Voice For Liberty in Wichita

Kansas Liberty, which has become a very fine place to read news and opinion about Kansas and its politics, recently posted the excellent article Kansas’ Left Conservatives. This article, written by Caleb Stegall, provides a look at the politics of former Kansas governor Joan Finney.
I highly recommend this article to learn more about “the [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve recently learned that the radical environmentalist group Earthjustice played a role in the rejection of a coal-fired power plant in Kansas. I didn’t learn that from any Kansas news source, but only from Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, and only then long after the permit for the plant was denied. See Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius [...]

[Read more →]

On June 26, 2008, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius spoke at an event hosted by Earthjustice (motto: “Because the earth needs a good lawyer”). By the next day, Earthjustice already had a self-congratulatory professionally-produced video available at Earthjustice & Kansas Governor Talk Clean Energy.
Evidently, Earthjustice, previously known as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, was involved [...]

[Read more →]

By Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network
State owned and operated casinos are constitutional and permissible in Kansas. The extremely activist and left-wing Kansas Supreme Court unanimously ruled June 27 that state owned and operated casinos were legal in Kansas. For many statehouse observers this wasn’t a surprise.
The Kansas Supreme Court is dominated by liberal Democrats [...]

[Read more →]

Yesterday’s Wichita Eagle editorial by Randy Scholfield (Climate group could help state) supports Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius and her hand-picked Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group (KEEP). Together with an earlier article in the same newspaper (Climate group to assist state on energy plan, June 22, 2008), Kansans have plenty to be worried [...]

[Read more →]

The Kansas Meadowlark gets it just right in this quote from a recent article: “Unfortunately Sebelius’ energy policy is more about winning elections than solving long-term energy problems.”

Most Kansans realize that Kathleen Sebelius’ national ambitions are more important to her than the good governance of the State of Kansas. Her policy switch on the desirability of coal-fired power plants in Kansas helps her nationally, but hurts us here in Kansas.

The Meadowlark’s full story is here: GPACE PAC/Sebelius only want unreliable energy sources for Kansas?

[Read more →]

In The Wichita Eagle (Roderick L. Bremby: Neufeld Disregards Truth About Air Permits, May 17, 2008) the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment takes issue with Kansas House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, a Republican from Ingalls. The point of contention is that Neufeld claims that if not for Bremby, Kansas might have landed a large oil refinery. Bremby disagrees with Neufeld’s assertion that Bremby’s actions have created “regulatory uncertainty” in Kansas.

There’s some uncertainty as to whether Kansas was really in the running for the oil refinery, or if we were just a fallback state.

There’s also controversy over whether the denial of the permit for a coal-fired power plant creates regulatory uncertainty.

But there can be no uncertainty over this: Secretary Bremby denied the Holcomb station permit because of its carbon dioxide emissions of 11 million tons per year. The oil refinery, according to Topeka Capital-Journal reporting based on its South Dakota application, will emit 17 million tons per year. (Hyperion refinery: possibility or politics? May 18, 2008)

So if a permit was denied because a plant would emit 11 million tons of carbon dioxide, what chance would a plant emitting 17 million tons (55% more) have of obtaining a permit? I would say it is quite certain the permit would not be approved.

But reporting from The Topeka Capital-Journal raises questions about Secretary Bremby and his actions that absolutely do contribute to regulatory uncertainty:

Phillips wrote to Kansas commerce secretary David Kerr on Jan. 22 asking for a commitment to approve the air-quality permit if Hyperion applied in Kansas. Bremby replied Feb. 11, “Kansas remains open for business.”

Bremby wrote he couldn’t commit to issuing the permit but said if Hyperion submitted the same application as they did in South Dakota, there “should not be a problem with issuance.”

The South Dakota application mentions the 17 million tons of carbon dioxide, which, if we believe the Secretary, would not be an obstacle to obtaining a permit. If so, why couldn’t the Holcomb plant, with its lesser carbon dioxide emissions, be approved?

Secretary Bremby has some explaining to do.

Related: The Kansas Meadowlark sees things that everyone else overlooks: Will Gov. Sebelius call for removal of carbon dioxide pollutants from the Great Seal of the State of Kansas?

[Read more →]

On May 6, 2008, Kansas State Senator Anthony Hensley, Democrat from Topeka and Senate Minority Leader, introduced a resolution commemorating the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s new deal.

