• About Us
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Pickem Terms and Conditions
Saturday, June 21, 2025
The Platte County Landmark Newspaper
  • Home
  • Local News
  • Opinion
  • Landmark Pickem!
    • Weekly Pickem Updates
    • Results by Week
    • The Leaderboard
    • Pickem Rules and Help
  • Landmark Live!
  • Looking Backward
  • es_MXSpanish
  • Home
  • Local News
  • Opinion
  • Landmark Pickem!
    • Weekly Pickem Updates
    • Results by Week
    • The Leaderboard
    • Pickem Rules and Help
  • Landmark Live!
  • Looking Backward
  • es_MXSpanish
No Result
View All Result
The Platte County Landmark Newspaper
No Result
View All Result

I’m just a bill,

Guy Speckman by Guy Speckman
March 11, 2021
in Ponder the Thought
I’m just a bill,
5
SHARES
119
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare via Email

State government in action is my favorite government to watch flail. The Missouri Senate has recently debated Senate Bill 12. Listen, I agree with this bill, but I find it hilarious/sad that we must pass a law to tell local government they can’t do something that they are already are not legally authorized to do.

Basically, this bill eliminates the ability for local government to impose rules to restrict the number of people gathering or residing on private residential property during a state emergency related to public health. It also restricts local government reach for closing or limiting churches, schools and such.

RelatedNews

Protests, dinner parties and such

Better person, baby needs, new shoes

Natural gas, basketball

You catching what they’re throwing down over in Jefferson City, mayors and health departments?

Yeah, this needs to be the legal debate of our lifetime. The escalation of executive orders and “health” restrictions has grown to an alarming level in 2020. I’m old enough to remember when they were debating whether DWI checkpoints were a legal reason to stop people and the freedoms that it infringed upon. That has long been resolved as “legal” but the roll up of your freedom has been compromised much more significantly in the last year.

I’m still skeptical that mayors and health departments have the legal authority to shut down and limit business under the guise of a health emergency like they have. I’m hoping that the courts limit this in the next few years.

Remember when Saturday morning cartoons had the Schoolhouse Rock “I’m just a bill” song to help kids understand how a law is written and passed? Apparently, this concept of laws died a COVID related death this year as government officials at all levels began mandating closures and limits on gathering, all in the name of “your health.” The price you paid for this “protection” was paid in basic freedoms.

Here’s hoping the state government flailing will help get some of our collective freedom restored.


Let’s be honest, many public officials are happy with this newfound “power.” Getting cheered to increase restaurant capacity and the like somehow feeds their ego. I’m not cheering any of these restored freedoms; I expect them, sooner than later.


One winner in the 2020 experience may be school choice. COVID has exposed the continued weakness in public education and bills are being introduced across the country that would allow school funding being assigned to students and their families instead of to public institutions. As these bills gain momentum and traction, it could alter the landscape of public education in the United States.

Unions that refuse to go back to work and the administrative expense explosion in schools, combined with a continued slipping of the United States comparison on a world stage in core subjects is fueling this movement. Time will only tell if the movement can withstand the institutional strength that will come from the schools, their unions and the establishment.

(Guy Speckman can be reached at gspeckman@me.com <mailto:gspeckman@me.com> or singing “I’m Just a Bill” on karaoke night at the local bar)

Guy Speckman

Guy Speckman

Guy Speckman is a Landmark contributing columnist with his Ponder the Thought column. Speckman is the former owner of the Savannah Reporter, where the column appeared for nearly two decades. Speckman is a former city government manager, serving as city administrator in Maysville, Plattsburg and Savannah before entering business. He is a graduate of Northwest Missouri State University (1989). He is originally from Plattsburg, Missouri. He and his wife own and operate a real estate valuation firm and a daily legal newspaper and are the parents of two grown children.

Related Posts

45 Years Ago–June 20, 1980

by Ivan Foley
June 20, 2025
0

Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Baker, Jr. of Platte City announce the engagement of their daughter, Lori Ann Baker, to Devin Sherry, son of Mr. and Mrs. Willis Sherry of Smithville. The future bride is a 1980 graduate of Platte County...

30 Years Ago–June 22, 1995

by Ivan Foley
June 20, 2025
0

Robert Vick, the Dearborn reserve police officer suspended for 30 days by the city’s board of aldermen last month, has been reinstated. This action came at the board’s meeting last Wednesday. Vick had been suspended after many residents of Dearborn...

15 Years Ago–June 23, 2010

by Ivan Foley
June 20, 2025
0

Platte City police expect to submit a case file to juvenile authorities this week regarding a report they received from a local 17-year-old girl claiming to have been raped and sodomized over a span of four years by her step-brother....

health officer badge

Never enough

by Chris Kamler
June 20, 2025
0

Health is a fickle mistress who charges by the hour and still judges your life choices. I learned this the hard way last week when my new chiropractor—a woman whose job is to yank my spine and make it pop...

Next Post

15 Years Ago--March 9, 2006

Popular News

  • Ruslan Huseynov

    Details about murder suspect begin to emerge

    131 shares
    Share 52 Tweet 33
  • Platte City makes offer to man from Arnold, Mo.

    46 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 12
  • New bridge going in on Hwy. Z

    12 shares
    Share 5 Tweet 3
  • I-29 pedestrian struck by three vehicles dies at scene

    74 shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19
  • KC man charged in shooting death of local sports reporter

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Pickem Terms and Conditions
Call us at 816-858-0363

Copyright © 2019-2020 The Platte County Landmark Newspaper - All Rights Reserved

No Result
View All Result
  • Subscribe Online
  • Home
  • Local News
  • Opinion
  • Landmark Pickem
    • Results by Week
    • The Leaderboard
    • Pickem Rules and Help
  • Landmark Live!
  • Looking Backward
  • es_MXSpanish

Copyright © 2019-2020 The Platte County Landmark Newspaper - All Rights Reserved