Governor Nixon does love to go throughout the state spreading good news, doesn’t he? Just loves to get out there to announce this or that company is adding a few jobs in the next five or ten years. Efforts by some lawmakers to cut the travel budget don’t appear to be working and accusations are being made that Nixon is putting some of his staff on other agency payrolls so he can free up money in his own budget.

Here is where you probably will NOT see the governor:

• at the Dillard’s department store merchandising division office in St. Louis. It’s closing. Sixty-five people might lose their jobs.
• At the Suburban Journals offices in St. Louis where Lee Enterprises is firing 20 staffers and eliminating some of the print editions of the newspapers. Lee owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which publishes the newspapers for suburban communities.
• At a Payless Shoe Store near you. Payless is owned by Collective Brands in Topeka, Kansas. The company says it is closing 475 of its lower-performing stores. Indications are the company is looking for a buyer after losing $35 million in the second quarter. The closings represent about ten percent of the Payless stores in the company’s operations. We’re waiting to see a list of the stores that will be closed.

Well, with the legislature trying to control his travel expenses, the Governor does have to be selective in where he goes to make announcements. As songwriter Johnny Mercer put it:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between
You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium’s
Liable to walk upon the scene.

That seems to be part of the Traveling Jay Philosophy. It’s important to make people feel good, to feel positive, about an economic turnaround. And who in Missouri can shine the spotlight on the positive more than a governor? So he’ll go wherever somebody is hiring, it seems, to accentuate (a word only a songwriter would use in a sentence, we suspect) the positive.

And places like the Dillard’s offices or a shoe store, or a suburban newspaper office? Can’t go there. Have to eliminate the negative and latch on to the affirmative, spread joy up to the maximum and bring gloom down to the minimum and don’t let the legislature get in between.