Letters on Ranzau, senseless deaths
Ranzau shows a lack of educability
Under Chairman Richard Ranzau’s leadership, the Sedgwick County Commission has consistently reflected an extreme ideology that has demonstrated a lack of empathy for the destructive effects on quality of life and the ability to live in general for the residents of Sedgwick County. This is to be expected from a rigid, closed system of thinking in which lack of success is punishable as a personal failure.
An alternate approach emphasizes the development of personal responsibility: a characteristic that, ironically, Ranzau indicates we must have. This approach relates to the fact that people may need help in their efforts to become self-sufficient. It may focus on health care assistance and does not require that we give people everything they want.
Ranzau’s elective attacks on the health department reveal a deficit in his understanding of nurturance in line with his failure to see the validity of the common good.
Ranzau will never connect the dots of personal responsibility to those unnecessary deaths that have resulted from obesity, cervical or breast cancer, as well as infant mortality, from a lack of otherwise available resources, which he has chosen to curtail or eliminate. To him, the victims should have known better, had the resources and acted.
In this case, the victims include infants who are considered legal citizens and who will never assume that kind of personal responsibility Ranzau dictates we should possess.
Ranzau has demonstrated a lack of educability, and decisions based upon his destructive “wisdom” will continue as long as he remains in office.
CHARLES A. GAYNOR
Bel Aire
Senseless deaths
Every day the headlines scream the same grim message: innocent people killed or hurt in a senseless tragedy.
Stillwater, Okla., on Oct. 24. New York City on Halloween night. About 100 people are killed in locales around the nation each and every day.
“When will someone do something to stop this slaughter?” the masses cry.
“What terrible weapon is causing such carnage?” the people ask, with grim visages and clenched teeth. “Surely our congressmen must take action.”
Yes, these vehicles of destruction have a name, but it is not Ruger, Colt or Kalashnikov. Rather, it is Buick, Ford and Chevy, among others.
“Oh, sorry. Nothing you can do about that. It is just part of modern life,” the people say as they stifle their fervor and put down their protest signs.
Newsroom managers decide whether to slot the report before or after the results of the local punkin’ chuckin’ contest. This is not the media firestorm they slaver for.
The phones are silent in congressional offices. There is no angle to work, nothing to further one’s campaign.
No candlelight vigils for the innocents.
GREG MARTIN
Belle Plaine
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This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 6:06 PM with the headline "Letters on Ranzau, senseless deaths."