In our conversation, you’ll learn about her motivation for renovating the once-dilapidated building - including her initial battle with the pigeons who had taken up residency in the building.

You’ll also learn about her vision and spirit for downtown, and how the work she’s doing to redevelop the Meyer Landmark is building on the legacy of her father, Nation Meyer, who was a strong advocate for downtown Hutchinson.

If you’ve been curious about what’s happening at the corner of 5th and Main, you’ll want to make sure to listen to this episode of That Podcast in Hutch.

Instead of taking the advice of nearly everyone in the city to just leave HutchRec alone and move on to one of the many other very real and pressing issues in our city, the city has taken the odd approach of adding an educational session on the agenda.

The topic will be how Recreation Commissions exist throughout the state, and the professor will be the City of Hutchinson, which hasn’t ever run its own Recreation Commission. Also, we’ve had this lesson already.

We’ll be told this is being done in the spirit of education, and to have a conversation about whether there are efficiencies to be found by absorbing HutchRec into the city. And, we’ll be told that’s not the ultimate goal - we’re just asking questions here, and what could be wrong with asking questions? But anyone with a lick of sense who’s been paying attention at all knows there’s no other goal at all. For any member of City Staff or the City Council to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s a quick rundown of the past couple months - at least the parts I’ve been privy to be a part of or know about.

• On March 2, a young man made his first public appearance into Hutchinson government/politics by making a very specific open records request to the city for a memo from 1994 that suggested the idea of pulling HutchRec and the Hutchinson Public Library under the city. (It’s worth noting that this same person also served as treasurer for an ad hoc committee that purchased electronic billboards in support of the city’s sales tax initiative.) His request was fulfilled in less than a day, and on March 3, he spoke in public comment to the council, suggesting that they should again consider saving money by bringing HutchRec and the library under city control.

Note: I can confidently say that I have more experience with open records requests than probably anyone in Hutchinson. I have never had a request completed in a day. Normally, the agency has 3-days to respond to even acknowledge receipt of a request and they take it. Making a request specific and time bound enough is difficult - unless you have information that allows you to craft a very detailed request. Even then, documents from the 90s are not often digitized, and not often so close at hand they can be processed and delivered on such short notice. That has been my experience in more than 20 years of work in journalism and advocacy. And I want to be very clear about something - the issue here isn’t that a young person got involved in politics. Quite the contrary - I wish an entire legion of young people would start asking questions about how and what local government is doing. The part that feels unusual and, frankly, untoward, here is the city’s robust, immediate, and enthusiastic response to that question. The city council is setting precedent where anyone who presents anything to the council must be taken just as seriously, or risk accusations that they are applying their power unevenly and unfairly. I imagine if a resident asked for a similar study about efficiency in the police or fire department, we wouldn’t be witnessing the rush to study that we’ve seen here. That brings into the question the validity of claims that this isn’t about personalities.

• During the next month or so, there are a number of conversations among stakeholders about the matter. There were questions about why this is coming up now, and why the city council seemed so poised to act on this young man’s suggestion - which if you watch the video wasn’t simply to study HutchRec, it was to study the absorption of HutchRec. Again, from the outset of this, the clear intent was to eliminate HutchRec. It was never about how to make HutchRec work better, or more efficient. On the same night that the City won its sales tax vote, the effort to make its grab was taking place in council chambers.

  In some of the conversations I had with HutchRec board members, there was a great deal of confusion about what had happened between December and March to reignite old tensions. The City Manager had come to the HutchRec board meeting in December and expressed a desire to want to get past their differences and build a productive relationship. The board chair at the time also sent an email to the city manager thanking him for his graciousness and willingness to work together. But something changed between December and March, and no one on the HutchRec knows what. They all felt blindsided by the movements in March.

• Later in March and early April, I visited with several council members and City Manager Enrico Villegas, who had previously been on my podcast to talk about the city’s proposed 3/4 cent sales tax, which won a slim margin on March 3. Some of the conversations were lengthy. I expressed my concern that a protracted and public fight between the City of Hutchinson and HutchRec would harm the city - and throw away any of the goodwill that had been found in the conversations of the previous month or so around the sales tax vote. There, to me, seemed to be a sense of renewed optimism about the future of our city. A belief that maybe we had turned a corner and there was reason to feel good about our city. I thought such a fight would fracture the people most involved in the city, and would eventually pit different parts of the community against one another. I also anticipate that should the city move to eliminate HutchRec, there will be a protest petition to force a public vote - which the city must pay to hold. I saw no good coming from such a fight and determined the underlying issue is that HutchRec and the City have not developed a comprehensive MOU or operating agreement.

  On the afternoon of April 2, I secured a promise by both the city manager and the management and board of HutchRec to call a truce, and work toward developing an agreement that would create a better framework for working together. I suggested the use of a mediator, and the inclusion of a dispute resolution process to handle future agreements. Here’s the email I sent to all parties.

• On the afternoon of April 7, just a few hours before the now-infamous city council meeting, the city manager called me and said he was in a “political quagmire” and asked if I could help him navigate it. He indicated that three city council members asked him to draw his display of how recreation commissions are formed. I told him that I thought if he did that and brought up the topic of absorbing HutchRec, that would be seen as a violation of the agreement and all the good faith discussions would fall apart. I’ve also gotten word that as early as noon that day, the city IT department was setting up for the city manager’s anticipated presentation about HutchRec. Early on in the meeting, the same young man who approached the council on March 3 expressed his frustration that some had accused him of being a “plant.” That, and comments that followed, reignited the entire fight and conversation about eliminating HutchRec.

  That is in no way a comprehensive examination - a lot of other people have had a lot of other conversations and asked a number of other questions about these issues.

I had really hoped there could be a reasonable resolution that would’ve strengthened the relationship between HutchRec and the City and move this issue forward. Instead, it seems like we’re going to be in for a long, drawn out battle that doesn’t need to happen. At all. It’s nonsense, and it’s going to damage relationships across the board - and we’ll spend good money for yet another study when we have a study that already told us there’s no savings to be found.

And on that, I’ll add another point - if the City of Hutchinson is really interested in saving money and finding efficiencies, I’d argue that it makes far more sense to look at its own messes before trying to point a finger at someone else’s. And like I said before - now that I know it just takes a few minutes of public comment to whet the City Council’s appetite for any study anyone might suggest, I expect we might be in for a mighty fun ride.

But I’ll start with a free money-saving idea that doesn’t require a bit of study to find a significant amount of savings.

Stop paying out-of-state production companies $26,300 to produce a feel-good video to help win awards from a professional organization - that might make a person feel mighty specials, but don’t do one worthwhile thing for our city.

And if you are going to pay that much for promotional work to professional organizations, maybe think about shopping local.

Note: I want to be clear here that I have in the past, and continue to work directly with HutchRec in a number of ways, including serving as a member of Bike/Walk Hutch. For a number of years, I’ve partnered with HutchRec, participated in their events, and volunteered to help with some of their activities. I coached boys playing basketball for a couple years when my kids were young. I have also partnered with the city to promote some of their initiatives, and publicly supported their additional sales tax efforts, and will continue to serve the best interests of our city however I can - be it through the city of Hutchinson or HutchRec.

