Letters: Readers discuss Laura Kelly’s wisdom, absentee voting and Trump’s good works

Too liberal

You on The Kansas City Star Editorial Board claim to provide a less one-sided view with your guest columnists and commentators from other publications, but you really just can’t help your liberal selves can you?

- Ken Spader, Raytown

Lessons ahead

The greatest gifts sometimes arrive in odd wrapping. I am thinking of the coronavirus crisis.

While we all concentrate on handwashing, keeping distance between us and monitoring our temperatures, a funny thing is happening. We are all concerned with the well-being of one another’s parents, grandparents and relatives who may have compromised immune systems because of medical issues. We realize we care for one another.

For now, politics matter less than they have in a long time. Placing blame is unimportant. Meeting this challenge with a national unity of spirit and action is essential.

For the next few weeks, we will not be attending prayer and worship services. We will not be filling out our brackets, rooting for our favorite teams or going to the ballpark for opening day. Together, we will not attend the same plays, recitals and performances. I miss you already.

As we go about our business more separately than usual, let’s smile and nod as we pass. For this little time, I hope and pray we may finally realize that, regardless of our usual petty preoccupations, we are all part of one human family.

- Rich Leppert, Kansas City

Take action now

I just read Friday’s editorial on the different approaches taken by the Kansas and Missouri governors and couldn’t agree more. (10A, “Differences between Kelly and Parson are stark in virus crisis”)

As a native Kansan now living in the nation’s capitol, I am witnessing what Kansans, including my family , will experience in two to four weeks. Like Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan acted quickly and with courage to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in his state. Meanwhile, federal responses were in disarray because of the president’s failure to listen and learn from experts.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and Kansas state Sens. Gene Suellentrop and Robert Olson are flat-out wrong, and their behavior puts their own lives, as well as those especially of older and fragile family members and their neighbors, at risk.

Schools are closed here. Bars and restaurants are shut down or limited to takeout and delivery service, and we are all practicing social distancing. Lives can and will be saved by taking aggressive action early, and they will be lost by foolish words and the failure to act by elected officials.

- Robert Hall, Washington, D.C.

Let us vote

Thank you, Kansas City Star, for printing Jason Hancock’s informative and balanced article, “Coronavirus concerns raise questions about voting absentee.” (March 18, 4A) Democracy works when everyone votes — and in times of crisis, we need democracy at work. It is essential that voters vote to make democracy work.

Yet voters should not have to risk their well-being to vote when Missouri could allow them to absentee vote by mail. The pandemic crisis, which is not one of the specified criteria for elective confinement at home, is one more reason Missouri needs to change its voting laws to meet voters’ needs.

Requiring an election on a single day and restrictive absentee-voting laws are outdated and not in the public interest. We need to let our elected officials know that we want to be able to vote absentee, and without a required notary, for the June 2 election and any other election affected by the pandemic.

We need permanent change in our restrictive voting methods. But for now, it is urgent that Missouri elected officials make it possible for everyone to vote.

- Evelyn Maddox, President, League of Women Voters of Missouri, Kansas City

Trump’s great

The Star has published letters recently complaining about the president for various reasons: lacking compassion, not taking the coronavirus seriously, not taking responsibility for (fill in the blank), blaming the previous administration for (again, fill in the blank).

For the life of me, I can’t understand what these people want from this man. He has strengthened the economy, stemmed the invasion of illegal immigration, brought down unemployment and negotiated a peace treaty with the Taliban, just to name a few accomplishments, all while swimming upstream in the cesspool of the slew of bogus schemes by the Democrats to thwart any progress he might have made.

I just wonder if these people have been living in a cave the last three years. Come on, folks — can’t we just let the man do his job?

- Sherrill Darrow, Leawood