Growing more trees

We need to grow trees as fast as possible. Trees retain moisture, create shade (which reduces heat) and provide a place for ecosystems to exist, not to mention they just dang well look pretty, especially in Missouri.

We need to stop the destruction of the rainforests and stop mountain-top removal of trees.

We need to grow trees wherever there’s an inch of space, say along roadways, near sidewalks, in parks and anywhere there is space in your yard.

A program should be started so people can pick up seeds or starts for free through our Missouri conservation program.

OK. I’ve got my seeds. Where are yours?

Deanna Kline

Kansas City

Tame high oil prices

The Sept. 19 business story “FedEx gloom hinders stocks” says the global economy is slowing and will get worse. Sure it’s going to.

The No. 1 reason is the inflated price of oil. Oil is a natural resource that is making a few people rich while hurting the rest of us.

Oil touches every aspect of our lives, from shipping goods to producing food and gasoline at the pump. We all pay for it.

We’re getting shelled at the pump and grocery store. By the time we get done paying for everything oil touches, there’s little to drive our economy forward.

To fix the global economy, governments worldwide must fix oil prices. So few getting rich while so many suffer is just plain stupid.

The top U.S. oil companies have posted multibillion-dollar quarterly net profits for at least the past 24 quarters while the rest of our economy has tanked.

Financial crisis in Europe? Look at what they’re paying for oil.

Fix oil prices, and fuel prices will take care of themselves. It’s the profit at any and all cost mentality that is killing the global economy, and it has to stop.

Brian Acker

Kansas City

Romney, 47 percenters

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney made a big deal about the 47 percent of U.S. citizens who pay no federal income taxes. He said those people would naturally vote for President Barack Obama, and therefore they are not his concern.

He did not say they were breaking the law, but he implied they were not contributing their fair share. Not so. They are simply old and poor.

For himself, Romney said he pays all required taxes and “not a penny more.” Why then is not OK for low-income people to use their allowable deductions and credits to reduce their federal income tax to zero?

He could have said, “Under our tax rules, about 47 percent of our citizens owe no federal income tax at all.” That sounds nicer and carries the same information.

Robert Thatch

Kansas City

Importance of prayer

Let’s make sure we understand the true point of Jesus’ message regarding public praying.

Praying merely “to be seen by men” is clearly denounced.

But what if prayers of thanks before eating are routinely offered up in private settings? Wouldn’t it feel cowardly, or even hypocritical, not to pray before eating in public?

“Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

The heart’s motivation still defines the action.

Terri G. Jackson

Grain Valley

U.S. mudslinging roots

In William Safire’s novel, “Scandalmonger,” the revolutionary patriot Thomas Paine wrote in a gazette of his erstwhile hero, George Washington, “treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life, an apostate or an imposter.”

Removing his spectacles and pushing the newspaper across the tea table, Washington explained to Alexander Hamilton, “Some of the gazettes have teemed with the invectives that disappointment, ignorance of facts and malicious falsehoods could invent.”

So, who’s to say that the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan Republican presidential campaign’s invectives, distortions of truths and outright lies have not returned us to our Founding Fathers in politics?

Harold Oppenheim

Kansas City

Backward in Kansas

I used to live in Missouri until I retired to Johnson County three years ago. I always thought Missouri was behind the times about most issues.

But a guy named Jerry Moran was running for the U.S. Senate seat in Kansas on a campaign platform of having done nothing during his terms in the House, and he won. This didn’t look good.

In June, I went through the fiasco of renewing licenses for two cars with great aggravation but less than many people.

Now I must renew my driver’s license, so I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles. About 150 people were in line. Many had been there for hours.

They said I could register online for text notification or take my chances. I had to buy a texting service for my cellphone because I don’t text.

After receiving my notice, I drove 10 miles there as fast as possible only to be told the computer had crashed statewide, and they didn’t know when it would be online again. Incredible.

Kansas is the most backward state in the union in many areas. Management heads should roll over the entire DMV mess. No excuse is acceptable.

Henry Goben

Overland Park

Buying U.S. government

As long as lobbyists and special interest groups can buy Congress and people like Grover Norquist can hold Congress hostage, “Government of the people, by the people and for the people” will be denied to the American citizens.

Pauline Martin

Lee’s Summit

GOP jargon, clichés

When the right, as represented in letters to the editor, implies that President Barack Obama is a socialist, not an American or a Christian, I wonder whether the writers have anything of consequence to say.

When they dive into the void of teleprompter use, all doubt is removed.

Tom Witwer

Overland Park

Term limits needed

Vote Democratic? Are you kidding me?

It should be vote for the best person for the job. And once again, someone is blaming the Republicans for the outsourcing of jobs.

Don’t people do their own research, or do they just blindly follow what CNN or MSNBC tells them to do? For the record, the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Don’t blame business for wanting to make money. Blame the people who made it possible.

Since NAFTA, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have even hinted at the notion of repealing it. So blame both parties.

A line from one of my favorite movies is, “It’s not about black vs. white; it’s about us vs. them.” The truth is, Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama don’t care about you and me.

They have been bought and paid for. It’s time for everyone to pull their heads out of the sand.

Everything they do in Washington, D.C., affects you. You can’t hide from it anymore.

Vote for term limits = vote everyone out after one term.

Keith French

Kansas City

Guns deadly in U.S.

The United States public persists with its infatuation with guns. The murder rate by guns in the U.S. is much higher than any other industrialized nation (5-100,000 for the U.S. compared with 1.5-100,000 for the rest of the industrialized countries).

Our murder rate by guns is 19.5 times higher than other high-income countries. More shocking, the death rate from guns is 42.7 times higher in the U.S. for ages 15 to 24.

Murder by firearms in the U.S. is greater than 11,000 a year, compared with 269 in Germany, 144 in Canada, 57 in Australia, 47 in Japan, 97 in Spain and 14 in England.

Why is there such a disparity? Most of it is because of the outdated Second Amendment to our Constitution but is equally because of a lack of continuity of our gun-control laws, which vary from state to state.

However, much of the blame has to fall on us individual citizens for not creating a public outrage over this glaring public health problem.

It’s more difficult to get a voter ID than it is to purchase a gun. How crazy is that?

Unfortunately, individual freedom and gun ownership have become synonymous.

Robert Stuber, M.D.

St. Joseph

Write-in candidates

There is an old saying, “If voting mattered they would make it illegal.” This old saying is becoming a reality with the GOP and what Republicans are doing with voter identification laws.

So this year I am going to vote in defiance of the voter ID laws. I have looked at the ballot to decide which corporate-owned political party I am going to vote for.

I think this year I’ll pick write-in candidates.

Ricky Setticase

Gardner