HELP MAY BE ON THE WAY FOR THOSE PUSHING LIMITED TERMS

Coming up on May 22 is the second annual awards banquet of the Professional Black Men's Club. The featured speaker will be Governor John Ashcroft.

This year, the club has announced a most promising program called "Grow Your Own". As we related in a news story this week, Grow Your Own is an effort to entice young black students into the field of education by interesting them in such a career when they're still in junior high school. My friend Dr. Ed Spicer of the university tells me the group has high hopes for this program, which backs the students with advice, support and scholarship assistance.

It's good to see the Governor's willing to find time in a busy schedule to assist such a worthy effort. Interested people can contact any club member or Dr. Spicer at his office at the University.

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Do today's legislative follies in Jefferson City have you casting an envious glance toward those states that have enacted some form of term limits for officeholders? Help just may be on the way.

I wrote nearly a year ago that despite all its manifest faults, term limitation may just be "a bad idea whose time has come." Nothing else seems to work with entrenched legislators who've succeeding in rigging a system that surprise! they find to their liking.

Make no mistake: This is a profound change in our constitutional scheme of governance. As such, it deserves to be debated widely and extensively. But while elites from business to labor to education to politics to the media all oppose term limits, voters simply love the idea. Every single time a term limit proposal has made the ballot anywhere in America, it has won, usually by a huge margin.

My favorite national newspaper had these comments on term limits this week:

"There isn't an issue in America today where the views of the political establishment and the people diverge more sharply than on term limits. Polls show large majorities in every demographic group think that term limits would limit the baleful influence of professional politicians and inject new blood and competition into the political system. By and large, political elites support the system they've rigged for their own benefit.

"On Saturday, those two opposing viewpoints had an electoral showdown in San Antonio, Texas, the nation's 10th largest city. Taxpayer groups had forced a vote on an initiative to limit the mayor and City Council to two terms of two years each. Business leaders, labor unions and both major newspapers campaigned against the idea. But when the votes were in, term limits won with 65 percent. They were approved easily in the council districts with the largest Hispanic and black populations.

"San Antonio marks the ninth straight victory for term limits since the idea first caught on eight months ago. Rocky Williform, a black community activist from Houston, is now leading a term-limit movement in his city. Other initiatives are planned in some 15 states, and at least one, Washington State, may vote on as many as three measures this November. We're especially struck by one there, sponsored by a coalition of conservatives and liberals with the imaginative acronym of LIMITS Let Incumbents Mosey Into the Sunset."

Wall Street Journal

A similar grassroots movement is under way in the Show Me State as well. Here's the address, and a partial lineup of active leaders:

Missourians for Limited Terms

P.O. Box 317

Marshfield, Missouri 65706

Among members of the Board of Directors are former Missouri Treasurer, legislator and gubernatorial candidate the Hon. James Spainhower (a Democrat); the Hon. Mel Hancock, Member of Congress (Republican); Dr. Richard Hardy, Professor of Political Science, University of Missouri-Columbia; and St. Louis attorney Greg Upchurch

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I have a question for education tax-hike proponents who are upset with anyone who asks questions or challenges their premises about enacting Missouri's largest-ever tax increase in the middle of a recession. The governor and business leaders statewide have agreed to higher taxes, even at the $200-$300-$400-million-plus level, as long as key reforms are included in the package. So, here's my question:

Are the education tax backers going to go over the cliff with all flags flying in support of a tax increase of $460-$600 million, which has no chance of gaining public approval, and thereby lose at least a fighting chance to actually gain the lower, more realistic figure?

Exactly what would that do for the cause?