Kevin Costner has been on a roll lately, headlining sports movies that shouldn’t work, but end up being something unique, something special. “Draft Day,” released last spring, was a surprisingly engaging film that revolved around the NFL Draft, with very little typical “sports action.” On paper, that would seem like a risky move to me. The result was quite the contrary – “Draft Day” provided a unique look into a side of football that I had never seen before.
In a similar vein, “McFarland, USA” also seems like a movie that might not necessarily work on paper. Football movies work, basketball movies work, even the occasional hockey movie works. But a cross country running movie? That’s a much harder sell.
“McFarland, USA” is a true story set in the predominately hispanic town of McFarland, California in 1987. Kevin Costner, who plays coach Jim White, leads a cast of talented, if relatively unknown, young actors.
I’ll be honest, I was skeptical about this film. I didn’t know a ton about it before seeing it, but nevertheless, a movie about a cross country team sounded a little boring to me. “McFarland” is anything but boring. The sports action is engaging; and, like “Draft Day,” “McFarland” is a window into a, comparatively, much narrower section of the wide world of sports.
Equally important to the film’s success is the Disney formula. There’s heart, there are life lessons, and there’s an indefatigable optimism that will race hearts. This is still very much a sports movie. On the surface it may not look as exciting as a football or basketball movie, but the core structure remains identifiable. “McFarland, USA” is easy to recommend to just about every demographic. It’s a good family movie, it’s a good date movie, it’s a good Kevin Costner movie, it’s an all-around satisfying flick.
You grown-up guys out there are going to remember the times when, on a coat-and-tie outing, your girlfriend ordered chicken at the restaurant and you had your first notion that the outing wasn’t going to cost you a car payment.
Well, this memory so far appears to be about where Gov. Sam Brownback is this legislative session, early in the adventure of course, but so far, some little things are going his way.
He presented the Legislature with a budget for the upcoming two fiscal years, and so far, he probably has been surprised that in House Appropriations Committee subcommittees, and their counterparts in the Senate, most of the budget trimming he has proposed for dozens of state agencies has been approved.
That’s millions of dollars of trims in spending—and where there weren’t cuts, there weren’t increases, either—that he has apparently won.
Now, this is very early in the date, mind you, but at this point, those dozens of little agencies—think Real Estate Appraisal Board or Dental Board—have generally been approved in one house or the other with the governor’s spending recommendations intact.
Small stuff, sure, and maybe it is because budget committee members are conserving their energy. Or, maybe at least for the relatively nickel-and-dime spending on small specialized agencies that most Kansans have never heard of, Brownback is actually reducing the cost of government.
This isn’t going to last, but for right now with just the smaller pieces of state government budgets taking shape, Brownback is getting much of what he proposed in terms of spending.
Now, there remains elementary and higher education and highways and public safety, and social services and health programs for the poor and their children, which aren’t settled yet and which will be the real fights for the governor.
But, for now, the governor isn’t doing badly in the small world of small budgets.
Considering the responsibility of the governor to present lawmakers with a budget that on paper appears to balance, he’s done. Almost.
Brownback appears to have presented his budget and virtually disappeared.
He’s having staffers alternately laud and defend his K-12 education block grant plan and present probably what is his assessment of falling revenues, but he isn’t talking out loud much about his budget.
Maybe it’s too early, or maybe he has just presented a budget and is leaving the conservative Republican-led legislature to make it work. But he’s not publicly wading into the simmering debate that will end with either new taxes to finance it or sharp reductions in spending that at some point are going to inconvenience even his supporters.
This week, the governor can relax, and watch non-budget bills pour through the Legislature, the ones that don’t have sizable—or for some, even computed—price tags. It is the deadline week for most bills to get approved in one chamber and sent to the opposite chamber for consideration.
So, watch the fur fly over issues like immigration, teacher contract negotiations, guns and who can carry them where, and even a few bridges to get names.
