Kelly rocks the “free money” tour

ANALYSIS – Fresh from pick-pocketing our $190 million federal income tax refund with her veto of SB 22, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly and Lt. Governor Lynn Rogers last week barnstormed Kansas like a 2019 version of a Motley Crue tour, belting out the praises of obsolete Obamacare Medicaid expansion and partying hard on the promise of bigger, richer government.

But unlike when The Crue buzz-sawed through Bramlage Coliseum in Manhattan that spring of 1990, this time you’re not going to have a choice whether or not to buy a ticket. In fact, Medicaid expansion – which raises the poverty line so some 150,000 additional able-bodied, childless adults can qualify for publicly-funded benefits, will complete Kelly’s tax-hike trifecta when combined with your federal tax refund dollars and that $90 million for new school funding approved in recent weeks.

For the Democrat Governor, Democrats in the Legislature and Democrats masquerading as Republicans who support that raucous spending, the early months of the Governor’s term has been like one great big backstage party. But the hangover’s coming.

With Medicaid specifically, no one’s yet answered what becomes of poor, legitimately needy people after the program expands to include adults who are 38 percent (italic) over (end italic) the present poverty line? Can the needs of people at the bottom of the scale still be served once we include 150,000 additional people who previously made too much money to qualify?

         In this way, Kelly’s love affair with Obamacare is a major reset in the way Medicaid used to be viewed in Kansas; from the old concept of providing healthcare for people who can’t provide for themselves, to providing it for those who are able to work and find other options on their own.

         And the extra head count is just the beginning. States which have jumped on the “free government money” bandwagon of Obamacare found new enrollees actually numbered an additional 50 to 100 percent more than the initial estimates foretold. That means Kansas’ new 150,000 enrollees could possibly be 260,000 to 300,000, with total costs as high as $1 billion per year. Even with your federal taxes and deficit spending going to pay for Obamacare’s offer to pay 90 percent of a Medicaid expansion, that still leaves Kansas on the hook for a cool $100 million in additional real cash spending – every year.

         Where’s that extra Kansas tax money going to come from?

         To help with the political and financial baggage of Medicaid expansion, Kelly joins the Kansas Hospital Association on the chorus that more Medicaid dollars will save your local hospital. Granted, Medicaid expansion might add a little revenue for Kansas hospitals, but certainly not enough to fix what ails them.

Kansas’ rural hospitals aren’t struggling because of too little Medicaid funding. They’re struggling because their margins are thinner than their urban cousins, and because the Kansas economy is weak – just ask any small businessperson in the state who’s trying to scratch out a living outside of Johnson or Sedgwick counties.

The flow of money in our state is still heavily impacted by low oil prices and by low farm commodity prices. Also, we hemorrhage population – college graduates and productive, working-age families with good incomes and private-pay health insurance leave the state in droves for greener pastures, taking their health care dollars with them. Couple that with higher taxes already wrought upon us by ever-increasing school funding and a federal tax refund that should have been ours and not state government’s, and it gets easy to tell why our hospitals struggle for enough business to remain open.

If our governor had a modicum of the initiative it takes the average concert goer to rush the floor barricades and make it to the front of the stage, we’d already have a better option than another “easy money” government program. The best Kelly can do is keep us in the nose bleed section.

– Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.

Et tu, Jerry?

In Kansas Senator Jerry Moran’s world, Washington, D.C., is a constructive, intuitive place where everyone has logical, common goals unfettered by unseemly influence or ulterior motives; a place where divisions between Democrats and Republicans are readily bandaged with a kind word and a solid Howard Cunningham-style pep talk; a place where the sun rises with hope each day and the Cleveland Browns have a chance to win a Super Bowl.

Other Republicans look out upon a national battle map where our representatives are engaged in a cold war between the struggling Democratic Republic and the emerging old-style Socialism being embraced by Democrats. They see they things differently.

For the Kansas Republicans who twice elected Moran to the U.S. Senate and recoiled in disgust last week when the Senator announced he would support a resolution against President Trump’s border wall emergency declaration, the betrayal is one of Shakespearian proportion. Few Republicans view the situation at the nation’s border with Mexico as anything less than an immediate national emergency, either from the standpoint of the human tragedy befalling the illegal immigrants attempting to make the trip through Central America and Mexico, or from the standpoint of a flat-out invasion of undocumented freeloaders into our debt-plagued country.

