The Kansas City Star, Oct. 13
After loss of two, Kansas City firefighters deserve respect, sympathy:
The death of a first responder in the line of duty is every community’s fear. Tragically, it became a fresh reality for Kansas City on Monday night when two firefighters perished after a wall of a three-story building in the city’s Northeast collapsed outward.
Larry J. Leggio, a 17-year department veteran, and John V. Mesh, a 13-year firefighter, were pronounced dead at a hospital. Both were married and Mesh had four daughters.
Two other firefighters were injured in the wall collapse. Before the wall fell, shortly after 8 p.m. Monday, firefighters had rescued at least three persons from the combination apartment and commercial building at Independence and Prospect avenues. Two of those persons were helped out of the building on ladders.
The families of Leggio and Mesh - and all of Kansas City’s firefighting family - are owed the community’s greatest respect and sympathy.
With fires and firefighter deaths decreasing in Kansas City and nationwide in recent years, it becomes easier to overlook the dangers that come with the job day in and day out.
The Kansas City Fire Department uses state-of-the-art safety training and equipment. But fire and structurally unsound buildings pose risks that can’t always be anticipated. Crews had already evacuated the building Monday night and were fighting the blaze from the exterior.
“It didn’t fall like a normal collapse,” Fire Chief Paul Berardi told reporters. “It was actually pushed out at least 30 feet.” The fallen wall trapped the four firefighters underneath debris.
A shaken Berardi took time to thank those in the community and beyond for their sympathy and support. Generously, he said there would be time and ways for Kansas City to reach out to the bereaved department and families.
The city set up a fund to benefit surviving family members on Tuesday. Donations can be made by check, payable to IAFF Local 42, and sent to 6320 Manchester Ave., Suite 42A, Kansas City, Mo. 64133.
“This is the worst day,” Berardi said Monday night, but added that families of the two firefighters will know that civilian lives were saved through the efforts of crews on the scene.
That is what firefighters sign up for - to place their own lives at risk in order to save others. We hope it never comes to that point but the possibility always exists. Today, we offer Kansas City’s firefighters our gratitude and condolences.
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St. Joseph New-Press, Oct. 14
Refine formula for Social Security cost of living:
Sometime today 70 million retired and disabled Americans will learn that next year will bring no increase in their federal benefits, for only the third time in the past 40 years.
This is the unwelcome prediction of economists who say relatively low gas prices are dragging down the annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for Social Security recipients, federal retirees and disabled veterans.
Which prompts the question: Is there not a better way to calculate these things?
After all, for many senior citizens their years of heavy driving and gasoline usage are over. And to the extent that fuel is factored into other parts of the commercial economy, well, many seniors are not a big part of that either.
We know lots of older folks whose budgets have narrowed down to primarily the essentials of food and housing. And when housing includes utilities such as sewer charges . well, it’s safe to say that hardly any senior citizen locally who owns a home or rents has seen their living costs hold steady over the last year.
On this point, here is another thought: In this technology-driven era, is it too fanciful to suggest every person is due his or her “personalized” COLA that takes into account personal differences?
Think that if your main pleasure is Starbucks coffee, and that dispenser of beverages takes steady increases in its cups of Joe. Should that impact on your household budget not be taken into account by the federal government statisticians?
We understand that reason says, no, coffee cannot be considered a major component of the Consumer Price Index. But the point is made that people are impacted differently by the formulas used to determine benefit increases.
Look at the shares of the big categories in the index: housing (42.2 percent), transportation and food/beverages (each 15.3 percent) and medical care (7.7 percent).
It’s good for most everyone that gas prices are down and the cost of transportation is following that trend. But we know senior citizens are impacted more than other people by such things as high sewer bills and rising drug costs. It makes sense that COLA increases of the future could take this into account.
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Joplin Globe, Oct. 16
Debates need to focus on ’unsustainable’ fiscal path:
As the debates between leading presidential contenders of each party rage on, remember that what you hear may not be half as important as what you don’t hear.
And what you don’t hear is any serious conversation, any serious proposal, about bailing out the ship of state as it sinks before our eyes in a sea of debt.
Whether they are talking about building a wall along the Mexican border, or a plan for free public college tuition, these things cost money at a time when America is “on an unsustainable fiscal path,” to use a phrase from the Concord Coalition.
Recently, representatives of that group sent a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates urging them to devote serious time in future debates to discussion of the country’s fiscal health, noting that regardless of the challenges that exist on everything from immigration to education, “the nation’s unsustainable budget policy hangs over all of them, because it affects the resources that can be devoted to competing priorities and the size of the future economy that will be called upon to produce those resources.”
