For all the howling about how dumb the “cash for clunkers” bill was, it’s certainly been a hit with the public, stirring dealership business by offering federal subsidies of up to $4,500 each for those who trade in old gas-guzzlers for fuel-efficient newer models. The House voted 316-109 today to replenish its funds with $2 billion more stimulus money. But how well is it working on the government’s end? “I’ve got dealers who have submitted the paperwork three times and have gotten three rejections,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich. “What is a dealer supposed to do?”
Waiting for the stock market to heal itself won’t be enough to guarantee the long-term solvency of the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, according to its experts. As 2008 ended, the system’s unfunded actuarial liability was at a record $8.3 billion, up $2.7 billion from 2007 — and not that far from equaling the fund’s $10 billion in assets. The KPERS board and staff are doing an analysis of the system’s funding status and how state leaders might respond to it. They plan to provide the governor and legislative leaders with the results this fall, so the 2010 Legislature can act. If the state’s next budget is anything like the current one, the pressure will be great to think about KPERS another day. But as our editorial today argues, leaders need to get going on a plan of attack, so public employees and retirees can trust they’ll get what’s coming to them.
Politico’s Roger Simon noted the snub of Lucia Whalen, the woman who called 911 to report a possible break-in at Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates’ home. She alone “acted responsibly from beginning to end in this whole affair,” Simon wrote. “And she doesn’t even get a free drink out of it. Instead, she has been reviled. She has been scorned. She was pilloried in the mainstream media and abused in the blogosphere” — without regard to the facts of what she said and did, he noted. Yet when asked Wednesday whether she’d make the call again, Whalen said: “I have had much reflection on that, and, yes, I would make the call.”
Kansas Board of Regents president Reggie Robinson promised this week to make public the results of pending audits of five state universities. It took the intervention of Attorney General Steve Six last month to ensure that Kansans, and not just the regents, learned the troubling contents of an audit of Kansas State University. Audits of the University of Kansas and Pittsburg State University are expected to be completed this fall. The three others will come later. A subcommittee appointed by the regents also is exploring the idea of systematic audits of the universities, as Gov. Mark Parkinson has urged. State Sen. John Vratil, R-Leawood, expressed a worthy concern this week: that the audits under way not be whitewashed in anticipation of their public release. Because the universities are public institutions, the public deserves an unvarnished account of their finances and management.
Gov. Mark Parkinson and other Democrats continue to challenge suggestions that the party plans to hand Cedar Crest to Republican Sam Brownback next year. But “the election is 15 months away and the Democrats haven’t endorsed a candidate,” wrote Topeka Capital-Journal columnist Ric Anderson. “It’s getting close to showtime — very close. The pews are full, the organ is playing, the minister is at the altar, and the bride hasn’t shown up. We’ve heard all kinds of names come and go — John Carlin, Dan Glickman, Nancy Boyda, Jill Docking and Bill Kurtis, to name a handful. But no one has stuck.” Anderson helpfully wrote the text of an announcement declaring Parkinson’s candidacy (should the governor rethink his decision not to run) in which Parkinson could point to “this crucial juncture in our state’s history” and the need for “a full and spirited debate on the issues,” and attribute the changing of his mind to “much soul-searching and extensive discussion” with his family.
President Obama’s latest approval numbers in a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll compare unfavorably with the 60 percent-plus numbers in the wake of Inauguration Day. But MSNBC’s First Read blog notes that they align with the returns of the poll that counted — on Election Day 2008. “His job-approval rating has dropped to 53 percent, which just happens to be the percentage of the popular vote he won in November. His approval among independents and Republicans is, respectively, 49 and 16 percent, which is fairly close to his exit-poll scores with these groups,” First Read noted. Co-pollster Bill McInturff said: “The question I asked back in February was: ‘When does political gravity take hold?’ The answer is in this survey. It is happening now.”
Meanwhile, closer to home, the latest SurveyUSA poll, co-sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, finds that just 41 percent of Kansans approve of the job Obama is doing, down 8 points since June and 12 points since May.