But Moran’s betrayal of the Trump agenda didn’t just begin here. Moran has spent much time already wringing his hands over this rogue, activist presidency. Moran’s button-down white shirt and red tie institutionalism has squirmed in discomfort as Trump brazenly slugged it out with the Socialist hoards in both houses led by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Occasional Cortex. Moran can’t understand why we all can’t just get along – why adult legislators can’t act like adults, come to a compromise, and work together. The president and most of the country, however, have given up expecting choruses of kumbaya.

The senator may not remember the president’s efforts at negotiation with House and Senate Democratic leadership over the weeks leading up to and including the December/January government shutdown. Trump wisely capitulated in order to put federal workers back on their jobs and re-fire the colossal engines of federal finance. Then he made fresh offers to advance discussions with Democrat leaders anew – and was flatly refused yet again.

And perhaps Moran hasn’t been watching the agonizing ironies besetting his Democrat colleagues. On one hand they have to keep Trump from gaining a win of any kind that might help in the 2020 election; on the other they have to try to stop the leftward stampede of their party toward bona fide Socialism so as to not alienate legions of centrist voters and stampede them into the Republicans’ welcoming ranks. Pelosi and Schumer are fighting a battle on two fronts, and they're losing.

Just as disappointing was Moran's melba toast manifesto explaining his betrayal. In an 18-point excuse released after the announcement, Moran claimed the 1977 law passed by Congress that allows Presidential Emergency Orders is unconstitutional and should be appealed or amended. He says he supports better border security, (but…). He said there are yet other ways for the president to fund the construction of the wall. He said he’s always been opposed to the overreach of presidential powers even under President Obama. It’s a matter of conscience, and sets the precedent for abuse of power from presidents to come, Moran argues.

Such noble foresight, but one wonders how many illegal immigrants and their children signed contracts in blood with ruthless Coyotes to cross the border while Moran penned his law professor’s lecture response? Or how many criminal illegals sold drugs or staffed the armies of Los Angeles gang bangers? Or how many bought Social Security numbers stolen from native-born American children to establish their bogus identities? Moran's treatise on his own lack of leadership is like debating the virtue of fluoride in public water with the firemen who’ve come to extinguish your blazing house.

The expectation is that Trump will veto the measure, and opponents lack the votes to overturn that veto. If so, the wall may become secondary to Kansas Republicans, who will then assess Moran’s betrayal of trust and whether he has a future as a Kansas Senator.

– Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review, a weekly community newspaper in Garnett, Kan., winner of The Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award.

Kansas hemp license fees keep state's farmers out of new, lucrative crop

   Although farmers in multiple states will be making money this year on their first legal industrial hemp crop in 80 years, the Kansas Department of Agriculture has set its "research" license and fee structure so exorbitantly high the practical effect will be to keep Kansas farmers out of the industry – again.

   These jacked-up fees – over $1,200 for initial state paperwork before a farmer ever even scuffs his boots in the dirt for a hem[ crop – appear aimed at discouraging Kansans from dipping a toe in the water of what will soon be a thriving option for crop rotations and a potentially lucrative addition to various Kansas agriculture revenue streams. With its fees so high, it's hard to imagine why KDOA wasn't more excited when the Kansas hemp bill was debated two years ago in the legislature. At double the fees other states charge, KDOA should have been able to muster a little better than a "neutral" position on the bill when it was debated by legislators.

   Here's the way this shakedown shakes out: for a crop which has no intoxicant, narcotic or psychoactive potential, the Kansas Department of Agriculture intends to pop each applicant (whether grower, distributor, processor, etc.) a $47 fingerprint fee. Since industrial hemp is no more a threat to your senses than corn, we have to wonder if a fingerprint fee will be required to grow corn next year as well?

   From there we move to a basic application fee – $200 into the KDOA coffers just to fill out the form. This is twice the $100 fee charged by states like Kentucky, which actually want to encourage the crop.

   Now that the state has your fingerprints, your phone number, your social security number and presumably knows where to send your mail, you have to pay an extra $1,000 for the grower's license. Yep, a thousand clams.

