Letters: GOP evolution, choosing party over country, Koren vet leader

Country over party

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have told President Barack Obama not to submit a nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia (2-24, A12, “Republicans vow to shun any high court nominee”).

They will not consider or even speak with the nominees regardless of their qualifications. Instead, it will be the president who is elected in November who will be allowed to pick a nominee.

Considering the next president isn’t sworn in until Jan. 20, 2017, Republicans are happy to put the Supreme Court in chaos for well over a year. If Republicans retain control of the Senate and a Democrat is elected president, how much longer will it take to confirm a nominee?

There are important cases to be decided by the Supreme Court in the coming months, but again that doesn’t matter to Republicans. They say, “let the American people decide.”

But I would like to remind them the American people did just that by electing President Obama twice. Republicans have already brought the country to its knees when they shut down the government over Obamacare and now will throw the highest court in the land into chaos because of their utter disdain of President Obama.

Leader McConnell, it’s country over party, remember that.

Karen Lane

Shawnee

GOP evolution

Republicans are in a tizzy because crass GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump may be their candidate picked out of the convention. They should have anticipated this is what their party would evolve into when they refused to stand up to the far-right radicals, or dialogue with the “enemy” and their moderates were chased off or put out to pasture.

For a party that doesn’t believe in evolution this should be a lesson.

Murphy Dickson

Overland Park

Losing in Kansas

We’re still moving away from being a people-centered society and becoming a money-centered society in which the have-nots have even less because the rich elite continue to hold a disproportionate amount of the nation’s wealth.

That’s pretty much the situation in 20 states, including Kansas, and what we’re seeing is absolutely horrifying. In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback still does not realize that Kansas was built on a foundation of a three-part revenue stream of income, sales and property taxes.

If you take one of these items out or one becomes out balance with the others, you risk toppling everything. Brownback’s budget plans are not feasible, managed or measured until after the fact.

His budget planning still assumes that the natural workings of the market and untruths will provide a balanced budget.

And across the country, the organizing rights of unions are under attack, while millions of poor and disabled seniors are being dumped from Medicaid. Are you going to vote for a losing team in 2016?

Jerry Brown

Overland Park

Not presidential

Hey, it happens. Look at this year’s presidential primary season for both parties. One front-runner should be in jail, and the other will be if he doesn’t learn to curb his Nixonesque brittleness to criticism.

Jim Eschrich

Lenexa

Leadership role

When Argentinean Jesuit cardinal, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected in 2013 to be the pope to lead a flock of 1.2 billion Catholics, the world was wild, and the media buzzed in excitement. But when the president of the local Korean War Veterans Association, Commander Tom Stevens, was elected recently to lead 14,000 members of the National Korean War Veterans Association in Washington D.C., no one heard about it except the veterans and their immediate families.

Never mind that those of “the greatest generation” are dwindling fast or that only less than 1 percent of the veterans belong to the national association.

Any war memorial is a solemn sanctuary that honors those who bled and lost their precious lives while protecting the lives of others. Is becoming the commander of the national Korean War Veterans Association less respectful than the Argentinean cardinal taking St. Peter’s seat in Vatican?

Stevens served the Korean War Veterans Association in Overland Park as the vice president-treasurer from 2003 to 2006, while he and more than 60 comrades were raising money to honor 415 fallen heroes from Kansas by constructing their memorial. He alone wrote hundreds of letters to local corporations, groups, individuals as well as to then-U.S. Rep. Dennis Moore and Sen. Pat Roberts in Washington, D.C., resulting $371,250 from the Bush administration, $50,000 from the Ewing Kauffman Foundation, $50,000 from the Korean-American Association, not including small and large sums from individuals. And he and his members hosted many pancake breakfasts and garage sales, too.

One of the widows of the veterans said: “Tom Stevens cares so much about the legacy of our local Korean War veterans. It’s no surprise that he now leads the national association.”

This is another reason to be proud of the town we live in.

Therese Park

Overland Park

This story was originally published March 8, 2016 at 12:22 PM with the headline "Letters: GOP evolution, choosing party over country, Koren vet leader."