Medicare for all, Clay County audit and Ward Parkway trees

Speak up, all

I’m glad the Kansas Bureau of Investigation is looking into child sex crimes and other wrongdoing in the state’s four Catholic dioceses. (Feb. 6, 1A, “KBI asks victims of clergy abuse to come forward”) This is long overdue.

I’d like to make a direct, personal appeal to church members and employees to speak up. Many know about or suspect abuse but stay silent, wanting to avoid embarrassing their church. Sadly, this often backfires.

The church will be a safer and healthier place for everyone in the future, but only if the full truth about this tragedy surfaces. And that will happen only if Catholic parishioners and staff, along with victims, call the KBI.

Larry Davis

Lenexa

The best way

Thank you for printing the balanced look at the potential Democratic candidates for president and their stances on Medicare for all. (Feb. 3, 16A, “Medicare for all emerges as test for 2020 Democrats”)

Although this cannot be achieved without laws and politics, I do not believe anyone on either side of the aisle can overlook the dysfunction of our current health care system. In the United States, we spend much more of our gross domestic product and much more out of our pockets, and we still get much worse health care outcomes than in other first-world nations.

Covering everyone would lower costs and improve people’s health. I can’t think of a better way to spend our tax dollars and save our people.

My work as a physician over the last 40 years has convinced me that change needs to be wholesale, not piecemeal. Now is the time to put aside partisan differences and address the needs of real people. I support single-payer universal health care.

Beth Andes

Raytown

Audit needed

Government should and must bend to the will of the people. I hope my fellow residents of Clay County will put their support and the full weight of their positions behind State Auditor Nicole Galloway and the petition-supported push for an audit of Clay County and its commissioners.

Last November, Missouri voters were clear when they approved Amendment 1, Clean Missouri: This is what the people want, voted for and demand from our government. We need to bring clarity and transparency to those who live in Clay County.

There appears to be a great deal of pushback from the county commissioners about such an audit. An honest, moral, ethical person has nothing to hide. If the commissioners are doing their jobs properly, ethically and in support of the residents of the county, they would welcome and support the audit, if for no other reason than to protect their good names and reputations.

Given their pushback, the only conclusion one can draw is that they have something to hide — potentially something unethical, deceitful, dishonest or immoral.

To paraphrase Marcellus in Act 1, Scene 4 of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as he speaks to Horatio: “Something is rotten in the county of Clay.”

Skip Speer

Kansas City

Asphalt jungle

What would George Kessler, renowned architect of the Kansas City boulevard system, say about the “forestation” of Ward Parkway over the last few years?

Ward Parkway is being transformed from a parkway into a mini-forest. Between 55th and 75th streets, 405 trees have been planted in just 18 city blocks. Many are just 15 feet apart and don’t have a chance of developing properly.

Within a decade, you will not be able to see across Ward Parkway in some places because it will be so crowded with trees.

Kessler balanced trees with other landscaping and fountains to strike a perfect balance of green space. As thousands drive Ward Parkway every day, only in years to come will they realize and question how Ward Parkway became an overgrown mess of foliage — which will eventually have to be culled out at taxpayers’ expense.

Doug Euston

Leawood

Feel it firsthand

Several decades ago, my wife and I arrived late, and without reservations, in a New England resort town to celebrate New Year’s Eve. We were promptly denied accommodation at the only remaining decent hotel in town. Why? Because we were a straight couple in a predominantly gay community.

Even though it was inconvenient (we wound up in a basement room in a dump on the outskirts), I found myself unable to work up much outrage. I knew that at the same time this happened to us, out in the real world gay people were legally being denied housing, jobs and services, and if it was fair for one it was fair for the other.

Recent discussions on this issue miss the point that proposed legal protections based on sexual orientation don’t apply only to the LGBT community — they apply to everybody. Most Missourians and Kansans may now be fired for being straight just as easily as for being gay.

The first time this happens to the son or daughter of an elected official, we may see the light bulb finally come on and hear calls for inclusiveness coming from the most unlikely places.

Larry Stice