   If you want to get into the business end of industrial hemp and operate in Kansas, a distributor license is going to set you back $2,000 before you even buy a single paper clip. If you want to invest in the Kansas economy with your own money for specialized equipment and a facility to become a processor of hemp fiber or grain – that's a cool $3,000 for the privilege of doing it in Kansas. And if you want to process the high-end floral presses that squeeze out that expensive hemp oil – Kansas is going to stick you for $6,000.

   By comparison, Kansas makers of the demon alcohol skate by on the cheap. For a farm winery – up and running lock, stock and barrel for $500; farm winery outlet to sell your own hootch, just an extra $100; want to package and sell your own product from your microbrewery? Check your sofa cushions for a measily $200. Now, nobody's ever gotten intoxicated on industrial hemp because it's like getting intoxicated on alfalfa. And please note: these alcohol license fees, designed to "encourage" wineries and the brewing arts apparently for tourism sake, are for two years, not just one.

   In fairness some, but not many, states have higher license fees associated with their hemp "research" programs than the Sunflower state. Not many, however, are foisting those bureaucratic junk fees on farmers who've been losing money on $3.70 corn and wrestling with soybean prices under $8.50 per bushel in recent years. In Vermont, where they grow mostly sweet corn, potatoes and apples, the license fee last year for a 100 acre industrial hemp plot was $25.

         Considering Kansas' continual low finish in the nation's economic growth rankings, we have to wonder how many times in the past 100 years we've looked squarely at solid opportunities – but been unable to get out of our own way in order to realize them? Unfortunately, industrial hemp may be the next one.        ###

-Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.

Former KC weather man to speak on wind farms at Thursday meeting in Mound City

MOUND CITY, Kan. –  Former Kansas City Fox 4 weatherman Mike Thompson who now advocates for community groups trying to fight industrial wind farms, will bring the science and politics of massive wind turbine fields to light in a special presentation, Thursday, March 7, at the Linn County Fairgrounds in Mound City.

         The event is hosted by Concerned Citizens of Linn County, Kansas, which is engaged in opposition to a proposed 30,000 acre wind farm near Mound City to be built by the German-based E.ON Corporation. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at the 4H Building on the fairgrounds.

         Thompson, a native of Burlington, said his presentation is based off his years of study and a hard look at the scientific irregularities that pervade the wind industry.

         “Basically it’s a fairly comprehensive look at how wind power is very problematic from a number of standpoints,” Thompson said. “What I speak about is the inefficiencies of wind power and how much more our electrical bills are each year as a result of the increasing number of wind farms going up.”

         Thompson was a member of the Kansas City television media for decades and was the meteorologist and on-air weatherman at Fox 4 Kansas City from 1992 until he retired in a contract buy-out last December.

         Thompson said federal subsidies to wind farms had hurt base power plants by driving down the wholesale price of electricity when it floods the grid with unneeded power. That forces rate increases to customers because companies still have to pay for the consistent, base power production we all rely on.

         The event is free and the public is invited to attend. Any schedule changes will be posted at the CCLC’s Facebook page. Contact David Fisher with questions at (913)226-8284.

Wait-a-minute Governor Kelly – That's OUR money

EDITORIAL – Thank you to Republicans in the Kansas Senate for reminding Governor Laura Kelly and Democrats in the Legislature that it is our money, after all.

Recently the Senate voted 25-14 to approve a bill that streamlines Kansas tax law with 2017 federal tax changes instituted as a part of President Trump's economic stimulus package. The change in Kansas would put $190 million in tax payments back into the hands of the corporations and individuals that paid it in –  and who will, in turn, spend it, save it or reinvest it.

It doesn't really matter what we do with it – it was our money from the start.

But Democrats in the governor's office and the legislature are miffed. They were hoping the taxpayers who paid that money in would just forget all about it and make it fodder for Governor Kelly's upcoming spending spree – buckets of additional tax money headed toward even more expensive state education finance, expansion of state Medicaid to able-bodied adults earning incomes at 138 percent of the poverty line, etc. Kelly's Christmas list is going to be expensive, and it will require another tax increase in addition to the one in 2017 (the largest in state history)  even if she got to keep our federal refund. Unless, of course, Republicans in the Legislature throttle back her drunken sailor spending plans.

It's easy for folks in government to develop the idea that the tax money collected from us is just some nebulous mass that's always been in state coffers and always will be. Whether you raise taxes or whether you just refuse to give back what is due doesnít matter – the idea is pervasive that it's money that really belongs to the government and never belonged to hard-working people trying to make their own living.

