3 hours and 30 minutes ago
Some GOP governors blasted health care reform last week, saying that it would result in crippling costs to states. But an analysis released last week by the Kansas Health Policy Authority concluded that the proposed reforms could save Kansas up to $50 million per year. The net savings would come in part from shifting some Kansans out of Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and into a private insurance market. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the reform bills could extend coverage to up to 240,000 uninsured Kansans.
3 hours and 32 minutes ago
Overall, Kansans seem to approve of how Republican Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts are doing in the Democratic-controlled Congress. In the latest SurveyUSA poll, co-sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, Brownback had a 52 percent approval rating, up 4 percentage points from September, and 54 percent approved of the job Roberts is doing (equal to his September rating). Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson’s approval dropped from 53 to 44 percent in the same poll — suggesting that even if he had decided to run against Brownback next year in an effort to stay at Cedar Crest, Parkinson could face an uphill fight.
3 hours and 33 minutes ago
Good for Sedgwick County Commissioner Dave Unruh for continuing to question the wisdom of giving an out-of-state consulting firm another 18 months and $228,000 to do the work it has yet to do under an earlier 10-month, $124,616 contract — reduce the Sedgwick County Jail’s population by 25 percent. Jail overcrowding is a hard problem to fix, especially when so many inmates are in the jail for reasons the county can’t control. But if commissioners decide next month to give Justice Concepts Inc. another chance, they need to better explain to the public why this isn’t throwing good taxpayer money after bad.
3 hours and 34 minutes ago
“What we do as Kansans when we struggle is that we pull together and we work through our challenges. We don’t typically sue each other.” — Gov. Mark Parkinson, to KSN, Channel 3, calling a possible schools lawsuit unproductive
“When you’re half the budget and the budget goes to hell, you’ll get your share.” — Sen. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina, on the necessity of K-12 cuts
“What happened to the money and where did it go? We’ve given it away. That’s the short answer.” — Revenue Secretary Joan Wagnon, partly blaming tax breaks and incentives for the state’s fiscal problems
“Good luck to the Jayhawks. I say that having gone to the Duke Law School. Please don’t boo too loudly, because it will be misinterpreted.” — Former Clinton independent counsel Ken Starr, speaking at KU
In the wake of the disputed 2000 presidential election, many Republicans thought that election reform was a nonissue and that Congress shouldn’t be telling locals how to run their elections. Nine years later, with a Democrat in the White House, 52 percent of Republican voters surveyed by Public Polling Policy said they think ACORN stole the 2008 election for Barack Obama. The polling firm concluded: “The constant harping on ACORN by Republican politicians may sound nutso in some circles, but it certainly has hurt the organization’s image and it looks like the anti-ACORN message may resonate with a decent portion of the American electorate.”
From the start, President Obama dispensed with China-bashing and declared the need for a strong bilateral relationship with China to tackle the many problems that confront the world, not least the economic downturn, climate change, nuclear proliferation and terrorism. His two Chinese-American Cabinet members, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, were among the first high-ranking officials to visit Beijing and begin the dialogue on collaboration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first trip after taking office was to China. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has also made an official visit, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been to China more than once. Obama’s actions have brought results. China’s Premier Wen Jiabao went to North Korea and came back to report that Pyongyang was ready to re-enter the six-party talks, subject to the United States being willing to conduct direct bilateral discussions. This is a refreshing change from the unilateral approach of the Bush administration. — George Koo, New America Media
Creating jobs for Americans is President Obama’s top priority. Yet he left China with little to show in further opening the world’s fastest-growing economy to greater U.S. imports. Perhaps Obama’s three-day visit at least created enough good will with Beijing’s tight-lipped leaders to later achieve his goal of reducing China’s blatant discrimination against foreign firms. The president promised last September that the United States “cannot go back to an era where the Chinese . . . just are selling everything to us.” More than three-quarters of the $400 billion in trade between the countries is one-way from China. But as old China hands like to say, “You don’t change China; China changes you.” And Obama seems to have fallen for many of the Communist Party’s old excuses for selective protectionism. Even boosting U.S. exports by 1 percent to a country with 1.3 billion people would create close to 200,000 American jobs. — Christian Science Monitor editorial
GOP governors ended their meeting in Texas on Thursday by cautioning the party’s 2010 candidates to go easy on President Obama. “We need to be careful. We need to treat the president respectfully,” said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who chairs the Republican Governors Association, noting that the nation’s first African-American president enjoys a “residuary of good will.” Somehow it’s hard to imagine that warning will be heeded by conservative media or by conservative candidates in red states such as Kansas, where Obama’s approval rating was just 41 percent late last month (in a SurveyUSA poll co-sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12).
There may be good science behind a federal task force recommendation that women in their 40s don’t need annual mammograms, but it was bad timing for the Obama administration. Coming in the midst of the heated debate about health care reform, the recommendation became instant fodder for those claiming that the government is going to ration health care and get between patients and their doctors. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius responded Wednesday that the task force does “not set federal policy and they don’t determine what services are covered by the federal government.” But that’s unlikely to quell concerns.
Some questions left over from Thursday’s editorial on the Kansas Coliseum’s uncertain future, in the wake of the Sedgwick County Commission’s vote against negotiating with any developer right now:
– How could the committee reviewing the proposals not take into consideration the fact that its preferred developer, North American Management-Kansas, also is involved in trying to get approval for a Native American casino nearby?
– The public outcry over the proposal last summer to close the Coliseum complex came from the groups that use its pavilions for dog, horse, gun shows and more. Where were the passionate defenders of the Britt Brown Arena? Do they have any ideas for how to keep it open and productive?
