Ford plant, Chiefs, Obamacare

I heard a rumor that a church representing workers will be established at the new Ford stamping plant in Claycomo — the Assembly of God.

I was 11 years old when the Kansas City Chiefs won their only Super Bowl. Today, I am 11 years from retirement. I’ve been a Chiefs fan since 1965, so at least I can say I was blessed to enjoy the victory over Minnesota in 1970.

Does the loss to the Colts on Jan. 4 sting? Yes.

Unfortunately, the Chiefs losing in the playoffs is something that all of us are used to from the last 20 years. Will I continue to root for the Chiefs?

Heck, yes. They’re my team, win or lose. This year was so much more fun than last year.

To the players, thanks for giving it your all. To coach Andy Reid, thanks for bringing exciting football back to our town. To general manager John Dorsey and Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, thank you for getting the Chiefs back on the right track.

Win or lose, I will remain a Chiefs fan until the day I die. I will also continue to have hope.

We have a terrific young core of players, and our future is bright. I still believe — even after four-plus decades of trying in vain to get back to the Super Bowl.

Please continue to support our team.

It will take many Americans to not sign up for the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, to fail. The fewer people who sign up, the more vulnerable it will be for Congress to stop it.

There are three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. The legislative branch is treating the executive branch like a puppet.

Members of the House are telling President Barack Obama to jump, and he asks how high? It is up to the judicial branch to stop them when they are going against the constitutional rights of Americans.

Talk to your congressional representative.

I try to understand the world around me, but it’s not always easy. A $17.5-million dormitory is in the works for University of Kansas basketball players (1-9, A1, “KU plans dorm for basketball players”). Wow.

There must be a great need in this area. That’s a huge amount of money to accommodate each player. Luxury apartments will make it easier to recruit.

I’ve been involved in education for more than half a century, and not once have I heard there was a shortage of basketball players.

How about mental-health workers? Mental-health services in Kansas have been decimated because of funding priorities.

I’ll bet luxury apartments would be a big plus in recruiting leadership and service-delivery personnel in this area. Or how about special education or family services or vocational rehabilitation or the arts, or perhaps luxury apartments to lure those willing to focus on establishing priorities and developing leadership skills?

I continue to try to understand, but my old mind seems to be in a fog. I know some of the finest minds in the country reside at the great University on the Hill, but perhaps their minds are also in a Phog.

I’ll bet my 2014 1.5 percent pay increase that most of the people yelling the loudest to vote out all Congress members next year won’t do so.

The emotions after last year’s debt-ceiling controversy and partial federal government shutdown probably won’t carry into November. So most people will continue voting as they have.

I believe in, if you talk the talk, then you should have the courage to walk the walk.

But few do. Anyone willing to take my bet?

I typically admire The Star’s stances on local issues, even when I disagree with them. However, I was amazed and disappointed by recent op-ed essays by Missouri Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro and Bill Eddy, a former Kansas City school board member and leader of Do the Right Thing for Kids.

According to The Star, Nicastro badly compromised the bid process in choosing consultants, showing a clear bias. She publicly supported an “open” bid process but contrived behind the scenes with individuals who favor and financially support charter schools. Her activity should have eliminated her participation in the bid process.

Instead, her Jan. 5 essay, “District must show sustained improvement,” allows her to rehabilitate herself as an unbiased participant in the bid process. Eddy’s Jan. 8 piece, “KC schools deserve our best thinking,” supports the same conclusion.

In his piece, Eddy asks, “Why wouldn’t we want all the informed ideas (from the study) we can get on fixing a bad situation … (that has) cheated students for decades?” The correct answer is because the process was compromised by undisclosed discussions with private individuals favoring one of the bidders who eventually obtained the contract. That contractor appears to habitually favor a charter school solution.

When did we adopt the wholesale view that charter schools are the answer to struggling public schools? The fallacy with this thinking is that it is OK to have winners and losers.

Unfortunately, the losers are often thousands of the most disadvantaged children in our city.

School board President Airick Leonard West has a propensity to substitute the term, “scholar” for the more appropriate “student” when identifying the boys and girls enrolled in Kansas City Public Schools. Perhaps his dictionary is different from Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, which offers the following definitions:

“Scholar, noun. 1. A learned or erudite person, especially one who has profound knowledge of a particular subject.”

“Student, noun. 1. A person formally engaged in learning, especially one enrolled in a school or college.”

All scholars can be considered students, but all students cannot be considered scholars. Let’s be honest.

If all those attending Kansas City Public Schools were scholars, school accreditation would not be an issue.

We need to clean up Kansas City’s blighted buildings, and I was glad to see the push for a loan pool.

The concept of putting families into reasonably priced housing and getting workers to construct or rehab these buildings sounds like a win-win to me.

Kansas City is a great city, but this problem must be addressed.

I hope the city will give serious consideration to a bank’s willingness to contribute to a loan pool as part of its analysis in where to bank in the future.

It will certainly be part of my consideration and I hope that of many other Kansas Citians as well.

Late last year, it was disturbingly pointed out to me that my driver’s license had expired. It was with much apprehension that I approached the newly designed Kansas driver’s license offices.

I had heard the many horror stories of daylong waits and of people being sent off to await a message on their cellphones, which I don’t do. Before, I had always gone to the offices and returned home within the hour,

I arrived to be greeted by an array of smiling faces and told to push a button, take a number and wait. I had not even opened my book when my number was called.

Net result, I was back home within the hour, which is why my new license photo has such a shocked and surprised look.

The plight of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie exemplifies once again the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats: The buck stops here.

Republicans: The buck stops there.

This story was originally published January 11, 2014 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Ford plant, Chiefs, Obamacare."