Today’s Wichita Eagle editorial and opinion page is chock full of plans for more government programs, regulations, taxes, and intervention.
Rhonda Holman’s editorial calls for more government involvement in setting energy policy so that Kansas can share in the “green-energy boom.” Readers of this blog know that government involvement in energy policy will only lead to disaster. It will lead to more taxes and more government programs, so maybe that’s why Holman is in favor of programs like this.
Jeff Fluhr of the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation — itself a taxpayer-funded organization — calls for planning to ensure the success of downtown Wichita. How are these plans to be developed and enforced? Through government, of course. Then, he tries to avoid the “T-word” by using euphemisms like “strategic public investment.” But how does the public “invest” in something except through taxation?
A featured letter calls for the city to build more swimming pools.
In the regular letter section, one writer calls for national health care, just like we have national defense.
Another uses the way that injured birds are cared for by the Kansas Raptor Center to advocate that the government care for young and injured people the same way.
A former state representative makes the case for more government regulation of political speech.
Then, to make sure the point is made as clear as possible, a writer who lived through the Great Depression praises Franklin D. Roosevelt and his policies.
Maybe this big-government stance of the Wichita Eagle editorial page is one of the reasons fewer people are reading it.