As expected, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius today rejected the “compromise” coal plant proposed by legislative leaders. “The latest proposal still builds two large coal-fired plants, with the purpose of sending 83 percent of their energy out of the state, and creating nearly 10 million tons of new carbon dioxide each year,” Sebelius said. She also noted that the bill still puts the Legislature “in the middle of the regulatory permitting process in a manner not found in any other state in the union.” Another objection that hasn’t received much attention is that the proposal releases Sunflower Electric Power Corp. “from Kansas Corporation Commission oversight — thus removing all protection their customers have from massive rate increases.”
Instead of this weak compromise, Sebelius is proposing a true middle ground of building the one plant that was approved earlier.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman slammed the plan offered by presidential candidates Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton to fight high gas prices by suspending the federal gasoline tax for a few months, calling it “so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away.”
The political pandering, he said, will only increase our debt to China and continue a transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia. “This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering.”
Democrats are understandably worried about their prospects in November, given how much Hillary Clinton and Jeremiah Wright have weakened Barack Obama. But Frank Rich of the New York Times noted that John McCain has his own electoral challenges to worry about. Will anti-war Ron Paul supporters vote for McCain? How about all those religious conservatives who still hate McCain’s guts? And what about the millions of new voters Obama has helped register in the Democratic Party? Rich also noted national trends that are going against the GOP:
“A Democrat won the first round of a special congressional election in Mississippi, even though the national GOP outspent the Democrats by more than double and President Bush carried this previously safe Republican district by 25 percentage points in 2004. A Gallup poll last week found Mr. Bush’s national disapproval rating the worst (69 percent) for any president in Gallup’s entire 70-year history. For all his (and Mr. McCain’s) persistent sightings of ‘victory’ in Iraq, the percentage of Americans calling the war a mistake (63) also set a new record.”
In the 24/7 media world of tween celebrities, maybe it was only a matter of time before wildly popular Disney star Miley Cyrus found herself overexposed.
The 15-year-old Cyrus has seemed squeaky clean and down to earth — a large part of her G-rated appeal. But an upcoming Vanity Fair photo spread that shows her bare-backed, clutching a sheet and looking bed-tousled has many people asking, “What were they thinking?”
Cyrus apologized to fans, saying she thought the shot was “artistic.” But she — and more to the point, her parents, who attended the photo shoot — aren’t media innocents. They should have known how fans would see the photo.
The Senate went into this week’s debate on revamping the air traffic control system having negotiated away the worrisome prospect of fees on general aviation’s airport use. Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback and Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, deserve praise for fighting hard against that funding method, which would have hurt Wichita’s planemakers by driving up the costs of owning and flying their products. Both the Senate proposal being debated and the House version, passed last year, would fund the new Global Positioning System for tracking air traffic through an increase in the tax on jet fuel used by noncommercial aircraft. Among the other pluses in the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill: a three-hour limit on the amount of time airliners can hold passengers captive on a runway.
How could the Wichita school board vote Monday to sell the former Carter Elementary to the Catholic Diocese of Wichita at the same time the district proposes a $350 million bond issue to build new schools? Interim superintendent Martin Libhart acknowledged that was a “fair question,” telling The Eagle editorial board Tuesday that the decision was based on Carter’s small capacity (200 students), location, lack of air conditioning and cost of needed renovations. When the district closed Carter in 1996, Libhart said, “it was becoming costly to maintain and even more costly per pupil.” He also said the district’s overcrowding is such that new schools are needed in the core and on the perimeter, not on East 15th Street. And “as nice a facility as it is for its age and the purpose it would serve for the diocese, it would cost quite a bit to renovate it to our standards,” Libhart said. The diocese will acquire it through a lease-to-own deal for use by Holy Savior Academy, currently in the city-owned former Magdalen School at Woodlawn and Kellogg.
As expected, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius today rejected the “compromise” coal plant proposed by legislative leaders. “The latest proposal still builds two large coal-fired plants, with the purpose of sending 83 percent of their energy out of the state, and creating nearly 10 million tons of new carbon dioxide each year,” Sebelius said. She also noted that the bill still puts the Legislature “in the middle of the regulatory permitting process in a manner not found in any other state in the union.” Another objection that hasn’t received much attention is that the proposal releases Sunflower Electric Power Corp. “from Kansas Corporation Commission oversight — thus removing all protection their customers have from massive rate increases.”
