Kansas Education has a post promoting a new report about early childhood education issued by the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy. An excerpt: "As appealing as the logic of universal pre-K may be, there’s a final reason to cast a critical eye on it: putting all or even a majority of very young children into government-run programs threatens the balance of responsibilities among important institutions such as family, religion, business, and government. Some level of government is required, but too much distorts a society." The post is here: Plato’s Republic on the Plains.

The Kansas Trunkline wonders Where in the World is Kathleen Sebelius? and How far left is Kathleen Sebelius on the Holcomb Power Plant issue?

The Kenig Konnection reports updates in the second and third district congressional races in Kansas: 2nd, 3rd District Updates.

At The Kansas Republican, Wyatt comments on the controversy surrounding Kansas Governor Kathleen and her church: Bishops cut Sebelius off at the Knees. But in Dan Glickman: Boyda, Moore, You’re Wrong on Colombia, I must disagree with Wild Bill when he states "[former Kansas congressman and Secretary of Agriculture] Glickman knows a thing or two about good agriculture policy." The best policy is, of course, no policy.

The Kansas Meadowlark has been hard at work again. He reports on the formation of a Kansas political action committee headed by Scott Allegrucci, a benefactor of political patronage in the past: New Kansas 527 PAC: GPACE Action. The Meadowlark notes a little about Scott's mother, but it is his father who Kansans should keep in mind. See The Ethics Case Against Justice Donald L. Allegrucci and The Wrong Canon; The Wrong Allegrucci.

Other Meadowlark articles of note include District Court Nominating Commission Works as Designed: 3 of 3 nominees are Democrats in a county with 21% Democrats and Friend of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius? Did you get to fly the State of Kansas Executive Aircraft to the NCAA basketball tournament in San Antonio?.

The Quiet Conservative comments upon Governor Kathleen Sebelius's veto of CARA, The Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act: The Forgotten Veto.

The Boondoggler at the Wichita 259 Truth blog has a nice article commenting on my recent appearance before the Wichita public school board of education. Wichita School Board Information Management.

On May 6, 2008, Kansas State Senator Anthony Hensley, Democrat from Topeka and Senate Minority Leader, introduced a resolution commemorating the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s new deal.

Besides being misinformed about the true impact of Roosevelt and the new deal, Senator Hensley wastes the time and resources of the people of the State of Kansas with resolutions such as this. Sadly, not even one Kansas senator voted against this resolution.

For a true look at Franklin D. Roosevelt and his presidency, I recommend reading Ralph Raico's introduction to John T. Flynn's book The Roosevelt Myth here: John T. Flynn and the Myth of FDR.

Here's the text of the resolution:

SENATE RESOLUTION No. 1868
A RESOLUTION commemorating the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

WHEREAS, In the summer of 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Governor of New York, was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party at a time the country was suffering from the Great Depression. In his acceptance speech, he told the American people, ‘‘I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.’’ And, Roosevelt won the presidency by a landslide; and

WHEREAS, The New Deal was the title President Roosevelt gave to a sequence of programs he initiated between 1933 and 1938 with the goal of giving relief to the needy, reform of the country’s financial system, and recovery of the economy during the Great Depression; and

WHEREAS, The New Deal Roosevelt had promised began to take shape immediately after his inauguration in March of 1933. The first days of Roosevelt’s administration was the ‘‘First New Deal’’ aimed at short-term recovery programs and saw the quick enactment by Congress of the Emergency Banking Act, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Rural Electrification Administration (REA) and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA); and

WHEREAS, Later the ‘‘Second New Deal’’ led to the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act, which established stronger collective bargaining rights for labor unions and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which created hundreds of thousands of low-skilled blue collar jobs for unemployed men and women; and

WHEREAS, The most important program of Roosevelt’s New Deal was the Social Security Act, which established a system of universal retirement pensions, unemployment insurance and welfare benefits for low income families; and WHEREAS, Several New Deal programs still exist under their original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), while the largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); and

WHEREAS, The New Deal programs were a reflection of Franklin Roosevelt’s personal and political philosophy that government has an important role in helping people make ends meet and in earning money for the work performed which raises the morale of the working man and woman: Now, therefore,

Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of Kansas: That we commemorate the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal; and

Be it further resolved: That the Secretary of the Senate provide an enrolled copy of the resolution to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, c/o Cynthia M. Koch, Director, 4079 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park, New York 12538.

On emergency motion of Senator Hensley SR 1868 was adopted unanimously.

From Karl Peterjohn of the Kansas Taxpayers Network.

How Much More Will Electricity Cost In Your Future?
Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network

Governor Sebelius and her bankrupt Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby (Bremby filed for personal bankruptcy over a year ago) now appear to have stopped the Kansas house from joining the Kansas senate in overriding her veto of the coal power plant expansion in western Kansas. The legislature’s final attempt at legislating a solution that would expand electrical power generation in the western half of Kansas is headed for another gubernatorial veto. The Kansas House of Representatives appears to be well short of the 84 votes needed to override her veto.

A number of legislators from northeast Kansas as well as mainly Wichita Democrats have mustered up enough house votes to kill this $3.6 billion power plant project. The May 13th death of Rep. Ted Powers, R-Mulvane, who voted to override this veto, makes a sine die override even more unlikely.

Eastern Kansans who seldom venture into western Kansas unless they are driving on I-70 to Colorado felt little direct concern on this 2008 legislative issue. That allowed the well-organized urban-based environmentalists to convince enough big city legislators from both parties to sustain Sebelius’ veto in the house.

