Watkins beats crazy for Kansas 2nd District

by Dane Hicks -   
There’s just too much crazy in the Democrat Party right now to consider anything but a Republican in the race for Kansas’ 2nd Congressional District.
    That might sound like a less-than-wholehearted endorsement of Steve Watkins, but Watkins’ strength as a candidate is a complete and separate issue to the sheer chaos we see being indulged and advocated on the part of Democrats who’ve allowed the radical left to take over their party.
    As a result, Democrats from 10 years ago don’t recognize the party as it's being led today, both in Kansas and nationally, and for good reason. Indeed, until some calm is re-established in the party’s leadership by those who either have clout or the ability to unseat its lunatic leadership, Democrat party members can’t be seriously considered for election – unless you’re a socialist.
    For starters, Democrats nationwide and in Kansas have to decide if their party intends to fully and uniformly embrace and pursue socialism as a central plank in their party’s platform. Not only did a significant percentage of Democrat Party members nationwide choose the avowed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders to lead them in the presidential primary of 2016, but Kansas Democrats themselves picked Sanders in the March 2016 caucus with nearly 68 percent of their ballots.
    The idea that Sanders, the “free stuff” candidate bent on a “free” college tuition plan along with “free” health care and “free” housing, etc., could command the majority of Kansas Democrat votes in a presidential caucus, is astounding. If Kansas Democrats would elect a political extremist as president, that alone signals Republicans, Libertarians and Independents in the state that the competence of the Democrat Party, as it now stands, is compromised.
    It’s a legitimate  worry – that a Democrat holding this congressional seat would behave in tandem with Maxine Waters’ and her calls for public harassment of Republicans; with Diane Feinstein and her shady withholding of testimony in the Kavanaugh hearing; with hysterical protestors clawing at the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court; with Portland, Ore., Mayor Ted Wheeler, who lets Antifa thugs run roughshod over the residents of his own city. The Kansas Second District deserves a congressman more fitted to our Kansas sensibilities.
    Watkins isn’t a lawyer or an experienced politician – he’s a legitimate political newcomer who’s stood up to the scrutiny of his own party and been embraced by its members who stand steadfastly against the creeping plague of socialism. He’s a soldier – a West Point graduate who’s been shot at for his country in the deserts of Afghanistan. His background in private business led to his understanding of the choking nature of needless federal regulation and its effect on jobs and the economy. Watkins will be a congressional vote to keep America on the right track.
    One of Watkins’ most admirable marks is that he has all the right enemies – liberals previously masquerading as Republicans and years ago exiled from party ranks, like John Vratil of Leawood, Wint Winter of Lawrence, Sandy Praeger of Topeka and others who’ve come out to join Kansas Democrats embracing socialism. When spend-a-holic “moderates” or liberals of any suit line up against a Kansas Republican, that’s a convincing enough endorsement.
    Steve Watkins will help hold crazy at bay until level-headed Democrats take their party back and offer the 2nd District a sane debate on issues.
– Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.

Iola Farm City Days: Anti-gun, anti-Kobach, or both?

by Dane Hicks – 

        

It isn’t just anti-Second Amendment sentiment that’s run amok in Iola with the denial by the Farm City Days committee to allow Kris Kobach’s jeep and machine gun parade entry in the FCD Parade – it’s nothing short of flat out political prejudice.

         What a shame it is that this political animosity has crept into an organization as institutional as the Iola event. Farm City Days was started four decades ago as an opportunity to bring area farmers and the ag industry together with townies to celebrate the works of the farm and the market to which those farm goods are eventually sold. Democrats, Republicans, Independents – no matter – the idea was to focus on the partnership and the beneficial synergy of farm and town. It is attended annually by thousands from around the region.

         That sentiment was the heartbeat of the organization since its inception in 1971, but now, like so much else in our country, Farm City Days has made itself about politics and the narrow, intolerant views of a handful of its organizers – all because a majority of its board has opted to foist its political beliefs upon the parade audience and restrict its parade entries according to that majority’s political leanings.

         Kobach supporter and Iolan Don Erbert’s red, white and blue jeep with its replica machine gun mount is by far the most recognizable parade entry of the summer parade season in Kansas. Breathless, hand-wringing publicity from press outlets generated Kobach tons of free media during parades prior to the primary and made the rig the most memorable of the 2018 Kansas political season, perhaps even nationally.

