Show Me Misery

Politics under the big top

Author’s Note: This essay is about Missouri, but it applies to any other state with a GOP-dominated legislature. A state captured by the oligarchs. My state is representative of the “red states” you often read about.

We’ve elected clowns, and now we are privy to the horrible circus.

No Kings Rally, Kansas City, MO. 10/18/25. Photo via a friendly photographer.

I live in Missouri. The Show Me state — a state that represented Midwestern values like kindness and morality and responsibility in government for decades. The bellwether state. A moderate state.

We elected a President from this humble state. He had a sign on his desk that said, “The buck stops here,” yet Truman would no longer recognize his state. He would mourn our trajectory under 22 years of a GOP Supermajority. His sign has no place in this state.

Republicans have no accountability, and the buck stops at a culture war and the awful circus they drum up to avoid accountability.

Harry S. Truman would loathe the officials running the state of Missouri. Particularly, our Governor, Mike Kehoe. A supposed “moderate” Republican who is tearing our state to shreds and dismantling the things that once made us a good neighbor.

Making a mockery of our state.

The things that made Missouri great lay in heaps on the ground…torn up and discarded by a State House captured by Republicans.

The Missouri GOP supports candidates for office that have no intention of governing, but every intention of doing the bidding of their donors.

Jesters. Fools for the wanna-be King. Clowns.

Missouri officials just announced that there is no money in the kitty to cover food assistance during the government shutdown.

Governor Mike Kehoe told reporters this week that Missouri doesn’t have the money to cover the $130 million shortfall. He said there’s no secret stash, no extra funds, and no backup plan.

“We as a state don’t have extra money laying around anywhere,”

No one thought to have an emergency fund to feed Missourians? I thought Republicans were the party of fiscal conservatism, and they have no secret stash? They have no extra funds? They have no backup plan?

Here’s the thing: Governor Mike Kehoe had the extra funds lying around to gerrymander our state.

He found taxpayer money to summon legislators back to Jefferson City to take away the voice of Kansas City residents by pushing through an unfair map created by the White House and laid bare by the jokers in the Missouri Republican party.

Governor Mike Kehoe found $173,661.80 just a few weeks ago to gerrymander our state at the behest of Trump and his cronies and to the benefit of not one Missourian. The Governor successfully walked the tightrope for an audience of one. An orange one.

Elect clowns and expect a circus.

But the gerrymandering money is small potatoes compared to the money Governor Kehoe found to fund private religious schools. Schools that should have no right to taxpayer money.

Governor Kehoe requested $50 million be budgeted toward the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, a voucher scheme that sends taxpayer money to private schools — even religious schools.

Fifty million dollars.

The $50M was approved in June 2025. Just a few months back.

In fact, Kehoe suggested funding private religious schools just days into his tenure as Governor, laying out the budget that would short-change public schools while sending millions into church coffers through vouchers.

A report shows that 98% of Missouri school vouchers are funding religious schools which is a direct violation of the Missouri Constitution. But no matter to our Governor and GOP supermajority — school choice may be a scam, but so is Republican governance.

Kehoe and his cronies were able to juggle budgetary items and find a secret stash to fund private religious schools.

Yet there is no money to be found for hungry Missourians.

Elect clowns and expect a circus.

And the biggest trick under the big top?

Missouri Republicans, under the direction of Mike Kehoe, just eliminated the capital gains tax. We are the first state to completely exempt capital gains from taxation.

The trained monkeys in the House wrote a bill to permit the wealthiest individuals in Missouri to deduct 100% of all income reported as a capital gain. Missouri is the first state to exempt profits from the sale of assets such as stocks, real estate, and cryptocurrency from income tax.

The estimated cost of eliminating the capital gains tax?

$625 million.

Because of this juggling act, the Office of Budget and Planning estimates:

“…a nearly $1 billion shortfall in general revenue starting in 2027,”

“Contributing to this shortfall, ongoing general revenue spending authorized in the 2026 budget is projected to outpace ongoing revenues by nearly $1 billion and grow larger in future years.”

Mike Kehoe and his clown car of elected Republicans can exempt the wealthiest Missourians from taxes, but there is no backup plan to feed hungry citizens during a government shutdown. In fact, there is no backup plan to fund schools or roads or hospitals or sidewalks or libraries or police or fire.

Elect clowns and expect a circus.

This circus is nauseating. The clowns are demented, and the trained animals are shitting on everything. On everyone.

The worst part is that we had a budget surplus of over $8 billion just two years back. It was mostly Federal Covid money. I wish I could tell you where it went, but like the lottery money that was supposed to be funding Missouri schools for the last decade, it just vanished.

Likely into the pocket of the ringmaster.

We’ve elected these clowns, but now it’s on us to usher them out of town. The fun was short-lived, and the cleanup will take years, but I know it can be done.

Strip them of their makeup and let the citizens see them for who they really are.

Clowns.

~Jess