Analysis by Daniel Starling

A national controversy broke out last week in Kansas City, striking at the heart of a philosophical divide over politics, race and the role of government here, and throughout the United States.

Over the last couple of years, the KC Metro has been bruised and battered by a number of ethnic and political quarrels that rival those bloody times of the 1850’s and 1860’s--sans the rape and pillage part.

Rampant murderous violence on the East Side, discriminatory dress codes enforcement at publicly financed Power and Light, the controversial firing of a Black City manager, the rise of nationalism at anti-immigration rallies targeting Hispanics, a local Black Congressman is spat upon the steps of the Capitol during debates over health reform and an academic turned Tea Party candidate for Secretary of State in Kansas pens one of the most controversial state-rights laws in Arizona.

These divisions along political, ethnic and religious lines are percolating above the coffee pot rim of politics pitting a new conservative movement known as the Tea Party against old Civil Right's stalwarts like the NAACP, thus stoking the fire of this always raucous debate.

Over the past months I followed the Tea Party fairly closing, attending a couple of rallies here in the Metro area, mostly out of curiosity on how this nascent outsider political movement would fair during this election cycle.

So I was also quite impressed to see the NAACP come to Kansas City for their 101st national convention and take on what they called “racist elements” in the predominately white, middle-class Republican political group that has been gaining popularity in the area.

By Daniel Starling

President Barack Obama visited town yesterday lauding local green energy stimulus programs with a visit to Kansas City-based Smith Electric Vehicles defending his push for green jobs and the Federal Stimulus package used to finance it.

President Obama praised the creation of 50 new clean energy assembly line jobs at the electric delivery van manufacturer located at the former site of the TWA overhaul base near KCI airport.

The company, which produces the Smith Newton, was the recipient of a $32 million federal grant via the controversial multi-billion dollar Federal Stimulus package.

The President toured the facility, met with the company’s C.E.O. Bryan Hansel and the workers whose jobs are owed in part to the investment of federal dollars into the start-up company’s future.

On hand to greet the President were Congressmen Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo), Dennis Moore (D-Kan.) and Senator Claire McCaskill, who the President described as “a friend and tireless defender of the people of Missouri.”

“The reason that I here today is that you are doing more than building electric vehicles,” said President Obama. “You are helping us fight our way through a vicious recession and building the economy of America’s future.”

by Daniel Starling

At a forum entitled, “Is it your Clothes or your Color?”, sponsored by the Human Rights Commission of Kansas City, Missouri a panel of experts, academics, civil right activists and business owners were brought together to discuss the use of dress codes in the city.

The issue of whether or not dress codes were being used as a tool of racism became front page news a couple years ago when people of color, mostly African American men, began reporting problems with their enforcement at the Power and Light entertainment district Downtown.

Several complaints were made to the Human Rights Commission, which then took several steps to investigate violations of the Public Accommodations Law, initiated its own testing and worked with the management of Power and Light to make changes to the code.

By Daniel Starling

In the late morning hours of Wednesday, April 7th, the last words of 120 hours of continuous poetry, known as the “Poetry Filibuster” were uttered. With them ended a most valiant attempt to set the World's Record for Longest Continuous Poetry Reading—which organizers insist they obliterated. Yet even before the first word was spoken or the last book of poetry opened, they knew there would be a battle for their efforts to be recognized as such.

Organizers must now complete an exhaustive application process of proving and pleading their case to the gatekeepers of such statistics; the Guinness Book of World Records. Guinness may or may not choose not to recognize the feat. Why, you may ask? Semantics, it seems may keep the event from claiming its “official” place in poetry history.

 By Daniel Starling

Thousands of disaffected and disgruntled Kansas Citians gathered at Community America Ball Park in Kansas City, Kansas to express there anger and organize against the Obama administration during a Tax Day Tea Party protest.

Quixotic Signs, buttons, t-shirts expressed the mood and speakers rallied the crowd to become active in the Tea Party Movement that is sweeping the country and transform their collective angst into real political action in the upcoming November elections.

Slogans like “Clean the House in November”, “I fought in Iraq for Freedom Not Socialism”, “TrickleUp Poverty”, “Tyranny is Torture, I’d rather be water-boarded, “I listed the Government as a Dependent on my Taxes”, dotted the small but exuberant crowd who came to voice their discontent.

Sponsored by FairTaxKC.org an anti-taxation group which proposes to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and repeal the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, Tax Day rally speakers railed against President Obama and his controversial health care legislation. Some proposed recalling legislators who supported it or through “defunding” which entails enacting state laws to thwart its implementation.

Opinion by Daniel Starling

A painfully slow and sad spectacle played out in a Wichita, Kansas courtroom yesterday as an erratic and remorseless convicted murderer, Scott Roeder, tried to explain the mitigating circumstances surrounding his assassination of abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller, in the vestibule of his Wichita church last year.

All of Roeder’s precise political and moral justifications did not help his cause as Judge Warren Wilbert gave him the maximum sentences under Kansas Law; the Hard 50--50 years before any possibility of parole. Roeder, 52, would be 102 years old before he could be released.

