House liberals win

It looks as though the House has concurred on the Senate's plan to cut 2.75% of the budget. That means the hole isn't really fixed as the Senate plan didn't fix the entire deficit. That also means there will be no conference committee between the House and the Senate. Basically House liberals decided no input into the Senate's budget was better than allowing any conservative input in the House.

How the rest of the hole will be filled isn't hard to figure out. Tax increases that everyone will scream are "revenue enhancements."

Is safety more important than racial profiling?

Is the safety of the public more important than the issue of racial profiling?

Steve Cisneros, executive director of the governor's Hispanic and Latino American Affairs Commission and a member of the state profiling task force, said profiling is a lesser concern than safety. He added that he recently spoke with a Hispanic woman whose daughter was killed in a car accident while not wearing a seat belt. "She said, 'I wish my daughter was here to tell me she was racially profiled. Now I have to talk to her at the cemetery,'" Cisneros said.

Did I just read that right? Public safety trumps racial profiling? Would Cisneros have given the same response if asked about profiling used at airports to target potential terrorists? After all, public safety trumps racial profiling, right?

Is this the only argument the big brother government lovers have to answer the very real concern expressed by Rep. Brenda Landwehr that primary seat belt laws could lead to more racial profiling by law enforcement? Apparently. Either that or it was a very poorly thought out attack on a lawmaker by Dion Lefler at the Wichita Eagle.

As if that wasn't enough, Cisneros decides that he needs to use a deceased woman to drive home the point that it's better for someone to be alive than to be discriminated against. I guess it never occurred to anyone on the left that it doesn't take a government official to pull a seat belt across your body and click it. Why don't we strive for seat belt use AND no racial profiling? Why does Cisneros believe the two are mutually exclusive?

Republican leadership needs to get a clue

News is breaking today from the Lawrence Journal-World that Republican legislative leaders gave some hefty bonuses to their staff while at the same time seeking cuts to state employee salaries.

That's not to say the article wasn't a hit piece. Only House leadership was mentioned and I'm sure Senate leaders were involved as well. Plus it doesn't mention what Democrats were doing with their pay scale, so I'm going to guess the paper never checked. And after all the nice things I had to say about them.

In the end leadership should have known how this would look, especially when trying to cut state employee salaries (which should be done.) As much as everyone likes to blame the media, this fiasco falls squarely on those handing out the checks. Honestly, who couldn't have seen this one coming?

Steve Rose says vetoed abortion bills are constitutional

Okay, so the headline is a little misleading. But not by much.

Steve Rose, publisher of the JoCo Sun, wrote an editorial that gives his take on how the state will look when Sam Brownback is elected Governor. First, there's this little tidbit.

Under Sam Brownback, there will be no checks and balances with the conservative Legislature.

Well, shucks Steve, I guess I must have missed the editorial you ran blasting Obama and Democrats because of the lack of checks and balances between Congress and the President. Perhaps you were waiting for a filibuster proof majority in the Senate before running that piece, huh? I'd say now would be the time to run it. Or is it only unbalanced when conservatives are in control? You might want to clarify that one.

To me what is most freighting is that his hypothetical isn't even true. Perhaps the 2010 elections will shift the House to be more conservative, but the Senate will remain in the hand of Morris and Vratil, hardly my definition of conservative. And I wouldn't exactly call the House conservative either, having just reject a completely reasonable 2010 budget. So while I appreciate the cred Rose is handing out, it seems to be mostly self serving so he can frighten people into not voting for Brownback.

As entertaining as that was, this is my favorite part.

Every conceivable anti-abortion piece of legislation that is constitutional will be approved by Sam Brownback.

Isn't that interesting? Every piece that is constitutional will be approved. So, what's he saying about the past? That every piece of legislation that was constitutional was rejected by Sebelius? I thought the party line was that anything the Legislature passed was unconstitutional? That's the last reason she gave before jetting off to D.C. Does Rose disagree with Queen Kathleen? It seems like it.

So there you have it. Even the liberals think past abortion policy changes in Kansas were constitutional. Hats off to Rose for finally having the guts to admit it, even if it was just in a passive absent-minded editorial.

Big spenders should write "delayed tax cuts" in stone

No one wants to admit that stopping a phased out tax cut is a tax increase. Democrats and Republicans alike want to call it everything they can without calling it a "tax increase." Apparently taxes can take a third direction besides up or down.

And of course, we should all just trust them on this one. You know, it's just for a little bit. "We'll phase the tax out eventually, trust us, we're politicians and we always follow through on our promises! We're like Wal-Mart. Always low taxes. Always."

That's the faith Democrats and "moderate" Republicans are asking of fiscally responsible legislators and the public. They want to stop the phase out of the death tax and the franchise tax, but what they won't say, and what isn't being reported, is that there is no timetable in any of the proposed bills that would continue the phase out of tax cuts approved several years ago. Rather than lambasting the fiscally responsible, how about a show of good faith by setting a new timetable to continue phasing out these unfair and irresponsible taxes? I thought it was all about compromise? How about a little compromise on the part of the tax and spenders; be willing to put your promises into statute.

There's a good reason a timetable will never be set. It's not because it couldn't be changed later. After all, the current timetable can be adjusted with just a majority passage of a bill. No, there's a much more sinister reason tax and spend politicians don't want to set a timetable into statute; because then they'd have to publicly change the timetable again in a couple of years when their out of control spending can't be supported by the tax base.

It's really that simple. It's much easier to promise a tax cut in the future without having to ever vote on it than it is to put it in statute and have to take a public vote in a few years to change it again. After all, if it's just a verbal promise then come election time it can be the "other" guy's fault a proposal never came to a vote. Put an actual delay in statute and each and every legislator automatically becomes responsible for their vote and whether or not they'll follow through on their "delay" promises.

(Why the photo? I don't know. I just think Paul Davis is a really scary looking person.)

Get ready to hear the educrats squeal

Prepare yourself to hear the government bankrolled educrats squeal. A House committee working on the budget shortfall is looking at a 3.3% cut in education funding. That's about $100 million overall.

I can't even begin to imagine what is going to be said after the reaction over a measly 1% cut. It's for the children, don't you know? Yes I know, and if more money equaled better results, I might consider getting on board. But time and time again studies have shown more money doesn't make students perform better or prepare them to enter college or the real world.

To understand that money does not equal performance, one needs to look no further than Kansas City, Missouri. In 1985, a federal judge ordered the district to come up with a plan to close the gap in achievement among white and black students. The catch? Money was to be no object.

A Cato Institute analysis gives us the plan formulation and the dismal results.

To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.

Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.

The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.

In fact, more money equals better schools was the mantra of educrats when the Supreme Court ordered more spending in 2005. And yet year after year no reliable evidence has been produced to show that money has a significant effect on student achievement.

Democrats have argued that Kansas should decouple it's tax code from federal tax laws to increase state revenues. Changes to Federal tax laws passed by the Democratically controlled Congress and signed by President Obama have compounded the state's budget problems because currently Kansas follow suit with any new tax breaks. And yet those changes were part of the stimulus package that was supposed to help our economy rebound. So will Kansas Democrats side with Obama or will they once again bow to the Kansas education lobby?