Recent Kansas editorials

The Topeka Capital Journal, Nov. 6

While we’re waiting for certain races (ahem) to shake out in the final tallies, we can’t let any more time pass before thanking the candidates.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Putting yourself out there for consideration for public office is a thankless task. Roughly half of the voting public will think that you’re a terrible person by belonging to one political party of another. If you’re running as a third-party candidate, they might not even bother to have an opinion at all.

You’ve probably knocked on doors and talked to would-be voters. You’ve raised money. You’ve run advertisements and sent mailers. You’ve worked and worked, and yet that’s no guarantee that you ultimately win.

What you’re actually doing, what’s really going on, is that you’re giving voters an option. You have stopped complaining, stood up and set yourself out there as a person who wants to solve problems in your community, state or country.

Our system only works because of you.

It only works because people are willing to give of themselves to represent others. No matter the party, no matter the level, running for office requires profound sacrifice.

We also know that the season is exhausting and unfair. Money from outside the state flowed in from Republicans and Democrats. Misleading ads appeared. And candidates had to figure out how to spread their message while a pandemic raged around them. Politics isn’t for the faint-hearted, regardless of the level.

For those who won, congratulations. Now you have to make your campaign promises a reality. You need to listen to your constituents - not only those who elected you, but those who cast ballots for your opponent. Remember, you’re serving them, not your party or particular set of ideological beliefs.

For those who lost, we sympathize. Few things hurt as much as earning fewer votes than your opponent in a race. But it’s not as though you were rejected by the public - you still received votes. You still have supporters. They’re just not as numerous. We hope that this experience, while it may sting now, doesn’t prevent you from participating in the future.

And for the rest of you - even if you’ve never been involved in politics before, except as a voter - why not consider a race of your own? Our communities are stronger when more people participate and feel like they’ve made a difference in the outcome.

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The Lawrence Journal-World, Nov. 7

The news came on a Saturday, which is appropriate. It is not the day that we gather to sing “Hallelujah,” but you can see it from here.

In some ways, that is where America stands right now. The day is drawing closer to when the country begins to heal, but it is not yet here. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris inherit a country that has many problems to work through. Remember, a ballot has never solved a problem, but rather has only created a plan to do so.

A raging pandemic, a wounded economy, racial unrest and a world confused about American power and priorities are among some of the more daunting challenges facing the new administration. But the election has confirmed another problem, which may trump them all.

It is indeed a true and powerful fact that Biden has won more votes than any other presidential candidate in history. However, Donald Trump has won more votes than any losing presidential candidate in history. Also, true and powerful.

The problem isn’t that more than 70 million Americans voted to reelect the president. The problem is the other half of the country continually will say that it is. We can’t for the next four years hang a cloud of shame over the heads of half of the voting population of America and expect for the country to become a healthier place. That cloud will produce far worse than thunder.

We must do the hard work of coming together as a country, and that may require us to separate our feelings for Trump supporters from the man himself. The fact is, America is a big country that has room for a variety of ideas. Yes, there are points that can’t be compromised. But surely some can. As this page has said before: Differences don’t have to equate to disdain.

The president, however, will make the work to be done more difficult. It will be a surprise if President Trump ever concedes the election. He is not required to give any such speech. He is only required to leave. And that indeed will happen, for it will be an even larger surprise if the U.S. justice system, including the Supreme Court, takes any action to change the ultimate outcome of this election. The justices are smart people. They understand a 6 to 3 tally can’t be the pivotal one in this election.

Yet, the president could do much to help heal the country with a traditional concession speech. As one network analyst said on Saturday morning, the concession speech is the final dose of anesthetic before the sutures are applied to the wound left from a hard-fought election.

It appears that the stitches are going to be painful, but we will get through it. Hopefully, we will do so with Trump supporters not only urging their candidate to concede, but more importantly seeing to a peaceful transfer of power. As noted earlier, there are some points that can’t be compromised. This is one of them.

The two sides of this election should use this occasion to strike an early bargain. Biden supporters should agree to not paint all 70 million-plus Trump supporters as racists and fascists, and Trump supporters should agree to fully support America’s greatest contribution to the world: free and fair elections, which the courts soon will confirm is what we’ve had.

And, then, how wonderful would it be if that is the first of many such deals the two sides can reach. The country desperately needs a period where we value compromise over conflict. It is too early to know whether we are entering such a period. But it now appears we have a man entering the White House who truly wants it.

For that, warm up your singing voices with a healthy ‘amen’ - appropriate on any and every day of the week.

