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Fussing over fireworks may cost other’s lives

July 19, 2011, 10:24 pm
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From

 Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;

 

The City of Wichita plans to put in another phone line for people who call 911 during the Fourth of July, because of calls by people complaining about fireworks being used near their homes. This will be only for the Fourth, according to the Wichita Eagle.
According to The Wichita Eagle, the emergency lines were fully staffed, yet many people got a busy signal. What really comes to mind is who really needed help and who just wanted the cops to harass some young person for LEAGALLY firing of firecrackers near some old fogy’s yard?
Sometimes fireworks might cause an emergency. There might be a serious injury, a fire on someone’s yard or house. There are also the usual calls that 911 gets such as heart attacks or strokes. But all of these were put on hold because a few stuffy adults simply didn’t like fireworks. Some people believe their piece and quite or the aesthetics of their neighborhood talk presidents over REAL emergencies. They are self-absorbed-egotist who have no respect for the traditional fireworks that were part of this country’s first Independence Day celebrations.
Here is a suggestion for their phone number next Fourth of July. They can call: IMA-JERK.

 

http://tiahrtfolly.blogspot.com/index.rdf
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County cuts Reverfest funds

July 26, 2011, 7:47 pm
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From

Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;

 

Sedgwick County Manager William Buchanan's budget proposal plans for the county is to eliminate its funding for the Wichita River Festival and the Preferred Health Systems Wichita Open golf tournament, according to The Wichita Eagle. The Riverfest received $25,000 in 2011.
It was a general overall payment, not aimed at one event. Wichita now takes up most of Sedgwick County. It’s hard to imagine that paying for the festival is not in the county’s interest.
I’ve complained in the past about the festival being too commercial and the sponsors more interest in plugging their businesses than putting on something tourist can really enjoy. But now it will be even more commercial.
The festival has already suffered over the years. Many events, such as the bathtub races and the sandcastle contests have been eliminated. The festival also brings a large crowd of both locals and tourist to the City. Moving it to June this year turned out be a disaster. It was way to hot for a lot of people. Cutting the funding is just one more punch. How much can they cut from this festival before it becomes a complete fizzle?


http://tiahrtfolly.blogspot.com/index.rdf
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Does Wichita need 5 golf courses?

August 13, 2011, 8:46 pm
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From

 Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner


Once again the City of Wichita shows where their true color as the council schedules meetings with two public golf courses. According toThe Wichita Eagle, the city is considering closing one of its five courses.
The city has recently raised buss fairs after considering cutting Saturday buss service. The buss system is already ridiculously inadequate. The buss has limited access to the city as well as closing at 6p.m. Yet the city has five golf courses for rich folks to stand out on the greens and put golf balls around. All year long Wichita and other cities have cut funding for every type of aid to the poor. They cut buss service but keep golf courses open.
The is also the question of water use. Local citizens are asked to go easy on the watering of lawns in this time of drought and yet large amounts of water are used keeping of all these golf courses up.

 
At a time when sever drought has damaged the states agriculture, when services are being cut for poor people and buss service is made more expensive, maybe the city just doesn’t need golf courses. This city is big enough that corporate people can provide their own golf courses.
http://tiahrtfolly.blogspot.com/index.rdf
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Wichita developers want land owners to put up with a landfill

August 23, 2011, 4:08 pm
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From

, Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner


John Schlegel and his staff found they had received 100 percent opposition to a rezoning request a construction and demolition landfill, according to The Wichita Eagle. The proposed area is at 55th Street South and Ridge Road.
Most of the landowners near by are farmers. There are a few businesses in the area. It’s not hard to see why landowners would oppose this. Besides the ugliness of piles of trash near by, there are also concerns about drainage, pollution, reduced groundwater contamination and property values. One of the main concerns is groundwater contamination. Board members of the Greenwood Cemetery District have opposed the zoning request. They are afraid the noise from the plant will interfere with those who visit the cemetery.
Because of the opposition, four out of five commissioners must vote in support of the landfill for it to be approved.
The Wichita Area Metropolitan Planning Commission recently approved the plan, and planning staff has recommended approval. In the past the city has rarely cared what citizens want when the Planning Commission gives an approval. Such an approval was granted by the county a few years ago for a sand digging operation north of Maize, even though local property owners came out in droves to oppose it. Those property owners were ignored and the planners have gone ahead. Rarely has the Planning Commission ever been turned down. They are backed by local developers so the city and county listen to them. The city often does what it wants and ignores common people’s feelings or opinions on many of its plans.
Since this is the first time they have 100 percent opposition, they may actually have to listen to the people for a change and not just rubber stamp what developers want.

http://tiahrtfolly.blogspot.com/index.rdf
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Wichita--the rat hole