Eastern Kansans’ power generation was not at immediate risk. Neither were their utility rates. That will change and this unpleasant and very expensive change is coming soon.

If you want details on the national plan and how this is becoming Kansas’ environmental policy the Capital Research Center (CRC) has provided the details. There is a national plan established by ultra-left wing environmental groups and CRC’s April, 20008 report (see www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1207000450.pdf) details this effort. The liberal environmental foundations are funding this state level plan to impose Kyoto Treaty like cuts in carbon energy emissions.

This will result in a huge rise in electricity costs as well as making other power sources more expensive. It will help push gasoline and other petroleum prices higher. This will be accomplished through entities like the Pennsylvania based Center for Climate Strategies that is helping establish new carbon controls by administrative edict over Kansas state policy.

Soaring utility costs will limit economic growth in a way that will restrict the economy while dramatically raising prices across the board. Here’s how it will happen.

What Governor Sebelius is trying to do at the state level in the 21st century with new restrictions on carbon based energy will soon lead to new carbon taxes. It is possible that new carbon taxes will appear at both the state and federal levels. Along with the tax hikes will be emission restrictions. Don’t forget that whenever you exhale or burn a log in the fireplace, you are emitting carbon.

Bremby’s edict is similar in impact to what former President Clinton achieved when he vetoed oil drilling in Alaska in 1995. It took roughly a decade for the lack of oil drilling to impact the U.S. oil prices. In contrast, today the demand for electrical power is growing. There is pressure on prices but major increases have not occurred. You can expect the rising demand for electricity to hit much more quickly than oil prices did a decade ago. Don’t forget that oil fell to record lows in the late 1990’s a couple of years after Clinton’s anti-energy veto.

The demise of the Holcomb power plant expansion when combined with new “carbon emissions” edicts from regulators like Bremby will negatively impact the Kansas economy in the future. This is a continuation of Democratic Party energy policies. At the beginning of the Clinton presidency, the Congress narrowly rejected the Clinton administration’s new carbon tax. This is likely to reappear in Washington next year.

The Holcomb power plant battle was not an aberration or isolated event. It is the energy tip of the “man made global warming” hoax (ironically occurring while parts of Kansas have been at or near freeze warnings well into May) that is centralizing all economic power and authority with state or federal levels of government in our state. The governor’s new energy council will include industry leaders who need to be worried about their carbon emissions.

Several established Kansas businesses are already expanding elsewhere like Bombardier and Spirit AeroSystems going to North Carolina. Cessna, whose President Jack Pelton will head up the governor’s new energy panel from the private sector, will now expand in Kansas after the state agreed to subsidize this expansion. So now, the state will be picking “winners and losers” in our economy.

Westar Energy, the electrical power company that owns a number of Kansas coal fired power plants, is now seeking higher electrical rates to pay for new pollution equipment costs from the KCC. They need to do this since their existing coal fired power plants are not nearly as low pollution as the Holcomb expansion would have been. Westar now needs Bremby to renew their existing permits to continue operations. Bureaucratic coercion is now codified in Kansas under Queen Sebelius.

House Speaker Rep. Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, has campaigned for the Holcomb plant expansion and against this arbitrary power grab by Bremby and his boss. This is a problem in Neufeld’s southwest Kansas district where the nearby Hugoton gas field slowly declines in production. Neufeld has warned that Bremby’s bureaucratic edict against Holcomb has pushed a possible oil refinery, a $10 billion project with 1,500 new full time jobs, out of state too. Neufeld has copies of documents concerning the permitting process from Bremby’s office concerning this project. Naturally, liberal newspapers like the Wichita Eagle criticized Neufeld for pointing out this loss.

Another irony about power generation and carbon emissions was the fact that both houses of the legislature overwhelmingly passed state legislation to try and locate a new agricultural-terror research facility in Manhattan this year. This new federal facility would need a special electrical power plant to be allowed to operate. Since this was a government facility, unlike the private co-op, the carbon dioxide being generated from this proposed new back-up electrical power plant was not a problem. The carbon it emits comes from natural gas and not the politically incorrect coal too.

Governor Sebelius quickly signed this authorizing legislation into law. If it is government, it is good. If it is private, let’s stop it. Here is another example of government economic hypocrisy.

Kansas has started a new era. The price of living in Kansas is going to soar while you will be facing stagnant incomes as politicians in Topeka and their out-of-state environmental foundations control economic activity by regulatory edict.

While the rest of the world grows, China alone has built or is building hundreds of new power plants, many of which will be coal fired. Jobs will continue to flow out of the U.S. Kansas and the other 49 states will increasingly find themselves and our economy in green handcuffs. That will result in a lot of Kansans eventually finding themselves in the same bankruptcy line behind the already bankrupt Rod Bremby while Governor Sebelius makes plans for her next job in Washington.

Our friends at the Wichita 259 Truth blog have a nice article commenting on my recent appearance before the Wichita public school board of education. Wichita School Board Information Management

A popular measure proposed to produce better educational outcomes in public schools today is to reduce class size. The Wichita, Kansas public school district is currently proposing a bond issue with a partial goal of reducing class size. At least some of the recently-mandated increase in school spending in Kansas was used to reduce class size.

