Hypocrisy On The Local Level

They say politics is local.  I'm not sure who 'they' are, but in honor of the saying let's have a quick look at some local KC politics [for everyone else, this will still apply to you, so just hang with me and you'll see in a moment].  I want to look at two stories in particular that I heard about on a local radio station.

Kansas City public library facing severe cuts

An expected decline in property tax revenues could force the Kansas City Public Library to start making major cuts this summer.

Board members received preliminary numbers Tuesday and began figuring out where to cut to match the potential shortfall. They want to allow time to review priorities and gather patron input.

A best-case scenario, library CEO R. Crosby Kemper III said, would be finding places to trim that patrons wouldn't notice. A worst-case scenario, he said, could mean more severe measures, such as closing branches.

The library receives roughly 90 percent of its revenue from property taxes.

KC budget cuts could curtail bus service

Kansas City's budget turmoil could trickle down to the bus rider before the end of the year.

The head of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority on Wednesday warned of possible cuts in bus service and layoffs because of a proposed $7 million cut in its budget.

"Everything is on the table," Mark Huffer, the ATA's general manager, said Wednesday after telling the agency's board of the possible cuts.

Cuts proposed by City Manager Wayne Cauthen would reduce Kansas City's funding for the Metro from $49.6 million this fiscal year to $42.3 million next year. A $7 million cut would be about 10 percent of the ATA's $76 million budget.

The ATA had about 16.5 million trips last year amid rising fuel prices. It was the highest ridership since 1991.

Any cuts would directly affect Kansas City bus riders, but they also could affect riders in outlying areas such as Independence, Liberty and Wyandotte County who make connections to city buses.

Now, some perspective is needed.  Wayne Cauthen is hopelessly incompetent as the City Manager.  The Mayor, Mark Funkhouser, tried to fire him last year, but the City Council pitched a massive hissyfit and overruled him (the problems with KC's peculiar form of government -- where the Mayor isn't really in charge -- are multitudinous, but that's another debate).  At the time, they defended Cauthen loudly, saying he was doing a fine job and that Funkhouser was just a closet raaaaaacist (Cauthen is black)!  Patently absurb, of course, since Funkhouser is a Democrat -- and we all know that Democrats can't possibly be racist -- but that didn't matter.

Fast forward to today.  Cauthen has hired someone with a functional brain to run his office for him, paying him a whopping $140,000 a year.  The radio station reported that Cauthen is also looking to hire two more top-level managers to help out, and both of them would be making six-figure salaries, too.  And he's doing all this while staring down budget shortfalls that could spell cutbacks on the public library and bus services.  If you read into the links above, you'll see people complaining about the potential cutbacks, but there's one giant elephant-sized thing missing.  Can you spot it?

There are no race peddlers decrying the loss of these services to the poor, underserved minorities in KC.

Where is Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (the local equivalent of the bullhorn-toting Al Sharpton)?  Where is the NAACP?  Where are the urban advocacy groups that howled and shrieked and gnashed their teeth at Funkhouser's suggestion that perhaps just maybe possibly could it be that Wayne Cauthen was an IDIOT who was wasting taxpayer money?

This, then, is the double standard of racism, played out on a local level.  The reason it works the same way is because it's the same liberal mindset being applied - competence, ability, and accomplishment mean nothing.  All that matters is that nebulous sense of fairness that tells us constantly that black people should be given a pass simply because they're black.

Can it get much more condescending or elitist?  That's liberalism for you.

If I was black, I think I would be insulted at this clear slap in the face of my ability to succeed without gratuitous help from the nanny state federal government.  But, there we go again with the personal responsibility.

It's a new era.

There's my two cents.