“When you tell a landlord the wheat made 80 bushels-per-acre and you’re going to double crop beans on his (recently) harvested land, they get a big smile on their face,” says Kris Bogart. Now that’s good news. The kind a Kansas land owner welcomes but doesn’t hear too often. Not because his/her tenant doesn’t do everything possible to raise a bumper wheat crop each year, but Mother Nature is fickle. This year, she’s inflicted fire, a late spring blizzard, too much moisture and in some cases, not enough. Her wrath has dealt a crippling blow to many western Kansas grain growers.         Fortunately, none of those conditions impacted Bogart who farms in central and southern Dickinson County. He and brother, Kelly, harvested wheat yields ranging from 64 to 95 bushels-per-acre. Test weights ranged from 61.8 to 63.5. “We harvested a phenomenal crop,” Bogart says. “We were right in a spot with ideal growing conditions.” The Dickinson County grain farmer realizes his family harvested a rare crop this year. Bogart doesn’t need to travel far from his farm to find wheat yields not nearly as good. While he wishes all farmers could have shared in the same bounty, Bogart understands the land giveth and taketh. He’s learned to see his vocation not as it is, but rather as it could, or will be. We’re really fortunate,” he says. “Believe me, it may be many years before we harvest such a crop again.” Still, as he waited for his wheat fields to dry out after a small shower traveled across the stubble the second week in July, Bogart did not fret too much about planting his late field of double-crop soybeans. He knew this would only dry the soil out a bit more and decrease the chance of the press wheels on his planter filling up with mud. It goes without saying, he’d much rather spend time doing just about anything than cleaning mud out of press wheels on a 100-degree July day with 70 percent humidity. That’s what he calls a sweaty mess. After more than a decade of double cropping soybeans immediately after wheat harvest, the Bogart brothers are convinced this rotation is good for their family farming operation. “It keeps our fields cleaner and crops produce better,” the Dickinson County farmer says. “The longer we no till it seems like we fight more weeds and disease. Double-crop soybeans behind wheat will pay for the chemicals we would have used and keep the ground just as clean.” In 2016, Bogart raised as many beans per acres on double-cropped fields as their full-season. He attributes this to the abundance of moisture the full-season soybeans received. Seems last year’s full-season crop grew a much bigger plant than necessary. On the other hand, the double-cropped soybeans didn’t grow as much vegetation and put more input into the pods and beans. Every year is different. Conditions vary. Moisture arrives or doesn’t. Who can predict what disease or insects might flock to the fields? We try to maintain a positive outlook,” Bogart says. “Some years, we’re blessed – others, not so much.” Like all farmers, they take the good with the bad. When it’s a bad year, the Bogarts look toward the next year and hope it’s better. John Schlageck is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas. Born and raised on a diversified farm in northwestern Kansas, his writing reflects a lifetime of experience, knowledge and passion.

By RON WILSON
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

Along Kansas Highway 156 about fifty miles west of Great Bend is the rural community of Burdett. Next to the water tower is a roadside park with a historical marker devoted to a local boy who became the discoverer of the planet Pluto.

Last week we learned about Clyde Tombaugh, the local farm boy whose interest in astronomy would lead to his discovery of another planet. Don Cloutman is one of the citizens of Burdett who is seeking to continue to honor Tombaugh’s legacy.

Don grew up southwest of Burdett in another rural community, the town of Minneola, population 717 people. Now, that’s rural.

Don studied zoology at Fort Hays State where he met his wife who is from Burdett. After serving in the Army, he went to graduate school at Arkansas, became a fisheries biologist at Duke Power Company in North Carolina, and earned a Ph.D. at Mississippi State. Dr. Cloutman became a professor of biology at Bemidji State University before he and his wife retired to Burdett.

They are helping Burdett continue to honor the legacy of noted astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. The Kansas Historical Society website, Kansapedia, provides some background.

Prior to 1781, scientists believed that there were six planets in our solar system. In March of that year, an English astronomer named Sir William Herschel became the first person in recorded history to discover a planet when he located the planet Uranus. This was a remarkable accomplishment. However, Uranus did not seem to conform to the laws of Newtonian physics. Its route through the night sky defied predictability, and no one could explain this erratic behavior.

In 1824, the work of a German astronomer and mathematician suggested that the variability was caused by the gravitational pull of another planet beyond Uranus. In 1846, an observatory in Berlin found such a planet: Neptune.

When additional variability was found, scientists assumed that there must be yet another planet beyond Neptune. However, it was thought to be too distant, too dim, and probably impossible to find.

Astronomers continued the quest, however, at such places as the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. To assist in this search, the director of the Lowell Observatory hired a young amateur astronomer from Kansas named Clyde Tombaugh. In 1930, Tombaugh found the ninth planet.

Clyde Tombaugh went on to a long and distinguished career in astronomy and academia. Besides discovering Pluto, he discovered six star clusters, a cloud of galaxies, one comet and about 775 asteroids.

Tombaugh retired from New Mexico State University as a professor of astronomy. In 1982, the citizens of Burdett honored him with a roadside historic marker describing his achievements. Dr. Tombaugh died on January 17, 1997.

