Letters: Readers discuss Andy Reid, Clean Missouri and hysterical TV meteorologists
Eject them
If you cheat, you do not belong in the game — sports or politics.
- Mary Barber, Blue Springs
Reid, it’s on you
It’s time for Chiefs coach Andy Reid to “get ’er done.”
The other coaches in the AFC and NFC championship games have six years of NFL head-coaching experience among them. Reid has 21 years with the Eagles and Chiefs.
Also, there are no big-name coaches such as Bill Belichick, Sean Payton, Mike Tomlin and Pete Carroll left to get outschemed by.
Reid has never had a group of players with this much talent. This is the seventh conference championship game he will have coached in, with one losing trip to the Super Bowl. None of the other remaining coaches has coached in a game of this significance.
Andy, it’s time to pull all your tricks out of the bag for the next two games and coach your rear end off to bring a parade to Kansas City. Go Chiefs!
- Greg Schoen, Overland Park
Keep it clean
The Missouri General Assembly should stop trying to undermine Clean Missouri, also known as Amendment 1 on the November 2018 ballot. It was approved with 62% of the vote.
The centerpiece of Clean Missouri is a system for drawing fair voting district maps, thus ending gerrymandering and ensuring nonpartisan fairness in our state legislative districts.
Opponents of Clean Missouri have justified their attempts to overturn the will of the people by claiming that Missourians did not understand what we were voting for. That is absolutely false.
I gathered hundreds of signatures for the ballot initiative petition, and most of the voters I spoke with who signed to put Clean Missouri on the ballot did so because they knew what gerrymandering is and they wanted to stop it in Missouri.
Among the voters I talked to, the anti-gerrymandering provision was by far the most popular of all the anti-corruption measures in Clean Missouri.
Contact your Missouri state legislators to demand that they oppose efforts to undermine Clean Missouri. Our lawmakers should support policies favored by a majority of Missourians on principle.
The 2018 election made it crystal clear that a strong majority of Missouri voters supports the reforms of Clean Missouri.
- Lyn Elliot, Kansas City
Scare tactics
I no longer watch the weather people on the local television channels. These drama queens make most forecasts in the winter sound like Armageddon is coming.
They tease you with how drastic the weather will be (when actually it is just typical for this area) and then say they will be back after the break to give you the full details. That means waiting 15 minutes for the “bad news” update.
A much better alternative is to go online to one of the major weather websites such as Accuweather.com and enter your ZIP code. It will give you accurate updates by the minute, hour and month for your precise area. This is something the alarmists on the news cannot do.
The TV stations could save a lot of time and money by eliminating their meteorologists and advising viewers to go online and get better, quicker and more accurate information. It also would save viewers from being afraid of the doom and gloom they predict.
- Fred Holtz, Kansas City
It’s our future
Robert F. Kennedy once said, “Every generation inherits a world it never made, and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after.” This is exactly true today for Generation Z, as our role in society is to advocate for ourselves and the generations that succeed us.
Many issues that corrupt our present world were precipitated by the generations before us. Therefore, being the future, we set out into society to advocate for change, perhaps more than any prior generation.
Students at my school in Kansas City hosted a walkout to attend a climate rally. Globally, teenager and fellow Gen Zer Greta Thunberg travels the world to advocate against the planet’s demise.
What so many people from older generations don’t understand is that problems such as those will not affect them as much as us. Because of the deteriorating environment and global politics, Gen Zers may not have the same opportunities to have families, to travel or even to have the same amenities as those in older generations.
Thus, because we are passionate about our future, Gen Z is the most fearless generation, despite the condemnation we endure from other generations.
- Molly Sexton, Prairie Village
This story was originally published January 19, 2020 at 5:00 AM.