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The Kansas City Star, Nov. 5

It’s an unmitigated scandal what COVID-19 is doing to our senior citizens in nursing homes. No one should rest until the current tragedy is abated and future ones avoided.

As residents die and suffer in isolation, it’s clear the pandemic has not just taken residents’ lives and cruelly kept them from their families, but also has illuminated and exacerbated the unforgivable flaws already in the system.

The long-term care system is ill-suited and ill-supported to withstand an outbreak of disease. How could society have done such a poor job protecting our most vulnerable?

Nursing home residents in Kansas are under renewed assault from COVID-19, with state health officials reporting a horrifying 250 long-term care clusters.

One of the worst is at Andbe Nursing home in Norton, where 10 residents have recently died following the infection of all 62 patients, as well as some staff. The facility didn’t quarantine coronavirus-positive residents, and inspectors found hopelessly belated testing, communal dining and multiple staff not wearing masks.

Worse yet, the home had been cited for “immediate jeopardy” as early as May for failure to follow COVID-19 protocols. The home has now been kicked out of the Medicare program.

Alas, Andbe is not alone in its failures. Five or more homes were found to have insufficient COVID-19 protocols from May to September, and reports are trickling in of staff and residents at other facilities not wearing masks.

“I had one family member tell me last week he was at an assisted living, and no one had a mask on while he was there visiting on a Saturday,” Sue Schuster, a Kansas regional long-term care ombudsman, told The Star. “He was aware that another building in town had active COVID in their building, so that shook him pretty badly.”

Schuster says the problems are particularly acute in nursing homes “that were ‘skimming by’ with sloppy systems and processes and too few staff on a regular basis.”

To be fair, even the best nursing homes have been walloped by the coronavirus, and they deserve our support rather than our scorn. And on its best day, staffing is a herculean challenge across the industry, Schuster says. During the pandemic, with already small staffs cut by illness - and no one out there to replace them - administrators are pitching in, and direct-care staff are working hellish hours. With testing needs and special rooms required for socially distanced visits in the cold months, the facilities could actually use more staff than usual.

Even administrators are increasingly throwing in the towel, either retiring or finding a new line of work, says Debra Harmon Zehr, president/CEO of LeadingAge Kansas, an association of 160 not-for-profit aging services providers.

“I get calls like that every week. Every week. Multiple calls,” she says.

State Sen. Molly Baumgardner also suggests a look at how the state has performed during the pandemic. She says infection control training and personal protective equipment have lagged at long-term care facilities, and at one point, the state appears to have required them to accept COVID-positive residents.

The idea of triage, Baumgardner argues, is to tend to the most at-risk first. Why weren’t nursing homes at the front of that line?

“We’ve known from day one when COVID hit the state of Kansas that our elderly were the most vulnerable,” she says.

Keeping nursing home residents safe is especially challenging because staff and visiting vendors are out in the community living their lives. Plus, a nursing home, by design, encapsulates pretty much everything we’re not supposed to do during a pandemic: grouping high-risk citizens in close quarters 24/7, amid the most intimate of care-giving.

“I don’t know that you can stop all infections,” Zehr says. And once the coronavirus is inside a nursing home, it spreads quickly.

When visits are permitted - it’s inhumane to keep nursing home residents in total isolation for so many months at a time - it’s difficult for family members to turn down a request for a hug, particularly when the resident may not be capable of understanding the circumstances of the pandemic.

That’s all the more reason, though, to take the strictest of precautions.

And to make sure this never happens again - which means an all-hands-on-deck review, at the state and county and community level, of how we got here with nursing homes and how to get where we need to be. Is it a lack of laws and regulations? A lack of enforcement? Are pay and training for staff adequate? (Hint: they’re not.) How can turnover be reduced? Shouldn’t nursing homes be at least as well-resourced as hospitals? One area of immediate need, notes Zehr, is crisis emergency staffing before and during outbreaks.

In the big picture, there must be an honest and uncomfortable top-to-bottom review of long-term care facilities and their oversight. As is now clear, lives are at stake.

“I hope that this is an awakening to what our priorities are,” says Linda MowBray, president and CEO of the Kansas Health Care Association representing 225 long-term care providers. “I just don’t think that we give our elders the place that they deserve - and that’s our full attention.”

“If we learn anything out of this pandemic, it is we desperately need to find ways to encourage a lot more workers into the health care profession at the direct care level,” says Schuster. “We need them everywhere.”

“It really does require everyone to come together to help these Kansans,” Baumgardner said. “They are a part of our communities. We should respect and allow them the dignity to live in an environment that is safe. And we’ve failed them on that.

“Where else can they call home?”