In subsequent years as technology improved, scientists were able to detect increasing numbers of small interplanetary objects such as Pluto. The International Astronomical Union issued an official definition of the term planet in 2006. Pluto was determined to be a dwarf planet and the 10th largest body orbiting the sun. It is located in the Kuiper Belt.

If Pluto is a dwarf planet, perhaps Dr. Tombaugh’s accomplishments are all the more impressive. In any event, Don Cloutman and the other citizens of Burdett continue to honor his achievements and have some fun along the way.

When the miniature golf course in the city park recently needed improvement, it was renovated with a planetary theme. Each of the nine holes was named for a different planet. The course was inaugurated with a community miniature golf tournament. With tongue in cheek, the winner was offered not just a belt buckle, but a Kuiper Belt buckle.

For more information on the community, see www.burdettks.org.

It’s time to leave Burdett, the boyhood home of an historic astronomer. We commend Don Cloutman and the other citizens of Burdett for making a difference by keeping alive Clyde Tombaugh’s historic achievements. The accomplishments of this young farm boy were out of this world.

And there’s more. In the 2000s, Pluto would become the target of a major outer space mission. The man who led this mission also came from rural Kansas. We’ll learn about that next week.

These are my own thoughts by simply putting two and two together.

Democrats keep losing elections. They lost a big one in Georgia recently even after spending a fortune of outside money.

What’s their message besides destroying Trump? Unfortunately for Dems, that’s pretty much it and, obviously, that’s not working.

There are two parts to ousting our president by Dems. Rake him over the coals incessantly with the help of media. Secondly, say “no” to everything or anything Trump wants to do to make America great again no matter what it is. In other words, impeachment and obstructionism.

We keep reading and hearing the party needs to do more. Call it a message to voters of what Dems stand for otherwise.

I have always been amused when hearing top Dems talk about the party’s values. Their mantra is “we will oppose Trump if he is against our values.” But the top dogs never say what those values are.

That being said, we can pretty much surmise what Dems stand for and I have news for them, as I see it. Average everyday grassroots Americans aren’t going to vote for their agenda even if it is something other than obstructionism or impeachment.

No, America’s voters are not going to vote for open borders, welfare mostly rather than jobs, climate change mandates that add extensively to our debt, unfettered Muslim refugee immigration, abortion on demand, transgender bathrooms, a downsized military, globalism, redistribution of wealth socialism, continuation of Obamacare, greater taxation, etc.

Nor are grassroots Americans going to put up with the old playbook of calling the opposition racist, bigot, homophobe, etc., instead of honest to goodness debate about the real issues. Character assassinations of Trump and having meltdowns about his tweets are getting boring and old, as is the false narrative of Russia collusion.

In spite of what you hear or read, the Donald Trump Jr. Russia collusion story will bite the dust just like all the others – no evidence that any kind of crime was committed.

If Dems are for minorities how will they explain more blacks in jobs today under Trump than when Obama was president? Dems rail about the rich but why did the top 1% get richer under Obama – and the poor poorer?

Fake news coming from partisan media is the kiss of death for Dems. Liberal media does more harm than good. That will certainly be the case if agendas are thrown at voters liberals don’t actually believe in. Voters will see through the lies.

Many liberals want to go even further left of Obama’s eight years. Why in the world would voters want to be even more extreme than during Obama’s eight years? How does that make any sense in winning elections?

Another point I wish to make is that liberals don’t operate in the realm of reality. Average day Americans do and will vote based on facts when they go to the polls.

Sorry Dems, your message, no matter what, will not carry the day. The divide between your ideology and what average Americans stand for is like my state’s Grand Canyon.

Les Knoll lives in Victoria and Gilbert, Ariz.

When some people hear the word “salad,” they think of a small bowl of leafy greens and creamy dressing that fills time before the arrival of their steak or chicken.

While a salad often precedes the main course in restaurants, a salad can also serve as the main course – or the only course. Chefs, dietitians, even bloggers and “foodies” are taking on salads these days, and pushing them in new directions.

“I think we’re seeing some new trends and ideas out there that really are widening our view of what a salad is, and what the components of it might be,” said Sandy Procter, K-State Research and Extension nutrition specialist.

For many, the base of a salad continues to be vegetables, usually one of the many varieties of lettuce or other leafy greens. Add other vegetables, maybe some protein, and a dressing and you have a basic salad. Procter says this is a great way to add vegetables and fruits to your diet.

Procter noted these four healthy reasons for adding more salads to our nutrition plan:

Fiber — Most of us don’t get enough fiber in our diet, and it works together with exercise to keep our digestive systems healthy and prevent some of the common chronic diseases of the day, including cancer.

Phytonutrients — These natural, plant-derived chemicals aren’t as critical as vitamins and minerals (also found in plants), but things like carotenoids and flavonoids help make us resistant to diseases and can slow down the aging process.

“Volumetrics” — If you’re one of those people that could stand to shed a few pounds, a properly designed salad can help you do this. The concept of volumetrics is that by eating larger portions of healthy foods, you’ll feel more satisfied. As an example, two apples have roughly the same number of calories as one candy bar, but the apples have more fiber and are bigger, therefore helping you feel fuller.

