Posted on Thu, May. 15, 2008

Photo IDs for voting

After reading Laura Scott’s commentary (5/12, Opinion) about the Voter ID bill and the non-driving nuns who didn’t have driver’s licenses, I couldn’t help but ask: Why are some people so scared to prove who they are before they vote?

Surely Republicans aren’t the only people concerned about voter fraud, are they? Don’t Democrats want an honest and fair election as well? A Missouri non-driver license (ID card) is $11.

Missouri provides millions of dollars in financial aid to underprivileged residents every year. The majority of these underprivileged people already have ID cards so they can receive benefits. Is it too much to ask the others to spend $11 to ensure that the constitutional voting process Ms. Scott mentions is not made a mockery of?

Steven Christensen

Blue Springs

I sympathize with those who are unable to obtain photo IDs. In the ’60s, when my father was ready to apply for Social Security, he obtained affidavits from older people who knew of his birth. Several years ago, when we first heard of photo IDs, I took my mother to the license bureau to get one.

While I realize I am fortunate to have a car to take my mother to the license bureau, isn’t this an opportunity for volunteers to step up and assist? In the big picture, isn’t one instance of election fraud too many?

Theresa Cotter

Belton

Combining FYI and Preview

I was disappointed to find that the Thursday FYI section of The Star has become part of the Preview section.

During the eight years my husband and I have lived in the Kansas City area, we’ve watched The Star shrink to fewer and fewer pages. Now, someone decided that if the paper reduces the size of the comic strips and crams them onto the smaller pages of Preview, another section of the paper can vanish.

The Monday edition of the paper is now so brief that I wonder if it warrants the use of the carrier’s gasoline to make deliveries.

Please, the U.S. newspaper industry is faced with ever-declining readership. The answer to this dilemma is not to decrease the number of pages. Instead, work toward improving quality of content.

Jane Henley

Lee’s Summit

As an attorney, I frequently have to read the fine print, but your newly shrunken comics section in the Preview section is nearly unreadable. Is it your plan to continue to shrink them until everyone over 40 stops reading them?

William E. Pray

Leavenworth

Reining in environmentalists

Ross Balano (5/10, Opinion, “To fix energy ills, rein in environmentalists”) has a misunderstanding about environmentalists and ethanol. The force driving increased ethanol production is agricultural interests.

Mr. Balano would expand oil drilling, but the Department of Energy estimates that the U.S. has less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves. The U.S. consumes more than 25 percent of the world’s oil, so expanded drilling would not significantly increase supplies or reduce prices.

Mr. Balano would increase the use of coal, since new technology reduces pollution. He fails to consider the environmental damage just from mining the coal (mountaintop removal throws pollutants right into our rivers), greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal and the rising cost of coal due to increasing worldwide demand and the inevitability of carbon taxes.

Money, time and effort would be better spent on reducing our reliance on oil and coal with increased efficiency and renewable energy. Not doing so only prolongs the problem.

Byron Combs

Kansas City

Hooray for Ross Balano’s column. I’d like to expand on one point. He writes, “Remember all the dire predictions about the Alaska pipeline before it was built? Those proved to be unfounded.” Precisely.

All you “environmentalists” who are against developing 2,000 acres out of 19 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge need to visit vast land swaths in western Kansas. There, cattle graze and millions of bushels of wheat are harvested, while oil wells all around them nod up and down and new oil derricks drill new holes. ANWAR is thought to contain at least 10 billion barrels of oil.

It’s a no-brainer. The internal combustion engine, fueled by hydrocarbon products, is the greatest industrial invention of all time. The United States’ standard of living was greatly increased by this discovery. Can we please let the marketplace keep working for us, instead of against us?

Dyrk Dugan

Overland Park

Ross Balano hit the nail on the head. It is sad that our country has no energy plan, but not much can be expected when leadership is lacking in both parties.

If the environmentalists of today had been around 150 years ago, we probably would not have many conveniences and comforts we enjoy today. Natural gas and the installation of gas lines would have been said to be too hazardous and destructive. Power, phone and transmission lines and poles would have been deemed too unsightly and environmentally unfriendly. The same could have been said of automobiles, airplanes, highways, skyscrapers and other advancements to which we are accustomed.

Protecting the environment is important, but common sense must be exercised doing so.

Austin E. Van Buskirk

Kansas City

Coal plants in Kansas

We just returned from a drive through Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Colorado. We couldn’t see 10 miles away, even after a storm. The air was as hazy as China until we got to the western slope of Colorado. All those wide open spaces were enveloped in a smoggy haze.

Kansans and Kansas City people should think long and hard about another coal-powered plant to the west of us. Sometimes we have to consider what is really best for the future rather than money for the moment. We did see a huge wind farm being built, and the scattered oil pumps were working.

Now, who profits from a coal plant in the far rural part of Kansas?

Letty Baker

Gladstone

The failure of the Kansas Legislature to override Gov. Sebelius’ veto of a coal-fired power plant has more grave consequences than most voters realize. Plug-in hybrid automobiles are expected to hit the mass market in 2010. They will have a range of 500-plus miles. By utilizing smart electric meters and nonpeak times, recharge is expected to cost about $2.