His detailed descriptions of abortion procedures and his anti-government, pro-God protestations reminded me just how much the state of Kansas and its citizens are in need of mental health services. To my mind, Roeder is mentally ill. Anyone watching his sentencing hearing could see his mental illness boiling up just below the surface.

Roeder, convicted of first degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault for his slaying of Dr. Tiller, was hoping to use his sentencing hearing as a soapbox; repeatedly quoting the New and Old Testament, and complete sections from a book by Paul Hill--another abortion provider executioner—to justify his actions.

I have to respectfully disagree with both sides of this prosecution and insist that Scott Roeder is so obviously ill, that he is innocent by reason of insanity. With all due respect to the family of Doctor Tiller, I believe Mr. Roeder’s conviction and sentencing are a grave miscarriage of justice. He belongs in Osawatomie State Mental Hospital, not in prison.

Opinion by Daniel Starling

“Inconsistencies of opinion arising from changes of circumstances are often justifiable. But there is one sort of inconsistency that is culpable: it is the inconsistency between a man’s conviction and a man’s vote, between his conscience and his conduct. No man shall ever charge me with an inconsistency of that kind.”

--United States Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts during debate on the 1850 Clay Compromise as quoted in “Profiles in Courage” by Sen. from Mass., John F. Kennedy.

As I sat and watched President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union speech, it struck me again how ironic America can be. Just days after the election of a Republican to complete the term of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, the last liberal lion of the Senate, and defenders of our broken American health care system jumped for joy.

Opinion by Daniel Starling

I’ve read quite a few descriptions of the last decade being passed around the media. Paul Krugman from the New York Times’ called it the “Big Zero”. In the United Kingdom they are calling it the “naughties” and some are simply calling it the “zeroes”. After a little thought, I decided to label the last ten years as the “Aught to Have” decade.

It seems to this writer that there were many things we “aught to have done”. Our leaders and their allies have spent most of the last decade explaining away and correcting missteps made out of ineptitude, hubris, miscalculations, lies, malfeasance, incompetence, greed, ignorance and corruption.

I too, feel guilty of not having participated in this sort of mass delusion. I “aught to have” listened to those who spoke so eloquently of hope, positive energy and the influence it has on us. That universal belief that someday, someway, I will wake up from the drudgery and banality of my day to day, to find my problems having magically disappeared. If I’d only had “faith” and “believed” in the essential goodness of humanity, i.e. God, everything would be provided for me.

Call me a cynic. But that sounds like the same load of crap teenage suicide bombers are sold before they slaughter innocent people for whatever insane religious/political cause they barely understand.

I will take blame for my part in this mess we have created. There are some many “aught to haves” from the last decade that I believe there is plenty enough blame to go around. As they say, it’s hard to shovel crap without getting it all over yourself!

By Daniel Starling

Well, last week I wrote that I was ashamed to be from Kansas because of what happened to Dr. Tiller, only to become red-faced again at what appears to have been brewing for some time in Downtown Kansas City Missouri around the Power and Light District. DJ Jazzy Jeff walks off stage and uses the news media to trash Kansas City and the flashy new entertainment district for being racist.

Now the Border Wars might have been 150 years or so ago but they haven’t been forgotten and I would be remiss if I didn’t admonish my fellow Missourians for their apparent reluctance to move into the 20th Century and to abandon arcane segregationist policies—policies that a country with a Half White Kansan/Half Black African President in the 21st Century could be proud of.

Analysis by Daniel Starling

As a 42-mile long oil slick hits the shores of Louisiana tonight, it is dooming more than coastal habitats and sea life in the area. The spill also threatens the Obama’s administration’s push for a comprehensive energy and climate policy—which has been debated for months behind closed doors in the Senate.

The sinking of the BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig, whose explosion took the lives of 11 workers, appears to be shaping up as one of the worst environmental disaster in the history of this country. The federal government on Thursday finally announced it as a matter of  “national significance” mobilizing its full power to try to stem the flow of more than 5,000 barrels a day from the ocean floor. This action comes almost a week after it capsized on Earth Day.

But the damage is done and it will take months to cap the well and several years to mitigate its environmental impact, costing taxpayers millions and permanently altering the future of President Obama’s controversial energy policy. The Senate version of the Waxman-Markey bill--which passed the House--proposes to finalize a cap and trade policy, set emission standards, as well as environmental and energy policy for decades, is expected to be introduced next week.

by Daniel Starling

On Tuesday, a group of hemp enthusiasts, marijuana activists and supporters gathered outside the It’s a Beautiful Day boutique in Midtown Kansas City to celebrate “420”—long known as a code word for marijuana--on April 20th, hopeful the loosening of marijuana laws in other states will bring its medical usage to Missouri and Kansas.

Around the country, the legalization of medical marijuana has normalized as 13 states have approved its proscription by doctors and its sale through legal dispensaries.

