Voice For Liberty

Tag: Kansas blogs

  • Kansas Blog Roundup for May 30, 2008

    Abortion politics were at the forefront in Kansas this week. Robert Novak’s column about Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (A Pro-Choicer’s Dream Veep as printed in the Washington Post) revealed some previously-unknown information about the relationship between her and the notorious late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller of Wichita. The KRA comments and links to Novak’s column: Novak: A Vice-President of Abortion.

    Kansas bloggers were quick to notice and expand on the story. The Kansas Meadowlark reports with this article that corrects Mr. Novak on a few details and expands greatly: Dinner for 6 or 20? Gov. Sebelius sold dinner, photos to highest bidder: Dr. George Tiller. At raubinandmegan.com, Raubin Pierce posts this entry: Gov’s Party:No Kids Allowed. The Kansas Republican posts several articles: Kathy Sebelius and George Tiller, Tillergate at Cedar Crest: “What’s for Dinner?”, and Baby Tartare Anyone? Some of these posts at The Kansas Republican contain altered photographs, one which, in my opinion, is tasteless. I would urge center-right bloggers in Kansas to not use the same childish tactics that many left bloggers do.

    The Kansas Trunkline wonders about the ethics of northeast Kansas congressman Dennis Moore in Taxpayers, Traveling and Dennis Moore and While the cat’s away, the mice break ethics rules? In a related post, The Kenig Konnection asks Where in the world is Dennis Moore?

    Stay Red Kansas contributes a post about JOCO House Updates (that’s Johnson County, I believe).

    The Kansas Meadowlark reports on energy policy in Kansas in GPACE PAC/Sebelius only want unreliable energy sources for Kansas? Also Jim Cates will have a radio show again, if only on the internet: Partial Victory: Cates Now Streamed Online.

    The Voice For Liberty in Wichita posts a letter that urges Sedgwick County to forgo trash franchising: Sedgwick County Trash Franchising: On the Road to Economic Perdition. Public schools are again a topic there with these articles: Let’s Spend on Wichita School Facilities, But Not Maintain Them?, Wichita School Bond Issue: Who Is Running the Survey?, and Wichita Public Schools as a Public Good.

  • A Kansas Blogroll

    I use Google Reader to read Kansas blogs. The following list represents all the Kansas blogs I know of that publish an RSS feed (not all do) and that appear not to have been abandoned. If you know of blogs that should appear on this list, please send notice of it to me at bob.weeks@gmail.com.


  • Kansas Blog Roundup for May 23, 2008

    The Kansas Meadowlark has a number of posts this week that merit reading by Kansans. Topekans Rally in Support of Canned Talk Show Host Jim Cates reports on the dismissal of Topeka’s conservative talk radio host. At least Topeka had such a talk show. Wichita has nothing like that. Kansas Parochial School Sued for Requiring English, the Official Language of Kansas reports on a lawsuit filed by four families in Wichita over their Catholic school banning the speaking of Spanish while at school. Second Oops! reports on a slip-up in an email sent by our governor Kathleen Sebelius.

    Kansas Education writes about school choice in the article How Good is Your Public School?

    At Neighborhood Watch Watch blogger Thomas Lessman also writes about Jim Cates, the Topeka talk radio show host: “The Jim Cates Show provided a community forum for people in Topeka, and he allowed anyone to call in and discuss issues of importance. Like everyone, Jim has his own views, but his show was never about HIS views – he allowed the public a chance to speak. Even when Jim disagreed with a caller, he was always respectful about it, but he made it a point to let people speak even if they have opposing views.” The full post is here: Jim Cates.

    In the post What’s in a word?, the anonymous blogger at Stay Red Kansas highlights the Kansas Republican Party’s reporting about Barack Obama returning a campaign contribution of $50 from Kansas senatorial candidate Jim Slattery.

    The Kansas Trunkline reports on the low approval ratings of the U.S. Congress and Kansas’s two Democratic house members: Nancy Boyda, Dennis Moore and the worst job performance ever. Also: an article reporting on a vote by Nancy Boyda in favor of limiting public-private competition at the Defense Department. “Nancy Boyda may claim to care about taxpayer savings, but actions are in direct contrast to that statement. She is also proving that she is in the back pocket of big labor.” The article is here: Boyda: Wasting taxpayer money.

    The Kenig Konnection reports on the future plans of a young northeast Kansas politician: Ben Hodge to run for Barbara Allen’s state senate seat.

    The Kansas Republican reports Shanan Guinn’s Clinton Connection: a True Burden for Nancy Boyda. Another article reports on the cost of governor Kathleen Sebelius’ quest for national prominence: The True Cost of Sebelius’ Green Agenda.

    The Quiet Conservative writes about the Iraq War in Espousing Weakness and Inaction as a Virtue in War.

    At Voice For Liberty in Wichita, these articles may be of interest: Wichita Public Schools: Open Records Requests Are a Burden, Rod Bremby’s Action Drove Away the Refinery, and Trash Franchising in Wichita and Sedgwick County.

  • Kansas Blog Roundup for May 16, 2008

    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 Sebelius 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.

