Kansas City News Blog

Over the summer, when the U.S. government said it would take a trillion dollars to cover 30 million people who don't have health insurance, lots of Americans complained loudly. Too much money!

We've heard a lot less noise about spending a trillion dollars to kill thousands of people -- including our own citizens -- in wars we didn't need to fight. The Washington Post has estimated the cost of the Iraq war at $3 trillion; a group called the National Priorities Project keeps a freaky running calculator (it moves so fast you can't really look at it or it'll give you a headache) that suggests we'll hit a trillion any day now.  

Amanda Cherry

​
On Sunday, 22 area organizations turn up the volume at a community forum called "Healthcare/Warfare: We Pay. Who Profits?"

Among the panelists is Amanda Cherry, an Army veteran who served in Bosnia and Kosovo and whose husband is Jim Haus. They're the courageous couple at the center of Pitch writer Carolyn Szczepanski's August 25 cover story about soldier suicides. Scheduled to deliver remarks on "The Human Cost of War," and she knows WTF she's talking about.

Also among the speakers is a celebrity in the international anti-war movement.

Kansas Congresswoman Lynn "Looking for the Great White Hope" Jenkins made the Republican case against current health-care reform proposals on Fox News on Saturday. Because Republicans really do want to address the issue of health-care reform. They even have an alternative proposal! It's been on Jenkins' Web site for three months now, so, like she says, "it shouldn't be any revelation to the world" that Republicans want to reform health care, too -- they just want to do it right. Right?

I'm Sam Brownback, and I'm ready to take you on, you, you ... who are you?

​Last week, the Kansas Democratic Party was celebrating a drop in approval ratings for Sen. Sam Brownback, who is leaving the Senate to run for governor.

"In September, public support for Brownback dropped 6 points," the Dems said, heralding new numbers  from SurveyUSA. "More notably, one in ten moderates withdrew their support from Brownback during September. With an approval rate of only 48 percent, Brownback has reached his lowest rating of 2009 and is approaching the all-time-low he set in 2007 when his Presidential ambitions led to increased scrutiny of his extreme views. 

Added Kenny Johnston, the executive director of the Kansas Democratic Party: "This poll reveals Brownback's candidacy isn't as strong as he'd lead us to believe."

Especially since Brownback faces a strong challenge from ... uh, they'll have to get back to us on that one.

​Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City has been running full-page ads all week in The Kansas City Star, explaining its positions in the debate about health-care reform.

"At Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, we're listening intently to your thoughts and concerns about health care and the proposed reforms now before Congress," the ads begin. "We'd like to take the opportunity to address some of the key issues surrounding this complex and rapidly evolving issue."

Mostly, the ads -- like the survey of local doctors Blue Cross also released this week -- reveal how much Blue Cross is invested in maintaining the status quo and looking like a good corporate citizen in the midst of heightened attacks on the insurance industry.

On Monday, the ads proclaimed that Blue Cross supports coverage for all Americans, along with "most insurance reform measures under consideration by Congress." Most but not all reforms. On Tuesday, in discussing reforms in somewhat more detail, Blue Cross said "We oppose the Public Option as unnecessary." This morning, it devoted a full page to arguing against the Public Option -- but only raised questions instead of offering reasons for that opposition.

On Wednesday, the ads talked about how Blue Cross treats its customers. In response to the question of whether Blue Cross denies coverage for the sick, it claimed: "Our company accepts 85 percent of all individual applicants for coverage and 99 percent of all applicants when group and individuals are combined."

That may be true, but it only took one phone call to find someone who fell outside the 85 percent of applicants that Blue Cross says it accepts.

This morning, The Kansas City Star's Business section ran a guest commentary by Amy J. Blankenbiller, president and CEO of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce. Slugged "Businesses are under fire from Washington," Blankenbiller's spin on current events was predictably conservative. But coming from the head of a pro-business organization that expects to be taken seriously, it was also laughably irresponsible.

Blankenbiller

​During the course of a national discussion whose violent tone is disgusting most reasonable people, Blankenbiller escalates the rhetoric:

"Never before in American history has your job and your personal prosperity been under attack as it is today," Blankenbiller begins (emphasis mine).

Second paragraph: "Our president is leading the charge with several pieces of legislation... "

Third paragraph: "The most recent assault is in the form of health care reform."

That's right. You are being attacked and assaulted by the president and his army.

​One of the books on my summer reading list was Seeding Civil War: Kansas in the National News, 1854-1858, by Wichita State University professor Craig Miner. I wanted to study up on area history, and Miner's research was interesting from a journalistic perspective, too.

I never knew this, but for a few years in the 1850s, the national media was obsessed with Kansas. "Hundreds of thousands of articles and editorials -- 4,500 in the New York Herald alone -- were published about Bleeding Kansas," Miner's book jacket notes.

