Protecting chimpanzees, at last

I saw this article in The New York Times  this past Sunday:

Goal of Broader Protection for Chimpanzees Emerges From Changing Perspectives

 

 

And suddenly, suddenly it also occurred to me how blatant and obvious this is, that we shouldn't be killing these beautiful animals or any longer using them for scientific experiments.

 

And how insane it all was that we ever did.

One billion dollar weather disasters in the US

Listening to the Weather Channel last evening, with a lot of thunderstorm warnings all around my new 'burg--yet again--the announcers mentioned that the last several years has seen a great deal of $1 billion dollar weather disasters in the US. They seemed to softly suggest that it was likely due to global warming and/or climate change.

So I Googled:

Billion Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters, 1980–2013

Source: National Climatic Data Center
 

The U.S. has sustained 123 weather-related disasters during the 1980-2012 period in which overall damages and costs reached or exceeded $1 billion at the time of the event. Twelve occurred during 2011 alone—the most for any year on record, with total costs being approximately $52 billion.

Then I searched some more:

NCDC Releases 2012 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters

According to NCDC’s 2012 weather and climate disasters information, 2012 saw 11 weather and climate disaster events each with losses exceeding $1 billion in damages. This makes 2012 the second costliest year since 1980, with a total of more than $110 billion in damages throughout the year. The 2012 total damages rank only behind 2005, which incurred $160 billion in damages due in part to four devastating land-falling hurricanes.

The 2012 billion-dollar events included seven severe weather and tornado events, two tropical cyclone events, and the yearlong drought and its associated wildfires. These 11 events killed over 300 people and had devastating economic effects on the areas impacted. With 11 events, 2012 also ranks second highest in total number of billion-dollar events behind 2011, which had 14 events.

The two major drivers of the damage costs in 2012 were Sandy at approximately $65 billion and the yearlong drought at approximately $30 billion. Sandy’s large size, with tropical storm force winds extending nearly 500 miles from the center, led to record storm surge, large-scale flooding, wind damage, and mass power outages along much of the East Coast.

So it begs the question: at what point do we learn?

At what point do our nation's leaders stand up, recognize the situation we're in and lead the people, lead the country to what we need?  That is, how soon until they guide us onto a path of far more sustainable lives and living?

We need to get started.

Links: Billion Dollar U.S. Weather Disasters, 1980–2013 | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0882823.html#ixzz2WWF0Lozm

Billion-Dollar Weather/Climate Disasters

Entertainment overnight

Go here:

http://reichrolld.com/

What Americans don't know about health care

There is a terrific article today in The New York Times about health care in America--and Sweden.  I contend that virtually all Americans should read it--with an open mind--and so few will.

What Sweden Can Tell Us About Obamacare

Just a small bit from the article:

The United States spends more than $8,000 a person per year on health care, well more than twice what Sweden spends. Yet health outcomes are far better in Sweden along virtually every dimension. Its infant mortality rate, for example, was recently less than half that of the United States. And males aged 15 to 60 are almost twice as likely to die in any given year in the United States than in Sweden.

Not that Americans are about to learn anything--anything--from Sweden or anyone else (heck, learning alone is a problem for us) but it would be nice if we could read or study these other country's situations--gasp--and, as I said, learn something.

Just a few comparisons:

Doctors in the two countries also face different financial incentives. In the United States, under the fee-for-service model, they can bolster their incomes, often substantially, by prescribing additional tests and procedures. Most Swedish doctors, as salaried employees, have no comparable incentive.

Another important difference is that, unlike many American health insurance providers, the government groups that manage Swedish health care are nonprofit entities. Because their charge is to provide quality care for all citizens, they don’t face the same incentive to withhold care that for-profit organizations do...

      

The Swedes also provide drugs and other treatments only when evidence establishes their effectiveness. People can spend privately on unproven treatments, but the government refuses to impose their cost on taxpayers.

Clearly, the Swedish health care model is far more humane and moral than our profit-based one.

