The Central Prairie Honor Flight deserves a salute for helping Kansas veterans visit the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. The Great Bend-based group has raised money and arranged for about 1,000 veterans and their guardians to make the trip. As wonderful as it was to see the World War II Memorial and other sights, Wichitan Merle Herrick said one of the most moving experiences was being greeted at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport by hundreds of schoolchildren who waved tiny American flags and shouted “Thank you” to him and other elderly veterans. That’s what the honor flights are about _ saying “Thank you.”
The uncertainty throughout the economy is so confounding and serious that President Obama ought to summon the leaders of labor, business and Congress to Camp David and not let them leave until they’ve made a “grand bargain” on taxes, trade, budget cuts, energy and more, counseled New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. But instead, he lamented, “America’s two big parties still cling to their core religious beliefs as if nothing has changed. Republicans try to undermine the president at every turn and offer their nostrum of tax-cuts-will-solve-everything — without ever specifying what services they’ll give up to pay for them. Mr. Obama gave us expanded health care before expanding the economic pie to sustain it. You still don’t sense our politicians are saying, ‘Wait a minute; stop everything; we have got to work together.’ Don’t these people have 401(k) plans of their own and kids worried about jobs?”
“If ground zero is ‘sacred ground,’ as some argue, because of the nearly 3,000 lives that were lost there to savagery, then should it not be shared with any religious building?” columnist David Broder asked. “Would a church or a synagogue be as equally objectionable as a mosque? If not, then the implicit message is to blame all Muslims for the actions of al-Qaida, a leap into stereotyping that is almost racist.”
Whether Kansans are simply getting smarter or our new primary seat-belt law is already changing behavior, it’s good that seat-belt use in Kansas increased nearly 5 points this year to 81.8 percent, according to a recent study. Kansas’ rate is still below the national average, but it should continue to climb because of the new law enabling law enforcement officers to stop and ticket drivers seen not wearing seat belts. Kansas Transportation Secretary Deb Miller said that seat-belt use in other states have gone up 8 to 11 percentage points when they passed primary seat-belt laws. “And when belt use goes up, fatalities go down, and serious injuries go down,” she said. “That’s very good news.”
