When it was all over, thousands wrote, emailed and phoned the offices of Moran, Tiahrt and Boyda. People 'were very angry.'

The $700 bailout bill Congress sent to President George W. Bush Friday evening was certainly not a low-profile event.

As the drama on Wall Street and in Washington unfolded, members of the Kansas congressional delegation heard from thousands of Kansans, many worried that the bill's benefits might not outweigh its risks.

Wendy Knox, spokeswoman for Fourth District Congressman Todd Tiahrt, said the office's call volume has gone up dramatically over the past two weeks. [ Read more...]

If the latest Rasmussen poll was an accurate reflection of Kansans' concern about the proposed bailout bill passed by the Senate, voters should be pleased with Pat Roberts' and Sam Brownback's vote Wednesday night.

Both voted against a rescue plan that many critics thought was an unwise way to reward what they perceive as corporate incompetence.

According to Rasmussen Reports, the solution for many Americans may bhave been simpler and much, much cheaper: a tax cut. [ Read more...]

Third District Congressman Dennis Moore is receiving some criticism of his support for President George W. Bush’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout initiative.

Moore’s challenger in the upcoming November elections, State Sen. Nick Jordan, a Shawnee Republican, and Moore’s fellow finance committee member, Rep. Tom Price, a Republican from Georgia, said they believed Moore’s vote was not representative of what Kansas residents in his district are looking for.

“I believe a $700 billion bailout is not proper at this time without first addressing the underlying problem and without reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Jordan told Kansas Liberty. [ Read more...]

The $700 billion bailout plan, intended to ease the strain on Wall Street and the financial markets caused by subprime mortgages and other problems, may have passed Friday, but it received little help from the Kansas congressional delegation its first time around on Monday.

Kansas Liberty surveyed the representatives and found little regret for the votes, no matter which side of the argument they supported.

Rep. Dennis Moore, a Democrat from Lenexa, was the lone Kansas supporter of the legislation, which ultimately failed 228-205 in Congress. [ Read more...]

Senators say surprise ouster of K-State president and KU chancellor point to the need for Senate committee scrutiny

Sebelius accused of politicizing bioscience board

Kansas State Sen. Karin Brownlee charged Thursday that the Kansas BioScience Authority has become more political under Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Brownlee, an Olathe Republican, said KBA appointments often are not scrutinized by the appropriate Senate committee. She said she was considering an attempt to rewrite the law governing the appointment process when the Legislature convenes in January.

Brownlee’s comments came after Sebelius was criticized for the unexpected removal of K-State president Jon Wefald and KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway as non-voting members of the board.[ Read more...]

Follows suggestions for government mandates to ration red meat and lower dairy consumption.

Gore's call for 'civil disobedience' to fight coal plants draws mixed response

He may be a former vice president, and a former presidential nominee, and last year's Nobel Peace Prize co-winner, but this year Al Gore is recommending citizens engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of most modern coal-powered plants.

Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative this week that drastic measures must be taken to ensure the health of the environment.

"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore told the crowd.

The remarks also came only days after his Nobel Prize co-winner, the head of the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change, Rajendra Pachauri, urged that people give up red meat at least one day a week to reduce methane emissions from livestock. [ Read more...]

State Supreme Court might have the case by the beginning of the new year.

Deadlines set on Holcomb challenge

Parties in a legal action that seeks to allow a coal plant expansion in Holcomb were notified Friday that they have until October 27 to file their final written arguments in the case.

The denial of the expansion by Kansas Department of Health Secretary Rod Bremby because of fears the plant might contribute to climate change is being challenged, and it appears that Sunflower Electric Power Corp. will know before the end of the year whether the issue will be moving onto the Kansas Supreme Court.

The Kansas Legislature has repeatedly supported the coal-plant extension by wide, bi-partisan majorities. But Democrats, aided by liberal Republicans, have been able to help sustain Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' vetoes of the bills. [ Read more...]

Senate Democrat pronounces proposal DOA should it reach the Legislature

Energy Council gets earful on lower speed limit

During a public hearing Tuesday in Wichita, members of the Kansas Energy Council got an earful about a proposal that speed limits on Kansas highways be reduced.

Jeff Kennedy, a Wichita attorney who represents the natural gas industry on the council, said the speed limit recommendation was the primary focus of most audience members who addressed the council.

Two individuals, citing safety and energy conservation issues, spoke in favor of the recommendation to lower highway speed limits to 65 mph. [ Read more...]

