Category Archives: The Oligarchy

Candidate Forum: 2014 GOP Cass County Primary

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The Cass County Candidate Forum met last night at the Harrisonville Community Center. The democrats weren’t present. Their party strictly controls their primary—there isn’t one. They don’t allow contested races.

The only ones at the forum were ‘Pubs for three contested races between the county GOP conservatives and members of the Oligarchy who created the mess that plunged the county deeply in debt. The current office holders are working and making progress against that debt by returning the county to its principle areas of responsibilities.

The races covered was the Presiding Commissioner, Associate Circuit Judge, County Auditor and Circuit Clerk. Amy Bell, Kim York’s opponent for Cass County Circuit Clerk, withdrew a week or so ago as part of an agreement with the judicial system ending her service as Circuit Clerk. Kim York is now unopposed and will take office at the beginning of the new term. Regardless, she appeared alone and answered question as did the rest of the candidates.

The forum began at 6:30pm with introductions by each candidate. I noted a couple of…interesting items. All the candidates had two minutes for their responses and answers to questions with a one minute closing statement.

Dave Morris, who ran for state senator against Scot Largent and Ed Emery in the last general election, learned a few things since then. I took him to task then when he appeared at a GOP ‘meet the candidates’ meeting wearing shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops when Messrs Emery and Largent wore suits. I said at that time, Dave Morris wasn’t ready for prime time, i.e., his lack of experience in public office and the professionalism needed for state office. I’m sorry to say, he still isn’t ready for prime time.

In a subsequent question, Dave Morris was first to be asked, “What is the most positive act by the County Commission in the last ten years?” After a minute or so of stammering, he admitted he couldn’t think of anything. Jeff Cox, when asked the same question, immediately answered with killing the TriGen and Broadband projects that were pushing the county into bankruptcy.

The comparisons between Judges Meryl Lange and Stacey Lett were distinctive as well. Ms Lange has been practicing law for well over twenty years. Ms Lett for eleven years if I heard her correctly. Stacey Lett said that she has managed her own law office, and had experience with the local US Attorney’s office and other similar offices. It was unclear if Meryl Lange had ever done so, although she said she was once a lawclerk for a Supreme Court Judge. I didn’t recognize which judge that was so it must have been a state supreme court justice.

The important difference between the two was that Stacey Lett, younger and with only ten years practicing law, had twice the experience as a judge. Ms Lett has been the Raymore Municipal Judge for the last three or four years and has personally handled over 9,000 cases. Ms Lange was appointed to fill a vacancy as an Associate Circuit Judge a little over a year ago.

I did notice that Ms Lett answered the questions given her while Ms Lange did not, using the excuse of maintaining her impartiality prohibited her response to some general answers. I suppose that is one method of not making a statement on her views of being a judge. One statement that struck me, when Ms Lange actually answered a question, was her claim to have “handled 100 cases in less than an hour.” That means each case had only 36 seconds of her attention. It does make one wonder how she could do so and give each decision the necessary scrutiny any judicial case deserves.

The questions to Ron Johnson and Ryan Wescoat was fiery as expected. To call this race for Cass County Auditor a grudge match would be a great understatement. Ron Johnson was elected in 2010 ending decades of auditorial neglect by a string of democrat office holders who did not perform a single audit since the 1970s. During that time, the county auditor, “was an accounts payable office,” said Ron Johnson. Ryan Wescoat was an employee in Johnson’s auditor office when that office uncovered the fiasco of the TriGen and Broadband projects. I’ve written about his discovery in a post some years ago.

Mr. Wescoat wasn’t an employee for long. He was fired for insubordination and, without authorization, releasing documents and approving payments to UAM, the company being sued by the county for non-performance on the TriGen and Broadband projects. Since Wescoat’s political backers are the same former commissioners under investigation, Brian Baker and Bill Cook, one may suspect Wescoat’s motives running against his former boss.

Mr. Wescoat, during the initial introduction, went into great detail about his education and teaching experience. It brought to mind the saying, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” I made mention of that phrase in a Facebook posting last night. My wife, a professor in a local bible college, was not amused by the allegory.

When questions about the future of the county, both Dave Morris and Ryan Wescoat spoke at length about the need for economic development and taking advantage of the conversion of US 71 highway to Interstate Highway 49. At one point I had to wonder if Ryan Wescoat was running for Auditor or for the office of Director for Economic Development. I forget who responded, Jeff Cox or Ron Johnson, that unrestrained spending by the prior commission to push two economic development projects, nearly bankrupted the county.

Returning to the County Auditor’s race, one question clearly displayed the difference between Ron Johnson and Ryan Wescoat. The question, “What would you do if you found an office holder who was not complying with procedures demanded by law?”

Johnson used his discovery of apparent nepotism by the Cass County Clerk, Janet Burlingame as an example. He reported the discovery to the County Clerk and asked her to change her practice to be compliant with the state’s nepotism law. When, after six months, she had done nothing, he reported the case to the county prosecutor. The case was referred to the circuit court where a judge dismissed the charge because it had occurred during a previous term of the county clerk.

