Here's a message from Tim Phillips, President of Americans For Prosperity. I listened in to the telephone town hall meeting he mentions. Despite a few technical glitches, these meetings are becoming popular, and serve as an effective way to communicate with a large number of people. Wait -- don't we have the Internet for that? Last night, you could feel the energy on our live telephone town hall as 10,819 American citizens joined Americans for Prosperity and Senator Jim DeMint -- the leader of the effort to defeat this big government boondoggle. During the call one wonderful lady who asked Senator DeMint a question, Lee from Kentucky, told us that she had just gotten her power and phone service back on from the snowstorms that have buried her state and…
No matter which side wins the Kansas school finance lawsuit, we already know who loses: Kansas schoolchildren. The last time schools won a suit, the state lowered its standards for schools. Talking about school spending is easy, even though most Kansas public school spending advocates refuse to acknowledge the totality of spending. (Or if they acknowledge the total level, they may make excuses for the spending not being effective.) Advocating for more spending is easy. It's easy because the Kansas Constitution says the state must spend on schools. Parents want more spending, and so do teachers, public employee unions, and children. It's easy to support more spending on schools because anyone who doesn't is demonized as anti-child, anti-education, and even anti-human. But the focus on school spending lets the Kansas…
By Dr. Walt Chappell, member, Kansas State Board of Education. Recent ads in Kansas newspapers have told the truth about the unacceptable level of reading and math scores for Kansas students. Yet, for Diane DeBacker, the State Education Commissioner, and education lobbyists to continue to deny these documented results from Kansas schools is a disservice to our students, their parents and taxpayers. This massive cover-up has gone on for years and needs to stop. All outside indicators of how well our schools are doing show that the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates have been a major disaster and a tremendous waste of taxpayer money. Our students are not dumb plus our teachers and school administrators are doing what they have been told. But, largely due to these bureaucratic…
From Representative Frank Miller The Kansas Legislative Research Department provided information substantiating that property taxes increased by 126 percent since 1993, yet the inflation rate adjusted for population growth increased only 43 percent! I don't see how the appraised value of residential property could have risen 2.75 times faster than inflation adjusted for population growth! I would suggest that appraisers are encouraged to over-appraise property in order to satisfy the need for increased property taxes without increasing the mill levy. I authored this bill in the hopes of restraining appraisers from adjusting the value of your property to a value that is higher than market value. Is not the selling price of your home the only true value for "MARKET VALUE"? The key wording in the resolution would change the…
He had an opportunity to learn the true history of Naftzger Park in downtown Wichita. But Mayor Jeff Longwell didn't learn, or maybe he doesn't care. In March, Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell answered a question about Naftzger Park, telling viewers of the KPTS Television program Call the Mayor that: "Actually what we found out is when our city fathers put in that park years ago they put the park in on private development land and so the development's actually not on Naftzger Park. Naftzger Park used to be planted on private development land and so they had to change the boundaries of the park." The mayor blamed past city administrations for not being to read a survey. (Click here to view the video starting with this question.) Chase M. Billingham,…
In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: David Boaz, Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute, visits the WichitaLiberty.TV studios and explains the ideas behind libertarianism and its approach to government and society. Episode 18, broadcast October 27, 2013. View below, or click here to view at YouTube. David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute and has played a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement. He is a provocative commentator and a leading authority on domestic issues such as education choice, drug legalization, the growth of government, and the rise of libertarianism. Boaz is the former editor of New Guard magazine and was executive director of the Council for a Competitive Economy prior to joining Cato in 1981. He is the…
A Wichita statistician is thwarted in efforts to obtain data that might explain a strange observation. A paper details the discovery of unexplained patterns in election returns. The paper is titled 2008/2012 Election Anomalies, Results, Analysis and Concerns. The authors are Francois Choquette and James Johnson. A passage from the introduction explains what has been noticed: Back in February 2012 during the South Carolina primaries, a keen observer noted that Republican candidate Mitt Romney had an unusual gain of votes in larger precincts. Analysts noted this effect violated expected statistics. Specifically, the percentage of votes in each precinct strangely increased as a function of precinct size (vote tally). The vote gain is correlated to precinct size, not the precinct location, be it in cities or rural areas. This anomaly is…
Dan Mitchell summarizing John Fund: ....lobbyists visiting Capitol Hill are bound by House and Senate ethics rules that cap most individual gifts at $50 per elected official or staffer, with an annual limit of $100 per recipient from any single source. But local governments, public universities and Indian tribes are exempt from the limit, so they are able to shower members and their staffs with such goodies as luxury skybox tickets to basketball games and front-row concert tickets. Having members or their key aides attend such free events in the company of glad-handing university presidents and local government officials winds up costing taxpayers a pretty penny. Much of the explosive growth in earmarks has been directed to local governments and universities. ...Universities and colleges spent at least $75 million in…
Airfares down in Wichita. A city press release announces: "Wichita Mid-Continent Airport had the country’s 11th largest airline fare decrease since 2000 and now ranks 43rd in average fare of the 100 busiest airports, according to research by the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS)." The program's major source of funding is $5 million per year from the state. Currently, it is not known whether this funding will be in the budget the legislature is working on. ... The program is controversial for claims of economic benefit that appear overstated. There is a way to pay for the program that shouldn't be controversial. When government provides services that benefit everyone, such as police protection, most people agree that taxes to pay for these services should be broad-based. But we can…
Karma Mason, President of iSi Environmental, presents the Water Task Force Findings from the Wichita Chamber of Commerce during the Wichita Water Conference on July 17, 2014. Kansas Policy Institute organized the conference as an educational and discussion opportunity before citizens vote on a one cent per dollar sales tax increase to fund water infrastructure and other spending by the City of Wichita. Key advice: "Conservation planning is not the same as drought planning." View below, or click here to view at YouTube. The presentation shown is contained within this document.