Class 6A – Wichita
Lawrence 64, Wichita South 46
Olathe East 60, Olathe North 48
SM North 65, Derby 51
Wichita East 59, Maize 46 Class 4A Division I – Salina
Basehor-Linwood 65, Wellington 40
Bishop Miege 50, Andale 34
McPherson 66, Chanute 31
Ottawa 53, Fort Scott 44 Class 4A Division II – Park City
Holcomb 59, Parsons 44
Osawatomie 63, Girard 57
Rock Creek 74, Atchison 40
Wichita Trinity 63, Hays-TMP-Marian 57 Class 2A – Manhattan
Central Plains 67, Jackson Heights 42
Olpe 42, Pittsburg Colgan 31
St. John 83, Ellis 41
Washington County 71, South Gray 57
GIRLS Class 5A – Topeka Blue Valley Southwest 47, Wichita Bishop Carroll 37
Kapaun Mount Carmel 55, Topeka Seaman 28
Leavenworth 49, Newton 31
St. Thomas Aquinas 56, Emporia 34 Class 3A – Hutchinson
Cimarron 57, Wellsville 39
Hesston 51, Galena 25
Sabetha 55, Beloit 52
Silver Lake 55, Remington 42 Class 1A Division I – Emporia
Centralia 70, Waverly 55
Centre 46, Ingalls 38
Hoxie 71, LaCrosse 43
St. Paul 37, Thunder Ridge 32 Class 1A Division II – Dodge City
Moscow 56, Sylvan-Lucas 42
Norwich 41, South Barber 39
St. John’s Beloit-Tipton 52, Wetmore 49
Wheatland-Grinnell 48, Wallace County 36
Since 2010, Republican majorities have grown, now controlling both houses of Congress and 30 state legislatures, along with 31 governorships. Look at a congressional district map of the U.S., and you’ll see an ocean of red, bounded by blue slivers on the coasts and some blue patches in the upper Midwest and around various urban areas.
The rise of red state Republicans has changed the face of American politics, but with very different implications in D.C. and in state capitals like Topeka.
Burdett Loomis
In Washington, the GOP influx has taken legislative dysfunction to new highs. The Senate, with its filibuster rules, has long proven problematic, as it needs 60 votes to pass any significant legislation. But this condition has been exacerbated by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who famously stated in 2010, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
Earlier this week McConnell called on the states to actively reject Obama’s environmental executive order, thus protecting Kentucky coal operators. Even more incredible, and disturbing, was the fact that 47 senators, including McConnell, Pat Roberts, and Jerry Moran, signed on to Arkansas Tea Party Senator Tom Cotton’s letter that purposefully undermines presidential negotiations with Iran over nuclear weapons.
Remarkably, the House is currently more dysfunctional than the Senate.
Despite the largest GOP majority since the 1920s, Speaker Boehner cannot command the loyalty of many House Republicans, even when it comes to not shutting down funding for the Department of Homeland Security – whose spending in Kansas will total almost a billion dollars. Like the 47 senators, many GOP representatives are more obsessed with poking Obama in the eye than they are worried about legislating for the security of the country.
So, in DC, red state Republicans foster gridlock, broken only on occasion by extraordinary negotiations and face-saving short-term deals.
In Kansas and other deep red states, the impact of the past three elections is different; rather than deadlock, we have policies passed with far too little deliberation or consideration. Want everyone to pack a firearm? No problem. Call it “constitutional carry,” and it slides through the legislative process.
What about school finance, the state’s largest budget item in a year when we face $600 million in revenue shortfalls and a court mandate to increase funding? Just ram through a “block grant” proposal that was hastily concocted and given the most cursory of hearings. Then stick the House school funding bill into an already passed Senate bill, via the “gut and go” bill replacement tactic, and send it back to the Senate for an up or down vote.
On occasion, the red-state express will be slowed down a bit, as with the so-called moderates’ so-called victory in the House that increased the number of items in teachers’ contracts subject to bargaining. But right behind this “victory” is a bill that will sharply and arbitrarily cut negotiating rights for all public employees.
Likewise, changes in higher education funding, often reflecting legislators’ personal whims and vendettas, find wide acceptance, even as universities struggle with substantial previous cuts. So when Salina Sen. Tom Arpke somehow intuited that almost ten million bucks should be switched out of KU’s accounts, that was that. No serious discussion, no coherent rationale.
In sum, the congressional and state legislative red state victories of Republicans over the past four years have produced major effects: stalemate in Washington and hurried batches of legislation in the states.
What’s lost, tragically, is serious deliberation on important issues, whether in Washington or Topeka. And this lack of real deliberation weakens, even threatens, our democracy in both state and nation.
Burdett Loomis is a professor of political science at the University of Kansas.
The Fort Hays State University AgriBusiness Club will have its annual lawn mower clinic from 7 a.m. to noon on Saturday, March 28.
The event will be at Davis Hall on the FHSU campus.
Trained personnel will perform a full-service maintenance on your walk-behind lawnmower and check it for overall safety. The cost for the service is $40.
Mowers can be dropped off in advance from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, March 27, or between 7 and 8 a.m. Saturday, March 28. Mowers should be picked up no later than noon March 28.
For more information or to reserve a spot, call (785) 628-4368
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A Lawrence woman has been sentenced to two years in prison for embezzlement and ordered to pay $837,000 in restitution to her former employer.
The U.S. attorney’s office says 58-year-old Sharon Ann Holladay, of Lawrence, was sentenced Wednesday for stealing from Westheffer Company. The Lawrence business manufactures and sells agricultural chemical spray equipment.
