Readers react to Kris Kobach, Donald Trump and education funding
Backward Kansas
It’s hard to ignore the contrast: Tuesday was National Voter Registration Day. In Kansas City, people held registration drives. There was publicity nationally, urging people to register for this precious right of democracy.
Our soldiers fought and died for it. Many in the South struggled and bled for it. Congress finally passed the Voting Rights Act upholding that right for all.
And then there is Kansas, where Secretary of State Kris Kobach is putting up every obstacle he can think of — constitutional or not — to make it harder for citizens (mostly the elderly and minorities) to register and exercise their hard-won right.
And to think that Kansas was once a Free State.
Kobach has taken us down the path of denying rather than preserving and protecting the right to vote.
Judy Hellman
Overland Park
Steve Rose column
I read with interest Steve Rose’s proposal to use volunteer assistance to help Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office complete the registration of the 34,000 Kansas voters “in limbo” (9-20, Commentary, “Tap volunteers to help Kansas voters in limbo”).
I wonder whether Kobach has directed his staff to begin working on this effort.
After all, when two voters filed a lawsuit challenging Kobach’s proof-of-citizenship requirements, Kobach’s office checked for documentation of citizenship for the people who sued, found that and updated their records. Then Kobach asked a judge to drop the suit because he had been able to demonstrate the people were indeed citizens.
Now that is customer service. I’m curious how many of the other 34,000 Kansans Kobach’s office has worked for in this way?
Kobach seems like a smart and resourceful guy (Steve Rose described him as “clever and ruthless”; I won’t disagree with that either). I wish he would apply some of his smarts, resourcefulness or even ruthlessness to making it easier for the people of Kansas to vote.
Patty Logan
Leawood
Scary political path
Thanks to the candidacy of billionaire Republican Donald Trump, members of the racist base have come out from behind their dog whistles.
President Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy has worked well in cornering the market on fearful white folks.
GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush gets into this act by stating that his comment concerning the term “anchor babies” actually meant Asians. Which Asians Bush didn’t specify.
These are extremely troubling times for most Americans because of massive economic disparity, wage stagnation, climate-change disruptions, institutional racism and costly unwinnable wars, and people rightly feel anxiety about their futures.
But these conditions have not been brought about by minorities any more than the Great Depression in 1930s Germany was the responsibility of the Jewish population. Stoking the myth of white supremacy will not make America great again.
I fear for my country going so extremely and so blindly into blatant racism and nativism rhetoric because it walks and talks exactly like fascism. This is what should really scare everyone.
Rosemarie Woods
Kansas City
Politically correct
During the late 1980s, I began designing and co-facilitating multicultural education through workshops, learning about and creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for people of diverse ethnicity, religion, sexuality and ability level.
Shortly after those workshops were beginning to make an impact, the term “politically correct” began popping up as a derogatory term.
I began paying close attention to articles purporting that multicultural education was nothing more than a movement to censor free speech.
I soon came to see the labeling/branding terminology for what it was — a backlash by spin doctors of the political right to discredit the value of multicultural education.
Certain terms are created for marketing strategies. Using “Obamacare” instead of the Affordable Care Act and “politically correct” instead of being inclusive are two of them.
Multicultural educators use terms and behaviors to be inclusive and sensitive to cultural difference because they believe in the value of difference and believe more individuals behaving in an inclusive manner will create a more peaceful, caring world.
What do you value? What kind of world do you want?
Janet Brown Moss
BridgeWorks
Kansas City
K-State honors
A fan, after returning from the football game at the Bill Snyder Family Stadium last Saturday, posted this remark on a Kansas State University football forum. He said, “The standing ovation for Dr. (Frank) Tracz I believe was the loudest I have ever heard for any non-KSU athlete.”
The 53,540 fans recognized Tracz and the K-State marching band with their support and pride when the band was awarded the John Philip Sousa Foundation’s prestigious Sudler Trophy, awarded to a marching band that has “made outstanding contributions to the American way of life.” The Sudler Award was presented appropriately on K-State’s Band Day.
It is a shame the Kansas City news media passed up reporting this national award after the same media devoted so much print and video to a controversial halftime formation two weeks ago.
Congratulations to Tracz and the Pride of Wildcat Land marching band.
Larry Bilotta
Kansas City
Education funding
The Sept. 20 Kansas City Star editorial, “Brownback’s feuds with schools harm Kansas,” appears to be a regurgitation of Duane Goossen’s recent commentary for the Kansas Center for Economic Growth.
Both refer to “general classroom aid” as though it’s an official designation, but no such category exists. Local school boards alone decide how much money goes to instruction. Legislators and governors have no control over the allocation.
Total funding increased nearly $2 billion over the last 10 years. Instruction spending, available only through FY 2014, increased by $845 million since 2005 without counting a dollar of KPERS.
Here’s where things stand on achievement:
▪ Only 32 percent of the 2015 graduating class that took the ACT test is considered college-ready in English, reading, math and science.
▪ Only 38 percent of fourth-graders are proficient in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
▪ Twenty-seven percent of students who graduated from Kansas high schools in 2013 and attended a university in Kansas signed up for remedial training (Kansas Board of Regents).
These unacceptable outcomes aren’t necessarily anyone’s fault, but they are everyone’s responsibility — especially the Legislature’s — to fix.
And just spending more on a system that for whatever reasons produced these results isn’t a solution.
Dave Trabert
President
Kansas Policy Institute
Olathe
Use time wisely
You mean to tell me there is an actual company that supports and finances a website that encourages and initiates extramarital affairs and has a worldwide client list of more than 30 million people? Really?
Well, I guess this shouldn’t surprise me. It’s just another indication of how this world we live in has immersed itself into uncharted levels of depravity.
Psalm 14:1 states that, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ ”
Now, I know of the atheistic ideology, but I am inclined to believe that many people affirm the existence of a higher power (God) but act like he doesn’t matter.
In the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, “Lord of the Rings,” Gandalf, the wizard, was conversing with Frodo, the Hobbit, during a scene, and he said something like this: “We don’t determine how much time we have on this earth, but we do determine what to do with the time that we have.”
And let me add this: What we do with the time we have will determine where we will spend eternity.
Get it together, people.
Rev. David W. Brown
Grandview
This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Readers react to Kris Kobach, Donald Trump and education funding."