Letters on county cuts, Medicare, GOP hypocrisy, headed for disaster, President Trump

Not the Sedgwick County we want

Is this the Sedgwick County we want?

We watched as three county commissioners turned down a $2 million grant for the health of our community and carved tobacco control from our public health department, even though tobacco is still the No. 1 cause of preventable death. And the cuts continue, with Commissioner Jim Howell saying the county needs to focus on core functions and have a more responsible government.

Is it responsible to cut $780,000 for programs at the Sedgwick County Health Department that provide health screenings and immunizations and promote health education? Is it responsible to cut the county’s entire $200,000 share of funding for Project Access, which provides uninsured people with medical care? Is it responsible to put off building structures for ambulances in Derby and northeast Wichita, when staff warned that this could worsen response times and stress the EMS system?

Are we going to continue to watch as our county commissioners cut important programs that touch every member of our community? The cost of these programs that focus on prevention is minimal compared with the tax burden for each of us when these important services are not available. Please let your commissioner know this is not the Sedgwick County we want.

Medicare at risk

Senior citizens should be concerned about the recently passed joint budget resolution that would cut $430 billion from Medicare and lay the foundation for privatizing most of Medicare. Even President Obama’s budget proposal provides for a $25 increase in the Part B deductible and extension of Medicare means-testing to middle-income seniors.

Part of the reason for the strain in the federal budget, which could end up affecting Social Security and Medicare, is the granting of tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Seniors, and those who will be seniors in the future, should study the issues of Social Security and Medicare in depth and make their views known to presidential candidates and members of Congress, and at the ballot box in 2016.

GOP hypocrisy

So Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and the Senate Republican leadership took Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to the woodshed on Sunday for calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a liar last week on the chamber floor. As I recall, several of these same senators, including Hatch, were present during President Obama’s 2009 health care speech to Congress, and all sat in complete silence as Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted “you lie” as the president was speaking. This is truly exposing the Republican hypocrisy at its worst.

Shame on Hatch.

Headed for disaster

As a country, we are headed toward disaster. Call it what you want, but it still falls under the categories of communism-fascism-Nazism and plain old anarchy.

For the often-used term of “political correctness,” we are having our history destroyed by a few zealots, and our government is taking us down the path with their own agendas.

I have no problem with the South’s Confederate battle flag having been taken down. But now, as I predicted, they are going after all the monuments (“Georgia debates Confederate stone carving, state law,” July 26 Eagle).

Are the people so uneducated that they don’t realize that the Civil War was a war over states’ rights versus federal control? Slavery just happened to become a part of it. That was a very dark time in our country’s history but needs to be remembered, so that we can move on and not do such horrible things again.

Liberal and conservative extremism is destroying us. We have enough dangers coming at us from outside that we need to be better informed and educated.

The so-called news groups are nothing but opinion groups and do everything they can to try to make news lean toward their own agenda or, worse, toward the party extremism they happen to support.

President Trump?

I’ve been thinking about this Donald Trump phenomenon. One way to explain it is to realize that, with the general state of the country and world today, people need a diversion, something so ridiculous that the best comedians around couldn’t come up with anything that would fulfill this need so well. And this is probably what’s driving it in part.

The other explanation, and perhaps a better one that the media have touched on but failed to explore in depth, is that people are fed up with today’s politicians – those who are beholden to the big-money super PACs that are paying for their campaigns. The result is that our usual candidates have become the puppets of these special interests. As such, their voices no longer represent the people.

Whatever one might think of “the Donald,” the words coming out of his mouth are not put there by anyone or anything but those manufactured by his own confused psyche. And those who have jumped on his bandwagon know this. In a strange sort of way, this seems encouraging – as long as we stop short of giving Trump the crown.

How long can Trump maintain his lofty place on the political wall before, like Humpty, he crashes? In this topsy-turvy world, it’s anybody’s guess.

This story was originally published July 29, 2015 at 7:03 PM with the headline "Letters on county cuts, Medicare, GOP hypocrisy, headed for disaster, President Trump."