After all the millions the maker of the “Girls Gone Wild” videos and DVDs has made filming party girls in New Orleans, it’s only appropriate — I guess — that he is donating the proceeds from future sales of his Mardi Gras-themed DVDs to the Red Cross. Still, the Red Cross must feel a little uncomfortable knowing that its relief work is being funded in part by sales of “GGW Doggystyle.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Had Katrina fizzled somewhere south of the U.S. coast, Michael Brown’s shocking lack of qualifications to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency might never have been exposed. At least members of Congress are trying to show they learned something, by publicly questioning whether 36-year-old Julie Myers, a Shawnee native, is the right boss for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a crucial agency with 20,000 employees and a $4 billion budget. Maybe her experience as a federal prosecutor and an associate to Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr is apt; she’s said to know a lot about money laundering and drug smuggling. But especially post-Brown, it’s hard not to suspect that two other credentials made her Bush’s pick: Her uncle is Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and she just married the current chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff (also her former boss).
Posted by Rhonda Holman
link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901930.html?referrer=email
In the necessary process of trying to keep sex-related businesses out of Old Town and the arena district, the Wichita City Council risks unnecessarily barring new tattoo and piercing shops from opening in those blocks. Since body artists won the right to open shops in the city limits in 1998, five businesses have given new, youthful life to formerly moribund blocks of East Douglas, fitting right into free-spirited Old Town. The rezoning wouldn’t force out the businesses already open, but it would limit expansion and prevent others from opening. The city needs to rethink this check on a service business that long ago went mainstream.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
To hear Michael Moore tell it, no member of Congress would be caught dead letting a child of his or hers go to Iraq. Some have, though — to their credit and their nation’s benefit. Those whose kids have been deployed to Iraq reportedly include Sens. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and Reps. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.; Todd Akin, R-Mo.; and Joe Wilson, R-S.C. And the son of Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., just shipped out with a battalion from the 101st Airborne Division. True, that’s not very many troops, given the size of Congress. But any and all Americans willing to serve their country are worthy of unreserved praise.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had earlier tried to portray himself as being open-minded and nonideological about President Bush’s Supreme Court nominations. Forget that. His announced opposition to John Roberts smacks of partisan pandering. After all, as Washington Post columnist David Broder noted, Roberts is “ridiculously well equipped to lead the third branch of government.” In contrast, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced Wednesday that he would vote for Roberts.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
President Bush spoke last week at the United Nations World Summit about the need to end deep poverty in the world, but for the fourth year in a row, Bush this week blocked U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which addresses maternal health care and family planning for the world’s most impoverished women.
The reason? Abortion politics — some Bush supporters claim the fund has been used for coercive abortions in China, although the administration’s own 2002 investigation found no evidence to support those claims.
Poverty goes on, as usual, and so does politics. . . .
Posted by Randy Scholfield
I was troubled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June that the government could use eminent domain powers to acquire private property for an economic development purpose. But I was sympathetic to the court’s concern that justices in Washington, D.C., aren’t in the best position to decide whether a local project serves a public purpose. So I’m uneasy that the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday to consider ways to limit eminent domain, such as by withholding federal money from local governments. A better approach — which the Supreme Court mentioned — is for state legislatures to establish restrictions on the use of eminent domain, an issue the Kansas Legislature is planning to address next session.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Maybe because we heard so many from him last year, each utterance by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., now seems like a waste of his breath and our time. Still, his post-hurricane blast at the White House Monday had some sharp jabs:
“Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to ‘Mission Accomplished’ and ‘Wanted Dead or Alive.’ ” Hmm. Wonder whether an 8-month-old Kerry administration would have been any more prompt and efficient in responding.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