Besides being misinformed about the true impact of Roosevelt and the new deal, Senator Hensley wastes the time and resources of the people of the State of Kansas with resolutions such as this. Sadly, not even one Kansas senator voted against this resolution.

For a true look at Franklin D. Roosevelt and his presidency, I recommend reading Ralph Raico’s introduction to John T. Flynn’s book The Roosevelt Myth here: John T. Flynn and the Myth of FDR.

Here’s the text of the resolution:

SENATE RESOLUTION No. 1868
A RESOLUTION commemorating the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

WHEREAS, In the summer of 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party at a time the country was suffering from the Great Depression. In his acceptance speech, he told the American people, ‘‘I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.’’ And, Roosevelt won the presidency by a landslide; and

WHEREAS, The New Deal was the title President Roosevelt gave to a sequence of programs he initiated between 1933 and 1938 with the goal of giving relief to the needy, reform of the country’s financial system, and recovery of the economy during the Great Depression; and

WHEREAS, The New Deal Roosevelt had promised began to take shape immediately after his inauguration in March of 1933. The first days of Roosevelt’s administration was the ‘‘First New Deal’’ aimed at short-term recovery programs and saw the quick enactment by Congress of the Emergency Banking Act, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Rural Electrification Administration (REA) and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA); and

WHEREAS, Later the ‘‘Second New Deal’’ led to the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act, which established stronger collective bargaining rights for labor unions and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which created hundreds of thousands of low-skilled blue collar jobs for unemployed men and women; and

WHEREAS, The most important program of Roosevelt’s New Deal was the Social Security Act, which established a system of universal retirement pensions, unemployment insurance and welfare benefits for low income families; and WHEREAS, Several New Deal programs still exist under their original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), while the largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); and

WHEREAS, The New Deal programs were a reflection of Franklin Roosevelt’s personal and political philosophy that government has an important role in helping people make ends meet and in earning money for the work performed which raises the morale of the working man and woman: Now, therefore,

Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of Kansas: That we commemorate the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal; and

Be it further resolved: That the Secretary of the Senate provide an enrolled copy of the resolution to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, c/o Cynthia M. Koch, Director, 4079 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park, New York 12538.

On emergency motion of Senator Hensley SR 1868 was adopted unanimously.

[Read more →]

From Karl Peterjohn of the Kansas Taxpayers Network.

How Much More Will Electricity Cost In Your Future?
Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network

Governor Sebelius and her bankrupt Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby (Bremby filed for personal bankruptcy over a year ago) now appear to have stopped the Kansas house from joining the Kansas senate in overriding her veto of the coal power plant expansion in western Kansas. The legislature’s final attempt at legislating a solution that would expand electrical power generation in the western half of Kansas is headed for another gubernatorial veto. The Kansas House of Representatives appears to be well short of the 84 votes needed to override her veto.

A number of legislators from northeast Kansas as well as mainly Wichita Democrats have mustered up enough house votes to kill this $3.6 billion power plant project. The May 13th death of Rep. Ted Powers, R-Mulvane, who voted to override this veto, makes a sine die override even more unlikely.

Eastern Kansans who seldom venture into western Kansas unless they are driving on I-70 to Colorado felt little direct concern on this 2008 legislative issue. That allowed the well-organized urban-based environmentalists to convince enough big city legislators from both parties to sustain Sebelius’ veto in the house.

Eastern Kansans’ power generation was not at immediate risk. Neither were their utility rates. That will change and this unpleasant and very expensive change is coming soon.

If you want details on the national plan and how this is becoming Kansas’ environmental policy the Capital Research Center (CRC) has provided the details. There is a national plan established by ultra-left wing environmental groups and CRC’s April, 20008 report (see www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1207000450.pdf) details this effort. The liberal environmental foundations are funding this state level plan to impose Kyoto Treaty like cuts in carbon energy emissions.

This will result in a huge rise in electricity costs as well as making other power sources more expensive. It will help push gasoline and other petroleum prices higher. This will be accomplished through entities like the Pennsylvania based Center for Climate Strategies that is helping establish new carbon controls by administrative edict over Kansas state policy.

Soaring utility costs will limit economic growth in a way that will restrict the economy while dramatically raising prices across the board. Here’s how it will happen.

