Voice For Liberty

Tag: Kansas legislature

Articles about the Kansas legislature, both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

  • Judges are lawmakers

    Kansas University Law Professor Stephen J. Ware is the foremost authority on the method of judicial selection in Kansas and the need for reform. His paper on this topic is Selection to the Kansas Supreme Court, which is published by the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. Further reporting by me is at Kansas judicial selection needs reform, says law professor.

    The Kansas House of Representatives has passed a bill that would reform the way judges are appointed to the Court of Appeals. Now one person, Tim Owens, an attorney and Republican from Overland Park, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is blocking progress on this bill.

    The following article by Ware explains why reform of the method of judicial selection in Kansas is so important.

    In a democracy like ours, should lawmakers be selected democratically?

    Not according to Judge Richard Greene.

    In the judge’s Feb. 2 guest column in The Capital-Journal, he supported a process in which some of our state’s most important lawmakers are selected in a deeply undemocratic process that makes the votes of some citizens count far more than the votes of others.

    The lawmakers in question are our state’s appellate court judges.

    Judges are lawmakers? Yes.

    Judges have routinely made law throughout our country’s history and even earlier, going back to England. This judge-made law, called the “common law,” has generally worked well and continues today to govern thousands of cases including those involving contracts, property rights and bodily injuries.

    Common law rules differ from state to state. States with more liberal judges tend to have more liberal common law, while states with more conservative judges tend to have more conservative common law. The political leanings of appellate judges, rather than trial judges, are especially important because appellate judges have much more power over the direction of the law.

    In short, the appellate judges of Kansas, like those of other states, are tremendously important lawmakers.

    What is unusual about the lawmaking judges of Kansas is how they are selected. None of the other 49 states uses the system Kansas uses to pick its two appellate courts — and for good reason, because the Kansas system is a shockingly undemocratic way to select lawmakers.

    At the center of the Kansas system is the Supreme Court Nominating Commission. Most of the members of this commission are picked in elections open to only 9,000 people — the members of the state bar. The remaining 2.8 million people in Kansas have no vote in these elections.

    This plainly violates basic equality among citizens, the principle of one-person, one-vote. The current system elevates one small group into a powerful elite and treats everyone else like a second-class citizen.

    Kansas lawyers tend to be fine people, but they’re not superheroes. They don’t deserve more power than lawyers have in any of the other 49 states.

    In a democracy, a lawyer’s vote should not be worth more than any other citizen’s vote. As Washburn law professor Jeffrey Jackson writes, democratic legitimacy “would appear to favor a reduction in the influence of the state bar and its members over the nominating commission because they do not fit within the democratic process.”

    Kansas should break the grip its bar holds on the selection of our state’s lawmaking judges. Fortunately, the Kansas House of Representatives has passed a bill that would do just that.

    Will this responsible, moderate reform be enacted by the Kansas Senate?

    Or will our state senators defend the deeply undemocratic view that a lawyer’s vote should count far more than another Kansas citizen’s vote?

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Monday March 14, 2011

    Kansas Democrats: EITC cut is a tax increase. In this week’s Democratic legislative update recorded by Kansas House of Representatives Minority Leader Paul Davis, the distinction between welfare and taxes became muddled. Referring to HB 2347, proposal to cut the Kansas Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Davis said that Kansas House Republicans had “come forward with proposals to increase taxes on the working poor.” He called the proposal “a $60 million tax increase for the working poor.” … The EITC program at both federal and state levels is a program that spends money through the tax system. Sometimes called tax appropriations, these are economically equivalent to grants of money, both for government (whose tax revenues are reduced) and for the recipient (who receives a dollar-for-dollar reduction in tax liability, or in the case of the refundable EITC credit, a payment). … Whether or not you agree with this form of welfare, the proper way for Davis to have framed the debate is as a reduction in welfare payments for low-income people, not an increase in their taxes.

