Jacqueline Chanda, the president of the Kansas City Art Institute, remains filled with the same hope for the present and future that her parents instilled in her during the civil rights movement. It fueled her career. That hope, with the community’s renewed push, can make the next 50 years in America the greatest of all for the arts.
Four House members have proposed the Pets on Trains Act of 2013 to allow people to travel with their domestic pets. The act would require that Amtrak devote at least one car for kenneled pets for passengers traveling less than 750 miles. This important measure is long overdue.
The great civil liberties traditions of this nation do not condone invasive sweeps of information from innocents to find the few bad guys. That debate belongs in Congress and on Main Street. It needs to happen soon, and Obama should call for it directly.
There may yet be a role for America to minimize the horror in Syria. But a lasting solution can only be found when the people on the ground are ready and willing to take it to heart.
It takes money and attention to make sure the public’s investments in these fountains is not squandered. City Hall, private companies and foundations need to cooperatively focus on maintaining the fountains.
It’s up to Washington and Moscow to stop bickering so they can work to be sure a Syria peace conference takes place and produces some sort of outcome that saves the region from explosive disintegration.
The federal judiciary is in crisis. Courts lack judges to keep up with their caseloads. The current environment also discourages the most qualified people from seeking appointment. Why submit to rigorous public scrutiny when there is a good chance you will never even get a confirmation vote?
IRS supervisors were wrong to single out local tea parties when there’s a host of flagrant, big-time violators controlled by supporters of both major political parties.
Syria has become a global proxy war in which every other participant is more invested than America. Russia, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia — along with Hezbollah, al-Qaida and now the Muslim Brotherhood — aid the forces that seem to serve their interests.
“I am the CEO of my own company,” writes Laura Wells McKnight, an author and entrepreneur. “The one I started when I made my move. Which wasn't to lean in to get ahead. Instead, my move to step up was to step out.”
Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of a a tax bill approved by the General Assembly protects the state’s future, and responsible General Assembly members should sustain his bold move.
Medgar Evers’ push for integration and voting rights in the segregated South deserves continued recognition. Fifty years after he was assassinated, he is not forgotten. A City Council resolution honoring him will be considered Thursday in Kansas City.
The one overriding lesson from the entire Power & Light District project is this: The city in the future must do a better job estimating the true costs of projects to taxpayers, never again exposing them to this kind of financial miscalculation.
Internal Revenue Service misbehavior in the regulation of political advocacy, combined with the imminent expansion of the IRS to enable it to administer the coercions that are Obamacare, is sensitizing Americans to some of the costs of the regulatory state. There are many others, hidden but huge.
“Even with the dangers, there are good reasons to chase and get as close as we safely can to these meteorological monsters,” writes Dave Call, who teaches meteorology at Ball State University. “Unfortunately, chasing is still one of the best methods for weather researchers to collect data about tornadoes.”
Many interns express general disillusionment with politics and Congresswrites Gary Meltz, who supervises the University of Kansas Washington D.C. Internship Program. “This should raise a red flag for everyone who believes that a functional political process is the cornerstone of a healthy democracy.”
Kansas Corporation Commission staff members need to focus on rigorously reviewing rate applications and other utility filings — not on political infighting inside their own department. Providing a well-run commission is not too much for Kansans to ask of their governor.
Unfortunately, meddling Kansas legislators — who whine whenever they think the feds are telling them what to do — recently approved a bill that disrupts plans to ban Wyandotte County’s yard waste from a local landfill.
Don’t be swayed by all the sunny talk about increased consumer spending, rising home prices and a bull market on Wall Street. The only things that really count are jobs and wages. And by these measures, most Americans are still in a bad storm.
Demographically, single mothers are a growing and younger percentage of the population. They are the nation’s future, and it’s not a promising one. But here is the more sobering tale within the data: Nearly two-thirds of these “sole or primary” breadwinning women fit that description because they are the only one working in their households.