As the nation split into the two sides that would go on to fight the Civil War -- and Kansans debated among themselves about whether theirs would be a free state or a slave state -- Kansas was "the single matter to which the most ink was devoted by the national press," Miner writes. "This importance played out more in the media and opinion capitals of the eastern United States than in the tiny towns on the plains of Kansas."

What's astonishing to a modern reader is how the name-calling, lies and distortions back then sound the same as they do today -- just swap out "slavery" or "abolition" for "abortion" or "health-care reform."

Arguments over the Kansas-Nebraska Act's repeal of the Missouri Compromise blew up everywhere. The Richmond Enquirer's account of debates surrounding the proposed legislation sounds a lot like what happened at this summer's health-care town hall meetings:

The opponents of the ... bill have set in motion every engine of popular agitation. The public press, popular meetings, the pulpit and the State Legislatures have been employed as a means for kindling the passions of the mob and coercing the actions of Congress.

As arguments intensified in the media, Miner details the name-calling on both sides. From the Southern perspective, for example:

The "Molochs" who controlled the North were the "wizards" who invoked the tempest in Kansas. They wanted to "impale" the U.S. Constitution on "faggots" and plunge the Union into civil war from their safe desks in New York City. The Northerners in Kansas were painted as insatiable beasts, "godless and insane," deaf to reason, insensitive to pity -- bedlamites, tigers who, tasting a drop of a victim's blood, howled for the whole carcass.

Which makes today's insult of "socialist" sound pretty tame -- though it was around back then, too:

"I know no Abolitionist," wrote a journalist in Charleston, "that is not a socialist, and prepared to modify or destroy the right of property."

Then as now, the truth suffered most. "The manufacturing of opinion was key," Miner concludes. "The true events were far less vivid and compelling, and also less emotional and polarizing, than the media-filtered version. Reality was more complex, more ambiguous." And though there were plenty of moderate voices, they "did not compete well in currency or mass quotability."

It is a current popular myth that nineteenth-century newspapers, being pre-Watergate and therefore supposedly in an innocent time before investigative reporting, were boosters and cheerleaders for party, section, or nation. News-gathering was more primitive, indeed. But then, as now, it was tempting, even mandatory, to pillory public figures .... Such activity often went beyond responsible criticism into circulation-building invective.

Anyone who thinks Americans have grown meaner and nastier to each other under the cover of Internet anonymity will be surprised by this book. And probably depressed. After all, it's hard to choke down the idea that talk-radio blowhards or wedge-pounding political strategists might not be to blame for the great divide in American society.

It might just be the way we are.

After the jump, a conversation with Professor Miner about today's rhetoric compared to that of the 1850s -- and how close he thinks we might be to another Civil War.

Late last week, City Auditor Gary White released his latest Citizen Satisfaction Survey. These documents say a lot about our city, and Mark Funkhouser has said the surveys will be one of the significant ways in which he judges his performance as mayor.

Gary White

​
The new survey shows that, compared to how they felt in 2008, Kansas Citians are slightly happier in most areas: the overall quality of police, fire and ambulance services; the overall quality of park-and-rec facilities and programs; overall maintenance of city streets; overall codes enforcement; the quality of service from city employees.

Nonetheless, people are increasingly unhappy about some important things.

Now that the August of hellish town hall meetings is over, most political junkies I know are glad that our senators and representatives are actually getting the hell out of their districts.

I still don't know what to say about Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins' town hall meeting at the Dole Institute in Lawrence on Tuesday, but a KU political science major named Derek has posted lots of great video from that meeting on his YouTube page. Jenkins said a lot of inane things, but this had to be the capper:



As the week winds down, a couple of other noteworthy items:

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was among the 83 U.S. House members signing yesterday's letter to President Obama saying they won't support any health-care-reform legislation that doesn't include a public option.

Unlike the White House, which appears to be thinking about caving in to the bullies of summer, Cleaver and his colleagues are unimpressed with all of the town hall disrupters.

"Public opinion polls continue to show that a majority of Americans want the choice of a robust public plan and we stand in solidarity with them," the caucusers wrote.

And as always, the best local thinker on this subject is Dr. Joshua Freeman, chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. As Dr. Freeman notes on yesterday's installment of his Medicine and Social Justice blog, even if there's no official "public option," everyone who hates the idea of paying for other people's health care is paying for it anyway:

There are a lot of health care dollars spent directly by the government, federal, state and local.... Medicare, Medicaid, VA, military, Indian Health service. Then there are the public dollars filtered through private insurance companies -- the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan and the various state and local governments that pay the premiums for their employees. Then there are the tax subsidies for employer contributions to health insurance -- the money that the government would get if your employers paid you higher wages, but doesn't get because, instead of higher wages, you get health insurance, which is tax-deductible to the employer. Of course, even with the availability of this tax break, you may not get health insurance; it depends on your employer. Not, mainly, whether they are nice or caring, but whether they are big enough to negotiate a good rate with an insurer, and also pay enough in tax to get the break. So your neighbor, the machinist working for Ford, may have a good health plan while you, the just-as-skilled machinist working for a small company may not. But your income taxes are subsidizing his (or her) health insurance. And if you are the insured worker and are healthy, your premiums subsidize the costs of those who are not.