Great source of “smart fats” — We often think of “fat” as something that should be avoided in our diets, but not all fats are equal. Plant-based fats such as olive oil, avocado, nuts and seeds are good fats, and it’s not uncommon to find them in a salad. Just go easy on the high-fat dressings.

When a salad becomes a main course, protein frequently becomes part of the lineup. While chicken and steak are popular options, protein doesn’t have to be limited to meat. Eggs, beans cheeses, nuts and seeds can deliver protein to a salad. Quinoa (“KEEN-wah”) is a protein rich grain that can be served warm or chilled, after it’s been cooked.

The biggest obstacle to taking a salad to work for lunch is keeping it cold. This can be accomplished by packing your salad with a frozen bottle of water or a reusable “chill pack” from your freezer. One of the newer trends in brown-bagging salad is an old standby from your grandmother’s kitchen: the Mason jar or canning jar.

“The beauty of the Mason jar salad is that dressing goes in the bottom, followed by whatever ingredients you choose — you can see each layer and portion them out. Add the leafy greens last, screw on the lid, and then it’s easy to transport. The glass can stay cold longer than plastic. Give it a good shake when it’s time to eat,” Procter said.

“Also, the glass doesn’t absorb flavors as many plastics do, so you can carry balsamic vinegar one day and blue cheese the next, and those flavors aren’t going to be blended. Glass is easy to wash up and use the next day.”

Salads also provide a good reason for frequenting local farmers markets to take advantage of locally grown produce. Try to take the kids with you, let them pick some things out. That’s a great way to get kids interested in adding vegetables and fruits to meals.

“Salads are really nice way to widen people’s thoughts about what vegetables can be,” concluded Procter. “Not necessarily cooked and hot all the time — those cold, crisp, bite-sized vegetables can be really welcoming on a warm summer day.”

Articles and activities celebrating the 150 anniversary of Hancock’s War and the development of both Ft. Hays and Hays City have dominated the media.

Those living in temperature controlled homes and driving vehicles down paved roads and highways easily forget what this region was like 1800 months ago. If you want to peek at prairie life then, read letters Dr. Theophilus H. Turner sent from Fort Wallace in 1867. To do so, link to Kenneth Almy’s journal article, Autumn 1987 Kansas History http://kshs.org/publicat/history/1987autumn_almy.pdf.

Dr. Turner was an easterner who served as a medical doctor during the Civil War. After mustering out in 1865, Theophilus re-enlisted in the army and found himself stationed on the frontier at Ft. Wallace, which is near Kansas/Colorado border. Little except the cemetery of that fort still exists, but pictures and drawings reveal a hospital, officers’ quarters, stables, supply, and administrative buildings. It was likely the most developed community on the plains between Fort Hays and Denver.

Dr. Turner, or Thof as family and friends knew him, relished life on the prairie. He enjoyed hunting and wrote that he’d hunted buffalo, ducks, and geese soon after his arrival. His early education prepared him to observe life beyond civilization. He remarks on the differences between white and native hunting practices. He remarks on the white’s wastefulness. In a letter to his brother, he explains three Indians spent the night with him and other officers in their quarters. He notes his guests were mystified by photographs, especially of people staying in the barracks with them. He commented, “a photography establishment among them would be a paying institution.”

Not only did he enjoy hunting and studying native culture, local geology intrigued him. Despite bad weather and Indian danger, Thof and Scout William Comstock rode over the country, noting landscape features and discovering marine fossils. One of these finds near nearby McCallaster Butte in what is now Logan County later fueled heated public disagreements between famed paleontologists. E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh.

Dr. Cope determined that Thof’s dragon, the 40-foot sea creature Turner and Comstock recovered, was an Elasmosaurus platyurus. When he assembled bones Turner found north of Ft. Wallace and sent to him, he mistakenly determined this was a long-tailed, short-necked creature. Marsh, his competitive colleague, corrected him, which led to the virulent disputes that constituted the infamous Bone Wars.

Unfortunately, Theophilus’s life ended soon after he retrieved and shared his ancient sea creature. He died at Ft. Wallace of acute gastritis in 1869. Before his death, he and Dr. Cope corresponded frequently. Fortunately, someone discovered those long missing letters as well as the ones Turner wrote to his family in time to enhance the Academy of Natural Sciences 1986 Discovering Dinosaurs Exhibit.

Currently, a group of local historians is filming a documentary about Dr. Turner and his life at Fort Wallace. Interested readers can keep up with their progress on the Facebook page, Thof’s Dragon. It weaves history and science from the past into the present, forming part of the tapestry we call Kansas.

I feel a little badly about writing this now that our area just had a nice rain, but there are still those that haven’t and maybe it will bring a chuckle or two to everyone. So knowing how dry Kansas can get, think in that context as you read.

Last Sunday after church, a western Kansas rancher and a visitor from Washington State struck up a conversation and the topic naturally turned to how dry it was there in western KS. “Does it ever rain in this blooming state?” the visitor asked. “Oh sure,” answered the rancher. “Do you remember the story in the Bible where it rained for forty days and forty nights?” “Yes, I’m familiar with Noah’s flood,” replied the visitor. “Well,” began the rancher, “That time we got about 2 ½ inches.”

