Category Archives: Rich Steele

Steele: Has the KC Star Ceased to be Ridiculous?

For the last few days at least, the Kansas City Star has not sent out in its daily email blast an article scolding Kansas Governor Sam Brownback for some imagined offense… Had someone told the editors their Brownback mania was … Continue reading

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Steele: The Importance of Being Chelsea (@ UMKC)

UMKC hasn’t gotten this much national attention since the Bloch School was busted for goosing up its ratings… The Star threw the doors open on that scandal. This latest one took the Washington Post. I doubt if Star editors saw anything … Continue reading

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Steele: The Star’s Odd Take on Terrorism

Having milked the Bishop Finn resignation for every merciless drop, and having no new 30-year-old altar boy scandals to embellish, The Star has returned to its one true love, domestic terrorism… No, we’re not talking about the fact that the … Continue reading

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Steele: Why Did Anti-Sprint Tweet Become The Star’s Top Story?

About that dustup over Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure‘s use of the king’s English… Apparently, Brett Schulte, an LA-based social media consultant that no one had ever heard of, tweeted the following:  “I think they meant @marceloclaure for an MVNO. He’s so … Continue reading

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Steele: Why Bishop Finn Had to Go

Allow me to put my biases out in the open… Bishop Robert Finn is quite possibly the saintliest man I have ever met. He is everything a good bishop should be: kind, wise, prudent, and faithful. The kind, wise, and prudent … Continue reading

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Steele: The Entirely Predictable Demonization of Jeff Roe

Kansas City political consultant Jeff Roe made news the other day when he acknowledged that he, not gubernatorial candidate Catherine Hanaway, paid for the House of Cards parody ad that was said to have inspired auditor Tom Schweich‘s suicide… For … Continue reading

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Steele: Why Is KC Subsidizing Protest Movements?

On Friday, April 24, if you have nothing better to do and you’d like a free lunch courtesy of Kansas City taxpayers, the place to be is the Sheraton Hotel at Crown Center… The official theme of the symposium is … Continue reading

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Steele: Is KC City Council Being Paid by Kansas?

Dang! I was hoping to vote against Jermaine Reed for KC City Council, but as he is an in-district candidate in the 3rd District, I won’t get the chance. Maybe I’ll just show up over there and vote anyhow. I’ll … Continue reading

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Steele: KC Super Wins Best In State…Seriously

Sad but true: The Missouri Association of School Administrators has named Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent R. Stephen Green “it’s (sic) 2015 Pearce Award winner.” Bad enough is the glaring grammatical error in the second sentence of the press release … Continue reading

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Steele: Keep the Sewer Flowing but Lower the Fecal Count

Columnist Tom Friedman of the New York Times once opined, “The Internet is an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information, left, right, center, up, down, and requires that kind of filtering by anyone.” And that is its beauty. In what may … Continue reading

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Steele: Tom Schweich Suicide — What Really Happened

I’d expected to vote for Tom Schweich for Missouri governor in 2016… Although I had met Schweich only briefly, I knew his likely Democratic opponent, Chris Koster, halfway well, and I liked the contrast: dweeby straight arrow vs. blow-dried sleazeball. … Continue reading

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Steele: A Nation of Jasons, Kander to Challenge Blunt

Starting about 40 or so years ago, upwardly mobile Americans of all races, creeds, and political persuasions got it into their collective heads that they would be the first people on their block to name a son, Jason… “Jason” quickly … Continue reading

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Steele: Underpaid Missouri Principal Breaks Bad

If the case of former Hannibal elementary school principal Joshua “JD” Foust is indicative, Missouri educators are surely in need of a raise… According to the 2012 listings, Foust, now 33, was making only $65,000 a year as principal of … Continue reading

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Steele: Yippee! MARC Wins ‘Major Award’

Sometimes you don’t know whether to loathe the people involved in these scams or just feel sorry for them… President Obama has reached out to Kansas City to name MARC, the Mid-America Regional Council, one of this year’s “Climate Action … Continue reading

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Steele: The Truth About Kansas Found in the Driest of Places

Quite possibly the least ideological—and least sexy—publication in North America is the “Purchasing Economy Survey Report” produced by Creighton University… Now unless some deep operative from the Sam Brownback administration bought the editors’ cooperation with promises of new farm implements, … Continue reading

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Steele: What Non-Hysterical Kansas School Budget Reporting Looks Like

Kudos to Bryan Lowry of the Wichita Eagle‘s Topeka Bureau for his analytical look at education funding in Kansas… A sentence as balanced as the following has not graced the Kansas City Star since it had daily competition: “Some lawmakers … Continue reading

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Steele: Star’s Racist Attack on UMKC Plays Out

With UMKC Chancellor Leo Morton‘s apology for the inflated rankings of the university’s Bloch Business School, the Kansas City Star succeeded in its goal of embarrassing the university… Although no one questions that the data submitted to the Princeton Review … Continue reading

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Steele: Star’s Brownback OCD May Be Fatal

As I write this, three of the five “trending stories” on the Kansas City Star‘s website involve Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and his budget… In one of the stories the Star absolves KCK’s much discussed 48K piano for Kansas’s budget … Continue reading

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Steele: The Media ‘Misremember’ a Lot of Stuff

NBC anchorman Brian Williams has taken more fire over his remarks about Iraq than he ever took over Iraq itself… In the process, Williams has added a handy new locution to the lexicon of the disingenuous, the word “misremember.” A … Continue reading

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Steele: A $47,000 Piano but Kansas Schools Are Hurting?

There’s scarcely a media outlet in the world that has not wept a Niagara of tears for the alleged slashing and eviscerating of the Kansas education budget… The outcry is so universal that even Aljazeera America–typically mum about the slashing … Continue reading

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