So, yeah, opponents of reform: Go ahead and rail against the constitutionality of the public option. Then go look your employed-but-uninsured next-door neighbor in the eye and tell him why you did.

​Considering where this series began -- with Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts' $525,000 in campaign contributions from the health-care industry -- it ends on a number that's almost pathetic by contrast.

When I started counting campaign contributions earlier this month, Roberts was the first; his amount struck me as outrageous (Roberts sits on the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, so I wasn't surprised that medical interests were heavily invested in his work). I didn't know what I'd find when I started adding up everyone else's. (What I found: Rep. Dennis Moore, $62,000; Sen Claire McCaskill, $132,000; Rep. Sam Graves, $85,500; Senators Kit Bond, $20,500; and Sam Brownback, $11,500; and Lynn Jenkins, $33,129). I did all of this in mostly random order and never set out to end with the politician who had the lowest amount.

But that's how it happened. In 2007-2008, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's campaign committee banked a total of $554,099 (it apparently doesn't cost much to run against Jacob Turk; in his 2008 election, Cleaver got 64 percent of the vote to Turk's 35 percent; the Republican was challenging Cleaver for the second time). Of that total, a whopping $9,500 came from medical-industry interests:

$3,000
Blue Cross and Blue Shield

$2,500
American Society of Anesthesiologists

$2,000
American Medical Association

$1,500
Bayer

$500
Healthsouth

Which kind of makes me feel sorry for the guy. Considering what he's been through at the hands of reform opponents, maybe Bayer could at at least kick in a couple extra aspirin, too.

​Last week, after Missouri Congressman Sam Graves held a health-care town-hall meeting at Park Hill High School, KMBC Channel 9 reported that the debate had taken a "new turn." Reporter Jim Flink noted that Graves' crowd was "friendly" (to the Republican) and "partisan," but also suggested that there had been "a shift in strategy." The night's focus, he said, was "less on the fear and the frustration over the plan and more focusing on the fix -- fixing what's wrong with the current system."

I beg to differ with Flink's assessment of the night.

Granted, Graves does favor some insurance reforms (it should be portable if people lose their jobs; people shouldn't be denied for pre-existing conditions). And granted, no pro-reform disrupters showed up to give conservatives a taste of their own medicine, so the event was relatively calm (i.e., not filled with great TV moments).

But if anything, this was an anti-government rally hosted by a sitting congressman.

At one point Graves told his audience: "I have yet to see a program that the government runs well."

The line earned a loud round of applause, making it obvious that this type of crowd doesn't just favor small government -- this crowd is happy when it hears an elected official complain that government doesn't work at all.

Graves might have been working this crowd -- with full confidence that no one would accuse him of being a hypocrite. See, there are some government programs that Sam Graves likes.

​In honor of her town hall meeting scheduled for 4 p.m. today at the Dole Institute on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, here's a list of Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins' campaign contributions from the health-care industry. (We'll refrain from saying anything here about other town hall meetings that got her in the news recently.)

In 2007-2008, running in her first-and-only U.S. House campaign, former Kansas Treasurer Jenkins raised $1,803,976. Of that, $33,129 came from medical-industry interests.

Jenkins' total includes $6,129 in in-kind (other than cash) contributions from The Wish List (Women in the Senate and House), which describes itself as "America's largest fund raising network for pro-choice Republican women candidates." Because we counted money from pro-choice groups in Sen. Claire McCaskill's contributions, we're including The Wish List and the Republican Majority for Choice's contributions to Jenkins.

$8,500
American Society of Anesthesiologists

$6,129
The Wish List

$5,000
American Association of Orthodontists
Pfizer

$4,500
Republican Majority for Choice

$2,000
Kansas Medical Society

$1,000
American Academy of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery
American Association of Neurological Surgeons

Jenkins' list is the latest in a series of health-care campaign contributions we've been adding up during the August recess. So far, we've counted how much industry money has gone to Sen. Pat Roberts ($525,000), Rep. Dennis Moore ($62,000), Sen. Claire McCaskill ($132,000) Rep. Sam Graves ($85,500) and Senators Kit Bond ($20,500) and Sam Brownback ($11,500).

For today's August-recess-celebrating tally of how much medical-industry money is going to the campaigns of metro-area politicians, we've decided to be extra efficient.

We've already counted the totals for Sen. Pat Roberts ($525,000), Congressman Dennis Moore ($62,000), Sen. Claire McCaskill ($132,000) and Congressman Sam Graves ($85,500). Today, we've decided to combine the lists for Senators Kit Bond (Republican of Missouri) and Sam Brownback (Republican of Kansas) in one entry.

