Voice For Liberty in Wichita

A message from Alan Cobb of Americans for Prosperity:

I’m pleased to announce that Steve Moore, of The Wall Street Journal will be joining Jonah Goldberg, syndicated columnist of National Review Online and best selling author of Liberal Fascism, and Speaker of the House Mike O’Neal on January 10th in Wichita at the Defending the American Dream Summit.

Steve Moore is on the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, is a frequent guest on Fox News, and recently co-authored the book, The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom Our Economy- If We Let It Happen with economist Arthur Laffer. He’ll be joining Americans for Prosperity to speak about the current financial crisis and explain what we can do to secure freedom and economic prosperity in the future.

Steve Moore is a great writer and speaker. One of his best columns was the subject of my post The Decline of Local Chambers of Commerce.

This summit should be a great event. Learn more about it and sign up in the post Jonah Goldberg to Speak at Kansas Summit.

By Warner Todd Huston

Washington — In this current economic climate, bailouts for industries in the private sector are quickly becoming the chief form of reform and stability. From newspapers to the financial sector to the auto industry, Congress is infusing life saving money into the bloodstream of the country’s economy.

But one sector is finding itself over burdened at an alarming rate. Critics say that much more strain will find the CPA’s and accountants of America buckle and something needs to be done before it’s too late.

Click here to read the entire article.

At 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 8, 2009, the Sedgwick County legislative delegation will hold their annual meeting at the Wichita State University Marcus Center located at 4205 E. 21st Street, Wichita, Kansas, just east of the WSU baseball stadium. The public is invited but will not be allowed to address the delegation. This is your opportunity to listen and find out about the legislative agendas of local governmental units like the City of Wichita, Sedgwick County, USD 259, Wichita State University, and private sector groups like the Wichita Chamber of Commerce, Wichita Independent Business Association, and others.

At 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, the Sedgwick County legislative delegation will host a public hearing and inviting public input in the Jury Room of the Sedgwick County Courthouse, 525 N. Main, Wichita, Kansas. This is your opportunity to address your concerns to area legislators prior to the convening of the 2009 legislative session in Topeka on January 12, 2009. Entry to the Courthouse will be through security on the north side of the building. In past years speakers have been given approximately 3 minutes to speak depending on the number of people wanting to speak.

Here’s a note I received from someone who isn’t appreciative of the tax collector. This reminds me of the Internal Revenue Service’s effort to improve “customer service.” That’s funny. It reminds me of David Henderson, who wrote “calling taxpayers customers of the IRS is like calling chickens customers of the egg farmer.”

I received a nice letter on New Year’s Eve from the Kansas Department of Revenue telling me that I owed so many dollars of tax penalties and interest. I had filed an extension in April. Now I did expect a bill from them but what wrenched my stomach was the bold sentence toward the bottom of the letter that read:

“PLEASE NOTE: Failure to respond timely could result in legal action such as the filing of a tax warrant, garnishment of wages and bank accounts, or seizure of real and personal property.”

Hello???

We have millions living in the US without any documentation — but that’s okay they deserve amnesty.

We are giving billions to banks who are not “trickling down” their ability to give credit.

We are giving billions to auto makers who should be in bankruptcy for being idiots.

We give billions to countries who don’t like us.

We give billions to lazy and/or drug addicted people who did not pay attention in high school in the form of welfare …

But you threaten to take my house, my wages and throw me in jail over less than a thousand dollars!

Wake up Americans! Your desire to care for the world has made the US Taxpayers slaves to the system. They say the average taxpayer works until sometime in April just to pay our taxes. Imagine if that work had to be done in some sort of concentration camp — or dare I say plantation?

Then maybe the system would change. Apathy amongst the taxpayers is what is making us all slaves. As individuals we can’t do anything, but perhaps the taxpayers should be the ones protesting down the streets for once.

Here’s a message someone sent to me. It’s from Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer. It describes some of the ways that government grew in Wichita during 2008. It also promotes the mayor’s plan for greater centralized planning and control over Wichita’s future.

All this government expansion leads to less prosperity, making the mayor’s wish for a prosperous new year ring hollow.