 Of course, that's simply not true.

It is the earning power of individual taxpayers and of the companies we build and manage that provides those funds for government. Socialists now gaining ground in the modern political arena and who are electing Democrats to execute their policies would prefer the government got our paychecks first, and then in their generosity decided how much of our own pay we should get to put in our pockets.

The problem that Socialists don't understand is that without a vibrant, free economy there's no income to tax, hence no funding for government to spend. Once oil-rich Venezuela, where Socialism was so gleefully embraced years ago and where the starving population is now eating its pets and zoo animals due to economic collapse, is a prime example. Graft and cronyism and waste thrive in government when there's an unending supply of other people's money.

The Trump philosophy that pulled the gag off that $190 million in hostage tax money is the same philosophy that has hitched a rocket to the national economy. Unemployment is down, notably among minorities and women, jobs are being created faster than they can be filled, companies are re-tooling for American production and consumer confidence is zooming.

And as far as we know nobody's eating dog, unless that's just how they roll.

But these profitable lessons in solid economic theory won't convince Governor Kelly and Kansas Democrats to turn that money back over to Kansas workers and let them plug it into the state's economy the way they see fit. Kelly most likely will veto the measure when it hits her desk, and put the squeeze on Republicans to count up enough votes to try to override her veto.

But Kelly needs to be wary in coveting money that belongs to so many Kansans.

She won the governor's seat only because latte-sipping liberals in Johnson County, where 22 percent of the state's registered voters reside, wanted to heel and hide Kris Kobach to a barn door for being a conservative. Conservatives, however, gained seats in the House and Senate across the rest of the state.

Kelly should return that tax refund because it's the right thing to do. Lacking that vision, she should do the math in the Legislature and imagine, as she lusts after money that's not her's, just how rough Republicans might make her next four years. 

– Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.

Wind companies choke truth with gag orders

The wind may blow free, but the use of gag orders in lease agreements and easements that force property owners to keep their mouths shut about the realities they endure as sites for those giant wind turbines makes information flow anything but.

That's critical in this fat cat, tax-credit fueled industry which, more and more, depends on secrecy as much as it does a steady breeze. Wind farm developers like to point to thousands of lease holders at projects across the country and how few complaints they have about their gigantic neighbors, but they never mention the source of all that satisfaction – prosecution and financial ruination due to gag clauses in those signed leases and easement agreements. Indeed, where you can keep control of the smoke, there's no evidence of a fire.

Keeping tight control of information and particularly criticism from eye-witnesses is allowing wind companies like those moving against targets in Linn and Neosho counties and other rural communities in Kansas to go about their business without interference from public regulatory authorities and other outsiders who want to chronicle precisely how much damage is being done by wind turbines. Silenced victims suffer for their property, their environment and their own health. But the gag orders that bind those lease holders are clear: Speak up, particularly to the media, and not only will your lease payments disappear but we'll sue you – and we'll still have a 55-story tall tower on your land which you can't stop us from operating.

Perhaps the most damning casualty of this secrecy is in the kibosh it has put to extended research on Wind Turbine Syndrome, a health condition identified among many people living near wind turbines and believed to be caused by light flicker from the moving blades, fluctuations in air pressure as those blades move past their base tower and low-frequency noise they produce. In her book “Wind Turbine Syndrome: A report on a natural experiment,” Dr. Nina Pierpont conducted extensive clinical interviews with 10 families living near wind farm turbines both in the U.S. and abroad. The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine-trained pediatrician discovered a striking uniformity of complaints from these families – migraine, motion sickness, vertigo, noise and visual and gastrointestinal sensitivity, and anxiety. Between the time of her interviews and the final publication of the book, nine of the ten families had fled their homes for residences away from wind farms, and a 10^th who couldn't afford to move did extensive renovations to their house in an attempt to defeat the pressure and frequency issues, and had reduced air flow inside the home to the point it was now hard to heat.

A full-on epidemiological study however will probably never be done – one that correlates the common symptoms Pierpont identified and possible causes like setback from a turbine and what aspects of exposure to measure – because the bulk of the study subjects are all gagged.