What Governor Sebelius is trying to do at the state level in the 21st century with new restrictions on carbon based energy will soon lead to new carbon taxes. It is possible that new carbon taxes will appear at both the state and federal levels. Along with the tax hikes will be emission restrictions. Don’t forget that whenever you exhale or burn a log in the fireplace, you are emitting carbon.

Bremby’s edict is similar in impact to what former President Clinton achieved when he vetoed oil drilling in Alaska in 1995. It took roughly a decade for the lack of oil drilling to impact the U.S. oil prices. In contrast, today the demand for electrical power is growing. There is pressure on prices but major increases have not occurred. You can expect the rising demand for electricity to hit much more quickly than oil prices did a decade ago. Don’t forget that oil fell to record lows in the late 1990’s a couple of years after Clinton’s anti-energy veto.

The demise of the Holcomb power plant expansion when combined with new “carbon emissions” edicts from regulators like Bremby will negatively impact the Kansas economy in the future. This is a continuation of Democratic Party energy policies. At the beginning of the Clinton presidency, the Congress narrowly rejected the Clinton administration’s new carbon tax. This is likely to reappear in Washington next year.

The Holcomb power plant battle was not an aberration or isolated event. It is the energy tip of the “man made global warming” hoax (ironically occurring while parts of Kansas have been at or near freeze warnings well into May) that is centralizing all economic power and authority with state or federal levels of government in our state. The governor’s new energy council will include industry leaders who need to be worried about their carbon emissions.

Several established Kansas businesses are already expanding elsewhere like Bombardier and Spirit AeroSystems going to North Carolina. Cessna, whose President Jack Pelton will head up the governor’s new energy panel from the private sector, will now expand in Kansas after the state agreed to subsidize this expansion. So now, the state will be picking “winners and losers” in our economy.

Westar Energy, the electrical power company that owns a number of Kansas coal fired power plants, is now seeking higher electrical rates to pay for new pollution equipment costs from the KCC. They need to do this since their existing coal fired power plants are not nearly as low pollution as the Holcomb expansion would have been. Westar now needs Bremby to renew their existing permits to continue operations. Bureaucratic coercion is now codified in Kansas under Queen Sebelius.

House Speaker Rep. Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, has campaigned for the Holcomb plant expansion and against this arbitrary power grab by Bremby and his boss. This is a problem in Neufeld’s southwest Kansas district where the nearby Hugoton gas field slowly declines in production. Neufeld has warned that Bremby’s bureaucratic edict against Holcomb has pushed a possible oil refinery, a $10 billion project with 1,500 new full time jobs, out of state too. Neufeld has copies of documents concerning the permitting process from Bremby’s office concerning this project. Naturally, liberal newspapers like the Wichita Eagle criticized Neufeld for pointing out this loss.

Another irony about power generation and carbon emissions was the fact that both houses of the legislature overwhelmingly passed state legislation to try and locate a new agricultural-terror research facility in Manhattan this year. This new federal facility would need a special electrical power plant to be allowed to operate. Since this was a government facility, unlike the private co-op, the carbon dioxide being generated from this proposed new back-up electrical power plant was not a problem. The carbon it emits comes from natural gas and not the politically incorrect coal too.

Governor Sebelius quickly signed this authorizing legislation into law. If it is government, it is good. If it is private, let’s stop it. Here is another example of government economic hypocrisy.

Kansas has started a new era. The price of living in Kansas is going to soar while you will be facing stagnant incomes as politicians in Topeka and their out-of-state environmental foundations control economic activity by regulatory edict.

While the rest of the world grows, China alone has built or is building hundreds of new power plants, many of which will be coal fired. Jobs will continue to flow out of the U.S. Kansas and the other 49 states will increasingly find themselves and our economy in green handcuffs. That will result in a lot of Kansans eventually finding themselves in the same bankruptcy line behind the already bankrupt Rod Bremby while Governor Sebelius makes plans for her next job in Washington.

[Read more →]

Denis Boyles dissects the 2007 Kansas Economic Report and discovers something growing quickly in Kansas under its governor Kathleen Sebelius: poor children. He quotes the report as follows:

The number of Kansans estimated to be living below the poverty threshold in 2004 totaled 297,733, or more than 11.0 percent of the total population. From 2000 to 2004, Kansas poverty increased 26.6 percent while poverty in the U.S. went up 17.3 percent. From 2000 to 2004, the number of people in Kansas living below the poverty level increased more rapidly than the state’s population as a whole, with a 26.6 percent increase in poverty and a 1.7 percent increase in population.