It is just one week of pretty hot debates in the House and Senate over bills that will be the headline-grabbers, and then, it is budget again, and once there’s a budget the tax committees will start sifting through the options to fill what is assuredly going to be a hole in the budget.
Brownback has had a pretty good date with the Legislature—so far.
But he’s not on the front porch yet to see whether his date rewards him…or just goes indoors.
Syndicated by Hawver News Co. of Topeka, Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report. To learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit www.hawvernews.com.
John Richard Schrock is a professor at Emporia State University.
Two bills have reappeared in the Kansas Legislature to shut down sex education in Kansas.
House Bill 2199 would require “opt-in” permission from parents for any student to attend any sex education lessons. Senate Bill 56 would allow a Kansas teacher to be prosecuted for obscenity for using teaching materials appropriate for classroom use. Both fig-leaf bills died in previous legislatures but are back in an attempt to stifle sex education in Kansas.
House Bill 2199 requires the distribution of “all instructional materials” to parents beforehand and requires “opt-in” permission to attend the classes. Kansas has always required sex education lessons to be “opt-out” since Kansas became the third state to implement mandatory sex education in 1987. (Sex education has since become optional.)
The difference between opt-in and opt-out centers on parents who fail to return permission slips. Under opt-out, these students would remain in the sexuality class. With the imposed opt-in requirement, their student would be excluded. If the number of students who must be accommodated with alternative lessons is more than a few, a teacher will have to abandon sex education lessons or double-teach. Simply, requiring opt-in sex education usually results in the end of sex education.
The irony is that Kansas already allows parents to opt their student out of classes. Under Kansas Statute 1111e, parents can opt their child out of any lessons for religious reasons. And aside from religious objection, Kansas health education standards already require districts to have either an opt-out or opt-in policy for sex education in place. This is called “local control”—and we already have it.
Senate Bill 56 removes the K-12 teacher exemption for obscenity. Currently two professions have exemption under Kansas law: physicians and teachers. Medical doctors most certainly need to be able to use illustrations with patients. And teachers need to use similar graphics with students within the context of sex education lessons. Those graphics would be obscene if posted on main street, but are clearly not obscene and are indeed critical within the context of the doctor’s office or the teacher’s classroom. SB 56 takes away the K-12 teacher’s ability to use such graphics and generates the fear of prosecution in teachers and school officials for using sexual material in “any book, magazine, newspaper, pamphlet, poster, print, picture, figure, image, description, motion picture film, record, recording tape or video tape” with any student under the age of 18.
Similar bills have been brought up in Kansas before. In 2003, Kansas Senate Bill 263 attempted to take away the teaching exemption from obscenity from both K-12 and university teachers. In 2006 and 2008, additional attempts were made with the State Board of Education and the Kansas Legislature to discourage sex education through required opt-in. All of these attempts were wisely rejected.
Oddly, the main rationale given for censoring sex education is that sex education is the parent’s job. Sadly, this ignores the extensive recent discoveries in reproductive biology going well beyond in-vitro fertilization to variations in development, anatomy, hormones and brain development. Unless parents are medical endocrinologists, they are unlikely to be able to explain an anatomical girl with XY chromosomes in every cell, Turner or Klinefelter syndromes, genetic mosaics, the current status of AIDS, sexually-transmitted diseases, or gender and sex determination. It is not just about the “birds-and-the-bees” anymore.
Meanwhile, the new social media and our totally unregulated Internet have allowed youngsters to have access to massive amounts of pornography and a wealth of sexually explicit misinformation at a very young age. At a time when accurate knowledge is ever more important, these proposed Kansas laws will censor the responsible teaching of Kansas students younger than 18.
There are places in the world that want to go backward in history and preserve ignorance: Boko Haram (“Western education is forbidden”) in Nigeria, and ISIS in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
The average age of a farm operator in the United States is 57 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest census of agriculture. The majority of farm operators are between 45 and 64 years old, but the fastest growing group is those 65 years and older.
