Talk about a snap judgment: In SurveyUSA polling Tuesday and Wednesday for Wichita’s KWCH, Channel 12, and Kansas City’s KCTV, 62 percent of Kansans said they approved of the job President Barack Obama was doing. Not bad for a guy who won just 41.6 percent of Kansans’ votes on Election Day. In December, by the way, President George W. Bush’s approval rating in Kansas was 38 percent. And in a poll earlier this month, 37 percent of Kansans variously gave his overall job performance either a D or an F.
The percentage of Americans who see racism as a “big problem” has dropped in half in the past dozen years, from 54 percent in 1996 to 26 percent in the latest Washington Post/ABC News survey. But there hasn’t been much change in the amount of racism people perceive in their local communities. “There are two levels of identity with racism,” Wichita native Ron Walters (in photo), a University of Maryland political scientist, told the Post. “One is the national level, which is more symbolic. And the other is how they parse it in terms of their lives.” Not surprisingly, the latest poll also show disparity in how people of different races view the issue, with 44 percent of blacks and 22 percent of whites seeing racism as a large problem.
It’s good to see local leaders taking significant steps to respond to the economic conditions. As each day’s news confirms, this is no time for government as usual. Mayor Carl Brewer (in photo), United Way of the Plains and others want to set up a one-stop assistance center for laid-off workers by late February, like the one that helped after Sept. 11. The hiring freeze at USD 259 and hiring slowdown at the city of Wichita also are appropriate, given the darkening clouds over the state budget process in Topeka. Might the school district’s freeze apply to the open superintendent job, especially since interim superintendent Martin Libhart is doing such a solid job?
“We may have lost an election, but we have not lost the war. We will continue to fight for life, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many marches it takes.” – Sen. Sam Brownback (in photo), R-Kan., at Thursday’s March for Life in Washington, D.C.
“Who knows what song would have been written, or book. Or (what) cure for disease that would have been given from that young mind. We lose that through abortion. I think we just push it to the back of our mind under the false pretense that women have the right to choose.” – Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, to a Philadelphia newspaper
“Depends on how you get there.” – Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, asked what he thought of the GOP’s goal of cutting $300 million from the state budget
Talk about a snap judgment: In SurveyUSA polling Tuesday and Wednesday for Wichita’s KWCH, Channel 12, and Kansas City’s KCTV, 62 percent of Kansans said they approved of the job President Barack Obama was doing. Not bad for a guy who won just 41.6 percent of Kansans’ votes on Election Day. In December, by the way, President George W. Bush’s approval rating in Kansas was 38 percent. And in a poll earlier this month, 37 percent of Kansans variously gave his overall job performance either a D or an F.