Neither man really needed any money, but both cashed checks from the health-care industry anyway.

Kit Bond

​Sen. Kit Bond hasn't run since 2004 (his last Senate race, when he defeated Democrat Nancy Farmer with 56 percent of the vote). In January, he announced that he'll retire instead of running again in 2010. So we'll see what happens to the $1,419,774 he raised in 2007-2008. Of that, $20,500 came from medical-industry interests:

$5,000
Schering-Plough Corp.
Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc.

$3,000
Vision Council of America

$2,000
Blue Cross and Blue Shield

$1,000
Abbott Laboratories
Centene Corp.
Healthsouth
Missouri Hospital Association
Steris Corporation

$500
Pfizer

Brownback, meanwhile, ran essentially unopposed in 2006 (sorry, Lee Jones). He raised a relatively paltry $398,410 (more than $126,59​0 less than Roberts banked in medical-industry contributions alone!) Of that, $11,500 came from medical-industry interests:

$3,500
Amgen Inc.

$2,000
Eli Lilly and Co.

$1,500
Cooperative of American Physicians

$1,000
Bayer Corp.
Johnson & Johnson
Premier Inc.
Zeneca Inc.

$500
Pfizer

That $500 from Pfizer is another thing the two men have in common. The pharmaceutical giant has so much cash to spend on political contributions ($10,000 for Roberts; $5,000 for Graves; $2,000 for Moore) that it has a thousand bucks to toss at two candidates who don't even need it. Apparently just for the hell of it.

​So far, in our August-recess series of reports on local politicians' campaign contributions from the medical industry, we've counted up contributions to Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Dennis Moore of Kansas and Rep. Sam Graves from Missouri. We couldn't let Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill's week of difficult town hall meetings end without adding up her totals, too.

According to Federal Election Commission reports from her first and so-far only Senate campaign, McCaskill had banked $11,906,356 in total contributions as of December 31, 2006. Of that total, $132,000 came from medical-industry sources:

$12,500
Rehabcare Group Inc.

$12,000
Blue Cross & Blue Shield

$10,000
American Nurses Association
Washington Women for Choice

$9,000
Missouri Hospital Association

$7,500
American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons

$7,000
Express Scripts, Inc.
Planned Parenthood

$6,000
American Healthcare Association

$5,000
American Association of Clinical Urologists
American Hospital Association
American Society of Anesthesiologists
NARAL Pro-Choice America

$3,500
American Psychiatric Association

$2,500
American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery
American Academy of Ophthalmology
American Dental Association
National Emergency Medicine Political Action Committee

$2,000
American Dental Association
Healthcare Leadership Committee
Healthsouth Corporation

$1,500
Women in Psychology

$1,000
American Academy of Audiology
American Association of Nurse Anesthetists
Fresenius Medical Care North America
GGNSC Holdings/Golden Horizons care
Kindred Healthcare
American AIDS Political Action Committee
American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists
American Association of Neurological Surgeons
American College of Surgeons

$500
Federation of American Hospitals
Physicians for a Democratic Majority

Urologists apparently love McCaskill just as much as they love Roberts.

Sam Graves

​In honor of Missouri Rep. Sam Graves' town hall meeting scheduled for 5 p.m. this afternoon at Park Hill High School, here's a list of medical-industry campaign contributions that went to the 6th District Congressman in his last election.

We've already counted up the industry's contributions to Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Dennis Moore, so we figured it was time to take a look at the Missouri side. Graves sits on committees dealing specifically with transportation, agriculture and small business. According to the Federal Election Commission, he enjoyed $2,394,416 in total contributions in 2007-2008. Of that, at least $85,500 came from medical-industry donors:

$10,000
Physical Therapy Political Action Committee

$8,000
American Hospital Association

$7,000
Bayer Corporation
Cerner Corporation

$6,000
Glaxosmithkline

$5,500
National Community Pharmacists Association

$5,000
American Hospital Association
Pfizer
Physician Hospitals of America

$4,500
Blue Cross & Blue Shield

$3,000
U.S. Oncology Inc.
Biotechnology Industry Organization

$2,000
American Dental
Amgen
Centene Corporation
Eli Lilly & Co.

$1,500
American Optometric Association

$1,000
American Association of Nurse Anesthetists
American Dietetic Association
American Medical Association
American Healthcare Association
Doctors Company
Wellpoint, Inc.

$500
Davita Inc.
Roche

Yeah, we didn't know what Davita was, either. It's a dialysis services company. And Centene? Promising "better health outcomes at lower costs," it sells "a comprehensive portfolio of innovative" health-care solutions to "state governments, members, providers, uninsured individuals and families, and other health-care and commercial organizations."

​The health-care town-hall meeting yesterday at UMKC's Swinney Rec Center was classic Claire "Bear" McCaskill.

