Post Dispatch advocates the preservation of smoky, behind closed door MATA meetings to choose our judges.

 “Always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers…always be drastically independent.” – Taken from the STL Post Dispatch’s platform

The liberal St. Louis Post-Dispatch had another one of their famous hatchet job editorials yesterday defending the Missouri Plan.  We are a little surprised that the Post-Dispatch would oppose direct democracy.  The Missouri Plan works for liberals, but doesn’t produce fair and qualified jurists.  One of the proposed reforms during the legislative session would be to release the names of applicants so people could fairly gauge if the best candidates would make the panel, but the MO Bar and MATA opposed this reform.  They think they should have the list of applicants, but not average Missourian’s.

It is interesting that they use an editorial attacking individuals and not the message.  Could it be that they have no message?  The facts are that the Missouri Trial Attorneys are a special interest group, they control 6 of the 8 lawyer slots on the Missouri Bar and have 100% of the lawyer members on the Appellate Judicial Commission.  The MO Bar is a puppet for MATA and opposes reform because they have a financial interest in controlling who is appointed judge.

Defenders of the Missouri Plan act like this is a prom contest not a discussion about public policy.  What are they hiding?  Do they not want to talk about state employees using government resources to campaign against reform?  Do they not want to talk about why the commission meets in secret? Can they not explain why Judge Stith, then chair of the commission blocked two appellate panels from being submitted to the governor until her candidate was added?

The people should be allowed to voice their opinion through direct democracy without fear of being attacked by the press. Unfortunately, the Post-Dispatch has aligned itself with supporters of the status quo to try and stop this widespread reform movement.

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