It seems that smaller class sizes should be great for students. Research, however, doesn't always verify this assumption. The Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby, now at Stanford, has stated this about her research into class size:

I have a study in which I examined every change in class size at every elementary school in Connecticut over a 20-year period. In schools, class size varies from year to year because enrollment varies. Therefore, with 20 years and 800-some schools, there is a tremendous amount of variation in class size to examine.

I found there was no effect of class size on achievement at all, even when children were in small classes for all six years of elementary school.

There is, however, one study that shows increased student performance with smaller class sizes: the Tennessee STAR experiment. It is probably the study cited most often by education bureaucrats, so learning a little about it is useful. In this experiment, students were assigned to either a regular class with about 24 students, a class of the same size but with a teacher's aide to assist the teacher, or a smaller class of about 15 students.

Jay Greene has written about the problems with the STAR experiment. The first problem he finds is that "students were not tested when they entered the program. Such point-of-entry tests would establish a baseline for each student's performance as it stood before the experiment began. Without this baseline measurement, we cannot confirm that the STAR project's random assignment method was successfully carried out."

Second: "[there is] an anomaly in the research findings: the improvement in test scores was a one-time benefit. ... This is an unusual and unexpected finding, because if smaller classes really do improve student performance we would generally expect to see these benefits accrue over time."

The STAR program produced a one-time improvement in tests scores that are the equivalent of a student in the 50th percentile moving to about the 58th percentile. Greene says this increase "may not amount to an educational revolution, but it is not trivial."

One interesting aspect of the STAR program is that participants, particularly the teachers, knew they were part of an experiment. Caroline Hoxby describes the implications of this:

More importantly, in the Tennessee STAR experiment, everyone involved knew that if the class-size reduction didn't affect achievement, the experimental classes would return to their normal size and a general class-size reduction would not be funded by the legislature. In other words, principals and teachers had strong incentives to make the reduction work. Unfortunately, class-size reductions are never accompanied by such incentives when they are enacted as a policy.

Education bureaucrats and teachers often claim that schools are not like a business or other areas of human endeavor, so incentives don't work. Education, they say, is somehow different. But it appears in the STAR program that teachers had a powerful incentive to make the small class sizes work, and they responded to that.

Reducing class size is a very expensive measure to implement. The STAR program reduced class sizes by a large amount: from 24 to 15 students, a reduction of 38%. Many more teachers and classrooms are needed to implement reductions of this scope, and that's why it is so expensive.

That leads to an aspect of the problem that's not often mentioned. Right now Wichita has a teacher shortage. The district can't hire and retain enough teachers. Implementing class size reduction programs requires more teachers and makes the shortage even more acute.

Compounding this problem is that research shows that teacher quality is a very important factor in the success of students. If we can assume that the most highly-qualified teachers are hired first, then increasing the number of classrooms means hiring more less-qualified teachers. So some students will be taught by poor teachers, and since class sizes are smaller, fewer students will be in the classrooms led by good teachers.

There is no doubt that teachers and the education establishment like smaller class sizes. Smaller classes mean an easier workload for teachers, larger budgets for school district administrators and politicians, and more teachers union members paying dues. The local board of education can tell parents that they have "saved the children" and the parents will believe them. The research, however, is not settled on the benefits of smaller class sizes, and the unintended consequence of more students being taught by less-qualified teachers is a large negative effect.

Denis Boyles dissects the 2007 Kansas Economic Report and discovers something growing quickly in Kansas under its governor Kathleen Sebelius: poor children. He quotes the report as follows:

The number of Kansans estimated to be living below the poverty threshold in 2004 totaled 297,733, or more than 11.0 percent of the total population. From 2000 to 2004, Kansas poverty increased 26.6 percent while poverty in the U.S. went up 17.3 percent. From 2000 to 2004, the number of people in Kansas living below the poverty level increased more rapidly than the state’s population as a whole, with a 26.6 percent increase in poverty and a 1.7 percent increase in population.

Since a low in 2000, the number of people under the age of 18 in poverty in Kansas has increased by nearly 20.0 percent, reaching more than 98,000 people in 2004. This rate was higher than the national rate which increased at 12.5 percent. Additionally, the number of people under age five in poverty in Kansas has increased 27.5 percent in the past five years compared to 15.1 percent for the nation.

Read the entire analysis as published on Kansas Liberty here: Into poverty, with difficulty.

Remarks delivered to the board of USD 259, the Wichita, Kansas public school district on May 12, 2008.

My name is Bob Weeks. I am a member of Wichitans For Effective Education, a citizens group. Thank you for this opportunity to address this board and audience.

Since as of today there is no date set for an election concerning a bond issue, and therefore no specific bond issue to talk about, I would like to express a few of the concerns my group has regarding the process surrounding the election and its issues.

One of the problems we have is what I call the "shifting landscape of facts" emerging from USD 259. Two examples will illustrate. We relied on information from USD 259 that building the safe rooms would cost $15 million, and we wondered why can't something that modest be done without a bond issue? Then we learned that the issue is more complex after Mr. Cox issued a clarification. The total cost is really $75 million, with $15 million paid by FEMA. Then Mr. Libhart, in his April 13 Wichita Eagle editorial, used our reliance on these facts to discredit us.

But it wasn't only Wichitans For Effective Education that used the $15 million number as the cost of the safe rooms. Two television stations carried news stories stating the cost of the safe rooms would be $15 million. Here's a quote from a presentation made by Mr. Cox's firm to this board: "Includes bus loading/unloading, parking, parent drop off, security lighting. Provide FEMA shelters at all schools. Total Cost: $24 to $31 million." That's the cost for the safe rooms plus other things. Now if we can't rely on plain language like this, what can we rely on?

