[LETTERS] Readers react to Planned Parenthood, abandoned animals and Obamacare

Planned Parenthood

Even though Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas do not accept fetal tissue, Gov. Sam Brownback launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood. Brownback is staunchly opposed to abortion, so this is merely another effort to close down Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas.

Apparently, the governor does not realize the vital health care services Planned Parenthood provides for women. These include birth control, sexually transmitted disease testing, pelvic exams, Pap tests and breast-cancer screenings. Abortions account for only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services.

Brownback must keep his hands off health care for Kansas women and concentrate on the fiscal disaster he has created in our state.

Jane Toliver

Leawood

Abandoned animals

To the uncaring person who saw fit to drop off the little black and white dog at Missouri 150 and Bynum Road one Sunday morning, if you had stuck around a few minutes you could have seen that bewildered baby scanning every vehicle that passed by hoping in its heart that you would return, only to be disappointed time after time.

You would also have seen several caring people stop to try and rescue that poor thing before it became another dead animal along the roadway.

You were right in your apparent assumption that we country folk are animal lovers and will if possible make a home for your unwanted pet.

The truth is, however, we who want animals already have them. Your callous disregard for that animal’s feelings are reprehensible.

There are a number of animal rescuers in the metropolitan area that would have gladly taken that poor creature and tried to find a decent home for it.

Almost daily, we who travel the highway are treated to a collection of dead animals, some wild and some dumped as was yours, that have been struck by cars.

Shame on you.

Wayne Miller

Lone Jack

Kobach, Obamacare

The Kansas secretary of state has written members of Congress, urging them to affirm a health-care compact that he says would give states a way to exempt themselves from the federal Affordable Care Act.

News stories have said that Secretary of State Kris Kobach said in the letter to 94 Republicans in Congress that authorization of the interstate coalition on health care would give those states authority to regulate health care within their borders and to administer their federal health-care funds.

In 2014, Kansas lawmakers approved a bill to join such a compact. But it requires congressional approval to take effect. Critics say the plan could jeopardize the health care of people who receive other forms of federal health-care benefits, including more than 450,000 seniors in Kansas on Medicare.

Medicare works just fine as a federal program. Kansans should fight this effort.

Kansas cannot manage Medicare as well as the federal government.

John Skelton

Lansing

Brownback’s plan

I do not agree that the budget deficit in Kansas stems from a poor or mistaken economic policy by Gov. Sam Brownback. He knew exactly what the outcome would be.

The governor is an intelligent man. He has to be aware that trickle-down economics is a failed economic policy. Yet he has continued to pursue tax cuts for the wealthy and shifted more of the tax burden to the middle class and the poor through increased sales taxes and reduced mortgage deductions.

Gov. Brownback appears to subscribe to a libertarian philosophy, which favors dismantling the “nanny state” by starving state and local governments of adequate tax money to fund education, public pensions, Medicaid and infrastructure.

Next year, as the deficit grows, Kansans will face some hard choices if they continue to support Brownback’s insistence on his 2012 tax cuts for the wealthy.

Diane Mitchell

Kansas City

Redefining terrorism

Terrorism is a violent statement, meant to strike terror into the hearts of entire groups. The acts of Dylann Roof, F. Glenn Miller Jr. and a huge number of others fall into this category.

And yet our government and the news media mostly reserve the word terrorism for acts committed by Muslims. An example is Chattanooga, Tenn.

Most low-information Americans find the very word terrifying and wildly overestimate their odds of getting killed by Muslim terrorists. It’s considerably more likely that one might be the victim of an American terrorist.

Reserving the word for Muslims leads to unfair hatred of Islam and to our enthusiastic endorsement of war and drone strikes on Muslim countries. This understandably angers Muslims and recruits some to groups bent on vengeance.

It’s time to ponder this effect and rethink the role being played in the branding of Muslims as the terrorists of the world.

Marlen Beach

Kansas City

Climb pay ladder

I am a lifelong Kansas City resident. I voted for Mayor Sly James twice.

