Wichita City Council. Tomorrow the Wichita City Council considers these items: First, the council will have a do-over of a public hearing it held on September 21st. The need for this arises from a mistake regarding proper notification. Mistakes like this are not uncommon at Wichita city hall. … Then the council considers revising the development agreement for the Ken-Mar TIF district. More about that at Ken-Mar TIF district, the bailouts. … The council will be asked to approve an agreement with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 513 providing for pay raises of 2.5 percent per year for the next two years. … As always, the agenda packet is available at Wichita city council agendas.
What if the NFL Played by Teachers’ Rules? Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former NFL quarterback Fran Tarkenton explains the harm of teachers unions (What if the NFL Played by Teachers’ Rules? Imagine a league where players who make it through three seasons could never be cut from the roster.): “Teachers’ salaries have no relation to whether teachers are actually good at their job — excellence isn’t rewarded, and neither is extra effort. Pay is almost solely determined by how many years they’ve been teaching. That’s it. After a teacher earns tenure, which is often essentially automatic, firing him or her becomes almost impossible, no matter how bad the performance might be. And if you criticize the system, you’re demonized for hating teachers and not believing in our nation’s children. … Perhaps no other sector of American society so demonstrates the failure of government spending and interference. We’ve destroyed individual initiative, individual innovation and personal achievement, and marginalized anyone willing to point it out.”
Do-nothing Hoover? A new briefing paper from the Cato Institute (Herbert Hoover: Father of the New Deal) challenges the commonly-held view of President Herbert Hoover as doing nothing to prevent or fix the Great Depression. “Politicians and pundits portray Herbert Hoover as a defender of laissez faire governance whose dogmatic commitment to small government led him to stand by and do nothing while the economy collapsed in the wake of the stock market crash in 1929. In fact, Hoover had long been a critic of laissez faire. As president, he doubled federal spending in real terms in four years. He also used government to prop up wages, restricted immigration, signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, raised taxes, and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation — all interventionist measures and not laissez faire. Unlike many Democrats today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisers knew that Hoover had started the New Deal. One of them wrote, ‘When we all burst into Washington … we found every essential idea [of the New Deal] enacted in the 100-day Congress in the Hoover administration itself.’ Hoover’s big-spending, interventionist policies prolonged the Great Depression, and similar policies today could do similar damage. Dismantling the mythical presentation of Hoover as a ‘do-nothing’ president is crucial if we wish to have a proper understanding of what did and did not work in the Great Depression so that we do not repeat Hoover’s mistakes today.” … Well worth reading.
Kansas school cash. “A new report this month shows that cash reserves in Kansas’ 286 school districts grew 9 percent during the year ending June 30, even as schools statewide made plans to trim staff and cut programs because of reductions in basic state aid to education. The cash reserve increase is the sixth in as many years.” See Kansas Reporter, “Lawmakers question Kansas schools’ stashes of cash.”
John Locke to appear in Wichita. This week’s meeting (October 7th) of the Wichita Pachyderm Club presents John Locke — reincarnated through the miracle of modern technology — speaking on “Life, Liberty, and Property.” This promises to be informative and entertaining. The public is welcome and encouraged to attend Wichita Pachyderm meetings. For more information click on Wichita Pachyderm Club … Upcoming speakers: On October 14th, Lieutenant Governor Jeff Colyer, M.D. Speaking on “An update on the Brownback Administration’s ‘Roadmap for Kansas’ — Medicaid Reform” … On October 21st, N. Trip Shawver, Attorney/Mediator, on “The magic of mediation, its uses and benefits.” … On October 28th, U.S. Representative Tim Huelskamp, who is in his first term representing the Kansas first district, speaking on “Spending battles in Washington, D.C.”