MISSOURI WATCH: POLITICS OF POWER AND POWERLESSNESS

Eight years ago one of America's best known political analysts, Kevin Phillips, wrote a book entitled "The Politics of Rich and Poor," outlining the author's views on the increasing danger of economic disparity within the United States and the problems such a division will present in the future. Before readers conclude that Phillips is a liberal Democrat who was setting the mood for the election of Bill Clinton, it should be noted that in 1992 he was serving as the chief political analyst for the president of the United States, George Bush.

No, Phillips' book was triggered by his concern that his party, the only party he had ever had, was digging a political grave that would bury the long-term goals of the GOP. His insight, before and after his last book, has been 20-20, for he was the first to forecast a major Republican sweep in 1994 and a public mood shift that would guarantee the re-election of a Democratic president two years later.

The points of danger raised by Phillips throughout his book were valid ones, even as they sometimes pointed to a disturbing Republican preference to deal with the needs of wealthy individuals and huge multinational corporations. Near the book's end, Phillips warns, "The time is approaching for yet another great transformation, for the ruling Republicans have now themselves grown increasingly remote from the real needs, fears and hopes of the American majority."

If those words did not come easily for Phillips, then readers will understand the difficulty for this writer to note that our own state of Missouri, like the 1990s in Washington, has undergone a transformational change, although, unfortunately, not many have borne witness to this movement, and even fewer express any concern that it has lasting effects on how we in Missouri are governed and by whom.

Missouri, like most of its sister states, has mirrored the rapid buildup of personal and corporate revenue that has occurred over the past five or six years. We have enjoyed, like our fellow Americans elsewhere, the bounties of an expanding economy that have enriched the favored and left bereft the less favored. Like the increasing income share of the top 1 percent of Americans that has risen at rates as high as $200 billion a year, Missouri's state government has shared in a rising economic tide of mind-boggling revenue gains.

It is how Missouri's political entities have, in turn, shared their bounty with its citizens that should be of great concern to thoughtful citizens, whatever party they embrace and wherever they live.

One of our greatest concerns over state distribution inequities should be in the field of educaiton. Although the state had been forced by federal courts to pay an additional $3 billion to underwrite imperfect desegregation remedies, the targeted districts have often made poor use of the money, a fault less from poor management than the growing needs within the local jurisdictions of education. Although the costs of these special payments have been greatly reduced, the additional expenditures to all school districts will increase only $120,000,000 in the next budget period. While most districts have been holding the line, or even retrenching, their costs have been skyrocketing at a rate far greater than any increased expenditures to local schools over the past decade.

Perhaps, without realizing, we have been shortchanging our local school districts to such an extent that any increase in 1998 or 1999 seems generous. This dilemma is made even worse by the realization that the direct per-student expenditure in far more than half of the state's public schools has decreased rather than increased. Whatever generosity toward what the Missouri Constitution identifies as the most important role of state government -- public education -- has for the most part paid expenses not directly connected to educating our children.

This same trend, perhaps even more obvious in the state's college and university system, has brought about record increases in tuition costs for the very persons we are trying to assist, the students. These increases are manifestly apparent each time a state college or university announces that it is increasing not its academic excellence but its facilities in uncharted areas in order to attract more students or building new structures that will supposedly signify an expansion of its curriculum. Usually, these projects signify a university's desire to fulfill demands that have little or nothing to do with enhancing its intellectual and academic standing.

Mindful of a vast public that seldom if ever concerns itself with separating the state's priority needs from political ambitions, our elected officials often take steps that serve the latter and fail even to address the former. Whether the subject is welfare assistance or mental health, consumer protection or highways, the public is consulted only when the need for new, higher revenue is presented. Citizens are asked to rubber-stamp new taxes to fund programs that have been devised without any input from the public. Indeed, when questions are raised, voters are more often than not advised that they lack the knowledge to know what they want, much less how to get it.

If one doubts the validity of Kevin Phillips' final point, that a vast public policy disparity exists between the rich and poor, Missourians need only remind themselves of how few groups actually represent their overall interests. In comparison, citizens should take note of the many groups actively engaged in forging public programs that do not represent them.

Few decisions are made in the Missouri capital that identify and meet the real needs of citizens whose voices are seldom heard in Jefferson City. The marble walls of our Capitol are virtually soundproof, muting the occasional reminder that the most important voices in the state are those least heard.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.