I would rather be with the people of this town than with the finest people in the world.
Mayor Deeb Roxanne, 1987
My wife and I handled my mother-in-law’s grocery shopping this week. Her store began as an A & P, morphed into an IGA and now Midtowne Market stands as part of the Straub’s family of stores. Just a block from where I went to high school, I’ve been familiar with the beer aisle – now including a Beer Cave – since my junior year at Duchesne.
Besides a great variety of mass market and craft beers, well, I found three machines that looked more like they belonged at Ameristar Casino than a neighborhood grocer. Yes, in the heart of St. Charles you can drop money in a quasi-slot machine after picking-up a six pack of Kona Big Wave.
All about this state things keep getting squishy.
Rules and laws about gambling just lack the clarity of old.
In a similar way, the role of the state Attorney General no longer includes protecting the people of Missouri. As stated by Eric Schmitt, he can’t enforce the state’s Sunshine Law because the governor is a “client” and he can’t act against him. [ https://missouriindependent.com/2021/06/11/missouri-ag-cant-enforce-sunshine-laws-in-governors-office-because-its-a-client/ ]
Meanwhile, the legislature wasted better than a week rubber stamping a routine re-authorization of the Ponzi Scheme to turn $1.00 into about $3.00 for Medicaid: many Republicans wanted to turn a tax measure into a vote on abortion and birth control. (Fortunately, House and Senate Democrats all voted for sanity and common sense prevailed.)
Oh, traffic laws long ago became mild suggestions. And, I would never ask a waitress to put her hand on a Bible and say she declared all her tips to IRS and the Missouri Department of Revenue.
Still, the line between acceptable and no acceptable keeps fading, especially in Republican strongholds like St. Charles County. Many Facebookers from Charleytown claim their president is still Donald Trump, not the guy who got the most votes. Wearing masks to prevent others from getting sick stands as an example of government over reach. And, of course, the unemployed and those without health insurance simply refuse to do the right thing.
Human effluent runs downhill. Perhaps blame starts at the top, with His Accidency the governor refusing to treat a deadly health crisis as a real problem and even avoiding hiring a health director, a Medicaid director and a head for social services. Or, now refusing to enforce the Constitution change passed by Missouri voters. If Mike Parson gets by being squishy about his job, why should the rest of us worry?
Of course, as we celebrate July 4th remember that the signers of the Declaration of Independence expected their countrymen [yeah, they were white male-centric to an extreme] to be active citizens. They created a nation with laws written and enforced by the governed, for the common good.
That wouldn’t fly in Squishy Missouri. A necessary revolution? Whatever. Just keep dropping coins in the machine.
Glenn