28 October 2010

Cornered in the Electoral Paddock

For the first time ever, I might find myself voting no on every statewide issue, all to stay seemingly consistent with my objections to two entities spending roughly $7 per voter coming out to the polls Tuesday.

Already I've expressed issue with Propositions A and B, owing largely to the overwhelming onslaught of campaign material funded largely (in each issue) by a singular interest who would not be directly impacted by its passage. However, there is another singular interest pushing a ballot issue – a change to the state's constitution at that – that hasn't received as much publicity.

Constitutional Amendment Three was engineered largely by the Missouri Association of Realtors to prevent the state from introducing a transfer tax on the sale of homes and property within the state. Missouri, however, is currently one of 13 states that does not have such a tax in place. Proponents frame this as preventing lawmakers from imposing a tax on Missouri homeowners when selling property on which they already pay annual taxes.

Opposition is few and far between, but the majority of the rhetoric against it has emerged from a gaggle of conservative lawmakers who see this as a wrench about to be lodged in their efforts to introduce a "fair tax" in the state. Passing a law prohibiting the imposition of a sales tax on homes would run very much contrary to the desire of these lawmakers to make consumption-based taxed (for all intents and purposed) the only form of tax implemented in the state.

Another concern raised by this statewide group of Realtors muscling this proposed amendment to the state constitution onto the ballot is the glaring ability for narrowly-tailored interest groups to do the same. Already, with the overwhelming support of the General Assembly in 2009, voters can allow two narrow exceptions to become part of our state constitution.

Constitutional Amendment One would require all counties who have a charter form of government to elect their assessor, except those whose population is between 600,000 and 699,999. Right now, the only county that would be in that population donut hole is Jackson County. In Missouri, counties can either operate under a state-prescribed structure (which calls for the election of three commissioners and all county offices, including the assessor, prosecutor, sheriff, county clerk, recorder of deeds, auditor, and even the coroner) or petition the General Assembly to establish a customized, home-rule charter. These charters are crafted by a panel of citizens within the county, with input from other citizens, and then put to a vote of the voters.

When the General Assembly passed SJR5 last year, only St. Louis County would have been affected by the passage of this law. This was as a result of concerns raised about an appointed official in Missouri's largest county determining some of the highest assessments in the state, and thus, higher taxes. However, residents there passed a change to their charter by a 3-1 margin making the assessor elected. So were Amendment One to pass, it would have no immediate effect until either Jackson County exits this population donut hole or another county attempts to pursue a home-rule charter.

While I like the idea of holding all my county-wide officials accountable, this is a terrible way of doing it, and worse that this donut hole is intentionally written into the state constitution to shield certain entities at the expense of others. The state constitution must be a bedrock of proper and stable governance at the state, county, and municipal/township levels. For lawmakers to put through a narrow yet glaring donut hole, and asking voters to also divest their ability to determine for themselves whether they should allow their elected county leaders to appoint other officials as oppose to make them elected, only serves to make this bedrock a twisted knot of special exceptions and conflicting directives.

It is this reason that makes the next amendment challenging to support, yet heart-breaking to oppose. Voters have the opportunity to grant, via Constitutional Amendment 2 an exemption from property taxes for military veterans who, during their service to country, became a prisoner of war and totally disabled. While our military veterans deserve all the accolade they can get, sadly this method is similarly dangerous in its specificity. We do not have an exact number of how many veterans would qualify, and even if we did, the manner in which the exemption is granted is potentially dangerous for the sanctity of the state constitution.

The exemption is to be added into the first clause of Article 6, Section X of the state constitution, grouping this unknown amount of total-disabled veterans alongside the state, counties, municipalities, townships, and non-profit cemeteries. To group a subset of Missourians, no matter how selfless their sacrifice to their country and the price they paid, in with government entities is like grouping a sparrow with a brood of chickens. It's not the intent of the constitution to group specific citizens with these exemptions, even if we're perpetually indebted to them for their service. Further, the fear of those who are daring enough to speak against this amendment is that were voters to overwhelmingly support granting this exception, less-deserving groups could potentially have precedent to push for their own inclusion.

