Striving for pride

I am amazed by the bad ideas our Missouri legislators come up with. When I think I have heard the worst, another is presented. Paraphrasing President Ronald Reagan, here we go again.

We will start 2013 with a proposal to join Kansas in the race to the bottom.

Kansas has a zero tax rate for small businesses. “What’s our plan?” asks the little girl in an ad running in Kansas City. Our plan is to mimic Kansas, which has an $800 million shortfall in its budget, by creating our own revenue reduction by halving our corporate tax rate.

Our legislators suggest cutting our already low corporate taxes, presumably to keep businesses from bolting to Kansas.

Our kindergarten- through-12th-grade school funding is inadequate. College funding is slashed. Our bridges and highways are deteriorating.

By losing more revenue, the very programs that would entice businesses and help our families would continue to be severely underfunded.

For 2013, let’s replace “here we go again” with the phrase “we’re moving on up” from “The Jeffersons.”

Let’s raise our sights and make Missouri a state we can all be proud of.

Mary Clemons

President

Women’s Voices Raised

for Social Justice

Kirkwood, Mo.

Feeding rich in the U.S.

My research shows that the top 1 percent received 93 percent of the income gains during 2009 to 2010.

Could that be the reason that they paid so much in income taxes?

Diana Basler

Lee’s Summit

New quarterback is vital

Kudos to Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt for finally cutting ties with Scott Pioli and bringing in Andy Reid and John Dorsey. However, fans should not be satisfied until Matt Cassel leaves town for good, because until then this team will not progress.

Bill Gurney

Leawood

Gun is a deadly ‘tool’

“Guns are not the problem.” We hear that a lot in the gun-control debate. Guns are just tools.

A preschooler finds a gun under a jacket, where the owner probably never dreamed it would be found (because humans are ... human). It fires accidentally. Now 4-year-old Trinity Ross is dead (1-23, A4, “Shot kills 4-year-old girl”).

Can anyone honestly say that if there’d been a different tool — maybe a knife or even a chainsaw — under that jacket, she’d still be dead?

There’s a saying that when your favorite tool is a hammer, all problems look like nails. Perhaps that’s why so many angry arguments end with a shooting, if a gun is the nearest tool. That seems to be what happened at Lone Star College recently — and too often in Kansas City’s own neighborhoods.

Ask Adam Lanza’s mom if her guns/tools were used as she wanted. Oh, wait. You can’t.

Let’s say that, instead of guns, bowie knives were the weapon (sorry, tool) of choice in the U.S.

Bladed implements can do fearsome damage, but I’ll bet we can guess how many entire classes of first-graders have been mowed down in seconds by a lone, bowie-knife-wielding madman.

Jan S. Gephardt

Westwood

NCAA commits foul

The NCAA must be the most inept investigative agency that has ever existed (1-24, A1, “In surprise twist, NCAA puts Haith case on hold”).

It has taken nearly two years for the NCAA to investigate Miami and Frank Haith. But now an NCAA internal investigation will be wrapped up in two weeks or less. This is what happens when the same outfit acts as judge, jury and executioner.

Maybe the NCAA should clean house and start all over with investigators who know what they are doing. It should never take the length of time the NCAA spends on its cases.

Some cases may need to be turned over to an individual or an investigative agency to solve them.

Ed Breda

Lee’s Summit

Truth stretcher

The Rev. Adam Hamilton told President Barack Obama that God had given him a unique gift, unlike any president we’ve ever had, to cast a vision and inspire people (1-23, A1, “Pastor from Leawood has advice for D.C. audience: ‘Be one nation’ ”).

Tsk, tsk, tsk, Reverend, for it is a sin to tell a lie.

Laura Textor

Blue Springs

Change firearms rules

Politicians and the media want people to believe that America has a gun problem. While I’m inclined to agree, their solution is akin to doctors treating symptoms of the flu instead of targeting the virus. My solution is more practical:

• Do not pass any unconstitutional laws further banning “scary” firearms.

• Register citizens with aggressive mental disabilities and emotional instabilities and increase research for effective treatments and cures.

Form joint operations with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI, Homeland Security and state and local law enforcement to seize all illegal firearms off the streets and to make it more difficult for black-market purchasing of new firearms.

• Abolish gun-free zones with the exception of schools, banks, mass-transit hubs, hospitals and government buildings. Fund Homeland Security to protect those buildings and grounds.

• Have annual weapon-safety certification/recertification for everyone who owns a firearm. Have separate certifications for conceal-carry or open-carry. This will be used to help fund Homeland Security.

Have stricter punishments for crimes committed with a deadly weapon and more laws protecting citizens who use a firearm in self-defense, whether at home or in public.

Dewey E. Sweet Jr.

Manhattan, Kan.

Crossroads garage

As the city ages, for our neighborhoods to survive and thrive we must have a mix of the old and the new in proper proportions.

Just because a building is old does not necessarily make it historic.

All too often well-intentioned preservationists do more harm than good. The recently demolished home at 44th and Oak streets is a case in point.

The home sat empty, decaying and “protected” for years, becoming an eyesore and a blight to the neighborhood. I could go on with multiple other examples.

To anyone who has been to an event in the Crossroads District, the lack of adequate parking is obvious, and I strongly support Shirley Helzberg’s planned parking garage (1-23, A7, “Preservationist plans a tear-down”).

She is to be commended for her preservation efforts and building the infrastructure to support them.

Roland Sabates, M.D.

Kansas City

Wrong-way Brownback

It seems obvious by now that Gov. Sam Brownback is running for a Republican presidential nomination in 2016. He has solidified his place in the arms of the corporate tea party and the “let us protect you from evil” religious and social conservatives.

However, the 2012 election showed these groups to be vulnerable.

Perhaps Brownback has hitched his wagon to the wrong star, thus committing Kansas to become a nova.

John Nelles

Shawnee

Stan Musial memories

Frank Berry’s Jan. 24 letter with his moving “And the cornfields cry” tribute to Stan Musial evoked memories.

I grew up in central Kansas in the 1950s and listened daily with twin boys of the town to Harry Caray and Jack Buck’s broadcasts of Musial and the St. Louis Redbirds.

A few years later when the one twin married, he and his bride spent their honeymoon in St. Louis in a motel close to Sportsman’s Park. Finally, he’d had a chance to see our boyhood hero, Stan the Man.

A year later, he named their first boy Stanley. Stanley and his siblings 50 years later sent their parents to a weekend in St. Louis to see the Cards.

The golden anniversary couple had lunch at Mike Shannon’s, that close-by restaurant filled with Cardinals memorabilia. The wife mentioned their story to the waitress.

She told her manager, who passed it on to Tony La Russa. The Cardinals manager and four of his players were there having lunch. They graciously came out, greeted the celebrating couple and posed for pictures with them.

Larry Heffel

Lenexa

Penn Valley Park

Whoever is responsible for the beautiful remake of Broadway through Penn Valley Park deserves a big thank you from those of us who drive the road. Finally, the area looks like a park, and one that was actually planned.

It is nice to have curbs to help stop people from sliding into the lanes going in the opposite direction. The drive through the newly landscaped park is a pleasant experience and has greatly helped improve Kansas City’s image.

A job well done. Let’s see how long the trees in the median last, as well as the streetlights.

Larry Bilotta

Kansas City