“Older farm couples may remember what it was like when the farm was handed to them initially– and in earlier times, maybe not much planning had gone into the transition,” said Gregg Hadley, a farm management specialist and assistant director for agriculture, natural resources for K-State Research and Extension.
“Today, a lot of farmers and ranchers are realizing, especially with the dollar amounts that farms and ranches are worth now, that there needs to be more of a business approach to passing on the family farm or ranch,” Hadley said.
Passing down the farm successfully requires thoughtful planning, and it’s never too early to begin the planning process. Hadley, and other experts from Kansas State University, will speak on this subject in detail at the upcoming Planning for Farm & Ranch Succession conference on Tuesday, March 3, 9:00 am – 4:30 pm at the KSU Ag Research Center in Hays.
Registration is $60 for the first family member and $40 per person for additional family members who register together. Registration for each person includes lunch and snacks. One set of succession materials will be available for each family group.
To register online and pay with a credit card, go to www.ksre.ksu.edu/kams. Online registration closes one week prior to the conference on February 25th. After that, registration will still be available by calling 1-800-432-8222. Walk-in registration is available, but space may be limited and meals are not guaranteed for those who register on-site.
While every farm or ranch situation is different, all should have a succession plan in place. Succession planning involves discussing the financial assets as well as establishing a business philosophy, management and workload transference plan, partnership details and succession feasibility.
Don’t wait to start talking about farm succession until the owner wants to retire.
“A good time to get serious about the planning process is when a son or daughter is considering coming back to the farm as a significant part of their professional career, but really it is something that you should start as soon as possible,” Hadley said. “You never know when the five Ds—unexpected death, disease, disability, disagreements or divorce—are going to disrupt the farm or ranch business.”
Learning how to communicate should be the first step in farm succession planning, followed by dealing with emotional roadblocks, and then developing a business plan, financial plan and estate plan. Detail is essential in making a smooth transition.
“When you disagree about a family business that could be worth millions of dollars, you need to carefully plan how you’re going to transfer the farm, the assets, the decision-making process and the responsibilities to the next generation,” Hadley said. “Often it is not the estate plan which contributes to the failure of farm succession,” he said. “In fact, 85 percent of the time by some research estimates, the failure has to do with family communication, relationships and business philosophy issues.”
Succession planning can be stressful, and it helps to have reliable information to aid in the planning process. Plan to attend the regional farm and ranch succession planning workshop on March 3 in Hays. Go to www.ksre.ksu.edu/kams for more information and to register by February 25th, or contact the Ellis County Extension Office at 785-628-9430.
Linda K. Beech is Ellis County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences.
Troy L. Waymaster, State Representative, Kansas House district, 109
February 20, 2015
Senate Bill 178: High Tax Increases for Kansas Farmers
During the joint meeting that House Appropriations and Senate Ways and Means Committee held at the beginning of session, we were briefed by the Director of the Budget and the Legislative Liaison for the Department of Revenue about Governor Brownback’s proposed tax plan. When the discussion was then opened for questions, a senator from Johnson County, stated that if we really want to address tax issues, then we needed to address how agricultural land is assessed for property taxes. Hence, the introduction of Senate Bill 178.
As introduced, this bill would have huge implications on the farming and agricultural industry in the state of Kansas; this would undoubtedly raise the property taxes on agricultural land tremendously, some say by an estimated 500% on average.
As of current Kansas law, agricultural land is to be assessed a property tax value based off of its income or productivity, not based on property value. Even though the “use value” property tax valuation has been in place since 1989, the tax tables are updated on an annual basis.
During many of the legislative coffees and town halls that I have participated in throughout the 109th Kansas House District, I have routinely said that many of the disagreements that legislators may have are based on an urban versus rural platform. Senate Bill 178 is a prime example of that. If this were to become law, this would be catastrophic to the agricultural industry throughout the entire state of Kansas, which is ironic to me since this would affect agricultural land in Johnson County. I do not support Senate Bill 178 and hopefully it will not maneuver through the legislative process in the Senate.
