The week that was: Westport brawl, EPA in KCK, Eric Schmitt for prez, Musk’s Twitter
Seeking Westport skinny jeans assailants
Tough guys in designer skinny jeans assaulting people don’t belong on the streets. And we need to do all we can to help Kansas City police bring to justice two male suspects seen on video beating up a man and hitting a woman with a gun.
Video of the alleged aggravated assault early Sunday morning near 40th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue near the Westport entertainment district is grotesque. One suspect kicks a man who is seemingly already out for the count. As the woman places her body over the man to protect him, the other suspect smacks her in the face with a gun, knocking her out. Kansas City police released the video, which made its rounds on social media.
Investigators were searching for two males seen in the video wearing jeans. We’re hopeful the online exposure will help lead to the arrest of the alleged perps.
EPA team in Wyandotte County sticks around
Guess who is sticking around in the Kansas City area for another 20 years? A team of environmental scientists, researchers and bureaucrats who staff the Region VII office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Kansas City Science and Technology Center.
The center employs about 50 full-time workers in Wyandotte County and regularly performs water quality analyses and other high-tech evaluations, The facility apparently practices what it preaches, as well. With a unique graywater reuse system, it collects rainwater from the roof and air conditioner condensate discharge and uses a reverse osmosis system that generates pure water for experiments.
The remaining graywater is used to flush the toilets and as a coolant.
Who says government work is boring?
Eric Schmitt aiming for the stars?
Talk about getting a few dozen steps ahead of oneself. They say lurking in the heart of every U.S. senator is a sneaking suspicion that they’d make a heck of a president. But usually, the senators become, well, actual senators, before they reveal their soaring ambitions.
But that wasn’t the approach taken this week by a member of Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s staff when filing the October paperwork for his November campaign. KCTV noticed that instead of declaring his campaign for the Senate, a member of Schmitt’s staff wrote “President” on the document under “Office Sought.” Oops.
Obviously that’s wrong. But for a bit, before it was all cleared up when The Star called his campaign office, the error caused some speculation that perhaps the Republican might have been eyeing a bid for a higher office. But no. Schmitt is running against Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine to replace retiring Republican Sen. Roy Blunt.
The error appeared on routine campaign documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. Schmitt’s campaign said it was a clerical error. Yikes — that’s a pretty big blunder. Mistakenly indicating a run for president certainly seems like a little more than a slip of the pencil or mouse.
The campaign says it’s fixed the error. And it doesn’t change that Schmitt’s name will appear on the Missouri ballot in the Nov. 8 Senate race.
Elon Musk is about to face internet reality
Billionaire Elon Musk finally completed his hostile takeover of Twitter this week, ousting its CEO and other executives while assuring advertisers the social media platform won’t become a “free-for-all hellscape” when he ratchets back moderation of users’ tweets.
Good luck with that. People with no experience in publishing, particularly in the opinion sphere, too often think creating and curating content is simple. Yeah, no. Despite the old internet falsehood that “information wants to be free,” the truth is often straitjacketed and locked away — and usually expensive to turn loose, too.
It remains to be seen what Musk’s Twitter plans will ultimately include, but antisemite Kanye West’s account was already restored Friday. That’s a likely road map for where the service is heading: The history of sites with largely unregulated content (8chan, Gab) shows they quickly descend into havens for hardcore bigotry, abuse and even plotting terrorism.
Luckily, Musk is a serial fantasy artist. Because of his pattern of promises about impossible products — from fully self-driving cars within our lifetimes to the sci-fi absurdity of hyperloop capsules hurtling humans thousands of miles in vacuum tubes — there’s every reason to suspect his vision of a radically free but still usable Twitter will be like his laughable vow that the Tesla Cybertruck will also serve as a boat: It just won’t float.
