Readers sound off on Middle East, Social Security, Kansas budget
Kurds need support
One group that has so far successfully defended itself against the Islamic State is the Kurds. That might change because they are running out of weapons and ammunition.
The United States should give them the supplies they need so they can continue to defend themselves.
Many of the people who have been driven from their homes by the Islamic State have found refuge among the Kurds. If the Kurds are defeated, they will have to undergo tremendous suffering a second time.
Clyde Herrin
Bonner Springs
Social Security woes
The Supreme Court ruling in the Flemming v. Nestor 1960 decision “established the principle that entitlement to Social Security benefits is not (a) contractual right.” Yet we paid into Social Security during our working lifetime of 40 to 50 years.
Many congressional members are lawyers using the law against the majority working middle-class people of our country in order to benefit greedy corporations, the wealthy and themselves.
Most of the Republicans are forever working with corporations in deceiving the majority out of their Social Security and Medicare allocated for the middle and working class.
Most corporations are not paying their fair share of taxes, which is turning our government into an autocracy. We need more middle-class people in Congress, including farmers, factory workers, construction infrastructure workers, educators, social workers, physicians and plain, sincere people.
The Supreme Court made a grave error in determining corporations are as people, which allowed greedy corporations to buy politicians’ way into office to gain control of the country and the working middle class.
In time, 10 percent of our country will be the wealthy ruling elite, taking control of the 90 percent poor, and there will be no middle class.
Terrance R. Hawbaker
Atchison, Kan.
Kansas budget fix
About 90 percent of Kansans are violently against Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s income tax cuts based on printed letters to The Star. Surely, there is no bias at The Star that would account for this.
Because Johnson County has about 25 percent of all Kansans, these letters should represent a close approximation of the overwhelming sentiment in the entire state.
I have a proposal so obvious I can’t believe it hasn’t been immediately clear to all legislators in Topeka. It would solve the budget crisis immediately, based on the representative sample of letters printed daily in The Star.
The state should send letters to all Kansas taxpayers, recalculating their income tax payments for 2013 and 2014, showing how much more each should pay using the prior, higher tax schedules. Every Kansan paying the previous higher rate would receive a large button proudly proclaiming “Kansas Fair Share Taxpayer.”
Nearly all Kansans would, of course, based on the letters to The Star, put their money where their mouths are to prove their civic-mindedness and would pay their fair share, proudly wearing their buttons.
No need to thank me for this self-evident solution to the budget crisis.
Lee Levin
Overland Park
Lee Judge cartoons
Lee Judge’s opinion cartoon offends me almost every day. He is so biased and slanted that he should be labeled as such.
Can’t The Star find a more middle-of-the-road cartoonist who is actually amusing?
Marian Watkins
Overland Park
Corporate welfare
Capitalists celebrate the silent genius of the marketplace and how it always finds the fair value of goods and services. Usually this is accompanied by castigation of government bloat and overreach.
Both the Kansas and Missouri legislatures, bastions of corporate capitalism, are filled with lawmakers eager to shrink government, most often by cutting services to students, the disabled, the sick and the poor and by raising consumption taxes.
It is darkly ironic how few of them recognize the hypocrisy of their position, for it is these same lawmakers who expand and protect government subsidies to businesses, under the rubric of economic development, in the form of property-tax exemptions, tax-exempt bonds, income-tax rebates, deductions, tax credits of all sorts and, sometimes, direct allocations from a general fund.
We humbly offer a treasure trove of gifts to our corporate benefactors. The inanity peaks in our region with both states and their cities engaged in a much less than zero-sum battle to reward corporate incivility by bribing companies to cross the line and watch their taxes shrink.
Subsidies to farmers and businesses vastly exceed those assisting our young, old, poor and sick.
Who are the welfare queens?
Free-market capitalism? Absurd.
Jim White
Kansas City
Clinton’s candidacy
Everyone seems to be caught up on the importance of transparency. Well, we finally have a presidential candidate who is easy to see right through.
Hillary Clinton is transparently: dishonest (“We left the White House flat broke”), greedy ($250,000 speeches), paranoid (the “vast right-wing conspiracy”), ignorant (“businesses don’t create jobs”), devious (destruction of government emails from an unauthorized personal server), incompetent (the failed Russian reset), heartless (what difference does it make how and why four Americans were murdered while in service to their country), phony (standing by her man in a sham marriage with a serial womanizer), deceptive (refusal to answer pertinent questions from legitimate reporters), shallow (a “listening tour” with preselected sycophants providing the feedback), exploitive (a life attached to Bubba’s coattails), lawless (refusal to produce subpoenaed documents in her possession) and phony (serving as secretary of state in the administration of a reviled adversary).
The only thing more shameful than being duped into voting for a candidate devoid of experience and qualifications, as we now have in the White House, is to even consider voting for someone with demonstrably negative experience and multiple disqualifications.
Crosby P. Engel
Weatherby Lake
Constitutional silence
Perhaps you have noticed several groups thumping on our Constitution to enforce their points of view.
Members of the tea party, for example, want the federal government to leave them alone (well, until the tornado hits their town.)
The churches have long been looking for the word God in the Constitution to force or prevent other people from doing what they don’t like.
And millions upon millions of National Rifle Association members are training to be part of militias.
Hoping to take advantage of this groundswell, I quote from Article I, Section 6, “The Senators and Representatives ... for any Speech or Debate in either House ... shall not be questioned in any other Place.”
Doesn’t this mean we can rid the airwaves of pesky elected representatives from shows such as “Meet the Press” or “News Hour” or “Hannity” or any other forum not on the actual floor of Congress? Seems crystal clear to me.
Should any constitutional lawyer out there be sympathetic, please contact me about filing suit.
Ron Platt
Overland Park
Sinatra’s ‘Sunflower’
I am this song: “I was born in Kansas, I was bred in Kansas and when I get married I’ll be wed in Kansas.” I have always been proud to be a Kansan.
I was raised on a farm in southeast Kansas, and my father was a hard-working construction worker. He always said, “If they let me make the money, I will gladly pay the taxes.”
The song “Sunflower” was sung by Frank Sinatra. The lyrics continue, “Troubles end in Kansas, folks unbend in Kansas.”
Our Legislature made a mistake two years ago. It needs to fix it.
The Kansas Legislature needs to stop making us ashamed of Kansas.
Sandra Whitaker
Lake Quivira
This story was originally published June 29, 2015 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Readers sound off on Middle East, Social Security, Kansas budget."