Opinion Line (Jan. 18)

Kansas now ranks seventh in the nation in people leaving the state. Will we wait until we are No. 1 before we try to do something? Oh, wait – Wichita did try to do something and we voted it down. Small wonder people are leaving – no jobs and no leaders.

Sedgwick County needs to share the 1-cent sales tax. Half should go to the city of Wichita and half to Sedgwick County. This has my vote.

Hey, Governor, how about having a news conference at Learjet to inform the laid-off workers that the sun is still shining in Kansas?

One solution the governor or state legislators haven’t and won’t consider for Kansas’ financial woes is to put their egos in their hip pockets and do something constructive for Kansas for a change.

If we had lobbyists back in the day, we’d still have milkmen and ice trucks.

The NEA is one of the worst things to happen to education.

Why does the Legislature continually denigrate teachers, especially by attempting to limit their bargaining rights? What we pay teachers is a pittance of their worth. Next to medicine, teaching is the most important profession that exists (and obviously doctors had to have teachers to become doctors).

Kris Kobach is pandering to those folks who are intellectually bereft by advocating a button on the Kansas ballots to vote a straight-party ticket. I propose we up the ante and remove all party affiliations from the ballot. That would be far more interesting.

Abdicate all individual civic responsibility: Make straight-ticket voting an option when registering to vote. Let your registration vote for you. Never go to the polls again. How convenient.

Every Kansans had better pay attention to the bills that Kobach is planning to push through the Legislature in Topeka – giving him the power to prosecute, straight-party line voting, etc. Who does he think he is?

Why do we need straight-ticket voting? Why not just let Kobach vote for us? It’ll mean shorter lines at the ballot box, too.

It is pitiful how the president antagonizes Congress. He leaves town on his political tour as the new Congress convenes, his meeting with leaders is a “my way or the highway encounter,” and he lists items he will veto before there are any bills or amendments.

I know you Republicans can’t stand it when President Obama does something good, but opening relations with Cuba is a good thing. Not only are farmers benefiting, but it’s much easier to convert a communist country to a democratic country from the inside.

Quietly just before Christmas, the NSA dumped documents that showed it had spied on Americans and misused their personal information as we feared. Why hasn’t the political class addressed this?

I have heard of magical, mythical places where traffic lights are used to facilitate and improve traffic flow. But that’s just silly. We Wichitans know that traffic lights are meant to hinder and slow car travel.

This story was originally published January 17, 2015 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Opinion Line (Jan. 18)."