    Historian to visit Wichita. This week historian Gregory Schneider will speak in Wichita at two events. Schneider, of Topeka, is professor of history at Emporia State University. His most recent book is The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (Critical Issues in American History). … On Thursday (March 17th) Schneider will speak on the topic “The Conservative Century Revisited,” based on a Bradley Lecture that Dr. Schneider presented at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy in October 2010. This event is sponsored by the Wichita chapter of Americans for Prosperity, Kansas. It will be from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Wichita Downtown Public Library at 223 S. Main, in the third floor meeting room. For more information on this event contact John Todd at john@johntodd.net or 316-312-7335, or Susan Estes, AFP Field Director at sestes@afphq.org or 316-681-4415. … Then on Friday (March 18th) Schneider will speak at the Wichita Pachyderm Club on the topic “Requiem for a Railroad: The Collapse of the Rock Island,” which is the topic of a book he is currently writing. The public is welcome and encouraged to attend Wichita Pachyderm meetings. For more information click on Wichita Pachyderm Club.

    Kansas parents’ property tax challenge is dismissed. From Kansas Reporter: “A small group of parents of children in Johnson County’s Shawnee Mission Unified School District 512 filed a federal suit in December contending that lids Kansas places on property taxes for education essentially discriminate against schools in wealthier districts by holding spending to lower levels nearer those that less affluent districts can afford. U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum dismissed the suit Friday, ruling that the parents lacked sufficient authority to bring such a suit because the district ‘has no inherent or statutory authority outside the statutory funding scheme to impose a local tax to benefit the district.’” … ‘We won and the people of Kansas won,’ Robb [John Robb, chief counsel for Schools for Fair Funding] said.” Well, except for the people of Kansas who brought the lawsuit.

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Thursday March 10, 2011

    Kansas labor report. For January 2011, the Kansas Department of Labor reports: “According to January 2011 estimates, Kansas businesses lost 6,100 jobs over-the-year, a 0.5 percent decrease. … The January 2011 unemployment rate in Kansas was 7.4 percent, up from 6.4 in December 2010 but down from 7.9 percent in January 2010.” Said Labor Secretary Karin Brownlee: “The Great Recession continues to take a tremendous toll on the Kansas economy. The Governor’s focus on creating jobs could not be more timely. The work by the Brownback administration to make Kansas the best place to do business is the focus needed to grow our economy. Improving the tax and regulatory climate will help take some of the sting out of this recession and get Kansans back to work.” … Interestingly, at a time when it is said government is slashing budgets, government employment at all levels in Kansas grow by about 300 jobs from January 2010 to January 2011. In Topeka, about 600 government jobs were gained over that time period, in Wichita 300 jobs, and in Kansas City, 400 jobs.

    Whose money is it? Wisconsin protester: “Why do you have a right to your money?” See video.

    Kansas 2011 budget. Kansas Reporter writes: “Kansas House and Senate negotiators reached a tentative school financing deal Wednesday that may unjam state budget talks that have been stalled for weeks. … In the agreement that began emerging Wednesday, the House negotiators broadly agreed to restore some of the originally proposed special education funding cuts, while Senate negotiators broadly agreed to cut general fund spending for workers’ longevity pay, capital improvement projects and some child care development and insurance plans. Between $12 million and $14 million for those programs would come from special funds outside the state’s basic general fund or would be self funded with internal budget reductions.”

    Green jobs. John Stossel in Washington Examiner: “Anyone who understands basic economics already knows that President Obama’s $2.3 billion green-jobs initiative was snake oil. Now, thanks to Kenneth P. Green, we have statistics as well as theory to prove it. In a new article, ‘The Myth of Green Energy Jobs: The European Experience,’ the environmental scientist and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute writes, ‘Green programs in Spain destroyed 2.2 jobs for every green job created, while the capital needed for one green job in Italy could create almost five jobs in the general economy.’” The article Stossel refers to may be read by clicking on The Myth of Green Energy Jobs: The European Experience. Despite this evidence, Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer promotes manufacturing of wind power machinery as good for Wichita’s economic development, and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback supports renewable energy standards for Kansas.

