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“My boy is going to have the same opportunities as everyone else.”
“Guarded optimism” characterizes community reaction to Superintendent John Covington’s new administration. There are hopeful signs. He has brought in new top executives whose appointments seem to be based on merit, not connections. And a budget cutting process is under way.
As I’ve met with patients, doctors, small business owners and families to talk about health care, one thing is very clear: Missourians want to keep what works and fix what is broken. They are tired of bills whose importance is measured in length, rather than effectiveness. But the Washington Democrats’ response is to introduce a budget-busting, 1,990-page health care plan. This plan is so unwieldy that no one knows exactly what’s in it. We do know that it will cost more than $1 trillion, increase premium costs, put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor and pay for most of it with Medicare cuts.
I support a phased withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan, starting Jan. 1 and ending no later than Dec. 31, 2012. The Afghan people have suffered enough and the U.S. government should promote a negotiated settlement to the war. Afghanistan has been at war almost continually since 1979. We’ve been over there since 2001. At the end of 2012 we’ll have been there 11 years. That’s more than long enough to achieve our mission. And 32 years of war is too long for the Afghans.
The United States has long played an important role in animal health research and industry. This leadership is continuing and expanding with the creation of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, a unique, state-of-the-art science lab that will use world-class research expertise and infrastructure in Kansas to ensure food safety.
The current debate over global warming has obscured a fact that should not be debatable — namely that the planet is and has been environmentally degraded by the human footprint. Every third of a second, the planet makes room for one additional human being, who on average spews into the air 3.2 tons of carbon along with his share of 80,000 ton of carbon monoxide and 270,000 metric tons of methane.
Drug abuse and drug crime were virtually out of control in metro Kansas City in the 1980s. Drug houses flourished, and streets were open markets for dealing. We didn’t have the money or manpower to fight back — until the voters of Jackson County stepped in. Twenty years ago residents approved a Community Backed Anti-Drug Tax, better known as COMBAT. The quarter-cent sales tax bore huge results in clamping down on the drug trade, helping addicted people and steering young people away from drugs.
The Kansas City School District is on the path to success, and we’re counting on community stakeholders to lead us through our new strategic planning initiative.
I grew up in Kansas City, and was in attendance on Aug. 12, 1972, when Arrowhead Stadium opened with a preseason game between the Chiefs and Cardinals. I can remember looking around the gleaming stadium and marveling, with the slack-jawed wonder of a 9-year-old fanatic, at what a magnificent structure had been built for my favorite football team. Since then, I’ve been back to the Truman Sports Complex hundreds of times — regularly as a Chiefs and Royals fan growing up in Kansas City in the ’70s (including a two-year stint in high school as an Arrowhead usher, when flying the colors meant donning a red double-knit leisure suit), and whenever I could since then, as a dislocated Kansas Citian, returning to my hometown from Chicago or Austin or St. Louis.
Tom McClanahan’s commentary (10/4, “Inner city shouldn’t be picky about investors”) misses an important point: In real economic development, profit and ownership matter. And in the case of the New Tools District, community profit and community ownership matter. Instead of asking the city for money, the New Tools initiative will finance its business development through a Community Development Credit Union owned by local residents. This will enable all New Tools District residents to have ownership of the development process, becoming part of an entrepreneurial culture and its profit.
