Recent Missouri Editorials

The Joplin Globe, Nov. 15

The ship has sailed on duck boats

The accident that didn’t have to happen on Table Rock Lake is going to happen again. Maybe not in Missouri, but somewhere, sometime, and to somebody else.

That’s because no one - regulators, lawmakers, the industry - is being ordered to take the appropriate safety precautions.

Earlier this week the National Transportation Safety Board released its “Safety Recommendation Report” into the duck boat accident on Table Rock Lake in the summer of 2018. It was an accident that killed 17 people.

“Lives could have been saved, and the Stretch Duck 7 accident could have been prevented had previously issued safety recommendations been implemented,” NTSB Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt said in a statement.

“It is imperative that the United States Coast Guard adopt these life-saving recommendations now,” Sumwalt said.

If this sounds familiar it’s because 20 years earlier there was a similar accident in Arkansas in which 13 people died. There were investigations, recommendations, demands for change, etc.

Then crickets.

Nothing happened. Nothing changed.

Last week, Coast Guard Lt. Amy Midgett said they issued a guidance in 2000, following that NTSB recommendation, urging its inspectors and vessel owners to evaluate canopy design and installation and to “evaluate the design and installation of seats, deck rails, windshields, and windows as a system to ensure the overall arrangement did not restrict the ability of passengers to escape.”

Guidance … urging … evaluate …

A toothless attitude didn’t get the job done then, and it won’t get the job done now.

The Coast Guard also said a review of amphibious vessel canopies is planned based on “the NTSB’s reissuance” of recommendations.

Again, review … planned … recommendations …

It is way too little, way too late.

Readers who followed the Globe’s own investigation after the Table Rock Lake accident already know all of this.

We reported then that the canopies on these boats are inherently unsafe and can function like a net, trapping passengers against the roof when they need to escape as the boats sink.

We noted then that duck boats, made of metal, have a heavy chassis and transmission, swamp easily and sink quickly.

We also reported then that the boats needed “reserve buoyancy,” such as foam or bulkheads, to help them stay afloat in adverse conditions.

Yet no one - regulators, lawmakers, the industry - learned lessons from what happened in 1999 and took appropriate steps. We don’t believe anything will change after 2018.

The time has come to ban these boats for commercial and passenger use. As we argued then, surely, in the nearly 80 years since these boats were built for World War II cargo - cargo - better technologies and better designs are available if we want to continue using amphibious vehicles for recreational travel.

But as for this technology and this design … that ship has sailed.

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The Kansas City Star, Nov. 18

Missouri high school football players can pray, but coaches shouldn’t be leading ’ The Kansas City Star

Prayer is a good thing. It shadowed America’s Founders and still today underpins the very American tradition of Thanksgiving.

Moreover, character education should be a part of every youth athletic program in the country.

But prayer cannot be government-led - not even the most devout should want that - and there are myriad other ways to instill character in our young in public settings.

This is both the lesson and the solution to a suddenly roiling controversy over coaches having led their football players in prayer this past season at Cameron High School, about 50 miles northeast of Kansas City.

Even more American than Thanksgiving is the First Amendment, which is unique among the world’s nations, and which guarantees both the free exercise of religion and the freedom from government imposition of religion.

The Establishment Clause that restricts government involvement in religion, and the Free Exercise Clause that guarantees an individual’s freedom of conscience, need not be in conflict, as they seem to be in this nationally watched imbroglio in little Cameron, Missouri.

It’s pretty simple, really: Government officials - yes, including public school coaches and administrators - should not be leading prayers within the government’s sphere, but neither can students and townsfolk be prohibited from organic and unimposing expressions of faith. Even on a public football field before or after a game.

The prayers at Cameron this season inspired more than just the players. Parents, fans and residents of the town of 7,000 joined in. That’s wonderful. We’d just suggest, and we’re confident the courts would require, that next season, if there’s any praying going on after games that it be led by students flexing their free-exercise muscles - not government employees, however well-intended.

The Cameron school board meets Monday night. After a few days of written warnings from the Freedom From Religion Foundation - despite no aggrieved plaintiff having come forward - here’s to the school board and superintendent putting a swift end to the controversy. Just remind district employees they are not to lead students in prayer in their official capacities. And for coaches, that’s nearly all the time.

While reasonable accommodations must be made for it, even voluntary prayer in school settings must be kept at arm’s length from government involvement, and officials must be assiduous in making sure that no student feels pressured to participate. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that school officials “may not place the student dissenter in the dilemma of participating or protesting.”

This isn’t anti-religion. It’s pro-freedom. And it just happens to be the state of constitutional law.

In both perception and fact, prayer in the realm of public schools must be free and not forced upon anyone, either by those praying or those acting with state authority.

These two often-competing constitutional clauses can be accommodated. It’s just that in this particular situation, coaches must relinquish their natural leadership roles.

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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 17

Democratic wins show that affordable health care still drives election results.

Among the takeaways from Democratic election victories in Kentucky and Virginia this month is that support for the Affordable Care Act (known as Obamacare) continues to earn support for Democrats, as it did in the 2018 midterms.

As the Democratic presidential candidates rightly debate what health care should look like going forward, the party should continue reminding voters that the Obamacare model, while far from perfect, can work in the meantime if properly supported. It is a model that the Republican Party, from top to bottom, is still trying to destroy.

President Barack Obama’s signature policy initiative was an attempt to extend health insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans who didn’t previously have it - a situation that was not only morally intolerable in the richest nation on earth, but that contributed to making American health care overly expensive with inadequate outcomes.

Obamacare ensured that people with preexisting medical conditions could get affordable coverage, something that had always been denied to them by the private insurance industry. The program also used state-level expansion of Medicaid - the government’s health care system for the poor - to cover more Americans.

The GOP has fought those reforms tooth and nail for a decade now. Red states like Missouri refused to expand Medicaid, sacrificing their own poor for the sake of the GOP’s ideological belief that access to health care isn’t a right. Congressional Republicans tried and failed repeatedly to repeal it. The party finally settled for filing a pending federal lawsuit that, if successful, would throw millions of citizens with preexisting conditions off their insurance.

Once, when America was still unsure about Obamacare, Democrats shied from boldly campaigning on it. But with polls showing steady growth in the program’s popularity - despite the problems caused largely by Republican sabotage efforts - candidates in hotly contested races recently in Kentucky and Virginia made defense of the program a campaign mainstay. The results should be etched in stone for other Democrats running next year.

The winner in Kentucky’s governor race, Democrat Andy Beshear, and Democrats who took control of Virginia’s Legislature, all made the Affordable Care Act prominent features of their campaigns. They reminded voters that people with preexisting conditions remain under threat of having their coverage revoked, and Republican plans fail to address the potential consequences. They reminded poor communities that their own Republican leaders have denied them coverage under expanded Medicaid and would continue doing so.

In both states, Republicans campaigned like it was 2010 - slamming a program that has since pulled some 20 million people out of uninsured hell. It was a losing argument. Democrats running next year should heed that message and make it clear to the voters that 2020 will be a fight for, and against, affordable health care.