The senator from Missouri, having already stood through enough angry town-hall meetings to witness a white hillbilly tear up a black woman's Rosa Parks poster, knew how to handle the crowd.

Signs weren't allowed inside the gym, so at first glance it was a little hard to tell who was on what side. ("This looks like an Obama rally," griped one guy dressed in all black in front of me, though I wasn't seeing all the Obama T-shirts he was seeing.) Tension built a bit before McCaskill arrived, when some partisans started chanting, "Health care now!" and were met with, "Just say no!" This petered out after a few rounds.

Walking into the gymnasium, which had been set up with chairs and bleachers to accommodate 1,300 people, McCaskill was greeted with a standing ovation. She stood onstage and tapped her chest in one of the universal signs for "Oh, I love you guys, too."

Then came the prayer.

​As the national healthcare-reform "debate" drags on, giving new meaning to the words "August recess," here's another installment in our effort to figure out exactly what percentage of their souls Kansas and Missouri politicians have sold to the medical industry.

This time, we take a look at Rep. Dennis Moore, one of the card-carrying "Blue Dog Democrats" who've supposedly been imperiling the Obama administration's efforts.

Moore raised $1,715,751 in 2007-2008. Of this, the following amounts -- more than $62,000 -- came from the medical industry:

$5,000
American Association of Nurse Anesthetists
American Nurse's Association

$4,000
Bayer Corporation

$3,500
American Optometric Association
American College of Surgeons

$3,000
American Medical Association
American Hospital Association
National Community Pharmacists Association

$2,500
American Psychiatric Association
American Academy of Family Physicians
Cerner

$2,000
American Association of Nurse Anesthetists
American Nurse's Association
Kansas Medical Society
Medtronic Inc. Medical Technology Fund
Pfizer Inc.

$1,500
American Academy of Family Physicians
American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists
American Optometric Association

$1,000
American Academy of Family Physicians
American Academy of Ophthalmology
American Academy of Otolaryngology
American College of Radiology
American Health Care Association
American Osteopathic Information Society
American Surgical Hospital Association
Blue Cross Blue Shield
Universal American Corp.
Wyeth Good Government Fund

$500
Association for the Advancement of Psychology

Actually, a scan through Moore's records suggests that he's a lot more in the back pocket of the finance industry than he is beholden to healthcare interests (he's a member of the House Financial Services and Small Business committees rather than any committees directly dealing with health-care). And based on the health-care information on his Web site right now, he seems to be giving the issue some serious thought.

For now, Moore's contributions, unlike those of his fellow Kansan Sen. Pat Roberts, don't quite make us wanna vomit.

​You'd never know it from watching the news, but there has been some actual town-hall-style dialogue about the complicated medical, economic and policy issues surrounding healthcare reform.

When Congressman Emanuel Cleaver tried to hold one of his regular meetings with constituents last week, protesters converged on the Lee's Summit coffeehouse with a vengeance, demanding that their voices be heard. Why do we think the loudmouth contingent might not be all that happy to know that actually, Cleaver had already held a town hall meeting in which thousands of people had engaged in an hour of civil Q&A with the congressman on this very issue? Maybe because that meeting didn't accommodate any made-for-TV shouting.

On Thursday, August 6, Cleaver and his staff conducted a giant conference call with 5th District constituents. Cleaver estimates that 5,000 people participated.

At Saturday morning's protest, when several hundred people showed up at U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's regular coffee with constituents to either demonstrate against health-care reform or counter the anti-healthcare demonstrators, one hardy protester (she's the woman at the end of this video, who tells someone in the crowd that if they want socialized medicine they should go to Russia and "get the hell out of my country") stood in the same place for nearly three hours, holding up a printout of a sign depicting Barack Obama made up to look like Heath Ledger's Joker character in The Dark Knight.

​More than once, someone standing near her told her that her sign was racist. This sent her into hyper-defensive mode. At one point, she got on the cell phone to call as many friends as she could reach, telling them she couldn't wait until Tuesday's meeting to tell everyone how she'd been called a racist. "Yeah, me! I'm a racist! And I'm Mexican!" she kept saying incredulously. "Yeah, I was called a racist. I'm a racist." At one point a man standing next to her tried to clarify that it was her sign that was racist, not her, but there was no real dialogue to be had.

There was also a much bigger version floating around the crowd on Saturday.

​
So, is the sign racist? All I know is whoever thought it up had a stroke of genius, because, yeah, it's racist, but unlike the tradition of putting a white man in blackface -- which is widely acknowledged to be racist -- there is no traditional, commonly understood meaning for putting a black man in white make-up. So it's harder to explain why it's racist. The simple explanation: Whiteface is racist just like blackface.

