Letters on Richard Ranzau, American dream, U.S. health care

Ranzau doing a poor job listening

I was impressed by all the people who came to last week’s Sedgwick County Commission meeting to express concern about the proposed budget cuts (July 30 Eagle). They all did a great job in getting their point across.

On the other hand, I was extremely disappointed in Richard Ranzau’s performance as chairman, especially his “ugly moment,” as noted in an Eagle editorial (“Pushback warranted,” July 30 Eagle). It is inexcusable for a public official to lash out at anyone commenting in a public hearing. After he admitted to receiving a text message from a friend about this exchange, Ranzau clarified that his remarks were not personally directed at the Spirit AeroSystems representative. It took someone else to make him realize he had made a mistake?

Additionally, Ranzau challenged another presenter, saying he had a physician friend who thought county funding for health programs should be cut. Ranzau later said there is mass support for a smaller budget, with “thousands of people out there who have a different view, and they will not be forgotten either.” But apparently few of them felt strongly enough to come to the commission hearing and express their support of budget cuts.

It seems obvious that Ranzau has an extreme bias in his ideology that hasn’t changed much over the years. He is doing a poor job of listening to the citizens of Sedgwick County. Maybe he should consider a career change.

Success up to you

Hillary Clinton and the other Democratic presidential candidates are making one speech after another telling Americans that the “deck is stacked in favor of the wealthy” and “the game is rigged” against the poor and middle class. One only needs to look to some of the Republican presidential candidates to see how truly absurd these positions are.

Ben Carson was raised by an illiterate single mother in inner-city Detroit, yet he rose to become the director of pediatric neurosurgery for Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are both first-generation Americans whose working-class parents emigrated from Cuba; each has risen to become a U.S. senator. Bobby Jindal’s parents emigrated from India six months before he was born. He has held numerous positions in industry and government.

These are just a few examples of many thousands of Americans who rose from humble beginnings to lead successful, productive lives through hard work and determination. The last thing this country needs is another leader who makes excuses for failure, deters our young people from even trying to build a successful life, and fosters class warfare to get elected. We’ve had that for the past six years, and it has been a disaster.

I would rather see a leader who can inspire the American people and serve as an example that America is still the land of opportunity and, regardless of where you start, where you end up is entirely up to you.

Not the best

In the mid-1980s, I became aware that about 25 countries had a lower infant-mortality rate than the good old U.S. of A. This has not substantially improved.

This fact explodes in my mind every time I hear how “America has the best health care system in the world.” If it is true that our system is the best, why is it also true that newborns in Finland, Japan, Spain and Korea are much more likely to survive into their second year?

Now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that the maternal-mortality rate (the number of mothers who die because of complications of birthing a child) of U.S. mothers is the highest of any developed country and growing, while the rate in other developed countries is dropping. Women in Britain, the Czech Republic, Germany and Japan are much more likely to survive giving birth than American women.

Where is the outrage demanding that all American mothers and babies survive birth and thrive thereafter?

This story was originally published August 2, 2015 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Letters on Richard Ranzau, American dream, U.S. health care."