NPR and Fox News contributor Juan Williams wrote a Washington Post obituary for affirmative action, which he declared dead at age 45. He pointed to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the New Haven, Conn., firefighters case, saying it “cut the last legal underpinnings for affirmative action. Without protection from reverse-discrimination lawsuits, virtually every instance of affirmative action can now be forever tied in a legal tangle that chokes the life out of it.” Williams concluded: “The bold national experiment that came to life 45 years ago with the equal employment section of the Civil Rights Act is now over — even if discrimination is not. It is time to think about how to deal with racial inequity without affirmative action.”
State Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, wasn’t high on the list of likely candidates to succeed Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, in the 4th Congressional District seat next year. But such a candidacy, which she is exploring, would add interesting ideological breadth to the GOP field. Like former congressman Dan Glickman, Schodorf started her political career on the Wichita school board, including as its president. Her eight-year tenure in the Kansas Senate is four times longer than Tiahrt’s was when he unseated Glickman in 1994. Schodorf has connections to Montgomery and Chautauqua counties, making her district base much larger than Wichita. And don’t count out the potential impact if her radio and TV ads featured the sonorous voice of her brother, TV producer and broadcaster Bill Kurtis. Those already in the GOP primary are state Sen. Dick Kelsey, R-Goddard, and Republican National Committee member Mike Pompeo.
It was heartening that so many people came forward this week with new bicycles and donations for Heartspring, after news that half a dozen bikes used by special-needs children had been stolen. Now the organization will be able to provide bikes to even more of the kids it serves. Once again, people in this community saw a wrong and acted to make it right.
Why do Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and other members of the state’s congressional delegation think it’s a great idea to bring the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility and its deadly toxins to Manhattan but a terrible idea to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to Fort Leavenworth? “The terrorists out of Guantanamo Bay, they don’t fit in the mission of Leavenworth,” Brownback said this week. “The research on these pathogens in Manhattan, Kan., clearly fits in the research in the region.”
“President Obama, of course, everyone knows, has invited Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and the police officer who arrested him to the White House for a beer. Of course, this could be trouble, because the last time Obama got a few beers in him, he bought General Motors.” — Conan O’Brien
“If it goes well, then President Obama is going to invite Gov. and Mrs. Sanford to come up and have a beer.” — David Letterman
“It’s all part of Obama’s new approach to diplomacy: ‘How would they handle this on ‘Cheers’?” — Jimmy Fallon
“He’s going to try it with Jon and Kate, and he is going to try it with the Israelis and Hamas.” — Letterman
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen notes that it’s getting to be an exclusive not to have interviewed President Obama. And on the main agenda item driving Obama’s overexposure, Cohen writes: “As a single (actually, divorced) payer, I cannot for the life of me figure out why Obama did not simply expand Medicare, lowering the eligible age until everyone was covered. This would take one House committee and one Senate committee and one news conference. It would both provide your average patriotic American with health insurance and keep Obama off TV. This is known as a win-win.”
Vice President Walter Cronkite? Frank Mankiewicz, director of Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, writes in the Washington Post that the idea was discussed but rejected, on the assumption that the CBS newsman would decline. (McGovern eventually went with Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton, who withdrew after revelations of his hospitalizations and shock treatments for depression.) According to Mankiewicz, Cronkite told McGovern decades later, “I’d have accepted in a minute; anything to help end that dreadful war.” But would it have mattered? The ticket of McGovern and replacement running mate Sargent Shriver lost to President Nixon 61 to 37 percent.
In the debate over climate change and energy security, nuclear power gets barely a mention. But it has its attractions, argues John Dendahl, a Rocky Mountain Foundation senior fellow, in the Denver Post: “Among those are a half-century safety record unequaled by any major industry in history, zero carbon emissions, low operating expenses, no dependence on bad guys for fuel — and continuous output 24/7.” He also called it a “myth” that nuclear plants’ radioactive waste defies safe disposal, pointing to the safety record over the past 10 years of New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
Even the editors of the conservative National Review say “birthers” should move on: “The myth that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president represents the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of his election and presidency disappear. . . . The director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy. Given that fact, we are loath even to engage the fanciful notion that President Obama was born elsewhere, contrary to the information on his birth certificate, but we note for the record that his mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well.”