There was an excellent program on PBS a few years ago that did just that, too--compared other country's health care systems, one to another to ours:

Comparing International Health Care Systems

This one, here, above, compared our system to the Netherlands, which is highly successful both in keeping costs down and in getting good outcomes from the health care paid for.

And then these two, from 2009 and 2012, again on PBS, comparing our costs which, by the way, are and have been the highest in the world for decades now:

 Health Care Expenditures: An International Comparison

 

Health Costs: How the U.S. Compares With Other Countries

Here's just one very indicative chart from this article:

 

And then there's this tidbit, from that same article:

Life expectancy at birth increased by almost nine years between 1960 and 2010, but that's less than the increase of over 15 years in Japan and over 11 years on average in OECD countries. The average American now lives 78.7 years in 2010, more than one year below the average of 79.8 years.

Another fact:

When we look across a broad range of hospital services (both medical and surgical), the average price in the United States is 85 percent higher than the average in other OECD countries.

If anyone in this country thinks we don't or didn't need the Affordable Care Act--aka "Obamacare"--when we spend grossly more than any other nation on the planet for that care and our results are worse than any the other, top 17 industrialized nation, they are badly and sadly mistaken.
________________________

More PBS links on health care (in case anyone out there actually does want to learn about us and our health care system:

Toyota-inspired approach to improving care and bringing down costs.

What steps can you take to make your next hospital stay safer and cheaper?

They illustrate what the U.S. could buy with the $750 billion wasted in American health care each year, and, in a separate post, our partners at Kaiser Health News examine the "Top 7 Drivers of U.S. Health Care Costs."

In a "Reporter's Notebook," Betty Ann Bowser examines Virginia Mason's decision to eliminate a staple of the American hospital: the waiting room.

What inefficiencies have you seen in the U.S. health care system?

Ladies and gentlemen, your US Congress

The following productivity--or, rather, lack of it--comes to us all courtesy of our own US Congress:

 

This, among other things, is what campaign contributions and splintered, uncooperative political parties and politicians get us, as a nation, as a people.

 

And we must put an end to it.

 

We must fight to end campaign contributions.

 

As soon as possible.

On corporate profits, human greed and why we need government

The Supreme Court's ruling yesterday -- that human genes cannot be patented, but that patents can be had on scientific discoveries altering genes' natural states and on new processes to carry out genetic tests, such as cancer screenings -- will alter the future of the biotech industry and, in many ways, medical research. It will reduce the price of many new drugs and alter investment incentives.

But it also illustrates a more basic point.

At least since economist Milton Friedman first advanced the view (popularized by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher) that the basic choice is whether to rely on the market or on government to decide who gets what -- and that the market is more compatible with freedom -- we have been locked into an ideological debate that has little or no bearing on the real world.

The fact is, markets don't exist in a state of nature. All we have there is survival of the fittest. Civilized societies create markets. They decide on the rules of the game, such as whether genes can be private property. Markets can be organized in many different ways, some more equitable than others. The fundamental choice isn't between the so-called "free" market and government. It is between static efficiency or equal opportunity and access, between growing apart or growing together.

--Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political and economic commentator

It's regulation. It's why we need government to regulate business, clearly. Someone, some organization must oversee the human tendency for greed and the corporate propensity to cut costs at all costs, to maximize profit.  It's why there were 2 blasts yesterday in Louisiana at the oil processing plant--cost-cutting corporations for profit above all else.

Like it or not, ladies and gentlemen, we need government. We need strong government and we need government regulation of business. We don't need huge government but we do need strong government and we keep getting reminded of exactly why, too, with catastrophe after catastrophe.

Links:  Robert Reich

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

Quote of the day--on power in America

 

There are two centers of unaccountable power in the American political-economic system today -- places where decisions that affect large numbers of Americans in important ways are unchecked either by effective democratic oversight or by market competition. One goes by the name of the "intelligence community" and is centered in the National Security Agency within the Defense Department. If we trusted that it reasonably balanced its snooping on Americans with our nation's security needs, and that our elected representatives effectively oversaw that balance, there would be little cause for concern. But the NSA has so much power, and oversight is so thin, that we have every reason to be worried.

