Have a safe and happy Fourth of July from all of us at the Show-Me Institute.

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Earlier this week, Uber announced that it would provide free UberX rides in Saint Louis for the Fourth of July weekend. That seemed like a huge benefit for the city, as the holiday week is notorious for drunk driving accidents. Free ridesharing has been a promotion many other cities, including Kansas City, allowed while policymakers worked out regulatory hurdles. But despite support from just about everyone, including Mayor Slay, the MTC said thanks but no thanks.

That action was bad enough, but subsequent statements by the MTC’s chair are downright embarrassing for that commission and the Saint Louis region as a whole. The chair of the commission wrote that complaints about Uber were down to “white privilege,” despite all the evidence that the entire Saint Louis community would benefit from ridesharing. The commissioner also openly insulted Chris Sommers, a more pro-ridesharing commissioner, for criticizing the MTC’s decision. Aside from calling on Sommers to resign and “work 4Uber,” the chair used extremely inappropriate language to disparage Sommers over twitter, completely unbecoming of a public official.

To sum things up, we have a commission with a chairman who is publicly insulting another commissioner and using race-baiting language to attack Uber. We have another commissioner who, last week, intonated that we should regulate just about every job that exists and said that Uber is a want, not a need in Saint Louis. Worse yet, those two individuals are among those commissioners who don’t represent the taxi industry. How can we expect this body to come up with efficient, modern for-hire vehicle regulations? Might it be better at this point just to dissolve the commission and start fresh? 

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The Metropolitan Taxicab Commission (MTC), that’s who.

The MTC regulates all for-hire vehicle services in the city of Saint Louis, including ridesharing. Problematically, half of its members represent the existing taxi industry, with vested interests in keeping out new competitors and new business models. As we’ve written before, their onerous and outdated taxi regulations are the reason Saint Louis has fallen behind the rest of the nation in getting ridesharing companies to set up in the city. In response to Uber’s petition to allow free rides in Saint Louis on the Fourth, the MTC said they would only allow it if all Uber drivers had gone through the MTC’s background checks (including finger printing) and drug tests. That stipulation effectively scuttles the promotion.

There is some question as to whether the MTC has any legal authority to ban free Uber rides, as the company is not technically offering a paid service. But the commission believes it does have the authority, and it has decided to use it to the detriment of Saint Louis. Moreover, the commission’s decision is in direct opposition to the position of Mayor Slay, who tweeted out on the promotion:

Uber has offered a free trial of its X service for the long holiday weekend. It is a positive gesture that we welcome.

With the MTC now swimming against both the tide of public opinion and the Mayor’s Office (which has hinted that they would not pressure police to enforce the MTC’s decision), it may be time to ask whom exactly this regulatory commission works for, Saint Louis residents or itself? 

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As first appearing in the Kansas City Star and the American Spectator:

A surprised and outraged Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a date which will live in infamy.” But Dec. 7, 1941, may also be remembered as one of the great turning points (for the better) in world history. It had the startling effect of rousing a sleeping giant (the United States) into purposeful action, and that was the primary factor in stopping the forces of evil from cruising to an easy triumph in World War II. In Churchill’s words, the world was in danger of entering “a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

The Japanese Imperial Navy struck Pearl Harbor in two waves beginning at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time. Japanese aircraft destroyed much of the U.S. Pacific fleet and killed a total of 2,403 Americans – which compares to the 2,605 Americans and 372 U.S. residents from other countries who lost their lives in the surprise attack on the United States launched by al Qaeda on 9-11-2001.

As the Japanese readied for their attack, Hitler was sitting pretty – perilously close to winning a two-front war. Having already conquered France and other smaller European nations in 1940, German troops scored one victory after another against the poorly equipped and outmanned British Army in Southern Europe and North Africa in 1941. “Evacuation going fairly well – that’s all we’re really good at!” Alexander Cadogan, at the British Foreign Office, observed in his diary during the British withdrawal from Greece. “Our soldiers are the most pathetic amateurs, pitted against professionals.”

Things looked no better on the eastern front – with the German army on the outskirts of Moscow. In three parallel offenses, German forces invaded Russia in late June – sweeping across the vast countryside with the same lightning speed that marked the earlier invasions of Poland and Western Europe. Desperately short of every kind of war materiel from boots and rifles to tanks and planes, the Russian army was saved by the onset of winter.