July 21, 2012, 10:48 pm
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Living in Wichita is like living in hell. Here are some simple facts about the assholes that make up Wichita.
1. Most are petty-self-absorbed selfish people who are narrow-minded and want everyone to conform to their twisted way of life. The thinking is “I have what I need—fuck you if you don’t have your’s.”
2. The people who run this town are stupid.
3. The people who run this town are greedy and will do anything for a dollar.
4. Most people think you are mentally ill if you don’t believe in God or Jesus.
5. Most people belong to a religious cults where fascism is seen as normal.
6. Education means math and science. Understanding of culture, especially someone else’s, is frowned upon as useless.
7. Anyone with imagination that doesn’t focus on starting businesses is scene as a useless kook.
8. Most of the ass holes living here wouldn’t know art, music or philosophy if it bit them in the ass.
9. There are jobs in this rat-hole, but they are not worth having.
10. And YES, I am seriously looking for a job somewhere else and I REALLY want to move.


http://tiahrtfolly.blogspot.com/index.rdf
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The Gentrification of Maize Kansas

February 25, 2013, 12:23 pm
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FromWichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;
The town of Maize was a small hamlet located north of Wichita. For many years it was a quiet small town catering to area farmers and some Wichitans who liked to small town atmosphere. Yet today it is overcrowded with urban sprawl and new mega marts that pop up like mushrooms after a storm.
Ten years ago, Maize Road was the main street to get to the town. It had a down-town area that died out and what little business there was left ended up on the two-lane paved Maize Road. Then a few years ago, wealthy land developers moved in and started to build on the eastern side of Maize Road. At first they built large houses for upper middle class people.
Several years ago Wichita went on a growing spree and by the year 2000, the City of Maize and the City of Wichita were competing for land. Now Wichita boarders Maize. Today Maize is really just a “burb” of Wichita. It is hard to tell where Wichita ends and Maize begins as Maize has lost all of its small town charm.
Developers have focused on building Expensive two-story “Mcmansions” or houses that all look like a cookie cutter mold and are painted similar colors. They look almost identical.
There are some small working class homes build on far out on the eastern edge, right next to the highways, where there is a lot of noise and the dangers of children walking into traffic. They have link fences around the back yards but that doesn’t always stop little kids.
It doesn’t take long to see that the town has been “gentrified” or built up for the benefit of the wealthy. This trend is going on through out this country in states where growth is not well regulated. Recently the city decided to widen the main street to four lanes instead of two. Wichita had already widened their part of the road to four lanes and that created a bottle neck of traffic for Maize. But when Maize started their work on their part of that road they also decided to move all the telephone poles and the street lights across the street. They only reasonable explanation for this move is that the homes on the west side of the street are the small lower-income homes. The other side, that used to have the lights and polls, has newer homes and they are two story expensive homes for upper-middle class people.
Another move by the city is to change the methods of sending out water bills. The city recently sent out a letter explaining that city is doing away with water bill extensions. The extensions were given for people who have trouble paying their bills on time.
“We try to work with people if there is a layoff or serious financial problems,” said Sue Villarreal, Maize City Treasurer. “We just had too many people making a partial payment on-line or just constantly getting behind on their water bills.”
There may be some people who just took advantage of the system, but on the other hand it seems as if the city council decided to show less tolerance of those with smaller incomes.
There is no doubt that Maize, as with Wichita, will continue to grow. The City of Maize put this statement on the city web site;
“It is projected that, based on the anticipated population growth, Maize should expect between 230,000 to 250,000 square feet of commercial development timeframe. Similarly, based on the anticipated population growth, 80,000 to 90,000 square feet of industrial development should be planned for Maize. The current land use plan for maize provides sufficient land area to accommodate anticipated future commercial and industrial development.”
The real problem here is for fair growth for those lower income people who have lived in the town a long time. Maize is not unique to this gentrification problem. It is state-wide problem as well as for other towns in other US states. Since I live in Maize I have been able to observe the town’s gentrification first hand.
http://tiahrtfolly.blogspot.com/index.rdf
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Koch brothers Americans For Prosperity site gets hacked

March 28, 2013, 8:00 pm
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By Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;


A man has been caught hacking the Koch Brothers-Backed Americans For Prosperity Website. This all started in late February with Anonymous announcing plans to hack into such sites as acts of sabotage.
Charles and David Koch are headquartered here in Wichita even though they participate in political activities nation-wide. As reported in The Wichita Eagle;
“A Wisconsin man recruited by the computer hacking group Anonymous faces charges in a cyberattack on Koch Industries in Wichita, a federal prosecutor announced Tuesday.
Eric J. Rosol, of Black Creek Wis., is accused of one count of conspiracy to damage a protected computer and a single count of damaging a protected computer, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said in a news release.”
If convicted Rosol could face a possible five years in federal prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 on each count.
The Huffington Post reported on the intentions of Anonymous back on February. The article reported that anonymous would target Americans for Prosperity’s website. At least one such hacker succeeded. But he may face prison time for his actions.
We can’t justify people breaking the law, but corporate rulers need to realize they can’t just buy the political system and then start voting away people’s rights. Not only that, they have become experts at cutting off the voices of protest to the mainstream media, or vastly marginalizing them.
Anonymous made their intentions known to RT Television. Anonymous said they are looking for vulnerabilities of the Koch brothers, since they got involved with Gov. Scott Walker’s union busting campaign.
As of today, the website is up and running.
How can they expect people to just put up with being silenced? There is a price to pay for suppressing people’s rights. The Koch brothers need to learn this. If they didn’t already know, people will find their vulnerabilities. They have manipulated the press and this society’s political system and they should expect retribution.