    America, welfare nation. Investor’s Business Daily: “More than one-third of all wages and salaries in this country are actually government handouts. We should be alarmed that we’ve become a nation of dependents. Using data mined from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, TrimTabs Investment Research has found that 35% of wages and salaries this year will be in the form of a government payment. That’s up sharply from 2000, when it was 21%, which is more than double the rate — 10% — of 1960.” … We should note that 1960 was before the start of the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson and of the War on Poverty. 2000 was the year of the election of George W. Bush.

    Politics vs. free markets. Rothbard on the difference between the political means and the economic means: “A second basic reason for the oligarchic rule of the State is its parasitic nature — the fact that it lives coercively off the production of the citizenry. To be successful to its practitioners, the fruits of parasitic exploitation must be confined to a relative minority, otherwise a meaningless plunder of all by all would result in no gains for anyone. Nowhere has the coercive and parasitic nature of the State been more clearly limned than by the great late nineteenth-century German sociologist, Franz Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two and only two mutually exclusive means for man to obtain wealth. One, the method of production and voluntary exchange, the method of the free market, Oppenheimer termed the ‘economic means’; the other, the method of robbery by the use of violence, he called the ‘political means.’ The political means is clearly parasitic, for it requires previous production for the exploiters to confiscate, and it subtracts from instead of adding to the total production in society. Oppenheimer then proceeded to define the State as the ‘organization of the political means’ — the systematization of the predatory process over a given territorial area.”

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Wednesday March 9, 2011

    Kansas legislature website. It’s getting better, and now has — by my recollection — all the functionality of the site it replaced. But there are still some issues. The search feature uses a Google site-specific search, which is good in many ways. But trying to find if there’s any legislation this year concerning sales tax? Not so easy. … The rosters of members are displayed in panels of 12 members of a time. For the House there are 11 such panels. I wonder on which panel I’ll find the member I’m looking for? … Too many documents are still being delivered in OpenOffice doc format, which many people will not be able to use.

    Kansas smoking ban. The Hutchinson News has reported and editorialized on the statewide smoking ban. In Hutch club owner wants to see measure repealed, Sheila Martin expresses her concern for the small business owners who are being harmed by the smoking ban. The booklet Martin created that the article refers to may be read here Kansas Smoking Ban Booklet. Then the newspaper editorialized against the smoking ban, writing “Eight months since it took effect, the local jury is in on Kansas’ statewide smoking law. It has hurt sales at some drinking establishments — no doubt, in turn, hurting state and local sales tax receipts — and it was doubtful that it stopped anyone from smoking or saved many from exposure to secondhand smoke.”

    Fighting government secrecy. Announcing a television show regarding government transparency, the Kansas Sunshine Coalition for Open Government writes: “Open government is essential to a democracy. But it’s often hard to find that vital government transparency — and to get public access to public records, even when the law is on your side. “What is your government hiding?” is the focus of a town hall panel set at 4:00 to 5:00 pm Saturday, March 12, at the First United Methodist Church, 330 N. Broadway, in downtown Wichita. The event will be taped and shown on KAKE-TV and affiliated stations around the state at 10 am Sunday, March 13, as part of the national celebration of Sunshine Week (March 13-19). … ‘The Mike and Mike Show’ will headline the meeting. Media attorney Mike Merriam of Topeka will join University of Kansas law professor Mike Kautsch in a interactive presentation on media law, as well as how citizens can use the Kansas Open Records Act and the Kansas Open Meetings Act. … The show also will feature a panel on the importance of open government led by the League of Women Voters of Wichita. The audience is invited to ask questions. Refreshments will be available at a reception afterward. …KPTS-TV, Channel 8 in Wichita, will rebroadcast the show at 7 pm, Thursday, March 24. Those interested are asked to arrive in time to be seated by 3:45 pm. The event is sponsored by the Kansas Sunshine Coalition, the LWV and the Elliott School of Communication at Wichita State University.

