Voice For Liberty

Tag: Kansas state government

Articles about Kansas, its government, and public policy in Kansas.

  • Kansas Governor in 2010

    Larry Sabato of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia has a great website and accompanying email newsletter. In its own words: “Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball features analyses of presidential elections, Senate, House and gubernatorial races.” Here’s what he has to say about the gubernatorial race in Kansas next year:

    KANSAS — Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS), to be succeeded shortly by Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson (D-KS): PROBABLE OPEN SEAT. This contest is in flux on the Democratic side, which in this case helps the GOP. Two-term Governor Sebelius has been popular but had to retire after she reached the two-term limit in 2010. She might have run for the Senate seat of retiring U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R)–who is leaving to run for Governor. But Sebelius recently accepted the nomination of President Obama to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services. As her successor as Governor, Sebelius had wanted to help her lieutenant governor, Mark Parkinson, who switched from the Republican party to run with her as a Democrat in 2006. But Parkinson earlier decided not to run for Governor, leaving state Treasurer Dennis McKinney (D) as the possible nominee. Now Parkinson will become Governor, and he is under renewed pressure to run for the Democrats in 2010. Surprisingly, Parkinson still says he won’t run, and one suspects it is because he knows how difficult it will be for any Democrat to defeat Brownback. Brownback easily won his 1996, 1998, and 2004 contests for Senate, though he has a primary challenge from Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh (R). The critical unknown is the identity of the new Democratic lieutenant governor, to be appointed by Gov. Parkinson. He or she could end up being the Democratic candidate for Governor in 2010. LEANS REPUBLICAN TURNOVER.

  • Articles of Interest

    American exceptionalism, longer school days, landfill violations, Kansas vs. Missouri, open government.

    The Europe Syndrome and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism (Charles Murray in The American) “Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays.” There’s a difference between Europe and America, Murray tells us. Another difference is work as vocation, or work as necessary evil. There are also some changes coming in our understanding of humans. For example, consider the “equality premise,” which is the basis of political correctness, affirmative action, and much of the Democratic Party’s proposed legislation. Murray predicts that within a decade, no one will be defending this premise. There’s also what Murray calls the “New Man” premise, which says that “human beings are malleable through the right government interventions.” Murray says we are learning that this is nonsense. This is just the start of what you can learn in this fascinating article.

    President Obama’s call for longer school days raises questions (Suzanne Perez Tobias in the Wichita Eagle) Should kids be in school longer? No matter what decision is made, it will be one-size-fits-all.

    Cornejo landfill along K-15 taller than permitted (Brent D. Wistrom in the Wichita Eagle) Is a politically-connected businessman allowed to violate agreements with the City of Wichita? Do neighbors have a legitimate complaint? I’ve been told a class action lawsuit may be in the works. The Eagle article contains links to documents. Many comments left to this article indicate that citizens are not happy with this situation.

    Kansas to lose $1.4 million in taxes every year when store moves 100 feet into Missouri (Kansas Meadowlark) “A QuikTrip plans to spend millions of dollars and ‘move’ 100 feet from Kansas to Missouri.”

    Open government fuels democracy (Randy Brown in the Wichita Eagle) Brown lays out the case for open government, and cites instances where Kansas governments are not being open or transparent. In particular, USD 259, the Wichita school district has problems. There will be an event: a “public forum ‘The Power of Open Government: What Citizens Can do’ Sunday at 3 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 330 N. Broadway in downtown Wichita. The forum will be telecast live on KAKE-TV, Channel 10.” I’ll be there.

  • How does Kansas fare in freedom, compared to other states?

    The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just published a fascinating paper that ranks the states in several areas regarding freedom. According to the authors, “This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres.”

    What is the philosophical basis for measuring or determining freedom? Here’s an explanation from the introduction:

    We explicitly ground our conception of freedom on an individual rights framework. In our view, individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberties, and property as they see fit, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others. This understanding of freedom follows from the natural-rights liberal thought of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Robert Nozick, but it is also consistent with the rights-generating rule-utilitarianism of Herbert Spencer and others.