 

The second goes by the name of Wall Street and is centered in the five largest banks there. If we trusted that market forces kept them in check, and that they did not exercise inordinate influence over Congress and the executive branch, we would have no basis... for concern. But those banks are so large (much larger than they were when they almost melted down five years ago), have such a monopolistic grip on our financial system, and exercise so much power over Washington, that we have cause to be worried.

The reason, I think, that both the political right and left in America are equally upset about the encroachments of the NSA on the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, and about the depredations of "too big to fail or jail" Wall Street banks on our economy is, fundamentally, this toxic combination of inordinate power and lack of accountability. That neither Republicans nor Democrats have done much of anything about these two centers of unaccountable power makes me think that, if present trends continue, a third party will be borne out of the smoldering embers of these concerns.

--Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political and economic commentator

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I say again and why I keep saying that we must, must fight to end "campaign contributions." Until we get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of them out of our election and political systems, our laws and government will continue to be owned and operated by and for the wealthy and corporations.

Links:  Robert Reich

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

 

On Dems vs. Repubs

 

Keeping in mind, of course, that it was also these same Republicans who voted in their pack to also give the already-wealthy tax cuts the nation is now trying so desperately to afford and pay back during Dubya's grossly irresponsible administration.

Think government surveillance is new?

The whole brouhaha over government surveillance of our emails and phone calls gives me two reactions.

First, it makes me laugh because I think people are making a great deal out of not much and second, it kind of p*sses me off because the people complaining are quite likely, also, the ones who would REALLY scream bloody murder if we WERE attacked by some wack-jobs, intent on killing and hurting people in this nation.

And for anyone who thinks this is a new phenomenon, think again.

Back in 1937, the following happened:

"When Princess Juliana of the Netherlands became a mother, CBS planned a fifteen-minute spot" on the radio, mind you "...about the new heir to the House of Orange. For reasons of scheduling, New York changed its mind. The decision to drop it, a cabled order went back to London:

"KILL JULIANA'S BABY." 

That afternoon, Helen Sioussat found two FBI men at her door."*

Mind you, that's 1937, too.

When it comes to the government surveillance of our emails, so far, I come down with the likes of Right Wing, Republican, small-government, though moderate columnist David Brooks last week on NPR :

"You know, I'm not as bothered as some. I'm somewhat bothered by the secrecy, but I don't feel it's intrusive. Basically, they're running huge amounts of megadata through an algorithm. That feels less intrusive to me than the average TSA search at the airport. And so I don't think it's particularly intrusive. It is supervised by the court. It has some congressional supervision.

It seems to be reasonably narrowly focused. And so I don't regard this as a crime against our civil liberties. I regard it as a somewhat moderate and balanced way to look for people who are calling bad people."

What the government is doing was put by the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, also, so it's not as though it hasn't been "aired out", so to speak. It was never a big secret.

And what's the alternative choice?  That we have wackos with bombs running around the country for some God-knows-what purpose, trying to kill and hurt Americans?

I'll stick with the possible loss of a little privacy every time.

*Director of Talks and Public Affairs for CBS radio from 1937 to 1958. Passage taken from the book
 Murrow: His Life and Times by A. M. Sperber.

Link:

Week In Politics: Sifting Through Surveillance

Additional, great article, just out this week, that rather agrees with my points:

The New Yorker:  So Are We Living in 1984?

On life, living and the internet today

The New York Times has three good to great to excellent articles today on the internet and what it's doing to us today.

I will start, too, with the best of the three because I am convinced it is one of the most beautiful, true, poignant, timely and even important columns  I've read in a long, long time and that we might read all year:

How Not to Be Alone

It is about, yes, computers and our phones and technology and how they do bring us together but also, paradoxically, how they can also separate us physically and even emotionally.

Because the whole thing is that good and, as I said, even important, I'll only put a few quotes of it here:

Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat...