First, thank you for your service to our community. It is a difficult, and often thankless job - one in which everyone at one time or another is a critic - even though few of those critics seem willing to put their thoughts and ideas into action by running for the seats you currently hold.

I’m writing today to summarize my thoughts on the matter of the Hutchinson Recreation Commission and the idea that it might come under control of the city government. I’ve visited with a number of you, and with other stakeholders, and I have made my position clear. I believe that any move toward dissolving HutchRec is a misguided idea that would lead to a reduction in service to the community, increased staffing costs for the city, and a future in which community events, activities, camps, and more are compromised in the name of efficiency.

Currently, the city of Hutchinson is warning residents of a nearly failing water treatment plant. Recently, a collapsed storm water pipe created a washout that forced the closure of a busy intersection (11th and K-61). The limestone walking trail at Rice Park is nearly grown over in places with crabgrass. The Martinez trail is functionally unsafe to ride a bike or jog in places due to the lack of upkeep. Several potholes have become the subject of regional news stories.

Yet, I’m supposed to believe, despite all the evidence and history to the contrary, that moving HutchRec underneath the city’s stewardship will ensure it is protected and improved for future generations. HutchRec has demonstrated its ability to manage its meager budget well. It has grown its services and offerings in Hutchinson, all without ever increasing its mill levy. The City of Hutchinson cannot say the same.

Talk of this study has been presented as an effort to find efficiencies. I might suggest that the City first take the plank from its own eye before worrying about the splinter in another’s. If efficiency in city government is the goal, I might offer that more savings could be found by looking at the biggest portions of the city’s budget first, rather than an outside agency with a relatively small budget. This is a far more common sense approach.

If you need help with suggestions on possible cuts that are worth additional study, I have a variety of ideas I’m happy to offer. I’m sure I could find a number of residents who likewise would enjoy the opportunity to present their suggestions during public comment at city council meetings - and have them met with the same vigorous support from a majority of the council.

The 2011 study - commissioned by lay people on the city council and the school board at the time - indicated the city would incur additional costs and staffing if it absorbed HutchRec. I don’t know that those supporting yet another study have considered that they might be spearheading another, far more expensive effort, that will yield the same results. Using taxpayer dollars to conduct a study in the uncertain hopes of finding something that wasn’t found in a previous study might be the most inefficient way possible to find efficiencies.

Additionally, while this council might make commitments to protect parks and recreation funding, you have no control or power over the actions of future councils. During every meeting this year, you’ve had a group of people who have expressed their passionate belief that the city government should not manage any such amenities. It is not unlikely that people with such a mindset might secure a temporary majority on the council, and while there, enact policies that create lasting and permanent harm to our community’s future.

The core issue is not whether HutchRec would be better managed under the city, but the inability to draft a suitable agreement to govern the relationship between HutchRec and the City of Hutchinson. When everyone is getting along, the old gentleman’s agreement might work, but where there is conflict, contracts are required. The public doesn’t care who is to blame for the impasse - they want you to figure it out without all this public bickering.

And that brings me to my next, and perhaps most crucial reason in asking you all to move beyond the moment we’re currently in with dignity, respect, and real stewardship and leadership.

This effort around HutchRec is a war of choice.

There was no real public outcry demanding the city take over the organization. It is clear there are personality differences and lingering grievances that are the primary drivers of this effort. Some people have been treated poorly. Mistakes have been made, and relationships have been damaged. There was a suggestion made during one public comment segment of one city council meeting - but there has not been a groundswell of demand from the broader public for change on this front - save the handful of people bending the council’s ears.

However, this discussion is hurting our community. It is creating unnecessary divisions. It is asking people to choose sides, and it is spilling over into other areas of government and community life, and it is highlighting a level of dysfunction that negatively affects community morale, and the view residents have of our hometown.

Most perplexing to me is that you’ve chosen to have this fight on the heels of the community’s support for an additional sales tax to support the City’s ongoing efforts to move us to a better, more hopeful place. Three weeks before the March 3 vote, I’d never have given the sales tax question a shot of winning - but a number of community advocates lent their support for the effort and voters approved the measure. Yet on the very night those votes were being tallied in support of the City, the first public salvo of this unnecessary fight was launched during the public comment section of that night’s city council meeting.

For a moment, there was a sense of hope and belief that our community had a plan and the resolve to move ahead. I talked to so many people who thought that maybe after so many years of just getting by and trying to survive, that there might be a path forward, that we might have the right leadership in place to realize our full potential.

I will never understand why city leadership chose to immediately waste all the goodwill that was created in that moment. To squander the faith and hope it had created in residents, and to trade it in for a petty fight that isn’t rooted in public demand, public safety, economic development, or community good.

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In fact, I worry that should this fight continue, this moment and this council’s actions will become part of the lore that’s told about Hutchinson’s slow and continued decline.

You likely know the stories - that Hutchinson leaders in the 1950s declined its chance to have an Interstate Highway come through town and that’s why we never grew. Or how USD 308 in the 1960s didn’t want the hassle of running buses, thus leaving the district landlocked and ceding much of its potential tax base growth to nearby districts.

We have voluntarily converted a moment of hopefulness and unity into a moment of anger and division. There are plenty of forces working to sow division in our communities without creating it ourselves where none naturally exists. In fact, I’d argue that at this moment we’re behaving exactly as those at the federal and state levels of government want us to behave. In their long-term starvation of local governments - through the deployment of unfunded mandates, changes in tax policy that have stripped local governments of resources, and a refusal to fund property tax relief and assistance for more than a generation - they hope to further erode the effectiveness of local government. And done right, local government is the last place that puts people above party or politics. Instead of fighting amongst ourselves, we ought to be joining together to protect our community and demand better from our state and local governments.

Hutchinson has long struggled with its view of itself, and I believe that has been the biggest barrier to realizing our full potential and effectively building the future our children and grandchildren deserve. We have endured loss, and we’ve struggled to adapt to a changing world and economy, just like nearly every small or mid-sized town in America. We have allowed the naysayers to wield the biggest microphones, and as a result, they often have an outsized voice around policy discussions. Those of us who love and care for this community often aren’t eager to speak up for ourselves, or our community - especially in an environment where people feel free to harass and ridicule others in public. This practice must stop if we hope to be a part of building a stronger, more resilient, more hopeful community - one that can envision a future that’s more than the loss we’ve experienced in our lifetimes.

In this moment, that can start with you - the people who have been entrusted to lead our community for the next several years. You have a choice in this moment - a choice that will set a tone for the community’s future and send a signal to our residents about whether or not our leaders are committed to real change in Hutchinson.

We can continue to engage in this fight, and move forward with efforts to move a popular 80-year-old organization under City control. But the fight won’t end with a study or a city council vote. Kansas Statute allows for a protest petition and a public vote, the cost of which will be borne by the city. There will be a very public battle between the supporters of HutchRec and the supporters of the City. I’d place my money on HutchRec prevailing in such an election, and we will end up right back here - with the City of Hutchinson and HutchRec forced to find a way to work together. Except there will be more bad blood, more resentment, and numerous fractures and collateral damage created throughout the city’s institutions and residents.

