“Frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me,” Missouri congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver said in an 1899 speech: “I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

Note to Missouri governor Mike Parson: You’re getting this “Show-Me State” business all wrong.

Parson tried to charge Elad Gross, a  candidate for state attorney general,  $3,618 for documents Gross requested under the state’s Sunshine Law, claiming more than 90 hours of required “research and processing” at $40 per hour. The “processing” involved having attorneys redact information from the requested documents. The state’s Supreme Court ruled against Parson last June.

In the meantime, the state’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, claimed that he couldn’t investigate alleged violations of the Sunshine Law by the governor’s office because that office (rather than, say, the people of Missouri) is his “client.”

Now Parson’s asking the state legislature to amend the Sunshine Law so that he can keep more government documents secret and charge more for handing over such information as it might happen to please him to show.

It’s not just Missouri. Politicians and bureaucrats at every level of American government love keeping secrets from the media and from the mere serfs they claim to work for. They “classify” information, try to hide that information behind novel claims of “executive” or “attorney-client” privilege, or just jack up Sunshine Law fees so that the average taxpayer can’t afford to find out what his supposed employees are up to.

Those first two methods of thwarting transparency probably have to be dealt with in court on a case-by-case basis, but there’s an easy solution to the third.

How many billions of dollars has government spent putting a computer in every cubicle and building Internet-connected data centers complete with public-facing web sites?

Missouri’s legislature, and the legislatures of other states, SHOULD amend the Sunshine Laws — and the amendments should require all government documents and recordings of all government meetings to be posted in a timely manner to public-facing web sites with robust search functionality.

If a government employee, office, or department wants an exception for a particular document or recording, that document or recording should be posted to a closed database/site for review, within ten days, by a court. Or, better yet, by a randomly selected panel of registered voters, with a unanimous vote required to approve keeping the document or recording from public view.

Government transparency should be the rule, not the expensive exception.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

• “Missouri Governor Mike Parson Tries to Stick it Where the Sun Don’t Shine,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/11/22
• “Missouri Governor Mike Parson Tries To Stick It Where The Sun Don’t Shine,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/12/22
• “Missouri Governor Mike Parson Tries to Stick it Where the Sun Don’t Shine,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 01/13/22
• “Lawmakers should protect the right to information, not protect secrets,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Joplin, Missouri Globe [web and print], 01/15/22
• “Missouri Governor Mike Parson Tries to Stick it Where the Sun Don’t Shine,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wahpeton, North Dakota Daily News, 01/17/22

In mid-2020, I mused that if the COVID-19 pandemic ended up producing any silver linings, the most likely  bright spot would be its impact on government — so-called “public” — education. Throughout the previous spring, government schools had largely shut down in-person classes, switching to ad hoc and, it seems,  fairly lame, “remote learning.”

Some besieged, bedraggled parents held out hope for an autumn return to the previous normalcy. Others looked at the “remote learning” setup and decided they (perhaps in cooperation with other parents) could do a better job themselves — if not permanently, at least until the emergency was over.

By the fall 2020 semester, according to the US Census, the percentage of homeschooling households in America had doubled, from 5.4% of households to 11.1%.

That may have been just the beginning of a long-term trend.

Parents choose government schooling versus homeschooling or vice versa for many reasons, not all of them related to the overall better academic achievement (15-30% better performance on standardized tests, for example) homeschooling boasts.

One BIG reason is financial. In an age when nearly every parent works (regardless of whether the family is single- or multi-parent), homeschooling can mean significant loss of income. At least one parent has to be home to teach, rather than on an outside job.

The value proposition government schooling offers is: “Sure, we do a fairly crappy job of teaching your kids to read, write, and do arithmetic … but hey, who turns down free daycare?”

The pandemic threw a wrench into that value proposition. Suddenly, the kids weren’t disappearing on a yellow bus each morning, leaving Mom and/or Dad available to work a shift and earn a paycheck.

With “remote learning,” many parents had to either quit jobs or invest significant portions of their income in daycare. Some of them decided to turn “remote learning” lemons into homeschooling lemonade.

Others muddled through as best they could, waiting for that return to normalcy (or homeschooled in the interim with plans to send their kids back to government schools when possible). Because, after all, emergencies don’t last forever, right?

Now it’s January of 2022 and another problem with that financial equation, and with the government school value proposition, is rearing its ugly head: Reliability.

Parents who made the best of a bad situation while holding out hope that the government schools would get their act together Real Soon Now find themselves caught in a new cycle of alternating expectation and disappointment as we come up on “700 days to slow the spread.”

Will the government schools be in session this week? How about next week? And the week after that? Who knows?

Those parents can’t assure current or prospective employers that they’ll be available to work next week, or the week after, or the week after that.

They’re caught in the same “quit my job or fork over for daycare” trap they’ve spent the last two years in, with the added irritant of nearly daily uncertainty.

