Opinion

American pride the largest force for good, but only when we stop race baiting

L&T Publisher Earl Watt

Now an adult, former child actress Raven Symone raised eyebrows when she said she was not an African American but an American.

As expected, the race baiters chimed in, and she clarified her statement, but in a rare show of boldness, she didn’t cave.

“When I say that ‘African-American’ doesn’t align with me, that label, it doesn’t mean that I’m negating my Blackness or I’m not Black,” she said. “It means I am from this country. I was born here.”

She was born here. She is American.

A farm cat’s tale

GUEST COLUMN, Kim Baldwin, Kansas Farm Bureau

We adopted him from a nearby city animal shelter’s barn cat adoption program. They adopted him out to us because he was deemed “too bite-y” to be a house cat.

An expert mouser with some serious cattitude, he rotated his time between our shop, farm office and barn.

He viciously clawed my office chair one afternoon when I turned off his Netflix. He’d let you know when he was annoyed with you with his loud meow or his claws to the back of your leg. He also let you know when he wanted your affection when he’d sneak up behind you and bite you before flopping down by your feet expecting a belly rub.

NPR: How obsession with diversity killed diversity – and credibility

GUEST COLUMN, David Folkenflik, National Public Radio (kaninfo.com)

NPR’s top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

“An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America,” writes Uri Berliner.

A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR’s former CEO, John Lansing, has fed “the absence of viewpoint diversity,” Berliner writes.

SCCC a game-changer for students, community

SAINTS PERSPECTIVE, SCCC President Brad Bennett

April is National Community College Month, which might equate to the largest annual celebration of amazing advancements in the United States. I think of it like this because the more than 1,000 community colleges in the country — 19 of them in Kansas — are possibly the strongest method of people to radically transform their lives for the better through education. As the national campaign says, community colleges are a gamechanger.

That is something we see every day at Seward County Community College. The students we serve are phenomenal players in the game of life. This is due to geography, politics, demographics, and what I think of as unmatchable grit.

Revenue-neutral property tax law is helping, but taxpayers need more legislative action

GUEST COLUMN, Dave Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute

Most homeowners and businesses have been hammered with large property tax increases across the U.S., as many local officials have taken advantage of runaway assessed valuations over the last two or three years. The same is true in some parts of Kansas, but the Truth in Taxation / revenue-neutral law passed in 2021 is producing smaller increases in many counties.

Data from the Kansas Department of Revenue and the Bureau of Labor Statistics show property tax increases for the operation of local government entities in 76 counties were at or below inflation over the last three years. The Consumer Price Index for Midwest cities increased by 17.8 percent between 2020 and 2023. For this purpose, local government includes everything except school districts and other educational entities.