We also pointed out that school utilization overall is relatively low at 85%. Then we were criticized, both on the USD 259 website and in Mr. Libhart's Wichita Eagle editorial, for using outdated information. But the figures underlying these calculations came from the district's most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for 2007, from a page of figures labeled as being current as of June 30, 2007. Here we relied on the most recently available public information from the district's financial reports, and we were criticized for using old information.

The school district has the task of providing information and educating the public on the merits of the bond issue. It would be reasonable to expect that when representatives of the district criticize the data used by our group as old and no longer relevant, they would take steps to ensure that current and correct figures are available to the public.

A website, owned and operated by USD 259 and capable of criticizing bond issue opponents for using data that is not relevant, could easily post current relevant data and statistics to clarify and promote public debate using accurate information. But as of today, I have not seen updates issued to correct these outdated figures.

We as citizens cannot, to my knowledge, derive these figures ourselves. We must rely on you, the board and administration of the the Wichita public school district, to provide these figures.

Another problem we've had is that getting information from USD 259 can be prohibitively expensive. Wichitans For Effective Education made a records request for the number of classrooms and portables for the last two years. We were told this information is available to us at a cost of $860, with most of that cost paying for 40 hours of staff time to prepare the information. Besides not being able to afford to pay these prices for this information, we wonder how the district does not have this information readily available, especially since a claim of overcrowding is a prime reason given for the need for this bond issue. We wonder, then, if the district's physical plant and assets are being managed effectively. Furthermore, if the number of classrooms is not known, how can anyone calculate the capacity of each school?

So the shifting landscape of facts has been a problem for us. We find ourselves in a position where if we rely on facts from public documents and formulate an argument based on them, USD 259 will revise the facts, and we will be scolded on the district's website and the editorial pages of the Wichita Eagle about how we are mistaken.

The issue of the need for the special election is a problem, too. Several members of Wichitans For Effective Education appeared before this board and made the case for having the bond issue question appear as part of the already-scheduled August or November elections, instead of having a special election in the spring. But district administration delivered a presentation on the time value of money, explaining how any delay in the election would increase building costs much more than the cost of the special election. What changed that made the board willing to forgo those savings?

Similarly, an argument was made that with a May special election a new high school could be ready for use at the start of the 2011 school year. Delaying the election until even August would mean the school would not be available until the following school year. But now, apparently, those facts have changed.

The members of Wichitans For Effective Education care about our schools and the education of Wichita's children. We have tried to be responsive and helpful in providing feedback to the board and the community. But as you see, we've had some issues with the data and facts provided by USD 259. Without accurate and complete data, without a common set of facts to reason from, we feel the community can't have an effective dialog about the needs of the schools.

The Kansas Meadowlark again stirs up controversy in reporting on the travel of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

The "rates" charged for flying an aircraft like this are, in my opinion, totally misleading. The rate may reflect the actual variable costs involved for the time the plane is in the air. I believe, however, that the rates do not account for the fixed cost of owning an asset worth some $4 million.

Read the article here: Friend of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius? Did you get to fly the State of Kansas Executive Aircraft with Kathleen to the NCAA basketball tournament in San Antonio?

(By the way, Meadowlark, I like your switch to a WordPress blog. I especially like that now your site publishes an RSS feed, which I subscribe to.)

Here's an update by The Kansas Meadowlark on the abuse of franking by the Kansas Senate Majority Leader, Anthony Hensley of Topeka.

Update on Franking Abuse by Kansas Senate Minority Leader Hensley: $53,564 on 161,277 franked pieces

Remarks delivered to Wichita City Council, May 6, 2008. Listen here.

Smoking ban supporters claim that they have the right to go to bowling alleys, bars, and other such places without having to breath secondhand smoke. That's false. No one has the right to be on someone else's property on their own terms. The property owner controls those terms. If the bar owner lets the band play too loud (or maybe not loud enough), or the restaurant is too dimly lit, or the floor of the steakhouse covered with discarded peanut shells, do we want to regulate these things too?

Some have compared a smoking section in a restaurant to a urinating section in a swimming pool. This comparison is ridiculous. You can't tell upon entering a swimming pool if someone peed in it. You can tell, however, upon entering a bar or restaurant if there is smoking going on.

Some make the argument that since we regulate businesses for health reasons already, why not regulate smoking? Without agreeing with the need for these regulations, the answer is this: First, these government regulations don't necessarily accomplish their goal. People still become ill from food, for example. But there is some merit here. Just by entering a restaurant and inspecting the dining room and the menu, you can't tell if the food is being stored at the proper temperature in the restaurant's refrigerators. But you can easily tell if there's smoking going on.

A system of absolute respect for private property rights is the best way to handle smoking. The owners of bars and restaurants have, and should continue to have, the absolute right to permit or deny smoking on their property. Markets -– that is, people freely making decision for themselves -– will let property owners know whether they want smoking or clean air.

The problem with a smoking ban written into law rather than reliance on markets is that everyone has to live by the same rules. Living by the same rules is good when the purpose is to keep people and their property safe from harm. That's why we have laws against theft and murder. But it's different when we pass laws intended to keep people safe from harms that they themselves can easily avoid, just by staying out of those places where people are smoking. For the people who value being in the smoky place more than they dislike the negative effects of the smoke, they can make that decision.