http://tiahrtfolly.blogspot.com/index.rdf
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Education is more than just “getting a job”

March 29, 2013, 12:59 pm
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More and more we hear about educational institutions working with business to make sure that high school students are properly trained for the business world. What they overlook is that education is more than just getting a job. It is about learning to survive in the society in which students live. They need to understand their own culture, their rights under the law and how their political system works.
But those ideas are lost on our educators and the business community. As an example The Wichita Eagle reported that nearly120 business and education leaders planned an event Oct. 30-31 to work toward addressing the technical skills that employers need and workers must have for today's jobs.
"We can no longer afford just to send every kid to college to discover themselves and expect them to come out in the end prepared for today's job market," Bill Hagerman, the director of innovation and improvement for the state's Department of Education told The Wichita Eagle.
Subjects such as music and art are constantly being targeted by those who want to cut on education costs. History is also taught on a shoe string budget. Spanish is the only foreign language taught at many high schools today. This is a time a history when we are more connected to the world than any other in a long time and the idea that no one needs foreign language, except maybe Spanish, is ridiculously short sited.
If people want to learn a foreign language, later in life, they need to learn at least one foreign language at an early age. It becomes a lost cause later in life. We are short changing our students by denying them the cultural experiences of foreign language.
I Once showed “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” to students who thought none of it was funny. Later I had to show the same movie in a class I was substituting for and only the accelerated students laughed at it. Without a decent knowledge of history of the middle ages students don’t understand the humor.  We are raising a generation of culturally illiterate people because we spend too much time listening to what businesses want out of our students and have forgotten that education has many facets besides just getting a job.
Knowledge of our music and art history is another example of areas that businesses, students and parents may not see as important. But they are part of our culture and we are developing a hollow phony culture of commercial crap. Advertizing is everywhere and on everything. Very little of our artwork is for the sake of artistic inspiration. It is all developed to sell us cheap crap we really don’t need. How many of our high school students really need athletic shoes that cost a thousand dollars and up because they have a designer’s name?
Unless someone speaks out against these trends we are destined to become a superficial society of culturally illiterate tech-nerds.


-Otto’s War Room (毛派)

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Time to topple Brownback! Let’s start now!

March 29, 2013, 1:09 pm
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From now until we vote him out, this site will focus on Governor Sam Brownback and his merry band of idiots in the Kansas state-house. Brownback seems to be part of the new conservative movement based on lies, false ideology, and constant attacks on the state’s educational system and the poor.
Brownback and his Ilk have waged an extensive war against the poor. I have not used this site for some time. But I have decided to revive it and post and repost articles that expose the corruption and folly of our major Brownback and other Kansas politicians. It all starts with Brownback.
Allies of Brownback, in the state-house, will also come under scrutiny on this site.

-Otto
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No job opportunities here! -We’re discouraged

April 11, 2013, 4:57 pm
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From 

 Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;


Here in the USA, the so called “land of opportunity” is letting a lot of us down these days. And that is not just my opinion.
Yahoo News has reported that many people in this country are getting discouraged and dropping out of the work force. According to the article; “Older Americans have retired early. Younger ones have enrolled in school. Others have suspended their job hunt until the employment landscape brightens. Some…. are collecting disability checks.”
Of course that is happening right here in Kansas our Governor Sam Brownback is making sure we are one of the first to cut government jobs and do other things to add to the unemployment rate. I have a friend who is now on disabilities. He is in his late 50s. He has very high blood pressure and although he has always held a job and worked, he now realizes that he can’t compete with the 20 and 30 year olds who want the same jobs he is looking for. Not as young, healthy or energetic, he just doesn’t stand a chance.
I am in my late 50s myself and I have given up looking for a teaching position, years after I got my teachers license. For the last several years, Gov. Brownback kept cutting the education budget, which caused a layoff of teachers the local school system already had. That made it almost impossible to get a teaching job. Now I’m a lot older and I would have to compete with a flood of young 20 something year olds who also have teaching licenses. I have grown tired of finding that my applications to other school systems are piled up along with dozens of others, by younger applicants. So I plan to keep working somewhere, but am looking to retire early, to get out of a work force that simply offers no real opportunity.
I know plenty of younger people who are taking classes at our local universities. Ironically I know of two women in the 30s who are taking classes to get the same type of teaching license I have been trudging along with. They are young and haven’t had the experience of competing for limited jobs yet. I hope them the best of luck.
Part of the problem is the conservative Republicans cutting lots of government jobs to save money on the budget. Those people they throw out of the work force are competing with the already unemployed workers. My own experiences in job hunting have been discouraging. Each summer I have had to get a summer job as I am a substitute teacher. But the last few years the jobs are fewer and the competition greater. It gets so discouraging the job search just seems an outright waste of time.
Neither the Republicans nor Democrats have done anything to encourage job growth. The Republicans just take do whatever business wants and President Barak Obama seems too busygiving more money to Syrian Rebels. He seems to care more about people in foreign countries than people who live here. He is even cutting social security, but in a way so those of us, who will be new to it when we get there, will get less than those getting it now. He has done absolutely nothing to aid the working man here at home. His presidency has been a dismal failure for those who need job opportunities.
Last Friday the Labor Department released the unemployment rate that dropped to a four-year low of 7.6 percent in March from 7.7 in February. But while that looks good on paper, it doesn’t reflect those who have just given up.
Republicans like to claim we are just too lazy to find a job. The reality is they just like to work the few who can get a job to death while just starving out those of us who can’t keep up with an ultra-competitive job market.
So when I retire, I will continue to write and say “good riddance” to the working world of a system that just doesn’t care.


