While nation crumbles, Kansas senator seeks tens of millions for World Cup fan rides | Opinion
As the nation collapses around our ears, Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran has introduced a bill to provide $50 million a year in federal funding for transportation improvements for metropolitan areas in line to host World Cup and Olympic games.
“It was a tremendous feat to secure a spot as a host city during the 2026 World Cup, and I have no doubt that Kansas City will be a welcoming community for hundreds of thousands of soccer fans from around the world,” Moran said in a press release Thursday. “Preparations are already underway for the games, and this legislation will support local community and agency efforts to improve infrastructure to connect fans with businesses, hotels, the airport and other host cities during the World Cup.”
This bill and that justification are about as tone-deaf an exercise in government as I’ve ever seen from a member of Congress.
Actually, it’s beyond tone-deaf. It’s infuriating.
It’s a slap in the face to every one of the 280,000 federal workers who’ve gotten termination papers from the Donald Trump administration in the name of cost-cutting. Not to mention the as-yet uncounted number of scientists, medical researchers, hospitals, universities, museums, nonprofits and contractors who have had to cease trying to improve America, because Elon Musk and his DOGE Musketeers decided that kind work isn’t worth doing anymore.
Read the room, Jerry Moran.
On Thursday, Americans lost about $2 trillion in wealth when the stock market crashed 1,600 points, due entirely to Trump’s incredibly stupid “Liberation Day,” when he started a trade war against just about every country on the planet, including remote islands populated entirely by penguins and elephant seals.
As I wrote this on Friday, our 401ks continued to get pounded even worse, with the market down another 2,200 points, a $4.9 trillion loss in two days.
When you, Jerry Moran, had a chance to take a stand against this, you voted to stay the course and run our economy into a much bigger iceberg than the one that took out the Titanic.
Meanwhile, the gasoline I put in my car this morning was up 31 cents since I filled up last week. How’s that trade war with Canada, our leading source of foreign oil, working out, Jerry Moran?
We can’t effectively respond to a multi-state outbreak of measles(!), which was essentially eradicated until this year, because the Centers for Disease Control has been gutted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccination madman sitting around muttering about how full-fat milk is better than 2% — and who you, Jerry Moran, voted to confirm.
Musk closed down USAID, which bought and distributed Kansas farm produce to starving people around the world. I’ll give you credit, Jerry Moran, for objecting and at least getting the food that was rotting on ships at anchor doled out. But the shutdown of future aid will still hurt our farmers and has crippled our ability to project “soft power” in developing countries, a vacuum that China will doubtless be quick to fill.
The Department of Education is in the process of shutting itself down, but not before creating a “Special Investigations Team” with the Justice Department to “use the full power of the law to remedy any violation of women’s civil rights,” as they put it in a press release I got Friday. That sounds really important until you read on and find out what they’re really talking about is purging a few transgender children from K-12 school sports. I’ll remind you, Jerry Moran, that you voted to put the Education Department in the hands of fake-wrestling magnate Linda McMahon.
I expect such nonsense from your fellow Kansas senator, Roger Marshall, who’s drunk so much Trump-flavored Kool-Aid that I expect him to turn orange any day now.
I expected better from you, Jerry Moran. I’ve always been a supporter of yours, but right now, you’re reminding me of Kevin Bacon in “Animal House,” standing in the middle of a riot yelling “Remain calm. All is well.”
Our economy and the Republic are crumbling by the day, we’ve alienated just about everyone who could help us out of this self-inflicted disaster, and the best you can come up with is a bill to spend $50 million a year to get drunken sports fans from the airport to the hotel to the stadium?
Hell to the no.
I have some actual experience with this. I worked at the Pasadena Star-News in 1994 when the city hosted the World Cup Final. As the local media sponsor, we hosted the party for the international press corps, which consisted mainly of running back and forth to the liquor store all night.
So you can trust me when I tell you that everybody who had a ticket managed to make it to the Rose Bowl for the game. And that was before Uber and Lyft.
Anyone who can afford tickets to the World Cup, (and airfare and hotel) can afford to fund their own local transportation.
So you can stop worrying about the World Cup. We have incredibly larger problems to deal with right now, and it’s time for you to get your head in the game.
