Letters: Readers discuss the UMKC downtown arts campus, health care and Kris Kobach
UMKC arts campus
As an alumnus of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, I was quite saddened to learn of Gov. Eric Greitens’ veto of funds for the university’s downtown arts campus. (June 29, 1A, “UMKC plans campus with no state funding”)
University and civic leaders worked extremely hard to secure 50 percent of the $96 million matching funds necessary to bring the downtown conservatory to fruition. They held up their end of the bargain.
Instead of showing support for this bipartisan effort, Greitens failed to show leadership regarding this issue and closed a wide-open window of opportunity for our state’s future leaders.
Greitens takes pride in the fact that he is an “outsider.” With this veto, his first as governor, he shows himself to be outside the mainstream on this important issue.
I am encouraged that Kansas City leaders and UMKC officials will continue to push toward advancing the project and continue to raise funds to one day complete this long-sought downtown arts campus.
This is not politics. It’s good government.
State Rep.
DaRon McGee
Kansas City
Do it right
When I was in nursing school in 1976, I hoped that someday the United States would have a system to take care of all citizens’ health care needs. Someday came in the form of the Affordable Care Act. Now it seems that most of those gains may be lost.
Are we really willing to rob our most vulnerable and poor to give tax cuts to our wealthiest? I bet Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, will never have a worry about women’s care if Planned Parenthood is defunded.
The very wealthy can afford the best preventative health care, and they don’t have to give it a thought. Dr. Sharon Lee’s clinic on Southwest Boulevard certainly can attest to the effect being poor and disadvantaged has on overall health and wellness.
Senators, take your time and fix this. Ignore the harping about this and that. Allow us to know what truly is in the bill.
We are watching your performance. Elections in 2018 and 2020 are coming up.
Pamela Saltzman
Lenexa
Eating is a human right. But what if the federal government had in 1945 proclaimed that grocery companies don’t have to adhere to antitrust laws? We would today have, say, only two grocery chains in Missouri and Kansas. They’d be allowed to collude to fix their prices, and we would have to pay or starve.
Well, that’s precisely what was allowed to happen in health insurance.
Today, grocery competition gives us Price Chopper, Hy-Vee, Save-A-Lot, Wal-Mart, Costco and so on. This capitalist competition ensures reasonable grocery prices.
Not so in health insurance. These companies are legally permitted to divvy up their own controlled fiefdoms and collude to fix prices. And thus health insurance, permitted to be run by unscrupulous people, is totally unaffordable.
Any new federal health care plan is just snake oil if it does not repeal the McCarran Ferguson Act of 1945, which exempts and shields all health insurance from most antitrust laws. But the health insurance lobby owns key people in Congress.
Otto Rieke
Overland Park
Simple answers
In his June 25 guest commentary, Kris Kobach identified pertinent questions about his candidacy for governor but failed miserably in answering them. (17A, “Kansas needs a governor who will tackle issues”)
“But which of my views is so hyper-partisan?” he asked. “My work to stop non-citizens from voting in Kansas elections? … My insistence that illegal immigration be reduced?”
The answer to both questions is emphatically yes.
Bruce Hensel
Leawood
ID to vote
Photo identification is a ubiquitous part of modern life. The thought that you must produce a valid ID when you cash a check is acceptable but somehow sinister to cast a vote is absurd.
Why would any honest person think otherwise? Perhaps it’s because certain groups believe they benefit from votes that may not be legitimate.
The U.S. has traditionally been caught flat-footed when dealing with its own vulnerabilities. Our voting process is antiquated and susceptible to fraud. Photo identification is a necessary step in maintaining the integrity of the democratic process.
There is selective outrage over alleged Russian interference in our elections, but none over undocumented immigrants who cast votes in our elections.
Gregory H. Bontrager
Hutchinson
This story was originally published June 30, 2017 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Letters: Readers discuss the UMKC downtown arts campus, health care and Kris Kobach."