August 1, 2004

Is the Kansas City Star being a bit hypocritical about St. Louis money?

The Kansas City Star's editorial today (7/31/2004) complained about the deceptive ads and scare tactics used by a St. Louis rental car company to defeat Kansas City's plans for a new downtown arena.

Deceptive arena ads mislead KC voters www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/news/opinion/9286009.htm 

But isn't the Star being a bit hypocritical in this complaint? The Star complains when St. Louis money is spent on Kansas City politics but ignores stories about Kansas City, Missouri money spent to influence Kansas elections? In 2002 at least $90,000 was spent by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, directly or with the help of a secretive Missouri non-profit setup to hide what was going on, yet the Star was completely silent on that issue. Nearly $500,000 of money was collected by a Missouri non-profit and $40,000 of this was given to the Greater Kansas City Chamber's PAC that just happened to send this money to Kansas to affect races in our state in 2002. Did Mayor Barnes or the Star complain about Kansas City secretly affecting Kansas elections?

Details can be found here about what the Star is ignoring even though they benefited, too, by over $50,000 of business through their KC Star Direct group:

www.kansasmeadowlark.com/Issues/Bistate/index.htm 

The Star goes out of its way to ignore important political money stories that it does not like. About a year ago, the Star refused to write any editorial about nearly $300,000 that was spent by one individual to affect Kansas elections in 2002.

Back-door cash boosted Biggs (July 31, 2003) http://www.ljworld.com/section/stateregional/story/140574  

I made several direct appeals to the Kansas City Star's editorial board to comment how wrong it was for one individual to affect statewide politics with contributions that were not publicly disclosed before an election. The Star could have led the fight for better open records laws and campaign finance disclosure in both Kansas and Missouri, but the Star chose to ignore that story and this one that appeared a few weeks later:

Kansas gets 'F' in campaign finance disclosure (Sept 20, 2003) http://www.ljworld.com/section/citynews/story/146007 

So when the Star complains about St. Louis money being spent on Kansas City politics, I laugh. I hope more money from St. Louis will help in Kansas City politics. Someday perhaps even the IRS will even take note of what's going on with non-profits and politics in the Kansas City area.

Which city's newspaper will have the courage to print this letter?

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K a n s a s M e a d o w l a r k @ e f g 2 . c o m