Readers sound off on KCI, Donald Trump, Kansas jobs

KCI makeover

As a business owner, I buy about 100 tickets to or from Kansas City International Airport every year for my employees. I no longer care if we have a single terminal or renovate the old ones.

Any convenience of the current configuration is canceled by the lack of parking. Try finding a place to park Tuesday through Thursday outside Terminal B or in the adjoining lots.

The cellphone waiting lot is not convenient, which causes countless cars to circle waiting to pick up incoming passengers. Traffic jams regularly occur.

Arrival and departure gates are seriously deficient for the amount of people traveling today. I arrived from Washington, D.C., one evening and could hardly walk through the exit because of people sitting on the floor.

The high-volume gates are approaching the condition of New York’s LaGuardia, which has been labeled by many publications as the nation’s worst airport.

It is time to move forward, one way or another. The city owes the traveling public a better facility than the current KCI.

Greg Henson

Blue Springs

Trump’s undoing

Here’s a thought experiment: What if Khizr and Ghazala Khan became the loose spike in the railroad track, and the loose spike derailed the Donald Trump train’s path to the White House (8-1, A1, “Trump in spat with soldier’s parents’)? Shakespeare had a phrase: “Hoist with his own petard.”

Nathan Roser

Overland Park

Different America

Too often, fear-mongering can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the terrorists intended to bring about chaos to the world, they have surely succeeded.

It appears we have succumbed to fear as they intended. This summer it resulted in the split of Britain from the European Union and will surely result in more splits.

The terrorists have emboldened the politics of fear right here at home. We have traded the unity, resolve and patriotism so present on 9/11 for infighting, gridlock and division fed by tabloid journalism.

I’ve been a Republican all my life, and I do not recognize these people who purport to represent the Republican Party of today. It wasn’t enough to throw away what should have been the easiest presidential win in history. They’re determined to throw the Supreme Court, which will take decades to balance.

To think my 10th vote for a president might be my first for a Democrat.

My grandfather is surely spinning in his grave. I’m sure we’ll get through this as we always have, but it will be a very different America.

John Goldsmith

Napoleon, Mo.

Kansas job losses

It is sad to see that Wyandot Inc. had to lay off people because of funding shortfalls from the state (7-28, A1, “Agency to trim mental health services”). Instead of Gov. Sam Brownback’s promised job growth resulting from income tax reductions, here we have 19 real jobs gone and 18 other job vacancies.

And most sadly, they were people providing critical social services to needy people. Kansas voters better vote out the Brownback legislative enablers to prevent a total collapse of the system.

Jim Albrecht

Lenexa

Judge Scott Wright

I read recently of the passing of federal Judge Scott O. Wright, and I was sorry to learn this because he was an awesome man, judge and for me a teacher (7-12, A4, “ ‘One of a kind’ U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright dies at 93”).

Many years ago, I served on a federal grand jury with Judge Wright as the presiding judge. He appointed me, an African-American woman, the foreperson of the otherwise all-white grand jury. Most of those who came before the grand jury were also white.

I learned about “probable cause” and the Ku Klux Klan and skinheads, as well as drug cases, and it was scary for me but I served and I conquered my fears of being followed home by some criminal.

Judge Wright was such a good American, in my opinion, because he believed in equality and freedom and justice for all. I did not know he was a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Law in 1950.

That was the year Lincoln University student Gus Ridgel applied for entrance to graduate school at MU. After more than 100 years of segregation, the school became integrated. Ridgel was accepted and in 1951 became the first African-American student to earn a graduate degree at MU. You know what that meant to African-Americans.

Thanks to Judge Wright for all he did.

Elizabeth A. Wilson

Jefferson City

This story was originally published August 2, 2016 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Readers sound off on KCI, Donald Trump, Kansas jobs."