Editorial

What they're saying …

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Missouri newspapers:

Nov. 30

The Kansas City Star, on the stem-cell petition:

A petition drive to protect a form of lifesaving stem-cell research in Missouri is proceeding with the approval of the state's top leaders.

Secretary of State Robin Carnahan and Attorney General Jay Nixon have said the ballot language complies with state law. Gov. Matt Blunt says he supports the effort.

Yet a group in Scottsdale, Ariz., has gone to court to keep the initiative off the November 2006 ballot.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a religious-based group, contends the ballot language attempts to deceive voters.

The proposed constitutional amendment would ban human cloning but protect all stem-cell research permitted by federal law.

Opponents claim a form of research involving early stem cells amounts to human cloning. They are the ones being deceptive. Their protests are about stem cells that are cultivated in a petri dish, don't involve the union of an egg and a sperm and are never implanted in a woman.

To call such a process human cloning is to paste an extremist definition onto a process that holds great medical hope. No court should be a party to such a maneuver.

Nov. 29

Columbia Daily Tribune, on highway funding:

Seems the feds are having trouble keeping up with highway funding, just as states are. Hardly is the ink dry on the recently passed $286 billion highway and public transit act when comes a new report commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce showing the federal Highway Trust Fund is running out of money.

Not only will the fund itself run dry in 2008; the report says money from all levels of government will fall $500 billion short of simply maintaining transportation infrastructure through 2015. If improvements are to be made, the nation will be $1.1 trillion short by then.

Raising gas taxes can produce some relief in the short run, but this source has limits. As conservation pressure continues to mount, revenue from taxes-per-gallon increasingly will fail to keep up with highway and bridge use. As motorists buy more efficient cars, the money they produce in fuel taxes will proportionately diminish.

So the chamber report suggests owners of hybrids and other fuel-stingy cars pay more since wear and tear is caused by miles traveled, not merely the amount of motor fuel consumed in the process. In conjunction with higher taxes per gallon, a vehicle fee is suggested.

Interesting idea -- something environmentalists might not have imagined as they promote conservation. Their arguments remain sound, however, even from selfish standpoints. A vehicle tax might nick users of small, efficient cars, but it should take a bite out of heavy highway users as well, the owners of the behemoth 18-wheelers that cause more than their share of road damage, and the bulk of revenue is bound to come from fuel taxes.

The essential point is our sources of public revenue are not keeping up with our demand for public transit infrastructure. The chamber report gives a good foundation for thinking about the future, but since the crunch will creep up on us over time we will procrastinate, bouncing along as roads deteriorate, blaming public agents for neglect, never looking in the mirror.

Nov. 28

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, on voter registration:

When people tell you that Americans take democracy -- elections in particular -- for granted, drop this fact on them: In the last census, Missouri had 4,094,716 citizens eligible to vote. And last year, Missouri had 4,194,146 registered voters.

In other words, Missouri had nearly 100,000 more registered voters than it had citizens of voting age. That's democracy in action. Unless it's voter fraud in action. Or --more likely -- bureaucrats in non-action.

Last week, the United States Department of Justice filed suit against Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, alleging that her office had failed to properly maintain voter rolls and routinely allowed ineligible voters to stay registered.

The lawsuit immediately set off a round-Robin of finger-pointing. Ms. Carnahan, a Democrat who won office a year ago, said she'd inherited the problem from her Republican predecessor, Matt Blunt. A spokesman for Gov. Blunt, a Republican, said Ms. Carnahan should have worked with federal officials to avoid the lawsuit. Ms. Carnahan said she'd been advised against settling peacefully by the office of a fellow Democrat, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon. Mr. Nixon said he was leery of signing a consent decree that cedes too much state and local authority to the federal government.

Ms. Carnahan said she was puzzled by the Justice Department's actions, inasmuch as she agreed with most of its recommendations. "Under the new Help America Vote Act (signed into law in 2002), one of the requirements is a statewide voter registration list," Ms. Carnahan said. "It's supposed to be in place by the beginning of next year, and we've been working with county clerks, getting them to migrate their data." ...

... Ms. Carnahan said that the counties have different record keeping and computer systems, which have slowed down the job of compiling a statewide list. Budget cuts often mean that clerks' offices, which also handle the rest of their counties' paperwork, are understaffed.

Manpower problems are compounded by a couple of demographic problems: age and social mobility. ...

With modern technology, this problem should be easy to fix. It probably could have been fixed without a lawsuit. It certainly should have been fixed without blame-gaming. We owe that to all of our voters, living and dead.

Nov. 28

Springfield News-Leader, on the death penalty:

In the past 32 years, 122 people have walked away from death row, cleared of the horrible crimes they were convicted of committing. That number includes three people in Missouri. In the past 28 years, 997 inmates have been executed. That was the year a 10-year moratorium on executions ended. Three more men are scheduled to die this week. That will push the number to 1,000.

If our justice system were dispassionate and perfect, that number would be a grim reminder that we live in a world where people do evil, horrendous things. Actions have consequences and criminals must be punished.

However, our courts are far from spotless. We cannot confidently and comfortably say that no innocent person has ever been executed.

If we are honest with ourselves, we are left not to wonder whether one person has been killed for a crime he didn't commit. Rather, the question is how many have wrongly died.

There's no way to know for certain. ... However, legitimate concerns have been raised in at least two of those cases.

One is the case of a Missouri man, Larry Griffin, put to death by the state in 1995. The state used our tax dollars to execute Griffin for the death of a 19-year-old drug dealer. In his court case, the prosecution relied on the testimony of a career criminal. A police officer whose own testimony corroborated the informant's tale has recently stated the man was lying.

Another case of a presumably innocent man being executed happened in Texas. The state executed Ruben Cantu for killing one man and wounding another in a robbery attempt. Ten years after Cantu's execution, the lone witness in the case changed his story. He now insists Cantu was innocent.

... How many innocent people should be executed so that we can exact state-sponsored revenge on truly guilty killers? ... We should put a halt to this system to prevent such mistakes.

-- The Associated Press