Ryan Wescoat’s answer was similar except for one step. After working with the office holder and not getting compliance, he would go to the County Commission, then the prosecutor. The problem with Wescoat’s process is that elected county officeholders are NOT subservient to the County Commission. The commissioners and officeholders are elected peers. One office is not subordinate to the other. The only point of contact is their budget. The Commission, working with the officeholders, creates a budget for the county and the offices. The Commission, after review with the officeholders, approves the budget. I suppose the power of the budget could be a device to use to insure compliance by an officeholder, but it would be a messy and long drawn-out affair, with, I suspect, lawyers involved in the end. Apparently, Mr. Wescoat’s view of the office of Auditor is more inline with the auditors before Mr. Johnson, an accounts payable office who rubber-stamps the decisions of the Commission without question. The concept of the Auditor being the ‘Check and Balance’ of the Commission and the elected officeholders appears to be foreign to Mr. Wescoat’s thinking.

Overall, the distinction between the two political groups, the GOP conservatives and the Oligarchy seeking return of the old, corrupt methods of governance, was readily apparent last night. I make no apology for wishing the conservatives a win next week. Else…we can greet a return to unrestrained spending, debt, and the return of the county to the path of bankruptcy.

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Hierarchy of Needs

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Have you heard about the Federal Tax increase passed by the House last week? Not many people have because it contained a tax deferment and the Washington elite from both parties didn’t want the news spread. Ignorance of voters is bliss—especially when it is Washington taking more money out of our pockets.

In this case, the bill would allow employers to defer making pension fund payments. Pension fund payments are tax deductible. Companies are required by law to make those payments…unless…the government wants those measly tax payments for something else.

It’s a matter of taking from Peter to pay Paul. This Highway bill, which our local congresscritter, Vicky Hartzler voted for, allows companies to defer making those pension payments. If a company is in such dire straits, they would have more trouble making their tax payments. Peter, in this example, is the FedGov. Paul is the retirees. Guess who gets screwed. Vicky says, “It’s budget neutral.” My question is, “Whose budget!?” Not mine!

Highway maintenance is a subject that will appear on the upcoming primary election ballot August 5th. Amendment 7 is a sales tax increase to ‘help’ fund maintenance of Missouri’s roads and bridges. The reality is that there is sufficient money already—if the state, county and city governments use that money as it was intended.

The real problem is that the state, counties and cities, have not been spending the existing funds on roads and bridges. Instead, they’ve been using the funds for other items. For example, Kansas City has a fixation with light rail and street cars. They have a plan, using funds from the roads and bridges maintenance funds, to restore a 1940’s era rail plan.

In 1943, Abraham Maslow published a paper on Hierarchy of Needs. In that paper, Maslow discusses needs—prioritization of needs that must be met. In engineer-speak, it is known as prioritization of tasks and dependencies. In order to complete a project, say maintaining roads and bridges, the individual tasks must be listed, dependencies determined, and then the tasks are prioritized by need and efficiency, i.e., getting the most bang for the buck.

The assumption is that the state, counties and cities, will be logical and work the projects as engineers. Unfortunately, the leaders of the state, counties, and cities, especially the larger cities more insulated from voter wrath, are not logical. They are more like neurotics, seeking to upset that engineering hierarchy of needs to feed their neurotic needs of their egos. They want their needs to be at the top, and a high need is to remain in office.

If they can placate their supporters, some of their needs have been met. The original purpose of the project funding gets lost and instead of maintaining the city’s road and bridges, we get the light-rail/street car boondoggle in Kansas City. I’m given to understand St Louis has similar boondoggles that is funded by the road and bridges budget just like Kansas City.

Maslow’s thesis was that everyone has a hierarchy of needs. No one really disagrees with that concept. Organizations, like city and county governments have needs, too. Unfortunately, governments are logical people. They are reflections of their elected officials. The passage of Amendment 7 would feed their egos insteading of meeting the actual needs of roads and bridges.

In Kansas City, the issue is the ego-stuffing of Mayor Sly James. In Cass County four years ago, it was the egos of the presiding commissioner Gary Mallory and commissioners Bill Cook and Brian Baker.

Mallory, Cook and Baker approved two unworkable boondoggles called Tri-Gen and Broadband Internet. The projects were unworkable and unaffordable but they did present the opportunity for corruption. That issue is still being played in the courts.

The damage to Cass County’s finances was severe. The county was within a hair-breath of bankruptcy. Due to the leadership of the current Presiding Commissioner Jeff Cox and County Auditor Ron Johnson, Cass County is slowly recovering.

Cass County has a new crop of responsive elected officials and an auditor who actually does his job instead of being a rubber stamp for the county commission. But the opposition, the prior officials, are still present, building an insurgency to regain access to public funds. Their hierarchy of needs opposes the hierarchy of needs of us the residents of the county.

When the primary arrives on August 5th, vote for yourself, your needs, not for the selfish needs of an oligarchy, unrepentant of their corruption. Vote for Jeff Cox, Ron Johnson and Stacey Lett. Let’s keep Cass County free of the Oligarchy and supportive of the needs of the residents. We don’t’ need a minority in office who has rapacious eyes on our public funds.

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