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We’ve written about this before. The Star is correct that jazz serves only a niche audience, but they argue,

Still, other jazz festivals draw audiences many times larger. The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival this year drew 425,000 for the seven-day event, the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival attracted 205,000.

Are those fair comparisons? The 2017 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival hosted such non-jazz performers as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Kings of Leon, Usher, and Snoop Dogg. The Rochester International Jazz Festival featured Cheryl Crow—not a jazz artist. And as the Star notes, these festivals took place over more days than in Kansas City.

The Star then speculated whether the cause for such lackluster attendance here in Kansas City was fear of crime or racism. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, who led the effort to spend public money on 18th and Vine in the 1990s when he served as mayor, offered that New Orleans and Memphis seem to have gotten past this, but not Kansas City. In order for this claim to be true, one needs to believe that the Kansas City region contains tens of thousands of jazz fans who are staying home simply because of the festival’s venue. Does anyone believe that? It seems more likely that event supporters are merely pointing the finger at others for their own failures.

Memphis’ Beale Street is a great success largely, we suspect, because it is privately run. Back in the late 1990s, Beale Street boosters sought private investment at the same time Cleaver was insisting on public financing for 18th and Vine. As to which was the wiser approach, two decades later we know the answer: Cleaver was wrong. New Orleans has a long list of private corporate sponsors; Rochester does too. Kansas City’s sponsors appear to include only “National Endowment for the Arts, the City of Kansas City, and Hall Family Foundation.”

Private administration and sponsorship is a powerful incentive for success and probably accounts for why these festivals include lots of performances by non-jazz artists. That is the lesson Kansas City must learn; government jazz isn’t working. To spend public money and then blame the public for not attending will not make anything better.

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And it’s the “real job” debate that percolated during the first special session that I want to address here, since it’s now come back up in the second. During the first special session it appeared that a handful of senators might already have been looking ahead to the Memorial Day weekend, which I don’t begrudge them. But a common refrain during the session’s debates was that a few senators were put out by having to come back to the Capitol—that being a senator wasn’t a “real job.” At least one senator even threatened to try and close down future special sessions because his “real job,” whatever it is, was more important than finishing his work as a senator.

Are senators the victims here? They don’t donate their time to be senators. They’re paid. They’re aware that special sessions can be called. They weren’t tricked into this line of work.

And can you imagine U.S. Senators behaving like this when talking about their public service? Constituents aren’t honored by electing a senator to public office. Senators are, in fact, given the honor of representing their constituents. 

So when I hear a senator complaining on the People’s floor about his pay, the burden of his office, and the inconvenience of doing the job he sought and received, I am left to wonder why he is standing there to begin with.

And now, as would happen in a real job, some of these senators are going to have to earn their cash advance. They were happy to walk away with their salaries during the regular session as bill after bill was buried by their filibusters and foot-dragging. Now they’re being paid per diems to do jobs that should already be done.

Maybe next year these senators will treat their real jobs—doing the People’s business—more seriously; otherwise, I suspect the summer of special sessions will evolve into an annual tradition. Let’s hope that won’t be necessary.

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I can’t imagine most people would have any objection — I certainly don’t — to the government monitoring the water quality and safety rules of truly public pools. But the government also defines “public” to include apartment buildings, private clubs, and more. In St. Louis County:

As of Wednesday, 248 pools had not been approved to open for summer, although many were awaiting final inspections this week. The county expects that some of those pools will remain closed, particularly at apartment complexes.

Assuming that most of these apartment complexes with pools are somewhat large complexes, we can reasonably say that thousands of people in St. Louis will now be denied the use of a pool this summer — and millions of dollars will be spent across the country on pool improvements — because of drain issues that have killed an average of one person per year across the entire nation. I am certain I sound like a jerk, but this immediately brings a classic Onion article to mind.

The Post-Dispatch article points out that Jefferson County does not have any pool inspectors. I think this is supposed to be a criticism of good ol’ JeffCo, but something important is lacking from the article — any evidence at all that there are problems with the pools in Jefferson County! Instead, believe it or not, the people of the county seem to be doing a perfectly good job of maintaining their own pools even without the threat of inspections to close them down.

Without a county, state or federal ordinance on sanitation, public pool owners in Jefferson County can make their own rules.

“We don’t care if we get checked or not. We keep a clean pool,” said Beverly Sweet, the superintendent of the Crystal City public pool. She said the water is tested several times a day and that chlorine tablets are automatically fed into the pool, which opens Saturday.

