Humphreys contributes a quarter of a million in effort to scrap Missouri's judicial selection plan

It has been couched as an effort to bring democracy to the process of choosing judges in Missouri, but the forces who are attempting to scrap Missouri's much-praised judicial selection process seem to be the kind who are willing to spend every dollar to mold our courts into the best (for them) money can buy.

With his $100,000 contribution to Show Me Better Courts Wednesday, David Humphreys of TAMKO in Joplin has now contributed a quarter of a million dollars to the effort, according to Missouri Ethics Commission records.

The group has received $300,000 in oversized contributions from the Better Courts for Missouri group in the last few days, according to the Ethics Commission documents, which is interesting since the last time the group filed anything but a limited activity report with the Commission, it showed $28.05 on cent.

No oversized contributions have been received in recent months, according to the Commission documents, so where did the $300,000 come from?

On Better Courts for Missouri's website, the following passage can be found:

Every Missourian is harmed when government does its business behind closed doors. Unfortunately, the judges that decide our most important cases are currently selected by a Commission that conducts every aspect of its business in absolute secrecy, allowing special interest groups and corruption to take hold. We believe the same open records laws that apply to the rest of government should apply to the Commission that selects judges.

I would counter that every Missourian is harmed when efforts to dismantle our government go on behind closed doors, headed by the very businesspeople who would benefit from that dismantling.