The 2010 Legislature expects to re-examine the death penalty and debate a state smoking ban, as well as deal with a budget crisis. But it should be brief, noted Topeka Capital-Journal columnist Ric Anderson. “If there’s ever been a year for a short session, this is it,” he wrote. “Last year, it cost $78,158 per day for the Legislature to be in session. This year, the price tag will be slightly higher because of an increase in the per diem compensation given to lawmakers, which means a 90-day session would cost well more than $7 million. Cut the session to 45 days, though, and there’s $3.5 million that could be spent somewhere else in the budget. Granted, that’s a drop in the bucket when the latest projections show revenue is $235 million short, but every little bit helps.”
To encourage lawmakers to get in and out as quickly as possible, Anderson proposed “adopting a temporary rule change allowing legislators to throw their shoes at anyone who proposes frivolous proclamations or bills, like naming an official state spore or imposing a ban on declawing cats.”
“We’ve got a whole generation who will be negatively impacted . . . by the idiots and fools in Washington and Topeka that have been making policy.” — 2010 Commission member and former Kansas GOP chairman Dennis Jones of Lakin
“We’ve cut so deep in the meat, it’s tragic.” — Lawrence schools superintendent Rick Doll
“You can’t get blood out of a turnip. By joining it, we’re draining what resources we have left.” — Silver Lake school board president Sam Grant, who opposes joining another Schools for Fair Funding lawsuit against the state
“Almost half of Congress are millionaires. Isn’t that unbelievable? So, apparently, Congress is pretty good at managing their own money.” — Jay Leno
“CBS News is reporting that President Obama has decided to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says it’s all part of his plan to finally deliver on the campaign promises made by John McCain.” — Jimmy Fallon
“Outspoken anti-immigration anchor Lou Dobbs is leaving CNN. . . . He’ll be replaced by a guy named Juan, who will do the same job for $5 an hour.” — Conan O’Brien
“On Monday, Oprah Winfrey and Sarah Palin will sit down and they’re going to talk for an entire hour. And I was thinking, too bad John McCain didn’t do that with her before he chose her as his running mate.” — David Letterman
On the same day that Democrats lost the New Jersey and Virginia governors’ mansions, the state-by-state push to limit taxes and spending lost momentum. Maine voters nixed a Taxpayer Bill of Rights measure 60 to 40 percent. Washington state voters defeated similar legislation 57 to 43 percent. In both cases, wrote Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, opponents “made a case for what government does, why it’s important and why cutbacks in public services can be harmful to citizens and the common good.” He further observed: “It’s true that Washington and Maine have been reliably Democratic in recent presidential elections. But this is precisely why the defeat of these anti-tax measures was so important. Anti-government crusaders were getting ready to argue that if TABOR measures could pass in blue states, theirs was the wave of the future.”
Some are predicting that President Obama’s remarks at the Fort Hood memorial service will rank among his best. The text is worth reading. Among the standout phrases were these about the 13 who died in the shooting spree: “Their life’s work is our security, and the freedom that we all too often take for granted. Every evening that the sun sets on a tranquil town; every dawn that a flag is unfurled; every moment that an American enjoys life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — that is their legacy.”
As drivers cross from Oklahoma into Kansas on I-35, they see a sign touting the Web site HaysHasJobs.com, suggesting that parts of western Kansas want for workers rather than jobs. A new SurveyUSA poll, sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, further suggests that the recession is being unevenly felt in Kansas. Asked about the economy’s impact on their lives over the past year, 29 percent of respondents in western Kansas said it had been major, compared with 39 percent statewide and 43 percent in northeast Kansas; 24 percent out west said there had been no impact at all (16 percent statewide). Asked whether they or someone they knew had lost a job in the past year, 77 percent of those polled statewide said “yes,” compared with 69 percent in western Kansas. And 44 percent of those polled statewide said they were in debt, compared with 33 percent in western Kansas.
Does President Obama’s White House need more governing professionals and fewer political hacks? Forbes columnist Dan Gerstein thinks so, suggesting Obama invite an “independent-thinking Democratic wise man like Bob Kerrey” aboard. Survey the president’s advisers, Gerstein wrote, and “what’s missing from this group, besides diversity of experience and interests, is a senior adviser or two with an independent point of view who could carry Obama’s post-partisan portfolio. Someone who would wake up every day thinking about how to form broad-based coalitions, to deepen the confidence and trust of independents and non-rabid Republicans in government, and push Obama to honor his promise to change politics-as-usual in Washington. Or at minimum, someone not ingrained or trained to think that the Republicans are the enemy.”
The wealthiest member of Kansas’ congressional delegation, Sen. Sam Brownback, ranks 77th overall among congressional and executive officials in Washington, D.C., with a net worth ranging from $3.1 million to $9.2 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The other Kansans’ standings: Republican Sen. Pat Roberts was 211th, with more than $1.4 million; Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, was 295th, with more than $718,000; Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Lenexa, was 336th, with more than $506,000; Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, was 435th, with more than $186,000; and Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, was 470th, with more than $105,000.
