Pollster’s misleading questions undermine accuracy of Alzheimer’s research survey | Opinion
Wrong voice
The Kansas City Star should not have published the Dec. 8 guest commentary “Americans aren’t divided on Alzheimer’s research,” which was written by a pollster hired by a trio of pharmaceutical industry-funded groups. It’s easy to get supportive poll results when the questions are misleading.
The pollsters didn’t tell participants that Medicare does pay for Alzheimer’s treatments — it just requires that their doctors enroll the patients in a registry meant to track brain bleeds and other harms in patients taking these dangerous medications.
It’s obvious why pharmaceutical companies would want to avoid tracking harms, but the pharma-funded Alliance for Aging Research should be ashamed of supporting the industry’s efforts to avoid reporting harms.
- Judy Butler and Adriane Fugh-Berman, PharmedOut, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.
Tied to norms
Candidates love to talk about the need for the return of bipartisanship to Washington. Despite their assertions, there is no lack of bipartisanship. Lawmakers are happy to collaborate when it comes to banning TikTok, exploding the defense budget or permanently damaging our country’s diplomatic standing. In 2024, centrists point to these bipartisan priorities as something we should be proud of. However, this election showed just how out of touch they really are.
Voters of both parties want many of the same things: to retire with dignity, to be able to own a house, to get money out of politics, to not go broke visiting the doctor and for one job to be enough to live a middle-class lifestyle. Democrats are quick to blame the GOP for getting in the way of solutions, but when centrists such as Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema invoke the filibuster, Democrats simply throw up their hands in defeat. When a Republican senator gets in the way of legislation, he is publicly shamed by Donald Trump until he changes his mind.
Why can’t Democrats get popular things done? Simple: Centrists run the party. They will continue to lose elections until they realize that voters prefer results over outdated norms.
- Ethan Riscovallez, Prairie Village
Moran’s time
An open letter to Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran:
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. And now is the time for you to stand up and be heard. You are a moderate Republican, and I’m sure you’re appalled at the takeover of your party by the MAGA extremists and their morally corrupt leader Donald Trump.
But you have a chance now to have a backbone and push back on the dangerous slate of Cabinet members offered by Man King Donald. It takes only four gutsy Republican senators to knock down Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel, and to keep America from falling completely into the hands of incompetent grifters.
As for you, Sen. Moran, you have a chance to define your years in politics as a person willing to do the tough stuff America needs from its leaders. If you get primaried in 2028, so be it. I’m confident you would enjoy retirement much more than being a puppet for Trump.
Now is the time.
- Dan Toughey, Leawood
Make a tally
Now that Donald Trump, after railing against the state of the Biden economy, has been elected our president, I hope that someone smarter than me will put together a spreadsheet of our current everyday costs and compare them with those same costs at the end of his presidency. We’ll see then how his tariff plan has affected all of us. And then we will be able to look at those who voted him into office and ask, “Are you happy now?”
- Jim Hayes, Leawood
Loss is a win
I don’t agree with Toriano Porter that “we all lose” if Jackson County is forced to return $70 million in federal COVID-19 relief money because the Jackson County Legislature can’t agree on how to spend it. (Dec. 12, 10A, “Jackson County loses as leaders argue about ARPA”) In fact, it would be a great win for the American taxpayer.
Why should taxpayers send $1.9 trillion to Washington, D.C., only to ask for a tiny percentage of it back? Any federal program of this magnitude surely is fraught with waste and bureaucracy. That’s why it passed in March 2021 with zero Republican support. Now that conservatives are back in power, let’s hope that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will shine a spotlight on the program’s waste and prevent such travesties of taxpayer-funded programs in the future.
- Joe DeShon, Oak Grove
Real RINOs
The “R” in “RINO” should stand for Representatives — not Republicans — In Name Only.
Ever since Amendment 3 was passed by the majority of Missouri voters, these RINOS have publicly vowed to cancel, nullify and get rid of it. The Dec. 9 Star front-page headline read, “Missouri GOP lawmakers file bills to reinstate abortion ban.” If you are not outraged by this blatant action, you should be. It says, “We don’t care about the will of the people — the voters. We are going to pursue our own agenda and bias anyway.”
This means our elected representatives are in name only and will do whatever they want, not what we voters want and elected them to represent.
I’m 83 years old and a lifelong Republican, but these politicians are out of control and should be voted out of office ASAP. They have made a mockery of the democratic process.
A pointed letter to these RINOs would be a good idea, but I’m sure they would ignore it also!
- Robert Shortell, Raymore