I’ll end with quoting the famous playwright David Mamet about how people (the vast majority, at least) tend do the right thing and work things out even if the government is not there to compel them:

But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?

I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.

The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.

Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out.

Enjoy the pool this summer. Have a great Memorial Day weekend.

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I ask because of this article in today’s Kansas City Star about snow-removal efforts in Kansas City. The short answer for why snow removal is taking a long time in Kansas City is simply that there are too many roads and too little staff:

For example, Kansas City plows more than 4,200 lane-miles of main arterials and residential roads, compared with 1,800 lane-miles in Overland Park. During the last round of storms, Overland Park had 125 people involved in snow operations, compared with about 200 to 250 in Kansas City.

Staffing cuts and shortages haven’t helped. Since 1998, Kansas City’s street maintenance staff has dropped from 174 to about 110.

For the record, the reasons they give are entirely acceptable to me, and I have no reason to believe they are not all doing the best they can. Anyone who loves political history like I do knows how much local officials can be judged by these things, though. Just ask Jane Byrne.

This leads me to an open question about local government staffing. Cities and counties in Missouri could have at least a few workers who are trained in multiple fields, and can move from department to department as the needs change. Here is a possible schedule:

1. December–February of each year: Streets/highways, primarily as snow plow and salt truck drivers.
2. February–August of odd-numbered years: Assessment divisions, though not as primary assessors. (This has been done by St. Louis County in the past, although mostly just to get lots of people to physically eyeball properties that computers determined rose in value by more than 15 percent.)
3. Memorial Day to Labor Day every year: Parks Department, while the pools are open and the parks and golf courses are busy. 
4. November–December every year: Revenue Department, collecting checks as everyone pays their property taxes.
5. Other potential opportunities include working for the Revenue Department on the delinquent tax sale day, the Police Department for parades, protests, etc., and the Health Department for emergency preparedness procedures.

I predict everyone will hate this idea. Libertarians and unions would finally agree on something. I don’t actually support it, because it would be turned into an excuse just to hire more government employees in total, but it would not be a bad thing if we could have a small number of government employees able to assist in multiple fields as seasons and needs change.

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Now that I’m living in Missouri, it’s a little easier — my great-great-great-great grandpa is buried about an hour and a half northeast of Kansas City, lying at the bottom of an abandoned well with several other people after they were all murdered. Although I visited the site in March, and had considered going there again over the Memorial Day weekend, a nasty bug has laid me out for the past few days … and the rain would have been a dealbreaker anyway — my car didn’t handle so well on the muddy back roads last time.

I did, however, spend some time on Monday thinking about the value of civil society. Because we live in a country largely founded on principles of freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law, people with wildly different cultures, backgrounds, and belief systems can live comfortably together in the same communities. And although from time to time tragic incidents may occur — like the one that killed one of my progenitors, and drove several others out of Missouri — they are by far the exception rather than the rule. There are places in the world where this sort of organized persecution and violent purging happens all the time.

Ultimately, this is one of the most important historical innovations of the United States — despite our differences, for the most part we all manage to live and work together in peace.

The post A Memorial for Civil Society appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

McCaskill is under pressure from Democratic colleagues in both House and Senate to revise her distaste not for bloated rip-offs of the taxpayer per se but the way the bloated rip-offs are done. Stopping pork would not be a minor achievement: incumbents crave and exploit earmarks, and it would be a good first step to prevent them from furtively slipping pet projects into the spending bills and require them to discuss more openly how best to rip us off. And it’s only fair to wait and see what McCaskill does.

But the track record of politicos isn’t that auspicious. There have been a few principled congressmen in the modern era. But most of even the most anti-politics-as-usual newcomers to Washington tend to become mushier about their toe-the-line intentions the longer they’re in the capital, and regardless of partisan affiliation or alleged political philosophy.

In retrospect, I suppose congratulating a politician for not doling out taxpayer money hand over fist is sort of damning with faint praise. In a way, it reminds me of my Memorial Day weekend trip to my sister’s house, where my just-turned-three-year-old nephew was excited to let me know he could use a potty now. It feels silly to cheer effusively for someone using a toilet, but positive reinforcement helps cement his new skill as a step toward an ongoing civilized habit.

Simply doing the right thing isn’t an extraordinary accomplishment, it’s true. But it’s so far from the norm in politics, that I rush to offer positive reinforcement in the hopes that it might help — in some small way — to nudge a good political decision into a climate of ongoing political responsibility.