The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits...     

Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that unlike our almost instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. The more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care...    

 

THE problem with accepting — with preferring — diminished substitutes is that over time, we, too, become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little.
 

With each generation, it becomes harder to imagine a future that resembles the present.

 

I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.

 

Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs.

 

I say again, it was one good to great article. I would implore nearly anyone and everyone to read it.

 

The second and third articles, totally unintended to be related, I think, show what people are doing in order to stay connected:

 

The 'I Dos,' Unplugged

Showing how brides and grooms are having people leave their phones at the door, during weddings, increasingly (and good for them).

 

Student Social Climbing, but on an Indoor Bike

Wherein, students are attending kind of "cycle parties" and not texting, etc.

Interesting stuff.

There's lots more in the Times today, of course, on technology (like on the US and Chinese, negotiating how we'll work together and what will and will not happen with cyberespionage) but these, above, I thought were good and important on how we all act, interpersonally, with the 'puters and what we do and don't do with them.

Enjoy your Sunday, y'all.

Quote of the day--why is this so bloody rare in America?

"I just think people need to make a living wage with health benefits. It also puts more money back into the economy and creates a healthier country. It's really that simple." 

--Craig Jelinek, CEO of Costco

Link to original article:

Costco CEO Craig Jelinek Leads the Cheapest, Happiest Company in the World

What part of "public meeting" don't these people get?

So the Mayor's panel on deciding what we're going to do with our airport met yesterday for the first time and it was reported to be a public meeting--but they threw two people out who wanted to be there?

Seriously?

From the Kansas City Star today:

Public gets first input as KCI study panel meets

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/06/06/4276925/kci-task-force-says-it-will-try.html#storylink=cpy

Kansas City’s airport study panel held its first public meeting Thursday and said its goal will be to recommend the best airport to serve the region now and for future generations.     

     

Commission co-chairman Bob Berkebile said he hopes the group can issue its recommendations before the end of the year.

But already the initiative has been embroiled in a minor controversy. Two people were excluded from the public meeting at Union Station.

Dan Coffey, a member of a group gathering petition signatures against a new airport terminal, said he and a colleague were unfairly prevented from attending the meeting.

Coffey said that he had been gathering petition signatures in front of Union Station before the meeting but that security told him to leave. When he then tried to attend the task force meeting, security told him he had to leave and he did. Coffey said he was never told what law he was violating or why he had to leave. So it's a "public meeting" but you throw the public out? Then, get this: Union Station Kansas City Inc. issued a statement later saying that Union Station is not a public building and does not allow petition signing inside on any issue. The statement said the petitioners refused to move to a public area outside the building, so security and Kansas City police officers helped move them to a public area.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/06/06/4276925/kci-task-force-says-it-will-try.html#storylink=cpy

 We all thought it was a public building, didn't we? Yet they throw the ones they don't want in there, out? And they called it a "public meeting." Yet they want and expect the people's input and trust on all this? Seriously? It's surely not getting off on the proverbial "right foot" here, is it?

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/06/06/4276925/kci-task-force-says-it-will-try.html#storylink=cpy

Eavesdropping on our phone calls is just one part of the problem

The big news today--and yesterday--all over the internet and news programs is that--SURPRISE!--the government is listening in on Americans phone calls.

US Maintains Vast Database of Phone Calls, Lawmakers Say

I mean, come on, who of us is surprised?

But you know what surprises me far more and even disappoints me?

Do you even know how this story broke?

It came from a British newspaper, the Guardian UK:

 

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon ... - The Guardian

A foreign newspaper chain got the scoop on this story.  How insane is that? What about the New York Times or Reuters or the AP or heck, even Fox "News"?  ABC? CBS? NBC? CNN? NPR? PBS? Anyone? Any news agency here in the States?

No one in the reporting industry in America was on this story but a British, English newspaper was?

Is this what we are to expect of American media in the future? We're to get our news from England or Al Jazeera or some other international media source?

