Statehouse insiders, and probably even Kansans who don’t follow state government activity as a condition of probation, are figuring it may take two, maybe three weeks to determine whether we’re looking at a strictly political 2017 Legislature or a hold-your-nose and fix the problem session.

Now, the politics are fun, the strategies intriguing, but at some point, we must remind ourselves that we live in Kansas.

The options are relatively simple. It’s trim the budget, raise revenues (that’s the word lawmakers like to use instead of “taxes”) and still provide for the education, health, highways, public safety and such that we expect state government to take care of. Or, it’s not vote for anything unpleasant, shift the current responsibilities of state government to cities and counties, and talk about “local control.”

Frankly, at this point, nobody is sure which way the Legislature is going to go. It appears Gov. Sam Brownback is taking himself out of the picture, with a budget that was held secret until his State of the State address and his now familiar “It’s the Legislature’s responsibility to balance the budget” mantra.

So, what happens?

There’s some interest in those new legislators starting their own caucus, and since most of them were elected on the widely popular premises (a premise is just shy of a promise) they are going to put taxes back on Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs) and improve school funding, they may be key players. Or…they might decide that they are not going to get re-elected if they make some votes that will inconvenience their constituents.

That freshman caucus might make its first priority figuring out a chant or a bumper sticker that implores Kansans to disregard their votes in their first year in office, and decide on re-election based on the second year of their terms.

Politically, the other track in which the Legislature becomes sharply divided is for those newbies to decide that the returning legislators caused the problem with their votes for tax cuts, and tax hikes to fill in the hole the cuts created, and see whether voters will toss out all the experienced lawmakers. It can be done on a new/old decision by voters in two (House) and four (Senate) years. And, it will give the candidates for governor in 2018 something to campaign on.

Or, without the new/old lawmaker gambit, there’s a strictly party-line option. Now that Democrats have increased their numbers in each chamber (by a dozen in the House for a new 85R/40D count, and narrowly in the Senate, to a new 31R/9D count), Democrats could simply vote to tax LLCs and then quit voting.

Huh? Yes, there’s a political undercurrent among some Democrats that Republicans have run the state since conservative Brownback’s first term and Democrats are going to sit politely and quietly and watch Republicans fight each other to get the budget balanced.

That might make Republicans the only legislators with their DNA on the unpleasant budget fixes and tax increases needed. It would make Democrats look pretty un-involved in the business of state government, but ready to point at the Republicans for the pain needed to heal the budget. Or, of course, it also would mean Republicans take credit for fixing the budget, and, they, not Democrats, fixed things.

This 2017 can go several different ways, depending on how key players decide they want to go with it, and whether there are new members who are first interested in fixing the state and then considering, after their first jobs where someone else will buy their lunch and probably drinks, how their votes are going to look on a campaign palm card in a couple years.

We’re figuring we may be able to tell which road the Legislature will take in two or three weeks.

It’s going to take longer than figuring out whether that first date is going to lead to anything, but then, that date didn’t determine state tax policy, did it?

Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com

My wife and I often pass the hours spent in a hunting blind by making up animal conversations for various situations. On a fall turkey hunt years ago, we had our hunting blind set up near an old feedlot. The owner had round bales stored there and a tractor path wound around through the bales. The turkeys followed the tractor path through the bales and into the pasture surrounding the old feedlot. We put a couple hen turkey decoys just across the fence into the pasture and settled in to our blind. The resident cattle soon came to see what was up, and became enamored with the decoys.

You could almost sense their thoughts, so we named the cows Clara, Elsie, Audrey and Bessie, and imagined their conversation something like this; “They look like turkeys, but they sure don’t move much,” Clara thought starring at the decoys. Elsie added “Turkeys stink but these things smell like tractor tires or something. Let’s all run at them and see if they scatter and make those same funny noises turkeys make when we almost step on them.” Audrey weighed in “No I’m pretty sure they aren’t real turkeys – if they were they’d be eatin’ corn out of our poo right now.” Bessie said “Girls I’ve got an idea – let’s all back up and try to pee on them and see if they run like they usually do.”

