Voice For Liberty

Tag: Kansas state government

Articles about Kansas, its government, and public policy in Kansas.

  • Rasmussen Poll on Kansas Coal Plant

    What is the attitude of Kansans toward coal-fired power plants?

    Opponents of these plants have polls purportedly telling us that a majority of Kansans are opposed to them. See the press release Kansans Support Denial of Coal Plants, Want Wind Power for New Electricity from GPACE, a group headed by Scott Allegrucci, a former actor and son of Joyce Allegrucci, the former campaign director and chief of staff for Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. But also see Kansans’ Opposition to Coal Plant: Look at the Poll for a look at the type of questions used in this poll.

    Now a Rasmussen Reports poll from June 2008 covers some issues in Kansas. The poll can be viewed here. The last question in the poll is this:

    Should the State of Kansas allow a power company to build a new coal fired plant in southwest Kansas?

    48% Yes
    32% No
    19% Not sure

    This time the question is asked plainly, without the emotional imagery used to frame the questions in the poll mentioned above. The results, not surprisingly, are different.

  • Kansans’ Opposition to Coal Plant: Look at the Poll

    We’ve been told that Kansas public opinion is against the building of a coal-fired power plant in western Kansas. See the press release at Kansans Support Denial of Coal Plants, Want Wind Power for New Electricity.

    I would encourage you to view the questions that appeared on the poll cited in the press release. Here’s one, where people were asked which statement comes closer to their point of view:

    Statement A: Now more than ever we need to commit to alternative energy sources such as electric power generated by wind. We have the technology, if we only have the political will to invest sufficiently in it.

    Statement B: Wind energy is a nice idea, but it is ultimately insufficient to meet much of our energy needs. And placing huge wind turbines all over our beautiful rural landscapes is hardly the path to sound environmental stewardship. We need to focus our efforts on more practical sources of energy.

    Do you consider these two questions to be loaded, in that they use imagery designed to generate a certain response? Statement A refers to “political will,” something that most people are in favor of. Who doesn’t want more “political will?” Besides, what we need is private investment in electricity generation, not political investment.

    Statement B implies that “huge wind turbines” spoil our “beautiful rural landscapes” in Kansas and is poor “stewardship.” Powerful words, aren’t they?

    In my opinion, this question is designed to produce agreement biased towards statement A. It could not be more blatant.

  • Kansas environmental policy is full of uncertainty

    In a January 17, 2008 Wichita Eagle editorial, Nancy Jackson of the Climate and Energy Project of the Land Institute claims that Roderick L. Bremby, Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, did not create regulatory uncertainty when he denied the permit for the expansion of a coal-fired power plant in Kansas.

    A dubious claim made in this editorial is how “Neither Bremby nor Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is ‘out front’ on this issue [carbon emissions].” Jackson claims that Bremby was just following an inevitable trend towards more regulation of carbon emissions. But this is in direct opposition to news reports at the time. The Washington Post, for example, reported “The Kansas Department of Health and Environment yesterday became the first government agency in the United States to cite carbon dioxide emissions as the reason for rejecting an air permit for a proposed coal-fired electricity generating plant, saying that the greenhouse gas threatens public health and the environment.” (Power Plant Rejected Over Carbon Dioxide For First Time)

    Being the first to do something creates uncertainty, especially when the professional staff of KDHE approved the permit. The decision must have been made by just one person — or maybe two, as the level of involvement of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius in the decision is not known.

    But what discredits Ms. Jackson most is something she couldn’t have known when she wrote this editorial. In February, according to Associated Press reporting, Rod Bremby was apparently willing to approve a permit for an oil refinery that would emit 17 million tons of carbon a year, when he denied the power plant solely because of its emissions of 11 million tons. (See Oil refiner wary of coming to Kansas, also Rod Bremby’s Action Drove Away the Refinery.)

    If this isn’t regulatory uncertainty, I don’t know what is.

  • Wichita and Sedgwick County Candidate Websites

    I’ve started a page that lists candidates for election in the Wichita and Sedgwick County area, containing links to candidate websites. It’s not quite finished, but it’s a start. The link is here: Wichita and Sedgwick County Candidate Websites.

  • Who Owns and Runs the KEEP Website?

    The Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group (KEEP) has an impressive-looking website located at ksclimatechange.us. Just by looking at it, you’d think it was an official State of Kansas website, complete with a photograph of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and our state seal.