    Kansas judicial selection. The Wall Street Journal takes notice of the need for judicial selection reform in Kansas, writing “Kansas is the only state that gives the members of its bar a majority on the judicial nominating commission. That commission also handles the nominations for state Supreme Court justices, and changing that would require a state constitutional amendment. The Sunflower State is nonetheless off to a good start at making judicial appointments more than a preserve of the lawyers guild.” … Kansas University Law Professor Stephen J. Ware is the foremost authority on the method of judicial selection in Kansas and the need for reform. His paper on this topic is Selection to the Kansas Supreme Court, which is published by the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. Further reporting by me is at Kansas judicial selection needs reform, says law professor.

    Kansas Education Liberty Act. A strong school choice measure has been introduced in the Kansas House of Representatives. The bill is HB 2367 and may be read at the Kansas Legislature website. The measure’s supporters have a website at supportkela.com. From the bill’s supporters: “This bill authorizes specific non-profit organizations to grant scholarships to students to attend a qualified private or public school of their parents’ choice. These scholarships are funded through tax-credit eligible contributions from individual Kansans and corporations. State taxpayers will spend significantly less on each scholarship than they currently spend per pupil in public schools. This bill reduces education related spending from the state’s general fund and reduces the budget deficit. In addition, public schools will still have access to the majority of the federal and local taxpayer funding; so with each student who chooses another educational setting, public schools will have more funding per remaining student. Perhaps even more significant, our children will enjoy improved education outcomes in both public and private education in the state of Kansas with increased parental and community involvement.” … While the Kansas education establishment fiddles with “reforms” such as whether to grant tenure in three or five years, actual reform measures like this are what is needed.

    What … it’s not about the whales? “Environmental policy is not driven by tree-hugging activists, earnest liberal bloggers, or ecologically minded citizens. Instead, it flows from the lobbyists and executives of well-connected multinational corporations and built-for-subsidy startups that see profit in the loan guarantees, handouts, mandates, and tax credits Congress creates in the name of saving the planet.” Timothy P. Carney explains more in Meet the lobbyist who turns ‘green’ into greenbacks.

    Wichita council candidates. Now that the city primary election is over and each district has two candidates for the April 5 general election, this week’s meeting (March 11) of the Wichita Pachyderm Club features Wichita City Council candidates. Invited are from district 2: Pete Meitzner and Charlie Stevens. From district 4: Joshua Blick and Michael O’Donnell. From district 5: Jeff Longwell and Lynda Tyler. The public is welcome and encouraged to attend Wichita Pachyderm meetings. For more information click on Wichita Pachyderm Club.

    Common Sense — Revisited author in Wichita. Clyde Cleveland will visit Wichita to speak at the Holiday Inn at 549 S. Rock Road on Wednesday, March 16th at 7:00 pm. The event’s promotional poster reads: “Join Clyde Cleveland, the author of Common Sense — Revisited and 2002 libertarian candidate for Iowa Governor for an eye-opening presentation on our Government and how we can restore it to the Republic in its original form. Learn about Indigenous and Surrogate Powers, and how Americans have surrendered their ‘Sentient Power’. The good news is, we can peacefully, and lawfully, re-inhabit our Sovereign status and reclaim a bottom-up, ‘By, of, and For the People,’ Republic form of Government. … This is what was intended by our founding fathers, and for which many others have given their lives to protect. Following the presentation Clyde will discuss how we can participate in rebuilding our State and National Republics.” Cleveland’s website is Common Sense Revisited. He will also speak in Overland Park on March 17th.

  • Arts supporters make case in Kansas Senate committee

    Last week the Kansas Senate Committee on Federal and State Affairs heard testimony from opponents and proponents of Governor Sam Brownback’s Executive Reorganization Order that would eliminate the Kansas Arts Commission and create the Kansas Arts Foundation to take its place. The plan would also eliminate state funding for the arts after a transition year.

    One of the cases that arts supporters make is that with the Kansas Arts Commission being a state agency receiving government funds, the commission receives addition funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. If the KAC is ended and replaced by a non-profit organization (the), arts supporters say Kansas arts organizations could no longer receive these funds.