In the General Assembly, all but seven lawmakers voted for HJR15 placing this on the ballot. All seven happened to be absent on the days the measure came up for a final vote in both chambers.

So here we are, in the electoral paddock, staring at the shears that seek to skew the votes we put into the ballot box Tuesday. However you vote, be sure to hold onto all the wool, and keep it out from over your eyes in the process, by researching the facts and arguments, and surveying the long-term impact your vote could have on all Missourians, from Grant City to Granby to Gray Summit.

21 October 2010

Missouri: The Shear-Me State

With just under a fortnight to go until the biennial madness known as US General Election Season subsides, coverage from around the world increases along with the robo-calls and mud-slinging 30-second adverts. Recently, the BBC's Kevin Connolly breezed through Missouri and commented on our election mood, as well as his affinity for our nickname. Unfortunately, he only touched on the sentiment toward Washington and barely touched on state issues that also face Missouri voters.

Had Mr. Connolly done this, he might wind up coming up with a different nickname for the Show-Me State. Were he to comment on all the ads from Robin & Roy and Ike & Vicky, a more appropriate moniker would have been the Smear-Me State. Or, had he wanted to speak in detail on at least two of the five proposed ballot measures, he just might have developed a different, perhaps fitting nickname:

The Shear-Me State.

The two ballot measures in particular are Proposition A, which would effectively eliminate taxes on earnings, and Proposition B, which would establish additional laws covering the treatment and breeding of dogs. Both are changes to Missouri's revised statutes, meaning that lawmakers could, at any point in the future, pass a bill through the General Assembly to countermand their passage.

To explain why these two measures could turn Missouri into The Shear-Me State, I now introduce Rex H. Susa:
Rex H. Susa is not a happy sheep. You see, he's been told repeatedly by singular interests, wooing him by way of millions of dollars of second-rate adverts, to vote yes on Propositions A and B, believing that they're going to help him out, when their backers are instead treating him like the sheep he is so that their agenda can come to fruition at his expense.

Come to think of it, you could write the argument for the opposition of both measures this way:
"Proposition [A/B] is funded singularly by one [outstate arch-conservative billionaire/out-of-state activist organization] driven to single-handedly wreck Missouri's largest [cities' fiscal viability/industry—agriculture—] in the name of [free enterprise/animal rights]. However, it's clear to us that [Rex Sinquefield/the Humane Society of the United States] has no vested interest in [the public safety and infrastructure of/dogs living with loving owners in] Kansas City and St. Louis, and doesn't even put much of [his/their] money toward [developing property/rescuing and caring for dogs] in either city.

"Instead, [he intends/they intend] on duping us to vote to help [him/them] turn Missouri into [an experiment in free enterprise/a vegan paradise] where [cities receive revenue exclusively from a 23% sales tax/stepping on an anthill results in you being arrested for attempted genocide] but they won't have a way to [replace the lost revenue completely/make Missouri meat-free] because we'll travel to neighboring states to [shop/eat Arthur Bryant's Barbecue]. Therefore, we must vote no on Proposition [A/B]."

It may be a dubious argument, were it not for the reality that several opponents of Proposition B, hedging their bets on that argument, also happen to be supporters of Proposition A and chiding Proposition A's opponents who are using the same argument. One proponent of Prop A told The Kansas City Star that opponents relying on that argument were "blowing smoke".

Why must it take two entities, outside Missouri's two largest cities, at least $13 million to convince Missouri voters to vote something in that can easily be overruled, much like how in 2008 the Missouri General Assembly repealed campaign contribution limits voted in by 74 percent of Missourians in 1994? Further, contributions from those two entities amount to only a large amount of cash, with few ideas to back them up. Already a spokeswoman for Sinquefield admitted Sinquefield has no ideas to replace the revenue St. Louis and Kansas City will lose if voters dump the earnings tax in a subsequent vote. And despite many Missourians lining up behind Proposition B, including former Senator Jack Danforth and Cardinals skipper Tony La Russa, Missourians only accounted for $282,000 of contributions to Missourians for the Protection of Dogs, the group campaigning for Proposition B.

