Letters: How to save Kansas?

Saving Kansas

It is difficult for a progressive Kansan to muster the proper response to the April 21 headline, “Kansas faces gap of $290 million.” The immediate urge is to strike out, at the governor, the ultra-conservative members of the Kansas Legislature who cast such destructive votes and the voters who swept the entire incompetent bunch into office.

But it is too late for that. Kansans are faced with a state budget that will not fund quality education. The state turns its back on the mentally ill, threatens the pensions of public servants and ignores legitimate demands for adequate health care funding.

The disingenuous idea that reinstating reasonable taxes on small businesses and farmers is a tax increase flies in the face of the Kansas electorate. The loss of revenue caused by these tax cuts has done massive damage.

Lack of funding is having a deadly effect on the life and health of the state. And the prognosis is not good.

Conservative legislators must show themselves unwilling to impose any more spending cuts and rescind those already proposed. Force the governor to listen to reason.

If he demurs because his political legacy is threatened, remind him he has done this to himself. Now he must reverse the harmful downhill slide that he started. It is time for everyone — top to bottom who has helped to bring about this economic distress — not only to face Kansans squarely and take responsibility but also enact legislation to do something about it.

We cannot wait for the next election, although that does not look pretty right now for the incumbents. Stop the bleeding.

Save the state. This is not hyperbole. This is reality. Do it.

Janelle Lazzo

Roeland Park

Kansas manure

The purveyors of the city’s wild kingdom entertainment have proven that not even waste will go to waste (4-24, A-4 “Kansas City Zoo turns manure into garden gold”). In fact, 70 tons of animal waste annually are composted and sold to area gardeners for $25 a truckload.

Herein lies a potential solution for the budget crisis in the state of Kansas. The Legislature is a prolific producer of its own manure, ranging from disastrous tax cuts for businesses, to cuts in school funding, to raiding state highway funds, to stupid gun laws to voter suppression measures.

Heaped together and composted, this manure could be marketed and sold as KanPoop, producing enough revenue to achieve a balanced budget this fiscal year.

Ron Fugate

Overland Park

Shelter volunteers

Visiting several Kansas City area animal shelters, looking for a small companion, I have to comment on how hard all volunteers in those shelters were working. They were helping people looking at animals, cleaning cages, working and playing with animals as well as answering questions from the public.

The volunteers are to be commended for all of their love and hard work. Blessings to all.

Marjorie Hein

Westwood

Congress’ work

If what was shown on “60 Minutes” recently is true, then our members of Congress and the Republican and Democrat national committees owe we voters an explanation and an apology.

How can they justify spending four hours every day on the phone soliciting funds for the party while leaving the reason we elected them up to aides, to represent us and know how we want them to vote?

If the story is not true, CBS owes us a retraction, and members of Congress might consider a lawsuit against CBS.

Edward Barnes

Prairie Village

Bathroom wars

You can’t prevent a crime by arresting a suspect and you can’t arrest a gun owner because he might shoot someone. But, you can arrest a suspect if a crime has been committed.

You can’t prevent anyone from using the bathroom simply because he might be a so-called “pervert.” It is only if he acts on it can the full weight of the law be wrought against him.

The aim of American jurisprudence has always been to prosecute the behavior, not the supposition. That’s always been the case.

Nothing has really changed. Creating a “boogie man” during an election year just to garner votes is the creed of conservative dirty tricks. One might see a Willie Horton political ad as such an example.

Buying into discrimination just to make you feel comfortable isn’t the goal of those who fight to ensure equal justice for all. Those who put forward these absurd laws to ban transgender people into the nation’s restrooms and call such outright discrimination religious freedom fail to realize one important fact.

You all have been sharing bathrooms with gays, lesbians, bisexually and transgender folks all of your lives. And yet, somehow, you have survived.

Of all the real issues in the world, poverty, privation, starvation, slavery, war, disease and suffering — you would think that conservatives would have something better to focus on and fix. Rather than, once again, opting to scare their base by creating false enemies.

Discrimination in any form is morally wrong. Knowing that we are all God’s children, we must keep reminding so-called holier-than-thou Christian conservatives, ours is not to judge others, ours is to ask the question, “What would Jesus do?”

Tom Davis

Merriam

Candidate facts

I think it would be nice if the newspaper ran an article about what politicians are running for the House and Senate in the state Legislature in Topeka. Who are Gov. Sam Brownback’s supporters?

It seems like the public should know the details long before the Nov. 8 general election.

Danny Roos

Overland Park

This story was originally published May 3, 2016 at 5:55 PM with the headline "Letters: How to save Kansas?."