Someone asked me today if I’d been doing any frog hunting yet, being frog season is open now. I told them I would if I could find some water. I got to thinking that I should try the sewage treatment ponds just outside town; there’s always water there and for that reason the frogs are probably so thick there we could catch em’ with dip nets. Besides that, they probably glow in the dark, makin’ them easy to net, and I’ll bet they have four legs ta’ boot!

A new friend of mine, a recent transplant to Kansas, shared with me some pages from his diary:
June 10th – Just moved to Kansas, now this is a state that knows how to live; beautiful sunny days and warm, balmy evenings. It’s beautiful, I love it here!
June 14th – Really heating up, got to 100 today. Not a problem, I live in an air conditioned home, and drive an air conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this.
June 20th –I had the backyard landscaped with western plants today, lots of rocks and cactus. No more mowing the lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it here.
July 3 – The temperature hasn’t been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this heat? At least is kind of windy though. Getting used to this heat is taking longer than I expected.
July 5 – I missed Lomita my cat sneaking into the car when I left for work this morning. When I got to the car after work, she had roasted to death, now my hot car smells like grilled cat! Good ol’ mister sun strikes again.
July 7 – The air conditioner shot craps and the repairman charged me $200 to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts. I’ve been sleeping outside on the patio for three nights now; a $225,000 house and can’t even go inside! Lomita is the lucky one; why did I ever come here?
July 10 – Got the AC fixed; it cost $500 and drops the temperature down to 85. If one more wise guy asks “Hot enough for you today?” I’m going to strangle them. I hate this stupid state!
July 12 – My car smells like fried cat, my new air conditioner barely gets the inside of my house cooler than my morning coffee, my new cactus can’t even live in this blasted heat, and the weather report might as well be a recording! Does it ever rain in this God forsaken place?
July 14 – Welcome to HELL! Forgot to crack the car windows at work today and since it was 115, the windshield blew out. When the repairman came to fix it, guess what he asked me??? “Hot enough for you today?” …It cost my sister $1500 to bail me out of jail. What kind of demented idiot would want to live in a place like this?

Just when you thought you’d heard every possible way to finish this sentence “Its soo dry that…, let me offer a few more:
It’s so dry that the Baptists are sprinkling, the Methodists are using wet-wipes, the Presbyterians are giving rain checks and the Catholics are praying the wine will turn back to water.
It’s so dry that cows are giving evaporated milk and hens are laying hard-boiled eggs.
It’s so dry that the river only runs twice a week.
And finally, it’s so dry that they’ve had to close two lanes at the local swimming pool and swimmers are actually encouraged to pee in the pool.

As a farm boy in Ohio, the Ohio State fair was the perfect end to summer. We took our flock of registered sheep and stayed there for most of the fair. Just up the midway from the sheep barn was a dunk tank manned by a clown calling himself BoBo. Now BoBo knew just exactly how to taunt kids to the point where they would spend their life savings just to try to dunk him. His famous one -liner that I can still remember echoing across the midway into the wee hours of the morning was “BoBo, High and Dry!” BoBo, I feel your pain!

Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors anyway!

Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].

We’re getting ready for the first test of a political-season, non-partisan primary election that comes up in August, followed by November’s general, and we’ll see just how non-partisan things stay.

The movement of city, school district and some other elections from spring to the traditional fall season—when for decades Kansans have been looking for that little elephant or donkey on yard signs and on handbills—may be the first chance we have to see whether those nonpolitical local offices are going to become just as political as the races for the Legislature, statewide offices and national offices in even-numbered years.

Both Republicans and Democrats have been doing some campaign seminars for candidates for those nonpartisan seats, maybe just showing candidates how to best organize a campaign, get voters to turn out—and maybe offering up some party activists to assist in those races.

Nothing dramatic yet, but there’s a little background work going on, in which parties can get a look at potential candidates for partisan offices, get a little more background on local issues, or maybe just interest more Kansans in politics and government and public policy.

Oh, and this year’s “off-year” election for nonpartisan offices might well give political parties a chance to become more involved in races without donkeys and elephants and red and blue signs to expand their influence, membership and contributions and such.

Now, this year, everything is going to be subtle. There will be candidates for the school district or city council who may, on inquiry, tell you what political party they identify with, after or before they also explain that non-partisan means non-partisan.

But, this is just the first time out with these fall elections, and so expect that those candidates will be a little quiet about what political party they belong to; actually, most issues at the school district and municipal election level aren’t hard political ones—or haven’t been turned into partisan issues…yet. For many voters, they’ll probably be interested in whether the school board candidate has kids in school. For local government seats? It might be whether you want whoever is in charge of storm water drainage to live higher up the hill than you do, with probably less interest on how well the water moves at the bottom of the hill, where your basement is…

Is this spooky? Probably not now.

Remember, the ballots don’t show a party affiliation…at least they don’t this year. But a couple election cycles from now, there might be some interesting nicknames that candidates want on the ballot. Joe “Dem” Smith, or Jack “Rep” Jones?

