Were any of you bloggers among the nearly 100 million people who watched “The Day After” 25 years ago today? The TV movie was mostly filmed in Lawrence and was about a nuclear attack. Though we don’t worry as much anymore about the possibility of such an attack, that danger hasn’t receded, said the film’s director. “If anything,” he said, “it has grown worse, with atomic weapons no longer under control of stable governments.”
Wichitans aren’t ones to criticize people for using business jets, but the chief executives of the Big Three automakers sure were tone-deaf in flying on company planes to their Capitol Hill meetings this week about a $25 billion bailout. “There’s a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands,” Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, D-N.Y., told the CEOs. “It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo.”
Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., also pressed General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner and Ford CEO (and Kansas native) Alan Mulally about whether they would be willing to work for $1 a year, as Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli has offered to do.
“I don’t have a position on that today,” said Wagoner (2007 total compensation: $15.7 million).
“I think I’m OK where I am,” said Mulally ($21.7 million).
Mitt Romney, writing in the New York Times, joins the chorus urging the federal government to let the Big Three automakers go bankrupt: “Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course – the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.” Interesting viewpoint for a Detroit native who, as a presidential candidate, campaigned in the state by saying, “I’m going to fight for every job.”
Sunflower Electric Power. Corp. is pulling out all the stops – and abandoning reason – in its quest to get approval of two new coal-fired power plants. It filed a federal lawsuit this week claiming that state officials violated Sunflower’s civil rights. There is a civil right to pollute the air? The lawsuit also irresponsibly charges that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson and Kansas Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby opposed the permit application to “further their individual political fortunes.” So why have coal plants been blocked in other states? Are officials in those states building their resumes, too? Were U.S. Supreme Court justices hoping for better jobs when they ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to take action on regulating carbon dioxide?
Knowledgeable, easygoing and able to work effectively across party lines, House Minority Leader Dennis McKinney was a rising Democratic star in Kansas even before the horrific Greensburg tornado leveled his home and community last year and tested his mettle and leadership. It makes sense that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius would turn to him to fill the state treasurer’s job, newly open because of Lynn Jenkins’ win of the 2nd Congressional District seat. He will be missed in the House, but his likeliest successor would be Assistant Minority Leader Jim Ward (in photo), D-Wichita. It would be nice to have a Wichitan in that influential spot again, for the first time since Rep. Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, left the House to run for governor in 1998.
