Presidential debates unsuitable for children or adults | Letters to the editor
Presidential debates are awful
In regards to the current and even most recent years of election campaign debates, it has become visibly and audibly apparent, that if even any of the participants took a course in actual forensic debate, they have forgotten how.
It is my understanding that a debate isn’t supposed to be a “shout-fest” or an opportunity to show who is better at arguing and interrupting others at the podium. It is to be a form of impassioned — but calm, polite and respectful discussion — trying to persuade the listeners.
Our country has been heading down a path of destruction for many years. We U.S. citizens deserve and should expect better and certainly expect more qualified candidates than those who have been lifted to the level of political debate.
Tricia Glidewell, Wichita
Hospitals need expanded Medicaid
Gov. Laura Kelly visited Winfield recently to advocate Medicaid expansion.
Our hospital CEO, a small business owner, and a teacher all cited the benefits of allowing hard-working Kansans in low-wage jobs to obtain medical insurance coverage.
The governor also emphasized the harm to our Kansas economy and its at-risk rural hospitals of refusing the 90% federal subsidy all our neighboring states receive. Looking at other states, there are ways the other 10% can be funded without raising taxes.
Senate Majority Leader Larry Alley (our senator) replied the problem for rural hospitals is unfair reimbursement for insured patients, not Medicaid expansion — he mentioned one hospital trustee elsewhere shared this view.
Most trustees, including me, disagree.
At the September Kansas Hospital Association convention, scores of trustees and CEOs told me their hospital would benefit from Medicaid expansion.
Later, senate leaders Ty Masterson and Dan Hawkins called Medicaid expansion a “welfare tour for able-bodied adults who choose not to work.” These remarks are uninformed and also disrespectful of low-wage workers.
Better insurance reimbursement rates would be great, but are federal, not state issues.
Alley, Masterson and Hawkins should reconsider Medicaid expansion and resubmit the 2017 bill that passed both houses.
We need it for the future of Kansas.
Gary Brewer, Winfield, is a member of the Board of Trustees of William Newton Hospital
Menendez, graft and gold bars
Henry Olson’s recent op-ed published in the Sunday (Oct. 1) paper, “Senator Menendez Right Not to Step Down,” again reminds us all of the presumption of innocence and suggests that we should all give New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez the benefit of the doubt, and grant to him and others similarly situated prior to a criminal trial the presumption that he is, in fact, innocent of the charges of corruption against him.
Olson is wrong.
The presumption of innocence, as it is termed, is nowhere to be found in the Constitution but is a right recognized under later case law granted under the “due process” clause of the US Constitution.
As important as that right is, it is nothing more than a required starting point of any criminal trial, at which point all members of the jury must make that assumption prior to hearing any evidence.
To suggest that, in the real world, we should at this point assume a man who has admitted storing over $50,000 in cash in his closet and receiving kilo gold bars in payment for something rather illegal, is in fact innocent, is straining logic and common sense.
Let the coveted “presumption of innocence” apply where it is supposed to apply; at the start of trial.
In the meantime, we can all see graft for what it is.
Ron Lyon, Wichita