People are still trying to figure out what Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services meant last week when it identified 16 Kansas school districts as “highly resource-efficient,” as part of a study commissioned by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. One interesting observation by The Hutchinson News, though: Of the “Sweet 16” districts, seven have graduation rates lower than the state average; seven also have lower-than-average attendance rates. Turns out those factors weren’t part of the Standard & Poor’s study. But it’s fair to expect districts being held up as models to be getting students to class and graduation day.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Nonprofit circles worry about “compassion fatigue,” in which Americans tire of giving money to worthy causes. Thankfully, there hasn’t been much evidence of that lately. Americans gave more money in the first week after Katrina (an estimated $830.6 million) than they gave in the first two weeks following Sept. 11 and the Asian tsunami combined. And as of last week, the Katrina total had topped $923 million. But there is legitimate concern that this national giving might hurt support for local needs. That’s why it’s important that area residents also contribute to the United Way of the Plains and other charities. Katrina victims need help, but so do our neighbors.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
You’d like to think that two local drill teams could have an impromptu dance-off without disturbing the peace or worse. But such a contest went bad Saturday night at McAdams Park, leaving one injured and two arrested. What is particularly shocking is that some of the 50 people involved in the fight were moms of the drill team members. One even allegedly struck a 17-year-old boy in the face with a drum stick, before getting punched and cut up herself. As in the cases of parents behaving badly at their kids’ sporting events, you have to conclude: Having children is not the same thing as having a clue about how to be a good parent.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The presidential primary system is broken, empowering too few voters in the same few undeserving states to pick the nominees each time. Worse, the will to change things hits a wall at the major political parties. At least the new recommendations of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, a bipartisan effort led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, will get people talking about what’s wrong and what might fix it. Most interesting: the commission’s call for Congress to do what the parties won’t and require four rotating regional presidential primaries (regrettably, while still letting Iowa and New Hampshire go first). Also worthy: the call for voting machines to have a verifiable paper trail. Less appealing: a recommendation that voter registration become a state-level function and that voters must show photo ID cards.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
People are variously saying that the cost of Katrina’s cleanup and reconstruction should put a stop to Social Security reform, delay the Medicare prescription drug benefit and even hasten the withdrawal from Iraq. One expenditure it should render unaffordable is another moon shot, which NASA estimated Monday will cost $104 billion if done by 2018. We’re going to have to get back into that final frontier someday, but the nation’s earthbound problems are more pressing right now.
Still, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin made a good point Monday: “We must deal with our short-term problems while not sacrificing our long-term investments in our future. When we have a hurricane, we don’t cancel the Air Force. We don’t cancel the Navy. And we’re not going to cancel NASA.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Stephen Moore, senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal, put some perspective on the more than $200 billion in federal money expected to be spent on Katrina recovery. “We could give every one of the 500,000 families displaced by Katrina a check for $400,000, and they could each build a beachfront home virtually anywhere in America,” he wrote.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Katrina evacuees report they’ve been treated suspiciously in certain host cities, as if they’re prone to spontaneous looting. Then there are the unfortunate headlines about what some evacuees are doing with their relief money: Debit cards from the Red Cross reportedly have been used to buy $800 Louis Vuitton handbags and a PlayStation in Atlanta, jewelry and a TV with DVD in Illinois, and more. A Red Cross representative told the New York Daily News that the only no-nos for the cards are alcohol, tobacco or firearms. “Once they’re out of our hands, there’s nothing we can do,” she said.
Maybe so, but Americans’ generosity to private groups may dry up fast if more such stories emerge.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Is it really true that President Bush has put White House spinmeister Karl Rove — admittedly a brilliant political strategist but nonetheless a propagandist by trade — in charge of the largest reconstruction effort in U.S. history, as some media have reported? If so, that does not inspire confidence that Bush is thinking primarily of results, not image.
Bush has resisted calls from his own party to appoint a visible reconstruction czar — a Tommy Franks, say, Colin Powell or even Dick Cheney — to oversee the massive effort.