    Kansas Legislative Research Department made inquiries to the Arts Alliance and the NEA. The answers from both agencies indicate that it is unclear as to whether the new Kansas Arts Foundation would be eligible to receive grants. In particular, the NEA answered, according to Legislative Research, “the potential exists for Kansas to forfeit its ability to receive National Endowment for the Arts funding depending on how the new entity in structured …”

    Senator Roger Reitz, a member of the Senate committee, offered testimony that emphasized the economic development and jobs aspect of arts in Kansas, citing the study produced by Americans for the Arts. This study, which claims huge economic benefit from arts spending, is flawed in the same way of most similar reports.

    Representatives of several arts organizations appeared before the committee to offer testimony on the importance of KAC funding. But as we’ve seen in the case of the Spencer Museum of Art, the case these supporters make is often weak.

    Symphony in the Flint Hills

    An example of the weak case for the necessity of government funding comes from a representative of Symphony in the Flint Hills, Inc., who testified on the importance of KAC funding to that organization, which produces an annual concert. For this year, the tickets to this event cost $72 (plus $3 handling). This year the event sold out — 5,000 tickets — in 30 minutes, according to news reports. That’s $375,000 in revenue, and that’s not all the organization collects as it has many sponsors who make donations.

    Last year the KAC awarded $12,786 to Symphony in the Flint Hills. That’s just 3.4 percent of its revenue from tickets sales, which again are not its only source of revenue. According to the firm’s IRS filings for 2008, its total revenue for that year was $822,864. The KAC funding represents just 1.5 percent of this figure (these figures are not for the same year, but are undoubtedly comparable).

    In fact, Symphony in the Flint Hills, although organized as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is quite profitable. For 2008, its “profit” (the IRS form calls it “excess”) was $109,891. That was added to its starting net assets value of $252,401 to give it a balance of $362,292 going forward.

    Testimony provided by Symphony in the Flint Hills indicated that KAC has provided almost $30,000 in funding over six years. With the success of this organization, and with the cash it has on hand, the taxpayers of the State of Kansas would be grateful if it considered repaying these funds — or at least not beg for more. This organization has proven that it can thrive without state funding.

    As a smaller example, the Western Plains Arts Association offered written testimony that indicated without KAC funding, “we will have to eliminate many of our programs.” A look at the numbers indicates that WPAA received $4,035 from the KAC, while its IRS form 990 indicates total revenue of $80,513. While I’m sure WPAA will not appreciate the loss of this five percent of its revenue, it is inconceivable that it can’t adjust and either cut expenses without cutting programs, or seek a small additional amount of revenue from the people it provides services to.

    Taking arts away

    Advocates of government funding for the arts make claims that without such funding, arts will disappear. They even make claims that the government is proposing to take away arts, as in this which appeared in a Newton Kansan op-ed: “Abolishing or limiting access to the arts by reducing funding and support systems is not prudent.”

    These wild claims make the assumption that arts organizations will not attempt to adjust to the loss of government funding. As we’ve seen in several examples, the KAC funding is often a small portion of total funding. The claims of some that loss of KAC funding amounts to “abolishing” arts is not believable. Or, if the only reason an arts program exists is funding by government, I suggest a real-world test of its value is in order.

    The arts are important to our lives, I believe. That’s all the more reason why we need to get government out of art and return supports of the arts to the private sector. The importance of arts is why we need to remove government — which ultimately relies on coercion, a fact seemingly lost on arts supporters — from its funding, control, and management. We’ll have better art as a result.

    The committee passed a resolution opposing Brownback’s ERO. It will now move to the full Senate. If passed there by a simple majority, the ERO is canceled. Either chamber on its own can cancel an ERO, so no action would be required by the House of Representatives if the resolution passes the Senate. If the Senate passes the ERO, the governor can use the line item veto to strike the KAC’s funding, should he desire.

