Author: Guest Author
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Subsidy for Planeview Save-A-Lot grocery store bad for Wichita
I am troubled by what I see the Wichita city government doing to the owners of the Checkers Grocery store located near the Wichita Planeview neighborhood. At the public hearing before the Wichita City Council on September 14th, one of the Checkers owners testified that their grocery business has been serving the people of Planeview…
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Wichita City Council subsidizes pizza and doughnuts for Planeview
At the September 14th Wichita City Council meeting the public was treated to tales of the helpless nature of Wichita’s Planeview residents. It sounded as if residents are being held in an open-air prison, victims of society, greedy QuikTrip stores, and price-gouging cab companies, unable to obtain the necessities of life without trekking an entire…
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Avoiding bad decisions in good times
An associate of mine once said, “Some of the worst decisions are made in the best of times.” His observation pertained to negotiating agreements with labor unions but I was reminded of it by a news report saying local governments may eliminate 500,000 jobs across the country if Congress doesn’t pony up more federal tax…
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Will the real robber barons please stand up?
At the April 13th meeting of the Wichita City Council a request from downtown developer Real Development will be made for an additional $2.2 million taxpayer subsidy for its condo project Exchange Place, located at Douglas and Market. With two weeks to go before this public hearing there is still time for council members to…
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In Kansas, everyone wins or we all lose
By Dave Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute. One of the biggest obstacles to conflict resolution is the petty notion that one party has to lose in order for the other party to win. Amazingly, people (regrettably, including me) who very clearly understand and explain this common-sense concept when settling squabbles among their children can completely lose…
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Kansas Governor misleads Kansans on taxes
If President Reagan had attended Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson’s press conference last Friday, he likely would have said, “There you go again…” in response to Parkinson’s claim that $9 billion in tax cuts and exemptions over the last decade are to blame for the budget crisis.
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State budget ‘gap’ is all about perspective
When businesses or individuals talk about cutting their expenses, it means they are going to spend less money that they did in the past. But when governments talk about budget cuts they often have a different perspective: they are spending less than they had hoped to but not necessarily less than the year before. For…
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Kansas should not repeat Europe’s mistakes
Not for the first time, the prosperity of thousands of Kansans rests in the hands of politicians more than 1,000 miles removed in Washington, D.C. In the next few weeks politicians will decide whether to embrace the hype about manmade “climate change” and impose a costly global warming tax to address it. Some Americans believe…
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Kansas open records law needs an overhaul
“An open and transparent government is essential to the democratic process. Under Kansas law, citizens have the right to access public records and observe many meetings where decisions are made that affect our state.” That quote is taken from the Kansas Attorney General’s web site. Unfortunately, the second sentence isn’t really true. Kansans may technically…