    But who actually owns this website? A check reveals that the domain name is registered to a Thomas D. Peterson of Fairfax, Virginia. He also owns a few other domain names, including mnclimatechange.us, scclimatechange.us, flclimatechange.us, and wiclimatechange.us. These, of course, are websites for the states of Minnesota, South Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin.

    What does this mean? For me, it raises a question as to who is really running KEEP. Will the process be something that will benefit the people of Kansas, giving full recognition to what makes Kansas different from other states? Or is Kansas just another cog in the extremist Center for Climate Strategies machine?

  • Wichita Eagle Voter Guide Responses

    I am running for Republican precinct committeeman. The Wichita Eagle sent me a request to answer some questions to appear in a voter’s guide. These are the questions asked (to the best of my recollection; I didn’t record the text of the questions and now I can no longer log in to the system to see them) and my responses.

    1. What do you believe should be in the party’s platform?

    I believe the Republican party has strayed from its commitment to individual liberty, limited government, and free markets. The party should commit itself to nurturing economic prosperity by reducing government control of the economy. We should allow people to decide how to best spend and invest their time, money, and talents. By reducing the intrusiveness of government, we can create a laboratory of economic freedom in Wichita that would restore Wichita’s tradition of entrepreneurship.

    2. What is your position on social issues?

    Government should relinquish its monopoly on the financing of education by allowing school choice through tax credits. Parents would then have more control over the education of their children. Government’s ability to take private property through eminent domain should be severely restricted. All elected officials should be subject to term limits. Governments should respond to citizen requests for records in a reasonable way.

    3. What is your position on fiscal issues?

    Voter approval should be required for all tax increases. Governments should pledge to limit their increases in spending to the inflation rate plus population growth. The use of tax increment financing (TIF) districts and tax abatements should be eliminated. Giveaways such as the interest-free loan to the Old Town Warren Theater must be stopped. We should be careful that trading a higher sales tax rate for property tax relief doesn’t lead to more taxes overall.

  • Kansas Giveaways to Wealthy Homeowners

    A Wichita Eagle news story (Help with historic houses, July 4, 2008) describes two apparently wealthy College Hill homeowners who plan to benefit from Kansas tax credits. These credits are given to people who own homes that have a historic designation.

    If you own such a historic house and plan to, for example, replace the windows or the roof, the State of Kansas will give you a tax credit of up to 25%.

    Sounds like a good program, doesn’t it? Tax credits — do they cost the state anything when given? Tax credits mean that your taxes are reduced. Suppose you spent $5,000 replacing windows. 25% of that is $1,250, so with a tax credit, your Kansas income tax would be reduced by $1,250. If your taxes were going to be $4,000, after the tax credit you’ll pay only $2,750.

    (This is much better than a tax deduction, which reduces your taxable income and taxes, but by a much smaller amount. The highest Kansas personal tax rate is 6.45%, so reducing your income by the $5,000 spent on windows means a tax savings of $322.50. Not nearly as good for the homeowner as a credit of $1,250.)

    The problem with all this is that unless the state reduces its spending by the amount of the tax credits, someone else has to make up the difference.

    So, average hard-working Kansans of all income levels will pay more taxes so that gifts — wait, I mean tax credits — can be given to wealthy homeowners living in historic homes.

    Now does this seem like a good program? The irony is that liberals (or “social progressives”) are usually in favor of historic preservation laws, while at the same time decrying tax giveaways to the rich, who do not pay their fair share, they say. Go figure.

  • Kansas Governor Joan Finney

    Kansas Liberty, which has become a very fine place to read news and opinion about Kansas and its politics, recently posted the excellent article Kansas’ Left Conservatives. This article, written by Caleb Stegall, provides a look at the politics of former Kansas governor Joan Finney.

    I highly recommend this article to learn more about “the most conservative governor our state has had in at least the last fifty years.”

  • Earthjustice in Kansas: The Press Release

    I’ve recently learned that the radical environmentalist group Earthjustice played a role in the rejection of a coal-fired power plant in Kansas. I didn’t learn that from any Kansas news source, but only from Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, and only then long after the permit for the plant was denied. See Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius at Earthjustice.

    Now I see Earthjustice’s press release Kansas Rejects Massive Sunflower Coal-Fired Power Plant.

    What did Earthjustice do in Kansas, and how did they do it? These are things Kansans need to know. To that end, I’ve filed a request under the Kansas Open Records Act asking for records of the correspondence between the governor’s office and Earthjustice. Hopefully the governor’s office will respond to this request in a way that will let Kansans have access to information they have the right to know.