    Karl Peterjohn of the The Kansas Taxpayers Network contributes a fine editorial about Kansas and its energy and regulatory future: How Much More Will Kansas Electricity Cost In Your Future? (via Voice For Liberty in Wichita)

  • Summary of blogging on judicial ethics in Kansas

    News accounts report that there will be an investigation into the lunch that Kansas Supreme Court Justice Lawton Nuss shared with legislators. If it is the Kansas Commission on Judicial Qualifications that performs this investigation, I doubt we will see much happen.

    Last year, I along with Karl Peterjohn of the Kansas Taxpayers Network filed complaints with this commission against Justices Allegrucci and Nuss. I thought we made compelling cases, but the commission disagreed. (You may read my complaints and commentary in the links referred to below.) There was very little reporting in Kansas news media. Only lately has Kansas news media sensed that something might be wrong.

    The Kansas Meadowlark has uncovered a Salina Journal article published on October 22, 2002, that tells how, in 2002, Justice Nuss recused himself from the school finance case, as he had represented the Salina school district in the past. This is the very issue that Karl and I placed before the Kansas Commission on Judicial Qualifications. See www.saljournal.com/blogs/?p=667. Meadowlark also has some good ideas here: www.kansasmeadowlark.com/2006/04-21.htm.

    Links to Voice For Liberty in Wichita articles:

    Ethics Require Recusal in School Finance Lawsuit

    The Ethics Case Against Justice Donald L. Allegrucci

    The Wrong Canon; The Wrong Allegrucci

    The Ethics Case Against Justice Lawton R. Nuss

    Judicial Abuse Authorized in Kansas

    Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, or, Judicial-Legislative Dinners Continue in the Age of Montoy

    Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network

    The April 20, 2006 newspapers contain articles about the member of the Kansas Supreme Court, Lawton Nuss, belatedly recusing himself following the revelation that he had lunched with at least two legislators March 1 and improperly discussed the school finance lawsuit. I keep hearing reports of possibly at least one more legislator (Senate President Morris and Sen. Brungardt are the two who have been publicly identified as meeting with Nuss) also attending this luncheon meeting while discussing the continuing and apparently perpetual Montoy school finance lawsuit.

    KTN is now in a position to reveal that Kay McFarland, the court’s chief had lunch yesterday with the chair of the senate’s powerful spending committee, Ways and Means chairman, Sen. Dwayne Umbarger.

    Now I don’t know if anyone else from the court or the legislature joined Dwayne and Kay. I’m sure a fascinating discussion was held about the wonderful spring weather we’ve been having with only a slight diversion to discussion of something that would justify the taxpayers picking up the luncheon costs…..who picked up the tab and paid? Or was it a dutch treat? Do they dine together regularly or was this the very first time? My mind is filled with so many questions in the age of perpetual litigation and judicial usurpation. However, I am just a lowly taxpayer with a penchant for posting and too many bad experiences following closed door meetings where the public is banned and often fiscally damned.

    The luncheon discussion must have been over “judicial budgets” or something like that. School finance would be a topic taboo. In the age of perpetual school finance edicts heralding the age of Montoy, that is another meal that is hard for many hard working Kansas taxpayers to swallow. Taxpayers pay for the six figure judicial salaries, the expense accounts plus a wide assortment of other expensive benefits, and most importantly, the odious and outrageous spending edicts coming from this activist court.

    Let me remind the readers of this post that this is not the first time that there have been indications of irregular communications occurring between the court and elected officials in this case. House speaker Doug Mays has publicly expressed his frustration over the knowledge that Governor Sebelius had about the court’s, at that time unreleased edict, that she expressed in a legislative leadership meeting in the governor’s office during the special session last summer. At that time the governor’s chief of staff was Joyce Allegrucci. Ms. Allegrucci is the wife of another Supreme Court member, one of the five Democrat members of this court, Don Allegrucci. Since April, 2005 the governor has been publicly backing the position that Kansas public school spending is inadequate and following the court’s $284 million spending hike edict last year.

    When it comes to the rule of law in Kansas, this is a mandate applying only to the peasants and peons who get to pay the tab for our statehouse masters. When I use the word “statehouse” it includes the appointed masters operating out of the KS “Judicial” Center too.

    Last year I filed two ethics complaints against Nuss and Allegrucci that were dismissed by the court’s “ethics” panel after closed door hearings that no one except the panel itself could attend. It now is apparent that the complaints against Nuss that were filed by myself and a separate complaint filed by Bob Weeks were valid. The court’s self appointed committee meeting rejected our complaints during their closed door meetings last year. Yesterday’s recussal is a vindication of a sort but totally inadequate for providing an explanation of what is going on in the perpetual school finance imbroglio created by the Kansas Supreme Court continuing edicts in Montoy. The public and press must remember that the Kansas Supreme Court has issued no decision that is appealable to a court with real ethics!