Wichitans,

We made 2008 a wonderful year. We made investments to help stabilize and secure out aviation industry. We maintained competitive and affordable airfares. We retained and attracted new jobs. We took first steps to improve our parks and recreations system with the adoption of the Parks, Recreation and Open Space (PROS) Plan. We were also honored when Old Town was named A Great Neighborhood in America. As we enter the new year, I want to thank you for your support in our successes.

2009 provides another opportunity for us to partner to achieve greater successes. I believe it’s time to transform downtown Wichita. We need to start by connecting Old Town, the Intrust Bank Arena area and riverfront development such as the Wichita WaterWalk. That’s just the beginning.

As we embark on the planning process, I need your input because downtown is everybody’s neighborhood and because public engagement is key to success. The interest you have shown in helping to forward my vision for a new and revitalized downtown sends a unified message that downtown is “our neighborhood”. I need you to continue to share that vision in the coming months.

The Wichita City Council recently decided to form a steering committee charged with collecting input from citizens. Their feedback will be used to create the vision and the next steps to build a better downtown. That committee will be appointed in early 2009 and will, soon after, begin holding public meetings.

Please stay engaged and keep me informed about your ideas for downtown. Here’s wishing you a prosperous new year.

Mayor Carl Brewer

Here’s a message from Alan Cobb of Americans For Prosperity.

I’m pleased to announce that Jonah Goldberg, syndicated columnist of National Review Online and best selling author of Liberal Fascism will be joining us on January 10th in Wichita.

Register today for Kansas’ second Defending the American Dream Summit, America’s foremost free-market voices, top experts on grassroots mobilization, and Kansas’ largest gathering of grassroots leaders from across the state in a massive show of force for our shared belief in lower taxes and more limited government.

Registration is $39, and includes breakfast, lunch and admission to our general session of speakers.

Confirmed Speakers Include:

Jonah Goldberg, Syndicated columnist, National Review Online, author of Liberal Fascism

Mike O’Neal, Kansas Speaker of the House

Greg Schneider, Author of the newly published Conservative Century and Senior Fellow — Flint Hills Center for Public Policy

Susan Wagle, State Senator, former Speaker Pro-tem of the Kansas House

Professor Steven Ware, Author of Selection to the Kansas Supreme Court

Dave Trabert, President, Flint Hills Center for Public Policy, reforming the Kansas property tax

Chris Steineger, Kansas State Senator

Click here to register for this event.

The campaign finance report filed by Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education (CARE), reporting on the campaign in favor of the bond issue to benefit USD 259, the Wichita public school district, contains information that should be of interest to Wichitans. (To download and read the report, visit this article: Wichita School Bond Finance Report Omits a Big Contribution.)

For example, Kenton Cox of Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture contributed $13,800 in cash to CARE, and that firm made an in-kind contribution of $15,380, reported by the Wichita Eagle to be donated signs.

Why would an architecture firm have such an intense interest in Wichita public schools? Why would Kenton Cox be concerned, given that he doesn’t even live in USD 259? Here’s a possible answer: the minutes of the December 8 meeting of the board report that Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture was awarded a contract for plan management services for the bond issue. The value of this contract, as reported by the Wichita Eagle, is one percent of the value of the bond issue, or $3.7 million. This firm will undoubtedly earn millions more for those projects on which it serves as architect.

Was this lucrative contract put up for bid? Was any other firm considered? Was there ever any doubt that Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture’s contributions to the bond issue campaign would be returned multiplied many-fold?

(The board meeting minutes report that a summary of the agreement for plan management services is available in the appendix to the agenda. Just three weeks later, however, that material is no longer available on USD 259’s website. That’s a problem of a different kind with USD 259.)

Then, what about all the other architect firms that contributed many thousands to the CARE campaign? Civic involvement or self-interest — hoping to be sent a few crumbs in the form of design contracts that Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture decides not to keep for itself?

For the construction and engineering companies that contributed many thousands, the same questions apply.

One analysis finds that 72% of the contributions, both in-kind and cash, was given by contractors, architects, engineering firms and others who directly stand to benefit from the new construction.

Campaign finance reports for the groups that opposed the bond issue will show that real estate developers and owners contributed heavily to these campaigns. It’s likely that the Wichita Eagle — Rhonda Holman, probably — will editorialize about greedy developers, only wanting to increase their profits on the backs of schoolchildren.

