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.

Let's make vacations great again

EDITORIAL – Are you a rock-bellied Red Stater tired of spending your entertainment dollars in liberal bastions that elect socialist-leaning ne’er-do-wells? Are you anxious for a list of places where your hard-earned R&R dollars can go to benefit businesses and voters more akin to your political persuasion? 

Many of us have come to realize we’d prefer to support #MAGA believers by making our long-awaited time off this year a Red State Vacation. 

Heck, in a lot of cases it’s a simple safety issue. We were barely 12 minutes into the New Year last week when Chicago, where Democrats have voted early and often for three generations, logged its first incident of gun violence of 2019. A 12 year-old boy was looking out a second story residential window when a bullet whizzed through the glass and hit him in the hand. 

Four more shootings would follow on New Year’s Day, miraculously all non-fatal. 

The thugs had pretty much taken a holiday to ring in the New Year in the Windy City. The prior day – New Year’s Eve – only nine people were shot and two murdered within the Chicago metro area. But all in all, 2018 was a banner year for homicides in the city – 561 for the year (1.53 killings a day) compared to 660 in 2017 and 770 in 2016. 

So forget those fabulous weekend flight deals to Chicago, or the smog-ridden Hollywierd beckoning of the People’s Republic of California, or the Cheech & Chong intellectualism of Denver or the Colorado Mountains. Say goodbye to the overpriced calamari and tomato basil appetizers at those vanilla latte Johnson County hives where RINOs plot Democrat governorships and socialist takeovers of the 3rd Congressional District. Why not spend your recreation dollars in places where people vote like you do? 

Consider for instance Bedford County, Tenn., which went 75 percent Trump, 22 percent Clinton in 2016. There’s the Champion Run Golf Course in Shelbyville and the Tennessee Walking Horse Museum, and the jam-packed annual Moon Pie Festival featuring a slice of the world’s largest Moon Pie! 

Las Animas, Colo., flipped from Democrat to Republican in 2016, 55 percent Trump to 39 percent Clinton. There’s not much Red in Colorado, but in this little pocket you’ll find tons of Santa Fe Trail history with Bent’s Old Fort and Boggsville, both historic trail points. Plus, you’ll find the best guacamole and salsa in Southern Colorado at Carmen’s Restaurant. 

Don’t forget Hooker County, Neb., whose population of 736 souls don’t see many visitors, but which mustered 86 percent of their vote for Trump and 10 for Clinton. The Sandhills are cool, and you can float the Middle Loup River. Mullen has a new disc golf course, and the Hondo Lanes bowling alley is newly renovated. 

Calhoun County, MI., also flipped Blue to Red in 2016, with 54 percent voting Trump to 41 for Clinton. Battle Creek boasts the Binder Zoo with some 400 acres and more than 600 specimens on exhibit. Don’t forget the Fort Custer State Recreation area, a former WWII training ground now a 3,300 acre nature park with hiking and horse trails, river beach areas and more. 

And let’s not forget Scott County, Ks., whose stalwart Republican corps voted 85 percent Trump to 11 percent what’s-her-name. In Scott City, culture, natural wonder and science abound with the El Quartelejo Museum, Jerry Thomas and Keystone galleries, Monument Rocks and Spender Flight and Education Center – and the really cool Majestic Theater Restaurant. 

So take heart, monied Republican believers – divert your dollars from the clutches of those traditional loony liberal strongholds, and let’s Make Vacations Great Again.

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

Kansas Legislators: Build the Wall to keep out Kelly's new taxes

That vision which is stuck in the heads of many Kansas taxpayers – the one of Governor-elect Laura Kelly and her liberal Democrat henchmen storming into our state like marauding Mongols, ready to abscond with our daughters, thieve our livestock and pillory us with higher taxes for their new kingdom of governmental bloat – may be a little over-played. 

But then again, maybe only a little. 

As Kelly and her crew finish racking up their pre-inauguration Christmas list – bolstered by some $80 million to $138 million in extra Kansas tax dollars produced by the federal tax change windfall from last year – Kansas’ conservative lawmakers still in the majority in Topeka need to be thinking about how they plan to defend us and let us keep our own money. The term “Build A Wall” comes to mind. 

Make no mistake, Kelly intends to spend, and spend big. Rumors of another $90 million to go carte blanche to the ever-increasing tab for Kansas education; groundwork for expanding Medicaid in Kansas to a slew of new users at between 150 and 238 percent of the federal poverty level (in other words, those with incomes half again or more than twice what the feds actually consider “poor”). And while just 10 percent of all those extra Medicaid payments will get added to your state tax bill, the rest will billow into the ballooning federal deficit that will still be your responsibility – or most likely your kids and grandkids – to one day pay through their own taxes. 

Kelly’s plan compounds a situation of which most Kansans are unaware – that even though Kansas media relentlessly gnashed its teeth over “budget cuts” to education and poor people after Sam Brownback’s 2012 tax cut was initiated, the reality is that state spending overall continued to climb. To some government agencies reductions in their planned spending increases for next year are referred to in their press releases as “budget cuts,” and regurgitated by reporters and special interests until the public believes it. 

So gravity determines the following: Kansans are and will continue seeing a tax increase through the federal/state income tax incongruence even if legislators do absolutely nothing, because the way you pay your federal and state income tax right now amounts to an additional Kansas tax all on its own. 

Bear in mind this additional state/federal extraction of your dollars is above and beyond the $600 million state tax increase lumped onto your back last year by legislators, who eventually had to cover for Gov. Sam Brownback’s inability to make his 2012 tax cuts contingent on state budget cuts. Turning up the tap on your taxes has spewed forth even more money than planners forecast, with monthly revenue collections exceeding estimates for several months this year. 

Add it all up and what do you have? An incoming liberal governor with big spending plans and a nice pot of extra money that used to be yours just sitting there unguarded. Of course it won’t be enough to rescue the state from the legacy of Darth Brownback the way Kelly wants – not quite – it’ll require a little more. 

So our legislators – the ones who weren’t derailed in the election by the mob of Johnson County liberals with “I Hate Kobach” bumper stickers on their Land Rovers, are going to have to build a wall – a legislative wall that protects us Kansas outlanders from more and heavier taxes. They can do that by giving us back that federal windfall – like members of the Senate tried to do last year before their bill failed – and by barricading off the governor-elect’s options to raise additional taxes to make Kansas government even bigger and more expensive. Kelly’s plan kicks off when she takes over the governor’s office in January. Legislators – start mixing your mortar.

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