The KRA Blog

Over the past few years, I’ve heard nothing but confusion from regular people as to how our state has continued to decline economically, socially and morally. How did we become the first governmental body in the United States to own casinos? Why can’t we pass stricter reporting laws for abortions? Why can’t we stop taxpayer funded lobbying? Why can’t we defeat the environmental lobbyists and override Gov. Sebelius’ veto?

While I’m sure there are a lot of people who think there are many answers which are quite complicated, I don’t. I think they’re simple questions with very simple answers.

You and I are the reason. The voter. The voters put our leaders where they’re at to make the decisions they’ve made. The voters are the ones who elected our House and Senate members who voted for state owned gambling. The voters allowed our leaders to go to Topeka and vote against stricter abortion reporting laws. The voters decided to vote for candidates that side with out of state environmentalists and won’t allow energy independence for our state.

It’s not at all surprising to me where we are based on the kind of people we continue to put in office.

If our state is to move forward, it’ll have to be the voters that decide when that happens. And if the past is any indication, it could be just a handful of regular citizens, your friends and neighbors, that decide our fate for the next two to four years.

How 73 voters brought state-owned casinos to Kansas

Senate Bill 66 was introduced on January 11, 2007. It was gutted on the floor of the House and rewritten to circumvent the constitutional amendment process needed to allow out-of-state companies to build destination casinos in Kansas. The constitution only allowed for a state owned lottery, not gambling. To get around this problem and avoid the needed 27 votes in the Senate and 84 in the House (a near impossibility), the Governor, along with liberal Republicans, hatched a plan to redefine ’state-owned lotteries’ to include destination resort casinos.

It seemed ridiculous at the time to think that it would pass. Even the most liberal of Republican, I reasoned, would see that the state had no business running casinos, no matter how ‘badly’ they thought the state needed the money. Bureaucracy and gambling simply don’t mix.

I was wrong. With the help of former legislators circumventing the committee process, SB 66 was passed by six votes in the House and just one in the Senate.

Now, how would that vote have gone differently if voters had changed their minds in the voting booths back in 2006 and 2004?

For instance, SB 66 passed the House by a vote of 64-58. What if three legislators had changed their minds? Barring three House members that were absent coming in and voting, a change of three votes would have made the total 61-61 and killed the bill right there.

How close were the people of Kansas from getting those three votes? Let’s start in House District 16.

Gene Rardin won House District 16 in Johnson County by three votes. That’s right, theoretically, just two of those three people changing their minds would have sent Republican John Kriegshauser to Topeka instead of Democrat Gene Rardin.

But two people in House District 16 changing their minds wouldn’t have made a difference on the vote for SB 66. Assuming Krieghauser would have voted nea, it still would have passed 63-59. To get to our 61-61 tie, we’ll have to look back to the 2004 General Election in House District 67 as well.

In that race, 89 voters decided Democrat Tom Hawk was a better candidate over Republican Joe McGraw. A 2004 Manhattan Mercury article shows McGraw to be a strong fiscal conservative. If we assume he would have voted against SB 66 and that 45 of those 89 voters changed their votes in 2004 and that McGraw won reelection in 2006, we’re now down to 62-60, just one vote away from a tie. And it only took 45 changed votes in District 67 and two in District 16 to get us here.

Our final journey is to House District 96. In the 2006 General election, Democrat Terry McLachlan defeated Republican Willa DeCastro by just 50 votes.

So, assuming 26 changed votes and that DeCastro would have voted against the bill, we’re now at a 61-61 tie and the defeat of SB 66. Kansas doesn’t own casinos, we’ve avoided a costly legal battle to get the new law ruled constitutional and we’ve prevented potentially unlimited corruption in our state government.

And it could have all happened if just 73 people across just three House Districts had changed their ballots.

The Kansas GOP today posted their August 8 retracted statement on their official blog. The statement appears to read word for word from the original statement emailed to party supporters. The post includes only the statement signed by Chairman Kobach and has no explanation for why it was accidentally sent by email last week.

Most notably, the new post does not include signatures from other party officials that were included in the original email accidentally sent by the party. There is no explanation as to why.

Why is the party dragging this issue out? Why has it taken two weeks to respond to the attacks of KTRM? Why weren’t other party officials included in the blog post?

The original statement was sent by email, but so far a second email doesn’t seem to have been sent. Is the party waiting for party leaders to sign on before releasing the same statement by email? Were party officials included by mistake in the first email? Is that why we’ve heard nothing since then from either the party of any of the officers listed on the original email?

