Readers react to Gov. Sam Brownback’s brother, the EPA and the Iran agreement
Brownback’s brother
I find the allegations against Jim Brownback to be absolutely appalling (8-11, Blog Bit, Barbara Shelly). I can’t imagine living with someone like that as a neighbor.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback isn’t responsible for his brother’s actions, but he should publicly renounce this behavior and do all he can to see that justice is served.
Andrea DeHart
Olathe
Fully fund EPA
Watching TV news coverage of the toxic spill in the Animus River in Colorado, one can only hope Hillary Clinton’s campaign uses the event to highlight that — thanks to the Republican Congress — the Environmental Protection Agency is struggling to protect our environment with limited funds.
The contaminated water was a ticking time bomb that would have eventually burst into the river. The EPA was there to try to deal with decades of environmental neglect by the mining industry.
It is fair to criticize the EPA for the error in dealing with the problem but unfair to not acknowledge that the toxic waste was not of its making.
Oil exploration through fracking is a windfall for our country but can contaminate ground and surface water at a level to dwarf water contamination from traditional mining operations.
If the Clinton campaign is serious about environmental protection, it should pledge to support funding the EPA to continue fighting for our environment.
Albert Guarino
Prairie Village
Brooks column
David Brooks, in his Aug. 12 column, “Pact with Iran achieves not a single U.S. objective,” prefers war to what he calls the “partial-surrender agreement” in the recently negotiated proposal with Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Brooks never explains how war would achieve the no-nukes goal.
Every agreement involves compromises, and absent this agreement Iran would continue to enrich uranium without the burden of inspections. It is doubtful the allies that joined us in negotiating the agreement would join us in a war with Iran.
So, once again, we would have to go it alone.
Warmongers like Brooks have learned little from the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. That lesson is that diplomacy is much preferable to war every time.
Dennis McIntyre
Kansas City
Health care help
Thank you, Sen. Roy Blunt, for recently sponsoring the Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act. This legislation will allow pharmacists to provide the care they are trained to give and benefit Missourians who live in medically underserved areas.
Missourians rely on their local pharmacists as their first point of contact for health care, and in some areas pharmacists are the only contact many receive. This bill enables patients to get increased access to health care as a result of expanding pharmacists’ ability to provide that care under Medicare.
This legislation seeks to close the gap on provider shortages — a number that is rising. This legislation will allow for the continuing demand to be met.
Giving the medically underserved access to more services is a bipartisan issue. The House and Senate bills continue to gain support, and we encourage Congress to support that bill and its House counterpart so that people throughout Missouri can have the care and access they deserve.
The Missouri Retailers Association represents community pharmacies across the state and supports this legislation.
David S. Overfelt
Jefferson City
Defunding schools
So how did Dylann Roof arrive at the decision to kill nine innocent people in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.? He most likely used raw primitive emotions such as fear, anger and hatred.
Some of the websites he viewed are fueled with outright lies that can easily be disproved with a bit of fact-checking. These websites also espouse terror, fear and anger.
With his limited education, he does not have the tools or mental capacity to look at something and analytically critique and reason through a situation.
One of the most important things schools teach is independent, analytical, rational thinking. Basing decisions only on raw emotions is very dangerous.
The GOP is the leader of defunding and dismantling our public schools.
If you keep the masses uneducated and ignorant, they are much easier to control with tactics such as fear, lies, hatred and terror.
Barbara Nolan
Lenexa
Trump’s hate
Thanks need to go to Macy’s and other companies for standing against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s hate speech. Millions of Hispanics in the United States pay taxes and buy cars, homes and so many other things.
We have about 55 million American-born Latino citizens who buy products for their families.
Florentino Camacho Jr.
Kansas City
Political switch
A recent writer bemoaned Republicans labeling modern Democrats “leftists,” but then admitted to being one although preferring the term “liberal,” as in President John F. Kennedy liberal.
Does the writer mean the Kennedy who stared down Nikita Khrushchev and used the U.S. Navy to interdict Soviet shipping to halt nuclear proliferation in this hemisphere? The Kennedy who could be strong on civil rights and hard on crime simultaneously?
The Kennedy who challenged American youth to dream and to put a man on the moon within a decade? The Kennedy who created the Peace Corps, exporting thousands of American youth throughout the world to help improve quality of life and demonstrate American exceptionalism?
Above all, does the writer mean the Kennedy who demanded personal responsibility by telling us to ask not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country?
Modern-day lily-livered, doom-and-gloom, you-have-no-chance, we-must-immigrate-future-talent, government-will-provide, go-ahead-Iran Democrats are so far from Kennedy the resemblance has disappeared.
By the way, I’ve been a Kennedy liberal since the 1960s. But nowadays I must honestly call myself a Republican.
Mike Herr
Kansas City
GOP candidates
Former Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry and/or former GOP Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee would be excellent presidents for the United States. That said, should they somehow get skipped over, I say it should be billionaire Donald Trump’s time.
Other candidates for president have called Trump a clown. But they should remember the greatest part of the circus is the clown. And the world is a continuous circus. So what better leader could we have?
At least it appears he is trying to tell the truth, even as the news media belittle him.
Frank Berry
Kansas City
Heart on My Sleeve
I love
To walk through a wind tunnel on the upper deck
And breathe in the air of a baseball game.
I love the stadium lights and the exhilarating nights and the fountains that glow in the outfield.
I love grass-stained jerseys, and the dirt in the air as our boys steal bases,
And fireworks on a Friday night, and the sound of “Kansas City, here I come,” echoing in the stadium.
This is a place for hope because there’s a new game every day.
It’s where a city pulled together and found its way.
So take me out to the ballgame,
Where men wearing crowns swing wooden bats like kings,
Seeking their stolen thrones.
Kansas City, here I come, and the stadium chants fill my veins,
City of fountains, my home on the plains.
Kansas City, I’m coming, and I swear I believe —
My blood’s Royal blue and my heart’s on my sleeve.
Kansas City, I love you, please welcome me home;
Near or far away, I’m one of your own.
Kansas City, here I come, breathe that summer air in;
I’m grabbing a seat — the game’s about to begin.
Catherine Strayhall
Shawnee
This story was originally published August 14, 2015 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Readers react to Gov. Sam Brownback’s brother, the EPA and the Iran agreement."