The Concord Coalition, citing an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, notes that deficits will begin rising again just as the next president takes office, and are projected to continue climbing to more than $1 trillion by the time the next president (should he or she get a second term) leaves office in 2025. At the same time, the next president will have to deal with imminent Medicaid and Social Security insolvency.
The group argues: “Voters should not have to wait until the winter of 2017 to find out how, or whether, the next president plans to achieve a sustainable budget. They should hear about that during the campaign when they can assess the candidates’ proposals and make informed judgments on their credibility.”
The Concord Coalition is right on the money, and voters need to remember that all of these campaign promises and plans are meaningless without a way to pay for them.
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 13
College authorities strive for fair strategies in sexual assault cases:
Women on college campuses can’t seem to catch a break.
For decades they were shamed if they had consensual sex, while that seemed to be expected from men. When the sex wasn’t consensual, women were taught to keep their mouths shut if they were date-raped, friend-raped or even rape-raped (dare we say, “legitimately raped”). They were sneered at if they wore provocative clothing and flirted with men without expecting rape as a possible consequence.
Some of that’s changed now. Some of it hasn’t. There are still those who think a man can put his hands on a woman’s body without her permission. Or that when a woman gives a man permission and then changes her mind, he is free to coerce her. Or if a woman is too drunk or drugged to consent or not, it’s OK to assume the answer is yes.
None of those things is OK. But what if a woman packs an overnight bag, walks over to a man’s house, gets into his bed, has sex with him - and then accuses him of sexual assault?
Such was the case with two unnamed St. Louis University students who were under the microscope for more than a year in a school investigation that seems as messy as the women’s accusation. As reported by the Post-Dispatch’s Koran Addo last Sunday, the pivotal question in the university’s investigation was this: Did the man know the woman, while she was capable of packing a bag and showing up at his room, was too drunk to consent?
We’ve been here before as a society. Blaming a woman who got drunk and crawled into bed with a man and didn’t have second thoughts in time now has a name: victim-blaming. It didn’t always have that name. Women who casually slept with men used to be called much worse.
Men who fortify their courage before entering the sexual arena with a few drinks or some drugs are given a nudge-nudge, wink-wink knowing look. No one is calling them names.
Not until now. Making women and men aware of what constitutes sexual assault is as much about raising awareness as it is about stopping it from happening. Think of this as the 50-year-long no-smoking campaign, or the 35-year-long Mothers Against Drunk Driving campaign, two of the most successful public health efforts in our nation’s history.
The question raised by the SLU investigation is whether campuses are the right place to handle sexual assault cases. Critics say school procedures are slanted in favor of the accusers and that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of punishing the accused with little or no evidence of guilt.
This is new. And it follows generations of the pendulum being so far in the other direction that women used to routinely leave school or change their academic schedules to avoid the assailant. Help? Counseling? Investigation? Suspension? None of those things used to happen.
Campus authorities are trying their best to develop a system that listens to both the accused and the accuser and proceeds accordingly. They are trying to create an environment outside of the criminal justice system that is fair to everyone involved but at the same time ensures a safe campus with no tolerance for sexual assault.
Colleges do not have the authority to collect and store forensic evidence nor the subpoena powers available to police and the courts. Some schools are telling students that they have to get affirmative consent, consciously and voluntarily given, before a sexual encounter. That may be a good idea but the chances of that happening in a significant number of cases is probably not high. Still, like anti-smoking warnings on cigarette packages, it’s worth a try.
Critics say college administrators have long played down the problem, mounting sham investigations that made rape cases disappear. That was working pretty well for them until four years ago when the federal government warned colleges that they would face stiff sanctions if they did not develop strong protocols for rape and sexual assault investigations.
In their haste to meet the government requirements, schools are developing regulations that stem from Title IX, the law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities. The law also is being used to address sexual assault and harassment on campuses.
Is it perfect? No. But these are steps in the right direction. The criminal justice system is also grappling with better ways to handle sexual assault cases. So is the military.
Some young men will get caught in the undertow. The accused at SLU may be one such case. He was suspended by the university for a year as he was preparing to graduate, Mr. Addo reported. Then the university reversed itself and cleared him of blame. After his case was resolved he moved from St. Louis to Kansas City to work with a relative and is now beginning to apply to graduate schools.
This is more than a year later than he had expected to be making those applications. That is unfortunate but it is good that he is getting on with his life.
We hope the same can be said for the young woman.
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