Last month, petitioners in California qualified a proposal on the November ballot for voters to fully legalize tax and regulate marijuana. Advocates of the measure are promoting it as a new tax revenue source of $1.4 billion a year which could help rescue the near-bankrupt state government. The proposed law, would permit licensed retailers to sell up to one ounce to an adult, is considered likely to succeed in the cash-strapped state, which was also the first to approve medical marijuana use in 1996.

Recently, in the states of Colorado and New Jersey, medical marijuana is now reality as voters and politicians are acknowledging its potential benefits both as medicine and a source of tax revenue. Even in conservative South Dakota, voters will vote this fall on whether to join California and the 13 other states that currently allow medical marijuana use.

The cause was significantly bolstered with the election of President Barack Obama, whose administration has said it would not target dispensaries as long as they complied with state and local laws. This was a reversal from previous enforcement actions by President George W. Bush on the federal level.

As for legislation here in the Kansas City area, both Missouri and Kansas have legislation proposed, but each bill has failed to gain the necessary momentum to become law.

Analysis by Daniel Starling

Mayor Mark Funkhouser’s nascent “School’s First Plan” is filled with lofty, civic-minded ideas that sound good on paper but will be difficult—if not impossible to implement—due to the Mayor’s lack of political capital. Unfortunately for the children of the Kansas City Missouri School District, this project appears to be dead on arrival.

On Thursday, Mayor Funkhouser met with leaders of neighborhood associations from around the city, trying to drum up support for his ambitious, $100 million, school-centered neighborhood revitalization plan. In general, comments from the group of 20 or so community leaders were in favor of the Mayor’s ideas for change. Others remained skeptical that downward trends of urban blight, crime, declining enrollment and white flight from Kansas City, Mo., neighborhoods could be reversed anytime soon, or at all by this Mayor.

Recently we have seen a renewed focus on rescuing the long floundering public school system, with strong support for the current Superintendent John Covington’s “Right Sizing Plan”—bringing a ray of hope for a new era of cooperation in between City Hall and the School Board.

Funkhouser’s plan is based around the infamous Giuliani-era “Broken Windows” philosophy of dealing with persistent urban problems like graffiti, abandoned buildings and quality of life crimes, first. The Mayor sees an opportunity for the city to reverse decades-old trends if he can only convince the City Council, the Police Department, the School Board, community leaders and voter/taxpayers to buy in. That may be a long shot at best.

By Daniel Starling

An excited crowd of volunteers and well-wishers crowded into the offices of Freedom, Inc., for final preparations towards the April 6th Kansas City Missouri School Board Elections. Their goal was a simple one. Get out the vote for a slate of new board candidates who are firmly behind proposed changes proposed by Superintendent John Covington’s “Right Sizing Plan”.

The plan passed by the current board calls to downsize the district by 26 schools to meet budgetary constraints, improve lagging enrollment and falling graduation rates.

It was a historic moment for many in the room, as long-held racial, class and ethnic divisions that in the past pulled the district apart, seemed to disappear, if only for this one moment. The slate, endorsed by Kansas Citians United for Educational Achievement, features an African American, Hispanic and Anglo candidate for three contested seats on the school board. They stood together united for one purpose; change the status quo.

Opinion by Daniel Starling

Having once been a reporter covering the machinations of City Hall in Kansas City, Mo., I know it can be pretty exciting. Back then it was a corrupt City Council, with a new councilmember being hauled off to jail every week. We used to joke in the newsroom that they should construct a tunnel underneath the park between City Hall and the Federal Courthouse to make it easier on everyone.

It seems that Mayor Mark Funkhouser is intent on writing his own history as one of the most controversial least liked and least effective mayors ever to hold office.

But as much as writers like myself love to watch a train wreck or a pile up at the Kansas Speedway—the Ballad of Mark “Funky” Funkhouser and his entourage of one—must have an end; resignation.

Opinion by Daniel Starling

Back in the 1970’s, my father would send me to the store with 75 cents to get cigarettes with a note, “Please sell Danny Starling a package of Winston 100’s”. I’d happily skip down to the corner store in Shawnee, Kan., hand over my handwritten pass to purchase underage smokes to the guy at the counter, who would slide a fresh pack over the counter to an eight year old. I didn’t smoke them, but I got to spend the nickel change on bubble gum or baseball cards or whatever candy I could get.

Opinion by Daniel Starling

It was sometime during 1991 that I, as a photojournalist, traveled from Kansas City to Dr. George Tiller’s Women's Health Care Services clinic on Kellogg Ave. in Wichita, Kan., to document the spectacle that came to be known as Operation Rescue’s “Summer of Mercy”.

When I arrived the spectacle had been playing out in front of the anonymous brick building every day for almost six weeks. Thousands of true believers from around the state and beyond were bused in under the guise of trying to persuade young women to not have an abortion. More were to be arrested in non-violent “prayer-in” protests.

Gruesome giant signs of dead human fetuses held by old ladies along the road with groups harassing every single person who attempted to enter the building screaming “Don’t Kill Your Baby” and “God is Watching”. Visibly shaken and disturbed, these women would be spirited by volunteer security through the crowds of “pro-lifers” into tDr. Tiller’s clinic.