  • Cabela’s CID should not be approved in Wichita

    This week outdoor retailer Cabela’s will ask the Wichita City Council to create a Community Improvement District (CID) for its benefit. Creating the CID would allow Cabela’s — the only store in the proposed CID — to collect tax of an additional 1.2 cents per dollar sales from customers. Proceeds of one cent per dollar, less a handling fee, will be given to Cabela’s for its exclusive use, with 0.2 cents per dollar to be used for street and highway improvements near the proposed CID.

    CIDs should be opposed as they turn over tax policy to the private sector. We should look at taxation as a way for government to raise funds to pay for services that all people benefit from. An example is police and fire protection. Even people who are opposed to taxation rationalize paying taxes that way.

    But CIDs turn tax policy over to the private sector for personal benefit. The money is collected under the pretense of government authority, but it is collected for the exclusive benefit of the owners of property in the CID.

    This is perhaps the worst aspect of CIDs. Landlord and merchants already have a way to generate revenue from their customers under free exchange: through the prices posted or advertised for their products, plus consumers’ awareness of the sales tax rates that prevail in a state, county, and city.

    But the most consumers will never be aware that they paid an extra tax for the exclusive benefit of the CID. (A bill working its way through the Kansas legislature may require detailing of sales taxes on cash register receipts.)

    The Wichita city council had a chance to provide transparency to shoppers by requiring merchants in CIDs to post signs informing shoppers of the amount of extra tax to be changed in the store. But CID advocates got the city council to back down from that requirement. CID advocates know how powerful information is, and they along with their allies on the city council realized that signage with disclosure would harm CID merchants. Council Member Sue Schlapp succinctly summarized the subterfuge that must accompany the CID tax when she said: “This is very simple: If you vote to have the tool, and then you vote to put something in it that makes the tool useless, it’s not even any point in having the vote, in my opinion.” She voted against the signage requirement.

    We should ask Cabela’s why their business model is so flimsy that allowing them to collect one percent additional from their customers makes the difference between feasibility and not. Cabela’s is notorious throughout the country for seeking all sorts of corporate welfare, and the CID is not likely to be the only subsidy the company seeks to extract from the city, county, school district, and/or state. It’s all in their business plan, as revealed in the company’s 2004 IPO filing: “Historically, we have been able to negotiate economic development arrangements relating to the construction of a number of our new destination retail stores, including free land, monetary grants and the recapture of incremental sales, property or other taxes through economic development bonds, with many local and state governments.”

    Cabela’s and its supporters note that part of the 1.2 cents per dollar extra tax to be charged will be used to improve the intersection at Greenwich and K-96. The need of an upgrade there should be questioned. A Cabela’s spokesman told the Wichita Eagle that easy access to the store from the highway is needed because shoppers “come in with the big pickups, the Rvs.” We should note that there exists a full-service intersection with traffic signals less than one mile from the Cabela’s site. For half of the distance, Greenwich road is three lanes in each direction.

    The proposed intersection can be viewed as an unnecessary public improvement — a sweetener to the deal — that doesn’t cost Cabela’s anything. Interestingly, the city’s adopted capital improvement plan for 2009 to 2018 contains “private contributions of $8.4 million for an interchange at K-96 and Greenwich Road.”

    We also have to recognize the harmful effect of a subsidy granted to one company on its competitors. In this case, the city’s response is likely to be “let the competitors apply for a CID.” This pressure — where merchants of all types see other merchants benefiting from the state collecting taxes for their own benefit — is leading to “CID sprawl,” a term coined by Susan Estes. This accurately represents the natural result of the irresistible urge of the CID: charging your customers more and blaming it on the government.

    In particular, a major competitor to Cabela’s is Gander Mountain in the downtown WaterWalk development. This store benefits from taxpayer subsidy, and if it were to close, Wichita taxpayers would be liable for bond payments. Further, the store is considered an anchor for the struggling development. A closed store surely would not be good for WaterWalk’s future.

    Finally, Lynda Tyler, who is running for city council against current council member and Vice Mayor Jeff Longwell, wrote this letter which appeared in the Wichita Eagle. The questions she raises deserve answers.

    Is Cabela’s revenue estimate accurate?