         The FCD committee told Erbert he could enter the parade with Kobach, but they’d have to remove the gun mount. Both men are vehement supporters of the Second Amendment, and the obvious message was that if you want to be in our parade, you’re going to need to give up on your convictions. Justifiably, they declined.

         But the question can’t be denied: did the FCD parade organizers discover they’d struck on a veiled but effective way to keep Kobach out of the parade by attacking the illustration of his Constitutional right?

         The move overall is an interesting one, considering Allen County Republicans, who cast some 90 percent of the votes in the primary, picked Kobach handily over seven contenders in the GOP field.

         Firearms are part of the American heritage, and as such part of the tradition of parades. Military color guards frequently march in parades nationwide with rifles as part of their units. Colleges and high school drill teams lead bands and carry replica rifles to conduct drill exhibitions with them. Western re-enactors carry firearms as part of their frontier regalia. Military rifle teams honor the loved ones of fallen soldiers with 21 gun salutes. Firearms are ingrained in the American sense of celebration and discipline. There is certainly no basis in history or American culture to prohibit a replica firearm from a parade float or entry.

         Unless of course you’re in Iola, and it’s Kris Kobach.

         That vote of the Farm City Days committee, which was not unanimous, resulted in the resignation in protest by its chairman. Now, word is that some sponsors – those who perhaps have a better sense of American culture and both the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution, are pulling their support.

         What a terrible thing for a handful of politically intolerant people to do to a venerable community event, all in the name of squelching a candidate and his very American beliefs.

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

Kansas: Cut taxes, cut expenses, vote Kobach

-The Anderson County Review/Dane Hicks....

         

For many Kansas voters put off by the ever-growing cost and size of government and the post-2016 antics of the country’s political left, the fact that Kris Kobach raises the hackles of liberals, socialists and their media hit men to such a degree is alone reason enough to justify voting for him in the upcoming gubernatorial election.

But if you peer through the dust and haze fomented by all the Kobach haters over the past several years, you see plenty more to like about Kris Kobach, his philosophy and his vision for Kansas.

Kobach’s media-smeared reputation revolves primarily around his work as Secretary of State and his attempts to ensure proper voter identification – in the face of critics who apparently believe every Tom, Dick or Harry should be able to vote in Kansas elections. Kobach’s private consulting work as an attorney to build legal barriers to illegal immigration has also galded the open borders crowd. The frequent and faulty assumption, dispensed by his liberal critics and embraced by a predominantly prejudicial press, however, often leaves off the “illegal” portion of the term and tries to pin Kobach as anti-immigrant instead of anti-criminal.

         But little has been noted in public circles of Kobach’s plan to reduce the size of government and thus reduce government spending – a precursor to reducing taxes and putting Kansans dollars into the economy instead of into the state’s purse.

         Kobach’s plan revolves around the simple aging of the population and the fact that retiring baby boomers make up not only a record number of private industry jobs, but also a significant portion of government jobs. Their retirement, then, is an opportunity to reduce the size and cost of government through attrition and without mass layoffs.

         Anyone in business knows labor is one of the most expensive line items in a budget, and it’s a major portion of the massive expansion of government over past decades. While the growth of the federal workforce has slowed since 1960 to around 2.5- 3 million workers, state and local governments have ballooned, tripling to over 18 million employees. Kobach successfully cut staff through attrition in the Secretary of State’s office, and saved taxpayers dollars in the process while getting the same work done.

         Every private business in the world now performs the same or more duties with less staff than it did 10 or 20 years ago. New efficiencies and technologies avail themselves, and smart operators take advantage of them.

         This is a conservative philosophy toward fiscal responsibility, and Kobach is the only candidate in the race to have properly detailed one. The idea of commensurate spending reductions to match tax cuts – an area the Kansas Legislature failed to address in the Brownback Administration’s economic plan –  being the key to any tax cut plan.

The Democrat’s nominee, Laura Kelly, embodies old school, tax-and-spend Democrat approaches – promising yet more tax money instead of more accountability for Kansas public education; seeking a financially disastrous expansion of Medicaid benefits in Kansas and pledging “support” for workers and training programs and rural enterprises. Outside of higher taxes and bigger government, there is woefully little meat on the bones of Kelly’s economic proposals.

Kelly also lacks the personal presence to effectively lead the Legislature. Her subdued personal style belies an individual more prone to following than motivating and inspiring. Indeed, many watching her acceptance speech the night she won her party’s nomination wondered, at the end, if she had actually won it at all. She makes her icy, stern-faced friend and political consort Kathleen Sebelius look like Lady Gaga.

