Letters: KC readers discuss info for voters, Mark Dupree and the Roman Empire’s history
Be in the know
Depending on where you live, your Aug. 4 ballot could have a dozen or more races and ballot questions. And since this is a primary, some races have up to six candidates. It will be a lot to work through, whether you fill out a mail-in ballot or go to the polls on Election Day.
That’s why visiting www.vote411.org/ballot, the League of Women Voters’ nonpartisan, online voter guide, can be a big help. You can access your personalized sample ballot and find details candidates have shared about their backgrounds, qualifications and priorities. You can also review information about Amendment 2, the Medicaid expansion question, and what its passage or defeat will mean to Missourians.
Vote411.org lets you compare candidates side by side, then print or save your completed sample ballot before going to the polls.
Although local election authorities are taking precautions to keep voters safe from coronavirus transmission, swiftly getting in and out of a polling location reduces the risk of coming in contact with an infected person.
Using vote411.org now to prepare to vote on Aug. 4 just makes good sense.
- Pat Goodwin, Voter guide committee co-chair, League of Women Voters of Kansas City, Jackson, Clay and Platte Counties, Kansas City
Explain it to me
To my very conservative, unmasked friends:
I don’t understand.
This is not just a conciliatory preface to the usual letter to the editor demanding that you stop doing and thinking what you do and think, and do and think what I do and think, instead.
I don’t understand — in the same sense that I don’t understand my bilingual friend when she inadvertently switches to her native Hungarian. She is saying something important and interesting, but I haven’t a clue.
When it comes to COVID-19, I really don’t understand what point — political or otherwise — you are making. Maybe I would agree with it if I knew what it is.
Here is the part where I try to talk you into something: Would it be possible to make your point in a way that is not perceived by me and many others as life threatening, both to us and to you? (How about writing it on the mask, or on a T-shirt if it’s a big message?)
Maybe we are wrong. But it would be an honest mistake, and cutting us some slack would inconvenience you very little and make us feel very much safer.
- Greg Hodes, Kansas City
Out of water
Thank you for your editorials on District Attorney Mark Dupree. (July 23, 10A, “Wyandotte County DA Mark Dupree endangers public safety”; July 26, 18A, “Crime victims lack justice, concern from WyCo DA Dupree”)
The man is obviously the wrong man in the wrong job. He might be a good defense attorney, but he is a duck out of water now and depriving too many people of the justice they deserve.
- Jerry Brownawell, Kansas City, Kansas
How we serve
No, teaching is not like every other essential job.
We teachers are physically, mentally and emotionally responsible for 20 to 30 clients at one time. And we serve the same clientele for hours at a time.
We can’t simply walk away from clients or deny them service if they don’t follow policy.
Our clients possess developing brains. We serve a demographic with a false sense of invincibility, low respect for boundaries and short attention spans.
Some of our clients don’t want or appreciate our services, and act accordingly.
We contribute our own funds to help ensure that our clients are successful, happy and safe.
The majority of our clients are regulars, and we are devastated if anything happens to any of them.
The truth is that it’s not 100% safe to open any business right now. But equating the risks of education to every other business is simply ignorant.
Sure, at the moment, the idea that it’s unsafe to open schools is ultimately only a theory. But unfortunately, the proof could be catastrophic.
- Lillie Schenk, Leavenworth
Facts are off
A letter writer July 19 suggested that we could learn from Roman history. (16A) Maybe so. But the letter stated that the Roman Empire lasted “less that 200 years.” That is factually wrong. The empire lasted well over 400 years. Add the years of the republic, and the writer is very much in error.
If you intend to use history to make a political point, you fail unless you get your history correct.
I fear for our republic. Just one reason is that we have leaders who get away with stating as facts that which is clearly false. This paper ought not to contribute to that malpractice.
- Thomas Russell, St. Joseph