If this is what we are to expect, and I fear it is, it doesn't seem as though the media can be counted on to be the "fourth estate" and help keep the government and/or wealthy and/or corporations in check.

In the meantime, this morning, we got this from the President:

'Nobody is listening to your telephone calls'

President Obama staunchly defended domestic surveillance programs.

 

That is very little comfort, I have to say. First drones, then drones killing 4 Americans, then defending all that, now this.

 

I'm not panicking but I don't think it's good, either, not for using less or no drones, not for privacy and not for reporting in America and the world.

Quote of the day--on fairness

Southwest Airlines---expands??

Yessiree, I read it just this afternoon on none other than our own Kansas City International Airport's Facebook page:

Southwest Airlines restarted service to Oakland and Seattle-Tacoma this week. Book your flight to the West coast soon!

Imagine that.  And we didn't even have to tear down a terminal to get it.

Link:  http://www.facebook.com/Southwest?fref=ts

Senator Frank Lautenberg, 1924-2013, Rest in peace

The Cost of War

The cost of war -

Another week and another $2 Billion spent in Afghanistan. Total bill to U.S. Taxpayers = $1,444,224,447,359.

6680 - Number of Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn casualties as confirmed by U.S. Central Command.

1 more dead this week:

 - Army Spc. Christopher R. Drake, May 26, 2013 - 20, of Tickfaw, Louisiana

The Kansas, Republican debacle is finally over

From the Kansas Democratic Party Facebook page, yesterday:

"In the middle of the night, the Kansas Legislature voted to raise Kansans taxes $777 million. They also voted to slash $56.1 million from higher ed, cuts corrections funding making our state less safe, and refused to carve out the developmentally disabled from KanCare. Raising taxes on middle-class Kansans and cratering education - just another night's work for Gov. Brownback and the Kansas GOP."

What's also stunning about the end of this entire debacle, besides the fact that this should never have happened and that it was extremely, additionally and unnecessarily expensive for Kansans and that the Republicans are reputedly the political party of lower government spending (don't make me laugh), is that these people, these politicians, these political representatives of Kansas not only raised taxes on the middle- and lower-class people their supposed to represent while also, cruelly, let's face it, lowering the taxes of corporations and the already-wealthy but that they did it in the middle of the night and were so really cowardly about the whole thing.

The total cost to Kansans for the inability to do their work in a timely, responsible fashion?

Nine extra days x $45,000 per day = $405,000.

Perilously close to one half million dollars.

Congratulations, you Kansas State representatives. You spent nearly one half million additional dollars Kansas and Kansans didn't have. You must be so proud.

If there's one thing good about all this is that, one, it's that it's finally over and, two, it won't cost Kansans any more than it already has.

Link:  Republicans advancing tax, budget bills in push to end legislative session

Quote of the day--on the day of rest

The United States of Inequality

“A petty, narcissistic, pridefully ignorant politics has come to dominate and paralyze our government, while millions of people keep falling through the gaping hole that has turned us into the United States of Inequality.”

--Bill Moyers, American journalist and public commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary in the Johnson administration from 1965 to 1967

Links:  Bill Moyers Essay: The United States of Inequality

Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com

Bill Moyers - Wikipedia

At what point do we learn? At what point do we change?

I was speaking last evening, late, with a friend that recently retired from the federal government's National Weather Service and told him what I thought--that all it's going to take, I expect, is one more hit, one hit in Florida of some major city, heaven forbid, and finally, finally more people will think there likely is a good chance of humans effecting weather with all the CO2 we're putting into the atmosphere.

Heaven forbid it's Miami but there it sits, like a bit of a big bullseye, jutting out into big bodies of water. 

Purely coincidentally, after I wrote this entire piece, I ran across this article:

As hurricanes loom, Florida insurance lives on borrowed time

Because of its size and geographical position, with 1,200 miles of coastline on a peninsula sticking out into the warm waters where the Caribbean meets the Atlantic, Florida is a uniquely risky insurance market. Most of its insured residential and commercial property - 79 per cent - lies in coastal areas vulnerable to both wind damage and flooding.

Coastal property is valued at just under $3 trillion, according to a report due to be released next week by AIR Worldwide, a global leader in catastrophe risk modeling. Florida accounts for almost 30 percent of the nation's entire $10 trillion coastal exposure, AIR found.

Only New York has as much exposure, with $3 trillion in coastal property, and that compares to $239 billion in South Carolina and $107 billion in Georgia.

Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Daytona, you name it. When/if that should happen, it'll be game over for Florida, if it's a big enough storm. There will be lots more believers.
In the meantime, there's Oklahoma and Oklahoma City, repeatedly hit by tornadoes in the last week.

Did you know there were 9--nine tornadoes in the last 36 hours?

And in the last 24 hours, there was this:

5 dead in tornado in Oklahoma City area, 50 hurt

And that, of course, is on top of the direct hit the suburb of Oklahoma City took in Moore, the previous week.

At what point do we think maybe the way we humans live on this planet maybe isn't sustainable?

At what point do we maybe think we need to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?

Local basketball player makes waves nationally

A local basketball player made big headlines and national news this week and was on MSN Fox Sports:

 

 

College hoopster opens up about coming out

 

Benedictine hoopster is happy to make closet less crowded

 

Benedictine College's Jallen Messersmith adjusting to becoming a national story

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — With each passing day, the closet becomes a little less crowded, a little less scary, a little less dark and sheltered. Jallen Messersmith isn’t doing this for applause or a shoe deal or a reality show or martyrdom. This isn’t about being the wrecking ball; it’s about being another link in the chain that swings it. It’s about a cycle in which the news isn’t news anymore.

“I think it’s just inevitable for it to happen everywhere,” says Messersmith, a 6-foot-7 sophomore forward at Benedictine (Kan.) College, believed to be the first active openly gay player in U.S. men’s college basketball.

“At this point, it’s just going to happen (where) it slowly becomes less and less of a (newsworthy) thing, and people are becoming more and more comfortable with it. And I think it’s just a matter of time before it happens in every sport.”

Messersmith, a native of the Kansas City suburb of Blue Springs, Mo., came out to his teammates last fall, and then to the rest of the world on Tuesday, via Outsports.com, a story that has since gone national. To Jallen, the point wasn’t the trailblazing, but the trail itself. After all, what good is carving a path that nobody else has the stones to follow?

And good--no, great, for him.

Are we Americans or not? Are we about equality or not? Isn't that who we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to be about?

And the thing is, if you're under, say, 30? 35 years old?  maybe even older--it's not even an issue.  Not remotely.

This is a city ethics code?

City ethics code?

Are you freaking kidding me?

Reportedly, this week, our own city hall adopted what they're calling an ethics code:

New ethics code, approved Thursday, says Kansas City employees can't accept gifts worth more than $1,000.

Are you kidding me?

They can accept gifts up to $1000?

Who doesn't think our city government representatives can't be bought for $1000 or less?

Especially if, say, this month they get $1000 and then next month and the month after that, ad inifinitum?

Or $1000 this week from me and $1000 next week from my wife and another $1000 the week after that from my kid, 'cuz, you know, it's all perfectly legal, right?  Right?

I ask again--who here thinks their representative can't be bought?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Come on, guys, try a bit harder.

We know there are absolutely no limits down in Jefferson City for gifts or "campaign contributions" (don't make me laugh) but it's City Hall. You have to have more and better--read: lower--gift limits than this.

Get real.

Dammit

Some people should get a pass and be allowed to live forever.

Harvey Korman was one of them.

Comic actor Harvey Korman dies at 81

Rest in peace, Mr. Korman.

We miss you already.

We always will.

Lucky you, Kansas

 

Republicans in the Kansas Legislature have flushed $330,000 down the drain fighting about how best to raise taxes on working Kansans. It should be obvious that $330,000 would have been better spent hiring ten new Kansas teachers and not paying Kansas legislatures for failing to do their job.

 

Ironic, isn't it, if not also hypocritical? The political party that insists it's for small government spending is blowing a big hole in the state's budget.

 

We have Governor Sam Brownback and his very Republican legislature to thank.

 

And it ain't over yet.

 

With thanks to the Kansas Democratic Party and their Facebook page for the pic, above, and for much of the wording, above, that inspired the post.

 

Additional links: 

 

Legislative overtime costs KS taxpayers more every minute

 

Top 10 bizarre bills of the 2013 Kansas legislative session - Watchdog

 

Rep. Paul Davis Facebook

 

Kansas Watchdog 

Missouri on list of "10 States Most at Risk for Major Disaster"

And while the bad news is Missouri is on this list, if there's good news, it is that we're ranked in last place:

10 States Most At Risk For Major Disasters

What they have to say about us:

The Show-Me State has been shown disastrous weather in every month of the year: severe snow and ice storms in winter, tornadoes during the spring, summer and fall, and flooding at virtually any time.

Major disaster declarations since 1953: 53

Yikes. 

Check that out. Every month of the year.

I live here and didn't know that.

You're blowing Kansas cash, Gov. Brownback and we're not talking a lottery here

From Kansas Representative Paul Davis on his Facebook page today--a link to an article from the Wichita Eagle newspaper about their statehouse budget/tax mess:

House rejects compromise tax bill

TOPEKA — The Kansas House of Representatives on Tuesday soundly defeated the latest tax plan to come before it, leaving no clear path to end the contentious legislative session that is already well into overtime.

By a 71-42 vote, the House rejected a conference committee compromise on the tax bill, House Substitute for Senate Bill No. 84.

The bill would have set the sales tax rate at 6 percent – lower than the current 6.3 percent but higher than the 5.7 percent that will automatically take effect July 1, when an emergency sales tax increase passed in the depth of the recession three years ago expires.

The bill would have reduced base income tax rates but would also have trimmed tax deductions, including the standard deduction used by many taxpayers.

Rep. Davis' response to yesterday's actions--and the article:

This was not a compromise. This was an $856 million tax increase on Kansas middle class families, proposed to pay for income tax cuts for millionaires and big corporations. The legislative session has now been in overtime for 6 days, costing Kansas taxpayers $45,000 a day. How long will Governor Brownback let this continue?

So Kansas, Kansans, you, ladies and gentlemen, have had a grand total, as of last evening, of $270,000 spent in your name--that the state coffers didn't have anyway--all so you can, if Governor Brownback and the Republicans in the legislature have their way, raise taxes on the middle- and lower-classes and lower the taxes of the already-wealthy and corporations. A quarter of a million dollars that Kansas doesn't have, wasted and each day adds another $45,000.

Great day to be a Kansan, isn't it?

Ain't it great to be rich?

Don't you wish YOU were?

Walmart, locally and nationally, yesterday

I saw this a couple days ago:

Wal-Mart pleads guilty in hazardous waste cases, to pay $81 million

The bad thing? They polluted.  And blatantly so.  Worse, then they tried to get away with it.

The good thing? The great thing?

They got caught. 

Far better than that, they got penalized for it, and stiffly:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will pay $81.6 million after pleading guilty on Tuesday to criminal charges of improperly disposing of fertilizer, pesticides and other hazardous products that were pulled from stores in California and Missouri because of damaged packaging and other problems.

The retail giant entered the plea in federal court in San Francisco to misdemeanor counts of violating the Clean Water Act and another environmental law regulating pesticides. The fine also settled Environmental Protection Agency allegations.

Here's the headline from the Star:

Wal-Mart pleads guilty in environmental case involving pesticides sent to Missouri contractor

Here's hoping they learned their very expensive lesson and don't repeat it.

I'm not holding my breath.

Entertainment overnight

The only song of theirs I can bear to listen to again.

Land of the Free

Yeah.

Right.

Oh, and we're a "Christian nation", too, don't forget that one.