KC housing sham

I have always suggested that the people of the inner city not look at the amounts of money spent to help them (6-18, A1, “Dream home discount”). This is a prime example: $211,000 in federal money was spent on a house at 29th and Holly streets. You could buy a condo.

It is not the money spent. It is who authorized that spending. What contractors made that money, and to what community did those funds go?

It was senseless, or was it? Forty-five houses and counting. Someone made a lot of money on a project that any fool would know would not help those in need.

Jobs were allotted for those already working and doing well. It was to help that community.

This to me is the help those helpful conservatives want to give to people living in poverty. We will help you stay poor while using you for our job growth.

Beware of the giver of gifts. Don’t look at the money amounts used to help you. Look where and with whom it is spent. Someone else works — you don’t. Investigate this!

Richard G. Cushon

Kansas City

Exciting electric cars

Finally, electric cars are newsworthy in Kansas City.

The 100 percent electric Nissan Leaf can serve the daily commuting needs of 95 percent of the U.S. population. Charging costs 11 cents per kilowatt hour in the summer in Missouri and 9 cents in the winter, with little effect on the power grid. The cars charge overnight at home. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety also has rated the Leaf a top safety pick.

My Leaf arrives soon, and I’m excited. It has been a long wait since my August 2010 reservation.

Local unavailability is one reason you don’t see these around. Nissan rarely advertises it. If it is not promoted and the public isn’t aware of it, then it will reflect poorly in sales.

Widespread adoption of electric vehicles would reduce not only our dependence on foreign oil but the need to send our children to war to protect the interests of a single industry (oil).

Let’s get the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in place, using government incentives. Make quick charging stations as commonplace as gas stations to extend the range of electric vehicles.

Plug in your car and dump the pump. Visit www.pluginamerica.org.

Kathy Mussurici

Kansas City

Sculpture could move

I would love to have the Overland Park controversial sculpture in front of the Kansas City Garment District Museum at 801 Broadway. I could put a lovely coat from the 1960s on her in the winter.

It would be more attractive than the skeleton of the buffalo on the corner of Ninth and Broadway.

Ann Brownfield

Overland Park

Unjustly locked up

My daughter, Darlene Edwards, is one of five people doing life sentences in the 1988 deaths of six Kansas City firefighters, which, I may add, she had nothing to do with. I also know Mike McGraw of The Kansas City Star is working on finding the truth as to who the responsible party is.

I am aware the Department of Justice has published a report naming “other people.” I would like to know what the holdup is in getting the other people indicted.

I know my daughter’s co-defendants, too. Darlene has been in prison since February 1995.

That’s 17 years. How much longer must she pay for a crime she did not commit?

I’m begging for assistance in any way possible. My daughter and the other defendants need help to force the government to indict the guilty parties.

I’m sure one of the real guilty people will tell what really happened. I want my daughter to come home.

The public must be made aware that justice has not been done until the guilty ones are locked up.

Doris Clark

Roscoe, Mo.

‘Zippy’ entertains

I’m one of the weirdos who read and even occasionally get a chuckle out of “Zippy the Pinhead” and the existential world he and his creator, Bill Griffiths, find themselves negotiating — usually with questionable success.

I would wonder about the sanity of anyone who reads the comic page “seriously.” Perhaps if enough readers complained about “Zippy,” we could get the editors at The Star to reacquire “Mary Worth” or “Brenda Starr.”

Herman Bonett

Lee’s Summit

Cheers to food section

First of all, thank you Kansas City Star for always providing a wealth of practical, helpful and fun information every week in the FYI | Food section. I admit, I am a “foodie.”

I read lots of food articles, have taken a lot of cooking classes, possess about 75 cookbooks and even worked as an assistant chef. I love cooking.

However, even more, I love accurate, practical help for people who love to cook but who work in other professions. The June 13 article by Tom Scocca, “An onion outcry,” on the “only” way to achieve caramelized onions was right on and was a breath of fresh air.

Accurate, honest and 100 percent helpful. Thank you.

Debra J. Nordyke

Butler, Mo.

Anti-McCaskill ad

Television stations have been running an anti-Sen. Claire McCaskill ad paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. I went to FactCheck.org to check the claims of this ad.

It turns out that the chamber runs this ad with many debunked statements. It says, “Claire McCaskill cast the deciding vote on Obamacare.” In Ohio, the chamber ad says Sen. Sherrod Brown cast the deciding vote, and in Montana Jon Tester was the deciding vote.

Wow, they all can’t be the deciding vote. There were 60 votes for the program.

The ad also repeats an old debunked idea that Obamacare is a “job-killing program.” That was on the list of whoppers of 2011 by FactCheck.org.

Another whopper is calling Obamacare “government-run health care.” For that to be true, government would have to be the source of all insurance and also the source of all health care.

Actually, the law expands the private insurance market.

Take a cue from the advice at the end of the ad — call the chamber at 800-638-6582 and let it know you don’t appreciate its deceptive ads.

Sue Thompson

Mission

Baseball broadcasters

WGN broadcasts Cubs and White Sox games every once in a while. Real baseball fans should tune in to these games to hear how real broadcasters present a television baseball game. They really know how to do it.

It puts the Royals announcers to shame. They make the Royals guys sound like bush leaguers, which they are.

Richard W. Dahms

Country Club, Mo.

Clemens’ acquittal

So, the government failed after four years and millions of dollars to prove its perjury case against former major league baseball pitcher Roger Clemens.

Didn’t the first mistrial give you a hint?

What a farce and total grandstanding that whole congressional steroid hearing was anyway. The only things missing were popcorn and beer vendors.

Even though lawmakers rarely fulfill their elected duties anymore, they’re supposed to be legislating affairs crucial to our nation’s interest, not policing and residing over a professional game and private entity with its own governing body and supposed enforcement policies.

How about rounding up folks for a little fireside chat on the Hill about all the thieves, also known as Wall Street top executives, who blatantly violated numerous security and exchange laws on their way to wrecking the U.S. economy before the taxpayer-supported bailouts put us on life support?

I guess it wouldn’t be wise, though, to upset all of the sugar daddies of Congress.

Steve Meyers

Raytown

College improves lives

Since becoming University of Missouri System president, I have touted the advantages of higher education with examples such as a more informed citizenry, higher income and more engagement in society.

Let me give you one more: a healthier, longer life.

USA Today reported that people with bachelor’s degrees or higher live about nine years longer than those who don’t graduate from high school. Smoking rates are three times lower, and children of parents with college degrees have significantly lower obesity rates.

This all boils down to the No. 1 advantage of higher education: improved quality of life.

As the product of higher education myself and the president of the state’s premier public, research land-grant university, I can’t stress enough how valuable education is. And I am concerned that there are those in our state who just don’t get it.

So, I’ll continue to travel throughout Missouri touting the advantages of higher education. But lest anyone doubt my message, let me be clear: Higher education is a game-changer.

It transforms society. It advances our state.

It pays dividends to individuals. And it is related to longer, healthier lives.

Who needs more reasons than that?

Timothy Wolfe

President

University of Missouri

System