Readers share thoughts on the war on drugs, KCI and U.S. troops in Africa
End war on drugs
“Let’s be honest, the war on marijuana has failed,” said former Kansas City police chief Joseph McNamara.
In September, the country lost a hero with the passing of the Harvard Ph.D. and Hoover Institution fellow. Considered the “father of community policing,” McNamara led ground-breaking efforts here in Kansas City to reconcile the mistrust of police and citizens and to increase public safety.
As a prominent member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, McNamara stood at the front line of the drug war and found it a failure. I had the privilege of working with him in 2010 for California’s marijuana-legalization effort, and he was unequivocally the most potent voice of our campaign.
I had hoped to someday invite McNamara back to Kansas City to speak about marijuana prohibition. Although Joe will not be with us, LEAP director Neill Franklin, former American Civil Liberties Union director Ira Glasser, Missouri state Rep. Brandon Ellington and Show-Me Cannabis will participate in a public forum 6-8 p.m. Wednesday at the Mary L. Kelly Center, 2803 E. 51st St.
Race and the drug war will be discussed. Please join us and help advance the cause for which McNamara fought in the last decades of his life.
Amber Iris Langston
Kansas City
Liberalism just died
Tuesday night, liberalism was put into a deep coma for at least 10 years.
The Star and its political writers need to change their attitudes and not be so liberal by pushing for liberal candidates. Your recommendations on the Nov. 4 Opinion Page for Kansas were slaughtered.
For those of you who don’t live in Kansas, you have no right to voice an opinion. Kansas is a red state, and we want lower taxes and smaller government.
I can give you only one recommendation. Report the facts and don’t give your own personal opinion in your newspaper. The reputation of The Star is now on the line. To be so liberal hurts your reputation, professionalism, credibility and validity.
If you don’t change, The Star just might lose readership and be in trouble like a lot of print media are today.
Bob Holbert
Overland Park
Democratic strategy
In the same spirit of cooperation afforded the president and Democrats in a previous election, I would like for President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress to announce that their No. 1 priority from now on is to assure that Mitch McConnell will be a one-term Senate majority leader (and implicitly damn the rest of the country by being as obstructionist as possible).
Gabor Gyulafia
Kansas City, Kan.
Cost of KCI plan
I recently reviewed reports regarding the future of Kansas City International Airport. The panel’s finding that a one-terminal idea is in the best interest of the city, metropolitan community and area citizens is one I strongly disagree with.
Each report stated repairs and upgrades would run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And we know how much the proposed one-terminal plan could cost.
Since when is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make changes to our beloved airport an idea worth ignoring versus spending more than a billion dollars? Where was this panel’s head throughout this process?
I honestly can’t see it.
James Hawkins
Kansas City, Kan.
U.S. troops in Africa
Obama administration officials have done many stupid things, but sending 4,000 U.S. military personnel to West Africa, where the Ebola virus is rampant, is one of the stupidest.
The military is designed to break things and kill enemies, not nursemaid sick people. Can you shoot a disease? Can you send in an airstrike? Can you blow it up?
Sending 4,000 troops into West Africa will cost us plenty.
What will happen when these 4,000 soldiers rotate back to the States? Spread the Ebola virus to family members, other soldiers, the public? Would you want to be one of these soldiers?
What are these soldiers going to do, hand out blankets, water and food? Why does that have to be done by the U.S. military?
Or will they have military exercises or work with Liberian and Sierra Leone troops?
Just think what these 4,000 soldiers could do for America if they were stationed on the Texas border. Zero illegal immigration would happen.
Where are President Barack Obama’s priorities? Not with our country.
Terry Love
Shawnee
Keep drug tests
Drug tests in the workplace are beneficial because they hold employees accountable for their actions and for obeying company policy rules. Substance abuse is a serious issue and needs to be limited in the workplace for a businesses to run efficiently.
Employers explain drug testing and hold fast to it in the interview and examination realm. Tests should continue in order to keep the workplace professional and successful. Countless studies have shown that drugs inhibit the full potential that can be reached in work ethic, productivity and production.
Luke Schneider
Gladstone
President, truth
When Sen. Barack Obama was running for president, he promised that the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs would be addressed. He failed to address the problem.
After Mr. Obama became president, the national debt increased. He said al-Qaida was on the run. He needs to watch TV news more.
The Benghazi terrorist attack was the result of an Internet video, the Obama administration initially said. People died in that action. People also died because of the Fast and Furious operation.
And who can forget this gem? “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
So you folks will have to excuse me if I do not believe President Obama and his philosophy of man-made global warming. President Obama knows very little about the truth.
Larry Dickstein
Lone Jack
Immigration reform
Last year, the U.S. Senate passed an immigration-reform package with bipartisan support. The U.S. House Republican leadership will not allow its members to vote on this Senate bill.
Leading Republican and Democratic economists estimate that the U.S. Senate bill would boost the national growth rate by at least 1 percent per year over 10 years and reduce the national debt by nearly $3 trillion. The National Association of Manufacturers president, Jay Timmons, says that supporting reform “is a unified position of the business community in the United States.”
There are economic and moral reasons to pass immigration reform. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ official position states that an “immigration policy that allows people to live here and contribute to society for years but refuses to offer them the opportunity to achieve legal status does not serve the common good. The presence of millions of people living without easy access to basic human rights and necessities is a great injustice.”
Now is the time to let U.S. House members vote on immigration reform.
Dan Lykins
Topeka
Islamic State future
Larry Niven’s 1972 science-fiction story “Flash Crowd” offers a frightening explanation for the rise of the Islamic State.
He projects a world in which there is instant communication from the media (a hyped-up version of what would become CNN) and instant transportation through “transfer booths,” where one deposits coins and is immediately beamed to the desired destination. As a result, a tiny percentage of the world’s population that likes riots flocks to the transfer booths to join in.
So it goes in the quick rise of the Islamic State. Social media draw the world’s small percentage of psychopaths who want to go to the Middle East, where they can murder and rape in the name of God. We don’t have transfer booths, but travel is very fast, and social media connect us all.
So Niven’s concept warns us about the future of our world of seven billion people with a minuscule percentage of psychopathic killers.
Carrol L. Fry
Maryville, Mo.
This story was originally published November 6, 2014 at 5:13 PM with the headline "Readers share thoughts on the war on drugs, KCI and U.S. troops in Africa."