Good morning, friends and family. Today is the day in Missouri that local candidates file for office. After 31 years of public service, I have decided not to appear on the ballot in 2024.
It has been an extremely hard decision to make. It helps that a good candidate, that I have worked with and trained for 20 years, has decided to step up and take the reins.
I have been proud and honored to serve 6 Governors of both parties and have either written or helped to write legislation for all of them. As much as I love Bates County and the people of Bates County, the hate and discontent is getting worse every year and it gets in the way of good government.
I have also served for many years now as the Legislative Chair of the Missouri County Collector’s Association and trained many new Collectors and served as many on the Missouri County Treasurers Assoc. board of directors. I can honestly say that most of them don't even know what political party that I or other Collectors and Treasurers identify with.
This was not the overwhelming factor in my decision, but I can't say that it hasn't been a factor. I have never been very partisan, as is the case with many office holders I have been associated with. I lean towards the teachings of George Washington who did not believe in political parties or factions, as they were called at the time, and he thought they were dangerous.
Carol and I would like to thank everyone in Bates County and elsewhere for all the love and support they have given us over the years. We are truly blessed and hope to continue to be involved in the community.
In closing, I would like to leave you with excerpts from George Washington's farewell address to congress in 1796, as it has always been a guiding light for me. Feel free to share this post.
" Political parties. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the Community; However combinations or Associations of the above description may now & then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, & to usurp for themselves the reins of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common & continual mischiefs of the spirit of Party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise People to discourage and restrain it".
-Jim Platt
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