Senate Bill 171: Moving Elections
Early in the session, the Senate Elections committee introduced a bill that would move local elections from the month of April in the spring to a fall election in November. Some of the local elections this would affect would be the elections of school boards and city councils.
There has always been discussion on the topic of moving these elections from the spring to the fall. However in past years, they did not appear to gain much traction. There was an amendment, Wednesday, in the Senate Elections committee, changing the wording of the introduced legislation to move local elections from the spring to fall, however in odd-numbered years and leaving them non-partisan.
I have never been a proponent of moving the elections from the spring to the fall, especially if it could generate the adverse effect of deterring people from serving in their community.
Department of Corrections Bills
The Kansas House of Representatives worked several corrections bills last week and made alterations to existing law to address some issues that were identified over the interim. The first bill, House Bill 2055, updated the state’s conversion chart for out of state misdemeanor convictions for the purpose of determining an offender’s criminal history. For example, if someone was convicted of a misdemeanor out of state, the comparable Kansas offense would be used to classify it as a class A, B or C misdemeanor. If there is no comparable Kansas offense for an out of state misdemeanor, then it would not be counted in the offender’s criminal history.
House Bill 2051, recommended by the Kansas Sentencing Commission, is designed to assist the Department of Corrections to better manage its inmate population. The bill gives more tools to Department Of Correction staff to increase the “good time and credits” for inmates who are serving sentences for non-violent drug crimes. Inmates would have to participate in vocational training and social skills development to better assist them with integration into the community after release and to reduce the rate of recidivism. The commission projects a bed savings of 119 inmates in FY 2016 and 181 in FY 2017.
House Bill 2056 was also recommended by the Kansas Sentencing Commission and puts into place a “risk assessment tool” for determining the risk of an inmate reoffending. The tool called LSI-R is a more accurate measure of how well an individual has been rehabilitated instead of the current law, which uses offense classification to determine how long an inmate should serve. The commission believes the new tool will help public safety officials determine which inmates can be placed in community correctional service programs and which inmates are best kept in state prison. The bill had no fiscal effect on the Department of Corrections.
PBS Funding, 4-H, and Contact Information
On Thursday, February 19, the House Appropriations Committee reviewed the budget approved by the Agriculture and Natural Resources Budget Committee for the Department of Commerce. Included in their budget analysis was the funding for public broadcasting. The Budget Committee had an amendment to increase the funding, all derived from the Economic Development Incentive Funds, to $600,000 for 2016 and 2017. However, the Appropriations Committee amended the Budget Committee’s proposal and approved $500,000, which was the Governor’s recommendation. There was a substitute motion to entirely eliminate the funding and that motion failed by a voice-vote in Appropriations Committee.
On Sunday and Monday, the capitol was full of young 4-Her’s who were participating in 4-H Citizenship in Action. I attended the CIA House session on Sunday evening where they debated
legislation that they had introduced. I also met with 4-Her’s throughout the day on Monday.
It is an honor to serve the 109th Kansas House District and the state of Kansas. Do not hesitate to contact me with your thoughts, concerns and questions. I appreciate hearing from the residents of the 109th House District and others from the state of Kansas.
Troy L. Waymaster,
State Representative
109th Kansas House
300 SW 10th
Topeka, KS 66612
We’d like to share a few pertinent facts on education funding.
• Governor Brownback is committed to investing in education
• He is working to fix a broken education funding formula so more money gets into the classroom to benefit Kansas students
• K-12 spending is $177 million more this school year than last. (And that is after the recent 1.5% allotment from K-12)
• The Governor has increased funding to K-12 education every year since taking office
• Currently, Kansas schools have more than $370 million in reserves to help them cover this small reduction in increased funding over the next four months
The Governor has requested a timeout in the education finance wars. The current education funding formula needs reform to ensure more money goes to the classroom to benefit Kansas students. Realizing the legislative process takes time, the Governor also has recommended a sunset to the current school finance formula effective July 1, so he can work with the Legislature on reforming K-12 financing with a new – and sustainable – formula. Until a new formula becomes law, Governor Brownback recommends use of a block grant to distribute state education funding. The Governor’s proposal would have school districts funded at the currently approved Fiscal Year 2016 and 2017 funding levels – which includes weightings found in the current formula.