With the nation now reaping the benefits of a conservative approach to economic growth, this is no time for Kansas to step back toward the high costs and inefficiencies of big government bloat. Kris Kobach should be Kansas’ next governor.

         

What does EPA head Scott Pruitt want in Garnett, Ks.?

It’s hard to imagine, with his short tenure as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under fire for malfeasance by Republicans and Democrats alike, what Scott Pruitt wants in Garnett at a special meeting with East Kansas Agri Energy this coming Tuesday morning.

         We have to imagine it’s not about ethanol or schmoozing the farm vote at all – we think it's the lunch special at Trade Winds.

         Why else would the Administrator of the EPA – the Big Cheese, the Top Brass, The Big Kahuna – want to tour an ethanol plant in Eastern Kansas and meet with its principals and investors, when he’s spent a good portion of the last year acting against his boss (President Trump)’s directives and shooting holes in the law that supports the ethanol industry and the farmers who play such a core role in it?

         Pruitt’s been under fire almost since he first mashed his bare toes into the deep pile of the EPA’s head office carpet. The former Oklahoma Attorney General, jointed at the hip with his state’s oil industry, was one of a flurry of picks when President Trump’s surprise election pressed him into finding cabinet members ASAP. Pruitt, who Iowa Senator Joni Ernst once referred to as being “as swampy as you can get” washed in through the drainage ditches of political favor to the detriment of tax payers, Midwestern farmers and the Trump Administration itself.

         Allegations against Pruitt of largesse on the tax payer dime are Tudor–esque; that he had a $43,000 sound proof phone booth built for his office in order to have private phone calls; that he plugged some $105,000 into first-class airfares because some of the rabble in coach were once rude to him; that his 20-person security detail (c’mon, you’re the EPA guy, not one of the Getty children) burns millions; that a Washington lobbyist buddy got him a sweetheart deal on an expensive DC condo; that he’s cozied up to industry big-wigs he’s supposed to be regulating – and that he even hurried EPA office staff off to buy him a discounted mattress from the Trump International Hotel. That list, unfortunately, goes on.

         But his biggest sin – and the one that will probably be his undoing – is his back door attacks against farmers and the Renewable Fuel Standard. The RFS is the portion of the 2005 law that requires oil refineries to blend ethanol into their gasoline. Pruitt’s friends in the oil business aren’t fond of ethanol, so to a handful of them the EPA chief has been handing out “hardship waivers” exempting them from the blending requirements – which means they save money by not having to buy ethanol and mix it into their gasoline like other refiners do.

         If the cronyism and fiscal abuse in his office isn’t enough, it’s Pruitt’s stance against ethanol – contrary to the federal law he’s supposed to be administering as head of the EPA – that has him in the crosshairs of influential Republicans who want to keep the Midwest farm vote for the president in 2020. For that, Pruitt’s recent shenanigans in alienating the farm vote just won’t do.

         Our bet is Pruitt’s new affinity for agriculture states and ethanol plants has to do with trying to save his skin – or at least an attempt to assuage farmers’ fears and remind them that President Trump is, despite the actions of his EPA head, still behind them. Maybe, after torpedoing the ethanol industry, Pruitt’s Come-to-Jesus with ethanol at EKAE this Tuesday can make everything all right.

         Then again, maybe not.

         Either way, the flight from KCI to DC is a little more than two hours – long enough for a nap after Trade Winds chicken & noodles. Pruitt may need those extra carbs when he gets home – to pack up his office.

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

         

The Swamp is deep in Topeka, too

Assistant Kansas Ag Secretary Josh Roe at a Kansas Farmers Union meeting.

Dane Hicks, Publisher
The Anderson County Review
Garnett, Kansas

Congratulations to Rep. Willie Dove, author of The Alternative Crop Research Act, which sort of legalized industrial hemp in Kansas. The measure was recently approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Colyer.

It almost didn't happen, and due to bureaucratic canoodling it will still be years before Kansas farmers get to catch up to those in 30 other states where they're making money with hemp crops. All because the "swamp" is deep in Topeka, too.

The bill was the culmination of three years of effort by Dove, a Bonner Springs Republican, and others. The Sunflower State joins 30-odd others in the nation in legalizing the plant, distinguishable from its cousin marijuana by its THC content (1/30 as much), versatility (25,000 different products that can be eaten, worn, applied to the body, manufactured into auto parts and building materials, among thousands of other uses) and its "green" aptitude (requires no pesticides or herbicides and can be planted to "heal" toxic soil.