But The Washington Post had to get all academic to make the argument:

Although [The Dark Knight's Heath] Ledger was white, and the Joker is white, this equation of the wounded and the wounding mirrors basic racial typology in America. Urban blacks -- the thinking goes -- don't just live in dangerous neighborhoods, they carry that danger with them like a virus. Scientific studies, which demonstrate the social consequences of living in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, get processed and misinterpreted in the popular unconscious, underscoring the idea. Violence breeds violence...

Superimpose ... the Joker's makeup onto Obama's face, and you have subtly coded, highly effective racial and political argument. Forget socialism, this poster is another attempt to accomplish an association between Obama and the unpredictable, seeming danger of urban life. It is another effort to establish what failed to jell in the debate about Obama's association with Chicago radical William Ayers and the controversy over the racially charged sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama, like the Joker and like the racial stereotype of the black man, carries within him an unknowable, volatile and dangerous marker of urban violence, which could erupt at any time. The charge of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can't be trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he's black.

Try telling all that to the folks at the Cleaver rally -- and they'll tell you that you're a stupid, crazy liberal, and that, no, the sign's not racist. It's The Joker. Ha ha ha.

This just in from Kansas Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins: a schedule of town hall meetings!

Jenkins talks about health-care reform at a press conference on June 11.

​Jenkins is a Republican who represents the 2nd District (mostly the entire eastern edge of the state, except for Johnson County). What do you bet she's not expecting any anti-health-care-reform disrupters?

Actually, it sounds like she supports the obnoxiousness that's been going on at Democrats' town hall meetings recently.

As she wrote in a newsletter last week:

We've seen Americans all across the country rally and speak up about the government takeover of health care that is being pushed by the majority in Congress. I share their concerns that the health care proposal before Congress will take us in the wrong direction and I stand firmly against any government takeover of health care.

Not that we'd encourage any uncivil discourse. We're just noticing that the closest it looks like she'll be coming to The Pitch's distribution area appears to be a 4 p.m. meeting at the Dole Center in Lawrence on Tuesday, September 1.

After all, Jenkins is looking forward to hearing from every Kansan: "Being home this month will let me spend even more time with the good folks of Kansas," Jenkins says in her announcement. "Folks are concerned about the out-of-control spending, increasing debt and the rapid expansion of the federal government. I share their concerns and look forward to listening to them and discussing ideas to turn our nation around." 

Lee's Summit hadn't seen this much excitement since the last Sarah Palin rally. By 8 a.m. Saturday, hundreds of people were gathered outside JP Coffee, spoiling for a health-care fight.

Everyone was taking pictures of everyone else -- with cell phones, small digital cameras, big video setups. At least one "documentary filmmaker" roamed the crowd with his 14-year-old daughter.

Lots of people claimed they'd shown up for what they thought was supposed to be a town hall meeting, which was bullcrap, because congressmen don't hold town hall meetings in coffee shops. Anyway, click on the photo below for a slideshow of what went down:
​Most ridiculous thing anyone said -- and more than one person said it: "I'd rather have no health insurance than government health insurance."

Sometimes, people who'd been standing next to each other for a couple of hours actually tried to talk about their disagreements. This resulted in some strained attempts at civil dialogue -- and a lot of fingers pointing at chests. At one point, attention turned toward a loud conversation between a fat black woman and a fat white guy. "You started out so far ahead of me that I will never be ahead of you," the black woman said. The white guy was starting to reply, when another white guy, holding a "Patriotic Americans Arise" sign, chimed in that this (whatever it was) had nothing to do with race.

"I'm not talking to you!" the black woman yelled.

"I'm talking to you! I can talk to you as much as I want!" bellowed the interloper with the sign. People around told him to shut up, because the black woman and the original white guy were having a fine conversation and didn't need interference from the "patriotic" bully. Soon, another white guy, carrying a flag, came over and waved it slowly and dramatically over the arguing black woman and white man. Maybe this flag man was endorsing their free speech, but it looked more like he was trying to bestow some stars-and-stripes blessing on the white guy.

When some elderly women walked past them with signs in favor of health-care reform, a couple of protesters mourned their naivete. "We have to get these old people to understand," the man said, sounding genuinely worried that, under Obamacare, old people would be put to death. "They're gonna be the first ones -- someone'll be looking them in the eye and saying, 'You have no value.'"

Finally, here's some video from about halfway through the morning. The woman with the red hair and sunglasses had been yelling some pretty choice things, but clammed up when I turned on my camera. The folks around me didn't believe that I worked for The Pitch, but, note to the guy in the red ballcap and pink shirt: I've been called a lot worse than "low life." At about 1:37, the crowd is cheering for the Obama-in-Joker-makeup sign moving through toward the back of the crowd. And the woman at the end -- she's the best.