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Let’s imitate Kansas—Missouri Legislators think your boss needs a BIG tax cut

May 12, 2013, 7:52 am
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I have been hearing reports that our esteemed yet completely idiotic governor, Sam Brownback, is being promoted as a model for other state’s Tea Party Republican morons to emulate. Here is just one example from our state next-door Missouri.
-Otto  

From Blue Collar View;

  The Missouri Senate has passed a massive tax cut, (don't get excited, it's not for you), and the legislation will now go to the Governor. So who gets a big tax cut? Your boss! If your boss owns the company and  is paid directly though profits he'll get a 50% tax cut  on his income taxes. If you boss doesn't get paid that way, don't worry, he can cook the books so he qualifies. Also the company you work for will have their tax rate go from 6.25% to 3.25.% That's close to a 50% cut, who hoo! So what do you get? If you a working stiff your income tax rate will go from 6% to.... 5.5%.  That's something like an 8% tax cut.  If that doesn't seem like much, don't worry, you will get something else: crappier roads, underfunded schools, longer waits at the DMV. You see, this plan will pretty much bankrupt the state, costing it $700 million every year once the plan is in full effect.

     Why are we doing this? Because we have to keep up with Kansas. You see, Kansas enacted an even more radical tax cut plan last year, so we have to do the same (I can hear my mother saying "If Billy jumped into the lake, would you too?"). So far, all the Kansas plan has done is throw that state into a budgetary crisis as funding for schools, roads and everything else dries up. The Kansas tax plan was supposed to bring businesses and jobs  to the state, but that hasn't exactly happened. The resulting budget mess has gotten so bad that the architect of the plan, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's approval rating has fallen to 19 point in the last year, to 36%.  For a republican governor in a hard core republican state like Kansas, that's pitiful. The same poll showed President Obama getting a higher approval rating of 38%, IN KANSAS! 

     I was raised in Wichita, Kansas, so I hear from relatives how thing are going there. One of my brothers is a teacher there, and he tells me that as a cost saving measure, Kansas has closed down schools for children with behavioral problems, and dumped those kids into the regular class rooms, making it nearly impossible to teach. I hope all those businesses that aren't actually coming to Kansas don't expect educated workers.

     Missouri legislators say it will be different here, in part because the tax cuts will be fazed in over a five year period. So don't go making any plans for spending that two or three dollar a week tax cut you might be getting just yet. 

     So to sum up the tax cut plan. A BIG tax cut for your boss, a tiny one for you, crappier state government, and we get to be more like Kansas. 



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Revenge fantasies

May 21, 2013, 12:51 pm
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Excerpts from: The Journals Of A 21st Century Schizoid Man

This book is a fictional novel;