I’ve read Mary Sanchez’s columns for years, often disagreeing with her. I don’t own a business, and I get my coffee at McDonald’s every day. I put myself through college by working after school and through the GI bill.

Raising the minimum wage to $13 an hour by Jan. 1, 2020, is a mistake. It will only serve to hold people in menial jobs even longer.

I love the servers I see at McDonald’s every day. My best wish for them is to leave, move on to the next better job.

Raise your pay by advancement, not by raising the minimum wage.

Get out of the rut.

Mary Sanchez is worried about the programs these wonderful young people might lose if the wage went up. Go to school, get an education and get out of the rut.

I worked 40 hours a week and carried a full college load every semester. I was married, and my first son was born while I was in school.

It worked. I spent 42 years with the same company here in Kansas City by moving up, not by protesting for more pay.

Michael J. Callahan

Kansas City

Via: Kansas City Star

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Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article31134038.html#storylink=cpy

KANSAS; MAYOR BRAGS: OUR WHITE POPULATION PLUMMETS

The mayor of Kansas City, Kansas, in an address to the radical socialist organization National Council of La Raza, bragged that his city is no longer majority white and the city’s schools now have students who speak 62 different languages.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Kansas City, Kansas, was 52 percent white.

But in a speech before the La Raza National Affiliates Luncheon earlier this week in Kansas City, Mayor Mark Holland boasted that only five years later his city’s white population has been reduced to 40 percent.

He seemed to suggest that La Raza was at least partly responsible for the progress. But he also cited the refugee resettlement work of the United Nations and U.S. State Department for the city’s transformation into a gleaming example of multicultural diversity.

Kansas City, he said, “is very proud of the work of National Council of La Raza.”

“Kansas City, Kansas, is a city with no ethnic majority. Kansas City, Kansas, is 40 percent white, 28 percent Latino, and 26 percent African-American,” Holland said. “Our school district speaks 62 different languages by the children every single day. And Kansas City, Kansas, has a proud heritage of welcoming all people into the community, people who are not welcome in other places.”

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Latinos started coming with the Santa Fe railroad more than 100 years ago, to build the railroad, he said. Another railroad, the Underground Railroad, brought African-Americans to Kansas. “If they could get across the river they were free and settled in a township of Quindero.”

“We continue to have a number of groups of refugees from around the world,” he added, mentioning the large Hmong community that came in the 1970s and 80s following the Vietnam War.

In recent years, the city has welcomed more refugees from other parts of the world, including Muslim Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, Hindus from Bhutan and Buddhists and Muslims from Burma.

Via: WWD

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More Scare Tactics: Al Gore brings climate change message to Kansas City

Al Gore has been known for his climate change warnings since the 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.”

But the former vice president, speaking Saturday in Kansas City, cited many more recent examples how heavy use of fossil fuels is contributing to extreme weather events and trends, in his view.

Gore filled a Westin Crown Center ballroom with a 90-minute presentation, using photos and videos to illustrate a litany of floods, wildfires, torrential rains, droughts, dust storms, rising sea levels and increasing world temperatures.

To those attending the Folk Alliance International conference, he noted examples of flooding in locations both remote and closer to home, such as in Manitou Springs, Colo., where high water barreled down mountain highways last year, carrying cars along with it.

Via: Kansas City Star

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Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/22/4843012/al-gore-brings-climate-change.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/22/4843012/al-gore-brings-climate-change.html#storylink=cpy

     

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/22/4843012/al-gore-brings-climate-change.html#storylink=cpy

Roberts: NYT Residency Story Is Wrong

Kansas senator Pat Roberts hit back today at a New York Times story questioning whether the senator has a residence in his home state.

“We had an interview with Jonathan Martin where we discussed the senator’s residency, and what turned up in the story is a distortion,” Sarah Little, the Roberts campaign’s communications director, tells National Review Online.

Little says the senator is in Wichita today and goes back to the state whenever he can, and that the Times piece is a hit job.

