Third Parties in Missouri: The Progressive Party (Part 3 of 3)

Not every third party is receiving increased support this year. Despite its efforts to put candidates on the ballot, the Progressive Party of Missouri has only one write-in candidate running this year.

Third Parties in Missouri: The Constitution Party (Part 2 of 3)

Third parties nationwide share the belief that the Republican and Democratic parties’ agendas do not coincide with the people’s views, and try to differentiate their platforms from those of the major parties. For one party, the overriding factor in deciding their platform is the text of the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution Party, one of the largest third parties in the country, claims to base all of its policies on a strict interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

Third Parties in Misouri: The Libertarian Party (Part 1 of 3)

The success of the Tea Party movement has led to several upsets at the polls. Although most of this voter anger has translated into Republican Party success, such as with Scott Brown and Christine O’Donnell, the Libertarian Party is drawing some benefit as well.

Countdown to Election 2010

With three weeks to go, the 2010 race is heating up across the country, and Missouri is no exception. On November 2, Missourians will vote on Congressional and General Assembly seats, state and county administrative positions, and several ballot measures. Over the next three weekends leading up to the election, I will discuss and analyze the platforms of the largest third parties in Missouri: the Libertarians, the Constitutionalists, and the Progressives. I will discuss them in the following order:

Libertarian: October 16

Constitution: October 23

Progressive: October 30

 

Stay tuned for details.

Out of Joint: Study finds dinosaur joints worked differently than thought

Human knowledge about dinosaurs has come a long way since the Great Exhibition of 1851, which portrayed dinosaurs as four-legged monsters destroyed in Noah’s Flood. Now research suggests we have to change our understanding of dinosaurs yet again.

The Cotton Ball Incident and Hate Crime in Mid-Missouri

More than 800 people attended the town hall meeting at the University of Missouri’s Gaines-Oldham Black Culture Center on March 1 after two MU students scattered cotton balls in front of the center three days earlier. During the meeting, MU Police Chief Jack Watrig said he considered the incident a hate crime, although the department officially investigated the incident as an act of vandalism. When two suspects were arrested the following day, they were charged with hate crimes and second-degree vandalism, according to an article in the campus newspaper, The Maneater.

Hate crime is not a common occurrence in mid-Missouri. The Southern Poverty Law Center says there are 31 known hate groups in Missouri, most of them in the Kansas City and St. Louis areas. No Columbia or Jefferson City high schools said they had any trouble with hate-related incidents in the past few years.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines hate crimes as “a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin,” according to their Web site.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report says 99 hate crimes were committed in Missouri in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available. However, St. Louis FBI office spokesperson Bridget Patton said these statistics are not very accurate. She said the Uniform Crime Report is a compilation of crime statistics reported by law-enforcement agencies across the country. Patton said not every agency submits information, and those agencies that do participate in the UCR do not submit data every year.

Cole County Sheriff Greg White said he is not aware of any hate crimes in his term as sheriff. The only hate-related incident he can recall is the neo-Nazi march in Jefferson City in the spring of 2009. White says for situations like this, the best thing people can do is ignore the marchers.

White said less than 50 people watched the neo-Nazi march, “and 25 of them were undercover cops.”

White said there may not be any neo-Nazis left in Jefferson City.

Ashland, Mo. police chief Anthony Consiglio said the closest his town has come to a hate incident during his tenure was when two men spray-painted “KKK,” the initials of the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, onto a water tower. The Columbia and Jefferson City police departments could not be reached for comment.

Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Richardson said his office prosecutes less than one hate crime per year, a rate so low he said it prevents his office from identifying any patterns.

“We just don’t see it a lot,” Richardson said.

The two students arrested in connection with the incident were charged on April 19 with littering rather than a hate crime.

Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On

With the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Illinois, earthquakes are back in the headlines. The Illinois quake, which occurred far from any fault line, was not as severe as the Haiti quake, but it shows that no place is truly safe. And with the New Madrid Fault in the southern part of the state, earthquakes in Missouri are not entirely far-fetched.

I spoke with University of Missouri geology professor Eric Sandvol. He told me the New Madrid Fault experiences several earthquakes each week, but most of these only register between 2 and 3 on the Richter scale. Since the Richter scale is exponential, this means these miniquakes are rarely felt, if at all. Sandvol said these quakes might still be aftershocks from the massive earthquake in 1812, which is estimated to be a 7.1-7.4-magnitude trembler.
He said it would take a major quake to affect Boone County, but he added the soil in this area is ideal for liquefaction, in which the soil effectively turns to liquid. This is due to the number of rivers in this area.

University of Memphis adjunct professor Oliver Boyd said the amount of seismic activity along the New Madrid Fault has been fairly constant over the past three decades. He said on average, massive quakes like the 1812 event will only occur in this region about every 500 years, although Sandvol disputes the U.S. Geological Survey’s ability to predict earthquakes.

An October 2009 study by the Mid America Earthquake Center found the worst damage in the event of a magnitude-7 earthquake would be in Memphis and the Missouri Bootheel. St. Louis would also suffer serious damage, but the study did not list Boone County among the counties affected by this scenario.

If a major quake did strike the New Madrid Fault, Sandvol emphasizes the damage in Boone County would not approach the levels seen in Haiti, but because Missouri has no building code, significant building damage may result.