Missouri voters spoke clearly — will legislators listen?
On election day, Missouri voters decisively rejected Amendments 4 and 5. The legislative supermajority failed to increase the difficulty of approving citizen-led initiative petitions and to eliminate the state income tax by allowing for increased and expanded sales and service taxes. At the end of the day, 80% of voters said “no” to 4, and 83% said “no” to 5. Not a single county voted to approve either amendment.
Republican elected officials might try to discount these massive defeats by claiming that we did not understand what we were voting on or by blaming out-of-state special interests for funding the opposition. These are both false narratives. We understood very well how 4 and 5 would weaken our voice and shift the tax burden, and it was
Missourians who funded and led the opposition.
The better explanation is that our Republican legislators have become out-of-touch and routinely ignore their constituents. Protected by gerrymandered districts and flush with campaign cash from special interests, Republican elected officials in Missouri take us for granted. When will they begin listening to us again, holding town halls, and passing bills that most people favor? It is time for our elected officials to respect Missouri voters again.
Steve Berkwitz, Springfield
Trump is consistent, give him that
Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist, wrote a book in 2018 entitled "Everything Trump Touches Dies." At first I thought the title itself was a bit harsh. I was wrong. Longstanding events of Trump’s life, and recent events, have brought that assessment by Wilson in clear view.
Picture this: The American child-president had banged his spoon on the metal tray of his high chair, crying that the old presidential Air Force One aircraft was not impressive enough to take on international trips. He said it was an embarrassment. Trump’s new Air Force One, the one donated to him by Qatar, was supposed to be the greatest ever. It was retrofitted at the expense of the American taxpayers.
The old Air Force One that he used on previous trips to Europe on one of his embarrassment tours had defensive countermeasures including advanced antimissile capabilities. The new Air Force One was determined by defense experts to be fatally flawed because it did not have the same antimissile capabilities. With taxpayer dollars, he bought a Boeing 747-8 just to train pilots how to fly the new Qatar plane. All of this cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Those expenditures were paid, in part, by expenditures not authorized by Congress. The new plane sits mothballed awaiting many months of retrofitting work.
Now consider Venezuela. The entire point behind that was to steal their oil, Trump said and did as much. He seized two tankers of Venezuelan oil and the oil operations of the country and kept the money. The Financial Times estimates that Venezuelan oil sales have generated more than $13 billion in revenue this year and Trump has kept the money in accounts controlled by the United States without providing any transaction-level reconciliation of transfers to the people of Venezuela.
He has lost his war with Iran, costing the United States billions, but again, it was never about nuclear weapons, it was always about oil. He kept his promise to the oil companies that if they would give him a billion dollars, he would repay them with higher oil profits. In disrupting trade through the Strait of Hormuz, he has done that. Exxon and Chevron recently reported the largest profits ever, while the American people have paid the price economically.
The child with the Midas touch has left his mark on the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Monument Reflecting Pool, now known as the Trump sewage lagoon. His trade agreements have all been failures, manufacturing jobs have not been created and inflation rages for the American people. Need I even mention his ballroom and his arch? The clown show just continues at full throttle.
Rick Wilson was right, everything Trump touches does die.
James Fossard, Springfield
Missouri must keep junk science out of courtrooms
Missouri missed an opportunity to head off a growing battle that is unfolding in courtrooms across America, directly affecting healthcare decisions.
In 2017, Missouri aligned its statute governing expert testimony with Federal Rule of Evidence 702, creating consistency with federal courts. The rule was amended in December 2023 to clarify how judges must apply that standard — Missouri law has yet to be updated.
Sen. Jamie Burger (R-Benton) introduced a bill during the recent legislative session to align with Rule 702 and protect patients from misleading claims in court. Unfortunately, it failed to pass.
For too long, agenda-driven science has seeped into consequential court cases, manufactured for litigation rather than developed through rigorous, peer-reviewed research. The same standards patients and their doctors rely on to make informed health care decisions should apply in our courtrooms, too.
Misleading expert testimony distorts verdicts, drives up health care costs and can steer patients away from safe treatments based on manufactured fear rather than medical fact.
Patients deserve to trust the science coming out of our courts. Missouri lawmakers should prioritize amending the expert testimony rulings.
Connie Farrow, executive director of Patients Come First-Missouri, Columbia
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Letters to the Editor: Was election day landslide clear enough?