This is not a middle-ground position, as there really isn't a middle ground here. Instead, this is a position that respects the individual. It lets each person have what they individually prefer, rather than having a majority -- no matter how lop-sided -- make the same decision for everyone. Especially when that decision, as someone said, will "tick off everybody." Who benefits from a law that does that?

Wichitans for Effective Education wish to remind the residents of USD 259 (the Wichita, Kansas public school district) that on February 11, 2008, the board of USD 259 passed a resolution declaring that a special election was to be held today, May 6. That resolution asked the citizens of this community to approve a $350 million school bond proposal. On April 7, on the advice of an allied citizens group, the board decided the election should be delayed until some yet-to-be-known date.

The board originally argued that it was imperative to vote as soon as possible instead of waiting for the August primary or November general elections, even though the special election would cost $75,000. As evidence, Chief Operations Officer (now interim superintendent) Martin Libhart delivered to the board on January 28 a presentation titled "Time Is Money" which explained that if the bond issue election were delayed until November, the cost of building just one high school would increase by $360,000 -– far more than the cost of the special election.

The district also argued that if the election were delayed until August or later, the opening of the new high school would be delayed by one full school year.

Nevertheless, on April 7, the board abandoned these arguments.

Much effort went into preparation for the May special election. News outlets devoted extensive coverage. Three citizens groups formed to campaign for and against the bond issue. Expenses were incurred.

Opposition groups have had to deal with a shifting landscape of facts emerging from USD 259. We relied on figures supplied by USD 259 regarding the costs of building safe rooms, only to be told we didn't understand the true situation. We relied on figures published by USD 259 in its most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report reporting school capacity and enrollment, only to be told those numbers are out-of-date.

Sometimes getting any information from USD 259 is difficult. We asked for a count of classrooms and portables for the last two school years and were told that information is available at a cost of $860, with most of that cost paying for 40 hours of staff time. Since school overcrowding is one of the reasons given by USD 259 as the need for this bond issue, we wonder why these figures are not readily available.

The changing schedule of the bond issue election as well as the unreliable facts provided by USD 259 make it difficult to thoughtfully consider the merits of any proposal at this time. With the possibility of looming economic recession and the lack of a permanent superintendent in place to lead the Wichita schools, perhaps the best idea yet is to pull the question altogether. This would give the district time to research and locate all significant data, and then both opposing and supporting groups could base their decisions on accurate and timely information.

Part of the Wichita Eagle opinion watch series.

A writer in the April 2, 2008 Wichita Eagle presses the case for passenger train service in Wichita. But there are several problems with the writer's argument.

The writer makes this claim: "With Kansas' vast wind resource, we could power our trains with no fossil fuels." Yes, there is a lot of wind in Kansas. But it doesn't blow continuously. What does the writer suggest we power the trains with at those times? Until there is an economically feasible method of storing the electricity generated by wind, we will be reliant on traditional methods of power generation. Wind can only be a supplement.

The writer admits that high-speed passenger train service will require a lot of public money. That's okay, he says, as we presently spend a lot on our roads and traffic systems. The government-built and owned roads are frequently criticized, however. The fact that we've spent a lot on them -- with often unsatisfactory results -- is not an argument in favor of more government involvement in transportation systems. There is, in fact, a small movement towards more private highways, and there are persuasive arguments that all roads and highways should be privately owned.

If there is in fact a demand for high-speed rail travel in Kansas and the United States, let private entrepreneurs, rather than government, lead its development. That's the best way to have a system that meets the needs of customers, rather than the needs of politicians and government bureaucrats.

I wonder if the writer remembers that the government does have a track record of owning and operating a railroad. That's Amtrak, and having mentioned that, I believe no more needs to be said.

Part of the Wichita Eagle opinion watch series. An audio broadcast of this article may be heard by clicking here.

A letter writer in the April 27, 2008 Wichita Eagle makes the case that investment in USD 259 (the Wichita, Kansas public school district) has a good return.

By way of comparison, the writer argues that the Wichita airport, having been built with public funds, represents "an investment return." Whether it represents a good return on investment the writer doesn't say, but I believe he means that the airport was a good investment of public funds.

The mere fact that the airport exists, however, doesn't prove a good return on investment. Since the airport is owned by government and doesn't calculate its profit or loss in a competitive market, we can never know how wise is the "investment" made in the Wichita airport.

Then the writer really gets off track. He speaks of "my own school bond issue within my family," that being day care, preschool, K through 12, then a degree at the University of Kansas and a master's degree. These activities are all voluntary choices that the writer and his family made. Taxation by the government, however, is not voluntary. The writer might also be reminded that it may be a voluntary choice to attend the University of Kansas, but the people of the State of Kansas have no choice but to fund its operations.

Finally, the writer states "Some opponents of the school bond issue have even said the kids in USD 259 don't need tornado shelters. That is ridiculous." It is true that 60 schools in the Wichita school district don't have safe rooms, and this situation is the result of decisions made by the school district and its board. They had an opportunity to build more safe rooms as part of the bond issue in 2000, but they decided to spend the money on other things. Similarly, each year the district has a large capital budget to spend, and each year they decide to spend it on things other than safe rooms. Blame for the lack of storm shelters, therefore, rests solely with the Wichita school district. They have decided that other things are more important.

