Recent Kansas editorials

Lawrence Journal-World, July 4

Hopefully you haven’t become confused and placed your political yard sign on your face and your face mask in your yard. It seems to be an easy mistake to make these days.

Come to find out, they really aren’t the same thing.

Even people who like the president are stating plainly that masks should be worn. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio - he has no reason to dislike the president, right? - recently said simply: “Everyone should wear a damn mask.”

Everybody should, but everybody won’t. Even people who understand their importance don’t always wear them to the degree that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says we should. As a reminder, the CDC’s guidance is to wear them “in public settings and when around people who don’t live in your household, especially when other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.”

That language is just broad enough that it allows all of us to become amateur attorneys and put our parsing skills to work. Unfortunately, what probably needs to happen is for professional interpreters of the law to step in and save us from ourselves.

It is time for police officers to begin monitoring for unmasked individuals just like they monitor for speeders.

Unlike their speed checks, police officers won’t be able to sit along the side of a road to do their work. It would require them walking around through crowded spaces open to the public. Yes, that might mean a police officer walking around a grocery store or a discount retailer or any number of other businesses where crowds may be. Officers would have a ticket book, but also could have a box of masks. As they encounter someone not wearing a mask, they could give them a warning, but more importantly give them a mask. In a few weeks, the warnings may end and the tickets would begin, but hopefully there would be far fewer of them to write.

It does all sound uncomfortable, but surely we are getting used to that routine. There are many who would rather live with uncomfortable than disingenuous. If public health officials create these mask mandates and then do nothing to enforce them, it will come off as disingenuous. Yes, we understand that public health officials want people to simply and voluntarily do the right thing. It is a nice thought, but it also may be a sign that those officials understand health better than they do human nature. Many people simply will do the right thing, but there are always some who won’t. If you let those who won’t do so with impunity, it muddies the message for everybody else.

In time, masking wearing would become more commonplace. Some of the people not wearing them today would relent as societal pressure grows. Think back to the time when smoking indoors in public places was banned. In the beginning, there were people who flouted that law. Today, you see far less of that. Time has helped correct that problem.

They say that time does heal all wounds, but how true is that, especially in a pandemic? How much time do we have to allow attitudes to simply change on their own?

But we shouldn’t place all the responsibility on law enforcement. Go back to the smoking analogy for a moment. If you are a business owner and you would have no problem today telling a patron he must leave if he insists on smoking, why will you not tell an unmasked patron the same? If you are a patron who wouldn’t think of smoking in a no-smoking establishment, why would you go into a business without a mask?

We all could benefit from doing some deeper thinking on this issue. Perhaps thinking about the Independence Day that just passed will help. How many of us when this pandemic began planned to throw a massive July 4th party to celebrate the end of this lockdown culture?

It didn’t happen - or shouldn’t have - because the pandemic still rages. Hopefully we did find a way to celebrate our nation’s founding because it is still worthy of reverence. But by any measure, it was a terrible birthday party.

Let’s vow that July 4, 2020, was the worst birthday party in our lifetimes. To do that, though, we have to think about what to do today to make tomorrow better. A place to start: Put the party hats down and put the damn masks on.

Topeka Capital-Journal, July 6

This week begins a month-long blitz of television ads, radio spots, postcards and digital posts designed to sway your vote, and many of those ads will be funded by the Kansas Chamber PAC.

According to the most recent publicly available filing reports, Koch Industries is its largest contributor with a recent donation of $125,000.

When you turn on your radio or receive postcards paid for by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce PAC, consider this story.

During a discussion in the House Appropriations Committee about controlling feral swine, then Rep. Virgil Peck from Montgomery County quipped, “It looks like to me that if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works maybe we have found a (solution) to our illegal immigration problem.”

It was a vile comment unbecoming of an elected official, but Peck dismissed it, saying, “I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person.”

The incident occurred in 2011, but it is relevant today because Peck is seeking election to become a state senator and is an endorsed candidate of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce PAC.

Yes, the Kansas Chamber saw fit to endorse a man who thought shooting immigrants from a helicopter was an appropriate policy solution. Why is an organization that touts itself as “the leading statewide, member-driven organization that serves as the most credible legislative voice for the Kansas business community at the statehouse” endorsing someone who proclaimed shooting people from a helicopter could solve a problem?

It’s not a case of the Chamber choosing Peck because he is the more common-sense Republican. He’s not. Peck supported the Brownback tax plan, rejected Medicaid expansion and, again, thought immigrants should be shot from a helicopter.

Dan Goddard, who didn’t get the Chamber endorsement, voted to repeal the Brownback tax plan, enabling the state to get back on solid financial footing. Goddard also voted for Medicaid expansion, an issue critical to the southeast Kansas economy where low-income families are being jailed for medical debt.

The Brownback tax plan was a disastrous experiment that nearly bankrupted the state. Our healthcare system has been strained by Republican leaders’ inaction on Medicaid expansion.

Despite barriers enacted by the leaders at the top, several Republican senators elected in 2016 - Ed Berger, John Doll, Bruce Givens, Goddard, Randall Hardy, John Skubal and Mary Jo Taylor - voted to expand Medicaid and repealed the tax experiment. They are the types of common-sense leaders voters want in the Kansas Senate. But they didn’t get the Kansas Chamber’s endorsement.

As you consider your vote in the upcoming primary, ask yourself a couple of things: Do you support Medicaid expansion and do you believe the state acted in good faith to end the Brownback tax experiment? Then find out which candidates are on the ballot who support this kind of good governance.

Based on their endorsements, it’s not the candidate the Kansas Chamber is spending thousands of dollars to elect.

The Mercury in Manhattan, July 5

We’ve been thinking about the Fourth of July, and the freedom and independence that it celebrates, in light of the pandemic we’re currently fighting.

There’s a connection. Bear with us.

Start with this: Freedom is often thought of in terms of a lack of restrictions. To be “free” is to be able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. That’s the simple way to think of it. And, since America is the “Land of the Free,” it might seem that our guiding principle should be limitlessness. Individual freedom above all.

But that’s not the full picture. There’s also the idea of “all for one, one for all” that goes all the way back to the original Fourth of July, too. You might not think of it that way, but it’s true.

The reason we celebrate that date is because it’s when the founders of the country signed the Declaration of Indepence. That was the document that told Great Britain that we were out. We were on our own.

The line that resonates has always been the one about all people being created equal and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That’s a strong line, and a strong concept.

But before the signatures — the place at the end of the Declaration where people signed their names, potentially sentencing themselves to death for treason — comes another line that ought to resonate. It says “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

In other words, we’re in this together. We’ve got each other’s backs. We’re a team. All for one, one for all.

That’s what it would take to win a war of independence and establish a country, organized to secure the “safety and happiness” of its citizens. That was the point; so says another line in the Declaration.

So here we are, 244 years later, face-to-face with a virus that can kill vulnerable people, arguing with each other about wearing masks. Arguing is not the problem — we’ve always done that, and we always will. That’s democracy.

That’s also the legacy of our founding. Yes, we’re the Land of the Free, and we have “unalienable rights” to pursue happiness as we see fit.

But there’s also a legacy that we’re part of a team. Always have been, always will be.

We stay at home, we put the mask on, we consider the needs of others, because we have a pledge to each other. We do so freely, but we do so because the point of the whole thing is to secure safety and happiness for one and all.

We hope you had a good Fourth of July. The reason this country is the greatest in the history of the world is because of freedom, independence, and because of our pledge to each other.