Let’s suppose the city should prevail, any cut, any program that isn’t run as it was before, will be cause for additional criticism of the City. The grievances that are now directed toward HutchRec will be lobbed at the City - and it will be added to an already large pile of grievances people readily hold against their city government.

And all the while, there would have been efficiencies and savings to be found if only the City had looked inward and sought to clean its own House first.

If it’s a fight you want, there will be enough reason to fight in the future. There are conversations and decisions on the horizon that will eclipse by magnitudes the discussions surrounding the proper role of HutchRec. I hope you’ll foster an environment today that preserves our ability to approach those conversations with clarity and purpose.

The most direct and cost effective solution to any disagreement with HutchRec is to create a framework for working together in the future, not to dismantle what is proven to be working well. After my conversations with stakeholders, I mapped out a plan to negotiate a Memorandum of Understanding between the agencies - something I know has been promoted by Councilwoman Goss for at least a year. The immediate solution is for this council to compel staff to engage in those conversations, and for the HutchRec Board of Directors to do the same - and commit in good faith to reaching a fair and workable compromise.

I believe that every problem in the world can be solved, if the people involved really want a solution. We owe it to the residents of Hutchinson to work toward a solution that doesn’t create unnecessary divisions, doesn’t ask the community to pick sides, and that elevates the long-term wellbeing of our community above all else.

Sincerely,

Jason Probst

If at times, it seems that I’m frustrated/upset/exhausted/irritated/depressed/tired, it’s because I see in us the capacity for such love and kindness, and the teachings of Jesus Christ offer a clear road map of how to be the best versions or ourselves. And yet, I’ve watched over my life as the Easter Message of love, sacrifice, and hope is perverted by those who work to blend faith and fear to secure their own power and use it as a means of control.

You are free to believe as you please, but I will believe what Christ said - “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

On this Easter Morning, I am grateful that I have people to love. I am grateful for the love of my family. I am grateful for the love of my friends and for the ways we help and support one another through life. I am grateful for a community that is rich and vibrant. And I am grateful for the people who support the good I try to do in the world.

March 26, 2016

Shouldn’t Easter Sunday last more than just one day?

Today is Easter Sunday.

Churches will hold sunrise services to watch a new day take shape and reflect on the symbol of the cross and Christ’s power over death. Children will awaken to baskets filled with unexpected goodness, and they’ll search for Easter Eggs and find them in places where yesterday there was nothing out of the ordinary. Families will gather around a table, from the oldest to the youngest, share a bountiful meal and celebrate the promise of spring and Christ’s resurrection. Christians throughout Kansas, the nation, the world, will hear the message that Jesus has risen and the hope and faith that God’s love conquers even the universal fear of death.

Then it will be Monday again.

And frankly, on Monday I expect it will once again feel as if Jesus has died all over again. We won’t hear the message of hopefulness that fills the Easter holiday. We won’t hear that Christ’s love is more powerful than fear. Experience tells us that all the hope and faith of Easter is largely contained to one day in the spring – the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox – and that all the days after it will return to being just like all the days before it.

In Kansas, we’ll return to hearing about legislation that contradicts Christ’s message. We’ll hear about legislation that doesn’t include people or show them an ounce of compassion but instead excludes them from our community and works actively to deny Christ’s love to those most in need and, perhaps, who want it. Nationally, we’ll return to talk about how America is faltering, and it’s the fault of this person or that person, one policy or another, people who don’t try hard enough at life or people who hope to find refuge and sanctuary in America’s abundance.

We’ll forget all the messages in the Bible that preceded Christ’s death and resurrection. We won’t reflect on the man who healed a leper, who defended a prostitute, who reached out and showed mercy and compassion to those with physical and mental ailments. We’ll ignore our covenant with God that in exchange for his grace and love for us, we will extend the same to others, to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

We’ll hear about what’s good for business and very little about what’s good for people, and we’ll gloss over the fact that Christ chased the merchants and money-changers from the temple, saying: “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

On Monday, we’ll hear about how we should be scared of the world. There is ISIS and immigrants and refugees and in each of those groups, a danger lurks that threatens our way of life, even our very existence. Yet, the Christian way of life, as the Bible teaches, is one of faith and love that does not carry troubled hearts or fear any worldly force.

On Monday, less than a full rotation around the sun from Easter, we will hear that the world is falling apart, that kids don’t know what’s good for them, that people just want a handout, that in order to make the world better we must fear more, hide what we already have and give more to the wealthy.

And with it, all the promise and hope of Easter will have withered.

In America’s most dynamic and prosperous times, some of our greatest achievements occurred when our actions aligned with the message of Easter Sunday. When a group of people fought for the idea that all men are created equal. During a Great Depression when the rest of the world propped up dictators, we elected someone who told us everyone deserved a new deal and that the only thing to fear was fear itself. Or when we elected a relatively young man who hopefully asked us to dream bigger than we had ever thought imaginable.

We used to look together at the world and see what needed to be done to build a nation, a state, a community, and then we set to work to make it happen. We believed that we held within us what was required to do good, even great, things. We believed that America was an exceptional country, that it was great, because we had compassion and love in our hearts for our neighbors and that our wealth obliged us to make the world a better place. Or at least try.

Fear is not what brings comfort, strength or power. Hate and exclusion do not create peace or understanding. Greed does not create prosperity. Judgment does not create compassion.

Love is the agreement we have with God. He loves us, and we show that love to others, and through our compassionate efforts the world discovers that Christ’s love is for them, too.

Jesus spent his life trying to show us that, and he died and rose again that we might have faith in his teachings. We recognize and celebrate that on Easter morning with a great amount of fanfare.

And then, it will be Monday again. And on that day we have a choice.

Jason Probst is news editor for The Hutchinson News.

Happy Easter!

I asked Jon to talk about the difficulty of managing a city budget, especially when faced with a changing landscape - and mandates - from the state and federal governments.

We discuss a number of different topics in our conversation, and the time flew by while we recorded. I am confident you’ll feel the same as you listen.

It’s both important and enlightening to hear Jon’s takeaways and insights from his time on the council. It’s also a good reminder that at the local level, the people serving in elected capacity - your city council members, county commissioners, and school board members - are effectively neighborhood volunteers who care about their communities. They don’t make real money, typically aren’t politically driven, and often are tackling big, complex issues. And in a town the size of Hutchinson, any decision you make is bound to make one group or another upset.

My conversation with Jon is Part 3 in That Podcast In Hutch’s multi-part series on property taxes. Part one is a conversation with Kansas Senator Mike Murphy, who introduced legislation this session aimed at eliminating property taxes in Kansas and replacing it with a surtax, which is a sort of sales tax on consumption. In Part 2, I visited with Reno County Appraiser Michael Plank, who discussed the property valuation process. In Part 4, I visit with Chris Courtwright, the Kansas Legislature’s lead economist for 34 years.

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This package of episodes of TPIH contains a lot of valuable information for anyone who is interested in learning more about property taxes, tax appraisals, and the ways in which policy decisions from years ago are affecting you today.

