Letters: Readers discuss a difficult streetcar voting process, Kansas’ senators and brittle baseball bats

Onerous vote

Liberals who are convinced that voter ID requirements are designed to alienate minorities in state and national elections should look at Kansas City’s upcoming streetcar expansion voting requirements: ID, computer access, and restrictive voting places and timelines.

How about The Star doing a high-profile article on whom the city is trying to alienate?

Thank God I live in Parkville.

Tony Bradley

Parkville

Govern for all

When will U.S. Sens. Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran realize they represent more than just farmers?

The two recently made headlines in Kansas and nationally for expressing their disgruntlement about cuts to crop insurance proposed in President Donald Trump’s budget. (May 24, 8A, “Trump budget: ‘A slap in the face’ to rural voters who elected him”)

That same budget also decimates education, scientific research, health care and environmental protection. As a reminder to Roberts and Moran, they also represent educators, scientists, health care providers, and environmental consultants and agency workers.

In fact, fewer than one in five Kansans work in agriculture. Furthermore, two-thirds of Kansans live in cities, not in rural areas.

From listening to our senators’ priorities, you’d think we were all farmers dependent on government-subsidized crop insurance.

When will our senators express concern about what Trump’s budget does to the majority of Kansans, not the agricultural minority?

Amy Burgin

Lawrence

Brittle bats

What is it with baseball bats these days? They snap like toothpicks.

In the olden days, a broken bat was rare — like the highlight of the week, or something like that. But it got noticed.

Today, it’s ho-hum. When you break your bat on a little blooper to second base, something is seriously wrong.

I know that years ago they changed the kind of wood they used. The old ash bats lasted forever.

Unlike those, today’s bats seem to be made out of balsa wood. Now you see a couple broken every game.

Some of them fly all over the place, with plenty of places to land, like anywhere in the infield, in one of the dugouts — and at a whole lot of people in the stands, 15 to 20 rows back.

Somebody is going to die. But it hasn’t happened yet in the major leagues, so no need to worry, eh?

But if I were you, I wouldn’t be turning my head when somebody was batting. You know, as we used to say in the Scouts, be prepared.

Charley Hutto

Kansas City

Neighborhood good

Long-term vacant houses full of detritus and clusters of unkempt rental properties with absentee owners continue to exist in many Kansas City neighborhoods. This is in clear violation of city codes and zoning ordinances. The city’s Planning and Development Department has had little success in addressing these situations effectively.

If the Kansas City Council is serious about the “the rights of their neighbors to protect the safety and character of their neighborhoods,” as the department division manager recently said to The Star (May 23, 1A, “KC’s Airbnb hosts might see stricter regulation on renting”), we urge city authorities to focus on existing violations before creating additional unenforceable statutes and criminalizing our neighbors for their entrepreneurial efforts to meet the increasing cost of city services.

Trying to get ahead of the state in devising new limitations on the use of private property indicates to neighborhoods that the council does not understand the current threats to neighborhood safety and character.

Aryn Roth

Kansas City

No politics

Just a thought on the process of appointing a new director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation: I don’t believe any president should be allowed to pick an FBI director — the reason being that the person might have to investigate the president one day.

A non-partisan panel should pick a director.

Becky Leith

Raytown

Outrageous act

It has been reported that President Donald Trump experienced indigestion during his trip to the Middle East. Despite just being the quiet ones, the Democrats say this is the last straw and will move for immediate impeachment.

Ken Hedden