Editorials

By Brent Hampy, State Executive Director, Farm Service Agency and J.R. Flores, State Conservationist, Natural Resources Conservation Service
    At USDA, we celebrate Earth Day 2019 by thanking farmers and ranchers here in Missouri for all they do. Every day we see their efforts to conserve natural resources while producing food, fiber and fuel for people in their communities and around the world. They are doing what needs to be done to make sure we all enjoy the benefits of clean and plentiful water and healthy soils, ecosystems and wildlife habitat.

By Nicole Galloway, CPA, Missouri State Auditor
    When Missourians filed their taxes this year, they probably didn't spend a lot of time thinking about money that had been held back from their paychecks. Since these withholding amounts hadn't changed much before, why be concerned?

By Phill Brooks
    As the Kansas City Star noted just before the legislature went on its spring break, it's been a rough beginning for Missouri's Republican governor. The Republican-controlled House sidelined Mike Parson's idea for a state bond-issue debt to repair bridges.

    While some of our elected officials are calling for bigger and taller levees to hold back the annual spring flooding on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, which would ultimately just make the floods higher downstream, there is currently a movement in the Missouri Legislature to do something that should have been done decades ago—reduce development in the state’s floodplains.

By C. Dale Walton
    The United States is, increasingly, a country in which free speech exists only in the most limited, legalistic sense. First Amendment jurisprudence still makes it very difficult for the U.S. government to directly punish speech and expression under most circumstances. In that regard, Americans are better off than their counterparts in Britain, Canada, and many other places where speech laws often are aggressively used to punish “thought criminals” who express themselves in an unapproved manner.

By Eric Bohl
    One of the most egregiously-overreaching regulations of the Obama era is nearing its end. Until April 15, President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking public comments on its proposed replacement for the notorious Waters of the United States (WOTUS) Rule. Missourians need to be loud and clear in telling the EPA to ditch the WOTUS Rule and replace it with the new Clean Water Rule.