Letters on highway fund raid, WSU football, undermining rights, cursive

Highway fund raid hurts cities, too

I noted with more than casual interest the editorial on the raiding of highway funds by the Legislature and Gov. Sam Brownback (“Highway raids affecting jobs,” Aug. 31 Eagle Editorial). Unbeknownst to most citizens is the fact that highway dollars filter back to cities and counties all across our state. So shortages impact our city and county streets as well as our state highways.

The editorial noted that Iowa led the nation in construction job growth. Its legislature and governor responded quickly to declining gas prices. In the first legislative session after gas declined to the lows of $2 a gallon, they passed a use tax of 10 cents per gallon. Numerous other states across our nation, including Nebraska, have done the same.

I believe that is a positive response to an opportunity, as opposed to quibbling over education, roads and our court system.

We have all heard recently about the “brain drain” of college graduates leaving Kansas. I think the brain drain starts in the Governor’s Office and filters down through the Legislature. The upcoming election gives all Kansans a chance to turn our state around and put more people to work and resolve the budget deficits.

WSU play money?

In the early 1980s, I had the pleasure of spending several autumn afternoons and evenings as a substitute physician for Wichita State University football. The excitement of being a sideline participant was always offset by looking at the many empty seats of Cessna Stadium. This remained the case in spite of an 8-3 season in 1982, when the Shockers had Willie Jeffries as coach and Prince McJunkins as quarterback..

The announcement of termination of the program due to lack of interest and funding came as no surprise.

Due to football concussions brain injuries, parents are enrolling their children in junior football in diminishing numbers. The trend is expected to affect junior high, then high school, and slowly but surely college.

Are WSU operatives willing to jeopardize present educational enhancement projects, professors’ salaries, nationally recognized basketball, baseball and bowling programs, etc., with a cost of a $40 million gamble? Even worse, are they telling the taxpaying and donor community that WSU has plenty of play money?

Undermine rights

The divisiveness, tone and rhetoric of this election cycle are damaging the stability of our representative republic. Here are two examples that threaten the underlying fabric of the Constitution.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of the press. The press, like it or not, has always been the watchdog of our democracy in providing the information we need to make an informed decision. I recently watched with dismay as the crowd at one candidate’s rally, in reference to the press, repeatedly chanted “lock them up.” Maybe they meant to say lock them up, unless it’s Fox News or Breitbart. Either way, it undermines the Constitution.

The 15th Amendment guarantees the right to vote regardless of a person’s race or color. I watched with disbelief as the same presidential candidate at another rally urged his supporters to monitor polling stations in down-state Pennsylvania, inferring he might lose because of some massive voter fraud. Encouraging untrained people to show up at polling stations, some potentially armed, could easily lead to voter intimidation.

The ability to make an informed decision and freely exercise the right to vote are critical to our democracy.

Teach cursive

I recently spent a week in Washington, D.C. Of everything I saw, one thing remains on my mind perhaps more than the rest.

While I was in the National Archives looking at and reading the Declaration of Independence, there was a young gentleman standing next to me. I stated how beautiful the penmanship was “back in the day.” He agreed that it was nice but said he couldn’t read it, because he never learned “cursive writing.”

Isn’t that a shame?

Many of our public schools no longer teach cursive. As a result, we are creating generations that will never be able to actually read and understand the original documents that define our existence as a nation. How sad.

If future generations cannot read the original, how will they recognize if the modern printed versions are accurate? I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but ….

Hurt by policies

It seems that the cost of things continues to go up, including groceries and health care. The only thing not going up are incomes, particularly for those who rely on Social Security and savings.

We ask people to be responsible and self-reliant when planning for their retirements. But then we tell people that inflation is a paltry 1 percent for Social Security purposes (even though it’s easy to see that costs are going up a lot faster than that). And policymakers keep interest rates artificially low, hitting doubly hard those with savings that they rely on to supplement their retirements.

When will we do more than ask people to take care of themselves in retirement and actually set policies that make it possible?

This story was originally published September 7, 2016 at 5:03 AM with the headline "Letters on highway fund raid, WSU football, undermining rights, cursive."