Pearl Harbor changed everything – ending the long, enfeebling debate inside the U.S. between isolationists and interventionists. Suddenly, America was at war, and almost everyone – from FDR on down to Charles Lindbergh, hitherto an arch isolationist – agreed that this was a war that had to be fought with everything we had. Overnight Lindbergh turned from dove to hawk. Though unable to regain the Army Air Corps commission which he had resigned in April 1941, Lindbergh flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific Theater as a civilian consultant.

Within days of Pearl Harbor, hundreds of thousands of Americans made up their minds to join the armed forces. That included the two oldest sons of Joseph Kennedy, another isolationist and outspoken advocate of the appeasement of Nazi Germany, whose departure from London where he had served as U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James’s was a major addition by subtraction for both Roosevelt and Churchill. The older Kennedy left England in October 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain, which reduced much of London and other cities to rubble.

My late father – then 24, a reporter with the Kansas City Star, with a wife and baby daughter – was one of the many who rushed to serve. He failed his first Navy physical – being exceedingly thin – but passed the second time after gorging on food and water. He was one of the “ninety-day wonders” – sent to officer training school for just 90 days of rigorous physical and classroom training – and went on to skipper a submarine chaser that saw action along the eastern seaboard, off the coast of North Africa, and in the North Atlantic.

If any disaster may be called a good disaster, it was Pearl Harbor, which awakened America with a violent start and averted what might easily have been the greatest setback to human freedom, joy, and advancement in world history.

Andrew B. Wilson is a resident fellow and senior writer at the Show-Me Institute.

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Some state representatives objected to an official honor for Seaman because they thought there wasn’t enough evidence that he traveled through this state:

“If we’re going to have an official dead dog for the state of Missouri, we should have some evidence that the dog actually went to Missouri,” said Rep. Vicki Englund, D-St. Louis County.

Others commented that, now that Missouri has plenty of official symbols, “enough is enough.”

I’m happy with the results of the Missouri House’s vote, and I hope that Newfoundland fans will find ways to promote the breed outside of government. It just isn’t practical for the General Assembly to confer honors on everyone’s favorite animals. At some point, enthusiasts have to step back from lobbying the state and take their message directly to their fellow Missourians.

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New Hampshire state representatives talk about the official beverage proposals as if naming these symbols actually accomplished something:

Rep. Leigh Webb of Franklin saw a problem with both drinks, saying, “Neither is unique to New Hampshire. […] It will help agriculture, but I’m not sure this is the way to do it.”

This legislator implies that state symbols have the power to shape consumption patterns and improve health:

State Rep. Brian Poznanski, a Democrat from Nashua, reflected on his youth in supporting cider.

“In junior high and high school, I drank sugar and more sugar,” Poznanski said. “There’s a huge obesity problem in this country.”

The students’ teacher has a more realistic perspective on state symbols, and acknowledges that an official beverage probably won’t change people’s actions any more than the official recognition of state animals does:

“My students wanted cider to be a symbolic representation of New Hampshire because of autumn and farm stands,” Nichols said. […]

“We have a white-tailed deer as our state animal, and I’m not sure what that does for the economy, but it’s symbolic because it’s here. That’s what the children were going for, not to exclude milk by any stretch of the imagination.”

It’s clear from her statement that some people already associate apple cider with the state of New Hampshire. Her students nominated it because they’ve seen apples growing and they’ve seen stands selling cider. Many other New Hampshire residents identify these familiar sights with their state.

People are justified in thinking of apple cider as symbolic of New Hampshire. But it’s a bad idea for New Hampshire to create a new state symbol recognizing it, for the same reasons I’ve opposed the proliferation of official symbols in Missouri. Long lists of state symbols encourage people to ask the government to sign off on their opinions and preferences. They give the impression that for a symbol to count, it needs a state imprimatur.

However, there is a positive aspect of state symbols that I’ve overlooked. When people watch their representatives argue about whether cider or milk should be the state beverage, they may conclude that legislators don’t share their priorities. This could prompt them to realize that if they want to get things done in their state, they’re better off finding solutions in the market. Elected representatives are often apt to shy away from making waves about the things that matter to their constituents and instead talk about less consequential things like official drinks. Maybe the official political fish should be the red herring!

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I am sympathetic to Sarah Brodsky’s argument that the role of the state should not include handing out endorsements, and that individuals shouldn’t look to the state for approval. However, I am OK with legislation about state symbols. I feel that the more time the state spends making non-financial endorsements such as for a “state bird” or “state animal,” the less time it spends passing legislation that increases bureaucracy or infringes upon our personal liberties.

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