If the Democrats get crushed in the November congressional races, so what? That’s the perspective of Peter Beinart, senior political writer for the Daily Beast. “Particularly if he signs real financial reform, Obama will have milked his and the Democrats’ 2008 victory dry,” Beinart wrote. “So what if he plays defense a bit over the next two years, and spends his time ensuring that Republicans can’t pass their conservative agenda even as they ensure that he can’t pass his liberal one? The legislation Republicans block will be less important than the legislation Obama and the Democrats have already passed.”
With Gov. Mark Parkinson threatening to veto any bill that balances the fiscal 2011 budget by cutting education and other vital state spending, the chances increase that the legislative session could outlast the allotted 90 days. (Thursday was day 77.) “If we can’t end up on time, I’ll keep the Legislature there as long as they need to be for us to pass a responsible plan,” Parkinson told Kansas City TV station KMBC. Bring it on, responded Kent Eckles, vice president of government affairs for the Kansas Chamber of Commerce: “If we have to go into a special session, fine. We need to have this debate about the role of our government and how much we are going to have to spend.” Both sides need to be mindful of the potential price of such a standoff: For example, the 12-day special session in 2005 cost $574,000. But that summer the state ended a fiscal year with a flush $481 million balance. Now, lawmakers must fill a budget shortfall as big or bigger.
Before Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., joined all but one of his Republican colleagues on the Senate Agriculture Committee last week in voting against legislation meant to tighten regulation of derivatives, he pleaded not only for another bill but for true bipartisanship in general. “Let’s try to work together, not let any political pressure sway our commitments to each other and our constituents,” he said. “As of now, and as it has been for a considerable number of months in this session of Congress, the bridge of cooperation has been washed out, we apparently are not going to swim, and the bipartisan bill is on the other side. I am now writing country-Western music,” he added, to laughter.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., characterized the Republicans’ stalling in bringing the financial reform bill to the Senate floor Wednesday as “anti-American.” Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., suggested the same day that Wall Street practices leading to the financial meltdown displayed a “lack of patriotism.” Especially after anti-Iraq war Democrats saw their loyalty to country questioned by Republicans, why not criticize people for their conduct, without bringing patriotism into it?
Despite all the complaining many Republicans do about the federal stimulus package, GOP members in the Kansas House are hoping more money is coming the state’s way. In fact, their budget doesn’t balance without it. The GOP House budget assumes that Congress will pass a bill extending some stimulus money for Medicaid, which would save Kansas about $131 million. The U.S. Senate has approved the additional spending (over the objections of Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, R-Kan.), but the bill has not cleared the House. Though Congress may end up approving this additional money, it also might not, so it would be risky to count on it in the state budget.
The Sedgwick County Commission unanimously took a welcome step Wednesday toward working with the Arts Council to create an art garden in Sedgwick County Park — a natural venue within the park for permanent artworks and family-friendly arts events. Any public funding would come later, but with their action commissioners have endorsed the value of public art — something more associated locally with the extensive public art program initiated by the late Wichita City Manager Chris Cherches. “I think it will be a marvelous addition to the park,” County Commissioner Gwen Welshimer said of the art garden. In 2007, the county put a privately funded art proposal for the park on permanent hold, after a few people fretted that it had pagan or cultlike religious connotations.
“The top executive of Goldman Sachs testified before Congress today. So that proves crooks always return to the scene of the crime.” — Jay Leno
“Former President Bush is writing his memoir. Writing his autobiography about his eight years in the White House. He’s not done with it yet, but he’s already put up the ‘mission accomplished’ banner.” — David Letterman
“It’s called ‘Decision Points,’ which narrowly edged out its original title of ‘My Bad.’” — Jimmy Kimmel
“The state of Arizona has a new slogan: ‘Get out.’” — Leno
Goldman Sachs vice president Fabrice Tourre is becoming “the poster boy of the financial crisis,” Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote after “Fabulous Fab” appeared before a Senate panel Tuesday. He continued: “Fab’s arrogance, and that of his Goldman colleagues who also testified, bested previous displays of hubris by the automotive, oil and tobacco industries.” Tourre’s e-mails included one predicting that he would be the “only potential survivor” when the exotic trades he created collapsed, and another bragging how he had managed to dump some worthless mortgage securities on “widows and orphans” that he ran into at the airport.
Reps. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, and Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, both blasted the health care reform law over a new cost analysis by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It estimated that total health care spending, public and private, would increase by $311 billion between 2010 and 2019. “It is extremely disappointing that this fiscally irresponsible plan was pushed into law,” said Moran. Tiahrt said: “We have known all along that Obamacare is a budget-busting disaster that will require higher taxes and rationed care.” But the increase is less than 1 percent above what the spending would have been without reform, according to the study, and the increase is projected to disappear as cost-saving measures phase in. That caused Ezra Klein of the Washington Post to write: “The basic question here is whether covering 34 million Americans is worth adding a percentage point or two more to our health care spending for a couple of years, at which point total spending should actually fall below what it would’ve been if this bill had never passed.”