    It’s something that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius wouldn’t understand. At least she doesn’t want to trust us with these freedoms.

    According to the authors, “No current studies exist that measure both economic and personal freedom in the fifty states.” So this is a ground-breaking work.

    How does Kansas do? Surprisingly, not too badly. Not outstanding, but not as bad as I might have thought.

    For the four areas measured, here’s how we did: In fiscal policy, Kansas is 28. In regulatory policy, 4. In economic freedom, 18. In personal freedom, 15. (In all cases, a ranking of 1 means the most freedom.)

    Our overall ranking is 12.

    Some of our neighbors do pretty well in the overall ranking. Colorado is 2, Texas is 5, Missouri is 6, and Oklahoma is 18.

    Nebraska is not as good at 28.

    In case you’re wondering, for overall ranking, New Hampshire is best. The worst? It’s no surprise that it’s New York by a wide margin, with New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland rounding out the bottom five.

    The full study contains discussion of the politics surrounding these rankings, and a narrative discussion of the factors present in each state.

    You may read the entire study by clicking on Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom.

  • Kansas minimum wage: wrong questions

    A recent letter in the Wichita Eagle asks these questions: “Who would work for $2.65 an hour? State legislators don’t get paid much, that is true. But would they work for $2.65 an hour? Would they send their sons or daughters to a job that paid that little?”

    These questions are intended to stir up sympathy for low-wage workers in Kansas. It is, indeed, not a good situation when someone has such low productivity that they can’t command a very high wage.

    But passing a law can’t fix that.

    A related comment left on this blog asks these questions that help answer those above: “What do business owners do when their costs go up? They pass the increase along to consumers.”

    This is not necessarily true, however. If business owners felt they could increase their prices, they would do so now, and earn greater profits. Generally, when prices are increased, sales go down. Demand for labor may decrease, too, and that’s a big problem for workers.

    The writer claims that the 20,000 Kansans presently working for the Kansas minimum wage will have their lot improved if Kansas raises its minimum wage. That will be true for those who keep their jobs. Undoubtedly some, perhaps many, will lose their jobs. It would be a miracle if that didn’t happen.

    The writer also asks “Why not let the poor have more money?”

    This is a wrong question again. I don’t think anyone is against “letting” people have money. But for sustainability, wages have to be earned.

    I’m sure this writer is genuine in his concern for law-wage workers in Kansas. Fixing this problem, however, requires steps that are harder to take than simply passing a law.

    One way to increase workers’ productivity is through education. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that our public education system is failing badly. Even President Obama said so last week, although his prescriptions for fixing schools don’t go far enough.

    Capital may be a dirty word to some. But as the economist Walter E. Williams asks, what is the answer this question: who earns the higher wage: a man digging a ditch with a shovel, or a man digging a ditch using a power backhoe? The difference is that the man with the backhoe is more productive — and earns more, too. That productivity is provided by capital — the savings that someone accumulated and invested in a piece of equipment. That increases the output of workers and our economy. Workers can be paid more.

    Education and capital accumulation are the two best ways to increase the productivity and the wages of workers. Ironically, the people who are most vocal about raising wages through legislative action are also usually opposed to meaningful education reform and school choice. They usually insist that more resources be poured into the present system. They also usually support higher taxes on both individuals and business, which makes it harder to accumulate capital. These organizations should examine the effects of the policies they promote, as they are not in alignment with their stated goals.

  • South Central Kansas Legislative Meeting a Disappointment

    On Saturday March, 14, a meeting of the south central Kansas legislative delegation was held at the Marcus Center of Wichita State University. This meeting was a disappointment for several reasons.

    First, at its maximum, nine legislators attended. This is a poor rate of attendance. At the meeting in January, about 22 legislators attended. About 40 to 50 citizens attended this meeting.