Now, there are some advantages to the odd-numbered year fall elections. It means that newly elected city council and school board members will not have to jump into the deep end of the pool in putting together a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. It gives those newly elected members some time to figure out just what they need to do, how things work, who’s doing what, and how they’d like to see their unit of government managed.

And…it might give some of those candidates a chance to start a political career that just might wind up in a larger office representing more constituents and larger issues that affect more people.

Or, this could just turn out to be a better way to make sure that county election offices have more time to make sure that they’re ready for the odd-year elections, and it might just provide work every year so that if there are economies in conducting an election, they can be realized.

We probably ought to be watching for the subtle party-affiliation hints, how candidates and parties participate in the campaigns, and just what is the future of “nonpartisan.”

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

More teachers are leaving Kansas classrooms. That includes both veteran teachers and younger rookies. What can be done to reduce this attrition until someday the supply of new teachers returns? Simply—individual teachers who are contemplating leaving can be offered extra pay.

Over these last decades, Kansas beginning and average salaries for teachers have been dropping when compared with the other 49 states. Nor has teacher pay kept pace with inflation. Teacher salaries had their highest purchasing power in the early 1970s. Looking ahead to an eroding salary that no longer compares to other professions that require a college degree, and no longer being able to afford to send their own children to college, it is reasonable that more Kansas teachers are considering leaving the profession or leaving the state.

One stop gap measure now available to school administrators is retention bonuses, a form of differential pay. Simply, schools can pay an additional bonus to keep a good teacher in the classroom.

This is not to be confused with the supplemental pay provided to a teacher for taking on extra duties such as after-school coaching or sponsoring the student council.

In some states, there is one uniform statewide salary scale. Some of those states have a higher pay scale for teachers in a shortage area. Often, all special education or all science teachers will get a higher salary. This is called differential pay. However, Kansas has over 280 unified school districts, each with a different salary scale. And the cost of living across urban to rural districts can be quite different. So a teacher might earn a smaller salary but be better off than a richer teacher in a high-cost area.

But local control also means that schools can offer individual retention bonuses appropriate to their district. A teacher should check their district’s negotiated agreement for language pertaining to bonuses. Schools can offer extra money in the annual contract, above-and-beyond the standard salary scale, to individual teachers who have proven themselves in the classroom and for whom the school district is unlikely to find a replacement.

This is not too different from hiring bonuses, the one-time lumps of money commonly offered to attract a teacher to come to a district. Hiring bonuses have been used for years, especially by remote rural districts or high-poverty schools. But retention bonuses can be added to hold onto a veteran teacher who is considering leaving, or to recruit away an exceptional teacher from another district.

Retention bonuses are added to the yearly contracts. If a teacher is promised an ongoing bonus to stay in the district, this teacher needs to get in writing that the bonus will be added to the salary schedule dictated by the negotiated agreement each and every year through duration of employment.

For several years now, some high-performance Kansas science, math and other teachers have negotiated retention bonuses that have kept them in Kansas classrooms. Some have negotiated up to an additional $10,000–12,000 per year! The ability of a school to offer retention bonuses will depend on the district’s resources, local teaching climate and administration.

Even a modest $1000-per-year renewed retention-bonus amounts to $40,000 over a 40-year career. Such accumulating amounts can make a difference in the life of a teacher and his/her family.

It is important to do everything we can to keep our best teachers from leaving Kansas classrooms. When Kansas students return to school this fall, they need the best teachers Kansas can retain. This may not set well with non-shortage-area teachers in the teacher’s lounge. —Nor with local citizens who have a low regard for education. But Kansas needs to do what is best for Kansas students.

John Richard Schrock is a professor at Emporia State University.

State lawmakers who ended Governor Sam Brownback’s tax experiment were pragmatic but not conservative. So said my colleague Michael Smith recently in writing on “the myth of conservative Kansas.”

I disagree. Those lawmakers and the voters who elected them were indeed pragmatists in the best Kansas tradition but also fundamentally conservative in the true meaning of that word.

True conservatives abhor reckless experimentation, distrust absolute power, and see historical experience as a crucial guide in making public policy.

Brownback and the far-right faction of Republicans who commandeered the executive and legislative branches of Kansas state government from 2011 through 2015 were not genuine conservatives as they claim. They were ideologues with a radical agenda.

They experimented carelessly with state taxes, grabbed for control of the Kansas Supreme Court, and unraveled school finance. In each instance, these right-wing lawmakers ignored history—turning their backs on the judgement and conservative character of Kansas voters and those elected by these voters over recent generations.

Voters eventually saw through this ideological charade and rejected it at the ballot box in 2016.

First, voters halted the fanatical drive to eliminate the state income tax. Kansas conservatives had historically sought to restrain spending in line with revenues, maintain state balances, keep taxes fair and tax rates low, pay bills on time, exercise caution in the use of debt, and preserve state credit. The tax experiment took Kansas in exactly the opposite direction—four years of unbalanced budgets, a depleted state treasury, unfair taxes, record debt, and credit downgrades.