Max Stalin and his toy Guillotine
This is the story of Maxwell the Stalinist. Max likes Country Joe Stalin and he has no problem with leaders who commit mass murder. Max is one of the only Marxist-Leninists here in Wichita that I know.  He’s a short thin fellow with thinning brown hair. He is probably about 10 years younger than I am.
“That guy just creeps me out,” said Phaedra after she first met him at his home. Max lives in a working class neighborhood in a fairly-nice green-wooden house that he rents. He actually has a model of a Guillotine from the French Revolution that they used to sell along with such monster models as Frankenstein and Dracula, back in the 1960s. It sat on his fireplace mantel, along with his other collectables. We often sat in his front room, on one of his two couches, drank beer, which we set on his coffee table and discussed various politics.
“Well you have to take what he says with a grain of salt,” I replied. “I think he says things he really doesn’t mean.
“Since the 1960s, after World War II, the US set out to destroy any credibility to the new socialist governments of Asia,” Max said the first day Phaedra met him, at his home.  “Their idea was to do whatever they could get Americans to think of Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung and later, Pol Pot as nothing more than mass murderers.
….But here is this thing. Any leader who kills a lot of people is probably getting rid of a lot of scum—people that no one really wants around anyway. I have little doubt that some people deserve to be dragged into the street and shot in the head. Consider what it would be like to do that to Sam Brownback?”
He sure had a point there. Since his first term as Governor, Brownback has destroyed our public educational system, our health care system for the poor and disabled, he’s run our economy into the ground and he has hindered my ability to even get decent work. Heck—I’d like to see him shot and then hung upside down from a Kwick Shop the way they did Benito Mussolini and his mistress after they had been shot, so that passers-by could spit on them. I could really get into that. I have to admit, I really hate that bastard Brownback. But Phaedra found little to like about all of that.
“I really don’t like murders per say, but some people just need to be gotten rid of,” Max said. “Consider David and Charles Koch. Wouldn’t it be great if we could take those bastards out and just shoot them in the head?”
For the record, I really don’t want to kill the Koch Brothers. I’m not really violent or cruel person, but we all have our darker dreams, and finishing off the Koch brothers is one of mine. I would love to see David and Charles Koch dragged out in the street and shot in public. They continuously try to buy elections and destroy what little democracy we have left in this country. Their money should be redistributed to where it is needed.
“And while you’re at it, why not Brownback’s personal punk from Wichita; Kansas Representative Mike O’Connally,” I added in. “And don’t forget our lousy Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.”
It didn’t take me long to find myself swept up in the “let just kill’em all” fantasy.

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Kansas Sen. Wagle has lost touch with reality—says “Kansas is a model"

June 10, 2013, 5:34 pm
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From   Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;


For those of us who now live in Kansas and have lived here most of our lives, the changes taking place in our state, initiated from the governor’s office to the house and senate, are noticeable and unmistakably bad.
So it was no surprise last Sunday when The Wichita Eagle ran an article written by Kansas Senator Susan Wagle trying to justify her party’s policies that have damaged our state’s infrastructure, raised taxes on the poorer workers and left other workers with no jobs at all.
But to hear Wagle tell it, Kansas is an economic miracle that the rest of the country will soon want to emulate;
“The 2013 legislative session marked a major step forward in reforming long-term fiscal policy and positioning Kansas as a model for other pro-growth states.”
There may be economic growth in this state, but it is not reaching the working class or the middle classes. There are very few new jobs being created here in Wichita and this is the biggest city in the state. Since the end of the school year, (I work in a local school) I have found few new or summer jobs. What few jobs I have found have had at least 10 applicants for each opening. I know of other people looking for work and many have just given up.
If this is a future model for pro-growth states—where are the jobs? Who wants to live in a state where the jobs are few and far between?
Then she is quick to say that Kansas now has “a FairTax model that targets the taxation of consumption (sales) rather than productivity (income).”
This state has moved the tax burden to sales taxes rather than income based taxes. We now have some of the highest sales taxes in the country. This puts the burden of taxes on the working poor and middle classes who are spending more of their hard earned income on sales taxes. As for “lower income taxes,” that is not the case for those in the lower income tax brackets. Most people I know are actually paying MORE not less income taxes than they have ever paid before. This “Fair Tax model” works for those who make a lot of income, but not for those who earn lower levels of income. The average working class citizens is paying higher taxes than many other states. 
Wagle also wants the readers to know; “We passed a balanced budget while funding core services and kept state spending within our means.”
Her governor, Sam Brownback, and her other cohorts have balanced the budget by wrecking essential services to the average citizen and waging a war against any services to the poor and disabled.
People are spending three hours on average to renew their driver’s license. Any calls made to a government agency now take at least 10 minutes are more to get a real person. Any government services are now taking way longer to get done. It now takes me six to eight weeks to get my teaching certificate back after I reapply. It used to take only one week. This is typical of anything that requires the services of a government employee.
Schools have been seriously hit hard, with teachers being fired, and discipline problems at an all time high. There are fewer services for the students, fewer class choices, overcrowding, and there are shortages of supplies.
The poor in this state have been especially hard hit. According to Otto’s War room;
“Roughly 384,000 Kansans, or 13.8 percent of the state's population, live at or below the poverty line, which is $23,050 a year for a family of four. That number has risen by nearly 80,000 people since before the recession began in 2008. Of those, 34,000 were children, whose poverty rate has increased from 14.5 percent to nearly 19 percent.”
Wagle bragged that “we doubled down on the success of last session and set Kansas on a path to prosperity for years to come.”
If Wagle’s idea of prosperity is a huge increase in poverty that is not the kind of prosperity most of us living here want. I’m sure her rich friends are doing well; the rest of the state is enduring one of the worst economic nightmares in recent history.
This next statement shows just how much Wagle takes the working classes for granted;
“We live in a mobile society. Jobs grow and people locate where they can keep in their own pocket the maximum amount of their hard-earned money.”
She just doesn’t get it. People who can leave this state are doing it and at some point her rich friends she has worked so hard to satisfy are going to need workers to do the work it takes to create wealth. Many of the state’s most talented workers are leaving for states where they can “keep in their own pocket” what they earn. If people’s needs are not met, no amount of sucking up to business will keep the work force here that is required to keep an economy afloat.
This article doesn’t have a lot of statistics because I live and work here. So do many of my friends. We see firsthand what this “model for other pro-growth states” has produced and we want no part of it. God help any state that tries to incorporate this mess into their own economy. They are going to need it.