No word yet, but at the very least, it appears the party is moving in the right direction. Slowly, but in the right direction.

The Wichita Eagle blog is run and edited by the Eagle reporters who regularly post items that are, supposedly, of interest to the citizens of Wichita. Every now and then I’ll run across a post and just sit back and wonder why it was published.

For instance, the tragic shooting of the Arkansas Democratic Party chairman yesterday. Rhonda Holman posted this today about the investigation:

“If you lost your job at a Target store, reportedly because you wrote on a wall, it doesn’t logically follow that you would drive 30 miles to the state’s Democratic Party headquarters and fatally shoot its chairman.”

It seems harmless enough, but is then followed by this:

“Indeed, maybe there are no conclusions to be drawn from Wednesday’s fatal shooting in Little Rock, other than that a disturbed gunman killed somebody and then was himself killed.”

“Still, in this time of bitter politics, you have to wonder: Was the murder of Arkansas Democratic Party chairman Bill Gwatney by Timothy Dale Johnson some kind of partisan hate crime?”

What purpose did that comment serve? What is Holman trying to do? A man has lost his life and yet a Wichita Eagle staffer insists on implying that the killer was motivated by party politics even though she highlights that what little evidence there is suggests that the man was mentally unstable.

Why? Why would you do that? Is there nothing else of substance going on the world that you have to make stuff up as you go along?

After the primary, I think we could all use a little humor. (Although, it is an interesting idea…isn’t it???)

Maxine On Border Control

Everyone concentrates on the problems we’re having in this country lately: illegal immigration, hurricane recovery, alligators attacking people in Florida.

Not me. I concentrate on solutions for the problems. It’s a win-win situation.

~ Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border.

~ Send the dirt to New Orleans to raise the level of the levies.

~ Put the Florida alligators in the moat along the Mexican border.

Any other problems you would like for me to solve today?

The three C’s

COWS

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.

THE CONSTITUTION

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we’re not using it anymore.

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this: You cannot post ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal,’ ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,’ and ‘Thou Shall Not Lie’ in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians…It creates a hostile work environment.

The Kansas Republican Party leadership responded (kind of, sort of…not really) on Friday with an emailed statement denouncing the primary election attacks by KTRM on Phill Kline and Jim Ryun, both of whom lost their primary elections. A pdf copy of the statement can be found here.

The email was sent three days after the primary election and was signed by chairman Kris Kobach, Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, Representatives Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt, and most notably Lynn Jenkins, Jim Ryun’s opponent in the primary election.

Shortly after the email was sent, another email was sent saying that the press release should not have been sent because it was not ready for publication.

Why was the email not ‘ready’? Were there additional party leaders that needed to sign on before it was sent? How many days or weeks is it going to take for ‘moderate’ Republicans to stand up and say what KTRM did was wrong? Are moderates continuing to stall for time? The election is over and the damage is done, can’t you at least now stand up and say, “sorry?”

State Sen. Stephen Morris was not listed on the email denouncing KTRM’s press release. In a conversation with the Kansas Liberty, he says, “I haven’t seen the mailers, but I’ve heard some talk about them in the hall and that’s not helpful at all to go negative like that.”

Sen. Morris also made a similar statement back in 2006 when he said, “I’ve always been against negative campaigning. I think when you do negative campaigning, it’s counterproductive.”

And yet Sen. Morris continues to fund an organization that doesn’t flinch at using racist innuendo to bring down an opponent. So Senator Morris, is it all negative campaigning you don’t like or just negative campaigning against people you want to see elected that you don’t like?

I’m sure the KRA Blog probably isn’t a place you frequent much, but we have posted both the flyers sent earlier in the campaign and the KTRM press release itself. I’m sure it’s tough for you to pull yourself away from writing $45,000 checks to KTRM, but perhaps you should take a look at just what you bought. Did you get your money’s worth?

Also notably absent are the many state officials that gave money to KTRM as well, including SBOE candidate Mary Ca Ralstin ($100), State Rep. Pat Colloton ($50), State Rep. Don Hill ($200), State Rep. Jill Quigley’s husband ($5100), and SBOE Member Sally Cauble ($100).

Does the absence of these officials signatures mean that they condone the actions of KTRM or are they simply testing the political waters to see if they can continue to support KTRM?