On May 1, 2008, the Americans For Prosperity Hot Air Tour made its stop in Wichita, Kansas. It was too windy for the big hot air balloon (who could have guessed that might be the case in the Kansas springtime?) but the speakers spoke as planned, and that's the important part of this event.

Some photos that I took may be viewed here.

Some of the material from AFP:

Climate alarmists have bombarded citizens with apocalyptic scenarios and pressured them into environmental political correctness. It’s time to tell the other side of the story.

Climate Schemes Mean Higher Taxes

• A cap-and-trade system would amount to a $1.19 trillion tax hike over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
• Energy taxes would drive gas over $8.00 per gallon and more than double electricity bills, according to a study by the American Council for Capital Formation.
• Revenue from energy taxes or permit sales will be used by bureaucratic central planners to pick politically-favored but horribly ineffective alternatives, like ethanol.

Cap-and-Trade is a Massive Job-Killer

• The hundreds of billions of dollars of economic activity destroyed by the cap-and-trade tax scheme translate into millions of lost jobs for American workers.
• We would trade millions of productive private sector jobs, for a smaller number of jobs created by a government regulatory scheme.

Climate Alarmism Threatens Freedom

• The inevitable result of energy regulation is centralized control of the economy and our lives. The government has already banned incandescent light bulbs even though replacements, compact fluorescent bulbs, contain toxic mercury.
• California wants to place radio control devices in thermostats so the government can set the temperature in homes and businesses.
• Higher energy costs will increase the price of any product that is transported to market; these effects will ripple through the economy. Food prices have been especially hard hit, with milk prices up 20% in the last year.
• State climate panels want to return to 55 MPH speed limits.

Radical Proposals will have Very Little Impact

• Cap and trade policies are already failing to reduce CO2 emissions in Europe. In fact, emissions covered under their legislation in Europe have gone up according to the think tank, Open Europe.
• Even if the cap and trade scheme actually reduce emissions in the United States – despite failures in Europe, climate models show that the reductions would have an impact of approximately 0.1 degree Celsius in the year 2100.

Low-Income Families will be Hit Hardest

• Low-income families pay a much larger share of their income on goods that will be affected by these policies.
• Higher energy and food prices are a genuine hardship for low-income Americans, even if they are an affordable indulgence for Al Gore, who already spends tens of thousands of dollars on his home energy bills.

From our friends at the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy in Wichita, Kansas.

Universal Preschool Wastes Money, Imperils the Good Society
Short-term benefits, politicization of childhood await public funding

(WICHITA) - If K-12 schools fail to graduate one in four students on time, does it make much sense to enroll children in public programs at an even younger age? That's one problem with proposals for universal, taxpayer-funded preschool, as outlined by a new report issued by the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy. Read "Plato's Republic on the Plains: Should Kansas Really Embrace State-Financed Early Childhood Education?" at www.flinthills.org.

"On the one hand, you've got to applaud the desire to 'do something' to improve education," says John R. LaPlante, Education Policy Fellow of the Kansas-based think tank. "But what we see is that the longer children stay in school, the worse off they do. We should fix the K-12 system through competition and expanded school choice rather than enroll infants and toddlers in public programs that are often run through those same schools."

The study reviews the weaknesses of reports used to justify universal preschool programs, including methodological shortcomings. The benefits seen in preschool programs tend to be focused in lower-income children and fade out in a short time-hardly a prescription for a universal program.

In addition to experimental and economic problems, universal preschool poses a moral question: Do children belong to parents or do they belong to society and the state? Plato called for some children to be reared not by parents but by the collective. The impulse to use government to fix children's lives for the societal good may have at first a moral foundation, but it violates foundational truths about American society and the meaning of limited government.

Part of the Wichita Eagle Opinion Watch series. Audio is available here.

The school bond issue in Wichita and those occurring in surrounding districts overlook one crucial necessity: a fair wage for teachers. They are critically underpaid for all levels of education, service and abilities. (From The Wichita Eagle Opinion Line, April 27, 2008)

This writer is misinformed on several levels.

First, bond issues such as the one proposed by USD 259, the Wichita, Kansas public school district, are usually reserved for capital expenditures, such as constructing buildings. Ongoing expenses such as salaries are not considered as part of a bond issue. The writer might also remember that in August 2007, the Wichita school district raised property tax rates to pay for an increase in teacher salaries.

Then, who can determine what constitutes a "fair" wage? I know of no teachers who were forced to accept the jobs they filled. We can only presume that both the teacher and the school voluntarily entered into an agreement, with the wage to be paid as part of that agreement.

But the issue might be a little more complex. For one thing, most public school teachers work under a collective bargaining agreement which specifies the wages to be paid for teachers, based on their length of experience and educational credentials. There is little or nothing that most teachers can do to escape that pay scale. It works both ways: there are excellent teachers who are underpaid compared to the value they generate through their efforts and skill. At the same time there are poor teachers who are overpaid when compared to good or average teachers.

Related is the fact that public school teacher wages are not set in a free market by willing participants on both sides. Whenever teachers get a raise, it is inevitable that letter writers and opinion line callers will express outrage at having to pay for a raise in teacher pay. That's characteristic of coerced transactions: many taxpayers don't like to see their taxes go up. But that's usually the only way that public school teacher pay can be raised.