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Kansas legislatures show contempt for Kansas State Courts

June 16, 2013, 7:14 am
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From 

Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner:


The same Kansas legislatures who have given generous tax cuts for their wealthy backers are now suggesting that they don’t feel any need to abide by the decisions of the Kansas Supreme Court.
After years of cuts made to education, with teachers being laid off, resources and classes cut, some music classes and driver’s education was eliminated, The Rev. Jeff Gannon had finally had enough. He took the irresponsible actions of the Kansas Government to court, the Kansas Supreme Court. If the Court rules in favor of Gannon, it may order the state to pay up to $450 million in finances back to the public schools.
The Wichita Eagle ran a large article on the struggle between Gannon and the Kansas legislature. In it such high profile legislators as Rep. Steve Brunk from Wichita and Senate President Susan Wagle have suggested they will just ignore the ruling of the Supreme Court and continue to do what they feel like.
Brunk told The Wichita Eagle that he believes there is enough votes in the Senate and House to just ignore what the Supreme Court rules and “we might just say to the court that deciding expenditures is not your responsibility, thank you, and we’ll take it from here,” He also suggested there’s a mood to give the courts the finger,
That’s a lot of contempt for people who are supposed to be in charge of running the state. They seem to think they have all the power they need, by getting elected, to do whatever they want.
Education spending per pupil has gone done three years in a row, according toKansasOpenGov.gov; 2009: 12.631; 2020:12,267; 2012:12,226; 2023:12,595. For two years, it went way down and even though it went up slightly the following year, it went up to lest that the three year before and expenses went up that last year.
It is clear that underfunding education is a major role played by the present Governor Sam Brownback his Tea Party Republican allies.
The Wichita Eagle quoted David Trabert president of the Kansas Policy Institute, another phony conservative think tank. He mention the promotion of charter schools, which are being used nation-wide to bypass, teacher’s unions, pay and benefits. It also allows for conservative standards that amount to just “teaching to the test.” The worst part of charter school system ishow much money will be sucked off of the public school system and in Kansas, the public school system is already in shambles.
The time has come for the citizens of this state to let their Kansas legislators need to be impeached for violating the Kansas constitution, its courts and the idea that they can just “give the courts the finger” And that finger is a product of the people of this state. Our legislators have shown the state’s people nothing but contempt and it is time to show them the door.

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Kan. Secretary of State Kobach whimpers over protest

June 20, 2013, 8:55 am
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Poor big cry-baby Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach went blubbering, on Monday, to beg state officials to investigate an immigration reform rally that was staged outside his home, Wyandotte County, according to The Wichita Eagle.
It appears that Kobach has not heard of the abortion doctors and the constant protesting of their homes and other forms of harassment that has gone on nation-wide and in Kansas, for the last 20 plus years. They couldn’t do anything about it. Anti-abortionists have run some doctors out of business by protesting them at weddings, their churches, family events and at times, their homes around the clock.
Guess what Kobach—there ain’t shit you can do about it!!!
You can wine and cry all you want, but the constitution and the government won’t help you!
According to The Wichita Eagle;
Kobach told The Associated Press on Monday he asked the Kansas attorney general's office and the Wyandotte County district attorney to investigate the rally at his home, and described the crowd of protesters as threatening. The crowd has been estimated between 200 to 300 people.
Kobach has made a career of anti-immigrant laws and policies around the entire country. Where did he get the idea that such activity, which amounts to constant attacks on the rights of those who live in the country, would not have any consequences?
Mr. Kobach you are a public official. Protests and criticism come with the territory. GET OVER IT YOU BIG CRY BABY! And just get used to it. It’s not going away. If you can’t take the heat, get out of politics. You are already the most racist politician in Kansas, since the demise of the Ku Klux Klan. Most of us don’t feel any need for trash politicians as you anyway.

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Brownback trades child support contract for donations

June 22, 2013, 2:12 pm
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Being an arrogant Tea Party governor means never having to apologize for being corrupted and taking bribes. That fact was made public by The Kansas City Star article “Brownback donor’s Mississippi company gets Kansas child support contract.”
According to the article;

“A Mississippi company run by one of Gov. Sam Brownback's donors has been awarded one of the four contracts to privatize Kansas child support enforcement.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that the Kansas Department for Children and Families announced Friday that Jackson, Miss.-based YoungWilliams Child Support Services was awarded one of the contracts. Company CEO Robert Wells and his wife, Pam, both gave maximum $2,000 donations to Brownback's campaign.”
Not only is Browback openly awarding contracts to those companies who have paid him off (bribery) but he is out to privatize government agencies that need to concentrate on the welfare of children and not on profiting off of people’s problems. The idea of privatizing these sensitive agencies that deal with child welfare is outright ridiculous. It is criminal to allow people to profit from other people’s tragedies. How do we know that a for-profit corporation is going to care about anything other than their bottom line of making money? Fairness will be a thing of the past since child support enforcement will now be about collecting money and fees only. Justice is now a commodity to buy and sell here in Kansas.

