Commentary
Thinking about the frightening past while living in Missouri after the fall of Roe
What happened to Evelyn? What happened to Marsha? These questions still come up among my friends from high school 55 years later. Both disappeared from our high school class after they became pregnant. The question of how their teenage pregnancies impacted their lives is increasingly on my mind, living in Missouri after the fall of […]
Cori Bush and Josh Hawley: Two roads diverged in a state
I’ve always thought that true political talent is rooted in dexterity: the ability to appeal to a wide variety of constituencies without significant internal contradictions. Every politician starts with his or her base. Sometimes that base is ideological. Other times it is, racial, geographic or generational. Candidates with dexterity are not only able to expand […]
Missouri’s troubling fight to keep innocent people behind bars
On Tuesday, Christopher Dunn walked out of a courthouse in St. Louis a free man after serving 34 years for a murder he did not commit. A week prior, Dunn was only 50 feet from freedom, dressed in a suit he picked out for himself, after a St. Louis Circuit Court judge ordered his immediate […]
Missouri’s GOP gubernatorial primary as a hand of Texas Hold ‘Em, part three: The river
It’s time for the final card in the poker hand that is the Missouri governor’s race. Quick review for poker neophytes: In Texas Hold ‘Em, two cards are dealt face down to each player, while five “community cards” are dealt face up in three rounds – first, a group of three cards (“the flop”), then […]
The experiment of Medicare privatization has failed
It may seem like it’s always been a part of America, but Tuesday is Medicare’s 59th birthday. We should pause, celebrate its success and commit to stopping the corporations who are pilfering it for their own profits. Health care in the United States remains unaffordable and inaccessible despite costing Americans $4.7 trillion a year. Medical […]
Keeping our eyes on the prize during the homestretch of political campaigns
No state is an island. No state will survive, let alone thrive, without a winning America. Missouri’s welfare and America’s are inextricably tied. To answer the question of what kind of America you want is also to answer what kind of Missouri you want. If we do not see the connections, we are running the […]
What Missouri’s vulnerable children need — and what they don’t
Two recent news stories aptly illustrate what Missouri children “at risk” of maltreatment need — and what they don’t. What they need is concrete help for their families, so their family poverty is not confused with “neglect” and they are not torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster […]
Missouri is doing an atrocious job distributing federal funds owed to Missourians in need
SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as “food stamps,” is our foremost tool for keeping low-income families and people with disabilities from going hungry. It’s also a deal for the states. The federal government pays 100% of the cost of the food benefits and 50% of the cost to administer them. SNAP not […]
Our words have the power to create, to heal, to injure and to kill
We do not yet know the motive of the would-be assassin who attempted to take Donald Trump’s life. We do know that he was, like all of us are, confronted with a constant barrage of words promoting hate and divisiveness at every level of our politics. Have we created a climate that says violence is […]
Strike up the band: Missouri moves to the front of the MAGA parade
A recent national poll asked prospective voters in some states how Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges would impact their choice in this year’s presidential race. In Missouri, 31% of the respondents said that Trump’s new status as a convicted felon would make them more likely to vote for him. I had to read […]
The Biden-Trump presidential debate was a disaster, but not just for obvious reasons
In the days following the Biden-Trump debate, news stories and Facebook posts introduced a new term for many — Gish Gallop — defined roughly as throwing out numerous arguments that are typically unsupported by facts making it difficult to respond. The debate strategy was named in 1994 for Duane Gish, a creationist advocate who was known […]
Freedom isn’t free
You can’t understand the scope of 122,000 names until you see them on a wall. Stand at the foot of the National Monument to Freedom, recently dedicated by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, and you’ll see all of them, soaring three or four stories above your head. Each name, taken from the 1870 census, […]