More than 700 individuals and organizations issue an appeal to Congress, while critics say wind-energy is impractical.

Production tax credit for wind power gets one-year extension

A coalition of seemingly strange bedfellows that includes Dow Chemical Company and the Sierra Club has signed a letter delivered to congressional leaders last week appealing to Congress to extend a tax credit on wind energy production.

Several Kansas wind producers, including TradeWind Energy in Lenexa and Horizon Wind Energy in Overland Park, joined the effort to convince Congress to vote on the extension.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who also has been urging members of the Kansas congressional delegation to approve the tax credit extension, was not among the signers, however.

In the end, the one-year extension backers had already been promised came through as part of the $700 billion bank bailout. [ Read more...]

A huge wind farm is dedicated by the governor. Critics say when it comes on-line, the cost of energy will rise for everyone

The cost of energy is blowing in the Kansas wind

The conflict between Kansas' energy future and the realities of present-day needs were highlighted this week when Gov. Kathleen Sebelius praised Kansas’ energy wind resources at the official dedication of the Smoky Hills Wind Project. The wind farm will be the state's largest.

Sebelius said the usage of wind energy in Kansas had risen from 1 percent to almost 10 percent in the last three years. That puts Kansas ahead of her goal of having 10 percent of the state's energy come from wind by 2010.

“We’ll be at 1,000 megawatts of wind—that’s only the seventh state in the country to reach that threshold and the only state to do it without [a mandate from] the Legislature,” Sebelius said at the event. [ Read more...]

Cigarette tax revenue, after first-year spike, suffers annual declines in Kansas.

Cigarette tax hike in Kansas? Missouri retailer says bring it on

The last time Kansas raised its cigarette tax, from .24 to .79 cents, tobacco retailer Steve Barbour pulled up stakes at his two Johnson County Cigarettes 4 Less stores and moved them just across state line – a relative stone’s throw from Johnson County – where the state cigarette tax is the lowest in the nation, at a smooth and mild 17 cents a pack.

Today Barbour says his two stores, at 81st and State Line and 103rd and State Line, have never been busier, and if Kansas passes another 75-cent per-pack increase as proposed by the Kansas Health Policy Authority and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, he figures business will pick up even more.

“Right now, the per carton tax here in Missouri is about $3.20 because there’s a city tax on top of the state tax,” Barbour said. “The Kansas tax alone is now about $8 a carton, so it’s a noticeable difference.” [ Read more...]

Lawyers attack Kline - for charges filed by Morrison. AG's office seeks to delay filing of rebuttal until after hearing concludes

Prosecutor has until Nov. 17 to file response to Tiller attorneys

A prosecutor for the attorney general’s office must respond to allegations raised by attorneys for late-term abortionist Dr. George Tiller prior to a week-long hearing Nov. 17, but will be allowed to file additional arguments after the hearing.

The attorney general’s office had asked Judge Clark Owens to allow them to wait until after the Nov. 17 hearing to file their response to a brief that lashed out at alleged prosecutorial misconduct by former Attorney General Phill Kline, who began the investigation during his administration. Kline has denied the allegations.

The 19 misdemeanor charges that Tiller’s clinic faces were filed by Kline’s successor Paul Morrison. [ Read more...]

BAILOUT: The rescue of Wall Street is the triumph of the wealthy establishment, right and left, over what we used to call the 'working class.' Today, it's called the middle class and it includes most Americans. Caleb Stegall finds a lesson—and a hero—in Kansas' past.

Sockless Jerry rides again

In 1890, the brand-new Kansas People’s Party (later to become the national Populist Party) routed the Republican state establishment in the fall elections, winning control of both the state government and the state’s congressional delegation.

The race that best typified the mood of the day was the U.S. House contest pitting People’s Party candidate Jerry Simpson, the marshal of Medicine Lodge and a former Greenbacker, against Colonel James R. Hallowell, coifed and cosseted member of the GOP elite.

Hallowell, a former legislator, was so respected that, without irony, he went by the name “Prince Hal.” During one encounter, Simpson mocked Hallowell’s fine clothes and silk stockings, to which Prince Hal wrinkled his nose and said silk was preferable to dirty men who wore no socks at all. [ Read more...]

BAILOUT: What the financial institutions did was frightening. What the Congress and the President have done may be even worse. But now that the monster's loose, Maria Holiday argues, we'd better take a moment to try to understand just how bad this all is.

What would Andrew Jackson have done?