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Rep. Pompea wants us to just “trust the government” when we get spied on

June 24, 2013, 9:51 am
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From 

Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;

While many Tea Party Republicans express a cold skepticism of the government’s spying on us, Wichita’s very own US Representative Mike Pompeo, has assured us that we can trust him and the federal government. In fact he has insisted we are much safer now that our internet privacy is disappearing.
There is no need to worry about our government taking advantage of its advanced spy technology on us. According to Pompeo we can trust the government to do the right thing. He also believes we need to give up our freedom in order to win the never-ending war on terrorism.
According to a statement released to his constituents:
“We cannot abandon effective tools in the War on Terror any more than we can abandon the battlefield—too many lives are at risk. These programs work. In fact, they have worked close to home stopping terrorist plotters in Kansas City. Over 50 terrorist schemes have ended and American lives have been saved—those of our soldiers and those at home—because our professional intelligence community uses these programs. We must support them. We must continue our effective oversight to ensure the privacy of American citizens. And we must win this War on Terror…..”
But does he actually provide details of all these thwarted terror attempts? Not in his news letter to his constituents. He does, however, find a way to point fingers at other government attempts at domestic spying on his conservative allies, while trying to justify his personal “war on terror.” In his newsletter;
“There are few whose distrust of government is greater than mine. The actions of the IRS and of this administration following the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi do not engender confidence and provide no reason to trust this administration. I will remain vigilant in holding this administration accountable for each of those scandals and for executing the government’s central mission of securing our nation…..”
And some of his arguments amount to:”don’ts spy on our conservative people—just spy on liberals or anti-government people:”
“Some have compared the NSA program to the IRS’s scandalous targeting of political opponents of the administration. That comparison is inappropriate. For starters, the military leaders and professional counterterrorism officials at the NSA were acting within the scope of existing law. The IRS officials targeting Tea Party groups were not. Furthermore, General Alexander and Deputy Director Joyce take seriously their mission to keep us safe and protect our civil liberties. You will not see them in a Star Trek spoof video or in a Conga line at a taxpayer-funded conference the way we have seen IRS officials (click here/ my own version). The NSA culture of respecting the rule of law, the mission-driven leaders, and congressional and judicial oversight provide enormous protections for the American people.”
So he’s all for protecting his right-wing allies, but everyone else can just suck it up when it comes to privacy. He has also demonized the man who blew the whistle on government’s violation of our rights:
“Notorious leaker Edward Snowden has recently, and falsely, claimed two programs have resulted in the National Security Agency’s listening to phone calls and reading emails of U.S. citizens unconnected to terrorist activity. Not surprisingly, many in the media have parroted these claims notwithstanding their untrustworthy source.
…Snowden swore an oath of allegiance to the U.S., then stole U.S. secrets, snuck off to Communist China and now pretends to be acting in the best interests of a country that he has both betrayed and fled. These are the actions of a felon and a coward, not a whistleblower or a hero. We have already seen al Qaeda shift its communication tactics as a result of these leaks. It will now be much harder for us to find them.”
Again there are no actual evidence given to back up his claims, so we are just supposed to take his word for it that Snowden is a coward and a traitor. The actual enemy he alerted to is our government’s spying activity on its own people who have every right to know what their government is doing to them.
Once again we see the biased evidence that Pompeo uses to justify his ridiculous accusations. For example:
“Yesterday, I had the chance to go on Fox News and speak about these programs:
…As a veteran, I want our soldiers in the field to have the intelligence they need to perform their missions effectively. As a conservative, and member of the House Intelligence Committee, I take the balance between privacy and protecting American lives very seriously. I believe these anti-terror programs are crucial.”
He also quoted the most conservative and most discredited congresswoman in the US Congress today; “Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who he claims also asked the right questions. The answers she received were clear and unequivocal. Click here.”
So Pompeo has tried to defend his attacks on people’s privacy to The Wichita Eagle. At the same time, Yahoo News has revealed that the FBI and other agencies have used drones to spy on US citizens:
“When it comes to domestic surveillance, sometimes Congress seems like it’s expressing shock and outrage about something it already knows—or should have known. Take the use of drones on U.S. soil.
FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted at a hearing this week that his agency uses unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance on U.S. soil. Mueller insisted the FBI used drones “in a very, very minimal way”—but his comments did nothing to quiet the raging debate over privacy rights in the aftermath of National Security Agency spying revelations.”
So for those of us who live in Wichita, under Pompeo’s district, we can kiss our privacy good-by. Pompeo clearly just doesn’t care.

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Should we demand end to long DMV waits or is that just “the future that awaits us?”