The campaign of Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, looked childish and desperate in sending out an e-mail falsely claiming that Senate rival Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, had been endorsed by the Communist Party USA. But as Washburn University political science professor Robert Beatty hoped, perhaps the incident may lead to an intelligent discussion about U.S. policy. Perhaps — though probably not. As Moran correctly argues, decades of U.S. embargoes haven’t brought an end to communist rule in Cuba and actually may have helped prop it up. Lifting some trade and travel bans to Cuba would benefit Kansas farmers and could help spread democracy.
The public is evenly divided on the proposed health care reforms, with 49 percent opposed and 48 percent supportive, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The public also doubts that the reform will help control costs, with 56 percent saying that overall health care costs will go up. But 66 percent support requiring all large employers to provide health insurance coverage or face fines, and 53 percent support a public insurance option (72 percent support one limited to those who lack access to coverage).
The public still favors President Obama over Republicans in handling the economy (52 to 37 percent) and health care (50 to 37 percent), though the gaps have narrowed some during the year. And 61 percent of those surveyed think that GOP leaders mainly criticize Obama’s proposals without offering alternatives.
RealClearPolitics’ Tom Bevan and Mike Memoli have cast their imaginations beyond Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, and drawn up a list of GOP dark horses for 2012: South Dakota Sen. John Thune (in photo), Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn and former Vice President Dick Cheney, and, calling them the “best of the rest,” Gen. David Petraeus and Reps. Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, Mike Pence of Indiana and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
Two takes on the prospects of a Sarah Palin presidential nomination in 2012, offered Sunday by participants on ABC’s “This Week” roundtable:
– “She’s a joke. I just can’t take her seriously. We’ve got serious problems in the country. . . . The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination. Believe me — it’ll never happen,” said New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks.
– “You cannot underestimate the degree to which women will be drawn to her story, and that’s who she’s speaking to. These are people who are ignored, who nobody counts into their thinking,” said Gwen Ifill, moderator of PBS’ “Washington Week.”
Meanwhile, only 28 percent of Americans surveyed think that Palin is qualified to be president, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll. And Newsweek is taking heat over its cover photo of Palin posing in running gear.
In 2003, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., made a principled argument against filibustering judicial nominations. “We are really changing the constitutional design of what it takes to basically nominate and approve any judge,” he said. In 2005, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., also correctly argued that “all of the president’s nominees — both now and in the future — deserve a fair up or down vote.” So shouldn’t that mean that they both were among the 10 GOP lawmakers who voted Tuesday to end the filibuster of President Obama’s nomination of U.S. District Judge David Hamilton (in photo)? It should, but they weren’t.
Native Kansan and Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., hopes that lawmakers from both parties will finally declare a truce in their partisan fights over judicial nominations, thus ending such hypocrisy. “The Hamilton nomination would be a good time to do that,” he said. But apparently not for Roberts and Brownback.
Given the conservative challenges in several states against incumbents who are viewed as RINOs (Republicans in name only), would Ronald Reagan, if judged on his record, be pure enough for the GOP circa 2009? Newsweek’s Evan Thomas noted that “Reagan piously gave lip service to the right-wing social agenda while doing nothing to further it by legislation; he also chose George H.W. Bush to be his vice president and allowed the ultrapragmatic James A. Baker III to run the White House.” MSNBC’s First Read blog further observed that Reagan “raised taxes” and “increased the size of the deficit.”
The strong emotions over the now-scrapped proposal for a central-northeast Lord’s Diner satellite extended to the Wichita City Council bench Tuesday, notably with the sharply worded expressions of regret by council members Sue Schlapp and Paul Gray. Now, those who opposed the idea of a soup kitchen at 21st and Grove need to deliver on council member Lavonta Williams’ assurances that the hungry will be fed and the city-owned building will not remain blighted. Calling it probably the “most complicated” issue of his time on the council bench, Mayor Carl Brewer challenged the neighborhood to be as passionate in solving the hunger problem as it was in fighting the proposal. “At the end of the day, we want every citizen that’s in need or that’s hungry to be taken care of,” Brewer said.
Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, was one of nearly four dozen Republican and Democratic House members who submitted statements into the official record about health care reform that were written, in whole or in part, by lobbyists for a biotechnology company, the New York Times reported. Jenkins and Reps. K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, and Lee Terry, R-Neb., used nearly identical words in criticizing the health care reform bill, but each also said: “I do believe the sections relating to the creation of a market for biosimilar products is one area of the bill that strikes the appropriate balance in providing lower cost options.” So not only do lobbyists help write bills, they help write what lawmakers say.
UPDATE: Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., also submitted text written by lobbyists.
It’s not “treasonous,” as the blogosphere has suggested, but President Obama needs to stop bowing to foreign dignitaries. Not only does it look bad for the leader of the free world to bow to anyone, but his bow to Emperor Akihito of Japan over the weekend wasn’t even culturally correct, reported ABC News. One academic with knowledge of the Japanese Empire said the “handshake/forward lurch was so jarring and inappropriate” that it recalled President Bush’s back rub of the German chancellor. Then again, said the unnamed scholarly critic, “if Obama can get the dollar to stop bowing to the yen, I take it all back.” Obama similarly dipped at the waist in April upon meeting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Some of the members of John McCain’s presidential campaign are working hard to refute tales that his running mate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, tells in her book, “Going Rogue.” Former Bush White House and McCain campaign aide Nicolle Wallace, for example, calls everything Palin says involving her “just fabricated.” Give McCain credit for trying hard to remain respectful of Palin and her family, in recent interviews and otherwise. According to NBC, the Arizona senator has specifically asked his former staffers not to do interviews to rebut Palin’s charges.