And many more of them are almost certainly eyeing the homeschooling exits.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

• “COVID-19 and the End of Government Schooling’s Main Value Proposition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/08/22
• “COVID-19 and the end of government schooling’s main value proposition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 01/11/22
• “COVID-19 and the end of public schooling’s main value proposition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Elko, Nevada Daily, 01/11/22
• “COVID-19 And The End Of Government Schooling’s Main Value Proposition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/12/22
• “COVID-19 and the End of Government Schooling’s Main Value Proposition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Roundup, Montana Record Tribune & Winnett Times, 01/12/22
• “COVID-19 and the end of government schooling’s main value proposition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Newton, Iowa Daily News, 01/15/22
• “COVID-19 and the End of Government Schooling’s Main Value Proposition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Columbia, South Carolina Panorama [web and print], 01/15/22
• “COVID-19 and the end of government schooling’s main value proposition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wahpeton, North Dakota Daily News, 01/19/22
• “COVID-19 and the end of government schooling’s main-value proposition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Elizabethton, Tennessee Star, 01/25/22

It’s only early January, and already this 2022 thing is obviously not working out. With the “omicron variant” of COVID-19 upon us, politicians and public health authorities are already off on their next round of COVID-19 Hokey Pokey:

You put your school closures in. You pull your mask mandates out. You put your rising case numbers in, and you shake them all about. You do the COVID-19 Hokey Pokey and you order people around. That’s what it’s all about.

A successful COVID-19 Hokey Pokey this time around requires ignoring the fact that, even allowing for a lag between case numbers and deaths, the latter aren’t increasing.

From December 1 thru  December 30, 2021, daily reported cases of COVID-19 (according to Worldometer’s COVID-19 dashboard) in the United States rose from 123,430 to 450,298. During the same period, daily reported COVID-19 deaths fell from 1,697 to 1,584.

Yes, all of those numbers are bad things. But they’re not WORSE things than the pre-omicron COVID-19 landscape. They’re BETTER things. If we “trust the science,” or at least the data, here’s what it’s telling us: Omicron is the next evolutionary step along COVID-19’s path from deadly pandemic to endemic inconvenience.

The data may change. But, despite a month of smug warnings from the usual suspects — just wait for that lag, COVID-19 is going to GET YOU unless you DO AS YOU’RE TOLD! —  it hasn’t yet. Unless it does, President Joe Biden’s prediction of “a winter of severe illness and death” isn’t in the cards.

Here’s the problem:

As the 20 years since the 9/11 attacks have shown us, many Americans are willing to embrace authoritarian rule for as long as politicians are willing and able to curry abject fear — even long after such fear has proven itself unjustified.

With COVID-19, many Americans have graduated from that willingness to, well, eagerness.

They’ve spent the last two years hanging on every pronouncement as to what (and who) they should fear, waiting with bated breath and unconcealed glee for the order to hide under the bed again.

And, evidence or not, they’re downright insistent that we must all spend another year cowering in terror with them.

It seems to me that this is one of those rare cases where Congress might prove itself useful. When the House convenes its second session of the 117th Congress on January 10, it should promptly introduce and pass the Pandemic Saving Time Act of 2022. The Senate should immediately follow suit and get the bill to President Biden for his signature, stat.

Under the Pandemic Saving Time Act, at 2am on Saturday, January 15, all Americans will roll their calendars forward one year to January 15, 2023.

We can all pretend we spent another year obsessing over COVID-19, satisfying the eager beavers.

But we won’t have to actually do so, satisfying those of us who are sick of the COVID-19 Hokey Pokey.

The politicians and bureaucrats can make up stories about how they took the “tough” and “necessary” measures, but we won’t suffer another year of scurrying to comply with their bizarre, ever-shifting dictates.

Everybody wins!

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Tennessee Tribune
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/02/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Batesville, Mississippi Panolian, 01/03/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Anchorage, Alaska Press, 01/03/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 01/03/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Chester County, Pennsylvania Daily Local News, 01/04/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pottstown, Pennsylvania Mercury, 01/04/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Trenton, New Jersey Trentonian, 01/04/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Forest Hills / Rego Park, New York Times [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Queens, New York Ledger [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Queens, New York Examiner [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Greenpoint, New York Star [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Long Island City / Astoria, New York Journal [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, New York City Leader / Observer [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Brooklyn, New York Downtown Star [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal – Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Glasgow, Montana Courier, 01/05/22
• “A modest proposal: Pandemic saving time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Lake Havasu City, Arizona News-Herald, 01/07/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/07/22
• “A modest proposal: Pandemic saving time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sidney, Montana Herald, 01/08/22
• “COVID-19 Hokey Pokey,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orangeburg, South Carolina Times and Democrat, 01/09/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Columbia, South Carolina Panorama [web and print], 01/15/22
• “A modest proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Dillon, Montana Tribune [web and print], 01/22/22