    Second, after introductions, the meeting started with a highly inappropriate waste of citizens’ time. Rep. Steve Brunk, vice-chair of the south-central Kansas legislative delegation introduced a special presentation, which was a sales presentation for school software. This would have been an appropriate topic for a local board of education, or perhaps a committee at the statehouse, but was totally inappropriate for a legislative forum.

    After a few minutes I turned to the person next to me and asked “why are we sitting through this?” A little while later, several in the audience expressed the same sentiment.

    Chair Melody McCray-Miller explained that this was a presentation that was set up in advance by Rep. Brunk, and explained the need for this type of product, but this did not explain why the audience had to endure this waste of time.

    The audience submitted questions to Chair McRay-Miller in writing. She read the questions, although many of the question-writers had to clarify their questions, so the exercise of taking questions in writing was a waste.

    Here are some things the audience learned:

    Rules of how Kansas many use federal stimulus money are not all available, and may not be until the end of this Month, or even into April.

    A question about “proforma Fridays” put a number of legislators on the defensive, as they explained how they still worked on these days. Proforma sessions, according to the rules of the Kansas House, are for the “sole purposes of processing routine business of the House of Representatives.” Role is not taken, and votes are not conducted.

    Racial profiling was a concern to a number of audience members. Somehow a mandatory seatbelt law, according to one speaker, contributes to racial profiling. Several speakers told how this is a community issue.

    One questioner told of the need for records in child “need of care” courts to be open.

    The bill that might allow residents of Sedgwick county to vote on slot machines is dead.

    On Proposition K. Rep. McRay-Miller said that expensive properties increase in value faster than lower-value properties.

    Regarding the Holcomb coal power plant. Rep. Myers expressed his amazement at the lack of information and the misinformation that is available. Sen. Kelsey said there’s not a lot of give-and-take on this issue, seeming to say that most members are pretty well established in their positions.

    The meeting ended at 11:00.

  • Earl Watkins, Sunflower Chief Executive, speaks at AFP event

    Earl Watkins, President and CEO of Sunflower Electric Power Corporation recently spoke to a group of citizen activists as part of AFP – Kansas Day at the Capitol. Here’s a few notes from his talk.

    Did you know that Sunflower Electric is a not-for-profit organization?

    The demand for electricity changes constantly, moment-by-moment, throughout the day. Since electricity can’t be stored, matching generation to consumption of electricity is a challenge. Adding wind power makes this an even more challenging job, as wind power is very erratic.

    Watkins told a story of how a group of Kansas University students contacted him as part of their investigation of the “slothful and wasteful” practices of excess electricity consumption. Watkins told how when he attended KU, he had a radio and an electric typewriter in his dorm room, not to mention the forbidden hotplate. Today, however, these students have many electrical devices in their dorm rooms — refrigerators, microwave ovens, televisions, and computers, for example. Electrical power is a huge factor in the increased quality of life, especially for college students.

    The average age of Sunflower’s natural gas-powered plants is almost 40 years.

    While Kansas is often portrayed as having rich wind resources, the wind doesn’t always blow when power is needed. “The fact of the matter is, of the four seasons for harvesting wind, the summer in the day is the worst,” Watkins said. The highest demand for electrical power, of course, is on hot summer afternoons.

    It is the cost of the various forms of power generation that Sunflower uses that drives the decision as how to generate power and invest in capacity. These costs per kilowatt-hour are 1.5 cents for coal, 5 cents for wind, and 9 cents for natural gas.

    If the permit for the new coal plant is denied, Sunflower will be forced to build new wind and natural gas capacity. It’s estimated that the extra cost to consumers — remember these forms of generation are more expensive to build and operate than coal — is about $600 per household per year.

    Afterwards I asked Watkins a few questions. One concerned Cessna Aircraft Company chairman, president and chief executive officer Jack Pelton and his role as leader of the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group (KEEP). How, I asked, does Pelton expect to build airplanes in Wichita when the wind isn’t blowing? The answer is that it’s easy for him to trade Western Kansas for a relationship with the Sebelius administration. This relationship has paid off handsomely for Pelton and Cessna, with $33 million in state money heading his way, and potential for more. My post Jack Pelton, Leader of Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group explains.