The public schools, also, have the same problem as does any public agency: they are not able to perform economic calculation to properly evaluate their use of resources. They are not able to calculate profit or loss, so we really don't know if they use inputs -- such as the taxpayer funds used for teacher salaries -- wisely.

Besides, the myth that teachers are underpaid relative to other jobs has been exposed for just that. Jay Greene, in the book Education Myths, reports that based on U.S. Department of Labor data for 2002, accounting for the number of hours worked, school teachers earned about $31 per hour. That is more than architects, economists, biologists, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, and chemists.

Kimberly A. Strassel of the Wall Street Journal explains a mess of John McCain's own making, and which confirms to me that he is not suited to be President of the United States: McCain's Campaign Finance Revelation.

"The Arizonan may not yet fully understand that money is speech." writes Ms. Strassel.

As Thomas Sowell recently said: "Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain."

Paul Jacob, in a Common Sense commentary writes about David Boaz's article in the Wall Street Journal (available at the Cato Institute) which describes the effort to obtain a customized Starbucks card with the phrase "laissez-faire" printed on it.

The request was rejected. But the socialist slogan "people not profits" was accepted by Starbucks, as was the United Farm Workers slogan "Si Se Puede." ("Yes we can," adopted by Barack Obama's presidential campaign.)

Here's what you find if you read Starbuck's mission statement: "Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business."

It seems that some political ideas are more "diverse" than others.

Remarks delivered at a public hearing for the Sedgwick County solid waste management plan, April 24, 2008. Sedgwick County, Kansas, home to the City of Wichita, is considering a mandatory household recycling program. Or, perhaps people won't be forced to recycle, but they will be required to pay for the cost burden that recycling places on communities.

You may listen to this article in audio form by clicking here.

The economist Frederich Hayek tells us that the price system communicates all the information we need to know about the relative value of things. The price system allows people who don't know each other to coordinate their activities in the most effective and efficient way possible. The price system is truly a miracle.

If you want to see what happens when the price system is not allowed to work, usually because a government attempts to manage prices, just look at the former Soviet Union and other planned economies. The economist Thomas Sowell relates this story:

The last premiere of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, is said to have asked British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: How do you see to it that people get food? The answer was that she didn't. Prices did that. And the British people were better fed than those in the Soviet Union, even though the British have never grown enough food to feed themselves in more than a century. Prices bring them food from other countries.

The price system can do its work only when free people trade with each other freely under a system where property rights are respected. Any attempt by governments to manage prices leads to inefficiencies that manifest themselves as shortages, waiting lines, surpluses, and black markets. The emergence of these problems lead to calls for even more government interventionism to fix the very problem the government caused by interfering with the price system. It can be a never-ending cycle.

How does this apply to recycling in Sedgwick County?

In some cases the price system tells us that recycling is a beneficial use of resources. About 75% of automobiles are recycled, and used cardboard is often recycled in commercial settings. That's because the price paid for these recycled items is high enough that, in these contexts, recycling can be profitable. That's the price system at work. It tells us that the best use of an old car is to recycle it, and the same goes for cardboard boxes at the grocery store.

A household setting is different. Households usually have to pay to engage in recycling. The prices that recyclers can get for these recycled goods doesn't cover the cost of collecting them from households, as evidenced by the fact that in Wichita households must pay someone to pick up recyclables. That's the price system at work again. Its sober assessment is that in the context of households, recycling is a waste of resources. That waste can be tremendous. Orange County, Florida, for example, spends roughly $3 million per year to collect recyclable goods from households, but sells them for only $56,000.

What about running out of landfill space? If landfill space were truly scarce, the price system would tell us so, because landfill operators -- if there is a free market for landfills -- could charge high prices for accepting trash. But evidently, they can't.

So the price system tells us sometimes recycling is a good use of resources, and sometimes it isn't.

A mandatory recycling program or one where people have to pay fees even if they don't actually recycle their household goods amounts to the government attempting to override the price system. It is attempting to manage the price system through government interventionism. These policies, should Sedgwick County implement them, will cause citizens to suffer the same inefficiencies that all planned economies have demonstrated, if on a smaller scale.

Recently a USD 259 (Wichita, Kansas public school district) board member made this statement: "I know there are kids from many Catholic schools that have come to public schools when the Catholic schools have kicked them out."

This attitude reflects a common perception or myth: that private and religious schools kick out the misbehaving students they don't want to deal with. Since the public school system, by law, must accept them, these problem students are a reason why the public schools have such a difficult task. So goes the story, anyway.

I have read that this perception is false, so I decided to do some investigation on my own. The Kansas State Department of Education website can supply the number of students expelled from schools each year, not only for the public schools, but for some private and religious schools too.

As it turns out, the average number of students expelled from the Wichita Catholic Diocese schools is a little less than five per year. The Diocese covers an area much larger than Wichita, and presumably some of these expelled students didn't live within the boundaries of USD 259. Given that, plus the fact that there just aren't very many students expelled from the Catholic schools each year, accepting them can't be much of a burden to a large school district like the Wichita public schools.

The statistics I looked at are revealing in another way: expulsions, adjusted for the number of enrolled students, are much more frequent in the Wichita public schools. For the eleven years shown in the following table, the Wichita public school system expels students at a rate nearly ten times higher than does the Wichita Catholic Diocese.

I wonder if the USD 259 board member who made the statement quoted at the beginning of this article is ignorant of these facts. Or perhaps the board member simply believes, without critical thought or investigation, the myths told about public schools. Or perhaps there is another explanation.

