Kansas City United

     It’s been troubling me for a while now to see the way the Kansas and Missouri sides of Kansas City do battle with each other over jobs for no real tangible benefit to area workers. Job poaching is a scourge on Kansas City and adds little marginal benefit to residents of the Greater Kansas City area. Michael T. White of the UMKC School of Law brought to light a perfect example of the frivolity of job poaching. J.P. Morgan and its 800 jobs at its Retirement Plan Services offices moved four miles from 95th and Ward Parkway to Overland Park’s Sprint Campus. This inorganic economic growth is nice for incumbent politicians in campaign mode but it is of little material benefit to Kansas City residents.

     With Texas leading the charge in job poaching from other states, including Kansas and Missouri, and with Washington, D.C. centralizing the nation’s wealth in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area, all people and governments of Kansas City should be uniting to fight for our mutual benefit. 

     According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Kansas City metropolitan area had an 8.7% unemployment rate in August 2011 (its most recent numbers), which is unacceptably high. In comparison, the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area enjoyed a 6.1% unemployment rate as our area congressmen, specifically Missouri’s Emanuel Cleaver and his “progressive caucus,” have neglected their people’s interests for the benefit of the parasite class of Washington, D.C. As Washington, D.C. surpasses San Jose for the nation’s wealthiest area, Emanuel Cleaver’s constituents are barely treading water, wondering when their representatives will stop twiddling their thumbs as Rome burns.

     While I understand that an individual federally elected congressman has little direct impact on a local economy outside of questionably moral pork barrel (“ear mark”) spending, I declare earnestly that if I’m sent to Congress by my neighbors I will use my position of influence to bring the state and municipal governments of Missouri, Kansas and Kansas City together for an economic summit that will focus on calling a truce and working out plans for how we can do battle with Texas and Washington, D.C. for the betterment of our homes.

     I say it’s high time that we see a united Kansas City. The Civil War is long over, folks—we have an old but updated enemy. The enemy’s name is division and its bedfellow is neglect.