Kansas showing up the Show-Me State
It’s my birthday. I’m in my car. I’m driving to Topeka. (That’s in Kansas, for those of you who are geographically challenged.)
I drive past Lawrence. I smile. I have bright, new, chrome Mizzou Tigers license plate holders. The guy next to me is a Jayhawk. I pass him with a big smile on my face.
I accelerate beyond the legal limit. I’m late for my appointment.
The road is sweet. It’s six lanes. I’m in Kansas. It’s not bumper-to-bumper traffic at 80 miles per hour. The trucks are in the far lane. It’s a toll road. It’s Kansas. I like it.
I pay the toll. It’s $2.
My meeting, ironically, is with the Kansas Department of Transportation, a.k.a. KDOT. They don’t have as many miles of roads to worry about as our Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) does. We’re talking about traffic projections. I wonder, considering that gas now costs $3.35 a gallon: Will the projections continue, or is this a joke? Gas is $3.35 per gallon and rising, and we’re talking about increased car traffic in the year 2030.
The price of gas rose 10 cents per gallon last night. It rose 10 cents per gallon the night before. People are still driving. They haven’t stopped—not even in Kansas.
Gas goes up 20 cents per gallon in one week, and we can’t give MoDOT 10 cents in 10 years?! Kansas has toll roads. The trucks are two lanes away. The Jayhawkers have good roads. Have I made my point?
By the way, the Kansas General Assembly authorized $600 million for capital improvements at its state universities. They paid for it out of general revenue. It’s getting a little harder to make fun of those silly birds.
It continues to amaze me that Missouri remains in a quagmire of sub-mediocrity. Contrary to popular belief, the only thing that keeps us from actually dropping below our investment in infrastructure, government, higher education, primary education, health care, etc., is the dedication of the individuals who are actually working in these fields of endeavor. Contrary to popular belief, we get massive amounts of benefit from the majority of the people we ask to work for us as “public servants.”
We constantly hear about the malingerers, the rejects and the exceptions and never hear about those who daily go to bat and exceed the dollar value we place upon them in their endeavors. It’s time to accept the fact that we have stripped this beast we call government in Missouri to the bone.
I’m certainly not asking for a carte blanche increase in state taxes because there are still substantial prioritizations that need to occur to gain greater efficiencies. But this car we call Missouri is darn close to runnin’ on the rims. It has more than 200,000 miles on it, the seats are worn and uncomfortable, the air conditioning doesn’t work, and the gas mileage stinks!
It’s time to build this beast back up—selectively. It’s time to take some problems and actually fix them—not put Band-Aids on the problem spots. It’s time to quit playing politics with our children, with our public safety and with our future health.
As another year of mine goes by, I get more frustrated with what I’m seeing in Missouri. When I’m forced to envy Kansas, I know the whole world has gone topsy-turvy.