Bishop Finn’s justice

Children continued to be victimized while Bishop Robert Finn turned a blind eye. He was finally convicted for failing to report the crimes he witnessed, and unbelievably, gets away with probation.

Whatever happened to having consequences for bad acts? Now the Kansas City diocese will be led by a convicted criminal, and other similarly situated people in power know that there is no real price to pay for turning a blind eye to atrocities.

Ken C. Jones

Lenexa

Google Fiber for all

I am very excited for Google Fiber’s arrival in Kansas City and the offer to provide up to eight years of Internet service for $300 paid over the course of the first year. This is the best opportunity I have seen to bring affordable high-quality Internet to the east side of Kansas City.

It will enable us to bridge the digital divide and to provide our children access to educational resources online.

I’ve been disappointed that too date few East Side neighborhoods have met Google’s preregistration levels to qualify for service in their homes.

How can we as a community work together to get these neighborhoods qualified by Sept. 9? Not having access to reliable high-quality Internet is a huge disadvantage for any child attempting to succeed at educating herself today, and it will only become more so in the coming years.

I hope this opportunity provided by Google Fiber does not pass by the children in my neighborhood and community. I love my east Kansas City neighborhood, and the kids I see on my streets deserve the same opportunities to excel at learning as any other child in Kansas City.

Ron Baggett

Kansas City

Google Fiber doubts

Google Fiber is playing Elmer Gantry’s game, and we are eating it up.

Gantry purported to have the key to salvation and didn’t mind hurting people to make sure he sold it well. But it was salvation that fictional character promised, and people bought it, regardless of its cost.

Are we really expected to believe that:

• Google hadn’t planned where it was going to lay its network before it approached the Kansas Cities for its fiber launch?

• That we will never get Google Fiber if we don’t get it now?

• That the whole carrot-and-stick marketing isn’t just another duplicitous marketing scheme?

The whole way that Google has approached this launch has appealed to fear.

We will be left out. The prospect of our schools not getting Google Fiber — thus, hurting our children — will be our fault. Our city will not be welcome in the fiber future.

I’m not buying it.

Patrick Dobson

Kansas City

Drawing on strengths

What primary purpose did the Founding Fathers have in mind for the U.S. government when they wrote the Constitution?

I would have thought by now their intent would have been ferreted out and communicated to citizens in a clear, concise manner.

But, no. At least not as far as the jumbled-up mess of responses that came back when I Googled it recently would seem to indicate.

Whatever happened to the idea that the primary goal of government is to ensure the health, welfare and safety of its citizens?

How about this — a division of labor?

1. Democrats — work to ensure the health and welfare of citizens.

2. Republicans — create a favorable business climate that creates jobs.

Each recognizes the strengths of the other and doesn’t work at cross-purposes or do anything to jeopardize the government from realizing its primary goal. It can’t get much simpler than that.

The U.S. (government) should be concerned primarily with the health, welfare and safety of its citizens. Too lofty a goal? I think not.

If we work to our strengths then everybody wins, it seems to me.

Steve Sumner

Shawnee

Payday loan win

The election coming up in November might be much more significant and far-reaching than whether Democrat Barack Obama or Republican Mitt Romney occupies the Oval Office for the next four years.

If the presidency can be bought by the super political action committees of the vested-interest rich, we will no longer have a democracy “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

We will have a country ruled by an oligarchy “of the rich, by the rich and for the rich” who can make sure the whole game is slanted toward their advantage. A prime example of this is the case of the wealthy managing to tie up in court an effort to put on the November ballot an initiative to raise the minimum wage and limit how much interest payday loan companies can charge.

Payday loan places can charge 400 percent interest annualized. The ballot initiative may had enough citizen signatures to be put to a vote, but the payday loan sharks with vested interests were able to keep it off.

As a nation, we are following a certain “golden rule” — them that’s got the gold makes the rules.

Father Terry Bruce

Kansas City

‘The Music Man’

After watching the movie “The Music Man,” I have finally come to understand our president’s economic plan.

In the movie, a traveling music salesman, Harold Hill, cons a small Iowa town into believing he can teach its children to play band instruments simply by thinking about playing. He calls this the Think System.

President Barack Obama has no economic plan other than his own version of the Think System.

Either we are a nation of simple-minded rubes or we must get a competent, honest president. Enough is enough.

Joe Lavender

Lenexa

Royals announcer

Kansas City Royals broadcaster (color man) Rex Hudler is more than an irritating motor-mouth to a legion of us listeners.

In a very real sense he is a symbol of a certain value system that permeates the Royals’ front office and helps explain the team’s pathetic plight on the field.

I give you the case of replacing the balanced and honest comments of Frank White, a home-grown product with an illustrious major league career, with the inanities of an out-of-work, former well-traveled bench player. Does that say enough?

If the Royals need anything right now it’s a little honesty in place of the company line. Do they really have so little respect for the intelligence of their viewers and listeners?

Then again, this is the same front office that not long ago tried to sell us on Trey Hillman as a better choice for manager than one of their former star players doing a better-than-average job with their young players at Class AA Wichita.

Herman Bonett

Lee’s Summit

Rex Hudler came to Kansas City as an unemployed, second-rate TV analyst and sold Fox Sports on the idea that his endless patter would be entertaining (it’s not) and informative (it’s not).

Some writers get paid by the word. Evidently Hudler’s contract calls for him to get paid by how many inane comments he can string together every night.

We are stuck with him because Fox Sports executives will never admit that they goofed when they hired this guy.

Dan Allen

Richmond, Mo.

Bible as moral compass

America has too long looked at her presidents or celebrities or sports figures to be our moral compass. These are men just like us.

We have the right to go the other way when these leaders are following anything other than the word of God, the Holy Bible, our only moral compass. On this issue and so many others, President Barack Obama is far from the Bible, and we should certainly go another way than the way this man is leading us.

Mere men don’t define what is right or wrong. There is truth, and it can only be found in the Bible.

Lori Coffman

Overland Park

Obama’s oath of office

The president took the oath of office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

He is refusing to defend the Constitution, in this case the duly upheld provision of the Arizona immigration law. By doing so, isn’t he ignoring his sworn presidential duty?

Just askin’.

Carolyn K. Patterson

Westwood Hills

Marathon fish tale

If Republican nominee for vice president Paul Ryan will lie about his time in a marathon, what else will he lie about (9-2, A2, “You get faster over time”)?

Jim Rogers

Leawood