Children riding on 2 wheels don’t realize a motor makes all the difference | Opinion
E-hazard
A two-wheeled, human-powered conveyance is a bicycle. A two-wheeled, electric-powered conveyance is a motorbike. Last Tuesday, three children riding e-bikes pulled out from a side street directly in front of my car. They ignored the stop sign, no helmet on any of the three — not that it would have mattered. If I’m not paying attention or am distracted for the one instance, I would have run over all three.
I honked and was acknowledged with the universal one-finger salute. They apparently had no idea how close they had come to attaining statistic status. I did.
This is a serious problem, and growing more so as summer is near and children assume they’re bulletproof. Policing this activity adds to the list of time-consuming items that already overtax our police departments. But given the rapidly increasing number of electric modes of transport and the young age of those who operate them, it’s a simple question of how long and how many.
Pedaling our way to freedom served us well. But heading that way at 30 mph?
- Jim Bretz, Blue Springs
The real story
For my first 30 years, I lived in a bubble of unprecedented prosperity — prosperity with an advantage caused primarily by men in aircraft with bombs destroying the competition. My father climbed into the nose of a B-17 for 30 combat missions where he and others — some of whom did not come back — did all they could to destroy the enemy’s capacity to continue the war.
The subsequent absence of those bombed-flat European factories, combined with the GI Bill (which my father used and which Black veterans could not), combined with a top marginal income tax rate of 91%, combined with roughly a third of the private-sector workforce in unions, produced about 30 years in which a man with a high school diploma could buy a house, raise a family on one income and retire on a pension — provided he was white and was standing in roughly the spot my father was standing in when the music started.
The folks in the red hats are grieving — and their grief is real, and the deindustrialization that produced it is real. The narrative they offer is a lie.
- Larry Bennett, Overland Park
Stand up
I don’t know if I have ever been so ashamed of our government on hearing that the Department of Justice, under the direction of President Donald Trump’s former personal defense counsel, approved a $1.776 billion slush fund to “compensate“ Trump allies, including Jan. 6 rioters. (May 21, 7A, “Thune casts doubt on Trump settlement fund plan”) Equally alarming is that our two Missouri senators have remained silent, voicing no objection to this fraud on all of us who pay taxes. Yes, this is taxpayer money that will fund this scheme.
By now, I should well understand that Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt are afraid to take any stand against Trump — but when will they stand up for us and our very democracy?
- Brian Fowler, Kansas City
Gave all
When I graduated from college in 1967, this country was waging a war in Vietnam. The U.S. had 550,00 troops fighting in that country, with 3,400,000 troops having been in the region by May 1975.
The number of troops necessary for that war far exceeded the number of volunteers who joined the military. Draft boards were set up and given monthly quotas. The policy usually was to allow high school graduates four-year exemptions if they chose to attend college. However, they had to renew that exemption annually, and many draft boards (mine included) required an annual physical examination in case you were called to duty.
Our current president, Donald Trump, and I are about the same age. He never served in the military, was never drafted and claimed he had a physical disability — bone spurs in his heels, which exempted him from military service. The daughters of the doctor who made that diagnosis say their father did so falsely, as a “favor” to the Trump family.
Never served in the military. He must still laugh about that. But remember, more than 58,000 Americans were killed in that war.
- John Yeast, Prairie Village