Readers sound off on KCI, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders
New KCI palace
A proposed new Kansas City International Airport terminal is lambasted. Is that criticism accurate?
A 3 percent revenue increase suggests money is being made, bolstering the argument that sufficient monies exist, along with a bond, to build a new aviary palace.
Consider the advantages: One can begin walking less than 100 feet for a toilet inside the waiting lounge. One may begin consuming gourmet lunches and shop with élan and fervid, conspicuous consumption in a mall-like environment.
A Disney menagerie is not too offbeat to imagine as blueprints fly off the press. One can assuredly count on increased airfares, profligate or not, to challenge the flat pay raises Americans as a whole are experiencing in household budgets.
One may assume no builder, city official or commercial airline will take existing revenues from public or private coffers, offsetting revenues needed for the Taj Mahal of Missouri wonders. One certainly can expect air traffic building at KCI, to the point of forgetting about how to use a phantom terminal already in existence — awaiting new traffic, in a new terminal, rationalized by spin approaching quantum atom proportions.
Of course, like NFL football teams building new stadiums, we will bask in glorified pride. Nice proposal, nice marketing or poor idea?
Jack Landes
Kansas City
Democrat Clinton
What words come to mind when describing Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton?
Deceiving
Elitist
Marxist
Obnoxious
Contemptible
Reprehensible
Archaic
Treacherous.
Mike Brown
Kansas City, Kan.
Sanders’ appeal
Many are surprised that young people are choosing Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Now a decade into adulthood, millennials have experienced the election process. Perhaps they see the lunacy of a corrupt political system, where corporations are people and bribery is sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court. They see where politicians fight ideological wars instead of solving problems and where the party in power adds obstacles to voting.
Perhaps they’ve traveled to European social democracies, where citizens are relatively content, even while paying high taxes; where medical care does not lead to bankruptcy; where guns are registered, crime is low and mass shootings are a news story from America; where graduates begin their careers without huge college loans to pay off; where the science of climate change is respected and efficient public transportation is the norm.
Perhaps the younger generation recognizes that problems need attention. They realize their future is in their hands.
Richard Voss
Overland Park
Tough choices
Somebody has to pay the bills. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback made the news again last week for making the tough choices needed to make ends meet (5-19, A2, “Brownback cuts fall hard on Medicaid, higher education”).
Brownback enacted nearly $100 million in cuts to the environment, health care, higher education and services to the aging and disabled, children and poor. He also has delayed nearly $100 million in payments to the state’s employee pension fund.
In other news, University of Kansas basketball coach Bill Self and Kansas State University football coach Bill Snyder pay absolutely no state taxes on millions of dollars of their taxpayer-funded state employee incomes. Why?
Because Self and Snyder have taken advantage of the totally legal tax breaks Brownback has so generously afforded those who form limited liability companies. The state’s sick, aging, disabled, children, poor and pensioners aren’t so lucky.
Kansas simply cannot afford to help those who refuse to help themselves. As I said, Brownback has had some very tough choices to make and deserves full credit for making them. Somebody has to pay the bills.
Michael Ashcraft
Kansas City
Nerds on TV ads
Whenever I see the television commercials with the two nerds at the fast-food drive-in restaurant, I usually laugh out loud. Those two guys always put a smile on my face.
Sometimes they are so funny I repeat the commercial to others. Anything that brings a laugh our way is welcome.
I love those nerds.
Margaret Kensinger
Raytown
This story was originally published May 24, 2016 at 7:41 PM with the headline "Readers sound off on KCI, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders."