Friends,

Friday’s job report revealed that there were more than 200,000 jobs added in August, with unemployment remaining at 3.9%. The combination of lower taxes, less regulation, and an increase in access to capital have created a strong climate for American businesses, both large and small, to thrive.

In the Q3 MetLife and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index, which was released last week, almost 70% of small businesses surveyed had a positive outlook about their companies and their potential to grow going into the next quarter. With many of the companies across the district being small businesses, these report results are encouraging and a good indicator that we’re moving things in the right direction here in Washington.

Now we must pass a Farm Bill and secure our trade deals, so that our Ag community can also enjoy this economic boom.

Conferees outline top priorities for Farm Bill 

This week the Senate and House Ag Committee leaders hosted a meeting with the full Farm Bill Conference Committee.  This public meeting gave each member time to outline the priorities of the bill that are most important to them.

Kansas agriculture is in uncertain times. Multiple years of low prices and continued drought have taken their toll. Today, Kansas farm bankruptcies are six times what they were just three years ago. That is why I have no higher priority than a five-year farm bill, done on time.

Farm country needs a multi-year bill that protects crop insurance, tightens the safety net, opens markets and makes responsible investments in our communities.

Read my full remarks HERE. Watch the full meeting by clicking HERE.

Judge Kavanaugh: The best choice for #SCOTUS

Judge Kavanaugh is an honest, tried and true Judge that has demonstrated time and time again he will uphold the Constitution. Judge Kavanaugh has a proven track record as the type of jurist that President Trump has promised to put on the Supreme Court. This week, in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the high-ranking judge spent more than 30 hours answering questions. And while Democrats weren’t satisfied with his appearance before the Senate, his time in the hot seat just showed me how qualified, fair, and true leader he is.

I fully support Judge Kavanaugh and am grateful that President Trump selected the top qualified Judge in the country to serve on our Supreme Court, fulfilling another promise by the President.

Kavanaugh has devoted his life to public service and is a man of integrity. Unfortunately, if you watched the hearings on TV, you saw a lot of grandstanding from the left. Do not let the Democrats charades fool you, Kavanaugh is the best of the best with a proven track record.

Great Work, Kearny Co. Hospital!

Last week, Kearny County Hospital received feedback from their recent inspection survey completed on behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Not only did KCH pass this inspection, they received zero deficiencies – an incredible accomplishment that shows KCH is providing the highest level of care. Hospital CEO, Ben Anderson, attributes the hospital’s success to his “wonderful team.” Congratulations to Ben Anderson and the entire team at Kearny County Hospital.

Thank you, Salina veterans!

One of this congresses top priorities are to protect and help those who so honorably served to protect our country. I had the opportunity to sit down with members of the Salina VFW and Salina Chamber Military Affairs Council to discuss the needs and concerns of our Salina veteran population.

We are working hard to provide the healthcare services our veterans need and deserve and will continue to advocate for improvements in the VA and veteran services.

Meeting with KS Ag Leaders

It was a pleasure speaking to the folks of the Kansas City AgriBusiness Council. We hit the ground running discussing the Farm Bill, trade, tariffs, and guest worker visas.

I represent one of the largest ag-producing districts in the country, but our agriculture industry encompasses far more than just farmers and ranchers. Hundreds of companies in Kansas support producers in one way or another and are dependent upon a strong farm economy.

To ensure Ag country is taken care of we must pass the Farm Bill, secure our trade deals, and open markets.

That’s a wrap!

On Monday, we wrapped our Community Coffee Tour. In August we traveled more than 2,500 miles, visited with residents in dozens of communities and met with thousands of Kansans.

I’ve never seen a public so engaged. Since elected, I have stopped in every county across the Big First at least once if not twice, and have hosted nearly 90 town halls and roundtables.

Two years ago when I started, at almost every meeting folks brought up national security, I don’t think one person brought it up on our coffee tour. There is no doubt, our nation is more secure, and I am proud to see us no longer living in fear of threats like ISIS, which has been demolished under President Trump’s leadership.

Still, there is so much work to be done, among your top concerns were Trade/tariffs, the Farm Bill, the cost of health care, Infrastructure, and Immigration.

I’ll take your feedback to Washington and keep fighting for solutions. It was so great to hear from everyone who joined our team on our August Community Coffee Tour.

 

 

 

Here is a brief explanation on the importance of soil pH from the KSU horticulture specialist Chandler Day that I came across recently. This may help in understanding why so many of our trees, bushes and even grass turn yellow from iron chlorosis.

Have you ever applied fertilizer, but didn’t see any results? Soil pH might be the problem. Before we talk about why your plants can’t uptake essential nutrients, let’s talk about what pH is.  Soil pH stands for potential Hydrogen and is measured on a 1-14 scale where 1 is very acidic, 7 is neutral, and 14 is very alkaline.

“Building Soils for Better Crops” states that most agronomic crops prefer a soil pH ranging from 6 to 7.5, depending on the crop. Soil pH influences your plants’ ability to uptake nutrients. This is important because you might see symptoms of a nutrient deficiency, green veins and yellowing around the leaf, on your plant, but that doesn’t mean the nutrients are not in the soil.

For example, in Kansas the micronutrient iron is plentiful in soils, yet we see iron chlorosis in plants, especially oak trees. This is because iron is in a soluble form and is easily taken up by oak trees when the soil pH ranges from 5.0 to 6.5, but when the soil pH is above a 7 iron is no longer soluble and the tree can’t use this micronutrient.

Understanding soil pH when applying fertilizers, especially nitrogen, is important too because fertilizer has the potential raise or lower your soils pH.  One of the best, and most accurate, ways to determine your soils pH is to send a soil sample to the K-State soil testing lab. Follow this link for more information about soil testing. For more information about soil acidity and pH management, check out this video provided by the USDA and follow this link to Chapter 20 in “Building Soils for Better Crops” called Other Fertility Issues: Nutrients, CEC, Acidity, and Alkalinity.

Rip Winkel is the Horticulture agent in the Cottonwood District (Barton and Ellis Counties) for K-State Research and Extension. You can contact him by e-mail at [email protected] or calling either 785-682-9430, or 620-793-1910.

This week, executives from Twitter, Facebook and Google testified before Congress. Again. This was the third congressional hearing this year where the internet giants were grilled on their content policies, their privacy and security practices and their role in democracy.

It’s been a rough couple of years for social media platforms. They’ve come under fire for so many different things it can be hard to remember all of them. To recap: For enabling Russian propagandists to influence our presidential election and terrorist organizations to find new recruits. For allowing fake news stories to go viral. For exacerbating political polarization by trapping their users in “filter bubbles.” For giving hate mongers and conspiracy theorists a platform to reach a wider audience. For filtering or down-ranking conservative viewpoints. For collecting private user data and selling it to the highest bidder. For siphoning profits away from struggling local news organizations.

The social media platforms are taking various actions to mitigate these problems. But every potential solution seems to bring forth another unanticipated consequence. YouTube is currently trying to debunk conspiracy videos on its site by displaying links to more accurate information right alongside of them — but there’s concern that the presence of a link to an authoritative source will make a video seem more legitimate, even if the text and link directly contradict the video.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has expressed a desire to break up his users’ filter bubbles by injecting alternative viewpoints in their feeds. But new research suggests that exposing people to opposing political views may actually cause them to double down on their own — ironically, actually increasing political polarization. Facebook instituted a system for users to flag questionable news stories for review by their fact-checkers — but soon ran into the problem that users would falsely report stories as “fake news” if they disagreed with the premise of the story, or just wanted to target the specific publisher.

Some doubt the sincerity behind these efforts. As former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao says, “[S]ocial media companies and the leaders who run them are rewarded for focusing on reach and engagement, not for positive impact or for protecting subsets of users from harm.” In other words, what’s good for a company’s bottom line and what’s good for society as a whole are often at odds with each other.

It’s no wonder that the government is looking to step into the fray. If the numerous congressional hearings don’t make that clear, a proposed plan to regulate social media platforms that leaked from Senator Mark Warner’s office last month ought to. Just last week, President Trump announced that he wanted to take action against Google and Twitter for allegedly not displaying conservative media in his search results.

