Letters to the editor

Broken system

It’s TV political ads season once again and the meaningless insults to our intelligence are proliferating like a virus. Sadly, these manipulative and often deceitful sales pitches actually work with some portions of the uninformed public.

Here’s what Richard Kimball, president of Vote Smart, says about his experience running for the Senate:

“Understand what we do to you; we spend all of our time raising money, often from strangers we do not even know. Then we spend it in three specific ways: First we measure you, what it is you want to purchase in the political market place — just like Campbell Soup or Kellogg cereal. Next we hire some consultants who know how to tailor our image to fit what will sell. Lastly, we bombard you with the meaningless, issue-less, emotional nonsense that is always the result. And whichever one of us does that best, will win!”

Our political process is broken, and one reason is its use of professional marketing. The other is an electorate too lazy to to search out the truth.

Michael Zygmunt

Kansas City

Follow the money

The Islamic State is not a nation. The Islamic State is an organization. Are World War II bombing methods going to do the job?

Physical things are not the important aspect for Islamic State militants. It is the ideology. Organizations can exist anywhere, so the bombing of locations may not be effective.

The only organization that I know about that has been defeated is the Mafia. It was attacked by the FBI for years under criminal law with only limited success. When civil laws were used for income tax evasion, the money flow was stopped, and the Mafia organization withered.

I like the idea of bombing versus foot soldiers, but will it result in effectively controlling the Islamic State ideology? The Islamic State ideology of Sharia law for the world will not be stamped out by bombing buildings. The belief is not about material objects.

If the money flow is stopped and the mullahs had to work, the strict position would wither in favor of the real world life.

Richard Blaisdell

Kansas City

Affordable Care Act

Now that the health insurance companies have distributed their 2015 renewal materials, we can factually discern the effect of Obamacare. We have had United Healthcare Medicare Advantage coverage for years.

The notice for 2015 indicates the premium for my wife and me will increase almost $1,000 next year. That is because Obamacare took millions of dollars out of Medicare Advantage programs to pay for Obamacare. So people like us are paying directly for the effect of Obamacare.

I support providing health insurance coverage for the uninsured, but why does the cost have to come at my personal expense? This is a good and concrete example of financial class warfare.

Perhaps Congress should have read the 2,000-page legislation before approving it, rather than listening to Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s admonition to pass it, and then read it.

Bill Johnson

Raymore

Police, lethal force

To people asking why police shoot to kill instead of shooting a person in the hands or knees, police officers put their lives on the line every day to protect and serve. Because of the dangers of their job, they are trained that when they have a bad guy coming at them, to shoot for center mass so they can stop the threat.

Obviously people who ask such questions have never shot a gun or been in a high-stress, life-or-death situation, with a large man coming at them with the intent to do harm. Hitting center mass would be hard enough in that position, let alone trying to shoot someone in the hand or knee.

Police officers have milliseconds to react and make the decision on what to do. Add to that, the possibility that the person may have some sort of street drug in him that basically makes him not feel pain.

Police officers are just like everyone else in that they want to go home to their families at the end of the day and at times have to use lethal force to make that happen.

Dylan Borns

Grain Valley

A pleasant surprise

I am not from Harrisonville, but a week ago, my two sisters and I had lunch at Applebee’s in Harrisonville to celebrate a birthday.

The waitress announced the birthday to the whole place and when we were ready to leave, we found out that some anonymous person had paid for our meals.

To our knowledge, we did not know anyone in the restaurant at the time and no one else we knew was aware that we were eating there.

It was a delightful surprise and really made our day to have someone do that for us.

If they are from your reading area, we simply want to say thank you. These are trying times we are living in and a kindness such as that was truly encouraging. We will try to pass that kindness on. Thank you.

Bonnie Young

Carthage,Mo.

College sexual assaults

With all the publicity of campus sexual assaults now on the national agenda, I was surprised to see that universities at large campuses investigate them with their own campus police (9-28, A4, “University is seeing surge in reports of sex offenses”). Why do it internally instead of bringing an outside agency?

Are the campus police equipped to investigate quickly and have the resources to do as good a job as the local police department? And is there a conflict of interest when the university has its own department investigating?

Are they going to be objective and have authority to arrest and detain students? Are the guilty going to be treated as criminals and convicted as such, or are they going to be treated as bad students and punished outside the normal courts of law?

Better to treat all sexual assaults on campus as well as off campus the same way.

Gene Zwolinski

Leawood

This story was originally published October 7, 2014 at 4:39 PM with the headline "Letters to the editor."