    On the surface, the community improvement district for Cabela’s seems pretty simple: Those who shop at the store will help pay for the store and the K-96 on-ramps through an extra sales tax. But look at the numbers.

    The Eagle reported that the CID is expected to generate $17.2 million over 22 years (Feb. 16 Business Today). That means it would generate an average of $781,818 per year. At 1.2 cents per dollar of sales, the Wichita store would have to have yearly sales of $65.1 million per year.

    Cabela’s does not release its per store sales numbers, but according to an Aug. 23, 2007, Barron’s article, Cabela’s averaged about $348 in sales per square foot. On an 80,000-square-foot store, that would be $27.8 million of sales per year. That is less than half of the amount estimated for the Wichita store.

    If we issue general obligation bonds and build the ramps based on an inflated number, it would be the taxpayer who stands to lose. If the city also issues revenue bonds based on the inflated numbers, there could be a disaster, too, if the store does $26 million instead of $65 million in sales.

  • Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Monday February 28, 2011

    Elections tomorrow. On Tuesday voters across Kansas will vote in city and school board primary elections. Well, at least a few will vote, as it is thought that only nine percent of eligible voters will actually vote. Many of those may have already voted by now, as advance voting is popular. For those who haven’t yet decided, here’s the Wichita Eagle voter guide.

    Kansas schools can transfer funds? A recent legislative update by Kansas Representative Bob Brookens, a Republican from Marion, tells readers this about Kansas school finance: “Most school districts in our area braced for this possibility by taking advantage of a law passed last year by the legislature; the new provision allowed schools this one time to transfer funds from certain other areas to their contingency reserve fund, just in case the state had a budget hole in fiscal year 2011; and most of the school districts around here moved all they were allowed to.” Thing is, no one can seem to remember the law Brookens refers to. There were several such laws proposed, but none made their way through the legislature to become law.

    Ranzau stand on federal funds profiled. New Sedgwick County Commission member Richard Ranzau has taken a consistent stand against accepting federal grant funds, as explained in a Wichita Eagle story. While his efforts won’t presently reduce federal spending or debt, as explained in the article by H. Edward Flentje, Professor at the Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Affairs at Wichita State University (“Those funds are authorized, they’re budgeted, they’re appropriated, and (a) federal agency will commit the funds elsewhere.”), someone, somewhere, has to take a stand. While we usually think about the federal — and state — spending problem requiring a solution from the top, spending can also be controlled from the bottom up. Those federal elected officials who represent Sedgwick County and are concerned about federal spending — that would be Representative Mike Pompeo and Senators Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts — need to take notice and support Ranzau. Those serving in the Kansas legislature should take notice, too.

    Kansas legislative chambers don’t agree. Kansas Reporter details the problems conferees from the House of Representatives and Senate face coming to agreement on the rescission bill. Funding for special education seems the problem. The rescission bill makes cuts to spending so that the current year’s budget balances. More at House, Senate can’t agree how to fund special ed.

    Citizens, not taxpayers. A column in the McPherson Sentinel argues that we should think of ourselves as “citizens,” not merely “taxpayers.” The difference, as I read the article, is that a citizen is involved in government and public policy: “It takes work, hard work, to make this system work.” Taxpayers, on the other hand, just pay and expect something back: “‘Look at how much I paid,’ these people cry. ‘Give me my money’s worth!’” The writer makes the case that government “is not a simplistic fiscal transaction” and that citizens must participate to make sure that government does good things with taxes. … The writer gets one thing right. Meeting the needs of the country is complex. Where I don’t agree with the writer is that government is the best way — or even a feasible way — to meet the needs of the country. A method already exists: people trading voluntarily in free markets, guided by profit and loss, with information conveyed by an unfettered price system. Government, with its central planning, its lack of ability to calculate profit and loss, and inevitable tendency to become captured by special interests, is not equipped for this task.

    Kansas Economic Freedom Index. This week I produced the first version of the Kansas Economic Freedom Index: Who votes for and against economic freedom in Kansas? for the 2011 legislative session. Currently I have a version only for the House of Representatives, as the Senate hasn’t made many votes that affect economic freedom. The index now has its own site, kansaseconomicfreedom.com.

