Trump’s a crook but prosecuting him would be wrong. Here’s how to make him really pay

Trump’s due

A letter to Merrick Garland, attorney general for the United States in the Department of Justice:

Concerning the alleged criminal theft of U.S government documents by ex-President Donald J. Trump, I suggest the following, as Donald J. Trump cares only about two things: Donald J. Trump and money:

▪ File a civil suit against Trump for several hundred million dollars to pay for the nation’s expenses in recovering the illegally stolen government documents.

▪ Permanently mark all the documents he took with the notation “Illegally Stolen by ex-President Donald J. Trump,” so that whoever peruses the documents for the next several centuries, Trump’s name will live in shame and infamy.

This would save the reputation of the United States for not exacting revenge against a former president, as a banana republic might.

Trump should be arrested, convicted and imprisoned only for something on the order of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. However, he does not have the physical courage to actually do that — only the courage to hide behind childish insults and accusations and to grab women by their private body parts.

- Robert Anderson, Four Seasons, Missouri

Not my call

I’m sitting on a nice comfy spot on top of Independence, with the fire of discontent nearby.

Why should I or anyone else who lives outside the limits of Kansas City decide what the city pays toward its police protection? (Aug. 21, 21A, “Take Kansas City’s police back from Jeff City. Stop Amendment 4”)

I don’t mind helping Kansas City, or anybody else fighting crime. If the state wants to run the Kansas City Police Department, then the state should pay for it.

- Jim Turner, Independence

Feed them right

I am appealing for Sen. Roger Marshall’s consideration in support of healthy public school meals. As a practicing cardiologist, I know preventive health care through diet is not only of the upmost personal importance, but also imperative for maintenance and preservation of health in our state and across the nation to prevent rising health care costs.

Studies sponsored by the American College of Cardiology and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have demonstrated the impact of diet on disease, rising health care costs and cardiovascular illness early in life as well as in late adulthood.

Instilling healthy habits through education, both by awareness and promotion of appropriate meal choices, affects us all.

- Heath Wilt, Prairie Village

Why this fight?

Doesn’t the Gardner Edgerton school district have more important things to do than worry about which restroom or locker room students use? (Sept. 13, 7A, “On bathrooms, pronouns, schools must first be kind”)

With teacher shortages, school shootings, low test scores and so many other concerns, is the district actually considering fighting a lawsuit (with taxpayer money paying the legal fees) because its new discriminatory policy violates Title IX?

Wouldn’t that time and money be better spent on teacher raises or increased security or just about anything else?

- Lynne Clock, Kansas City

Inevitable costs

Here in Southern California, where we rarely have any right to complain about the weather, we’ve been baking for weeks under a “heat dome.” A rare hurricane added to the discomfort with high winds stirring up new wildfires and bringing suffocating humidity. The heat transported me back to my childhood in Kansas City, a childhood both glorious and sweaty.

As hot and sticky as Kansas City and Los Angeles may be, they are nothing compared to the misery engulfing the planet. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminds us that there is nothing natural about these supposedly natural disasters, in both frequency and scale, and he rightly tells us they “are the price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction.” Yet despite all the warnings, we are heading in the wrong direction.

The United States can and must do more. We can build on the Inflation Reduction Act’s strong climate legislation by implementing a carbon fee that would put a gradually increasing price on carbon emissions at the well or mine, and would return the collected revenue as a carbon cash-back to consumers to protect us from increased prices.

But we must act now before what is only uncomfortable becomes endless catastrophe.

- Peggy Painton, Los Angeles