​Last week, in a blog entry round-up of local efforts to counter Republican bullshit on health-care reform, I made a joke that wasn't really that funny. Local labor unions were encouraging their members to call in to urge passage of HR 3200, otherwise known as America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. I suggested that if people wanted to sound really smart about how far our representatives and senators have crawled up the ass of the health-care industry, they could easily look at campaign contributions on file with the Federal Election Commission. 

My not-so-funny joke:

If you really want to piss yourself off while having fun clicking around on cool maps, head over to the Federal Election Commission, which makes it really easy to see, for example, how much Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts banked in his last campaign (and, hell, money from tons of other medical industry interests, too -- like the American Association of Clinical Urologists, who kicked in $5,000).

I'm as big a fan of bathroom humor as the next gal, but the reason that joke wasn't so funny is because, by that point, I was just beginning to look at all of Roberts' contributions from medical interests, and already it was making me sick.

​Oh, my god, did you hear how much money we're going to spend on socialized health care? It's going to bankrupt the nation! The Democratic Party's in chaos! Moderate "Blue Dog" Dems in the House are wavering! If Congress doesn't vote on health-care reform by the August recess, then Barack Obama's done!

Talking points courtesy of the Republican National Committee.

The working folks in the Missouri AFL-CIO, along with their allies and Democrats, are now providing some talking points of their own -- and a phone number to call bullshit on Republican scare tactics. They've declared today "National Call-In Day for Health Care."  

They're urging support for HR 3200, otherwise known as America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. The basic message for senators and congressmen: "Support Americans" right to choose a strong public option for health care. Make sure that employers who refuse to offer health care pay into a system that provides health care for their workers. Don't support any measure that taxes workers' health care benefits." (If you've been thinking maybe you ought to actually read the bill everyone's fighting about, here's the whole damn thing.)

 We don't think Rep. Todd Tiahrt, who represents Kansas' 4th Congressional District (a south-easternish chunk of the state that includes Wichita), got quite enough recognition over the past week.

Of course, we noted on Monday the Congressman's gasp-inducing speech on the floor of the U.S. House, where, arguing against federal funding for abortion, he suggested that the president's and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' mothers might have aborted them had such funds been available when they were pregnant.

And sure, MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show followed up on Monday night with a nearly 8-minute segment devoted not only to Tiahrt's little game of What If, but also to his freaky indoctrination into the weird and secretive C Street Compound that's currently an obsession of Washington reporters thanks to all the alleged Republican philanderers who pray together there.

Author Jeff Sharlet (The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power), who spent some time with Tiahrt (and Sen. Sam Brownback), told Maddow that he sat in on "a spiritual counseling session" in which Tiahrt "was very concerned with the number of babies Muslims are having. He said Americans are killing too many of their babies while Muslims are having too many, and we need to have more babies and outlaw abortion so we can win the race with the Muslim."

The good stuff starts around 3:45:


Sharlet says that even though Tiahrt clearly "isn't ready for prime time," he's being groomed for a senate seat.

Entertainingly, the Kansas Democratic Party is now circulating a petition demanding that Tiahrt apologize to the president for his remarks about Obama's mother. Good luck with that, guys.

All this stuff was too good to miss, so here it is again in case you did. We just didn't think we should let the week end without celebrating Tiahrt's above-and-beyond contributions to the nation's civic life.

C-SPAN was in the house last Thursday night, when more than a hundred people gathered at the Kansas City Public Library to hear hometown civil rights activist Alvin Sykes talk about his life's work.

Sykes mostly recapped a story that Pitch readers might already know: that of a kid from a troubled family, a high-school dropout -- he likes to say he "transferred out of public school and into the public library" --  who taught himself so much about the law that, many years later, he was able to convince the U.S. Justice Department to open an investigation into one of the most heinous crimes of the Civil Rights era. Sykes has since succeeded in getting both the House and the Senate to pass the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act, which will fund investigations into unsolved murders up until 1970.

"Thirty-five years ago I was sitting in the library all by myself," he began, appreciating the fact that he was now surrounded by so many other people.

At the end of the night, he had one request of his audience: He wanted people to go home and talk to their relatives. Was there anyone in the family who suddenly disappeared one night in the '50s or '60s? Anyone in the family who bragged about making someone disappear?

Now, just because it's something cool on a Friday afternoon, here's the latest from our favorite former Missouri state rep/poet, Lloyd Daniel.

Inspired by "Kansas City's authentic cultural identity," and thinking that, regardless of the national economy, we could do a better job of "using our past as a primary pillar of the city's economic future," Daniel recently posted an essay/poem on his Web site called "Mining Cultural Gold." Part of the piece is, Daniel says, "a DJ-type 'roll call' which pays tribute to some of the many cultural legends, icons, people's heroes, spaces and events upon which modern Kansas City is built."

