Death to The Star

The Kansas City Star has refused to publish Arnold McMann's "As I See It" submission critical of the Red Bridge Road Alternatives Study.

While one can never expect or demand that one's letter to the editor will be published, the Star's summary dismissal of Arnold's letter seems suspicious in light of the fact that the Star previously published a piece praising the Alternatives Study.

It's even more suspicious because that pro-Study piece was simply a re-editing of the literature being disseminated to promote the project by the public relations firm hired to manage the Study. The supposed author is well-known to many who attend local meetings in south K.C. as a hack for parasitic commercial interests. Some of his neighbors also had pro-Study letters published in the Star even though those neighbors had never previously expressed an interest in the project and in one case at least was not even registered to vote here. Again, those letters appeared to have been ghost written by that same P.R. firm.

There is much going on behind the scenes that The Star has never shown an interest in uncovering for the benefit of open and efficient governance in Kansas City. Perhaps their evident collusion in the local culture of corruption explains all of this.