Now up, Jon Richardson, and his experience on the Hutchinson City Council.

The sad and unfunny truth is that while you’re out here working and trying to feed your family and pay your bills, there’s an entire industry that serves itself - an interconnected web of players across the political spectrum who make their entire living on the manipulation and mechanisms of a government system that should be serving the interests of ordinary people.

Behind these state and federal representative governments there is a sort-of shadow government - people whose names, histories, motivations, and positions never see the light of day and who never face the scrutiny of voters. Yet they work the halls of congress, and Topeka, using money and influence to enrich themselves, and the special interests that employ them. They influence elections to seat people more likely to comply with their demands. They align themselves behind shared goals - and lean collectively on lawmakers to see the world their way.

And if they don’t, they’ll be warned that non-compliance can result in a primary challenge, a withdrawal of financial support for a campaign, and the likely smearing of your name and reputation come August or November.

Lobbying has always been designed to secure a benefit for one interest or another. But it has become its own self-serving and self-replicating industry, and as such, we’ve experienced an intense rise of a lobbying-government complex in which lobbyists have a vested interest in keeping friendly lawmakers in power, and where those lawmakers are incentivized to keep their industry friends satisfied.

The old scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours dynamic has grotesquely morphed; grifting the taxpayer is the goal and the purpose, be it through lucrative government contracts for supposedly good causes, or tax breaks and incentives for some business or another.

I was once told a story (though unconfirmed) from a good source about a lobbying firm in Topeka that had been courting a lucrative contract with a well-known national ride sharing company. At the time, states were starting to require higher insurance coverage for rideshare drivers, on account of them engaging in a commercial venture and driving more miles than the average person.

This firm hoped to represent this national company in Kansas to keep any such requirements from emerging in the Sunflower State. But Kansas being Kansas, the company decided there was little chance a conservative legislature would initiate any sort of business requirement on the company.

This lobbying firm, however, didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to cash in on this payday - so they asked a friendly legislator to draft legislation that threatened to require higher insurance coverage. The bill had no chance of passing - it was a ruse the lobbyist could use to secure the contract, and the paycheck that came with it.

Similarly, when I served on the agriculture committee there was an interesting debate around the labeling of “meat analogs” - think Impossible Burger and other plant-based meat substitutes.

A representative for the beef industry at the time attempted to force state-level labeling requirements that would prevent such products from using the word or term “meat.” A member of the committee asked if that would create a hardship for this emerging industry, with different labeling requirements from state to state. The representative plainly stated that was the goal. Livestock groups across the country and at the national level hoped to create so much dysfunction in the market that it would force federal intervention to put limits on the market.

In Kansas, there are plenty of examples of this - and it’s not just from those typically viewed as the “bad guys.”

One year, while digging through the Kansas budget, I found a line item for $600,000 to a single non-profit in Wichita - a company that already benefits from a tax credit that’s billed as a way to employ people with disabilities, but that also helps offset tax liability for one of the country’s largest aerospace companies. I asked on the House floor why we were giving taxpayer money directly to a non-profit organization whose leadership team earned multi-million dollar salaries.

No one could give me an answer.

There are some truly dedicated and authentic and compassionate lobbyists who do the work for the right reasons, and whose hard work I value, though it often goes unrewarded. But there is also a corps of supposed “good guy” lobbyists who are more interested in securing their own contracts, and have for years taken money from passionate and concerned Kansans, while doing little more than cashing checks.

If you think I’m wrong, go down the rabbit hole of who quietly supported legislation last session to bring more money into Kansas politics. The allegiance was to money and power and the ability for lobbyists to have more control over elections.

This session has been rife with examples of grift:

We’re allowing “claims sharks” to make money from taking advantage of veterans trying to file disability claims when groups like the VFW do this work for free.

The legislative session shut down because a group of lawmakers planned to run over leadership’s efforts to protect the health insurance industry.

Even law enforcement doesn’t like this effort to require more bonds for more cases - and the courts say it will create problems. But it’s happening because there’s money to be made - both inside and outside the halls of government.

Government at these levels has largely become a business. I used to comment that in the Capitol we could see a person bleeding out on the floor and no one in the building would lift a finger to help until we could find a way for someone to make a buck. If we believe the old free market adage that self-interest is what drives people forward, compels them to work, and fuels their efforts - then we must also acknowledge that our political system has been corrupted by industrialization.

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Some people blame “the government” but that’s too simple. “The government” is little more than an extension of the people who control it. We like to think it’s voters who run the show, but more often than not, it’s the money.

The people working in this world might have wildly different views, they might serve diametrically opposed clients, but they all make their money from the same business model and have a vested interest in maintaining government dysfunction. Because if it ever works for people as well as it works for lobbyists, their means of income - which only exists in Capitol cities - would cease to exist.

The state level is problematic, but it’s reaching grotesque levels at the national level. Every day I get a news alert about some very direct conflict that a decade ago would have spelled political doom for the people involved. Nowadays, we just call it being good at business.

There’s Kristi Noem’s $220 million advertising campaign that she routed to an associate’s newly created company.

And the whole crypto mess, in which so many people in Washington, D.C. enmeshed in this it’s almost impossible to track and unpack.

Documents Reveal a Web of Financial Ties Between Trump Officials and the Industries They Help Regulate

While we are at war in Iran, the Trump offspring are $1.5B investors in an Israeli drone company that - I kid you not - “Specializes in Low Cost per Kill Drones.”

These suspicious trades in oil futures seem like they should be really hard to ignore.

Those things that could aid our lives and our society - real property tax relief, addressing healthcare costs, feeding hungry kids, rising energy expenses, containing insurance premiums, developing affordable housing - can’t seem to get much attention at all. Meanwhile, we’re never short of money for tax giveaways, lucrative sweetheart contracts, insider deals, government grift, and, of course, the never ending war machine.

So what’s the punchline?

We are.

Because the cruel joke is that we have the most representative form of government in the world, and it’s doing a really great job of representing how much we care about all the wrong things.

With a few selected photographs, I was ready to hit send and jump on board. But the photos caught my mind, and caused me to pause long enough to ask myself a question.

These photos show what I looked like in the 1990s. But they didn’t show what I was like. For that, I had to spend some time with myself considering the arcs and valleys of my life since then.

I think if we’re all honest, though, we probably don’t get a full accounting of ourselves without meaningful conversations with some of the people in our lives at the time. The people we hurt, the people who hurt us, our families, the friends we used to have.

Here’s what I can say with relative confidence - the 90s were a time of uncertainty.

In school, I had been a pretty good saxophone player, and for a while thought I might try to land a music scholarship. Or go try to make a life of it in a city. My folks didn’t graduate high school, and for them, college seemed like the sort of thing that was for other folks’ kids.

For a time, I sort of adopted their thinking.

I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. I thought I’d go into the Air Force, and started to join through one of those deals that recruits wayward teenagers who seem unlikely to leave their hometown for college or work.

Then I realized that was my father’s idea for my life, not mine. He thought I lacked discipline, and structure, and wasn’t bashful about saying it.

