Another two-term Democratic governor of Kansas, John Carlin, led a big wave of change in his second term in the mid-’80s, ushering in pari-mutuel gaming, liquor by the drink, the lottery and a severance tax on gas and oil production. But he noted to the Kansas City Star that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius must work with a Legislature with more conservative Republicans and fewer moderate Republicans and Democrats. He also thinks those days’ postelection honeymoon of bipartisanship is largely gone. "As soon as candidates win election, they start raising money for the next one," Carlin said. "There’s no pause in the campaigning anymore."
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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11 Comments
Why don’t you ask Ramona Carlin about John’s “postelection honeymoon”?
russell-Is there a story here?
ahhh…Sebelius Bible Thumping during her speech.
What ever will the Libs think?
Not a story you’ll hear from the Iggle. John dumped his wife of many years when he got to Cedar Crest, and married a girl he’d met years ago when he judged her 4-H dairy cow. She was quite the little heifer herself, and presto change-o, she became the second lady of Kansas. The Topeka press corps (and I knew quite a few of them at the time) had been fond of Ramona, so they didn’t take kindly to her replacement or the graceless way the whole thing happened. I doubt the Eagle even reported on it, since John was a Democrat and therefore infallible.
John Carlin was the last REAL governor of Kansas. The last governor with courage to do what was GOOD for the state.
His personal life? Eh, not so much. Russell’s letter sounds a lot like the right wing chorus during the Clinton impeachment.
Cant complain about the substance? Then just complain about his personal life.
John Carlin and his vision and courage made me a democrat.
Sebelius, with her pandering and shallow policies, made me an independent.
Will we ever have another leader like Carlin? Not likely. We are probably facing more weaklings like Graves and Sebelius.
I thought that if you dumped your wife you were slime (see: Newt Gingrich), but if he’s your guy, it’s OK. Did get it about right?
BTW Russ, the Eagle did a lot of stories about John’s inability to keep his zipper up. Might want to research instead of just blabbing off.
OK, grrl, here’s substance. Kansas had a small but marginally profitable oil and gas industry when Carlin took office. The industry was largely sustained by stripper wells, since the big production had long since slowed. Carlin’s mineral severance tax took the profit away, and a large percentage of those wells were plugged. Now i know oil and gas are evil, and all good liberals only ride bicycles today. But that severance tax was a pretty good example of taking wealth from the local economies and moving it to Topeka.
Uh, Russell, not being in the oil and gas game myself; I thought there was a “minimum production” exemption from the severance tax, which, more or less, ties in to my understanding of a “stripper” well. Am I way off base here?
Vaughn, it’s a dollar value exemption. $87 per day on average, which is about 2 barrels today. When Carlin was in office, the concept of 50 dollar oil would have brought howls of derision. So in the face of dropping yields, rising overheads, and the extra burden of the severance tax, a lot of producers decided to plug the weaklings and call it a day. And when a well has been plugged, you don’t bring it back into production without a lot of expense.
Thanks, Russell; that helps me understand the issue. Perhaps an “inflation adjustment” on the dollar value exemption would help?