Readers react to Amtrak, immigration and hamburgers

Fun riding rails

My husband and I took Amtrak to Chicago on a mini-vacation eight months ago. It was my husband’s first time traveling by train, and he enjoyed it very much and so did I.

You just sit back and relax or you can mingle with other friendly passengers. We loved watching the scenery and the stops at quaint little towns.

Congress should increase funding for train travel because it is good for the country.

Sharon Marshall

Kansas City

Harming Americans

We have people from Mexico coming into the United States every day. That country has cartels, drugs and killings every day.

But not once have I read about one of them taking some kind of gun and killing 20 children in an elementary school or spraying a U.S. military recruiting office with gunfire.

I could go on and on about the horrible massacres.

Quit wasting our money on the Mexican people and go after the ones who really mean us harm.

Sandra Justice

Independence

Hamburger redux

I wonder whether any of your readers have noticed the shrinkage in hamburger meat.

It seems to me that when I cook a hamburger patty, it shrinks to a patty much smaller than the one I shaped and started with.

It appears that a lot of steam comes from it while it is being cooked. That doesn’t seem to be the case with roasts and steaks, so it makes me wonder whether butchers or slaughterhouses are shaving ice into the hamburger I buy.

It would be helpful if the Food and Drug Administration would require that the moisture content of ground meat be placed on the label that now shows other pertinent facts.

I hate to pay $4 or $5 a pound for water.

Further, it seems this is a variable between stores.

Hugh J. Taylor

Overland Park

Steve Rose column

Steve Rose had been doing so well recently reporting and commenting on Gov. Sam Brownback’s Kansas fiscal disaster.

Apparently, his DNA, the Republican Kool-Aid or his hatred of the school-finance formula kicked in (8-30, Commentary, “Let’s now praise Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback”).

Rose praises Brownback for “avoiding draconian cuts” by increasing taxes on the poor and middle class to cover the hole he created by cutting taxes on business owners.

Rose even claims that Brownback has “… not been bad for education.”

Never mind extreme budget cuts, layoffs and teachers leaving in droves. The highest praise he can offer is that Brownback did not cut higher education by $250 million, as did Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Talk about damning with faint praise (or the coulda-been-worse defense.)

Scott Gregory

Roeland Park

Vision challenged

Education requires consistent commitment from everyone. As part of any ongoing dialogue, Independence residents should consider their district’s policy requiring that all administrators live in-district.

If common sense won’t suffice, science long ago proved the benefits of such hybrid vigor.

The one place with a mix of ideas is the Independence School District central office, but only because the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing. A revolving door of “cures” for education’s ills thwarts progress as each person grapples to leave his or her mark.

Residents should also question the district’s treatment of teachers. Experience and diversity of ideas improve any workplace. Quality teaching is not a plug-and-play app, and true leadership never comes from bully pulpits or fossilized, patriarchal business models and attitudes.

Independence seeks group-think to advance agendas. Erasmus, a Dutch Renaissance scholar, noted, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Unfortunately, in the Independence School District, too many don’t have even that much vision.

Anne Johnston

Kansas City

Religious freedom

Gov. Sam Brownback and his supporters in the Kansas Legislature have lost sight of how all religious beliefs are protected in our country. It exists in the Constitution in the separation of church and state.

In other words, no one religion is above another.

You don’t need to create laws to protect individuals and businesses from dealing with gays. They simply don’t have to participate. Or you can find other work.

Maryelizabeth Will

Kansas City, Kan.

Lessons in Kansas

Thanks to folks such as Gov. Sam Brownback, Secretary of State Kris Kobach and the Topeka clan of Fred Phelps, Kansas’ backward ways are actually helping to lead the nation forward.

Gov. Brownback’s trickle-down economy has been a complete disaster, ensuring his political future ends in Kansas, thus saving the country from any presidential aspirations he holds while leading other states away from his economic failures.

The Phelps clan’s ignorance and spewed hate led the way for fast-tracking marriage equality more than any other single group in the last 10 years. The group’s hate highlighted the issue from the extremist point of view and led the way for rational people to see the light.

Kobach’s backward methods of voter repression are gaining attention, and if all goes to plan will fail, costing us, the people, thousands if not millions of dollars in legal fees while fostering more negative attention and stereotyping Kansas as a bigoted state.

In some insane way, we should be thanking these folks. But I still can’t reward bad behavior.

I’ll just say, keep leading Kansas backward.

The nation is watching and learning.

Scott Kesterson

Overland Park

Big insurance

Health care and job paucity in America are crises and related.

In 1945, Congress, through the McCarran-Ferguson Act, granted the health-insurance industry an antitrust exemption.

Today, health insurance, a mammoth industry, remains exempt. Its lavish lobby owns members of Congress and local state insurance commissioners, enabling it to monopolize with cooperation from each state.

Meanwhile, the federal Treasury has printed trillions of dollars and has kept the prime lending rate near zero percent. However, the federal bureaucracy has imposed dozens of new major regulations, which, along with Obamacare, stifles business growth incentive.

So while money is cheap, creating a situation that is ripe for growth and jobs, it is not profitable for businesses to expand against such massive federal headwinds. The Feds’ cheap money, your pension funds and your IRA administrators all maximize payback in the stock market instead of economic growth and jobs.

This chaos could be mitigated if Congress repeals the McCarran-Ferguson Act and/or state insurance commissions begin to require the criminal health-insurance cartel to compete across state lines. Obamacare, subsidies and health-care costs could be cut by up to 50 percent.

Otto Rieke

Overland Park

Royals distractions

This letter is to the Kansas City Royals and the team’s bandwagon fans.

Royals, please be able to handle at least 36,000 fans and let the bandwagon fans know to arrive sooner.

I looked at a half-empty stadium from Interstate 70 at game time that was full by the second inning when I got to my seat having missed the three runs scored. Taking Amtrak and the “L” in Chicago to a Cardinals-Cubs game is easier than accessing Kauffman Stadium.

Let bandwagon fans know that a game is going on and that texting and multiple aisle exits interrupt the game-watching. This is baseball, not all of the entertainment distraction stuff like at the T-Bones games.

I was at a lightly attended Royals game during the wild-card push last season, when Royals manager Ned Yost begged for more fan support. The 16,000 fans at that game watched intently.

People now act as if it’s not worth paying total attention to the game and ruin it for the people who pay attention.

Johnny Cueto is awesome. Delays and distractions aren’t.

Mike Ford

Baldwin City, Kan.

This story was originally published September 1, 2015 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Readers react to Amtrak, immigration and hamburgers."