The purchase of a $48,000 piano was an excellent example of the problems with the current school funding formula since the capital outlay funds used to purchase it could not be used in other ways, for example to hire teachers or provide them with raises. The block grant would combine some of the current finance formula funds into one, including capital outlay funds, and would provide districts more flexibility in how they can spend their money.
We hope this information helps you understand why the Governor is taking these actions.
Best,
Melika Willoughby
Deputy Communications Director
Office of Governor Sam Brownback
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer and public speaker.
Ready or not, the race is on — for president, I mean.
Yes, Election Day is still nearly two years away, but the candidates are already on the loose. And they’re as goosey as ever.
So far, the goosiest has been Mitt Romney.
The GOP’s 2012 loser was asked last year if he would try again, and he said — in these exact words — “Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
That’s 11 not-uhs, which would seem pretty final.
But in January, Romney suddenly back-flipped into the race. Even more stunning, the multimillionaire plutocrat proclaimed that he was running this time as the candidate of the poor and the middle class.
That was going to be fun to watch, but only two weeks later, Mitt quit. He said he wanted to give some of the new faces a chance. What a guy.
So Romney’s out. Unless he gets back in.
Meanwhile, some of those “new faces” have an old and weary look, such as extremist right-wing retread Mike Huckabee. He recently informed us that being gay is a “lifestyle” choice, like choosing to drink alcohol.
Really? How does he know?
And don’t forget Rick “Oops” Perry. He’s back, this time wearing horn-rimmed glasses that are supposed to make him look smarter. You be the judge.
Rick’s latest handicap, however, isn’t his stupidity. It’s trying to look presidential while under felony indictment for abusing his gubernatorial power — plus having his office under scrutiny for awarding handouts of public dollars to campaign donors and political cronies.
You know you’ve got image issues when your press conferences keep featuring photo-ops of you flanked by your covey of high-dollar criminal defense lawyers.
Still, the goofiest thing about the 2016 race is that it’s expected to come down to Bush vs. Clinton. Haven’t we seen that movie before?
When Gov. Brownback spoke to Kansans in his state-of-the-state address last month, he called for a school finance formula that “should reflect real-world costs and put dollars in classrooms with real students, not in bureaucracy and buildings and artificial gimmicks.” Then the next morning he did the exact opposite. He released his budget, proposing a $127 million cut right at the heart of public education—from classrooms.
Duane Goossen is a Senior Fellow at the Kansas Center for Economic Growth and formerly served 12 years as Kansas Budget Director.
Not only that. The governor wants to sack the state’s school finance formula in favor of a “block grant” to schools, which would make that $127 million cut permanent and shut off any future funding increases for schools from the state.
Why would he propose this? How does this help Kansas? Well, it doesn’t help Kansas schools or Kansas students, but it does help staunch a budget crisis created by a dramatic loss of income tax revenue. School finance is the largest item in the state budget, putting school funds directly in the firing line when state finances deteriorate.
The governor says the school finance formula is too complicated, even suggesting that it was deliberately designed that way in order to confuse Kansans.
It’s not. Rather the formula helps make sense of a complex situation, and provides funding in a fair and consistent way. Kansas has 460,000 students with a wide range of abilities and varying needs. Those students receive education in 286 school districts that range from tiny, to quite large, from rich in property resources, to poor. Such a situation requires a reasoned, rational method for distributing funds which recognizes that one size does not fit all.
At root, the current formula provides a set amount per student. That’s a fair foundation. Growth in student numbers brings more funding, a decline, less. But not all students are the same, so the formula adjusts funding upward for students who are “at risk” and need extra attention, for students who need bilingual education, and for students who are in vocational programs. Large geographic districts logically receive more money per student for transportation. The formula also helps equalize how much each Kansas citizen pays for education through property taxes.
