Letters: Art of parkway, Kansas tax cuts

Art for parkway

In Johnson County we have families who cannot afford heat and have difficulty feeding their children. What shall we do?

I know, let’s spend citizens’ hard-earned tax dollars on an expensive work of art. Let’s landscape the area and place this installation in the median at Tomahawk Creek Parkway, where there are already three others. Superb idea, eh?

Oh, great — it looks like the insides of my messy toolbox, upon which silver paint spilled all over.

What a terrific and responsible way to spend our tax dollars. Thanks a lot to those who planned this. I feel ripped off.

Amy Brown

Leawood

Kansas tax cuts

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback may be delusional with respect to his belief that his tax cuts will entice businesses and individuals to move to Kansas. If even Sen. Pat Roberts refuses to move to Kansas from Virginia, despite the tax cuts, why would anyone else move here?

It may be that the real motive for the tax cuts was not to stimulate the Kansas economy, but to provide tax relief to wealthy Kansans.

Eric Dollard

Overland Park

CPR, heart safety

Would you know what to do if someone suffered sudden cardiac arrest? My family (including our 90-year-old mother) recently attended a 30-minute Hands-Only CPR class taught by a paramedic with Johnson County MED-ACT.

MED-ACT is partnering with Johnson County fire departments and hospitals to promote a HeartSafe Community.

Anyone can participate, including children and seniors. MED-ACT teaches individuals, groups, businesses and schools how to use this easy technique that can triple a victim’s chance of survival.

For more information about the HeartSafe Community program, call 913-715-1981 or visit www.JoCoHeartSafe.org.

Joyce Richards

Leawood

Raising children

With reference to the school shooting near Seattle last month, it does make one wonder why. There is indeed a reason why so many young people are flipping out.

The answer is simple: Our culture has decayed. We have scuttled Christianity.

We have destroyed the concepts of God-ordained right and wrong formerly known as the Ten Commandments. Conscience has been vaporized.

Children do not grow up in families anymore. Children are not protected by the tender boundary of family.

They are not given a chance to develop moral and emotional strength to carry them through the rough spots of life. For many children, there is no joy and happiness.

Parents are working hard for their own “joy and happiness.” Children are exposed every day to viciously violent video games, sexually explicit television and the Internet, filling their minds with God knows what.

Parents do little if anything to protect their children from these hideously dangerous influences. The only answer to this is for both mom and dad to take seriously the most important job on earth — raising their children well.

But like it or not, it cannot be done without God’s help. Just can’t.

Maureen Halpin

Prairie Village

Holder’s mistakes

Attorney General Eric Holder is resigning. He has had a busy six years, defending the president and defending from justice corrupt Internal Revenue Service officials who violated the law and the rights of thousands of American citizens.

While Lois Lerner and others destroyed evidence of their crimes, he has refused to investigate their crimes. He has defended wealthy bankers and President Barack Obama supporters on Wall Street by not indicting them for criminal actions that helped cause the 2008 mortgage crisis.

Eric Holder has surpassed both Janet Reno and John Mitchell as a political hack, and while he has earned a long prison term, America no longer holds high public officials like him or Lerner accountable.

Through the Nixon era we proclaimed that no man (or woman) was above the law, but thanks to people like Holder and Lerner, that American tradition is as dead as the ability of liberals to detect right from wrong.

Charles H. Morasch

Leawood

Support veterans

Several wars ago a soldier in a stone guard’s cubicle, on the island of Gibraltar, carved this tribute:

“God, and the soldier all men adore,

In times of danger and not before.

When the danger is past and all things righted,

God is forgotten and the soldier is slighted.”

Let us not make this the fate of our veterans any longer.

Don Rinck Sr.

Mission

Honoring U.S. flag

Far too often our flag, the Stars and Stripes, is flown inappropriately. To properly honor our flag it should be taken down immediately if it becomes tattered or torn.

If flown at night, it must be lighted by a light specifically designated for the flag. It should never be thrown away but retired honorably.

I would like to laude the Villa Medici Apartments and Townhomes in Overland Park, which flies our flag 24/7. A new flag light was installed.

The management team noticed the new light was not strong enough, and the flag was beginning to tatter. With dignity and respect the staffers lowered the flag immediately and properly folded it.

In addition, they arranged for the flag to be retired with all due ceremony by the Missouri Korean War Veterans Memorial, Flag Retirement Ceremony on June 14, (Flag Day) 2015.

Their new flag and light now flies proudly. Hats off to those who honor our country.

Debra Shultz

Chair

Missouri Korean War

Veterans Memorial

Overland Park

This story was originally published November 25, 2014 at 9:43 PM with the headline "Letters: Art of parkway, Kansas tax cuts."