Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Wichita’s inadequate buss system may not run on Saturday

From

The Wichita City Council is considering ending buss service on Saturdays. The City’s bus service is already a joke. This is a major city with almost half a million people and the busses only run until 6p.m. Some people can’t even use it to get home from work, because they get out after the busses have stopped running.
Wichita is one of the few cities that don’t have any real public transportation. Most large cities have a buss that runs late into the night. And most buss systems cover at least most of any large city (that doesn’t have some kind of subway system).
According to The Wichita Eagle the City Council also want to raise fares from $1.25 to $1.75. Even if they raise the fairs, it is cheaper to travel around town on a buss than fill up a car every few days with $50 or more. Once again poor people are the targets of city budget cuts. They city can contribute to investments for a River-walk Project we don’t really need. But anything that helps people, either to get to work, or old people who can’t drive to get around and shop, the City just forgets them.

 
They also developed a downtown area, with all kinds of bars and restaurants, to bring people back to that part of town, but if people go there to drink, they either have to pay $30 to $50 for a cab home or they get a DUI for driving themselves home. No one has ever thought about the idea of a buss to take people to and from the downtown area. Almost every other city has a system like that. There are also people without cars who could work a third shift if there was a night-time buss. According to The Wichita Eagle article, a lot of people in Wichita rely on the buss system. But the City Council doesn’t care. They only listen to people with big money.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Farmers take a hit from federal subsidy cuts

From

The poor, teachers and government workers are not alone in loosing income and financial safety nets. Now Washington’s Representatives are going after the farmers. They want to end farm subsidies.
Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp was one of the Republicans who have supported the plan. He is from the First District in Kansas, which is mostly farmland and staunchly Republican. The GOP spending blueprint’s Budget Committee plans to save $30 billion from the farm program over the next decade.
Heulskamp is the committee too decide where those cuts will be made. According to The Wichita Eagle, the cuts will be an easy sell to some farmers who want to wean even them off the welfare system. Others see it as cutting the throats of some farming communities.
Huelskamp’s own parents have received $1,169,499 in federal farm subsidies from 1995 to 2009, according to Micheal Hahoney’s 20 Pounds of headlines blog. Other congressmen and women from farm states have also received some type of federal funds.

 
Although many of Heulskamp’s constituents are farmers, they are usually die-hard supporters of their Republican Representative. But they have never been asked to live with the kind of subsidy cuts they are facing today. Their philosophy is pure Republican and for now most believe that they will be better of if they can live without out help from the federal government. Many may find in the long run that it was not in their best interest and that the “rugged individualism” they claim to believe in will leave them in serious financial trouble should there be another disaster such as the dust-bowl days.

 

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

June a bad choice for the River Festival

From

The River Festival has always been a kind of commercial extravaganza for local businesses who want to get their name and wares displayed in a large crowd. There’s still a river run that a local bank puts on.
And yet we can’t really blame the city for wanting to put on an event that draws people from miles around to visit an enjoy Wichita.
I’ve complained about various aspects of the festival in the past, but as with the Grinch, I don’t want to steal fun away from the families and the people who actually do enjoy this festival.
On the positive side, they put more events closer to the river. They want people to appreciate the river even it if is too polluted to use for actual events, such as the old bathtub races.
But our city officials always come up with something stupid to mess up an event. This year they moved it from May to June because a few events got rained out in May. Now it is in June and this year we have had triple digit temperatures which are normally rare for this time of the year. Monday through Wednesday was about 100° plus.

 
How many of us really want to check out the food court and the concerts when the temperatures are at such a dangerous level. Even our kids should not spend much time in this heat.
Last year I heard complaints that people who go to the music concerts are usually crammed into an area open to the hot sun where they can’t bring in their own drinks. They have to buy overpriced bottled water and other refreshments from venders there. They can’t even bring their own water. Many young people I know just don’t go and that was last year when the temperatures weren’t as bad.
The high temperatures could be global warming, but it is way too early to tell. If this happens five years in a row, we will know something is wrong. For this year it may just be bad luck. But the festival is still being held at a really bad time period.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Gov. Brownback—plenty for roads—nothing for art

From
Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has started a national debate by eliminating funding for arts programs. According to The Wichita Eagle,he wants private donations to pay for all the state’s art. If he and others have their way, public art will disappear and all art will be corporate art. At the same time the state's transportation funding program, has been awarded $529 million worth of road projects for south-central Kansas, according to The Wichita Eagle.
A lot of our art already is corporate art. We have corporate names on just about every building constructed for the public including the new Exploration Place, science museum which has a lot of rooms with the names of the aircraft companies. They no doubt paid for those names to be on those rooms. So Wichita’s public buildings and museums are all financed and then named after local corporations. They probably decide what goes into these museums.
The Wichita Art Museum also has The Emprise Bank Research Library,

another room paid for by a corporation that wants publicity for its
contribution. It has some great works of art by some well known and progressive Kansans. But What about the future. Will the Wichita Art Museum end up begging people to donate as our public radio show does now?
Brownback is not leaving the next generation much to appreciate about Kansas.