Jacology: Stan Musial Bridge

(KPLR) – As we told you at the top of the show, there is a move afoot to have the new Mississippi River Bridge named after Stan Musial.

But Charles Jaco has a small dispute with that idea in Wednesday’s Jacology.

Support seems to be growing for a campaign to name the new Mississippi River Bridge after Stan Musial. As part of that, how about a campaign to change Missouri’s state motto? The motto now is, “The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.” I propose changing it to something simpler, we’re freeloaders.

I say this because the new bridge is mostly being paid for by Uncle Sam and the state of Illinois. In fact, Illinois taxpayers alone are coughing up the biggest amount of money. The bridge is costing $670 million dollars. And almost half of that $313 million comes from Illinois taxpayers. The state of Missouri is only paying a relatively piddling $115 million for the bridge.

Yet, despite paying almost nothing, the state of Missouri now presumes to say it gets to name the bridge. Admittedly, it would be named after Musial, which is a good thing. But where does Missouri get off doing that? Since the biggest share of the bridge’s cost is being paid for by Illinois and since most of Illinois’ tax money comes from the Chicago area; taxpayers there would be perfectly justified in asking the bridge to be named after Ernie Banks or Ryne Sandburg or even Carlos Zambrano.

But this is the way it’s worked all along. Missouri has continually made demands about the bridge. Missouri for a while demanded it be a troll bridge. Missouri demanded that Illinois and the feds pay most of the cost. Missouri demanded that, despite that it be given a supervisory role in the bridge’s construction. Now Missouri demands the bridge be named after Stan Musial.

Look, I’m in favor of naming the bridge after my childhood hero. But since Missouri refused to pay much of the bridge’s cost, we really don’t have a right to demand anything.

I’m Charles Jaco and that’s Jacology.