Gov. Sam Brownback’s ideological wars against poor women and the arts are costing Kansas.
Kansas is in a legal battle with Planned Parenthood of Kansas over the federal funding the Brownback administration has diverted to other recipients.
Planned Parenthood has three clinics in Kansas. Only one of these, the Overland Park clinic, provides abortions. With a slick maneuver, the governor ordered the state to pay out the federal money to hospitals and other clinics first and deliver what was left to Planned Parenthood. There was — surprise, surprise — nothing left.
It is the governor’s position that money is fungible, so any money given to any of the three clinics would, in fact, subsidize the abortion clinic in Overland Park. Stretch that logic a bit and any payment of any federal tax or fee also becomes a subsidy of abortion.
The fact is, of course, that Planned Parenthood clinics provide many free or low-cost services to women who meet income guidelines to help them plan their families, treat illnesses and provide contraceptives if they want them. It should be obvious to any but the obsessed that the services provided by Planned Parenthood reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore reduce the number of abortions.
The lawsuit filed by the  organization this week against Gov. Brownback and the state seeks payment for providing those non-abortion services. If the suit is unsuccessful, Planned Parenthood CEO Peter Brownlie said last week, the organization will lose about $330,000 a year and be forced to raise its charges to the poor women it serves or reduce its services.
A failure by Kansas to distribute the federal family planning money as Congress intended for it to be distributed will:
— Increase the number of abortions performed.
— Make the lives of low-income women still more impoverished.
— Increase state Medicaid and welfare costs.
And the tradeoff to these negatives? Gov. Brownback earns a combat medal in his ideological war.

HIS UNILATERAL decision to veto the appropriation for the Kansas Arts Commission — making Kansas the only state in the nation without an arts commission — saved the state budget about $700,000. Because he killed the commission, the National Endowment of the Arts announced that it was forced to stop providing about $800,000 in annual partnership grants to Kansas organizations such as the Bowlus Fine Arts Center in Iola.
The Mid-America Arts Alliance, which has provided another $400,000 in grants to Kansas arts groups, also is expected to withhold its funds due to Gov. Brownback’s decision.
So Kansas makes another decision that just doesn’t add up — save $700,000, but give up $1,200,000.
As the going-bankrupt merchant explained, “I lose a little on every sale, but make up for it in volume.” 

But the dollars forfeited aren’t the primary loss. The blow to the reputation of Kansas is the main embarrassment. Why on earth would our governor want Kansas to stand out as the only one of the 50 states to turn its back on the arts?
So our new slogan is “Come Live in Arts-Free Kansas.”
Flies like a lead balloon.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.

Think about kids –
I’m writing in reference to people speeding down the streets in our school zones and elsewhere.
School has begun, there are children everywhere. They may not see the vehicles coming and step out from parked cars and be struck and possibly killed. Could you live with yourself it this happened to you? And it could be your child.
Here on South Jefferson it is bad. I would be safe in saying some cars are running 40 to 45 miles per hour. It’s not just the younger generation either. Some adults are guilty, also. Let’s give this some serious thought and protect all our children.
While speaking about children, the article in the Register about shortage of funds for Toys for Tots may not or doesn’t have enough money to buy toys for the needy this Christmas. Think about how you would feel if your children got up Christmas morning and didn’t have any toys, etc. to open. Maybe someone responsible could start a drive and take donations to help fund the cause.
There is always someone who would claim to be collecting for whatever cause and isn’t, then keeps the donations for themselves. If you would care to donate for this cause we could find a responsible party to collect and if you donate make check payable to Toys for Tots.
If our city can squander half a million dollars on the hardly used rails to trails and the idea of a dog park, surely they can use some money to help out with the important cause of Toys for Tots. At least the money would be spent on something worthwhile and very important. I’m hoping that the needy kids can have something to open on Christmas morning.
Please give both of the above a lot of thought. And keep all the children safe from harm or death.

Keep Smiling,
Carl Letsinger
Iola, Kan.

Mosquitoes are back:
Thank you for spraying for mosquitoes
I would like to thank the city council for deciding to begin spraying again in the south part of town next week.
The mosquitoes have been bad this month. You can’t go out to water any plants without them biting you. I am sure others in our part of the town will appreciate it too.

Thank you!
Lavon Johnson
Iola, Kan.

Bernie Koch runs the Kansas Economic Progress Council, which studies the state’s economy and makes proposals to stimulate growth. In a press release Monday, Koch took a look at the effect government austerity was having on the recovery. He wrote:
“Private sector job growth in Kansas is being canceled out by government job cuts. Overall employment was down 400 jobs from July of 2010 to July of 2011, according to the latest Kansas Department of Labor employment report.  That’s down 0.4 percent.
“However, private industry grew 1,300 jobs, while there were 1,700 fewer government jobs.  Some quick calculating shows that if Kansas had not reduced those government jobs, we would have had employment growth instead of decline, nearly 1 percent growth over the past year.’
Koch prefaced his  report on the Kansas situation with  comments  made on the Internet by Gavyn Davis, a British macroeconomist, investment executive and visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
Davis blames government budget cuts for weakening demand in world economies and singles out state and local government budget cuts in the United States as examples.
“In the United States,” Davis wrote, “there has been a lot of focus on the fiscal policy of the federal government, which has barely changed this year compared to last, but in fact the main change in the fiscal stance this year has come from expenditure cuts by the state and local government sectors.
“This has tightened overall fiscal policy by about 1 percent of GDP in the first two quarters of the year. In Britain, fiscal tightening has been at about 2 percent a year and in peripheral Europe the austerity program is now much bigger than that.
“A year ago, we knew that the era of fiscal easing has ended in the developed world, but the extent of the tightening which has occurred in 2011 has come as a surprise. Governments have responded to any form of financial trouble by tightening the near term fiscal stance, while failing to address their long term sustainability problems.
“This, according to almost all economists who have written on the subject, is precisely the wrong way around, but that has not stopped them. It now seems most unlikely that this trend will be reversed, short of a second leg of recession.”

TO TRANSLATE FROM professorese, Davis thinks  slashing spending at the state and local levels is killing economic recovery. The Kansas Department of Labor report bears him out. The jobs gained by the private sector in Kansas are canceled by those lost by state and local government budget tightening.
To brighten this picture, Kansas and the other 49 states should solve their budget problems by increasing revenue and then hiring more workers to build roads and bridges and make other improvements that will make their economies stronger. Following this course of action — a decision that would be applauded by most economists and business leaders — would boost the general economy and re-start the recovery.
To get there from here would require a combination of tax increases and a reduction of tax exemptions. Those initiatives would be ritually opposed by those who will proclaim at the top of their voices that increasing state revenue would kill jobs. They will not offer a jot or a tittle of evidence to prove that claim.
It is very clear that hiring more state workers would put more money into the Kansas economy and reduce unemployment. That’s a given. That raising the revenue to pay those workers would harm the state economy cannot be proved by any historical example. The last tax increase at the federal level of any size occurred in the early 1990s under President Clinton and was followed by a decade of extraordinary economic growth and the first balanced budgets since Eisenhower.
Raising taxes and reducing tax giveaways to balance budgets and stimulate economic growth at the state and local levels would put the people’s money to work in their own communities where they can see and control the results and would help jump-start the nation’s economic engine.
Let’s do it.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.