    Increasing taxes not seen as solution. “Leaving aside the moral objection to tax increases, raising taxes won’t in fact solve the problem. For one thing, our public servants always seem to find something new on which to spend the additional money, and it isn’t deficit reduction. But more to the point, tax policy can go only so far, given the natural brick wall it has run into for the past fifty years. Economist Jeffrey Rogers Hummel points out that federal tax revenue ‘has bumped up against 20 percent of GDP for well over half a century. That is quite an astonishing statistic when you think about all the changes in the tax code over the intervening years. Tax rates go up, tax rates go down, and the total bite out of the economy remains relatively constant. This suggests that 20 percent is some kind of structural-political limit for federal taxes in the United States.’” From Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Hummel’s article may be read at Why Default on U.S. Treasuries is Likely.

  • Kansas Economic Freedom Index released

    Today marks the release of the first Kansas Economic Freedom Index for the 2011 legislative session. To view the index, click on Kansas Economic Freedom Index.

    Why is economic freedom important? Here’s what Milton Friedman had to say in the opening chapter of his monumental work Capitalism and Freedom:

    The Relation between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom

    It is widely believed that politics and economics are separate and largely unconnected; that individual freedom is a political problem and material welfare an economic problem; and that any kind of political arrangements can be combined with any kind of economic arrangements. The chief contemporary manifestation of this idea is the advocacy of “democratic socialism” by many who condemn out of hand the restrictions on individual freedom imposed by “totalitarian socialism” in Russia, and who are persuaded that it is possible for a country to adopt the essential features of Russian economic arrangements and yet to ensure individual freedom through political arrangements. The thesis of this chapter is that such a view is a delusion, that there is an intimate connection between economics and politics, that only certain arrangements are possible and that, in particular, a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.

    Economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

    Resources on economic freedom:
    Wikipedia article on economic freedom
    Milton Friedman, the Father of Economic Freedom

  • Unions disrupt Kansas Legislature

    Last week I asked Kansas legislators whether the union-organized protests in Wisconsin could happen in Kansas. Representative Jim Ward said: “I don’t think it would happen in Kansas.” While people in Kansas are passionate, we have a tradition of civility, he added.

    At today’s session of the Kansas House of Representatives, however, we’ve seen that it can happen. There union members were evicted from the House chamber for their noisy and rude protests.

    According to reporting by Martin Hawver: “The Kansas House this morning — for the first time in decades — was interrupted by shouting from the balcony by opponents of the bill that would prohibit employers from providing union political action committee checkoff on paychecks.”

    Hawver also reported that the group made “tasteless remarks about female legislators who supported the bill.”

    The bill in question prohibits automatically deducting donations to unions’ political action committees from workers’ paychecks. Workers may still contribute, but not automatically.

    Video of the demonstration shows the workers to be quite unruly. A union leader said “we will not shut up … we will not keep it down.”

    On Twitter, union supporters and Democrats seemed pleased with the way events unfolded. The Twitter account for kshousedems tweeted: “We are pleased to see so many working men and women in the KS Capitol today, fighting for their rights!” Later the same account called the disruption a manifestation of democracy: “The GOP Speaker’s chief aide says the peaceful assembly of working Kansans in the Capitol is “intimidation.” We call it Democracy.”

    “katethedavis” disputed the account reported by Hawver, saying; “Repubs saying the union folks at the Capitol were sexually derogatory? This 24yo female saw nothing but perfect gentlemen.”

    Chad Manspeaker was proud, tweeting “We are no longer in the gallery. I couldn’t be more proud of my Union family today.”

    This bill does not prohibit unions from accepting contributions for political activity, although it makes it likely that contributions may decline, as union members will have to take active steps to contribute.

    So if the Kansas governor and legislature advanced the same actions that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has proposed, could there be large union demonstrations in Kansas? It seems so. In fact, unions have just announced a “Rally to Save the American Dream” to take place on the steps of the Kansas statehouse this Saturday.