In 2016 voters elected a new class of lawmakers who restored a fair and balanced tax structure and moved Kansas back onto a more conservative fiscal course. These lawmakers also understood that all the damage done by the experimenters could not be repaired in one legislative session.

Second, voters rebuffed plans to pack the Kansas Supreme Court. The governor and his right-wing allies had unleashed a crescendo of political attacks on the Court prior to the election of 2016. They threatened the Court with budget cuts and impeachment procedures and tried to undermine court administration. They sought to abandon merit selection of Supreme Court justices put in place by voters nearly 60 years earlier to deter gubernatorial abuse of power.

Conservative voters rejected the blatant power grab. They retained all five Supreme Court justices on the 2016 ballot and demonstrated their long-standing preference for an independent judiciary as a check on executive and legislative powers.

Third, in 2016 voters elected a majority of state lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, who believed in public schools and reasonable school funding. Prior to the election of 2010 Kansas legislators and governors had repeatedly cooperated with state courts in resolving constitutional challenges to state funding for public schools and refining procedures for that funding. In 2013 far-right lawmakers led by the governor disregarded historical precedents and discarded those procedures with no plan for replacing them. They enacted temporary block grants that shortchanged schools. Their transient fix was declared unconstitutional by the Kansas Supreme Court.

The newly elected majority of lawmakers looked to past experience in responding to the court order. They reinstated earlier procedures for school funding, refined them in response to the court, and adopted a conservative level of funding for schools. Their actions are now under review by the Court.

Once Kansas voters realized what ideological Republicans were up to, they changed course. They opted for pragmatism and conservatism in charting the state’s future.

H. Edward Flentje is professor emeritus at Wichita State University.

Last month, the Kansas Legislature enacted comprehensive tax reform, overturning Governor Brownback’s overly-aggressive 2012 tax cut. This return to common sense tax policy resulted from legislators listening to their constituents and fulfilling the promises they made during 2016 campaigns. In the end, a group of 88 representatives and 27 senators from across the political spectrum voted to override the governor’s veto and restore our state to firmer fiscal ground.

Brownback’s tax plan abandoned the “three-legged stool” approach to funding government which had served Kansas well for decades by relying on a stable balance of income, sales, and property. Instead, his plan dramatically slashed income taxes and created the small business exemption which many Kansans viewed as unfair. As predicted by those of us who opposed the measure, Kansas faced massive budget deficits. And when they came, the governor urged the legislature to increase sales tax, issue billions in new debt, sweep from the highway fund and use one-time sources of funding just to pay the bills. Finally, the legislature said “enough is enough”, and rejected the governor’s short-term fixes as being neither responsible nor conservative.

The fiscal strain created by the 2012 tax cuts caused public schools to suffer, increasing class sizes and reducing program offerings. Medicaid reimbursements were reduced, straining rural hospital budgets heavily reliant on those payments. Highway funds for preservation and maintenance were cut to unsustainably low levels. And despite the assurances of adviser Art Laffer that economic nirvana was just around the corner, Kansans continued to move out of state. Governor Brownback and his allies insisted that his tax plan was working, offering as evidence cherry-picked data such as unemployment rate and new business starts. Those are not reliable indicators of economic growth, however, and plenty of other data shows a Kansas economy which continues to lag its neighbors and the nation.

Though raising taxes is never easy, it was unfortunately the only responsible option available. State government has been cut to the point where there is no reasonable way to reduce spending enough to balance the budget. Those who parrot the phrase “we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem” have repeatedly failed to offer realistic suggestions for further cuts. The costs of fulfilling our obligation to those enrolled in Medicaid and KPERS continue to increase, and the Kansas Supreme Court has yet to determine whether the $460 million increase in K-12 funding passes constitutional muster. The tax plan passed by the legislature will generate enough revenue to balance the budget, ensure our public schools have the resources they need, and meet the state’s obligation to retirees. It will do all this while keeping taxes lower than they were before Governor Brownback took office. Additionally, it restores important tax credits and deductions which will help offset increased tax liability for many low-income Kansans.

Meanwhile the Governor and his surrogates employ the tactics we’ve sadly come to expect from Washington D.C., skewing the facts to fit their narrative. They use buzz words like “retroactive,” although they know the legislature ensured the tax plan would not apply retroactively to wage earners. They call it a $1.2 billion tax increase, more than doubling the estimated revenue the tax plan will generate. They say the legislature spent every penny, when budget projections point to responsible but not extravagant ending balances. They claim that the legislature created $200 million of new spending but refuse to provide any detail. In contrast, the budget contains only $60 million of new spending, and primarily for a long-overdue state employee pay increase and restoration of funding for Kansas’ mental health system. Most Kansans would agree those are essential governmental services, and not “pet projects” as one of the governor’s aides recently asserted.

The advocates for the failed Brownback tax plan hope their misleading rhetoric will convince voters to support them as they pursue the same policies Kansans rejected last year. They want to stop us from undoing the damage that has been done.

Much work remains. It took years to get us into such a dire situation, and it will take years for us to recover. I hope you will stand with us, because together we can make tomorrow a brighter day in the great state of Kansas.

