The World We Live In

Pinney for your Thoughts – The World We Live In

I knew what I wanted to write about for this week’s column on Friday night, when I got home from work. Then things changed on Tuesday, when President Trump logged on to Twitter.

The video he posted Tuesday morning was of a choir singing an anthem written by a Southern Baptist minister from my hometown of Dallas, Texas, called “Make America Great Again.”

On one of our nation’s most important holidays, our president chose to post a video of a self-aggrandizing propaganda hymn instead of something like “The Star Spangled Banner” or “America the Beautiful.” And many who are outraged when “America the Beautiful” precedes the National Anthem at the Super Bowl each year were perfectly fine with it.

That leads me to point number two, discussing what happened when NPR tweeted the Declaration of Independence line by line Tuesday.

Reading and tweeting the Declaration is a time-honored tradition for NPR on Independence Day, and I know that because I’ve worked there the past two July Fourths and heard it during Morning Edition. But this year, some thought that the tyrant NPR was Tweeting about was our president.

So they got mad. Comments ranged from calling out NPR’s “agenda” to saying they were calling for a revolution.

Of course, I think it’s interesting that they think Trump when they see or hear “tyrant” as well, but I’m not going to say anything about that…

Third, Maryville police officers were very busy over the weekend enforcing a city ordinance banning the use of fireworks unless the date is July 4. But this isn’t going to be about how I think the ordinance shouldn’t exist.

This is about how the ordinance isn’t strict enough.

To their credit, fireworks have been a part of the July 4 celebrations since 1776, though historians disagree about why; some believe it was for morale, while others believe it was supposed to be representative of the weaponry used to defeat America’s enemies, a theory given credence when firearms were phased out of the celebrations due to increasing concern for public safety (per Time Magazine, July 3, 2017). However, using fireworks has two very unintended consequences.

First, July 4 has the single highest concentration of pet disappearances. Pets are spooked by fireworks, so they run to find something resembling shelter.

Some hide under porches in their own backyards, others escape their enclosures and book it for anything they can find to shield them from what they believe is impending death. And for people with pets that can be left outside while they’re at work, this presents a huge problem.

Second, fireworks can be a major trigger for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. The sound of fireworks going off is eerily reminiscent of gunfire and artillery, and when veterans hear it, some of them get flashbacks of the wars they survived.

If we should care about anyone on Independence Day, we should care about our veterans. But my opposition to fireworks goes much deeper.

My aunt runs an orphanage and school in Guatemala, one of the United States’ biggest exporters of fireworks. Her mission looks to rescue children from factories where fireworks are made.

When you see kids who have lost limbs and eyes because a firework went off in their hands, fireworks lose their novelty. And while I’d love to see fireworks banned altogether, it’s better if we come up with a solution together.

Maybe, when you purchase fireworks, don’t set them off inside city limits if it isn’t July 4. All I’m asking is for you to follow the rules, because it’s hard enough to prepare for July 4 knowing that there will be fireworks.

I’m running out of inches, so let’s move on. Governor Greitens will allow a local minimum wage ban to pass without his signature, according to an announcement he made over the weekend.

Proponents of the ban say that this helps St. Louis’ struggling economy, but a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article from December 31, 2016 said that St. Louis had a “pretty good year” with unemployment at an historical low of 4.7 percent and income per person was up 2.3 percent (which kept spending power ahead of inflation). Proponents actually believe that St. Louis having business success with a $10 minimum wage would effectively kill any sort of argument that we shouldn’t raise the minimum wage to a livable wage, but they won’t tell you that.

Further, however, how is this not an outrageous government overreach by the party who is supposedly against just that?

While Governor Greitens has said he would not sign it, he said he would allow it to take effect without a veto from his desk. And among those who voted for this bill were our local legislators, Dan Hegeman and Allen Andrews.

This bill prohibits municipalities from enacting minimum wages above the state’s minimum wage, but it doesn’t say why this is a problem. Furthermore, revoking St. Louis’ minimum wage increase will slash many wages by as much as 23 percent.

How do you tell someone that the raise they just received is being taken away, and then some? How is this not utter political suicide?

But further, where does it end? At what point does the state government recognize the fact that they are going too far? At what point is local government rendered useless?

Overwhelmingly, the people whose constituents this would actively affect were against the legislation – St. Louis legislators voted a combined 29-11 against the measures with three absent. They should know a thing or two about how the higher minimum wage was affecting their economy, but the state acted anyway.

We need to seriously ask ourselves about the lengths to which we’ll allow our state government to control local ordinances, especially those that have proven successful.

Because they have a performance review in 16 short months.