    Also, does the fact of Governor Sebelius’ impending departure from Kansas have any potential impact on the Kansas House of Representatives and its voting? He indicated that perhaps it would.

  • Kansas Smoking Ban Conflicts Wichita’s

    Here’s a letter the Wichita Eagle printed from Wichita businessman Craig Gabel.

    There are many reasons to oppose more smoking bans. The posts Testimony Opposing Kansas Smoking Ban, Haze Surrounds Wichita Smoking Ban, Property Rights Should Control Kansas Smoking Decisions, and It’s Not the Same as Pee In the Swimming Pool supply some background.

    The issue that Craig mentions is important. Just last year some establishments such as his spent a great deal of money to install the equipment necessary to conform to the smoking ban that Wichita passes. Now, if a comprehensive ban passes at the state level, this investment is lost. There needs to be some provision for these businesses to be exempted or compensated.

    By the way, did you know that the state exempted itself from the smoking ban when it appeared that it might hurt the state’s pocketbook? See Kansas Exempts Itself from Onerous Regulation.

    Charlie Claycomb has compared a smoking section in a restaurant to a urination section in a swimming pool. Claycomb needs to come and speak with those of us who have spent thousands of dollars remodeling our restaurants this past year to comply with the city of Wichita’s smoking ordinance.

    If lawmakers don’t want smoking, they should have the guts to outlaw smoking everywhere, as well as the sale of cigarettes. They know that if they did, their tenure in office would be limited to the next election. We don’t need any more liberal politicians pushing special-interest agendas and eating away at our personal freedoms “for our own good.”

    CRAIG GABEL
    Wichita

  • Articles of Interest

    Charity, Kansas legal intrigue, Kansas infant mortality rate rises under Sebelius, taxing it all, bailouts not wanted, cap-and-trade costs, school choice saves.

    The Charity Revolt: Liberals oppose a tax hike on rich donors (Wall Street Journal) true-blue liberals who run most of America’s nonprofits, universities and charities” are worried that Obama’s plan to limit deductions for charitable contributions will cost them. This article introduces a term I saw for the first time: “New Charity State,” and it is a real danger. “Mr. Orszag [White House budget chief Peter] revealed the real agenda at work when he pointed out that the money taken from the ‘rich’ would be used to fund such Obama state-run charities as universal health care. The argument is that any potential declines in private gifts, whether to universities or foundations, will be balanced by increases in government grants paid with higher taxes — redistribution by another means. This is how Europe’s welfare state works: Taxes are so high that private citizens have come to believe it is only the state’s duty to support cultural institutions and public welfare. The ambit for private giving shrinks.” Ambit: sphere or scope, I learned.

    Who is playing politics in the Kansas Judiciary by leaking information to the press? (Kansas Meadowlark) More intrigue.

    State’s infant mortality rate rises under Sebelius (Kansas Liberty, a subscription service) “Roderick Bremby, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, told lawmakers Tuesday that between 1988 and 2007 the infant mortality rate increased in Kansas from a rate of 6.9 to 7.9 per 1,000 live births. Bremby said that though infant mortality rates for white babies actually decreased slightly during that time, rates for non-white babies increased greatly.” Wait … wasn’t Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius just appointed secretary of health and human services for the entire country? With this record?

    The 2% Illusion: Take everything they earn, and it still won’t be enough (Wall Street Journal) Can President Obama finance his spending plans by increasing taxes only on the rich? “Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can’t possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama’s new spending ambitions. … A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That’s less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable ‘dime’ of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.”

    Some Banks, Feeling Chained, Want to Return Bailout Money (New York Times) It seems that even free money isn’t all it’s promoted to be. “The list of demands keeps getting longer. … others say the conditions go beyond protecting taxpayers and border on social engineering.”