Kansas took an important step Tuesday in capitalizing on its wind-energy potential. The board of directors of the Southwest Power Pool, a regional organization that manages power transmission, approved the construction of a 180-mile transmission line from Spearville in western Kansas to Wichita, with a connection to Oklahoma. The “V plan” line will enable power from windy western Kansas to be sent to the rest of the state and beyond. Equally important, the power pool submitted a filing last week to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission seeking approval to charge ratepayers in the pool’s eight-state region for the estimated $356 million cost of constructing the line.
It isn’t too late to mail in your census form and spare taxpayers some unnecessary expense. Kansas’ mail-in participation rate in the 2010 census was at 74 percent as of Tuesday — better than the nation’s 72 percent and already ahead of the state’s mail response rate of 71 percent a decade ago, but lagging Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota. It costs the Census Bureau $85 million for every 1 percentage point of the U.S. population that blows off returning the form.
As he labeled Arizona’s new immigration law “racist, arbitrary, oppressive, mean-spirited, unjust,” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wondered why tea partiers aren’t up in arms. “It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim — and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state — would send the tea partiers into apoplexy,” Robinson wrote. “Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish?”
The state legislators preparing to reconvene in Topeka Wednesday to try to close a $400 million-plus budget gap have a lot to think about, thanks to input received at packed forums and otherwise. The closing question at a meeting of area county officials last week in Colby put it especially bluntly: “I just want to compliment you gentlemen for coming out and having the courage to show your faces in public,” Gove County Commissioner Mahlon Tuttle told the panel of lawmakers. “You got the state broke. You got schools broke. You decimated mental health and developmental services. I really haven’t heard you say what you’re doing to do about it. Or what you want us to do.” The lawmakers pointed to the global recession and county leaders’ own responsibility to respond to it. But the mood is tense this session, acknowledged state Sen. Ralph Ostmeyer, R-Grinnell, in the Hays Daily News. “This is the first year I’ve gotten e-mails — I don’t want to say they’re threatening, but they’re impolite. They don’t trust my judgment.”
Monday’s news that the city of Wichita is waiving all parking tickets given to the April 15 tea party participants who used the city-owned Rounds and Porter Building lot was a nice surprise for those ticketed. But now it looks like the city is showing favoritism to a group with political connections, because at least two City Council members and several conservative GOP candidates attended. At least there may be consistency going forward, if the city follows through on a new plan to open the lot to free public parking on weekends and after 5 p.m. weekdays.
Nate Phelps, estranged son of Fred Phelps, said that much of the public, including many Christians, didn’t say much when his family was protesting at the funerals of gays. It wasn’t until the Phelpses started protesting at military funerals that people got really upset. “To me that says something about whether the other side of Christianity is all that desirable, is all that caring,” he told the Topeka Capital Journal. “They’re willing to stand by and let it happen as long as they also were against the group the church was attacking.”
As to why Phelps became an atheist rather than a more moderate Christian, Phelps said: “The same Bible moderate Christians use to say God loves is the same Bible my father uses to say God hates. Both views are in there. I couldn’t pick and choose what I believe God is. If it is God’s word, then you have to look at all of it. That being said, I am grateful most Christians see the Bible as a work of love, redemption and sacrifice.”
One wouldn’t usually have reason to put Comedy Central and “courage” in the same sentence. But the Viacom cable network really choked in reacting to a Muslim group’s threat by censoring a “South Park” episode’s references to the Prophet Muhammad, as well as Kyle’s culminating speech about intimidation and fear — and without the knowledge of creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. As David Harsanyi wrote in the Denver Post of the show, which has been on 14 years: “‘South Park’ is the program that featured an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President George W. Bush and the American flag. It’s the program that featured the Virgin Mary gushing blood while undergoing menstruation and Pope Benedict XVI inspecting her in a truly distasteful manner.” He added: “If those who bankroll satirists can be so easily intimidated, shouldn’t we all be troubled about the lesson that sends religious fanatics elsewhere? And what does it say about us?”
It remains to be seen whether America will be made physically healthier by the health care reform bill’s passage, but President Obama definitely was made geopolitically healthier, according to columnist Thomas Friedman. He wrote that leaders from other countries watched the health care debate closely to gauge Obama’s strength — and, thus, whether or not America would be a lame power. Defense Secretary Robert Gates agreed: “When others see the president as a winner or as somebody who has real authority in his own house, it absolutely makes a difference. . . . Failure would have badly weakened the president in terms of dealing with others — his ability to do various kinds of national security things.”
The following satirical headlines come from borowitzreport.com:
GOLDMAN CEO TO PERFORM COMMUNITY SERVICE AS TREASURY SECRETARY; ‘Will Do Less Harm’ in New Post, Says Treasury Spokesperson
PALIN, BACHMANN SEEK TWO ADDITIONAL HORSEMEN; Send Out Call at Tea Party Rally
VOLCANIC ASH CLOUD TURNS OUT TO BE FINALE OF ‘LOST’; Producers Set Off Explosive Charge
It was sobering to see Wichita superintendent John Allison propose ending driver’s education, cutting 117 jobs and increasing student fees by 5 percent — worse to realize those and cuts proposed earlier would only bring the district $14.3 million closer to filling a possible $25 million shortfall. Nothing will be final until the Legislature makes its hard decisions in the coming days, but every cut in every district will have consequences, including unintended ones. For example, what would be the public safety implications of ending driver’s ed?