It’s unlikely that the president would be able to do much about that, just as it’s unlikely that Congress would be able to force Facebook to say, ban all fake news stories from its platform. Twitter, Facebook and Google are all private companies, and the First Amendment prohibits government officials from limiting or compelling speech by private actors.

So what can the government do? It can encourage (and, if necessary, regulate) these companies to be more transparent. It’s shocking how little we know about the algorithms, content moderation practices and internal policies that control what information we receive and how we communicate with one another. It’s reckless that we only become aware of these things when something catastrophic happens.

Lata Nott is executive director of the First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum Institute. Contact her via email at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @LataNott.

By RON WILSON
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

I looked into a human brain. Don’t worry, I wasn’t doing brain surgery. I was witnessing a demonstration of an incredible new, high-tech three-dimensional imaging system. This process is being pioneered by a team of entrepreneurs in the heart of Kansas.

Anjan Ghosh Hajra is the CEO of Immersion 3D Plus, the innovative company which developed this technology. Anjan’s father, Ashish Ghosh Hajra, came to the U.S. from India in 1971. After working back east, Ashish was transferred to a job in Salina where he enjoyed a long career with what is now Philips Lighting. He also worked on advanced degrees in chemical engineering at K-State.

“I fell in love with Kansas,” Ashish said. He also connected with Dr. Swapan Chakrabarti, a University of Kansas electrical engineering and computer science professor, who shared innovative ideas about 3D imaging.

Ashish started a company named Immersion 3D Plus, or I3DP, in Salina to commercialize these ideas. I3DP acquired the exclusive rights to the initial patents on Dr. Chakrabarti’s work from the University of Kansas and has since developed and filed additional provisional patents. Ashish also invested in Abilene where he is interested in expanding. Abilene is a rural community of 6,844 people. Now, that’s rural.

Ashish’s son Anjan studied at a medical school, in India, and at K-State before joining the business. “He has made a big difference,” Ashish said. Besides Anjan and Ashish, the company’s leadership team includes Dr. Chakrabarti as chief technology officer, K-State-Polytechnic engineering technology professor Dr. Raju Dandu as consultant, and research associate Alec Cork.

“We’ve developed a technology that allows you to see all sides of an image – and even what’s inside,” Anjan said. Using digital equipment, their process enables amazing volumetric visualization of what is inside people and things.

“We call it true 3D,” Anjan said. “This is more than a hologram or just wearing glasses in a movie theater,” he said. In fact, no 3D glasses are required.

The demonstration depicted the inside of a human brain and more. Thanks to this technology, we could see from all angles as well as through the brain itself.

Imagine the applications of this technology. Perhaps a doctor or specialist could more accurately see the inside of a human organ. Perhaps an engineer could see the inside of a building or a piece of equipment, or scan the earth for water or oil and gas. Perhaps a surgeon could conduct more precise operations using this technology.

There would also be applications for gaming, education and training.

Another innovation of this company is High Dynamic Range imaging. For example, a standard range has a measure of gradiant called 8 bits per color, while High Dynamic Range can depict up to 16 bits per color.

This produces more vivid, richer colorations in movies, photos, or other images, for example. It’s like Technicolor with depth.

In October 2017, I3DP presented the Immersion 3D Plus concept at a special event called Encountering Innovation, hosted by the Kansas Small Business Development Center. It was an opportunity for innovative small businesses to present their concepts to representatives of potential federal customers, primarily the Department of Defense. “The DoD is the largest customer on earth,” said Alan Badgley of the Kansas SBDCs. “They need innovation and technology, and we can be a match-maker to connect them with innovative Midwestern small businesses,” he said.

Another round of Encountering Innovation will be held in October 2018 in Johnson County. For information on that session, see www.encounteringinnovation.com.

“It was a real confidence boost to see their interest in our technology,” Anjan said. Imagine high-tech in the middle of the country. “What Silicon Valley has done in California, why can’t we do that here with Kansas kids?” Ashish said. For more information, see www.i3dplus.com.

I looked into a human brain. Immersive, 3D imaging enabled us to see inside and through the brain and other organs. We commend Anjan and Ashish Ghosh Hajra and all those involved with Immersion 3D Plus for making a difference with their innovative technology. I could see this business has a lot of brain power – and a lot of heart.