“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Barack Obama recently said at a San Francisco fundraiser, trying to explain his lack of appeal to some small-town working-class voters. Hillary Clinton has tagged the statement as “elitist and divisive,” words that Republicans are happy to have for later. This could stick to Obama longer than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, but someone whose family income has topped $100 million this decade might be careful about calling people “elitist” and “out of touch.”
Saying that Kansas’ Big First congressional district holds “the single greatest potential for wind energy in the country,” Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson helped break ground Friday for Horizon Wind Energy’s 67-turbine Meridian Way Wind Farm south of Concordia. Parkinson noted it had been “a week of smiles in Kansas,” what with the University of Kansas Jayhawks’ NCAA championship and the Kansas City Royals’ two wins over the New York Yankees. “But I don’t think I’ve ever seen smiles like I’ve seen today on the faces of the landowners that are going to have turbines on their property,” he said.
Vice President Dick Cheney is busy these days “casting the Iranian leadership as apocalyptic zealots who yearn for a nuclear conflagration,” Dan Froomkin wrote for the Washington Post. Froomkin noted how Cheney’s claims ignore the last National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. And he said that the prophecies about “the 12th Imam” marked Cheney’s “revival of an old neocon chestnut.”
Tri-State Generation, the Colorado utility that’s partnering with Sunflower Electric Power Corp. on a proposed coal-fired expansion near Holcomb, is looking into the possibility of building a nuclear plant in Colorado if Holcomb doesn’t fly, reports the Denver Post. Tri-State has been getting criticism from some of its member rural cooperatives about its heavy reliance on coal. A backup site to the Holcomb project in southeast Colorado could be either coal or nuclear, company officials said at a recent meeting, acknowledging a changing regulatory environment.”We’re at a crossroads here, in more ways than one,” said board chairman Harold Thompson.
If they don’t do it themselves, most Kansans know somebody who has registered his boat out of state to avoid Kansas’ onerous personal property taxes on watercraft, which are figured at 30 percent of the boat’s market value. The status quo is bad for Kansas, but the Legislature can’t do anything about the taxes until the voters change the Kansas Constitution. They narrowly defeated such an amendment in 2000, when it also would have applied to personal aircraft. Good for state Rep. Dale Swenson, R-Wichita, for reviving the proposed constitutional amendment to apply only to boats. It recently passed the House 102-19. When the Senate returns later in the month, it should give the resolution the needed two-thirds majority endorsement and put it on the Nov. 4 ballot. If voters give lawmakers the authority to make boat taxes lower and more fair next year, Swenson told The Eagle editorial board, “More people will own boats. More people will use boats. We’ll get more use out of the lakes.”
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Barack Obama recently said at a San Francisco fundraiser, trying to explain his lack of appeal to some small-town working-class voters. Hillary Clinton has tagged the statement as “elitist and divisive,” words that Republicans are happy to have for later. This could stick to Obama longer than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, but someone whose family income has topped $100 million this decade might be careful about calling people “elitist” and “out of touch.”
