Readers share their thoughts on Frank White, Kris Kobach’s ethics and the message of Christianity
Score, you’re out
Frank White: Hit a home run.
Resign.
Bob Washburn
Kansas City
Is this corruption?
Kris Kobach conveniently forgets his own actions that border on corruption. (Nov. 28, 13A, “The culture of corruption in Kansas’ capitol”)
In early 2017, he was fined for making “patently misleading representations” to a federal court about a binder he was photographed carrying into a meeting with President Donald Trump late in 2016. He also failed to mention that in June, a federal district judge upheld a $1,000 fine against him as vice chair of the Election Integrity Commission, citing a “pattern” of “misleading the court” in voter ID cases. The ACLU was awarded $1,000 against Kobach based on his “deceptive conduct and lack of candor” before the court.
If there’s a culture of corruption in Topeka, it begins with Kobach.
Leo Schell
Manhattan, Kan.
Cycle of abuse
Sexual harassment and abuse are and always have been rampant in society. Yet we do not accept responsibility for our self-righteous disregard for the victims.
Many times the innocent young girls and boys who suffer the pain of the abusive nature of society become the very adults who victimize the next generation. For the true victims, there is nowhere to hide. The abusers have no trouble locating their prey, yet we do not acknowledge the depravity of the crimes and the perpetrators.
The children are victimized for our shame. We do not protect their innocence. Instead, our lifestyles that totally disregard the child and his vulnerability to abusive crimes has desecrated our entire social stratum.
In our self-indulgence, we are too permissive. Dirty little secrets are shared between gossips, and off-color comments are so easily accepted in our society.
The disregard for the innocence of childhood has brought about a generation of men and women who feel legitimized in the criminal acts they commit. Victims are shamed. They carry the shame of their violations until they take their last breath.
Julie Whiting
Greenwood, Mo.
Lifestyle math
The annual letter from the Social Security Administration just arrived announcing the cost-of-living allowance adjustments for 2018. I won this year. The last two years, my Social Security check went down.
The cost of benefits is “indexed” to your income. Social Security gets a report from the IRS about your adjusted gross income for last year. The cost of Medicare Part B insurance and Part D drugs are changed according to a table of charges related to that adjusted income.
Because I have only traditional IRAs, I must take a required minimum distribution from those IRA accounts and show it as income on my 1040 tax form. This requirement is because I put the money in the IRA account tax-free years ago, and now I must pay the tax. If I do not need to take the money out for any purpose, that does not matter. It is a mandatory withdrawal and declaration of income.
After all the adding, subtracting and adjusting, I am now back to the same level as the 2015 letter.
I wish grocery-store pricing understood all this.
Richard Blaisdell
Kansas City
Message of Christ
Will this president never cease his outrages? His recent phony tweets against Muslims are only his most recent effort to incite and stir up slanders and hatred between groups, including religions. (Nov. 30, 8A, “Trump’s anti-Muslim video tweets draw fire from Britain”)
I know American soldiers now on active duty whose parents’ lives were saved by Muslim physicians working in American cities. They are some of the most noble and decent human beings alive today. I owe vital information about my own life to a Muslim physician and his Christian staff members.
The Christian message about any human being, Muslim or otherwise, is very simple: Human life and selfhood come from God. An attack on another human being, his life, reputation, religion or dignity is an attack on Christ, who is inseparable from everything Christians can know about the meaning of the word “God.”
A political leader who defies that truth defies the source of it. It’s just that simple.
David A. Lee
Ottawa
Bad development
The ideology of the present Republican Party is a perverse aberration of Darwin’s theory of evolution: the survival of the wealthiest.
John Nelles
Shawnee
This story was originally published December 1, 2017 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Readers share their thoughts on Frank White, Kris Kobach’s ethics and the message of Christianity."