Any formula may need to be adjusted from time to time to make it better, but dumping the entire Kansas school finance formula, as the governor proposes, will immediately lead to funding inequality, unfairness, and less money from the state.
If the governor and state lawmakers throw up their hands and claim they can’t comprehend the formula, they are abdicating their responsibility. Giving school districts less money through a fixed block grant simply passes the buck to every local school district. The governor is saying, in effect: “If more students show up, tough luck.”
Aside from state funding, school districts only have one other significant source of revenue—property tax receipts. A cut in state funds that will be frozen in place by a block grant forces districts into impossibly difficult choices. To make up for disappearing state funding, school districts will have to reduce classroom spending or raise property taxes.
School districts get this choice because the governor’s fiscal experiment is failing. State tax revenue has fallen far below normal, reasonable expenses. Instead of fixing the real problem, school kids and property taxes are asked to pay the price.
Duane Goossen is a Senior Fellow at the Kansas Center for Economic Growth and formerly served 12 years as Kansas Budget Director.
Every spring, the ritual continues. Farmers, stockmen and landowners continue to use fire as a range management tool while maintaining the economic viability of the Flint Hills.
Viewed up close or at a distance, prairie fires are riveting. Across the vast, open grasslands we call the Flint Hills, fires can be seen for miles. The flames lick at the blue Kansas sky as the brown, dry grass crinkles, crackles and bursts into orange.
These fires aren’t recent phenomena and they aren’t strictly for the viewing pleasure of those traveling up and down our highways. Long before civilization invaded the prairie, fires were ignited by lightning storms and the charred prairie restored the health of the native grasses.
Native Americans were the first practitioners of prescribed fires. They used the fire to attract the buffalo for easier hunting.
The artificially ignited controlled burning of the tall-grass prairie in east-central Kansas is an annual event designed to mimic nature’s match. It has become a tradition, part of the culture of the communities and the people who inhabit this region of our state.
Fire is an essential element of the ecosystem. Burning these pastures is one of the best management tools for maintaining the native prairie.
This annual pasture burning only occurs for a few days each year. It is not a procedure that is drawn out and lasts for weeks. However, weather conditions dictate the length of the burning seasons most years.
Not every cattleman burns his pastures each and every year as is sometimes portrayed. Instead, individual ranchers and landowners survey and decide each spring, which pastures will benefit and produce a healthier, lush grass for livestock after burning occurs. Often neighbors plan and burn together, giving them more hands to ensure a safe, controlled burn.
Forage quality and ecosystem health are both dependent on fire. Without fire woodlands take over the Flint Hills and the livestock industry loses a fantastic resource.
Kansas State University recommends burning take place when wind speeds are between 5 and 15 miles per hour, relative humidity is from 40 to 70 percent and temperatures fall in the range of 55 to 80 degrees.
Landowners in all counties must notify local officials prior to planned, controlled burns. This notification is a key to preventing prescribed fires from turning into accidental wildfires and ensuring burning is allowed under the existing conditions.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) has a Kansas Flint Hills Smoke management plan to help alleviate air quality issues in urban areas generated by prescribed burning in the Flint Hills region. Coupled with the associated web tools, it should give producers better decision-making abilities when planning and implementing prescribed fires.
Producers can now assess how the smoke from their burns may impact urban areas downwind. Information like this can make a difference in keeping ozone within acceptable levels and keeping regulatory restrictions from impacting ranchers. This website is www.ksfire.org.
Actions to control smoke in the Flint Hills ranching community must remain voluntary. To ensure this continues, the farm and ranch community should tune into ever changing weather conditions and keep prescribed fire in the tall grass prairies confined to a minimum time period.
Prairie fires help rejuvenate the grasses that carpet the fertile Flint Hills. This is good for cattlemen, agriculture, rural communities and the Kansas economy.
John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.