I don't take too kindly to Missouri voters like me being treated as sheep by Sinquefield and HSUS, with 30-second adverts trying to pull the wool over my eyes with selective language, pejorative words that start with the letter P, and imagery that makes a deliberate attempt to evoke an emotional knee-jerk reaction. I may come off as a Demon Sheep when I explain my objections to both measures this weekend, but I'm not about to let them turn our bellwether state into the nation's petri dish for their political gambits.

20 October 2010

Estão conspirando com o Qataris?

On the same day the two FIFA executives compromised by a sting reporting job by The Sunday Times were suspended pending a review, another British newspaper has named who they say are the two parties under investigation for vote-trading.

The Telegraph will report Thursday morning that the Qatari committee bidding to host the 2022 World Cup are under investigation for possibly conspiring with the 2018 combined bid of Spain and Portugal, in violation of FIFA's bidding rules. If this proves to be the case, then FIFA could disqualify both bids.

While Qatar remains a longshot for 2022 against the US, Australia, Japan and South Korea, the Iberian bid is considered a rival to England's quest to upend current front-runners Russia. Were the Spanish/Portuguese bid dismissed, England could focus exclusively on the Russians, with the Benelux bid still lurking in the distance.

Fortunately, the date remains 2 December on when we find out whether Egyptian and Peruvian soccer fans will blare their vuvuzelas inbetween bites of Gates' barbecued beef brisket at Arrowhead Stadium in 2022.

18 October 2010

Why Murdoch's Minions Might Muck Up FIFA

We found out Friday that vuvuzelas will not blare en masse from Arrowhead Stadium in 2018. Now we might have to wait a bit longer to see if Lamar's Lair will welcome the world in 2022.

FIFA executives are now saying that they might postpone their vote on who gets to hose the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals, currently scheduled for 2 December, following a sting expose by The Sunday Times. In their article (complete with undercover videos that are only available via a paid subscription), two Sunday Times reporters pose as English-based lobbyists trying to buy votes for the US' 2022 bid. In particular, they entertain offers from the presidents of football federations in Nigeria and Tahiti, both of whom are on FIFA's executive board and wield clout amongst the African and Oceania confederations.

FIFA have vowed to move swiftly with their investigation, and could suspend the impugned executives as early as Wednesday. Additionally, FIFA's ethics committee are reported to also be investigating reports of collusion between bidding committees, likely concerning vote swaps. While it could be another potential embarrassment for England's hopes to host the 2018 finals, there just might be an underlying reason for this. (Please convert your old UHF antennae into tinfoil hats… now.)

The Sunday Times is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation conglomerate, the same conglomerate that owns the Sky network of channels in the UK and the Fox networks in the US and Australia. Despite building much of their sport coverage on association football (namely Fox Soccer and Soccer Plus in the US and Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday), none of these channels have ever broadcast the sporting event that's surpassed even the Summer Olympics in cumulative audience numbers.

Since 1994, coverage rights of the World Cup in the US have been owned by ABC, whose parent company Disney also owns ESPN. In England, broadcast rights are split between ITV and the BBC. However, the current partnership is due to expire after the 2014 finals in Brazil, with no current indication of either the partnership being renewed or the World Cup remaining on a government list of sporting events required to be shown on free-to-air broadcasters. In Australia, semi-public broadcaster SBS have the rights.

While a majority of major US sporting events remain on terrestrial or basic cable/satellite channels, in Britain most anything not on the government's protected list has been picked up by Sky or ESPN (which replaced Setanta Sports when the Irish-based channel collapsed last year) on a pay-to-air basis. This includes all Premier League fixtures and high-profile cricket Test series, namely The Ashes.

