Readers share views on small businesses, adjunct professors, Postal Service
Small businesses
Earlier this year, a statement appeared in the news media saying business groups are aligned behind an effort to challenge the power of local governments to pass laws banning workplace discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals and raising the minimum wage.
As the Midwest Outreach manager for Small Business Majority, a national small-business advocacy group with a network of more than 40,000 small-business owners, I’m writing to correct the record.
Our scientific research has consistently found that small businesses are in favor of non-discrimination laws and a higher minimum wage.
In 2013, we conducted a poll finding that 71 percent of Missouri entrepreneurs believe there should be a statewide law preventing employment discrimination against gay and transgender individuals.
We also conducted a poll last year that found nearly six in 10 small-business owners nationwide support increasing the federal minimum wage and adjusting it annually to keep pace with the cost of living.
It’s a mistake for the news media to assert that small employers are united in pushing for the repeal of local laws that ultimately raise the quality of life in Missouri and benefit small businesses and their employees.
Mary Timmel
Midwest Outreach
Manager
Small Business Majority
St. Louis
Adjunct professors
I thoroughly appreciated your Feb. 24 front-page article, “Higher education: Big burden on lower-paid teachers.”
As an educator for more than 40 years, I have always believed that teachers, police and firefighters should be paid what professional athletes receive and that professional athletes should be paid no more than what teachers receive.
Consider this: Who has the greater impact on the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for future generations of American citizens?
Gail Dunker
Adjunct professor
Johnson County
Community College
Stilwell
Dr. Strangelove
Despite the doomsday warnings of every sane budget analyst, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is enthusiastic about enlarging the gaping hole in the state’s budget.
He reminds me of Slim Pickens in “Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” yelling “Yahoo!” as he rode the A-bomb down to certain destruction.
Liz Craig
Mission
Soggy postal service
Recently my mail was delivered sopping wet. Literally. The envelopes were dripping when I took them out of the mailbox.
As it happened, these were very important papers, and some were barely legible. I filed a complaint via email and, later that day, received a phone call from the post office.
The person apologized but said it couldn’t be helped because it’s a walking route and my house is not near the truck.
I asked whether the letter carriers couldn’t use plastic bags to protect the mail and was told, “No, because that slows the carriers down.”
I suggested that might be better than delivering wet mail.
She said, “No, because that might result in them having to deliver the mail after dark.”
I asked whether the mail bags were water-repellent, but it seems cotton bags are better protection against dog bites.
Apparently, U.S. Postal Service policy is that delivering the mail wet is perfectly acceptable.
Barbara Young
Independence
Gov. Brownback:
I live in Kansas and teach school here. Please keep your poisonous ideas about “long-term prosperity” in Kansas, where you will harm only myself and other Kansas residents (3-5, A6, “Brownback talks tax cuts in Missouri”).
Three of my four adult children live and work in Missouri, including one who is a young teacher.
I told him to work in Missouri, and not Kansas, 20 months ago because I believed your policies would cripple Kansas’ funding for education. I was right.
I understand that you believe in your heart that you are right, and I believe you can use creative accounting and false information to make the “Kansas experiment” look better than it is.
The truth is you have ruined the Kansas economic outlook, and although I believe you are a person of personal morality, you have been deceived or confused, or you are genuinely harming our state’s economy for reasons that are indefensible.
You have a rubber-stamp Legislature, which approved a plan even more radical than what you had proposed, and now you hope to use Missouri millionaires to transplant this same deception in Missouri.
Again, please for my family’s sake, keep your dangerous ideas in Kansas.
Steve Hopkins
Basehor
Higher moral ground
As a lifelong Republican, I am saddened by the untimely death of Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich (3-4, A1, “‘Bully’ tactics faulted in death”).
I feel he was a victim of political bullying.
I feel there needs to be ethics reform when it comes to elections. The mudslinging and name-calling need to stop. We need to unite our party instead of splitting ourselves into various factions.
I feel the head of the Missouri Republican Party needs to resign.
I am a supersensitive person myself. Words do hurt whatever age you are.
How are we to be examples to our young people if we are bullying others as adults?
I sincerely hope and pray for this situation. We all need to respect all people.
We need to end this bullying. I expect my political party to always be respectful of others and take the higher moral ground.
Rita Byler-May
Richmond, Mo.
Medicaid expansion
The majority of our citizens think we have the best health care in the world, and we probably do for those who can afford it.
Paradoxically, we do not have the best health-care system in the world, ranking last of all industrialized countries in the world in health-care outcomes while paying more for our health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined.
So, we are not getting the bang for our bucks. Why?
Well, for one, we do not have equal access to health care for all of our citizens.
This is illustrated by Missouri and Kansas, whose Republican-led legislatures have heartlessly refused to expand Medicaid, thereby excluding the very poor. Access would enable the poor to get proper treatment for ongoing chronic, life-shortening health conditions.
Left unattended, these chronic conditions lead to crises that are treated in the more expensive venues of emergency rooms and hospitalizations.
Our heartless state legislators say we cannot afford to expand Medicaid. Yet, 28 other states have done so without going belly up.
Legislators of Missouri and Kansas, do the humanitarian thing.
Show some compassion for once. Expand Medicaid.
Bob Stuber, M.D.
St. Joseph
Veterans’ misery
I am writing this in defense of all the young men and women who served in Vietnam. They didn’t hesitate to serve our country.
Now their bodies are still serving as a result of the war.
My son volunteered to defend our country, and now his health is ruined. He is in pain all the time. He has had heart surgery and back surgery.
Getting an appointment takes at least two weeks. Then, when he sees a doctor, he gets more pills — pain drugs that are habit-forming.
He isn’t getting better. Instead, the pills have drugged him up, causing him to just sit or sleep while he waits two to three weeks for his next appointment.
These people need help now, not two, three or four weeks later.
No wonder so many young military people are hooked on drugs. They deserve better.
I am like other mothers who were so happy that their sons made it home but now are so sad to see them suffer every day for what they have gone through.
Because of the long wait at the Veterans Affairs hospital, let them go to public hospitals and have the government pay for it.
The government always seems to have the money to pay for other things.
Dorothy Arnold
Kansas City, Kan.
This story was originally published March 9, 2015 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Readers share views on small businesses, adjunct professors, Postal Service."