To help quantify how far Attorney General Phill Kline has strayed from a core mission of his office, consider his meager effort to help cheated consumers.
As an Eagle article reported Friday, Kline has brought in about $1 million a year in consumer fraud restitution — less than half the average $2.2 million a year won by former attorneys general Bob Stephan and Carla Stovall Steckline.
Kline defended his record, saying previous efforts were those of a “shakedown agency,” but it might sound strange to Kansans for the person in charge of protecting consumers to be attacking successful efforts to protect consumers.
In fact, Kline’s office has actively discouraged consumer complaints, leading to a sharp decrease, from 7,000 a year under Steckline to 4,300 a year under Kline.
“Don’t call us” might be the new motto.
Add another number — the record $1.5 million in independent advertising support that Kline received from an out-of-state pro-business political action committee — and you can’t blame Kansans for wondering whose interests Kline is looking out for. And who’s doing the shakedown.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
If Gov. Kathleen Sebelius wins a second term Tuesday, will she serve it to the end? Asked that question Thursday by the Topeka Capital-Journal, Sebelius clearly left the door open for another opportunity to intervene between now and her term-limited departure in January 2011 — say, as a vice presidential candidate on a Democratic ticket in 2008 or a Cabinet post in a Democratic White House. She said: “It’s my intention to serve if voters give me that opportunity.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Former Kansas congressman Bill Roy has a column on today’s Opinion pages about how the current Congress may be the worst in modern times. He points to the problems with lobbyist influence and runaway spending and earmarks. But he is also concerned about how little Congress works now. He cites a book by two congressional observers, one conservative and one liberal, which notes that Congress will meet only 97 days this year, compared with a two-year average of 323 days in the 1960s and 1970s, and 278 days in the 1980s.
Roy writes: “The few meetings reflect Congress’ miserable failure to exercise its highly important oversight duties, and the subjugation of its powers to an administration that recognizes few restrictions on executive power and disdains review of its actions.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
George Will had a column last week that provided some interesting historical context to the upcoming presidential race. He notes that 2008 will be the first election in 56 years that there won’t be an incumbent president or vice president seeking the nomination. And he included this quote from the book “The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008”:
“When the current President Bush completes his full second term, it will be the first time since James Madison and James Monroe almost two hundred years ago that back-to-back presidents both served all eight years of two elected terms. Put another way, two of the most divisive figures in this country’s history will have commanded the White House for sixteen consecutive years.”
As a result, the race ought to be wide open and attract a lot of candidates. But as Will notes, that doesn’t appear to be the case yet with the GOP.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Most people are eager to see Election Tuesday arrive so that all the campaign ads will disappear. However, the general population doesn’t include the advertising and media businesses reaping the profits to make the political propaganda world.
The midterm election will result in a record $3.1 billion spent for all the candidate clamor, 14.5 percent higher than in 2004, USA Today estimated. This total is even more significant because $1 billion was spent on the presidential race in 2004.
Posted by Angie Holladay