June 27, 2013, 6:51 am
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We don’t usually respond to The Wichita Eagle’s“Letters to the editor,” but Chuck Jones is probably typical of the people who wonder how we ended up with such long lines at the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV). Jones wrote;
“Every once in a while The Eagle publishes another story about some poor taxpayer who spent six hours or more renewing his driver’s license. What is mind-boggling to me is that the citizens of Kansas are putting up with this absurdity.”
Well Mr. Jones, the people of Kansas not only tolerate this abuse, they VOTED FOR IT. Governor Sam Brownback and his recently elected allies promised to make major cuts to the government budget and to provide this state with a SMALLER GOVERNMENT. They openly fired thousands of public employees and promised us we would never really miss them.
“The governor should call in those in charge of this mess and tell them they have three months to reduce the wait time to 30 minutes or less and that if they can’t do it, they will be replaced. Repeat as necessary until the problem is fixed.”
The problem here is that the governor IS responsible for this mess. Brownback created it with the help of his Tea Party Republican allies, who just got elected about a year ago. The drivers license bureau is not the only government entity that is being affected by all of this “SMALLER GOVERNMENT” we were promised. Anyone who needs to call and talk to a person about any government service will find long waits and anything that is sent to them, will take three times longer to get. For example, it now takes me six to eight weeks to receive my new teaching license, rather than the one to two weeks it took before Brownback. This is what happens when employees are just let go and no plan is in place to deal with the overload of customers. This is not California. This is Kansas and it is being promoted as the state of the future. This is the Tea Party utopia they want to promote in every state of the union, including California.
So Mr. Jones, warn your California friends that following the lead of Kansas will lead to this and other forms of frustration to anyone who needs to use government services. The only way to fix this is to GET RID of our governor and all his Tea Party friends. THEY CREATED THIS MESS. They lied and said those workers were not really needed and we would never notice them being fired.
If you have had to visit the DMV, just learn to get used to it, because this is the state of the future and this is just part of that future. Either vote the bums out or just get used to this. It will only get worse as this “cut to the core” philosophy continues. 

So remember Kansas—you voted for this! What did you think was going to happen?
Pix by http://www.clarisconsulting.net/blog/dont-wait/.
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White racists in Wichita attempt to incite a riot at a peaceful protest

August 4, 2013, 8:24 pm
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There was a march supporting Trayvon Martin, this morning at 11am. As this video shows we still have our share of racist provocateurs in our community.

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Economic Freedom—lies and distortions from Charles Koch

August 4, 2013, 8:30 pm
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As usual with Charles Koch, this add running on TV in the Kansas area and elsewhere, is very misleading. It starts off telling you that if you earn $34,000 a year you are in the top 1 % of the world’s earners. What he is not telling us is that about 1/3 of the world has people who earn $2.50 an hour or less. No one living in the US could afford to live on a salary that low. But some countries are poor, their people live in huts or shanties and about all they have to buy with that money is a small amount of food. Many people in such countries have no electricity, running water, flush toilets or few if any health services.


Notice the graph on world earnings below:


Notice that North America and Europe together make up about 2/3rd’s of the world’s wealth. The US makes up most of North America.
The reality is that most of the countries in this graph have a relatively similar economic system. “Economic freedom” as Koch tells us, is really not that different from country to country.
For example India makes up only 2%. But how much economic freedom does that country have?
According to Wikipedia:
“Until 1991, all Indian governments followed protectionist policies that were influenced by socialist economics. Widespread state intervention and regulation largely walled the economy off from the outside world. An acute balance of payments crisis in 1991forced the nation to liberalise its economy; since then it has slowly moved towards a free-market system by emphasising both foreign trade and direct investment inflows. India's recent economic model is largely capitalist. India has been a member of WTO since 1 January 1995.”
But does all the economic freedom result in well paid happy workers? Again Wikipedia:
 “However, the country ranks 140th in the world in nominal GDP per capita and 129th in GDP per capita at PPP
……. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption,malnutrition, inadequate public healthcare, and terrorism[1].
So people in the US are economically better off than the people in India. According to Wikipedia here are some differences between India and the US including population, India has 1.27 billion people, the US has 315 million people, The US has more land and more resources, so that has a great deal to do with the differences in their place in the world economy.
The United States is a developed country and has the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2012 GDP of $15.6 trillion – 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity, as of 2011.
Then there is Europe that has 32% of the world’s share of wealth. About 30% of Europe’s workers belong to unions, compared to12% of workers in The US. That means that Europeans get better wages and benefits than their US counterparts.
One country that is very poor, vet has many economic freedoms and lacks government regulations is Bangladesh. The Rana Plaza Garment fire disaster in Bangladesh, caused the deaths of at least 1,127 workers, due to ignoring safety regulations. The minimum wage for Bangladesh's garment workers is $37 a month.. That’s one country where economic freedom and lack of government over-reach has not benefited workers.
So don’t be fooled by the phony statistics of any ad put out by Charles Koch. His ad is mostly just lies and that is what he and his brother do best.
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