Readers react to climate change, ingenuity and God
Climate change
If, after evaluation, more than 95 percent of the world’s medical doctors advised that you have a significant medical problem but more than 60 percent of the U.S. Congress concluded you have no problem, would you be concerned (11-29, A12, “Congress tries to cripple Obama in climate pact”)?
If, after evaluation, more than 95 percent of the world’s climatologists advised that climate change is a significant global problem but more than 60 percent of the U.S. Congress concluded there is no problem, should you be concerned?
Richard Robison
Overland Park
Protect ingenuity
The protections built into our patent system have driven innovation for generations by defending the rights and hard work of America’s inventors. These core principles were laid out in the Constitution and continue to ensure the property rights of America’s creative class.
Congress, spurred by corporate special interests, has taken on the task on reinventing patent law from the ground up to combat the abusive tactics of a small minority of patent holders.
The two bills working their way through Congress, H.R. 9 and S. 1137, do little to protect the hard work of inventors and patent holders like myself and, in an increasingly globalized market, would limit our ability to protect our patents from infringement abroad.
We here at the Inventors Center of Kansas City recognize that abusive patent activity is a problem that we must continue to address, but these bills are not the solution.
Rather than rewriting the laws completely, which could lead to long-lasting and unintended consequences, Congress should be working across the aisle to fine-tune our patent system and guarantee it will continue to protect American ingenuity for years to come.
Sean Murphy
CEO Inventors
Center of KC
Olathe
God, poor choices
In a Nov. 28 column, “If God created everything, why did he create disease?” the Rev. Joe Nassal tries to answer the question “If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why does God allow suffering in the world?”
Nassal offers this explanation: “The answer is often boiled down to free will: God gives us the freedom to choose, and sometimes we make poor choices.”
One problem with this answer is that while the perpetrators of horrendous acts may have made poor choices, the victims, often children, did not have a choice. How can one argue that the little girl who was imprisoned in a closet for years by her mother was exercising her free will or that the 7-year-old who allegedly was killed by his father made a poor decision?
Unless a better explanation can be provided, reason forces us to reach these conclusions:
▪ If God is all-loving, then he is not all-powerful.
▪ If God is all-powerful, then he is not all-loving.
Neither conclusion is very reassuring, but you’d have to be a real cynic to believe an omnipotent God would allow great evil done to innocents to teach us a lesson about making poor choices.
Pablo La Rosa
Mission
Dump Trump
I was absolutely appalled by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comments concerning his small loan from his father for $1 million. His sense of financial reality is not in line with 98 percent of Americans.
Anyone who can find Trump a viable candidate for president must be delusional. They consider him an outsider. I consider him part of the problem.
My father was an auto worker, which in the 1960s made him part of the middle class. Fortunately, he worked 35 years at the General Motors plant in Leeds before GM closed the plant.
He never owned a new car. My parents paid less for their house than what a car costs today. I felt lucky that they were able to pay for my first two years at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Donald Trump has again proved that he is completely out of touch with the realities of people working for a poverty minimum wage. Sorry, Trump supporters.
A vote for him is a vote for business as usual, with the National Rifle Association, big oil companies and Wall Street continuing their stranglehold on the average American.
Democratic president Bernie Sanders is speaking the truth.
Steven D. Addison
Kansas City
This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Readers react to climate change, ingenuity and God."