Readers share views on libraries, President Obama, oil price
Great KC libraries
Any list of life-enhancing institutions in the Kansas City area should certainly include our award-winning libraries: Johnson County, Kansas City, Linda Hall, Mid-Continent plus our history, health science, law, college, university and other fine libraries. Too often in listings these are overlooked.
Yet they are vital to our well-being. Use them. Support them. Love them.
Alma Rae Price
Fairway
Obama’s success
When reading the Feb. 18 letters to the editor, I was surprised to find someone had written that after eight years of President Barack Obama, we as a country are doomed. The writer said he has “failed on every front and possibly on purpose.”
I don’t know how this contributor defines failure, but I think Obama has been a very successful president.
We are not committing our Army to a land war. The stock market hovers around 17,000 not 8,000, where it was in the previous administration. Unemployment is under 5 percent, not the 9.5 he inherited, and more people have access to health insurance than ever before.
Many more people could be insured through Medicaid if lawmakers in more states would approve Medicaid expansion. We shouldn’t play politics with our children’s health.
Personally, I think President Obama has been very successful.
Denny Gibler
Lee’s Summit
Falling oil prices
I’m not an economist, but it seems to me that the world economy is intentionally being thrown into a recession by Saudi Arabia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. In an effort to financially shut down the fracking industry, they have been flooding the world market with oil, driving the price to ridiculously low levels.
This is causing the world stock markets to nosedive. With it could come a recession.
Why don’t the world powers (hello, United States), for purposes of national security, put sanctions on the countries in OPEC until they close the floodgates? And national security is really threatened, so it’s not a stretch.
Tony Hawkins
Kansas City
Trump, Christianity
Responding to Pope Francis’ comment that Donald Trump is not Christian (2-19, A1, “Papal comments stir U.S. politics”), the Republican presidential candidate said, “I am proud to be a Christian, and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”
If anyone has weakened Christianity in the eyes of the world, it is Trump, whose words and actions are the antithesis of Christian thought and values. He ridicules a war hero, employs misogynist humor, mocks a disabled reporter and calls the last Republican president a liar.
He recommends expelling 11 million undocumented immigrants, sending Syrian refugees back into a war zone and banning the immigration of Muslims to America. He bullies and berates those who disagree with him by calling them losers, morons and dummies.
The pope has it right. Trump’s abusive and venomous words and thoughts defy the essence of Christianity. Rather they portray an alarming example of what voters should reject when choosing the leader of the free world.
Ron Fugate
Overland Park
Non-lawyer jurist
Many of my friends are lawyers. I admire the legal profession. But why do lawyers possess all the seats of the Supreme Court? The Constitution does not specify lawyers for the court.
The Supreme Court should be democracy’s temple of justice, not a hothouse where, by arcane arguments, lawyers twist the law to their own ends. Lawyers are not the only ones who can recognize justice.
Groups of highly qualified people of diverse backgrounds working together often produce superior outcomes.
Therefore, I suggest that at least one Supreme Court justice, the next one, be a non-lawyer smart enough to access and comprehend the history and technicalities of the law, having been trained in medicine, education, the social services, government, business, the arts, sports, science, the media or religion.
Kansas City has several such polymaths who would enhance the court’s work, and from the nation’s talent pool we could easily find someone who would make the Constitution blaze anew with the light of justice for a democratic nation.
Vern Barnet
Kansas City
This story was originally published February 22, 2016 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Readers share views on libraries, President Obama, oil price."