These developers, however, are looking out for two things: First, it’s really their tenants that pay the increased property taxes that the school bond will impose. Then, in turn, anyone who eats in these restaurants, or shops at these stores, or rents these apartments, will pay more. The misinformation that USD 259 and CARE spread — that the bond issue costs just a dollar a week for a typical homeowner — didn’t acknowledge these costs.

Second, the property tax environment in Wichita and Kansas is such that development is discouraged. Some projects, as reported in the Wichita Eagle, have been canceled. What’s not seen by the news media and Wichitans are the projects that aren’t proposed or considered because of our high — and about to be made higher — property taxes. We’ll never see or hear about these.

When considering who are the greedy and self-interested parties, look at the CARE campaign finance report and the education bureaucracy in charge of the Wichita public schools. Their names are there.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation has released a report titled Texas Wind Energy: Past, Present, and Future. It doesn’t have a catchy title, but the report is full of useful information about wind energy. Here’s a little bit from the executive summary:

The distinction between wind and wind energy is critical. The wind itself is free, but wind energy is anything but. Cost estimates for wind-energy generation typically include only turbine construction and maintenance. Left out are many of wind energy’s costs—transmission, grid connection and management, and backup generation—that ultimately will be borne by Texas’ electric ratepayers. Direct subsidies, tax breaks, and increased production and ancillary costs associated with wind energy could cost Texas more than $4 billion per year and at least $60 billion through 2025.

Wind, like every other energy resource, has its pros and cons, and there is no doubt that wind power should be part of Texas’ energy supply. Texas needs a variety of fuel sources, plus concerted efforts at conservation and efficiency, in order to meet its energy needs. However, wind energy should only be employed to the extent it passes economic cost-benefit muster. Instead of subsidizing private wind development and imposing billions of dollars in new transmission costs upon retail electric customers, Texas policymakers should step back and allow the energy marketplace to bring wind power online when the market is ready. Texas electricity consumers will reap the benefits of such a prudent path.

Global warming alarmists — in this article Christopher Booker refers to them simply as “warmists” — have become “even shriller and more frantic” in light of evidence that climate change may not be proceeding they way they’ve been predicting.

In his article in the Daily Telegraph (2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved), Booker makes these points:

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare.

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed.

Thirdly … All those grandiose projects for “emissions trading”, “carbon capture”, building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to “biofuels”, are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

In Kansas we’re considering taking very expensive actions to mitigate carbon emissions. (See coverage of Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group (KEEP), for example.) These actions, in the global scheme of things (and it’s not called “global warming” for nothing), are less than the proverbial drop in the bucket. At the same time, we delay doing things that we need, like the expansion of the Holcomb Station coal-fired electricity generating plant. Let’s hope that 2009 brings a reasoned and measured response to the hysteria generated by the “warmists.”

Yesterday, Citizens Alliance for Responsible Education (CARE) filed their campaign finance report. This group was in favor of the bond issue to benefit USD 259, the Wichita public school district.

There are some interesting details in this report, but there’s one glaring omission: there’s no mention of the campaign contribution made by the taxpayers of USD 259.

The administration of USD 259 says they spent nothing on a campaign to pass the bond issue. They say what they did was merely an educational and informational campaign. But what USD 259 did had all the characteristics of a political campaign except the explicit appeal to vote “yes.” Anyone who saw the materials produced by USD 259 got the message loud and clear: vote yes for this bond.

The assertion that USD 259 ran an educational and informational campaign is ridiculous. The campaign materials contained nothing that was negative or even neutral towards the bond issue. Is that because no such facts exist? Of course not. An honest informational campaign would have given consideration to them. But that’s not what the Wichita school district wanted to provide.

Now I can understand architecture firms like Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture and construction companies making contributions to the bond issue campaign and not wanting negative or neutral information provided. These firms promoted the bond issue solely out of self-interest. They’ll design and construct buildings whether they’re useful or not.

But schools — their mission being education instead of politics and self-interest — should be different. Schools should seek to teach the truth, and the only way to do that is to provide balance. That’s not what the Wichita school district provided the public during the bond issue campaign.

We’ll probably never be able to learn how much USD 259 spent promoting the bond issue. In the future, when taxpayer-funded entities like USD 259 run informational campaigns, we’ll need a method for balanced information to get to the voters.

Click here to download CARE’s campaign finance report.