If President Obama were President Johnson, he would have used his signature on the spending bill that included $32 million for the proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan as leverage over Kansas Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts. Kansas City Star columnist Steve Kraske noted that “Johnson, the master pol, would have demanded something: a tough vote, more cooperation or fewer criticisms in exchange for his help on something as major as NBAF.” Instead, Obama recently signed the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.
“In one short year, Obama’s slogan has gone from ‘Yes, we can’ to ‘Wow, this is freakin’ hard.’” — Conan O’Brien
“One year later, we’re still in Iraq. We’re still in Afghanistan. But, you know, at least we got rid of Paula Abdul.” — David Letterman
“The White House predicted there would be 120 million doses of swine flu vaccines available today. But right now, there are only 26 million. Yeah, they overshot by so much, they are all getting jobs as pilots for Northwest Airlines.” — Jimmy Fallon
Good for state Sen. Thomas “Tim” Owens, R-Overland Park, for his stated commitment to give a proposed repeal of Kansas’ unused death penalty more than a cursory glance in the legislative session that starts in January. “We are going to have a complete and thorough discussion of death penalty abolition,” said Owens, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. Since Kansas reinstated capital punishment in 1994, nine men have taken up residence on death row but no execution dates are in sight. Meanwhile, according to a 2003 study, capital cases are costing Kansas 70 percent more than noncapital cases.
When Sen. Sam Brownback gives up his job to run for governor next year, it could be Kansas’ only open seat for a while. The Hutchinson News reported that Sen. Pat Roberts, who is officially Kansas’ “junior senator,” already plans to run for a fourth term in 2014 and had $82,256 in campaign cash as of September. If Roberts won in 2014 and served the full six years, by the way, he’d be 84 when his term ended in early 2021. At that point, Roberts’ 24 years in the Senate would make his longevity among Kansans second only to Bob Dole’s 27 years.
“I had a tremendous time looking at fossils.” — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (in photo), in Lawrence, saying KU’s Dyche Hall “may be the best university natural history museum in the United States”
“My name has been besmirched.” — Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, in Pittsburg, saying an earmarks-related ethics probe was started by an anonymous accusation
“We hurt people. I can tell you who didn’t share in the pain: corporate interests.” — Rep. Ann Mah, D-Topeka, on the 2009 Legislature’s spending cuts
“I was just reading this interesting story that I was going to run for the Senate in Kansas as a Democrat. I don’t know where that came from. I’m a lifelong Republican.” — Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
To hear the GOP members of the Kansas congressional delegation tell it, passage of health reform will end liberty as we know it. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, is already talking about trying to repeal or defund any bill that makes it into law. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger (in photo), also a Republican, has concerns about the unlevel playing field a public option could create, but she remains optimistic about reform overall, telling the Topeka Capital-Journal: “If we go with a plan that retains as much flexibility as possible, keeps the states are regulators, allows us to continue to be there for consumers, and we could get a national system in place in terms of no pre-existing condition exclusions and everybody have coverage and meaningful subsidies, I think we’d all be better.”
This week’s opening of the Kellogg freeway at Rock Road — eastbound lanes Wednesday, westbound lanes today — represents a major milestone for Wichita’s transportation system that arguably deserved fireworks and a marching band. Then again, the ability to drive 14 miles along Kellogg without stopping may suffice, especially for those who remember when the thoroughfare was a 19-stoplight nightmare. It will take a while not only for the city to open all the through and turn lanes at Kellogg and Rock but also for drivers to adjust to the changes. And watch the speed out there: As more of Kellogg becomes a freeway, it must not also become a free-for-all.
Kansans’ thoughts and prayers are with the family of William Avery, the former Republican governor who died Wednesday at age 98. Avery was the last Kansas governor to feel the weight of the death penalty on his shoulders, having dealt with the appeals of the “In Cold Blood” killers and two others among the last to be hanged in the state, in 1965. Yet he advocated in 1985 that Kansas reinstate the death penalty, viewing it as reasonable protection for law-abiding citizens. Avery, who billed himself as “Kansas’ No. 1 salesman” and served 10 years in Congress before running for governor, actually took pride in tax increases — though the 1965 package of income and sales taxes, intended to fund education and provide property-tax relief, denied him re-election in 1966. “The teachers told me they appreciated that. But when it got to election time, I saw no evidence they told anybody,” Avery said decades later. Given that Gov. Mark Parkinson and legislators could face a fiscal 2011 budget shortfall of $500 million, it was sobering to realize Thursday that the shortfall Avery aimed to bridge back then was a mere $50 million.
When Politico blogger Ben Smith heard that Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, was among the more than two dozen House members who are the subject of an ethics inquiry, he wondered whether it meant Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, will be a senator soon. “It’s tough enough running in a GOP primary in a conservative state as an appropriator. . . . And when you have even a whiff of scandal surrounding your role as a congressional spender, you’re in an even tougher spot,” Smith wrote. “Tiahrt will need to clear his name quickly on this.”