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The summer of 2005 was not a good one for Sharon Fitzgerald. On Memorial Day, she learned she had inoperable lung cancer. Three days later, she got a knock on her door.

It was Jonathan Browne, head of real estate developer Novus Equities. He wanted to buy her house. And he made it clear that this was an offer she couldn’t refuse.

Michael Fitzgerald outside his “blighted” home. Sharon was too ill to come outside for this picture.

“He told us that if we didn’t sell, he’d just use eminent domain and take our home anyway,” said Sharon, “What could we do? With my health and everything and the chance to lose our home anyway, we didn’t really have a choice.”

Sharon and her husband Michael reluctantly agreed to sell. They wanted to get the issue behind them so they could concentrate on dealing with her illness. But when the time came to close on the house, they were dealt another blow: “It turned out that Browne didn’t have enough money from the banks to close,” said Sharon.

Residents say that Browne misled them and the city council about his capacity to complete the project. In reality, he didn’t have the money he needed to buy out the properties, and he was having trouble recruiting tenants for the shopping mall he wanted to build. When those facts came to light, the project collapsed.

Another Sunset Hills home condemned for “blight.”

That has put many Sunset Hills residents in a bind. Some of them had already entered into agreements with Browne to sell their homes to him, and they had made plans to move on the assumption that the contracts would be honored.

Even worse, some property owners have already moved, leaving their previous homes in a state of disrepair. There wasn’t much blight in Sunset Hills at the start of the process, but there is plenty now. Some of the most neglected homes in the neighborhood are owned by Browne, who has not kept them in good repair.

One Sunset Hills resident died without bequeathing his house to anyone, leaving the house abandoned. Sunset Hills doesn’t have any legal provision for handling abandoned property, and neighbors say that the city council hasn’t made any effort to address the problem, choosing instead to let the property deteriorate.

With the collapse of Browne’s development plan, the uncertainty faced by Sharon and Michael has only increased. There is talk of finding another developer, but that will take time. In the meantime, property values have begun to decline as the looming threat of condemnation discourages anyone from purchasing property in the area.

The home of Sharon’s parents, also condemned for blight.

Sharon and her husband weren’t the only ones whose lives were put on hold by Browne’s actions. Sharon’s parents live just down the street from her in the house they’ve owned since 1954. When Browne came to the door with threats of eminent domain, Sharon’s parents became quite frightened. “They were scared out of their minds,” said Sharon. “They’ve lived in that house for decades and they can’t afford house payments now, with their medical bills and other expenses. The entire experience has had a terrible effect on their health.”

Not all of Sharon’s neighbors were so easily intimidated. Resident Kathy Tripp decided to tell Mayor Hobbs about Browne’s strong-arm tactics. She got nowhere. “He assured me everything would be fine, but then he didn’t do anything at all,” said Kathy.

But Kathy isn’t easily deterred. She recently filed suit against Novus and Browne for fraud. The suit details Browne’s extensive harassment of residents.

This neglected property is owned by developer Jonathan Browne.

Kathy says that Browne’s harassment campaign was made possible by the city’s decision to use the power of eminent domain. When Browne approached the city with his development proposal, the city enthusiastically agreed to help him get the land he wanted. They commissioned a blight study from Peckham, Guyton, Albers, and Viets (PGAV), a consulting firm notorious for finding blighted conditions everywhere they look. After inspecting only 42 of the 262 homes, PGAV concluded the neighborhood was blighted, citing such problems as a broken rainspout, an unsettled concrete porch, and a family of four living in a 2-bedroom house. With the blight study in hand, Browne had a credible threat to use against residents who didn’t want to sell their homes.

Residents say that eminent domain has pitted neighbor against neighbor, as those who want to move blame those who want to stay, and vice versa. “I’ve been called every name in the book by some neighbors,” said Kathy. “Some people don’t like me standing up for my rights.”

But both Sharon, who signed a contract with Browne, and Kathy, who refused to do so, agree on this much: it’s not right to use eminent domain for private profit.

“It’s not right what Browne has done, or what the city has done.” Sharon said. “People’s homes shouldn’t be taken away just because the city can pocket some extra money. A hospital is one thing, but profit is different. And Brown has nearly destroyed our neighborhood, pitting one against the other. The hardest ones hit are the elderly.”

Timothy B. Lee is an editor at the Show-Me Institute. Jonathon Burns is a student at Truman State University.

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