Despite these attributes – not theoretical, mind you, but practiced daily in states far ahead of Kansas in harvesting and manufacturing hemp – Rep. Dove had to overcome lies, distortions and back-stabbing to achieve his legislative goal.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation and Kansas Sheriffs Association purposely conflated industrial hemp with marijuana, despite genetic proof to the contrary. Since when are the KBI and KSA disinterested in evidence? The distinguishing characteristics between the two plants are well understood in Kentucky, Tennessee, Colorado and the other states whose law enforcement concerns were apparently satisfied with the science. But not in Kansas. The lawmen argued that hemp producers would try an end-run around pot laws by planting weed among the hemp. They were unconvinced when shown scientific proof that marijuana planted near hemp loses much of its THC concentration when the plants cross-pollinate.

When confronted with science, the KSA's legislative lackey, Katie Wishman, resorted to funny math instead. The Dove Bill would have cost taxpayers no more than $60,000 in start-up costs. Not so, said Wishman, her abacus rattling. More like $800,000. When asked why her figures were 15 times that calculated by the nonpartisan Kansas Legislative Research Department, Wishman answered her number was the "most" it might cost. Any wonder why spending is out of control in Topeka?

The KBI and KSA have a great deal of influence in the State Capitol, and for good reason. They are dedicated professionals and have earned the respect of all Kansans. But they are not immune to political hackery. Their foolish opposition to this legislation was a disservice to their state, and it will continue to limit farmers' incomes and the Kansas economy.

At least law enforcement's opposition was partially defensible as misplaced concern for public safety. But the mindless interference by the Kansas Department of Agriculture was all about bureaucratic turf protection.

The ag department never promoted the bill despite proof in other states of the benefits accruing to farmers. The department ping-ponged from being against hemp, then mildly in favor of it, then neutral. Each day seemed to bring a new posture until this year, when the legislation was gutted to such an extent that it survived only as a research and pilot program. 

Administered by...wait for it...

The Kansas Department of Agriculture.

Suddenly, deputy ag secretary Josh Roe and his department became acolytes of industrial hemp, a conversion worthy of Paul on the Road to Damascus.

    Ag will now administer the research program conducted statewide by universities – totally redundant and unnecessary. The "research" has already been conducted in the states operating a thriving hemp industry. Why does Kansas have to re-invent the hemp wheel?

The lying, obfuscation, and bureaucratic inertia from the KBI, KSA, and KDOA should be condemned by all Kansans, regardless of political stripe. These Establishment Types cost farmers, transporters, and manufacturers an opportunity to immediately take advantage of the profit potential from this amazing plant.

We now have to wait a year or two, or more, while academics and pencil-pushers discover what folks in more than 30 states already know; the miracle of industrial hemp.

Media gives NEA a pass on school violence

by Dane Hicks – How odd that so much media criticism after the recent Florida school shooting has been focused against the National Rifle Association instead of the National Education Association.

         After all, school shootings involve guns and schools.

         But as instance after instance of school shootings has unfolded across the country over the past two decades and high-profile criticism and media attention constantly focused on the NRA for its support of constitutional gun rights, a review of media reports shows no limelight at all focused on the NEA for failing to make schools safer.

         It’s an irony that apparently escapes many journalists – if an association of 5 million members like the NRA bears responsibility for the violence committed by murderers with guns (none of whom have been NRA members, notably), then shouldn’t an assessment be performed of the NEA, with its 3 million members, and its failure to make school’s safer?

         Interestingly, a review last week of the posted information on the NEA’s website shows no such instruction to staff and administration for ensuring safer schools – no outline for upgraded security measures or instruction to schools on their implementation; no video presentations on “Run, Hide, Fight,”; no insight as to identifying troubled students who might potentially turn violent and how to implement treatment.

         There are no hiring guidelines for school guards or criteria for assessing their ability and willingness to engage a possible school shooter. No suggestion of evaluation for auto-locking doors or magnetic switches which lock down or sound alarms if large metal objects are brought close to them. No treatise on what it is about public schools that goes so terribly wrong for some students, and why those schools are so often the target of the deranged.

         What the NEA’s website does include is plenty of self-serving political aggrandizement. “Tell Betsy Devos It’s Time To Resign” heralds one header on the slideshow of main backgrounds. “What Do Vouchers Have To Do With Protecting Bullied Students?” and “It’s Time To Take Action: Students Lead Protest To Change Gun Laws.”