Anyone else taken aback by Rove overseeing this? My complaint simply is: What makes him qualified?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Three cheers for The Opportunity Project (TOP) Learning Center North, which will hold a groundbreaking ceremony at 10 a.m. Wednesday at 2200 N. Jardine. The $3 million, 23,000-square-foot early childhood education center is scheduled to open August 2006 and will be part of the new Youth Empowerment Zone planned on the old Heartspring campus in northeast Wichita. The center is expected to serve 200 children and is a partnership between the city of Wichita, the Wichita school district and TOP, a nonprofit organization that operates another education center in the Oaklawn-Planeview area of Wichita and was formed by Wichita entrepreneur Barry Downing. Hip, hip, hooray.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The war on drugs hit an embarrassing new low earlier this month with the search of former Bel Aire Mayor Harold Smith’s house. The Bel Aire police suspected Smith and his wife, both senior citizens, of growing marijuana in their backyard. So nearly a dozen officers spent about 45 minutes searching their home, including looking in dresser drawers, before realizing that the plants were . . . sunflowers. Bel Aire contracted for an independent review to see how it was possible for the police — plus the Sedgwick County district attorney’s office and a district judge — to mistake our state flower for pot. Sounds like they were the ones on drugs.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Democratic leaders criticized President Bush after his New Orleans speech last week for trying to use the disaster to promote “ideological experimentation.” And I was a little surprised myself that he chose that speech to outline plans for school vouchers, “worker recovery accounts,” and opportunity zones. But David Brooks opined in his New York Times column on Sunday that the reconstruction could be Bush’s version of FDR’s New Deal, and an opportunity to forge “a positive use of government that is neither big government liberalism nor antigovernment libertarianism.” That will be a battle, Brooks noted, but said that if Bush can “devote himself to executing his policies, the Gulf Coast will be his T.V.A., the program that serves as a model for what can be done nationwide.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
One thing that grates on my ears is hearing rock music classics used as sound-bite jingles for commercials. Is that how the younger generation will recognize, say, Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll,” as an anthem for Cadillac? Sad.
Here’s an interesting exception to the rule: Gravel-voiced singer Tom Waits, who has a policy of not doing commercials, recently turned down repeated offers to do an ad for General Motors, which proceeded to hired a soundalike and run the ads anyway in Europe.
Waits is now suing GM and the ad agency involved. “Apparently the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad — ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car. I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor,” Waits said. “While the court can’t make me active in radio, I am asking it to make me radioactive to advertisers.”
Maybe there are a few rock stars who haven’t sold out entirely?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Josh Marshall made a good point on his blog:
“Then there’s the president’s great line from the speech: ‘It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces.’’’
“No, it’s not. Actually, every actual fact that’s surfaced in the last two weeks points to just the opposite conclusion. There was no lack of federal authority to handle the situation. There was faulty organization, poor coordination and incompetence. . . .
“You don’t repair disorganized or incompetent government by granting it more power. You fix it by making it more organized and more competent. If conservatism can’t grasp that point, what is it good for?”
Right at this moment, I think it’s hard for a lot of people to come up with an answer for that one.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
The Kansas Supreme Court’s review of whether Attorney General Phill Kline should be able to obtain patient records from abortion clinics isn’t the only Kline case dealing with medical privacy. A federal appeals court in Denver heard a request last week by Kline’s office to lift an order blocking the enforcement of his 2002 opinion that all health-care providers — including school nurses, psychiatrists and social workers — have to report to authorities any indications of underage sex, even if it was consensual and between teens. Kline’s argument is that, according to state law, any sexual relations with children younger than 16 is a crime. But health-care providers — which already report possible child rapes — argue that the reporting requirement is an invasion of privacy, and, of particular concern, they worry that it could discourage some minors from getting needed medical services, such as prenatal care.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
This study adds weight to the theory that global warming is increasing the intensity of hurricanes. It says the number of hurricanes in the most powerful categories has increased sharply over the past few decades.
This may not be the last Katrina, so it is important that as we rebuild New Orleans, we prepare it for another. That means improving the levees and restoring the wetlands.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
With the unveiling of the much-lampooned “Kansas — as big as you think” campaign came a commitment to spend more money promoting the state’s potential for economic development and tourists, $4.5 million total. Because of the boost, Kansas has moved from 49th to 41st in the nation in state spending on travel and tourism in the past year (North Dakota, eat our dust!). Already this year, 50,000 people have inquired with the state’s travel and tourism office, compared with 57,000 inquiries for all of last year. Lots of them are said to be seeking agritourism experiences — wagon rides, sheep shearing, etc. Can it be that the goofy slogan is working?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
We’ve read and heard some of the horror stories of what happened inside the Superdome. But that was nothing compared with what it was like for the 15,000 people in the New Orleans Convention Center. Here is some of what The New York Times has reported:
“Gunfire became so routine that large SWAT teams had to storm the place nearly every night. . . . Armed groups of 15 to 25 men terrorized the others, stealing cash and jewelry. . . . Policemen patrolling the center told him that a number of women had been dragged off by groups of men and gang-raped, and that murders were occurring.”
It got so out of control that the Police Department came close to abandoning the convention halls and evacuating police officers by helicopter, a la the fall of Saigon.
“The only way I can describe it is as a completely lawless situation,” said Capt. Winn, the head of the police SWAT team.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
