Readers react to police shootings, Kansas leaders, First Amendment

Police shootings

In all the emotion and outrage about the shootings of honorable police officers during a peaceful protest, there are questions about “black lives” and there are questions about “police lives.”

Both are valid, but where are the questions about the guns — the large-capacity magazines and the armor piercing ammunition?

Lawrence MacLachlan

Prairie Village

Choices in voting

The fault with the problems in Kansas obviously rests with the misguided individuals who voted in the current leaders. You get the government that you vote for. Sometimes that’s OK. Sometimes it’s not so good.

Voters, you need to make better choices. People don’t like to remember what Pogo told us in a comic strip a long time ago: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

William Buechele

Shawnee

First Amendment

The Star by pulling Laura Herrick’s July 9 Midwest Voices column, “Women can take action to prevent rapes,” from its website has behaved reprehensibly and should be taken to the woodshed and made to recite the First Amendment until the newspaper staff understands it. Or, does The Star wish to become a mouthpiece for the prevailing orthodoxy and squelch alternative takes on our disjointed culture?

It is perfectly clear that nothing in the Herrick column made light of rape. Nor did it blame the victim.

The second paragraph in the column is absolutely clear on this. Rather, it raised an issue about the prudent use of alcohol and, by extension, the credibility of allegations, absent extenuating evidence, of a person who was dead drunk at the time of the incident.

It was a message about prudence of the sort, frequently given to travelers to certain countries, about keeping one’s wallet and passport in a secure place. In a week in which the fragility of the American enterprise was so much before us and the need for real, inevitably contentious conversation so apparent, it is shameful that The Star would try to shut down one such conversation within our Midwest community.

J. Mark McDowell

Kansas City

Cuts hurt poor

It has been said that the poor, who often don’t vote, do not stand up and take notice until their government does something that affects them personally. The people of Flint, Mich., can attest to that.

So will the poor of Kansas by the time Brownback and company finish with them.

I recall former Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt bragging that he had “saved the state millions of dollars.” What he did not say was that he did it on the backs of the neediest of the needy in Missouri.

My mother, who felt the pain of Blunt’s budget cuts, could attest to that if she were alive today. If poor people could vote out of office those who spite them, their lot in life would drastically improve.

But, unfortunately, because of voter suppression, even that has become very hard to do.

Eddie L. Clay

Grandview

City Hall priorities

Why does City Hall ignore the poverty of its citizens trapped all across its geographical boundaries of responsibility?

It is apparent from the spending of City Hall that tourists, conventions, young professionals and visitors are the focus of city officials who control the spending priorities.

For instance, it seems the Royals, Chiefs, Sprint Center, Power & Light District, streetcars, hotels, conventions, Union Station, City Market, Kansas City International Airport, sports tournaments and the 18th & Vine Jazz District receive the most attention and most of the financial backing.

The citizens outside this clique of beneficiaries struggle through their lives trying to make a living, raise children, live modestly and be good, contributing neighbors in their destitute communities without any real support from city officials.

What does this say about Kansas City?

Its current spending plan does little to improve the lot of the impoverished citizens who receive little if any benefit from the spending done on behalf of the tourists and visitors.

John Boyer

Leavenworth

Royals overload

No matter which edition of The Star on any given day, the reader gets blistered with four to five pages of the Royals’ so-called achievements in baseball. Yet the sports section fails to even inform the reader that there might be other teams that deserve to be mentioned.

I guess no other teams matter or deserve to be mentioned other than the Kansas City Royals.

Ralph J. Lorenz