I got a job. Made some friends. Had some fun.

By 1994, I was a father.

Exciting, but also the most terrifying time of my life. I was 20 years old, earned $250 gross a week running a restaurant, had no health insurance, drove an unreliable car. Still didn’t know what I was doing. And knew even less about how to take care of a child.

By 1995, we launched a family business. A restaurant. Everything seemed new and exciting, and it felt like our family was building something that was ours, something that would move us closer to the life we dreamed.

We worked nearly every waking hour. We didn’t make any money. Our family had to help pay some of our personal bills so we could afford to keep the business running. I saw a close friend die in front of me in an automobile accident.

By 1996, the business failed. We filed bankruptcy and came back to Hutchinson. I was embarrassed and ashamed, and I felt like my ambition had failed my family.

I took a job that I wasn’t thrilled with, but it paid just enough that I couldn’t justify going somewhere else. It felt like some sort of a hopeless trap. But I didn’t want to fail again.

When 1997 rolled around, I was a father again. Still scared, but less than before.

We bought a house. It was old and in need of repair. We didn’t know what we were doing, but didn’t have the money to pay someone who did. Over time, we did what work we could, the best that we could.

We also made good friends, built memories for our children, and had fun where and when we could.

Somewhere in there, I started taking college classes at Hutchinson Community College, and later Baker University. I would pack a book bag in the morning before work, wash the cast iron dust from my face at the end of the day, change clothes, and head off to school.

It was hard, and it seemed like it took a very long time. And it wouldn’t have been possible without a partner who believed in and supported this goal for our family.

What was I like in the 90s?

I was a kid who hadn’t yet had his heart broken. Or broken anyone else’s.

I was an emerging adult, with dreams and ideas - and no sense of how to realize them.

I was a husband and father who had no idea how to do either.

I had the sort of hope that lives in a person who hasn’t yet experienced real defeat.

I began to see the world more as it is, and less how I hoped it would be.

I was an uncomfortable mixture of doubt and hope, faith and loss, ambition and fear.

I see it again in some of these young men now.

The ones who will one day be asked what they were like today.

I hope they know it’s OK if they say that they didn’t quite know themselves yet.

But they found him.

Like lots of people, you might still be reeling from the recent valuation statement that came in the mail. And like some, your first instinct might have been to cuss the county appraiser’s office - and I think a good number of people have done just that.

I asked Michael to help me better understand how those valuations are calculated. He also explained how much of their work in the appraiser’s office is governed by laws created by the Kansas Legislature. Michale unpacks the complicated and heavily mathematical world of valuations in a way that is easy to understand.

He even offers tips and suggestions on how to appeal your valuations.

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No matter how you feel about your valuations, it’s important to acknowledge Michael’s openness to the community about his work - which during a time of inflationary pressure and increasing demands on all of us is among the most unpopular roles in government. He could easily stay in his office and avoid the public altogether, instead he has held events across the county to help people understand the property valuation process.

My conversation with Mike is part two in That Podcast In Hutch’s multi-part series on property taxes. Part one is a conversation with Kansas Senator Mike Murphy, who introduced legislation this session aimed at eliminating property taxes in Kansas and replacing it with a surtax, which is a sort of sales tax on consumption. In coming episodes I visit with former Hutchinson City Council member Jon Richardson and Chris Courtwright, who served for 34 years as the chief economist for the Kansas Legislature.

This package of episodes of TPIH contains a lot of valuable information for anyone who is interested in learning more about property taxes, tax appraisals, and the ways in which policy decisions from years ago are affecting you today.

Now up, Michael Plank, to help us better understand the valuation process.

Residents dread opening their valuation statements for fear of what they’ll see. Politicians keep promising relief, and local governments try to balance meeting the wants and needs of their communities with ongoing demands for lower taxes.

Yet, for something that affects so many of us, it’s an area that is complex and layered and can be difficult to understand.

Today’s episode of That Podcast in Hutch kicks off a multi-part series in which we’ll try to unpack and simplify some of the discussion around property taxes in Kansas.

Part one is a conversation with Kansas Senator Mike Murphy, who introduced legislation this session aimed at eliminating property taxes in Kansas and replacing it with a surtax, which is a sort of sales tax on consumption.

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I asked Mike to sit down with me not necessarily because I think his bill is the right approach to property tax relief, but because I think that ideas are worth exploring - especially when the public is expressing a dire need for a change. I’ve not been scared of too many ideas in my life, and I think we find better solutions when we entertain thoughts that challenge the status quo and the established order. Mike’s idea is a foundational system change, one that is rightly met with questions and concern. But it is, in my opinion, an important part of a broader conversation.

In coming episodes, I’ll visit with Reno County Appraiser Michael Plank, former Hutchinson City Council member Jon Richardson, and Chris Courtwright, who worked for decades as the principal economist informing the Kansas Legislature on revenue and tax policy.

These next few episodes of TPIH contain a lot of valuable information for anyone who is interested in learning more about property taxes, tax appraisals, and the ways in which policy decisions from years ago are affecting you today. As I’ve recorded these episodes, I’ve learned things I didn’t know about the process and deepened my understanding around this issue. I think you’ll find the same as you listen.

First up, Sen. Michael Murphy on his plan to replace property taxes with a consumption surtax in Kansas.

As always, if you like what we’re doing consider subscribing to the newsletter and podcast, following me or the podcast on social media - and sharing these episodes with your friends.

1. Be sure to download this week’s episode of That Podcast in Hutch - featuring a conversation with Sen. Mike Murphy about his plan to end property taxes in Kansas and replace it with a surtax on purchases. His bill had a hearing in the Senate Tax Committee this week, where it met some expected resistance. If you’re curious about Sen. Murphy’s proposed legislation, property taxes, or the Kansas legislature in general this will be worth a listen. You’ll also get the chance to hear two people from two wildly different points on the political spectrum talk to each other with the decency and respect. 🤯 You can listen to That Podcast in Hutch on Spotify, Apple, Youtube, or just about anywhere you get your favorite podcast.

2. Why is censorship all the rage lately? I thought Americans loved freedom, and few more than a free press and the right to say what we like, however we like. Now I see the same people who used to fly those giant “F**k your Feelings” flags whining and complaining anytime someone says something the slightest bit unkind or who doesn’t toe the establishment line. And they’re not afraid to use massive wealth or the power to silence critics - or even basic reporting. Here’s our Fox and Friends weekend host-turned Secretary of War Pete Hegseth championing consolidation of news reporting under a single billionaire family:

   “He faulted numerous headlines, insisting that rather than report things like “Mideast War Intensifies,” the press should instead be “patriotic” and write headlines like: “Iran Increasingly Desperate.” The visibly angry Hegseth also ridiculed a CNN story reporting that Trump’s war planners “underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz.” He added: “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

   And there’s the threat by Minister of Truth, er, I mean, FCC chairman Brendan Carr to revoke broadcasters’ licenses if they don’t start reporting the news in a more with a little more truthiness:

   “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote in a post on the social platform X.

