Readers express thoughts on illegal immigration, KC Chiefs, ‘The Wizard of Oz’
Illegal immigration
The children crossing the border into the United States illegally could be a blessing or a curse. As workers, they could keep Social Security solvent for decades or rip apart our country with divisive politics.
Tom Stroud
Overland Park
Lament over Chiefs
I write this letter tongue in cheek, as I have been a loyal Chiefs fan forever. My parents have had what I call the best seats in the house since the stadium opened.
I had been eagerly waiting to take my sports-addicted 7-year-old grandson to his first Chiefs game, which I did recently. He was doing OK until the third-quarter interception and touchdown by the Vikings.
At this point, he had an emotional meltdown, with huge tears streaming down his cheeks. The man in front of us turned around and said: “Sorry, little buddy, I feel just like you. I wish I could cry.”
My patient daughter-in-law thought our crying 7-year-old should leave, but as she was taking him out, he kept crying louder and lamenting for all to hear, “This is the worst game I have ever seen. They can’t score a touchdown, and they can’t complete a pass. I’m never coming back!”
Everyone around us heard him and grinned. As we walked out, I looked to the people around us and said, “He is expressing the way we all feel.”
Heads bobbed up and down. Should I forward this to the front office?
Sheila Berry
Lenexa
Learning to live
I was thinking the other day that God gave us a beautiful place to live in, with all the resources we need to live in comfort, harmony and peace. But it seems man is determined to destroy all of this, including each other.
Are we stupid, or what?
Jim Lockhart
Merriam
Power-plant smoke
It’s time Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and the Koch brothers stop the outright lies and half-truths of their television ads about the so-called must-have Holcomb power plant.
Building a coal plant that uses massive amounts of water in a water-starved area of Kansas is only slightly less stupid than putting one in Death Valley.
As for the many jobs (a highly inflated number) quoted to build it, most of the workers would be there only a few months at a time and not from start to finish during the four or five years needed to construct it.
If built, relatively few would be employed to operate it. The coal plants in Kansas aren’t among the biggest employers in the state, and that’s nothing like the abundance of jobs implied by the misleading ad.
Furthermore, nearly all the electricity produced would go to Colorado and Texas, if they will buy it, while Kansas would get most of the pollution.
Bob Burns
Leavenworth
Hands off Medicare
Concerning the Aug. 27 front-page article, “Health compact faces many hurdles,” this health compact wants to block the federal government from regulating the health-care system, which includes Medicaid and Medicare.
These states, including Missouri and Kansas, refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordale Care Act. They want to take the federal funds and have total control of the health system at the state level without federal intervention.
Leave my Medicare alone. It’s doing just fine at the federal level. State block grants are a recipe for disaster.
I paid into the Medicare system for 42 years. I do not want the states messing with the system.
So many states are touting less government regulation. However, there has recently been an epidemic of laws and regulations passed at the state level pertaining to women’s health-care issues that should be left to the woman and her doctor.
There is no need or room for state legislatures regulating the health care of women.
May I reiterate, leave my Medicare alone.
Lillie French
Kansas City
Wizard of wonder
Because this year marks the 75th anniversary of the classic movie “The Wizard of Oz,” I’d like to pose a question: In the face of an oncoming tornado, what kind of guardians go into a storm cellar and batten down the door before ascertaining the whereabouts of their young charge — figuratively throwing her to the winds?
Such action sort of gives a whole new meaning to “no place like home,” doesn’t it?
Sandy Maxwell
Independence
Immigration reform
Republicans who have attacked our dreamers with their racist laws will feel our power on Election Day in 2014, 2016 and 2020. We will tell Sen. Roy Blunt that his party will not win.
Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, talks about the “rule of law” when it comes to immigration. The “rule of law” was used to steal Native Americans’ land and to kill millions of American Indians.
In 1930, President Herbert Hoover drove thousands of Mexican immigrants and naturalized Mexican-American citizens from their jobs and homes, took everything they had and forced them into Mexico.
Their jobs were given to white Americans because of the conditions of the time.
People who hate will find a law to do anything racist they want.
The law protecting immigrant children was signed into law in 2008 by President George W. Bush. GOP leaders now want to make an amendment to send the children home faster.
Our families spend $750 billion a year. We are responsible for millions of dollars in taxes that are collected from our paychecks.
We will use our numbers to fight our battle at the ballot box peacefully and legally.
Florentino Camacho Jr.
Former Lulac
Civil Rights
and Human Rights
State Director
Kansas City
Increase state fuel tax
The soundly defeated Missouri transportation sales-tax issue last month accurately reflects that we can’t fool all the people all the time.
With claims that the tax would be excluded from groceries and health-care items, the devil was in the details.
What you weren’t told is what would be taxed. A recent cash-register tape showed just what would be taxed, including scratch remover, light bulbs, wild bird seed, the kitchen sink drain and just about everything else in a super market.
Now, consider a fuel tax alternative.
The nine mid-central states — Missouri and the eight surrounding states — average 22 cents per gallon, with Illinois at 39.1 and Kentucky at 32.5 being the highest and Missouri at 17.3 and Oklahoma at 17.0 being the lowest.
After nearly 20 years of no fuel-tax increases, most reasonable people would consider now to be a good time for a responsible fuel tax to be presented to the voters.
Bill Eltzholtz
Lee’s Summit
Sleeping with babies
In our area, infant mortality rates hover above the norm. However, I almost daily counsel families against a practice that increases the risk of infant death by up to five times — co-sleeping.
The main arguments in support of co-sleeping are: “It’s more convenient,” “The baby sleeps better with me” and, my personal favorite, “I’m a light sleeper.”
Is it so much harder to have your baby in a bassinet beside the bed? Even a dresser drawer would be safer. It takes only one sound sleep to suffocate a sleeping baby accidentally.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has a strong, simple statement regarding healthy infant sleep. Babies should sleep on their backs, on a firm surface, in a crib meeting current safety standards.
While pillows, blankets or stuffed animals are advertised to accessorize baby’s sleeping environment, the American Academy of Pediatrics has proved that simplicity is safest.
If a car was going to run over my baby girl, I would do anything to get her out of that environment. Co-sleeping poses the same danger to our children. Now we have to do something about it.
Dr. Jeremy Avila
Kansas City
This story was originally published September 2, 2014 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Readers express thoughts on illegal immigration, KC Chiefs, ‘The Wizard of Oz’."