Letters on pit bulls, taxing the poor, electronic voting, Wells Fargo ad, saving school pictures

Don’t believe all you hear on pit bulls

Regarding “Pit bulls figure prominently in area attacks, officials say” (June 1 Eagle): Many people nowadays seem to believe what they read on the Internet. They believe what they want to believe, or simply what their own eyes can see. One of those misjudged conclusions is that pit bulls are a dangerous type of breed.

I believe that pit bulls are widely misunderstood and misjudged just because of their bulky and fierce appearance. But in reality, they are just like little kids who want to be loved.

In 2013 in Wellston, Okla., a 10-year-old pit bull terrier saved her family from their burning home. Also in 2013, a pit bull in Virginia was wounded while defending her owner from a bullet.

Pit bulls are truly beautiful creatures and deserve to be loved. Don’t think because of their bad history that they are all the same.

Taking from poor

In days of old, the rich and powerful, with no shame, openly took from the peasants what they wanted. They simply sent their soldiers/servants out to collect it.

Not much has changed. There are a few more steps to go through, and their soldiers/servants are now called politicians.

Can’t verify ballots

Electronic voting machines are essentially unverifiable. It’s as if we give our vote to a guy who takes our vote into a room, then comes out later and says that he has carefully counted all the votes before shredding them and “here’s the result. Like it or lump it.”

And yet thousands of elections since computers began counting votes in 1988 have not squared with the exit polls or with other significant measures of trustworthy results. In the 2014 election in Kansas, for example, Beth Clarkson, a statistician at Wichita State University, found some marked irregularities in terms of urban-rural deviation and asked to be allowed to study the paper tapes from the voting machines to square them with the precinct results. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach would not allow her to do so.

A recent book, “Code Red” by Jonathan Simon, presents an excellent summary of how we got to the point in which corporations count about 98 percent of the vote and it’s almost impossible to verify anything. Isn’t it time we joined Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands and trashed the machines in favor of easily verifiable paper ballots, preferably hand-counted?

Upset about ad?

Franklin Graham, CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is upset that Wells Fargo, a bastion of free-market capitalism, aired an ad depicting a lesbian couple learning sign language in preparation for adopting a deaf child.

But where was he when Wells Fargo accepted blame and fines for unlawfully foreclosing on service members? Or when it was reported Wells Fargo was in discussions for a nearly billion-dollar settlement for packaging and marketing bogus mortgage-backed securities? Where was he when Corinthian Colleges (Wells Fargo was its largest investor) folded amid predatory student loans and fraudulent advertising?

He is entitled to take his business elsewhere when a business conducts itself in a disagreeable manner. I would. But perhaps he should begin by picking actions that have crippled lives, rather than using a TV commercial to create empty outrage.

What does Graham hope to accomplish? Get businesses to ignore their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender customers? Refuse business to LGBT customers? Donate to his organizations? What meaningful change can be accomplished?

He’s so disturbed by all of this that come next summer, he’s going to endorse a presidential candidate who will want to cut Wells Fargo’s taxes and remove regulatory oversight. Wells Fargo has no greater backer than Graham.

Save school pictures

I returned to Wichita recently to attend my 45-year high school class reunion. In advance of coming, I called my former grade school, junior high and high school to learn whether class pictures and yearbooks were available for supervised viewing.

I received permission from my junior high and high schools to view their yearbooks. Unfortunately, the new administrator at my former grade school was unable to locate class pictures from the 1930s through 1985, excepting the years 1974-79. Apparently, a part of USD 259 history has been lost.

To ensure that further loss of school history does not occur, ask school board members and superintendent John Allison to implement a policy requiring all schools to retain student and school pictures and hard-copy documents in organized and good condition, or to send all such materials to Paul Oberg, volunteer curator of the McCormick School Museum, where additional storage is possible with adequate funding to the facility.

This story was originally published June 12, 2015 at 7:03 PM with the headline "Letters on pit bulls, taxing the poor, electronic voting, Wells Fargo ad, saving school pictures."