   The powerful inconvenience of the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is that it protects both the speech that suits you and the speech that doesn’t. And during times of distress and discord our protection of free speech is most required - something Kansas’ most famous journalist articulated in his “Letter to an Anxious Friend”

   “You say that freedom of utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger. No one questions it in calm days, because it is not needed. And the reverse is true also; only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed, it is most vital to justice.”

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3. Speaking of Kansas, there’s so much happening in the Kansas Legislature it’s a challenge to see what’s slipping under the radar. And there’s most certainly a lot of things sliding under the table. But here are a few headlines that caught my attention this week.

   Kansas bill would make it a crime to approach within 25 feet of first responders

   Students raise concerns over bill that limits First Amendment right to protest

   Kansas bill to expand free breast cancer screening likely killed by lawmaker

   Democrats exit election committee meeting after accusing chair of antisemitism

4. Locally, there are two big things that I want to share. First, the Food Bank of Reno County had it’s grand opening at its new location at corner of 4th and Severance. There have been a lot of people working very hard to make this moment a reality - and the new space will serve our community very well, and for a very long time.

   

   

Second, I attended the Trends in Data Centers event last week hosted by the Hutch Chamber. I am generally skeptical of data centers and what they mean for any community they want to set up in. BUT - I’m also trying to keep an open mind on the matter. I want to listen and gather information, but also to process that information critically. This is good and useful information that is being presented by a group of people who are pro-data center development. And that’s fair, but also worth noting as we launch into bigger conversations about what this could mean for Hutchinson, Reno County, and surrounding communities.

Do you believe Hutch has peaked?
Is this as good as it’s ever going to get?
Or is there a brighter future worth investing in?

That question sparked one of the most widely read essays here.

Now, ahead of the March 3 sales tax vote, he’s joining me on the podcast for a real conversation about what this moment means for Hutchinson.

Not just the tax.
Not just the politics.
But the history, and the trajectory.

If you care about where our community is headed, I think you’ll want to hear it.

We talked about delaying projects year after year, and how that can end up costing us more over the long run.

We talked about that trip to Japan that prompted a number of questions at the public meeting I attended. It cost the city $10,040 to send the city manager and two council members on a business recruitment/potential business expansion trip (Takako has a manufacturing facility in Hutchinson) - as well as efforts to establish a sister city relationship that could potentially lead to increased tourism.

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We talked about the issues with current restrictions on the current stormwater fee, and how much additional spending it would take to equal the amount we’ll all save from the elimination of that fee. AND - you’ll hear the city on record for everyone to hear that the fee will end shortly after the sales tax begins.

We talked about how federal and state policies create unfunded mandates for local governments - who are forced to comply with those laws while having limited ability to pay for the demands created by high levels of government.

We talked about the current need to upgrade our wastewater treatment plant, and how not doing so has and still could cost us more money over time.

We talked about the vision for our community’s future, and the strengths we can leverage to make that vision a reality.

I expected that Enrico and I would record for about an hour, but we talked for close to 90 minutes. I hope you’ll listen to this episode, and really hear what is behind the decision to ask to support the sales tax increase. And if you find our conversation useful and helpful, I hope you’ll share it with others.

I also hope you’ll listen with a mind toward possibly, toward growth, and not default to the scarcity, fearful mindset that I feel has plagued our community, and much of rural Kansas, for far too long.

Most people, I suspect, see a fun kids movie featuring the antics of a bunch of cartoon automobiles, voiced by actors like Larry The Cable Guy, who played one of the movie’s central characters, Mater the tow truck.

I see Cars as a sort of biopic about the lingering social and emotional effects of economic policies that have led to rural decline over the past 60 or so years, and the way those policies have affected the view of ourselves and interfered with our ability to craft a better future for our communities.

On March 3, Hutchinson voters will decide whether .75 percent in new sales tax goes on the books. Voters are being asked to support the sales tax increase to avoid property tax increases and cuts to local services and infrastructure - and as a way to ensure that our city has the resources to do more than manage our own slow and agonizing death.

It faces a tough uphill battle.

Partly because families are having the lives squeezed out of them in nearly every way, partly because of some unearned errors ahead of the vote rollout, and partly because of a well-built political machine that has for decades deployed policy to sabotage our communities and then pushed all that anger and frustration from the federal and state level - where it rightly belongs - to the good men and women who volunteer to serve on their local city, county and school governing bodies.

Rural communities in Middle America have been hollowed out since at least the 1970s. Most counties in Kansas saw their peak population before the 1920s, as the world moved away from agriculture-based economies and toward industrial economies. Towns and mid-sized cities across Kansas, and the country, struggled to hold their communities together while international trade policies, corporate consolidation, Wall Street greed, and mechanized and automated manufacturing processes eroded our wealth, our futures, and our hope.

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Yet, there has been a resurgence in some rural towns across the country. I’ve traveled all over Kansas, and there are communities that possess a renewed sense of hope. They have active and busy downtowns. New homes are under construction. Industrial parks are filling up, and people are choosing to leave the abundant amenities of urban life to seek a quieter, perhaps more fulfilling, life in Rural Kansas.

There’s one key difference between those towns, and the places that are managing their own slow and bitter deaths: The communities that will thrive in the 21st Century like and believe in themselves. They believe that they have agency in what their communities can become, and they like themselves enough to try.

Sometimes it seems to me that Hutchinson doesn’t like itself very much. And the chatter from the “Always No” crowd shows that a lot of us view our community’s future as a predestined, slow, depressing, multi-generational loss that can’t ever be altered.

Earlier in the week, I attended a public meeting about the upcoming vote. During the meeting, there was a question about what cuts were being made to “parks, the zoo, the golf course, and other quality of life” amenities.

The question struck me as odd, because who would want to live in a place with a poor quality of life? I get that some people might be happy hiding out in their homes all the time, or maybe have the money for big chunks of land upon which they can live out all their family’s dreams. But most of us need roads, clean water, functioning sewers, parks, trails, green spaces, and smart, planned development and the such, to help us feel like we’re living in a vibrant community.

Furthermore, the reality is that people largely make decisions about where to live based on whether a community offers what they require to live the life they desire. Companies, in turn, partly make decisions about where to set up shop based on whether they can find the quality work force they will need.

Good luck turning the tide on our declining population, fun places to shop, and lack of good paying jobs by reducing our city to a bland, flavorless, and soulless wasteland of mere survival.

At some point, the city manager asked the audience if they thought that Hutchinson, in its current form, was the best that it could ever be. Was this, he asked, the peak of our community’s existence?

And that hits at the heart of the matter.

Hutchinson has lost a lot, and it would be foolish to pretend that’s not the case. Companies that long provided good jobs for families shuttered their plants long ago, attracted to places like Mexico or China, where the labor is cheaper and the profits are bigger. Popular retailers have abandoned us for the ease of online, or the shopping volume and variety offered just up the road in Wichita. Many of our children have left town, taking their families somewhere far away for better opportunities.

We feel that loss, the distance from our loved ones, and the memory of our abandoned dreams deep in our bones.