Were England to win the 2018 bid and either Australia or the United States to follow in 2022, News Corp. would have home turf for eight years. While their newspapers would generate a large following reporting on preparations and whipping up support by way of nationalistic headlines atop The Sun and New York Post, an even larger chunk of revenue could come to them if they had exclusive rights to broadcast coverage in all three nations. Granted, it might not go down well were Fox to pre-empt habitual coverage of Cardinals baseball and NASCAR with 22 guys in shorts chipping a ball around. But the audiences, ad revenue, and ability to force subscribers to pay to view every game would generate far more revenue and profit for News Corp.

While such an insinuation–that a media conglomerate would conspire against its nations' interests as to prevent their domestic competitors from raking in millions–would need a ton of concrete evidence to support, the circumstances seem to connect (if only within the cosy confines of a tinfoil hat). Why would The Sunday Times pose as agents acting on behalf of the US Soccer Federation to sting and expose two corrupt voters that representatives from England's bid courted early in the process? Is it possible that, knowing that the status quo for broadcasting World Cup games will remain in place, News Corp is seeking to undermine or derail the bidding process as to prevent their competition from milking the home-field advantage?

Such a scenario, even if true, would be preposterous to believe and damning if accurate. But should English-speaking nations prevail come December, I suspect the current broadcasters will quickly ink new deals to extend their coverage rights and secure the eventual windfall from broadcasting the world's biggest single-sport spectacle, much to the dismay of Murdoch's empire.

01 October 2010

I thought Partisan TV News was suppose to be a Yankee thing

With election season at its peak in the U.S., televisions from sea to shining sea are tuned to the channel that emphasizes their viewpoints, be it Fox News for the rabid right, MSNBC for the rabid left, or HLN for the rabidly apathetic who don't care who's leading the U.S. over a cliff.

As this display of entrenched partisan nonsense and the simultaneous degradation of enlightened, sensible discourse and the general concept of centrism continues here, across the pond the greatest chance of it happening was scheduled to take place next week. And not by Murdoch-owned Sky News.

The taxpayer-funded BBC could have found itself the epicentre of a partisan programming debate, thanks to three unions who wanted to go on two 48-hour strikes timed to coincide with Prime Minister David Cameron's speech at the Conservative Party's annual conference in Birmingham and Chancellor George Osborne's speech on budget cuts two weeks later. At issue are concessions the BBC are asking members of the National Union of Journalists, Unite and Becta to grant for pension contributions. The cuts largely stem from a freeze into the rate of the annual television license fee and ongoing austerity measures that the Coalition government are starting to put into place.

The timing of the strikes is essentially aimed at the government, running contrary to the non-partisan objectives of the BBC. The unions have little to gain from the Conservatives being back in power. The last time Britain had a Tory government, Thatcher held out against the National Union of Mineworkers, and the unions' resolve fell flat. So the latest tactic: keep the Prime Minister from speaking on BBC by not having enough staff on hand to cover the speech.

Surely a political tactic like this — one activists would crave to use to stymie Fox News or MSNBC's ability to cover current events — would meet with with the leadership of a party still searching for traction despite a post-conference bump in several polls?

To the benefit of those who cling on to the hope of there being any semblance of objective news sources, it didn't. Shortly after the Labour party conference concluded in Manchester, new party leader Ed Miliband (or as the Tory-loving, Murdoch-owned Sun derisively calls him, "Red Ed") called on the very unions that nudged him past his old brother David to become party leader to not go through with the strike threat. Miliband said that the country had a right to hear what Cameron has to say from the Tory conference because the country heard what Miliband had to say. Additionally, several news presenters with the BBC, among them the venerable Jeremy Paxman and political editor Nick Robinson, warned of the action being seen as "unduly partisan"

As a result, principally because of a new offer on the table from the BBC, the strike's off. For the moment. But this threat just may have been the first blow toward the introduction of yet another American vice into British culture. (If only we could stick with continuing to impress Mountain Dew and Chiefs football on the world.)