If there is one culture in Kansas that is isolated from nearly every other, it’s probably K-12 education — your local school district.
There are Kansans who like that isolation, making sure that school board members are not tied to a political party, that they don’t get suggestions from “someone upstream” either politically or through the finance of their election campaigns. Makes sense to some.
There are Kansans who think that isolation essentially makes those school board members less representative of the public that elects them and whose children are in school, and more responsive to the district’s administrators than to the taxpayers who help support the schools.
And, there’s that third factor that operating public schools is now very complicated. There are state and federal laws to be observed, and, well, the schools that kids attend now are instructionally very different than those back in the days before cars came with shoulder belts, or that many people knew that for some pupils, their best meal of the day was their free or reduced-price lunch. Or, even before the Internet.
That education culture is hard to understand fully, and many school board elections draw a fraction of the turnout that participates in those November general government elections for state and national officials.
Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe those spring school board election voters know what goes on in the schools, what policies and courses and procedures—that all cost money, of course—are necessary to make sure that your children will be job-ready when they graduate—and move out of your home.
Lots of talk at the Statehouse about low turnout in those spring school board elections, and maybe that’s a good thing because presumably those voters are interested enough to know what issues are important, and if their elections were moved to November, the school boards candidates just become a few more boxes to check off before you get back to the car.
And, are those off-the-cuff, just check the box beside the names you aren’t really familiar with votes that you want to elect the people who run your schools? If the candidates must become partisan, as at least one bill getting a hard look by the Legislature proposes, what does that mean?
Will Republicans spend less on schools, or less on administering the school district and more in the classroom? Will Democrats make sure the administration takes care of harder-to-educate students so they are job-ready when they are graduated?
Maybe that political isolation of school board elections—in the spring without party labels behind their names—is best, maybe not. It’s sure a place for political upstarts to open their election careers, getting the probably unstudied votes of party-line voters, which can be leveraged for higher offices later. Or maybe it is a place for those whose sole interest is educating your children, without a non-education focused general government political party litmus test to meet.
There may just be some significant education/election legislation this year that tosses all those questions in the air. There’s even a bill introduced that would disqualify teachers, those married to teachers, who have children who are teachers or who live in the same house with teachers, from seeking school board seats. That’s a way to eliminate the inward-focused industry of educating children, if that’s what you are looking for.
Those decisions come as state funding for school districts is headed downward, and local property taxes for those without children in school or much reason to know what happens in the classroom and why are probably going to inch upward.
Nearly everything dealing with the issues of education and voting are intertwined this session. And, not surprisingly, nobody’s sure how it gets sorted out…if it does…
Syndicated by Hawver News Co. of Topeka, Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report. To learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit www.hawvernews.com.
“Kingsman: The Secret Service” is not at all what I expected. The distance between what I expected of “Kingsman” and what I actually experienced is easily among the greatest of such measurements.
“Kingsman” appears to be a film about a young man being trained as a super spy. While that is certainly true, the film’s style and scope far exceeded what I had assumed would be a mix between “The Tuxedo” and “Spy Kids.” The truth is closer to a mix of “Django Unchained” and a “Jay and Silent Bob” movie with perhaps a little “George of the Jungle” thrown in (which, by the way, was hysterical when it came out and is as equally hysterical today). “Kingsman” is self-referential, action-packed, justifiably R-rated and above all, a damned lot of fun.
This film is a love-letter to the fun of going to the movies. There’s far more true love in the globe-trotting adventures of “Kingsman” than there was in “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
5 of 6 stars
Back in the 1980s, the method of appraising agricultural land for property tax purposes was changed. At that time ag land, like all other classes of property, was valued on its market value. But inflationary pressures were making it difficult for farmers and ranchers to pay their property tax bill. Ag land is the only class of property which never grows, and the old saying that “they aren’t making any more” is entirely accurate.