    The Climate Change Lobby Has Regrets: Cap and trade is going to cost them (Kimberley A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal) Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, decided to go along with the government’s plan for cap-and-trade as a way to control carbon emissions. “At the time, Mr. Rogers explained: ‘If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’ll wind up on the menu.’ Duke sat, yet it and its compatriots are still shaping up to be Washington’s breakfast, lunch and dinner.” Ms. Strassel explains how now we are beginning to realize just how expensive cap-and-trade will be for consumers, and how lucrative it will be for the government: “President Obama’s auction bonanza would earn the feds $650 billion in 10 years, according to the administration’s budget estimate — and that’s a low, low, low estimate.”

    Finding room for school choice (John LePlante, Saint Paul Legal Ledger) The government school lobby says that school choice programs drain precious money from public schools. There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary: “In December, 2008, a research office of the Florida Legislature evaluated a school choice program in that state, and estimated that it saves state government $1.49 for every dollar spent. … Here in Minnesota, a 2005 report published by the Humphrey Institute stated that a majority of K-8 private schools in Minnesota charged less than the state sends to public school districts as their ‘basic formula allowance.’ The allowance is only one block of money, albeit the largest one, that the state sends to school districts. So can we ‘afford’ school choice programs? Perhaps we ought to ask the question ‘Can we afford to not have them?’”

  • We really don’t know what Kansas taxes should be — except lower

    Today’s edition of the Kansas Jackass blog has a post written by Jason Croucher that criticizes Americans For Prosperity because the group doesn’t like taxes.

    That’s not quite accurate, as Croucher himself says he doesn’t like paying taxes. Instead, the post seems to argue that we have to pay taxes because they’re there, and we don’t know whether they’re too high, and anyway, we can’t identify and agree on what is waste, so let’s just pay. Something like this, anyway. But there are a few problems with this post that deserve discussion.

    He likens paying his cable television bill to paying taxes. This analogy is false on several levels.

    First, subscribing to cable television is a voluntary act. A company offers a service, a person decides to buy, and therefore becomes a customer. The customer — and the company, too — can decide to sever the relationship whenever and for whatever reason the parties have agreed to.

    That’s not the way taxes work. There’s nothing voluntary about the relationship between state and taxpayer.

    Then he says that he doesn’t know whether his cable bill and taxes are too high — his emotions make him feel like they are — and how there’s no rational reason for thinking they should or could cost less.

    As it turns out, there is a rational reason why a cable bill is what it is: competition provided through markets. It hasn’t been this way until recently, but now you can get television service in several ways besides free over-the-air broadcasts: cable TV, satellite TV, and in many areas, TV provided by the telephone company. These three service providers compete with each other on the basis of price and service. (This doesn’t include services like hulu that show television programs over the Internet.)

    For most of the things that government does and taxes us to pay for, government is the sole source. Even for areas where there are alternatives, such as private schools, many people can’t afford to pay their taxes and private school tuition at the same time, so government is almost like the sole source. And even if a family decides not to use the government schools, they still have to pay the same taxes just as through they used them. Companies operating in markets can’t compel their customers to do that.

    Furthermore, competition provides a built-in incentive to control waste, something that Croucher seems to think is desirable to control in government, if we could come to agreement as to the definition of waste.

    In private industry, the profit and loss system provides a powerful incentive to control waste. At the minimum, being efficient while satisfying customer needs leads to greater profits. Its strongest incentive, however, is survival: those firms that are wasteful die.

    What happens to wasteful government programs? President Obama campaigned on ending wasteful earmarks, but signed a bill containing 8,500 such earmarks. He did say this is the “end to the old way of doing business,” but I don’t think anyone believes him. Or ask George Will about the mohair subsidy.

    The automatic pruning of inefficient or wasteful companies through markets and the profit and loss system saves consumers from having to do with a grocery store what Croucher wants us to do with Kansas government: come up with a list of “waste.”

    So government, as we see, is largely immune from the pressures of a marketplace. So Croucher is correct on one respect: we don’t know what our taxes should be.

    But we can be positive that they’re too high.