Kansas House Majority Leader Don Hineman
118th District
620-397-3242
[email protected]

By JOHN P. TRETBAR

Baker Hughes reported 952 active drilling rigs across the country Friday, up 12. There are 763 total rigs drilling for oil in the US, which is up seven and more than double the number from last year at this time. There are 189 rigs actively targeting natural gas. In Canada 14 rigs fell off the active list, down to 175 total. Independent Oil & Gas Service reported 13 active rigs in eastern Kansas, down one, and 20 west of Wichita, down two. In Ellis County, they’re moving in completion tools at one lease. Drilling is underway at one lease in Barton County, where they’re moving in rotary tools at one site, and moving in completion tools at two more.

There were just 14 permits filed last week for drilling at new locations across Kansas, 724 so far this year. There were three east of Wichita and 11 in Western Kansas, including one in Barton County.

Independent Oil & Gas Service reported 31 new well completions last week across the state, 21 in eastern Kansas and 10 west of Wichita. There was one new completion in Russell County and one in Stafford County.

Operators across Kansas filed just 141 intent-to-drill notices last month, for a mid-year total of 781. That’s more than last year’s 448, but well below the 1,285 filed through the second quarter of 2015, and the 3,831 intents filed in 2014. There were six intents filed with the KCC in June in Barton County, three in Ellis County, one in Russell County and one in Stafford County.

In a first-of-its-kind settlement, an Oklahoma oil company has come to terms with a woman who sued them for injuries suffered in a 2011 earthquake she said was caused oilfield saltwater disposal. The Stillwater News-Press reports Spress Oil settled with Sandra and Gary Ladra for an undisclosed amount. The 5.7 magnitude earthquake in Central Oklahoma was the state’s largest ever. Sandra Ladra was injured when rocks and bricks from her chimney fell on her legs. The initial lawsuit claimed damages totaling more than $75,000. The Oklahoma Supreme Court had to determine whether the courts or the Oklahoma Corporation Commission had jurisdiction over the matter before it could be heard. This means future cases will be heard by the courts and not state regulators. The Ladras’ lawsuit continues against another oil company, with a hearing scheduled July 12.

Halliburton has hired about 100 new oilfield workers each month this year to keep up with surging demand in West Texas, a sharp turnaround after the job-killing oil bust. The Houston Chronicle reports the oil field service company has expanded its active fleet of fracking trucks and pumps by 30 percent in recent months. Its workforce in the region has grown by more than a third to 2,700 employees. Many of those were recruited outside of West Texas. The company held job fairs in places like Alabama, Mississippi and Nevada.

China has ramped up purchases of U.S.crude, as the glut makes our product cheaper than its Mideast rivals. The Wall Street Journal says China now buys 100,000 barrels a day from the U.S., 10 times the average of a year earlier, shortly after Congress lifted the US export ban. Imports in April and May jumped to more than 180,000 barrels a day on average. U.S. oil sales to China may reach more than $1 billion this year, up from $150 million last year. Russia, Saudi Arabia and Angola are still the top suppliers to China.

We told you about the first supertanker to ever navigate the channel at Corpus Christi last month. The New York Times says the successful docking of the French-flagged supertanker Anne at Occidental is seen as the herald of an export boom. There’s already ample evidence: oil exports grew slowly through most of 2016, but this year there has been a surge reaching 1.3 million barrels a day — roughly 15 percent of domestic production — which even at today’s depressed prices is worth more than $1.5 billion a month.

Mexico’s state oil firm Pemex lost $3.2 million per day from fuel theft last year. That’s the equivalent of two percent of total sales. According to a government report cited by BN Americas, Pemex reported a total of 6,537 illegal taps on pipelines last year, larger than earlier reports and the highest annual number so far. The number in 2009 was 310. Media reports in Mexico say the big players now are the criminal drug gangs acting in concert with corrupt oil company officials.

When F.D.R. proclaimed that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” we had not yet developed nuclear warfare. Today, with nuclear armaments expanding in North Korea and the increasing threat of non-governmental terrorists securing or building nuclear bombs, there is good reason to be very worried.

We came closer to nuclear annihilation in the Cuban missile crisis under President Kennedy than most of us realize. In the bio-documentary of Robert McNamara, “Fog of War,” we hear the taped committee discussion where Kennedy faces two replies from the Soviet Union. J.F.K. wisely follows the civilian advice to respond to the less militaristic message. As a high school student at that time, I joined the rest of America in sighing relief that all ended well.    

But we came much closer to an exchange of nuclear missiles and worldwide devastation than we knew. William J. Perry, the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997 was a young photo analyst at the time. In his book “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink,” he reveals the pure luck that prevented a civilization-ending war. The Soviet fleet that approached our Cuban blockade included submarines equipped with nuclear torpedoes. Because underwater communication was difficult, the Soviet submarine captains had been given full authorization to decide whether to open fire. When our fleet attempted to force a submarine to the surface, the submarine captain gave the order to fire nuclear torpedoes at our destroyer. It was only by chance that the fleet commander, Vasili Arkhipov, was aboard that submarine and countered the order—and prevented World War III.

