Letters: Readers discuss Kansas City homicides, national debt and transparency
Horrible numbers
Everyone should be concerned about the number of homicides in Kansas City. We are listed in the top 20 of highest per-capita murder rates, according to statistics from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program. We have higher murder and non-negligent manslaughter rates than Miami, Oakland, Calif., Waco, Texas and Indianapolis.
Children have been murdered. People have been reported missing and found dead. And there have been far too many unsolved killings.
Why hasn’t there been anyone coming to assist us in finding these monsters and explaining to those who have lost a loved one why they have been killed?
There has to be a time when we say enough is enough.
Khamedriah Grimes
Kansas City
Shoveling away
As Congress continues to debate tax reform, perhaps it would be worth remembering that our country is more than $20 trillion in debt. That figures out to about $61,000 per man, woman and child in the United States.
Will Rogers said it best when he quipped, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
Steve Walker
Leawood
Look ahead
The events of the last week make it clear the tectonic plates of feminism and male chauvinism have irrevocably shifted. The dynamics of gender interaction in the workplace are becoming a level field.
Let’s not weaponize this shift by relentlessly focusing on the past. There are too many important issues to address: tax policy, the Russia probe, the environmental crisis and nuclear war.
The new landscape gives us a greater advantage to work together addressing these problems. Let’s get to it.
Betti Kalahurka
Kansas City
Sources say …
My wife of 45 years has informed me she is considering filing for divorce. She claims I groped her backside the day before we were married.
Thanks, media.
Robert Asher Sr.
Kansas City
What we hear
That piercing, cracking sound you hear negatively affecting your future, reverberating down Pennsylvania Avenue like an ever-widening and deepening cavern, spreading to every nook and cranny of this country, is the gut-wrenching cry of our democracy as it is destroyed and crumbles before our horrified eyes.
Wake up, America.
William R. Park Sr.
Shawnee
The end is nigh?
As I approach my 90th birthday, I worry about nuclear annihilation of life on Earth. The nuclear option was championed during the Cold War by lawbreaking paranoiacs. Richard Nixon, who served in the House of Representatives during 1947-1950, joined Chairman J. Parnell Thomas to lead the House Un-American Activities Committee in branding opponents of nuclear armament as traitors.
Thomas later went to prison for tax evasion. President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon for his crimes. On the other hand, law-abiding opponents of nuclear stockpiling like me, a cosponsor of the Stockholm Peace Appeal of 1950, were rebuked publicly and blacklisted as we watched nuclear arsenals proliferate worldwide.
Since then, attitudes have shifted, as witnessed in the awarding the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Yet control rests with an immature paranoiac who disrespects the Constitution, who is an alleged lawbreaker in business and an admitted sexual predator — President Donald Trump
I fear Americans’ choice of an unstable leader will probably lead, this time, to Trump’s pressing the nuclear button. A new book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” by 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts, tells why this is likely. So please gather loved ones close and start saying goodbye.
Norm Ledgin
Overland Park
Closed government
Ed O’Malley’s words are important to us all. (Nov. 30, 17A, “Government should be limited but transparent”)
Government has a history of not being transparent. School boards meeting in groups of three, as he describes, may not violate the letter of law, but they certainty violate the spirit.
This commentary reminds me of an incident that happened to me in Overland Park. I was a landlord, and a tenant threatened me physically. I called the police, who responded and made a report. When I asked for a copy of the report, I was told I needed a lawyer to make a request for a public record.
So much for public records.
Bob Cleary
Overland Park
This story was originally published December 3, 2017 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Letters: Readers discuss Kansas City homicides, national debt and transparency."