         It’s worth mentioning, of course, that capitalizing each word in a sentence isn’t proper grammar – but oddly  a style adopted by an association of educators.

         The larger point is that while school shooting news coverage attacks the NRA for pursuing its members’ interests and assigns guilt based on the belief that owning firearms is a constitutional right, there is no similar expectation or attention paid to the organization which collects dues from teachers at each location where a school shooting has taken place.

The NEA, in fact, at least from the content of its website, has offered no proposals for more secure schools whatsoever – yet its mainstay of membership is those very public schools whose safety it ignores.

         While it offers nothing in the way of guidance or instruction for preventing or surviving a school shooting, the NEA has actively explored its own right to free expression and political activism by generously supporting Democratic political candidates. From 1989 through the 2014 election cycle, the NEA spent some $92 million on political donations, 97 percent of which was paid to Democrat candidates.

         But throughout the post-Columbine era – shootings at Red Lake, Minn., the Amish school shooting in Nickel Mines, Penn., the Virginia Tech shooting Newtown, Conn., Umqua Communitiy College – the NEA repeatedly committed none of its budget to develop school training programs for security or tactical survival in a live shooter situation, or devoted resources to studying why students go crazy and attack schools.

         This, of course, is among the questions journalists in the media don’t ask. But it seems sauce for the goose should, by rights, be sauce for the gander.

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

Kansas Republicans, farmers need hemp bill

– Dane Hicks, The Anderson County Review, Garnett, Ks.

         So far, Republicans who run the Kansas Senate haven’t come up with a good explanation as to why they want to keep Kansas farmers from making money with a state industrial hemp crop.

         This legislative session, it’s time to stop dilly-dallying and pass a bill to legally grow and process industrial hemp in Kansas.

         House Bill 2182, from 38^th Dist. Rep. Willie Dove of  Bonner Springs, would have opened up the industry for Kansas farmers last session. It would have opened an industry already embraced by 34 other states whose farmers and small business people are already making money off the crop, plugging those funds back into their economies and creating jobs. The Kansas House passed the bill, but it languished in the Senate Natural Resources committee, where chairman Dan Kerschen, a Republican from Garden Plain, wouldn’t even give it a hearing.

         Now, Kerschen has forwarded his own bill, SB 263, which would ship the potential for hemp off to K-State for “research” before any steps are taken to legalize it – another way to effectively kill the crop for years or maybe decades and keep it from benefiting the state’s farmers now, when they really need it.

         The opposition has been obscure. Industrial hemp isn’t pot – you can smoke a whole bale of it and never get high. It’s a different genetic animal than marijuana, as 34 states have already realized to their own profit. But lobbyists for Kansas law enforcement believe they’ll have too much trouble distinguishing industrial hemp plants from marijuana – even though law officers in 34 other states seem to have no trouble with that.

         What industrial hemp does do is serve a burgeoning market in the U.S. and abroad. Health foods, organic body care, clothing, construction materials, biofuels, plastic composites – the list goes on. Hemp products pulled down a cool $688 million in sales in 2016 – all of which went to producers and processors in places other than Kansas. True – you can buy hemp products in Kansas – and send your dollars out of state – you just can’t grow it here.

         And there’s rarely been a time other than now when Kansas farmers needed more options for another cash crop. Prices for corn, wheat and soybeans lag in a nationwide glut of commodities, with farmers forced to acquire more land and more costs to plant, or pray for better weather to increase yields. There’s no doubt Kansas Farmers need the hemp option.

         And Republicans in the Kansas Legislature need it too. They’re already carrying a damaged brand into the 2018 elections due to school funding mandates from the state supreme court and lagging tax revenues from a Brownback economic plan that went bust. Republicans desperately need an economic win, and legalizing industrial hemp with its immediate economic impact would illustrate that the party is still in touch with its pro-business platform.

         With an improving national economy and the new 2018 federal tax package, investors will be itching to put their money to use in businesses that offer solid returns. Passage of industrial hemp would clear the way for those investors to put their money to work in Kansas-based processing operations as well as family farms. It is an economic wave Kansans, particularly Republican leadership, can’t pass up.

         Get out of the way, Kansas GOP, and let our farmers and businesses make money on industrial hemp.

– Dane Hicks is editor& publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Ks., and chairman of the Anderson County Republican Central Committee.