All the while, local leaders have done their best to manage our city amidst a steady, persistent decline that was never unique to Hutchinson - but pervasive throughout rural America. They pushed some problems off to the future, while addressing the most immediate needs of the day to find the right balance between austerity and investment to satisfy residents’ demands.

The prevailing argument now seems to be that we’ve spent too much, we’ve been too careless, and that we’ve been frivolous with taxpayer’s money. I would argue that the reality is that we’ve been far too cheap for far too long.

When voters were asked in the 1990s to decide the fate of Memorial Hall, they had two options - tear it down, or fix it up so that it would be fully usable. Voters rejected both options, dooming the city to a generation of upkeep and minimum maintenance that ultimately cost the city’s taxpayers more than either of the earlier options.

When stormwaters filled residents parked cars and breached Main Street store fronts roughly two decades or so ago, the public demanded improvements to our storm water drainage systems that hadn’t been significantly updated for 100 years. The stormwater fee was implemented and expanded to meet an urgent need at the demand of residents - to address an issue that had been neglected for most of city’s history.

It’s worth noting the sales tax proposed in this vote, if approved, would eliminate that stormwater fee, saving homeowners more than $60 per year, and businesses even more. Moreover, it provides the city with more flexility - currently the storm water fee can only be used to fund stormwater improvements and can’t be used for something as common sense as fixing the road afterwards that was dug up to reach the storm water system.

There are countless examples of when our collective cheapness has cost us more in the long run. The paradox of excessive austerity is that it often ends up costing everyone more in the end. We know this in our individual lives - we can save money today by not changing the oil in the car or pay for the blown engine later. Don’t repair the leaky pipe now, or deal with the rotten wood way down the road.

I’m not going to work to move you one way or the other on this vote. I’ll just tell you that a few weeks ago, I was inclined to vote against it and today I’m likely to support it. If you like policy and want to read a very good and thorough explanation of the logic behind the sales tax vote, I highly encourage you to read this, by Jackson Swearer. He gets into deeper detail that does a great job explaining how a sales tax draws resources from outside our community.

You can also go watch this video and hear directly from city council and staff who did a nice job answering the public’s questions.

I just hope when you make your decision it’s based on the real information surrounding the actual issues we face in this moment - and not because you’re bent out of shape about something that turns out to not actually be true at all. Or because you’re mad at the wrong the people. Or because you’re holding some old grudge from back in your middle school days. Or because some craven politician has told you everything you ever wanted to hear. Or because you see this as a “my team” versus “their” team issue.

I don’t like taxes anymore than the next guy. I probably dislike them more, actually - especially when they fall on working and poor families. I am of the belief that if we taxed uber wealthy people an appropriate amount, maybe the rest of us wouldn’t feel the squeeze quite so much. In fact, not long ago, I wrote about how such greed at the top is even making it hard for otherwise well off people to maintain their level of wealth.

I also don’t like that our communities are now expected to carry the burden of carving a path through an uncertain future while oligarchs, crooked politicians, and their sex offender friends openly bask in the grift of their ill-gotten gains. The future wellbeing of many of our communities has been left behind by decades of globalism, corporate consolidation, the economics of greed - and a religious/political complex that creates culture wars that cultivate fear so that callous corporate interests can control our governing bodies at the state and federal levels.

Meanwhile, the small business owners, farmers, mothers, and fathers who make up our local elected bodies are forced to endure unfair wrath from the general public - who feel the growing strain of life while lacking the time or energy needed to fully participate in our government or its workings.

But never forgot that the people who serve at the local level aren’t separated from the decisions they are asked to make. They own homes here, shop here, raise their kids here, and engage in our community.

In this case, they’ve submitted the issue to voters and will respond accordingly however the vote turns out. If voters approve the tax, they’ll move ahead with planned investments. If not, they’ll do what leaders before them have done and return to the unenviable work of cutting our city’s budget, while also meeting the public’s expectations for functioning water systems, road maintenance, etc.

I like Hutchinson. I love it, actually, despite its many faults and flaws.

I believe that our community has a future that will be determined by our view of its possibility. I believe we possess the agency to be one of those communities that thrives in the 21st Century.

Hutchinson will have a future. This town will still be on the map 100 years from now. And whatever that future looks like is ours alone to determine.

If we believe our future is loss and eventual death, that is the future we will secure and create for ourselves.

I’d like to try something different for a change.

That was true in the 1930s when Billie Holliday sang Strange Fruit, a haunting song about the lynching of black men in the South.

Woody Guthrie, along with a host of Americana folk singers, helped shape our view and understanding about international fascism, and gave us insight into the pervasive poverty and struggles of working families - propped up for all of history by self-serving systems.

It was true in 1969 when Credence Clearwater Revival gave us Fortunate Son - blending word and song to give life to what we always knew about who fights wars, and why.

And of course, War Pigs by Black Sabbath.

In the 1980s, Rap artists tried to tell us all about the reality of black life in Urban America.

Bands like NWA explicitly told us about the feeling of being racially profiled and mistreated by law enforcement, and groups like Wu-Tang Clan spelled out how economic disparities and systemic failures shaped their view of life and survival.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, groups like Rage Against the Machine and System of a Down shouted about the growing concentration of wealth in a few hands, the corrupting social effects of greed and power, and, again, the reality of wars.

Closer to today, artists like Childish Gambino and Kendrick Lamar - and that’s not even a fair start - have carried on the long American tradition of putting into song truths we’d be more comfortable not ever knowing.

For the past several years, I’ve noticed more songful warnings from folk and Americana artists. It’s worth really listening to what they’re trying to tell us - because it provides a great deal of insight and understanding about the way a lot of people are navigating today’s economy.

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A few years ago, folk-country musician Oliver Anthony caught a lot of grief for his song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which leveled an insult at families on public assistance - basically singing that people with obesity on welfare were milking the system and taking resources from hard working people.

While I think that view fails to lay blame where it rightly belongs, it is a common complaint among people who work hard to make ends meet. Despite his unfair characterization of public assistance, I understood his primary aim was at the sense of hopelessness many working families feel every day - and the politicians in Washington D.C. who have done nothing to alleviate that feeling.

That brings me to Jesse Welles, an emerging folk artist who has been singing about economic disparity and his view on government, fairness, and systemic abuses.

I woke up this morning and heard a performance of his song “The Poor.” It felt like a personal anthem for how I have felt many times, particularly in my younger life, and I believe, it penetrates straight to the heart of what many people have felt in this country for the better part of a generation. Most likely, much longer.

While musicians across genres have been singing about this sort of thing for years, the message in these songs is factually supported with economic data showing we are experiencing what’s known as a “K-Shaped” economy - after years of stalled incomes, reduced spending power, and obscene concentration of wealth.

Here’s a fun explanation

Here’s a more in-depth newsy version. But this quote from the story really hits the core of this issue:

“Those at the bottom are living with the cumulative impacts of price inflation,” said Peter Atwater, an economics professor at William & Mary in Virginia. “At the same time, those at the top are benefiting from the cumulative impact of asset inflation.”

Or, as folk artists and my elders have always told me, “The Rich get richer and the Poor get poorer.”