The Times reporter, Jonathan Martin, leads his story with a man-in-the-street interview of retiree Jerald Miller held at a restaurant across the street from the address listed on Roberts’s voter registration.

“They talked to one person in Dodge City, Kansas, who is apparently empirical evidence for the senator’s trips to the state,” Little says.

The Times piece says the senator is “desperate to re-establish ties to Kansas.” Little says that statement is false, and that Roberts’ ties to Kansas are as strong as ever.

The senator, she told NRO, goes back to Kansas at least once or twice every month and has visited 72 of the state’s counties this Congress. His election began a more conservative era for the state’s politicians, she says.

In a statement provided to NRO, she writes the following:

Also false is the statement that Senator Roberts “acknowledged he does not have a home of his own in Kansas.” Senator Roberts told the reporter just the opposite, both verbally and in writing.

The statement continues, taking aim at the reporter: 

Reporter Jonathan Martin came to us with a clear agenda. In an interview with the Senator, Martin scoffed at the fact Pat is proud to call Dodge City home. Martin even told us he didn’t understand why Pat bothered to live in western Kansas when it was so far away. He suggested Pat should live in Kansas City.
Martin did not let facts stand in the way of his agenda.
The reporter found two people who said they did not know Senator Roberts. Martin did not bother to find thousands of others who know the Senator well.

Via: NRO

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Hallmark Cards regrets taking word 'gay' off ornament

(Reuters) - Hallmark Cards has apologized for changing a word in a well-known Christmas carol from "gay" to "fun" on a holiday ornament.

The Kansas City-based company created an ornament for its Keepsake line depicting a miniature sweater bearing the words "Don we now our fun apparel," instead of the lyric "Don we now our gay apparel" from the Christmas carol "Deck the Halls."

"We've been surprised at the wide range of reactions expressed about the change of lyrics on this ornament, and we're sorry to have caused so much concern," Hallmark said in a Twitter posting on its website on Thursday.

"We never intend to offend or make political statements with our products, and in hindsight we realize we shouldn't have changed the lyrics on the ornament," it said.

Hallmark did not say where negative reaction to the ornament came from, but a leader of one Kansas City gay rights organization said on Friday that the company went overboard in using the word "fun" on the ornament.

"The whole thing seems silly to us," said Mitch Levine, community ambassador of the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of Kansas City. "No one was offended by that in the song and the change was not necessary."

Levine said he had received nine media calls about the ornament and wishes so much attention was given to more serious affronts to gays and lesbians, such as homophobic lyrics in some new songs.

In an earlier statement about the ornament, Hallmark said that when the lyrics to "Deck the Halls" were converted from Gaelic to English in the 1800s, the word gay meant festive or merry.

"Today it has multiple meanings, which we thought could leave our intent open to misinterpretation," Hallmark said.

It then explained its selection of the word "fun":

"The trend of wearing festively decorated Christmas sweaters to parties is all about fun, and this ornament is intended to play into that, so the planning team decided to say what we meant: 'fun.' That's the spirit we intended and the spirit in which we hope ornament buyers will take it."

Via: Reuters

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For Those Who Don't Believe in Election Fraud

"Yes, the Rizzo-Royster race turned on vote fraud," admitted the Kansas City Star's Barbara Shelly in a crow-eating column nearly three years after it would do any good. For years the Star has routinely mocked anyone who dared suggest vote fraud was a problem.

Among those mocked was Will Royster, a retired Navy fighter pilot who seemingly lost in a northeast Kansas City Democratic primary for state representative in 2010 by the final count of one single vote. The seeming victor, endorsed by the Star, was neophyte J.J. Rizzo, the son of Democratic machine honcho, Henry Rizzo.

What follows is a letter from a young Democrat Nick Moreno who observed the process up close named. The letter details the various tools Democrats use to steal elections and kill would-be Democratic reformers in the womb. It is edited only for length and clarity.

Via: American Thinker

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