    Last year the court finally said that the Kansas Constitution requires $285 million in additional school spending in 2005 (where does it say that and how does this amount change yearly?) and for this year the amount is … drum roll please … don’t forget — we’ve got the $289 million in additional revenue estimates to spend with the latest revenue forecast … do the judges get their pay raise too? … what part of Article six, section 6 sets specific school expenditure figures? … oh, what the hell, who are we lunching with tomorrow? … let’s announce it … after lunch!

    An aside for those who care about the future of Kansas: Yesterday the U.S. Census issued their latest report from 2000-2004 on population growth trends and Kansas came in a dismal 46th out of the 50 states in terms of population growth, “average annual rates of net domestic migration,” see figure 2 on page 4 of this report. We did beat New York that scored 50th.

    Actually, “population growth” is a misnomer. It’s population loss in the case of Kansas. This report is the most recent listed on the U.S. Census Department’s web site.

    Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network
    www.kansastaxpayers.com

  • Tom Daschle’s Defeat, Media Filters, and Kansas

    (Reprinted with the permission of the author, Karl Peterjohn, of Kansas Taxpayers Network.)

    Enclosed is a December 13, 2004 Wall Street Journal opinion piece by John Fund (How Daschle Got Blogged) demonstrating how the bloggers went past the media filters in South Dakota to help knock off Tom Daschle last month.

    This is relevant to Kansas for several reasons: This state has a similar one party news media like South Dakota’s that provides unbalanced information — as was well demonstrated by the critical letter to the editor that appeared in the Wichita Eagle December 13 criticizing an Americans For Prosperity report that the Kansas press — with one exception in the Lawrence Journal World — had not bothered to mention in print.

    The Eagle editorial page found it worthwhile to publish a letter from Wisconsin blasting AFP-KS’ position on TABOR without bothering to report on the basic study or mention it in their editorial page. In fact, the Eagle has an unpublished editorial piece from Alan Cobb on TABOR.

    Ironically, despite this recent flaw in their coverage, I consider the Eagle to have the least bad level of imbalance in both its editorial and news coverage when compared with the major newspapers in this state.

    There are even worse examples coming out of the Kansas City area as well as the Topeka newspaper. The smaller dailies, lead by the Harris chain as well as Dave Seaton’s two Cowley County papers are usually even worse.

    Second, these media filters allow distortions, like the 2002 Sebelius campaign, to get away with remarkable prevarication on their position concerning key issues, like taxes. Another example of flawed Kansas media coverage is the non reporting of the Missouri money flowing into Kansas campaigns at many levels. See the last minute, third-party hit pieces that occur at the end of the campaign and get no negative coverage if the Left blasts Phill Kline in the last week of his campaign but is major news if the conservatives find a 527 vehicle that runs paid media ads in this state.

    In the 2002 campaign Sebelius kept claiming that she was not supportive of raising taxes. No one in the mainstream press bothered to ask her about her repeated legislative votes for raising taxes while serving in the Kansas house in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Now that she has spent the last year proposing numerous, large tax hikes it would seem worthwhile for someone in this state’s news media to bother to mention her flip-flop. I’ve complained about it in my editorials that I post on KTN’s web site and I send out on-line but I believe that the statehouse press corps is concerned about losing access inside her office if they press her on this as well as other key issues.

    Third, there are already a few good bloggers at work in this state. “The Kansas Meadowlark” is regularly providing excellent public document information that is regularly ignored in the “mainstream” Kansas press. We need more Meadowlarks and we need ways to disseminate his work more widely to Kansas netizens. There was another blogger, I believe it was “Kansas Citizen” operating out of Johnson County too.

    Fourth, I’m tired of the rotating door between the media and its sources and the political Left in this state. Jim MacLean leaves the Topeka Capital-Journal for the Sebelius administration. This occurred only a year or so after the head of the KS Associated Press statehouse office “retires” and is then appointed to the Kansas Board of Regents as well as serving on other boards appointed by the governor.

    More recently the most commonly quoted-by-the-press academic in this state, Burdett Loomis, takes a position with the Sebelius administration without fully leaving his position at KU! I was recently surprised to find out from the Kansas Meadowlark that his son had been active in the 2002 Sebelius campaign as well as joining her staff after Sebelius became governor. I wonder who the media will find to become the next Burdett Loomis to quote in “news” stories or if they will continue to quote him since he still is part time at KU’s Dole center.

    Fifth, this is a national as well as statewide problem. Tom Daschle’s wife is a Washington lobbyist. Could a Dennis Hastert or Bill Frist spouse do this? Of course not, the media would howl. Newt Gingrich was forced by the news media to surrender book royalties after he became speaker while HIllary Clinton had no problem taking her book royalties to her bank. Fortunately there are several groups like the Media Resource Center and Accuracy in Media as well as numerous bloggers operating in Washington. Unfortunately, the only methodical effort to hold the media accountable in this state that I know of is through bloggers like the Kansas Meadowlark.

    Many of you receiving this email distribute your own material and others to your own lists. This effort needs to expand and grow. If you have a web site, I strongly urge you to link up with the Kansas Meadowlark’s. If you find other web sites, please spread the word. I’m sending this to you not in the belief that I have all of the answers, but only because I think I know some of the questions and you need to read Fund’s editorial.