Letters to the editor on Topgolf, car wash, gun laws and university education
Topgolf subsidy
Personally I love golf and will undoubtedly utilize the proposed and impressive Topgolf facility. However, would not a $10 million fund to incentivize young and talented workers to move to our metro area be a far better use of public funds?
$10 million could provide $5,000 incentive bonuses to the first 2,000 remote or self employed workers who move here and sign a lease or purchase residential property within X months of relocation. That investment fund would enhance our workforce talent pool, generate long-term profits for multiple businesses and produce significant additional taxable income.
Many talented people can continue to work remotely, want to leave large metro areas, and are looking for a great place to live and raise families. Those of us who moved here years ago know we have so much to offer in quality of life, but significant incentives may now be needed to motivate others to do the same.
Car wash permit
With the first round of Riverfest coming to a close, the irony should not be lost on this community that, the day before the festivities began this weekend, the MAPC has awarded a permit to a car wash to locate on the banks of your river. My river. Our river.
A river that local officials are quick to say meets the standards set by someone in an office far away; standards that are a baseline, a minimum, the ‘low bar.’
A river that local officials are champing at the bit to subsidize some slick developer to “reactivate,” yet claim is too expensive to clean up and can’t recommend we eat any fish that come out of it.
Well, I’d like to ask the city and its developers a simple question: Why don’t we have a Deli at the Dump? I bet the views would be unmatched.
Pride is more than just a flittering flag or license tag.
It’s time we set a higher bar for ourselves, our community, our leaders, and our city — and the little that’s left of our wild places.
Gun laws
So, America has such a fascination with guns and our politicians are so afraid of the NRA, that this country is willing to sacrifice 1,000’s of innocent lives in almost daily mass shootings. These shootings are taking place in schools, churches, workplaces and even clubs. And all the while, our “worthless” politicians in Washington cannot muster the courage to grow some spine and backbone to resist the NRA and pass meaningful gun control laws. Meanwhile, the state of Texas is about to pass the most senseless gun law ever, allowing any adult to open carry a gun, WITHOUT a permit, training or license. Only in America.
University education
The failure to teach about the history and ongoing consequences of slavery, and many other important histories in American schools, colleges and universities makes us weak as a people. All of us are equally deprived of knowledge of our history. I have been talking to some of my fellow survivors (all white) of my grade school class, and we all remember gratefully that we learned in 4th grade about China, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson and George Washington Carver, as well as about the Emancipation Proclamation and the United Nations in 8th grade. But I did not learn about Jim Crow laws in the south until I was a graduate student in New Zealand.
WSU had a Minority Studies program where the histories and cultures of the various sub-cultures in this country were taught by people from these sub-cultures. This program was eliminated as “too expensive,” though it was popular with students. Now we have “innovations” and other gimmicks that might be useful to corporations that want WSU to train workers in south-central Kansas. I have not heard that any attempt is being made to focus on the violence, ignorance of science, contempt for law and other characteristics that threaten a democratic system of government being prominently available or required at WSU.
WSU began with the Humanities, Social Science, Natural Science and a Liberal Arts and Sciences program. It is still a Public University. What do people want for their university education?