“Better Plan Wisconsin” is a wind farm opposition organization in the Badger State which got hold of a wind farm lease from a farmer who'd had enough. The story is nearly identical state to state and lease to lease. Landowners who sign leases or easements can't discuss noise, vibration, shadow flicker or any disruptions the turbines might cause to their properties. The gag orders stop all discussion regarding the terms of the lease, or the construction or operation of the turbines, as well as speaking to reporters or to anyone in the media or issuing statements or press releases without the written permission of the wind company. Then there's this jewel:

“This section shall survive the termination of expiration of this lease,” meaning the gag order survives forever, even after the lease is terminated. Under the threat of litigation, you are gagged for life.

Still, impoverished county leaders and farmers embrace the promise of lease payments and payments in lieu of taxes (Kansas wind farms are exempt from property taxes, unlike other power plants), ignoring the deafening silence coming from those signed to the lease agreements.

Yes, silence is golden. That's just how the wind companies want it. ###

– Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.

My 4 year-old, the Mexican drug mule

My youngest daughter was four years old when her Social Security number was found in the possession of an illegal alien living in Lincoln, Neb., who’d been arrested in connection with a methamphetamine bust. 

So I have a unique perspective on criminal immigration and the major underground industry which buying and selling stolen SSI numbers has become in the illegal immigrant community. The crime reaches to every corner of the U.S., even 3,000 population Garnett, Kansas.

It is an unfortunate component of countless crimes involving illegal immigrants, including the death of Iowa college student Mollee Tibbetts, whose body was discovered last fall in an Iowa cornfield a month after she went missing while jogging. A 24 year-old illegal who worked on a nearby dairy farm led investigators to the body and has since been charged with her stabbing and murder. His trial is set for April.

Indeed it’s the trade in stolen SSI numbers that helps facilitate the illegal immigration challenge that faces the U.S. Just as big a problem is that the Social Security Administration has virtually nothing to gain in helping solve the crime. 

A SSI number is the magic key for people not legally authorized to be in the country. With it comes employment authenticity and a bona fide identity; it’s a guarantee that payroll taxes can be paid and unemployment contributions withheld, and that your employment identity will fade into the woodwork like so many millions of tax paying workers. It is anonymity that illegal immigrants pay dearly to have. 

In Mollie Tibbetts’ case, Christhian Rivera apparently falsified his credentials used by the E-Verify system, the internet-based process that runs an individual’s identity through Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to determine one’s status both nationally and internationally. Rivera’s employer says Rivera passed the E-Verify check. While the full details are not yet known, it is highly likely Rivera had a stolen SSI number. 

The sobering phone call I got at my office that day 11 years ago from a DEA agent based in Omaha was as enlightening as it was terrifying. His first question: Did we have any domestic help working in our house? It’s common, he explained, for house cleaning staff working in people’s homes to gain access to children’s SSI numbers and sell them to brokers who then resell them to illegals in package deals that set them up in this country. Hospital staff in children’s wings or doctor’s offices work their opportunities too, he told me, because they have access to those numbers from the minute they’re assigned at birth through any time the child seeks medical treatment thereafter. 

They like kids’ numbers, he told me, because they’re less likely to be used much and they’re pretty much inactive until the first time the kid pays taxes from a summer job or has to file a tax return. In our case we believed our daughter’s number had been compromised for at least two years – and at no time did it ever seem strange to anyone who worked at Social Security that a four year-old would be paying employment taxes from a construction job in Nebraska?

But then again, why should Social Security care who pays into the fund? The more the merrier, as far as SSI is concerned, considering its pyramid scheme mechanics have it set for eventual insolvency anyway.

I also have reason to wonder how extensive is the background check within the E-Verify system if a four year-old paying employment taxes from a construction or farm labor job doesn’t raise a red flag with someone.

Now our family's worries are double.

Not only do we have to be concerned that multiple as yet unknown others may have been sold our daughter’s SSI number, but we have to wonder, when one day included as a part of her college applications, car loans, mortgage documents or military enlistment papers, will her SSI number be flagged by some leftover error from a drug bust in Lincoln, or who knows what else? 

Common sense dictates, as border patrol agents and those who live close to the border recount constantly, that we need a wall or "physical barrier" or whatever you want to call it to help stem the tide of illegals surging into our country. But we need a credible screening system within the Social Security Administration to ferret out stolen numbers and bogus employees to countermand the damage done by criminal illegals who are already here.

-Dane Hicks is president of Garnett Publishing, Inc., and publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.