September 28, 2018

My email to Senator Blunt regarding Kavanuagh

Senator Blunt:

I urge you to reject the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. Accepting or rejecting the allegations of sexual impropriety notwithstanding, his demeanor during the questioning on Thursday September 27th clearly indicated that he does not have the temperament to sit upon either the highest court in the land or frankly any other court.

Thank You Very Much,
Sincerely,

September 21, 2018

Big Sports Plans In Hazelwood

All elements are in place for the final approval for the game-changing mega sports complex, POWERplex at the site of the St. Louis Outlet Mall. The Hazelwood City Council gave its unanimous and strong vocal support at its September meeting for the redevelopment of the former Mills Mall for the huge sports complex, described as the largest youth sports complex in the country.

All sides in the financing should be in place when the city council takes a final vote for approval at the Oct. 17th council meeting.

Construction should start before the end of the year with the first tournament by next spring. Developer Dan Buck of Big Sports Properties estimates more than 2.6 million visitors annually, providing a major economic boom for not only North County, but the entire metro area.

The resolution passed by city council on Sept. 12 states that Big Sports Complex will provide $49.6 million from bank financing, the St. Louis Cardinals and several investors. The St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission would provide $6 million and St. Louis County will put up $2 million for roads, parking lots and sidewalks. Hazelwood’s portions of the estimated $62 million project is $5.6 million loan to Big Sports.

http://www.flovalleynews.com/big-sports-plans-in-hazelwood

Happy to see new life being pumped into this former outlet mall as it is repurposed into a sportsplex. This mall came online just as malls were falling out of favor for shopping in general. It never had a good mix of retail outlets and with the shakeouts of the Great Recession and The Retail Sector in general it never had much of a chance. At this point all that remains are a few retailers and a theater. Food court is closed as are some outlet restaurants.

September 21, 2018

Governor Addressing Shortage Of Truck Drivers

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Gov. Mike Parson is considering changes to Missouri regulations to help address a shortage of long-haul truck drivers.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports one possibility is changing a law that takes away driver's licenses or occupational licenses from people who haven't paid child support for three months.

Parson said with an increasing shortage of truckers, the state should find another way to punish those who don't pay child support, although he offered no specific alternatives.

Parson also said he would like to give state prison inmates a chance to learn truck driving so they could help fill the driver shortage when they leave prison.

https://www.ktts.com/news/local-news/governor-addressing-shortage-of-truck-drivers

Interesting, with regard to the taking of licenses from those who fail to pay child support, I would think it more logical to simply garnish their wages than to take away the means of generating income to pay the child support.

September 17, 2018

Schnucks buying 19 Shop 'n Save stores in 'generational transaction,' with plans to rebrand them as

Schnuck Markets has agreed to buy roughly half of the Shop ‘n Save stores in the St. Louis area in a deal that CEO Todd Schnuck called a “generational transaction.”

The 19 Shop ‘n Save stores to be acquired — 14 on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River and five in the Metro East — will be closed in waves of three beginning October 7, undergo a renovation and reopen as a Schnucks store less than three days later.

A schedule of the closures and reopenings has not yet been released. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The approximately 1,500 Shop ‘n Save union-represented employees working at those locations will be offered jobs at the Schnucks stores, pending a background check.

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/schnucks-buying-shop-n-save-stores-in-generational-transaction-with/article_d66ebfc5-b7ad-50e7-8641-61dcb9df24a0.html

September 16, 2018

Was watching the Brooklyn Book Festival on C-Span this morning

and there was a panel discussion on what has been happening to the middle class/working people in the country. The panelist were all well versed in the subject but this guy seemed to stand out and apparently he is running for President in 2020 as a Democrat. Took a look at his web page and some of the policies and liked what I saw.


https://www.yang2020.com/policies/

September 8, 2018

Elijah Lovejoy: An American Martyr

On this day in 1836 Elijah Lovejoy began publishing the Observer in Alton, IL ultimately he became a martyr for Freedom of The Press.

“Elijah Parish Lovejoy died in Alton, Illinois, on November 7, 1837. He died, so far as is known, as the only martyr in the United States of America to the cause of the Freedom of the Press.” So reads the legal motion to close the case of Lovejoy’s estate, 100 years after his death sparked new passion in the abolitionist movement.

BIRTH OF THE ST. LOUIS OBSERVER

After much soul searching, teacher-turned-editor Elijah Lovejoy joined the First Presbyterian Church in 1832. Soon afterward, the 30-year-old left the St. Louis Times newspaper to study at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. When he had earned his preaching license the next year, a group of his St. Louis friends put forth a tempting proposition: return to Missouri and run a new Presbyterian newspaper, which they would fund. Eager to proselytize via the written word, Lovejoy agreed.

The St. Louis Observer debuted on November 22, 1833. In it, Lovejoy railed against Catholicism—something that didn’t sit well with the city’s French Creole and Irish residents but that was regarded as free speech and rebuked in a similar fashion. Lovejoy’s next topic of focus proved far more inflammatory.

In 1834, Lovejoy began editorializing against slavery, making points such as this one, from April 1835:

[Slavery] is demonstrably evil. In every community where it exists, it presses like a night-mare on the body politic. Or, like the vampire, it slowly and imperceptibly sucks away the life-blood of society, leaving it faint and disheartened to stagger along the road of improvement. . . . It becomes us as a Christian people, as those who believe in the future retribution of a righteous Providence, to remove from our midst an institution, no less the cause of moral corruption to the master than to the slave.

http://mohistory.org/blog/elijah-lovejoy-an-american-martyr/

September 1, 2018

How big is Missouri's Senate race? It's the top target of outside spending, nationwide

WASHINGTON • At the traditional Labor Day pivot toward Nov. 6 elections, Missouri is the top target for outside-group spenders in Senate races across the country, according to data analyzed by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Data compiled by the group from Federal Election Commission reports indicate that about $23 million has been spent so far, slightly over half of it by groups aligned with Democrats.

But that figure, which rises by the day, does not encompass all “dark money” spending or spending not yet reported to the FEC. For instance, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity announced another $2.1 million ad buy attacking Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill. In February, it bought $1.8 million in ads attacking McCaskill for voting against Republican tax cuts.

McCaskill’s campaign, citing media reports on top of the CRP-analyzed data, estimates that at least $37 million has already been spent in Missouri outside of the campaigns of McCaskill, Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley and independent candidate Craig O’Dear. That spending, which includes harder-to-trace “dark money,” outpaces the combined amount of money raised by those three candidates for their own campaigns, and is on a pace to set records for Missouri Senate races.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/how-big-is-missouri-s-senate-race-it-s-the/article_6513cd7d-0b32-5462-a624-76be5f548d88.html

September 1, 2018

St. Louis prosecutor says police asked for 'exclusion list' of officers

ST. LOUIS • St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office said Friday that police officials were the ones who prompted the creation of a list of 28 officers who will be excluded as witnesses in criminal cases.

In a statement, Gardner’s office said “key leaders” in her office and the police department for months had been having “in-depth conversations about prosecutors’ concerns regarding the credibility of several city police officers.” A spokeswoman said police officials then asked for a physical list of officers’ names.

The list was originally “intended for internal purposes to ensure integrity in the system,” the statement says.

A lawyer who represents officers, Brian Millikan, said Friday that he had seen the full list and represented some of the officers on it.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-louis-prosecutor-says-police-asked-for-exclusion-list-of/article_c789670d-42d4-5474-b205-b1eddf92a0cf.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1