I'm writing this early Tuesday so don't know how the election went in Miller County, though I suspect there were some problems with people showing up at the wrong precinct or having failed to update their registered voter information due to a move or some other reason. Just like always.
Anyway, I made a verbal election complaint when I voted early last week. Someone had placed a sign urging a "yes" vote on one of the amendments in the front flower border at the courthouse. I thought that was "illegal" but was informed it was not a violation because the county does not have a policy prohibiting it.
I was far from the first, or only, person to complain about the sign.
I would urge the county commission to look into such a policy. Political messages have no place on public property for the most part. I also would urge cities, school districts and the like to see if they would need a policy too.
By Saturday, the sign was gone. I don't know if the person who placed it there heard about the complaints and removed it or if someone else did.
I don't know about you, but I'm feeling less safe about our food and drug supplies than ever. I've not used my dry eye drops for literally years because most of them are made in foreign countries and instances and recalls for contamination have been frequent. I don't plan on becoming blind because of icky eye drops from Southeast Asia.
I have not bought any lettuce for weeks. And I'm dismayed at the FDA's slow and bumbling response. Is the fact that Elon's groupies and others have reduced the federal work force that tracks such things one of the reasons? As of now, cyclasporiasis is in 45 states, including Missouri. Two people, who were already quite ill, have died in Michigan.
The fact that so, so much of our food comes from foreign sources is probably a factor but as immigrants are run out of the country, there are fewer and fewer farm workers here. After all, do you want to spend eight hours a day, or longer, bent over harvesting vegetables in hot fields? Probably not. Guest worker programs need to be strengthened, not eliminated.
Then there is the plan to put the post office partly in charge of how elections are run in this nation. Really? The post office can't even do the job the constitution requires of it. Delivery is getting worse and worse by the week. I'll say our local carrier does a good job but he can't deliver mail if it never makes it to the local post office. We talked to a person Saturday who was waiting on NEEDED prescription medicine that had been sitting in the Columbia mail sorting site for a long time, never delivered. The location was confirmed by the post office's own tracking service.
How many people are being injured, even killed, by this kind of c--p?
And elections are the states' responsibility, not the post office's or any other federal agency, office or busybody.
Senator Hawley, you have more work to do on the post office.