Holladay was office manager and transferred money from the operations account to a petty cash fund she controlled. She also gave herself unauthorized bonuses and commissions and made unauthorized purchases with the company’s credit card.
DP Management and The Mall at Hays ownership this week introduced the new property manager of the mall to mall stores.
Katie Dorzweiler was hired to oversee all operations. She was a store manager of Bath and Body Works in the Hays Mall since 2012.
“Dorzweiler will add a strong retail perspective to our management team. She has a lot of energy and we look forward to working with her can-do attitude,” said DP asset manager Peter Jirous.
Dorzweiler takes the role as construction is about to begin for the renovation of inside and outside features of the mall including flooring, lighting, and revamping mall entrances.
“Dorzweiler will work along side our Omaha team to oversee the entire project and work to maintain convenient and safe shopping for our customers,” Jirous added.
Dorzweiler is a mother of three young boys and her husband farms near Hays.
“I just really enjoy being apart of the mall family and didn’t want that to end,” she said. “This opportunity will give me the opportunity to expand my knowledge of the retail industry and be able to be more flexible for my boys.”
WINFIELD – A Kansas man died in an accident just after 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday in Cowley County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2009 Honda Motorcycle driven by Kevin W. Bodkins, 28, Winfield, was northbound on US. 77 four miles north of Winfield and struck a deer crossing the road.
Bodkins was lying in the roadway after the collision. A 2005 Ford Truck driven by Richard L. Pitts, 66, Wichita hit him.
Bodkins was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Miles Funeral Home.
KINGMAN, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say two men who escaped from a southern Oklahoma correctional center have been arrested in Kansas.
Oklahoma authorities said 40-year-old Lance Colbert and 54-year-old Dwayne Motsenbocker escaped through a hole in the fence of Mack Alford Correctional Center on Sunday.
A U.S. Marshal says Motsenbocker was arrested early Wednesday after an altercation in a Wichita, Kansas, store. He was booked into the Sedgwick County Jail and will face charges in Wichita along with new charges in Oklahoma.
Authorities say Colbert was arrested Wednesday afternoon in Spivey, Kansas. He also has been booked into Sedgwick County Jail until Oklahoma authorities arrive to take him back into custody.
Colbert was convicted in the shooting deaths of two people in the early 1990s. Motsenbocker has multiple robbery convictions.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is urging Kansas House members to support a plan from top GOP lawmakers ahead of the chamber’s debate on overhauling school funding.
Legislators who drafted the plan up for debate Thursday argue it gives schools predictable funding through the 2016-17 school year.
The plan also would help the state control its costs by junking a per-student aid formula that has forced unanticipated but automatic increases in aid.
The plan gives districts “block grants” based on their current aid for the next two school years, until lawmakers draft a new formula. Brownback and other Republicans say the current formula is too complex and directs too much money away from classroom learning.
But many educators don’t like the plan and defend the current formula as sound.
FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar says two officers were shot around midnight at a Ferguson, Missouri, protest.
He said a 32-year-old officer from Webster Groves was shot in the face and a 41-year-old officer from St. Louis County was shot in the shoulder.
He says both are conscious.
Belmar says he did not know who shot the officers.
The shots were fired as protesters had gathered following the resignation of Ferguson’s embattled Police Chief Thomas Jackson on Wednesday.
Jackson was the sixth employee to resign or be fired after a Justice Department report cleared a white former Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, of civil rights charges in the shooting of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson last summer. Wilson has since resigned.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Department of Agriculture is joining with farm groups to focus public attention on the state’s role in feeding a growing global population.
National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson is headlining an event March 18 at Kansas State University’s Union Little Theatre with a visual journal that aims to highlight the topic “Feeding a Hungry Planet.” The program is part of the state’s celebrations of Kansas Agriculture Month.
A group of Kansas agriculture experts will follow Richardson’s lecture to talk about the state’s agricultural industry. Kansas is the nation’s biggest producer wheat and grain sorghum.
A tough fourth quarter stretch proved costly for the TMP Monarchs in their 63-57 loss to Wichita-Trinity Academy in the opening round of the 4A-Division II State Basketball Tournament in Park City. Trailing 47-43 at the start of the fourth quarter the Monarch offense went cold. They went five minutes and 21 seconds without scoring as they watched Trinity build their lead to double figures and TMP could not recover. Max Megaffin hit a late three to pinch the lead to four points but it was to little to late for TMP’s season.
The second half was as stark contrast to the first half. Both teams held leads and made runs to counter each other. TMP held a 10-5 advantage early and the Knights countered with an 11-nothing run to go up by six. TMP was able to close it to two points at the end of the first quarter. The second quarter was much of the same. TMP trailed and fought back but trailed by two, 33-31 at the break.
Kameron Schmidt scored a team high 16 points, 14 of those came in the first half. Jared Vitztum was the only other Monarch in double figures with 14. TMP ends their season with a 16-7 record.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Chris Washburn and Kyan Anderson scored 16 points apiece, and TCU held on down the stretch to beat Kansas State 67-65 on Wednesday night for its first Big 12 tournament victory.
Trey Zeigler added 15 points for the ninth-seeded Horned Frogs (18-14), who had been one-and-done in their first two trips to the Sprint Center.
TCU will play No. 1 seed Kansas in the quarterfinal on Thursday afternoon.
Thomas Gipson had 16 points and Nino Williams finished with 13 for the No. 8 seed Wildcats (15-17), who finished the season with a losing record for the first time since 2003.
TCU had built a 58-46 lead with 6 1/2 minutes left, but the Wildcats managed to trim it to 64-62 when Williams converted a three-point play with about a minute to go.