Since a low in 2000, the number of people under the age of 18 in poverty in Kansas has increased by nearly 20.0 percent, reaching more than 98,000 people in 2004. This rate was higher than the national rate which increased at 12.5 percent. Additionally, the number of people under age five in poverty in Kansas has increased 27.5 percent in the past five years compared to 15.1 percent for the nation.

Read the entire analysis as published on Kansas Liberty here: Into poverty, with difficulty.

[Read more →]

The Kansas Meadowlark again stirs up controversy in reporting on the travel of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

The “rates” charged for flying an aircraft like this are, in my opinion, totally misleading. The rate may reflect the actual variable costs involved for the time the plane is in the air. I believe, however, that the rates do not account for the fixed cost of owning an asset worth some $4 million.

Read the article here: Friend of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius? Did you get to fly the State of Kansas Executive Aircraft with Kathleen to the NCAA basketball tournament in San Antonio?

(By the way, Meadowlark, I like your switch to a WordPress blog. I especially like that now your site publishes an RSS feed, which I subscribe to.)

[Read more →]

Here’s an update by The Kansas Meadowlark on the abuse of franking by the Kansas Senate Majority Leader, Anthony Hensley of Topeka.

Update on Franking Abuse by Kansas Senate Minority Leader Hensley: $53,564 on 161,277 franked pieces

[Read more →]

From Denis Boyles’s column at Kansas Liberty, calling the consistency and judgment of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius into question (admittedly, a small task):

If there are at least some scientific studies that show gambling’s bad for you, and none that show that carbon dioxide’s bad for you, why is the governor of Kansas hugging casinos and banning power plants?

Read the entire column here: Feedlot Environmentalism.

By the way, the new book Superior, Nebraska: The Common Sense Values of America’s Heartland by Denis Boyles is wonderful. I recommend it to all with an interest in Kansas politics.

[Read more →]

From our friends at Kansas Liberty:

The Kansas Supreme Court is a private club filled with people you’ve never heard of until they pass some tax you have to pay or invent some law you don’t want. There is a way to fix this, but you won’t like it, says Denis Boyles.

Read the full story at Kansas Liberty.

Professor Stephen J. Ware of the Kansas University School of Law writes this in a Lawrence Journal-World editorial:

What makes the Kansas Supreme Court selection process unusual is not that it’s political, but that it gives so much political power to the bar (the state’s lawyers). Kansas is the only state that gives its bar majority control over the commission that nominates Supreme Court justices. It’s no surprise that members of the Kansas bar are happy with the current system because it gives them more power than the bar has in any of the other 49 states and allows them to exercise that power in secret, without any accountability to the public.

His research paper may be read here: www.fed-soc.org/kansaspaper.

[Read more →]

An argument opponents of the proposed Holcomb Station coal-fired electricity generation plant make is that its water usage is excessive and will lead to, depending on who is speaking, little water left for other uses. Even drinking water, according to some critics, could be threatened.

Together, the proposed plants will use 16,000 acre-feet of water — about 5.2 billion gallons – annually. While that seems like a tremendous amount of water, especially in dry western Kansas, we should put that water usage in context before making judgments.

According to the Kansas Water Office, in 2006, 3,496,586 acre-feet of water was used to irrigate 3,066,602 acres, a rate of 1.14 acre-feet of water per acre. In Finney county, where the Holcomb plant is located, water use for irrigation is a little higher. The average usage for 2002 to 2006 was 1.31 acre-feet per acre.

Using the Finney county rates, we find that the 16,000 acre-feet of water usage by the proposed power plants is enough to irrigate 12,215 acres of crops.

While 12,215 acres of crops may seem like a lot, Finney county alone had 227,297 acres under irrigation in 2006. So the water usage by the proposed plants amounts to 5.4% of just Finney county’s water use for irrigation. For the entire state of Kansas, it’s less than one-half of one percent of the water used for irrigation.

So while 5.2 billion gallons of water seems like a lot, it’s not much more than a few drops in the bucket, figuratively speaking, of water use for irrigation in Kansas. The economic value of the electricity the Holcomb plant expansion will generate, however, is large.