Perhaps the funniest animal conversation we ever conjured up came about at an old farmstead where we hunt deer. The abandoned farmyard sits back a long lane and we park our pickup there and walk to the nearby deer blind. We know deer routinely wonder through the farmyard and around the old buildings, so we tried to imagine how they would react to our truck sitting there if they wandered through as we sat in the blind. Here’s the scene: One morning as we sit there in our deer blind, two deer, Bucky and Chloe wonder through and come upon our pickup in the drive. “See Bucky,” Chloe states “I told you I smelled them again.”

Bucky rests his chin on the hood of the pickup and replies “Yup, sure enough. Hoods still warm, they’re here somewhere.” “What duffuses,” Chloe retorts with disgust as she turns and begins to walk away. Meanwhile Bucky jumps up and sprawls out across the hood of the pickup with his front legs sticking out in front of him and his back legs out behind him, rolls his eyes back into his head and hangs his tongue out the side of his mouth. “Chloe hears the commotion, and just as she turns around Bucky calls out “Ohhhhh Chloe, they got me!” “You get off there this instant,” Chloe scolds. “That’s not funny at all anymore, especially after you got shot in the butt last season!”

The nursing/retirement home where I used to work has two dementia units and I often marveled at the strange things the residents there with dementia would say and think. Making up animal conversations may see pretty weird and even goofy, but I can only hope that filling my mind with silliness like that now will help me ramble on about silly stuff like that when I get dementia rather than being mean & nasty and cussin’ all the time!

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].

Voters clearly showed repudiation of Democrat agendas in the recent general election. Another way to put it is to say a total rejection of liberalism as evidenced by voting down Hillary and selecting Trump.

Hillary campaigned to continue with Obama agendas, therefore, voters turned their backs on him as well and what the man has done as president the past eight years.

Numbers speak volumes.

Trump won 304 electoral votes to Hillary’s 227. Hillary’s number is the lowest for any Democrat presidential candidate since 1988. The difference in those two numbers means a landslide victory for Trump.

Don’t be fooled by Democrats proclaiming Hillary should be president because she won the popular vote. If you throw out the votes of Los Angeles County and the city of New York, Trump wins the popular vote. Trump easily wins the popular vote looking at the other 48 states and leaving California and New York out of the picture.

If not for the Electoral College, big cities could choose our president. Kansas City, for example, voted for Hillary but she did poorly in most of fly over and rural America.

U.S. Democrat Congressman Tim Ryan, who challenged Nancy Pelosi for House minority leader, said Democrats are not even a national party anymore but a coastal one with support from big cities on both coasts. “But we have lost the support of Middle America,” he added.

Our most precious document called the U.S. Constitution has no provision for a president to gain the White House by popular vote, but does provide for selecting our president through a representative electoral process.

Besides the omission of “popular vote” for president from the Constitution the popular vote claim isn’t even a good argument considering all the numbers I present in this letter that are negative for Democrats and positive for Republicans.

Trump, for example, won 2,623 counties to only 489 for Hillary. In Kansas alone it was 103 out of 105 for Trump.

Looking at the elections of 2010, 2012, 2014 plus 2016 the Democrat Party under Obama has been decimated. Over 1,000 seats have been lost in U.S. Congress seats, governorships, and state legislature seats; an obvious repudiation of our liberal government the past eight years.

And, let’s not forget that the big one also got away from Obama with Hillary losing to Trump. A popular talk radio host says Obama has been a wrecking ball for Democrats when it comes to elections. What president can claim a successful legacy with those failures?

Trump showed his smarts by campaigning for electoral votes. Hillary again showed incompetence going after the votes in big cities where she knew she was popular.
And, wouldn’t you know it? Polls now show Trump to be even more popular than during the election.

Republicans now control 32 state legislatures. Democrats have only 13. Five are split. There are also 33 Republican governors to 16 Democrat governors with one Independent. Republicans have total control of 25 states. Democrats control only six.

The numbers speak volumes! Readers may be a bit put out by all the numbers, but keep in mind point being Trump won big and Americans want to go in an entirely different direction going forward.

Voters want a different kind of government, not liberalism, nor socialism, but clearly to the right of center after so much has gone wrong on the left.

Les Knoll lives in Victoria and Gilbert, Ariz.