But the U.S. had risky commanders as well, including General Curtis LeMay whose advice to go ahead and bomb the Cuban missile sites was rejected by Kennedy. Only long afterward did we learn that the Soviet commanders manning those Cuban missiles, similar to the submarine captains, had been given discretion to launch without further orders. We now know that had General LeMay’s plan been enacted, there is little doubt that some of those nuclear missiles—including warheads targeted at Washington, D.C.—would have gotten through.

To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. In the cases of Generals Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay, every problem had a military solution with nuclear options included. There are notable exceptions, including Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall. But our history has shown the wisdom of a civilian Secretary of Defense. 

We laugh at the naive “duck-and-cover” school exercises of the early Cold War era.  But although the deadly and long-lasting effects of nuclear blasts and fallout radiation are now better understood, they are nearly completely missing from the modern school curriculum.

The actual effects of nuclear warfare are barely perceived by a public that would simply rather not know. Ironically, one of the more accurate portrayals was filmed in Lawrence. “The Day After” aired in November 1983 on ABC stations. Although it was seen by over 100 million people, there is little evidence today of any residual appreciation for the civilization-ending impact of a full-scale nuclear war. The decades-long “nuclear winter” and other effects of these weapons remain beyond the comprehension of supposedly well-informed modern citizens.

Nor do today’s generals really understand the destructive force of nuclear warfare. Thanks to the test ban treaty, we no longer have any generals who have witnessed a nuclear bomb.  Harold Agnew, a physicist from our Manhattan Project, explains “…you don’t know what heat is until you’ve seen the heat from a 10 megaton, 15 megaton hydrogen bomb. The most impressive thing about the heat is it doesn’t stop, it just gets hotter and hotter and you start to really worry even though you’re 20 some miles away….”  Agnew believed that if generals felt the intensity of that distant inferno firsthand, they would never order a thermonuclear bombing.  No audio-visuals, no modern media in 3-D, could ever replace the feel of that heat penetrating your body.  But today’s generals whose only imagery of the H-bomb is from conventional weapons and abstract videos made this a more dangerous world.

So, where is a school curriculum that helps our next generation understand these things—if there is to be another generation?

Ever hear of digging prickly pear cactus out of a pasture for 50 cents an acre?

I hadn’t either until longtime Phillips County resident Max Schick told me his story.

Schick was a boy of 10 back in the mid ‘30s when the U.S. government paid people to rid their grass of prickly pear cactus. He and his older brother toiled for two years on his family’s 65-acre pasture to rid the land of these sticky, nuisance plants threatening the western Kansas short-grass prairie.

Extremely drought-resistant, the prickly pear cactus was thriving during the drought of the Dirty Thirties crowding out the grassland and food supply of cattle.

There’s a bit of untold irony here as well. Some of the grass survived only because the cattle couldn’t reach it because of the cactus spines and stickers.

“Back then, the cactus hills dotted the pasture like fly specs,” Schick says. “They were everywhere in the pasture.”

On his family’s farm, located approximately seven miles northeast of Logan, Schick and his brother dug the cactus out of the ground with a shovel. They couldn’t afford gloves and were always fighting the little red stickers that broke off the plant and became embedded in their clothes and skin.

Every night when they finished digging cactus, the two boys would go down to the pond and try to wash themselves clean of the prickly pear cactus.

“The pond was our shower back then,” Schick recalls. “It’s how we got clean.”

The Schick brothers dug from breakfast to dinner and from dinner until supper time. After about two days of digging, they’d go out with a team and wagon and load up the cactus. Then, they’d turn around and haul the pesky cactus to the farmstead and throw them in a rick or stack.

“You had to dig each plant out of the ground and then take ‘em clean out of the pasture,” Schick says. “At the bottom of each cactus was a little bit of a root, about as round as your little finger and a couple inches long. If you didn’t get the root and all, the cactus would sprout and grow again.”

When the brothers finally finished the prickly pear excavation project, their uncle and grandfather received payment from the government. The sum of approximately $32.50 was considered a gold mine back then, Schick says.

“I didn’t get anything, my brother kept it all,” he says. “I was just trailing along for the fun. At 10 years of age and seven miles from a town we only went to three times a year, what did I need money for?”

Young Schick has no regrets about the two years of his young life spent digging prickly pear cactus out of his family’s pasture. He prefers to look at this period in his life that made him appreciate what he did have.
It was also during this time he discovered a treasure that still holds his interest nearly 80 years later.

“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” Schick remembers. “It was along about 11 in the morning and I was pretty tired from all that digging. There he lay in a low spot in the pasture a few feet from a cactus I was workin’ on.”

That’s when the Phillips County farm boy discovered his first arrow head.

“It was about two inches long and worked on both sides,” Schick says. It was made of flint with a round, good point – a real beauty.”

Since that day many years ago, the Phillipsburg resident still collects, trades and admires his Native American arrow heads. He’s walked many a mile and worn out the knees on more than one pair of coveralls in search of his passion littered across the High Plains prairie.

Just a few months shy of 90, Schick reports he’s “doin’ fine.”

And with autumn just around the corner, he’s beginning to think about his pumpkin patch and telling stories with youngsters. But don’t kid yourself, he still finds time to look through his collection of arrow heads – especially his favorites.

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.