The editorial concludes: “Barack Obama may prefer European-style socialized health care. He may consider himself a citizen of the Earth and sometimes address his audiences as ‘people of the world,’ as though he were born not in another country but on another planet. Like Bruce Springsteen, he has a lot of bad political ideas; but he was born in the USA.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., subjected Judge Sonia Sotomayor (in photo) to quite a grilling during her confirmation hearings. Yet he ended up the only Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee to support her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 13-6 vote expected to lead to a full Senate vote next week. “I’m deciding to vote for a woman I would not have chosen,” Graham said. But it’s a “big deal” for President Obama to have nominated the first-ever Latina to the high court, he said, and “America has changed for the better with her selection.” There’s no suspense about how Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback will vote; they announced in May and June, respectively, that they would vote against her.
It’s an old, sarcastic argument but an interesting one, especially considering how ubiquitous metal detectors and purse searches are throughout Washington, D.C., and how many friends the National Rifle Association has in Congress: Why should Second Amendment rights stop at the Capitol steps? “Congress seems to think that gun restrictions are for wimps,” wrote Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. “It voted this year to allow people to bring their weapons into national parks, and pro-gun legislators have pushed for the right to carry in taverns, colleges and workplaces. Shouldn’t Congress set an example in its own workplace?”
As she stepped down Sunday as Alaska’s governor, Sarah Palin said she didn’t need a title to fight “for what is right, and for truth.” For most politicians, quitting midway through a first term wouldn’t further their careers. But Palin makes her own rules. Her immediate future appears to hold an Aug. 8 speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, work on her book and campaigning for like-minded Republicans, as well as more speaking out via Twitter. But “there is absolutely no plan,” she told the Associated Press. Meanwhile, a New Republic article paints a grim picture of her final months in office and relationship with state legislators. None of her major bills passed, and “she managed to alienate most of the 60 members of House and Senate,” said an aide to one GOP lawmaker. “It wasn’t a matter of burning bridges — she blew them up.”
A lengthy weekend article in the New York Times by David Barstow thoughtfully tells the story of the life, practice and violent death of George Tiller, and captures the passions and defiance on both sides of the abortion issue in Wichita. The cast of the article and online multimedia package is familiar to Wichitans, though not every detail will be. Barstow observes that “not a single Kansas politician of statewide prominence showed up” for Tiller’s June funeral and that some anti-abortion activists view Tiller with grudging respect. Mark Gietzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life, called Tiller “very smart” and a “great businessman” and “worthy adversary.”
Talking about race has been all the rage since news broke of the arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. But will it amount to anything? Judging from recent history, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart predicts the flap “will end as quickly as it began, with no clearer understanding of the roots of the racial reactions that fueled it.” Attorney General Eric Holder said in February that we are a “nation of cowards” when discussing race. President Obama, trying to repair the damage he did with his “stupidly” comment, said Friday that “these are issues that are still very sensitive here in America.” On ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, columnist George Will declared that “we converse about race too much.” But it remains, responded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, “as Condoleezza Rice said sometime ago, our birth defect because we won’t have a real, honest, candid conversation, George, and that’s the problem.”
Former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius made a big show in 2003 of eliminating the state’s central motor pool and selling underused state vehicles. But reviews by state auditors have calculated that the state hasn’t saved much money, because it has had to spend more than it used to renting cars and reimbursing state employees for using their private cars. A new report also found that at least nine Kansas government employees last year rented vehicles for more than 300 days, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. That doesn’t make sense to state Rep. John Grange, R-El Dorado, given that the average person is on the job only about 250 days annually. “That smacks of somebody doing something that was not right,” Grange said.
