Letters to the editor (Sept. 25, 2018)

Editorial page concerns

I’m starting to worry about the Eagle’s editorial page — the one reason I continue to pay full price for my paper subscription (when my friends negotiate a much lower price). Where in today’s paper (Sunday, 9/23/18) are the editorials about Kansas, the state we live in and need to stay informed about? Where are the editorials by the Kansas college professors, Davis Merritt, the Capital Journal in Topeka, and the KC Star? Where are the Letters to the Editor? And where is the BALANCE newspapers purport to revere, i.e., the counter piece to Estes’ “Medicare for All means security for none” from James Thompson?

I know you’ve undergone a management change and I’ve been patiently waiting to see the level of coverage restored. When is it going to happen?

Lynn,

You raise a couple of questions that others have as well, so I’d like to take a moment to answer them.

We’re receiving fewer letters to the editor and of those that we do receive, many are from the same people or are near duplicates of others’ points. Until we start receiving more letters, and a greater variety of them, that feature will be appearing on an occasional basis instead of a daily one. The college professors still appear — Michael Smith, who wrote the commentary about church in Sunday’s paper is one of them — but Davis Merritt has opted to no longer write for us. As to balance, each day’s page will not achieve political equality. Some days will lean more conservative; other days will lean more liberal. James Thompson has written on these pages before and he’s welcome to submit more commentary.

Michael Roehrman, editor

Presumption of innocence

It is a problem for democrats when, during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing, their representative members on the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded assurance from Judge Kavanaugh that he will approach all cases with an open mind, and yet since that hearing go about in public effectually showing everyone that they believe Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation while discounting anything Judge Kavanaugh has to say in his defense. The touchtone of legal process is neutral, consistent and fair review. That means that no one has an advantage because of who they are or what they represent or what they are alleging.

The Judiciary Committee cannot be excused from affording the presumption of innocence to those it hears. Some may think presumption of innocence is not to be given consideration outside a courtroom. That attitude exists in authoritarian and dictatorial regimes and should be disconcerting to anyone who believes in the rule of law.

Democrats who so blatantly lack respect for the presumption of innocence should find their party’s chances of having candidates elected slim to none. Will that be the case? No one can be certain. We live in very illiberal times with objectivity in decline and bias on the rise.

Medicare solutions

I read with interest and dismay Rep. Ron Estes’ op-ed piece ( Wichita Eagle, Sunday, Sept. 23) which offered a critique of the proposed “Medicare for All.”

It is well known that our current health care system accounts for approximately 18% of our GDP, which amounts to about $3.3 trillion annually, and is overly burdened with administrative costs. This is roughly $10,000 per person, and is about twice the average expenditure in comparable countries throughout the world. Nevertheless, our mortality rates are poorer and we have millions of our citizens without health insurance.

While “Medicare for All” may or may not be the best answer to this dilemma, Rep. Estes’ failure to at least identify an alternative suggests that it is considerably easier to critique this issue than find a solution for our broken health care system.

We send our representatives to Congress to find solutions for problems. So far, in the case of health care, we remain disappointed.