Because of that unique characteristic of ag land, it has always represented a store of value and a safe haven for money in uncertain economic times. In other words, when the future is unpredictable, many people invest in ag land because it is seen as a very safe place to invest while they wait for better investment opportunities to develop elsewhere. That is certainly a large part of the reason that land prices have skyrocketed in recent years. For at least the past twenty years, ag land prices have steadily risen without any downturn while grain prices and yields have varied wildly from year to year. Land is subject to inflationary pressures that other classes of property avoid, and the reason is because they aren’t making any more!
So in 1986 the Kansas constitution was changed to allow ag land to be valued for property taxes based on its productive capability rather than its market value. It is a complicated formula, but works well to estimate the producing capability of the land. Now, however, that formula is under attack.
In 2012 when a massive income tax cut was proposed, assurances were made that cutting income tax would not result in higher property taxes. Many of us were not buying the story then, and we now have solid evidence that the ploy was a smokescreen to gain enough votes to pass the tax cut.
Last week Senator Jeff Melcher (R-Leawood) introduced a bill which would radically alter the way that agricultural land is valued for property tax purposes. SB 178 would cause a massive tax shift from all other classes of property and increase taxes on ag land drastically. Statewide, the bill would increase valuations on dryland by an average of 408%, irrigated farmland by an average of 593% and grassland by an average of 672%. The effect on farmers, ranchers, and rural economies would be devastating.
Once again, the consequences of an overly-aggressive tax cut plan are becoming evident. Instead of laying waste to the economy of rural Kansas perhaps it is time to own up to the fact that we went too far, too fast. The tax cut of 2012 was a bad plan. Our focus now should be to correct the plan’s excesses.
I am honored to represent the people of the 118th District in Topeka, and I welcome your questions, concerns and suggestions.
Representative Don Hineman can be contacted at (620) 397-3242 or [email protected].
“Fifty Shades of Grey” needs little introduction. It’s a story, which, humorously, started out as fan fiction for the “Twilight” series, about a kinky billionaire who lusts after and aggressively pursues a final-year college student. The movie in and of itself, is not terribly interesting, nor, in fact, is it absolutely terrible.
The leads, Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, deliver above-passable performances with a chemistry that sells the confused nature of both the story and the storytelling, at times to the film’s benefit and at others, to it’s cost. I highly doubt that either Johnson or Dornan will receive Oscar nods next year; however, their body language and facial expressions used to convey inner-monologue were present, if less-than-subtle. Granted, I was watching for exactly those things. (More on this later)
The plot structure is unconventional in places; which may work better in a literary format but it does potentially leave film audiences with little to grasp. The ending, in particular, is one of two things: it is either a very poor ending or not an ending at all. From what I gather about the source material, the movie ends in roughly the same place, but it left me feeling more than a little tired at the prospect of having to sit through at least another half a movie to finish what should be one story.
The most interesting thing for me was not the film itself, not even the comparatively tame sex scenes, but rather the invisible and ever-shifting line between unconventional methods of sexual activity and abuse. Media outlets nationwide and, no doubt, the social media feeds of nearly everyone reading this, have been strongly bisected in this regard. From my perspective, the truth, as per usual, is a shade of grey. Consenting adults mixing pain and pleasure is not a surefire sign of abuse. My questions start to arise when it gets difficult to determine where one party’s free will starts and other’s ends. The relationship between “Fifty Shades of Grey’s” main characters is complicated. There’s consent, very explicit consent, but there is also persuasion and manipulation. The point I would like to make is this: the abuse in “Fifty Shades of Grey,” and I do believe it is there, is not a result of the couple’s sexual practices. If filmgoers who boycott this film would apply a consistent level of tolerance for abusive relationships, their options at the movie theatre would be more limited than it would initially seem. For example, both Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and “Twilight’s” Edward and Bella are surface-level examples of abusive relationships.
Disregarding my investigation of the relationship dynamics, this film is a fair leap ahead of where I expected it to be, but it still lands far from the target. It’s not great and it’s not terrible, but rest assured, “Fifty Shades of Grey” won’t hurt anyone.