Pacific Northwest National Labs stated that power plants can meet the needs of 73 percent of the cars, thus cutting oil consumption by 6.2 million barrels a day and eliminating 52 percent of oil imports. C02 emissions would be cut by 450 million metric tons a year, effectively scrapping 82 million cars.

Now, the kicker: If coal-fired plants furnished all the electricity, C02 emissions would fall because coal is burned more efficiently than cars burn gasoline.

By 2010, the governor will be modeling her Oscar de La Renta gown elsewhere, and the Legislature will be wiping the pie off their faces.

Tom Hammack

Camdenton, Mo.

Obama’s lack of experience

Edwidge Danticat (5/12, Opinion, “Pro-con: Does Barack Obama offer a real possibility for change?”) thinks Obama would bring a groundbreaking change of leadership to the U.S.

But as an educator, would she choose for her own district superintendent a teacher with minimal years of classroom experience just because that teacher so eloquently and deftly brings his lessons to his students? I think not. She would expect someone with many years of teaching and administrative experience. She would want someone who has expertise in the subject matter as well as the ability to communicate and delegate to others.

Why, then, should we expect any less from a candidate for the presidency? It amazes me that an entire political party dismisses Obama’s lack of experience, congressional or otherwise, as of little or no consequence. It amazes me further that his supporters are more impressed with his oratory skills than with positions of leadership and governance.

A wise man once said that speech is an invention of man to prevent him from thinking. It is also an infallible means of discovering that which he wishes to hide. Democrats do not think cerebrally. They think emotionally. Democrats don’t act. They react.

Peggy Fry

Olathe

Let voters decide about Hillary

Mike Huckabee stayed in the primary race until Sen. McCain earned enough delegates to declare him a winner. Why? So people could have a choice and be part of the process. Hillary Clinton should do the same (5/13, Opinion, “Hillary Clinton gracefully should step aside”).

There has been little mudslinging in the last “ugly few months.” The 24/7 TV media and opinion writers pick up on the few negatives, blowing them up and repeating them over and over, because they have a job to do.

If I lived in one of the states that had not yet had its primary, I would be distraught if my candidate quit before I had a chance to cast my vote. The system will work. Allow us all to be part of the process.

Joann Blackburn

Gladstone

Going too easy on McCain

Day after day, The Star’s many conservative columnists savage the Democratic presidential candidates. Conservative Charles Krauthammer, for instance, tells us the gas tax holiday shows Clinton to be “just a pol” (5/13 Opinion).

Meanwhile, Ellen Goodman writes about family matters (5/11, Opinion, “Obama should put verve into his mother’s story”) and Leonard Pitts writes on how “Impulse of uniformity is choking Americans,” (5/13, Opinion). It’s nice that your liberal columnists are sweet.

Maybe it’s even good to know that Sen. Clinton is a politician.

But The Star should choose columnists who remind us now and then about Sen. McCain’s sorry divorce, his pandering to lobbyists and that he, too, demands the gas tax holiday for which The Star’s columnists savaged Clinton.

Charles Hammer

Shawnee

No horse in this race

No longer able to take the daily hammering by the Democratic Party that our country is evil and corrupt, I have changed party affiliation.

The Democratic leaders think that only they and Big Government can solve what they see that is wrong with America. The Democratic Party has moved so far left that I now refer to them as the Socialist Democratic Party. They will say and do anything to get back the White House.

A Democrat will be elected president this year, and I don’t have a horse in this race. There are two socialists, Mrs. “I can’t seem to remember” Clinton and Mr. “my race card trumps any card you have” Obama, and one conservative, Mr. “I have shown that I can cross party lines” McCain.

The dumbing down of America continues.

L.F. Buccero

Leawood

Time for Glass to go

All Royals fans and taxpaying citizens need to organize a referendum, recall, impeachment, or whatever it takes to let David Glass go. His skills and abilities no longer fit the greater good.

Baseball is a team sport, and there is no room for a prima donna owner more concerned about his country club prestige and his bank-giggling salary then he is about fellow teammates and fans. I suspect Mr. and Mrs. Kauffman can no longer turn in their graves after having watched their organization turn from gold to garbage. Just as so many recent all-stars were not retained, so must Mr. Glass not be retained.

George Brett and company deserve another chance at ownership.

Tom Wolfe

Leavenworth

Traveling by train

I imagine Ross Warnell (5/5, Letters, “Slow train trip to St. Louis”) knows that Amtrak has no control over the rails it travels on, with the exception of the Northeast corridor. The tracks belong to Union Pacific, CSX and other transportation companies. Amtrak moves forward, or stops, at their convenience.

Train travel is still fun and relaxing, but being late so often is still frustrating. I have long felt the “powers in control” made a huge mistake on relying so heavily on air travel to the detriment of public ground travel.

How fun or convenient is it to fly now? The only positive aspect left is it gets one from point A to point B faster. That is if the weather holds and there are no mechanical problems.

J.S. Klein

Kansas City

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