This column space has a loyal reader from Doniphan County, Kan. I hear from him every now and then, if I’ve put together a decent set of opinions and he gets to a place with cell phone coverage. He is exactly like you would expect someone from Doniphan County, Kan. to be. He looks good in overalls, hunts wild pigs for fun, everyone in 12 counties knows him by his nickname only, and he’s related to most everyone he passes on the highway. Well, he meets them on the highway, I doubt he ever passes anyone, strikes me as a 40-mph max guy.
Anyway, he calls on Saturday of last week, following my “toes” column. I answer. “Hey Guy, Richard here. Headed to my grandson’s ballgame and wanted to let you know, I’m wearing sandals.” The last part delivered in his attempt at a sexy whisper. I threw up a little.
Damn, here we go with old white guys wanting to share their toes with me. I’m having none of this. If you call me and try to even whisper something about your toes, I’m calling the Platte County Sherriff and getting you arrested for whatever we can trump up. This is a threat to democracy.
If this gets out of hand, I’ll be the lone voice of reason in this newspaper and support the biggest jail construction project that the Kansas City metropolitan area has ever seen. You can’t put toe suckers and toe porn dudes in jail fast enough to meet my needs. Tell Zahnd to open a special Toe Division of the prosecutor’s office and let’s get these people rounded up. We’ll call it “This Little Piggie Went to Jail Unit.”
Somebody call the health department and see if we can get an emergency “toe covering” order ASAP. This is serious folks; we can’t have a bunch of gnarly toes running around this summer. You think COVID was bad? That stuff doesn’t even compare to a wicked toe fungus. Seriously, this is a health emergency, let’s put up some Plexiglas and keep six feet (and 10 toes) apart until this is settled. Maybe shut down the skateboard parks and stuff and for sure keep all the elderly locked in the nursing homes but I’ll defer to the experts and science on everything that needs done.
You’re waking up this morning having footed the bill for the Missouri legislature to have done almost nothing in their latest session. We should have put the money we paid for this session in a community firepit and we would have gotten better use of your money.
The sad truth of the matter is that the Republican party is almost entirely to blame. Democrats are almost just a distraction in Jefferson City, but the infighting in the Republican party has stalemated meaningful legislation for a few years.
Political pundit Dave Drebes at moscout.com summed it up best. “The clear consensus is that the legislative session was a dud for the majority party. They whiffed on what were gimmes, priorities which were teed up for passage.” This includes sports betting, education reform and other items that would have impacted daily lives for the better, yet Republicans could not get out of their own way or look past their donor’s wallets to see their way to a successful session.
Unfortunately, nary a soul pays any attention to state government, so we trudge forward with a little more spending on our backs with a little less relief from the government we deserve.
(Guy Speckman can be reached at the prosecutor’s office, filing formal complaints with the “This Little Piggie Went to Jail Unit”)