This week's horror story has finally reached its gruesome conclusion. The monster we call the government finally broke through the wall of common sense the House had built and is now reaching into our pockets and bailing out incompetent bankers and brokers to the tune of $700 billion.

That's a lot. $700 billion is a difficult number to wrap one's mind around, perhaps because there aren't even 700 billion cells in the human brain. To make matters more confusing, the situation is so complex and what lead to it so convoluted that even those who have taken time to try to understand it find themselves throwing up their hands in frustration.

Start with the basic questions. Is it a Wall Street bailout or, as the Democrats and George W. Bush claim, a way to save Main Street? Who is responsible for this mess? Does it matter now? Will $700 billion dollars fix it? If so, for how long? What if we hadn't done anything at all? [ Read more...]

CLIMATE CHANGE: What kind of a contest puts the opposing teams in the bleachers and asks the refs to duke it out on the field? It's the game being played over climate change and the environment. Forrest Knox calls the play-by-play.

The umpires strike out

I love the weather. Watching a summer thunderstorm rolling across the prairie, approaching from fifty miles away is a delight to me. We love to talk about the weather because it is so safe. There is no controversy, no choosing of sides. We can do nothing about the weather, nor can we predict it with any great accuracy—or can we?

Back in grade school we chose sides to play dodge ball. Soon we chose sides socially; then we chose between KU and K-State; then religiously; then politically—it seems life is full of choosing sides—often rather arbitrarily—though we prefer not to admit it, as we are so adamant in our support for the side we have chosen.

These days people are even choosing sides when it comes to the weather. A contest of gigantic proportions is forming, dwarfing the Super Bowl in its size and scope. All the governments of the world are being drawn in. It’s a spectacle where even $700 billion is small change. The outcomes go far beyond gold medals or championship rings. One side claims a loss will be the end of the world as we know it. The other claims our contribution to the game is insignificant—that there really is no game at all, just hype.[ Read more...]

The Week on the Web

Bounce Bernanke, somebody, and send Bill Wyckoff, president of the Labette Bank, to run the Fed in Ben's place. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Wyckoff explained the banking crisis in terms so simple even Bush, McCain and Obama should be able to understand what went wrong:

Today we are reacting to a crisis that absolutely everyone knew was going to happen. Can you tell me that the entire congressional delegation from California didn't read a newspaper or watch any TV when unregulated brokers were offering 100% loans and allowing borrowers to make up their income?

Appraisal rules were established after the savings-and-loan debacle. The brokers and packagers weren't regulated so some appraisers really had a field day being creative. And now the government thinks we need new rules? They didn't enforce the existing ones...

If the government really wanted to help banks stimulate this economy, all that would be needed is a bonfire eliminating redundant red tape. While starter homes may cost a half-million dollars in some parts of this country, they are one-tenth of that here. So why does the borrower sign but three pieces of paper to process a $50,000 auto loan but needs two dozen-plus documents (which are never read) for a home purchase of the same amount? All that extra paperwork sure didn't protect anyone in this crisis.

Can anyone tell me why my small bank headquartered in a town of 1,100 is subject to the onerous rules of CRA, HMDA, CIP, FACTA, Red Flag and others? We have no red-lined areas or stop lights and everyone is making a low or moderate income. We were probably at the hospital when the borrower was born.

I am really concerned about my grandchildren's future being mortgaged by a $1 trillion porked-up bailout. But our small bank, along with many others, is alive and well and still making loans. To paraphrase the late great Kansas newspaperman William Allen White: What's right with Kansas are the more than 300 local banks taking care of Main Street.

That's Wyckoff's two cents, and you can take it to the bank. It's open Monday through Friday, as usual.

Sebelius watch. Where was she last weekend? York, Pennsylvania, doing her campaign thing for Obama. The York Daily Record captures the spirit of her speech:

Sebelius said she had been criticized by opponents who said she's spending too much time campaigning for Obama when she should be running her state, and that she's looking for a job in Washington.

"I don't want a new job," Sebelius said. "I want a new president."

There it is, in writing. Sebelius doesn't want a new job. Her term ends in 2010.

Quick! Name the poet laureate of Kansas. It's Denise Lowe, of course. She's not just a poet laureate, however. She's also a blogging poet laureate, perhaps Kansas' first woman blogging poet laureate. Her current post features a fine poem by Lawrence's Judith Roitman. Slow down for a sec and take a look.

A Preview of the Coming Week

News, columns and comment all yours for the price of a mouse-click. Subscribe now!