An excerpt:

This is a poem for Charlie Parker, Charlie, Mary, Memo Lona and Captain Tate. Lester Young, Thomas Hart Benton, Tom Bass, Tom Pendergast, Big Joe Turner, the Sign, the Ram and Saber Jets, Mrs. Meeks, Chuck Moore, Town Hall Ballroom, Cowtown Ballroom, the Inferno, Freedom Palace, Buck O'Neil, Ida McBeth, Satchel Paige, Owen Bush, Owen Murray, Mattie Rhodes, Mike Ross, Milt Morris, Buck Buchanon, Larry Sells, John L. Frasier, Eddie Baker, Otis Taylor, Roger Nabor, and Chucky Draper.

From there, the rhythmic list just builds and builds. See if you discover your friends or yourself -- or your city -- here.

In honor of the upcoming patriotic holiday, here's our list of local people and places that, for better or worse, constitute hallmarks of quintessential Americanness.

10. George Brett. A hall-of-famer in the great American pastime, hero to many a baseball-loving kid, turns out to be insufferable in real life.

9. Kris Kobach. This UMKC law professor, former head of the Kansas Republican Party and current candidate for Kansas Secretary of State, made a name for himself in the classic American tradition of opposing a certain kind of immigrant.

8. Honeywell's Kansas City Plant. The plant makes "non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons" (as if that "non-nuclear" specification makes our city somehow less a part of the arms race); it's slated for a $673 million upgrade.  

A faint but strong heart beats for 18th and Vine. That much was obvious last Tuesday night, when a crowd packed the lobby of the Gem Theater to take part in what might sound like one of the most boring activities of good citizenship: a city planning meeting.

At least a hundred people showed up to hear what City Hall had in mind for the district -- and  listening to City Hall talk about 18th and Vine can be emotionally risky. After all, it's been a long time since Emanuel Cleaver's administration, when we dumped the first $20 million into the district's rehab (with tens of millions to follow). If City Hall had delivered on the promise back then, 18th and Vine would have been jumping for years now.

"In the past, there have been a lot of plans and initiatives," Chris Cline, one of the people working on the plan, told the audience. This one, he said, would be different. The new Black Heritage District Economic Development Plan will incorporate all of those past efforts "into a strategy that can see things built."

...we feel compelled to say so. Especially since we are so often obligated to point out the senator's faulty intelligence, as David Martin does so well in his column this week.

Yesterday, Brownback announced that the Senate had passed a resolution apologizing for "the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans."

Brownback had sponsored the resolution along with Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. In his speech, Harkin pointed out all of the ways in which the U.S. government had perpetuated the unjust legacies of slavery:

Numerous states and even corporations such as J.P. Morgan and Aetna have apologized for their role in slavery and Jim Crow. But slavery and Jim Crow, and their continuing consequences are not the historical baggage of one state, one region, or one company. They are an enduring national shame. It was the nation that enshrined slavery in the Constitution and Congress that passed laws such as the Missouri Compromise and Fugitive Slave Act. It was the nation's Supreme Court which bolstered slavery and affirmed segregation in Dred Scott vs. Sandford and Plessey vs. Ferguson. This resolution acknowledges and apologizes for a past collective injustice. And it is long over-due.

Brownback, meanwhile, focused a bit more on Kansas -- where, at the moment, he appears certain to be the next governor.

Recently, a controversy down in Springfield provoked some strong language.

As the mayor and city council struggled with cutting the city budget, one service they thought could be eliminated was city's Human Rights Commission, which investigates discrimination complaints. Earlier this month, the council cut the commission's funding from $68,000 to a measly $1,000. During that meeting, the Human Rights Commission's executive director, Kathy Clancy, begging the council to save her agency, said that "Springfield is seen as one of the most racist cities in Missouri."

Knowing nothing about Springfield, I can only imagine Clancy's reasons for giving her city that ignominious distinction (her official press release provides some insight).

But it made me wonder whether Springfield really was the state's most racist city. Because I've always thought Kansas City could be a contender for that designation.

Health and Human Services Secretary (and former Kansas Governor) Kathleen Sebelius worked the Sunday morning talk-show circuit yesterday. The topic was health-care reform. ABC's George Stephanopoulos thinks the "news" he got out of their conversation was that "the secretary wouldn't commit to a presidential veto on health care reform legislation that adds to the federal deficit." He seemed most concerned about how Obama plans to pay for covering everyone. More helpful, however, would be some serious discussion about what exactly the administration means -- and doesn't mean -- by a "public plan."

Stephanopoulos noted that there's some congressional resistance to "any public plan" -- one in which the government would help cover people who don't have insurance.

Last week, the local Republican talking-point-trio of Reps. Roy Blunt, Sam Graves and Lynn Jenkins weighed in with an "As I See It" opinion piece in The Kansas City Star. Headlined "GOP offers constructive options to improve access to health care," the piece promised constructive conversation but offered only alarmist rhetoric that Republicans really, really want you to believe.

Oh sure, they spent the first five paragraphs sounding reasonable. But that was only a wind-up for their scary main point: