Unassuming captain

pilots the City ship

toward populist port

 

           Mayor foresees more

           financial scrutiny of

           City funded projects

 

Mayor Mark Funkhauser marked November 11, 2007, as the one-year anniversary of his decision to quit his job as Kansas City Auditor and take control of his life.

                 In a presentation to the Broadway Westport Council membership on that “anniversary” date, he demonstrated his unassuming leadership in control of Kansas City government by leading the audience through his social science analysis of city issues. It is that thinking that “governs” his decision making now.

                 The mayor said citizens should judge his administration by how well his ideas and analysis — many drawn from academia — resolve Kansas City issues such as

basic services, population loss, transportation, crime and city finance.

                 Improving quality of life is the main ingredient toward attracting development, he said, rather than financial incentives. He called on a strategy to make Kansas City “a community of choice.” To address quality of life issues, Kansas City must come to terms with African American male unemployment, he said. One solution is a better transit system including regional light rail, he concluded, giving access to the entire metro job market to inner city residents. From employment, comes reinvestment into inner city neighborhoods, he

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Tom, Dick, and Harry as well as Martha, Jane and Phyllis all want the war to end and a return to the possibilities of peace.  Young citizens are concerned that they might be drawn into military conflict if the war continues.  Older persons certainly want peace for their children and grandchildren.

        War, the most violent of all human activity, kills and maims, destroys homes and businesess, makes farmland unproductive.  It mis-uses the planet’s natural resources for destruction.  Resources of war could be turned to educational options, job opportunities, and preservation of the planet which itself is at risk.

        The president succeeded in getting our nation into war by using a psychology of fear.  There was a veiled threat from Iraq which turned out to be no more than false rumours.   The truth came to citizens  belatedly — there were no life-destroying bombs or chemicals in Iraq.  The unsubstantiated threats have cost tens of thousands of lives, and untold dollar resources for both the United States and Iraq.  Is  the citizenry in either country better off?

       Science provides definitive data that we human beings, whatever our ethnic history, wherever we live, whatever our skin color, are 99.8 per cent identical .  We all have come from the same ancestors which now can be easily traced.    Is there any question that we are all of one family of brother s and sisters.  Sometimes families quarrel but they seldom become violent.  Families are designed to support rather than fight one another.

     Democracy  has evolved with the premise that we do not always think alike.  If this were not true, a dictator would be adequate for our governance.  Democracy is premised on the fact that we can be free to look at data and come to shared conclusions. Democracy understands that we affirm both the individual and the community.  A community can be defined as two or more persons who have relationships that make them inter-dependent.  In this sense, we all belong to the planet or the world community.   Everyone, everywhere shares the air we breathe, the sun which warms, and the soil which nourishes us.

    We have the option of learning to share our resources or continue to fight for them.  The planet’s resources are sufficient to go around if  persons or nations do not take what others need.   Poverty, homelessness, hunger , and discrimination lead to disaster. 

    Sharing one’s community as brothers and sisters can promote peace. Certainly as we enter the Advent and Christmas Season,  followers of  Jesus, members of other religions, followers of Ghandi, Mandella, Martin Luther King, and all who see war as tragic, can reach out  to others who are both the same and different from us. Is there a better option?  Let us use the basic tenets of our faiths, of our democracy, of our families to promote peace.   

 

                                       ~John C. Gingerich, Sr., Senior Editor

12/2007