Waste on museum

If the Johnson County commissioners had not spent $8 million on the white elephant on Metcalf Avenue for a 1950s museum, we’d have money enough for longer hours at our libraries and money enough for some park improvements without a tax increase. Remember that during the elections.

Parks and libraries are heavily used community assets. Museums, not so much.

Why not spend tax dollars to benefit the most people?

Doris A. Duke

Overland Park

Not at fault

The $40 million Department of Motor Vehicles modernization project in Kansas was authorized by the 2008 Kansas Legislature and required a $4 fee in addition to the cost of registering a vehicle. It was intended to streamline transactions at the DMV for all Kansas citizens.

Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, now President Barack Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services, was the governor of Kansas at the time. As it has become a tradition for everyone to blame Republicans for all the world’s woes and systematic for President Obama to continue to blame his predecessor for all of our country’s problems, people now are wrongly blaming Gov. Sam Brownback for the DMV predicament.

Perhaps they can instead construct a path of blame directed at George W. Bush.

Curt Feyerherm

Olathe

Culinary kudos

Broadmoor’s Culinary Center in the Shawnee Mission School District deserves to be recognized for its excellent program. The food, the service, and the setting are wonderul.

A recent guest chef, Jon Dallen, produced a meal that any restaurant would be proud to serve. Bob Brassard has developed the culinary center into a truly amazing program, and it’s obvious that he cares deeply for his students. Many have returned to work with him.

Kudos to Bob!

Ruth Armstrong

Prairie Village

Many suffer cancer

While it is certainly noble and humane to draw attention to breast cancer, let us not forget that there are many other forms of this hideous disease women face that require and merit equally intense social scrutiny and support.

My wife bravely encountered, battled and endured esophageal cancer, a most debilitating and harsh invader. Millions of other women face similar challenges worthy of research and surveillance.

It seems only logical that all cancer issues that face women should be addressed in addition to breast cancer.

Peter Yates Enich

Lenexa

‘New normal’

Now that the campaigns have ended, hopefully the overpoliticized environment will dissipate long enough to give our elected officials the opportunity to effectively tackle this nation’s greatest challenge — our crushing debt.

As the lame-duck session begins and members of Congress and the president look for ways to avoid the draconian “financial cliff,” which is the most immediate manifestation of our fiscal dysfunction, I have a suggestion that is actually inspired by the ridiculously irresponsible sequestration process that produced the “financial cliff.”

My suggestion is for Congress and the president to use sequestration (or a similar automatic triggering mechanism) to create the following default scenario: for every year that we don’t achieve a balanced federal budget, two things must happen:

1) the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare will be increased by one month.

2) any annual increases in defense spending would be capped at a percentage lower than the current consumer price index.

Assuming our politicians are unable to achieve fiscal responsibility on their own, this approach would force fiscal responsibility on them but at least in a balanced, gradual and predictable way that is far better than what we would have to face in a true debt crisis.

Thurston Cromwell

Leawood

Moving U.S. forward

On the presidential election last week, neither candidate in this election showed a great deal in their solutions to the perceived problems facing the country. But the results brought forth an underlining “cancer” that has seethed beneath all other issues that we have faced for years.

It is that of bigotry, self-rightous religious beliefs and plutocratic beliefs that have tried to dominate the democratic tenets upon which our way of life is based. Maybe now, we can move forward into the modern era that lets all of us to participate in the rights granted to us.

John Nelles

Shawnee

After Sandy

Having been through hurricanes myself, I have utmost concern and sympathy for the people of the Northeast of our country. In the day or two after Hurricane Sandy and the vast devastation surrounding it, I heard on the radio several people interviewed.

They said, in quivering voices, things like, “Ooooh, my home is gone and I have nothing.” And “I’m going crazy with grief.”

I recall the Joplin tornado, which admittedly did not affect so many, but it hit individuals just as hard. Homes were flattened, and loved ones were killed or hospitalized.

Cleanup was massive, and the work continues today. Here in the heartland, just days afterward, we heard strong though weary voices say again and again, “We will rebuild.”

Amy Brown

Leawood

Artistic freedom

Is the statue of Venus de Milo or of David by Michelangelo obscene? No. They are beautiful and priceless works of art.

The name of the piece, “Accept or Reject,” sums it up (10-27, A1, (Jury: Statue is not obscene”). This is a piece of art, people.

Some people have way too much time on their hands. These folks are probably part of the same squeaky wheel minority that wants prayer taken out of the military.

It seems to me they are encroaching on the artists’ freedom of expression.

Tom Voll

Olathe