When Bob Corkins, a lawyer with no classroom experience, was named Kansas Commissioner of Education in 2005, newspapers editorialists and education bureaucrats throughout Kansas condemned the action. How could a person with no classroom experience and no traditional education credentials possibly manage the state's schools?

"Bob's in way over his head," said Winston Brooks, superintendent of USD 259, the Wichita public school district.

But what about Martin Libhart, the man who succeeds Winston Brooks, if only as the interim superintendent? According to a news release on the USD 259 website: "Because Libhart does not currently possess a district level leadership certificate, the district is working with the Kansas State Department of Education for a restricted certificate as permitted by the department." (emphasis added)

It seems that lack of formal credentials was not an obstacle to the promotion of Mr. Libhart. But Mr. Libhart has worked for the Wichita public school district for 20 years, and it seems that loyalty is now paying dividends. Evidently it is enough to overcome his lack of classroom experience and traditional education credentials -- the same inexperience that made Bob Corkins, in the minds of Kansas education bureaucrats, unfit to serve.

What exactly did Mr. Libhart do for the Wichita school district? Again, from the USD 259 news release: "During his 20-year career in the Wichita Public Schools, Libhart served for 13 years as director of the Facilities Division prior to being appointed chief operations officer."

It seems, however, that the facilities and operations of the Wichita school district are managed somewhat less than efficiently. I say this because if you submit a records request asking the district how many classrooms and portables the district owned for the previous two years, you may get this answer, as did one citizens group:

The information is available. In order to prepare the information, it will require 40 hours of staff time @ $20.00 and 300 copies @ $.20, for a total cost of $860.00.

The Wichita public school district is telling us that in order to count the number of classrooms it possesses, it will take someone an entire workweek to produce this number. Does it seem like the district is effectively managing its resources when it will take one week to simply count the number of classrooms?

From Denis Boyles's column at Kansas Liberty, calling the consistency and judgment of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius into question (admittedly, a small task):

If there are at least some scientific studies that show gambling’s bad for you, and none that show that carbon dioxide’s bad for you, why is the governor of Kansas hugging casinos and banning power plants?

Read the entire column here: Feedlot Environmentalism.

By the way, the new book Superior, Nebraska: The Common Sense Values of America's Heartland by Denis Boyles is wonderful. I recommend it to all with an interest in Kansas politics.

From our friends at Kansas Liberty:

The Kansas Supreme Court is a private club filled with people you've never heard of until they pass some tax you have to pay or invent some law you don't want. There is a way to fix this, but you won't like it, says Denis Boyles.

Read the full story at Kansas Liberty.

Professor Stephen J. Ware of the Kansas University School of Law writes this in a Lawrence Journal-World editorial:

What makes the Kansas Supreme Court selection process unusual is not that it’s political, but that it gives so much political power to the bar (the state’s lawyers). Kansas is the only state that gives its bar majority control over the commission that nominates Supreme Court justices. It’s no surprise that members of the Kansas bar are happy with the current system because it gives them more power than the bar has in any of the other 49 states and allows them to exercise that power in secret, without any accountability to the public.

His research paper may be read here: www.fed-soc.org/kansaspaper.

An argument opponents of the proposed Holcomb Station coal-fired electricity generation plant make is that its water usage is excessive and will lead to, depending on who is speaking, little water left for other uses. Even drinking water, according to some critics, could be threatened.

Together, the proposed plants will use 16,000 acre-feet of water -- about 5.2 billion gallons – annually. While that seems like a tremendous amount of water, especially in dry western Kansas, we should put that water usage in context before making judgments.

According to the Kansas Water Office, in 2006, 3,496,586 acre-feet of water was used to irrigate 3,066,602 acres, a rate of 1.14 acre-feet of water per acre. In Finney county, where the Holcomb plant is located, water use for irrigation is a little higher. The average usage for 2002 to 2006 was 1.31 acre-feet per acre.

Using the Finney county rates, we find that the 16,000 acre-feet of water usage by the proposed power plants is enough to irrigate 12,215 acres of crops.

While 12,215 acres of crops may seem like a lot, Finney county alone had 227,297 acres under irrigation in 2006. So the water usage by the proposed plants amounts to 5.4% of just Finney county's water use for irrigation. For the entire state of Kansas, it's less than one-half of one percent of the water used for irrigation.

So while 5.2 billion gallons of water seems like a lot, it's not much more than a few drops in the bucket, figuratively speaking, of water use for irrigation in Kansas. The economic value of the electricity the Holcomb plant expansion will generate, however, is large.

The Kansas Meadowlark reports on Franking Abuse by Kansas Democratic Legislative Leadership:

Recently both the Kansas House Minority Leader, Dennis McKinney, and Kansas Senate Minority Leader, Anthony Hensley, abused their nearly unlimited budget to mail items to Kansas voters. These mailings had less to do with helping inform constituents about what is going on in the Kansas legislature, and more to do with getting certain Democrats re-elected this year.

A reliable source tells the Meadowlark that House Minority Leader Mckinney will reimburse the State for postage for his recent mailings. However, the Senate Minority Leader has not made a pledge to repay taxpayers for his franking abuse, even though taxpayers paid a hefty sum for his recent needless mailings.

Actual amounts for these mailings will be published here when available.

Read the entire story here at The Kansas Meadowlark website: Franking Abuse by Kansas Democratic Legislative Leadership