[Read more →]

The Kansas Meadowlark reports on Franking Abuse by Kansas Democratic Legislative Leadership:

Recently both the Kansas House Minority Leader, Dennis McKinney, and Kansas Senate Minority Leader, Anthony Hensley, abused their nearly unlimited budget to mail items to Kansas voters. These mailings had less to do with helping inform constituents about what is going on in the Kansas legislature, and more to do with getting certain Democrats re-elected this year.

A reliable source tells the Meadowlark that House Minority Leader Mckinney will reimburse the State for postage for his recent mailings. However, the Senate Minority Leader has not made a pledge to repay taxpayers for his franking abuse, even though taxpayers paid a hefty sum for his recent needless mailings.

Actual amounts for these mailings will be published here when available.

Read the entire story here at The Kansas Meadowlark website: Franking Abuse by Kansas Democratic Legislative Leadership

[Read more →]

Here’s a message from John Todd about an exciting event to be held by Americans for Prosperity. If you’re in south-central Kansas the bus trip is much easier and less expensive than driving to Topeka. AFP is a great group to be involved with, and I encourage everyone to take advantage of this free bus trip to this important event. The event in Topeka costs $29, but as John says, there are a limited number of scholarships available.

You are invited to join the Wichita Area Chapter of Americans for Prosperity Foundation — Kansas for a bus trip from Wichita to the Defending the American Dream Summit in Topeka on Wednesday March 19, 2008.

[Read more →]

The Kansas Meadowlark reports on the debut of Kanview, and wonders “Why did the Kansas press give this new information resource such little coverage?”

Read the excellent report at http://www.kansasmeadowlark.com/2008/03-02/index.htm.

[Read more →]

In this article, Karl Peterjohn states that the professional staff at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment approved the permit for a new coal-burning electricity plant in Kansas, but the agency’s Secretary, Rod Bremby, overruled that staff. It seems as though he and Governor Kathleen Sebelius were trying to stake new political ground in America. Why they would want to do this is not clear to me and many other Kansans. China builds a new plant like the one proposed for Kansas every seven to ten days. India builds many, and so do some other countries. Since it’s not called global warming for nothing, it doesn’t matter where these plants are built. They all affect the global atmosphere, as far as carbon dioxide is concerned, in precisely the same way. So two Kansas politicians, cheered on by a few newspaper editorial writers, place the Kansas economy at great risk for what benefit? Perhaps in a few years, on a hot summer day when little wind is blowing, the chillers at the Wichita Eagle building on East Douglas will slow to a crawl, the editorialists’ computers switch to battery back up power with only a few minutes left to finish the day’s work, and no electricity is available to run the printing presses or the servers hosting the Eagle’s web site. But at least we in Kansas spewed only 0.01% as much carbon into the atmosphere as did the new Chinese coal plants.

Regulatory Uncertainty Weakens Kansas’ Economy
By Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network, www.kansastaxpayers.com

The regulatory uncertainty created by Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) Secretary Ron Bremby’s decision to deny a permit to Sunflower Electric’s proposed power plant places the Kansas economy at risk and should be obvious to everyone. Sadly, this everyone does not include the Wichita Eagle’s editorial board’s February 27th editorial.

Electric utilities are already highly regulated by the state as well as federal rules and edicts. Sunflower Electric’s proposed coal fired electrical power plant expansion had been through numerous permits and regulatory requirements. The professional staff at KDHE had recommended approval based upon the criteria elected officials had placed in Kansas law.

Secretary Bremby decided that he would add new criteria that no federal or state elected officials had approved. Kansas became the first state to declare that carbon dioxide emissions are pollutants. That became his basis for denying a construction permit.

[Read more →]

Lost in the debate over the building of a coal-fired electricity plant in Kansas is the fact that China builds a plant like this every week to ten days, according to the New York Times. Nonetheless, newspaper editorial writers like Randy Scholfield of The Wichita Eagle want to saddle Kansans with higher utility bills and a stifling regulatory structure. There is no doubt that other forms of producing electricity are more expensive than coal. Mr. Scholfield’s newspaper is full of stories of woe about how people can’t pay their bills when the price of natural gas or gasoline goes up. Yet, he is willing to ask them to pay more for something of dubious value. At the same time, his position holds the real possibility of reducing economic growth in Kansas, which should lead to more tales of woe for the Wichita Eagle to report.