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What stuck me most about Welles song is the way it speaks to how our culture has long viewed anything other than wealth as a failure, and poverty as a moral weakness or failing, while completely ignoring the exploitive systems that make it nearly impossible for most people to climb out of poverty.

In fact, I’d argue that not only do we ignore those realities, we have crafted a mythology about how anyone, anywhere can achieve wild success, regardless of whatever station or economic condition they might have been born into, or whatever trauma, disabilities, or realities they encounter throughout their lives.

It’s true that people fight and claw their way out of poverty and that is cause for celebration. Yet if we continue to pretend as if such success is the norm and not the exception, those systemic challenges that have trapped poor folks for generations begin to trap the middle class, and the upper middle class - as we’ve experienced over the past 30 or 40 years. It feels like you are working harder to stay in the same place because that’s what has been happening since the 1970s.

If you don’t believe me, consider this: Walmart, the discount retail giant that made its name selling wares and goods to lower income Americans with its “Always Low Prices” now says households with incomes above $100,000 accounted for 75 percent of its increased market share gains last year.

Because even relatively high earners are now compelled to shop at Walmart, the company experienced a 28 percent rise in its share price over the last year and has passed $1 Trillion in market capitalization. The efforts we make to save money convert into higher profits for the wealthiest corporations and families in the world.

Unless you are in the top 10 percent of incomes in the United States (currently around $200,000 depending on geography) you are among the 90 percent of households feeding the growth at the top of the economy.

But I wouldn’t get too comfortable in that lofty space, either, because every resource can be exploited only so long before new exploration is required. The line will keep moving, just as it has for the past 40 or so years, and most of us are going to find ourselves on the wrong side of it eventually.

Welcome to the bottom leg of the K-Shaped Economy.

I don’t think you’re going to like it here.

But, hey, at least we make good music.

This was close to 10 years ago, back when terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts” hadn’t yet become part of our everyday language.

One of my primary suggestions to those in my class was to verify stories they found online with reports from local news sources. If the very dramatic and very upsetting thing you had just read online really happened, and was really that terrible, it would be reported at the local level.

For an example I used this photo that was widely shared on the internet after Hurricane Harvey hit Southeast Texas and the Houston area.

The message was that climate change had raised sea levels so much that after the hurricane the entire Houston airport was underwater, and would be for months.

In truth, this was an artist rendering of what the Houston airport could look like if sea levels rose a certain amount, as estimated in some report.

I also threw in these bits of fakery, to demonstrate that liars and the dirty lies they tell are all around us.

This of course isn’t true at all. The photo was from a protest several years earlier in Atlanta, not Houston, and not as part of an effort to thwart rescue efforts. What’s worse is that the site that published this carried two disclaimers in the small print telling people that nothing they publish is true.

Very few people got past the emotionally charged headline - and since it conformed with what they believed to be true, they shared it all over the interwebs. Sadly, instead of us becoming collectively more savvy at spotting bogus news, it seems we’ve actually become more likely to consume it and promote it - and it’s only growing more pervasive and insidious with the proliferation of AI generated photos and videos.

That brings me to today, and what’s happening in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Recently, I shared a post about a 5 year old Minnesota boy being detained and used as bait by ICE agents.

The story and the reporting is accurate, but there are differences of opinion about how this happened, and the ICE agents’ motivation for detaining the child.

That encouraged some passionate conversation and disagreement in the comments about the legitimacy of claims that U.S. Citizens had been detained and deported, and claims that the child was actually being cared for by these agents because no other adults wanted to care for him.

Vice President JD Vance said as much.

I decided to take my own advice from all those years ago, and look local. I now have a subscription to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Since Minneapolis is emerging as the epicenter in this conflict between dueling ideas of what America is to become, I will rely primarily on its local reporting and far less on national news.

For the record, these days, I assume just about everything I see online is either manipulated, spiked with emotion or vitirol, or outright fake - unless it’s from a known and trusted sorce. Otherwise, the sheer volume of bad information masquerading as news has forced me to seek second and third sources to verify most everything I read.

Local news is the best way to break through the noise of our curated, manipulated, and harmful online bubbles created by the algorithms we constantly feed - and that in turn reward us with more of what we’ve shown we already crave.

So, what does the local reporting say? I’ll let you read for yourself. You should be able to get a few free stories from this site. But there are a few points I want to call out.

Here’s the local reporting on the issue of whether the child was being helped by ICE agents:

“Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that ICE “did NOT target a child” and that as agents approached Arias’ car, he fled on foot. “For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias,” she said.

School leaders say that several bystanders disputed that account, adding that the father ran to the house to alert his wife not to open the door.

School Board Chair Mary Granlund said she arrived while agents were still on scene and heard adults plead with them not to take the child, offering to care for him. She and others also told agents that school officials could help.

“There was ample opportunity to safely hand that child off to adults,” Granlund said. She said she believed the boy’s mother was inside the home and afraid to open the door as agents surrounded it.”

I also thought this added context from the story and the effect on schools and students was heartbreaking…

“After moving recess inside because of nearby enforcement activity, Stenvik said she heard one elementary schooler ask her to confirm if recess couldn’t be outside “because of ICE.”

Also in this edition of the local newspaper, you’ll see a story about a local 23-year-old woman, a U.S. Citizen born here, who was beaten and detained for two days. You’ll also be able to read about how in-person attendance at local schools is alarmingly low, due to students and families fearful of ICE raids targeting students while they’re at school.

In this moment, I think back to my childhood in Nickerson, and my days running the unfenced playgrounds at Nickerson Elementary School. I can’t imagine what it must be like for some of these kids to be aware of the dangers they face. To worry if today is the day their lives change forever. I wonder, too, how our actions today will reveal themselves to us 20 or 30 years down the road.

My mom used to sing me a church tune that I heard in Sunday School just about every week. She loved it so much, I wondered if it was her favorite song in the whole wide world.

It has remained in my head to this day. If I think about it, I can hear my Mom and my Sunday School teachers singing it. At the time, it made me feel special and loved, and safe in the idea that all of my friends were loved, too.

Nowadays, I wonder if the people who sang that song to me really ever believed it at all. Or maybe Jesus just loves some of the children.

Our amygdala is a primitive and fearful part of our brain that is always on alert for anything that might harm us. It triggers our flight, fight, or freeze response, and it etches a memory of every event, every situation, every animal, or person that ever posed as a threat to our well-being.

In a long-ago world filled with predacious animals and warring factions, this is a useful feature. In a world filled with economic strain, social disorder, political unrest, and social media, our overworked amygdala can’t well discern between real and perceived dangers.

That means it’s far easier to focus on the negative events in our lives, and our world, than it is to remember and recall all the positive. To defy our genetic and evolutionary predisposition requires a degree of mindfulness and determination that can be challenging to find in a world that constantly bombards us with images and messages of fear.

For me, the new year doesn’t really start on Jan. 1. It starts on Jan. 12, the day after my birthday. I generally spend the time between Christmas and my birthday reflecting and ruminating on the past year and thinking about my hopes for the next orbit.

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For much of this year, I have largely seen the darkness. And I’ll say that in some cases that’s not without good reason. I’ve endured some setbacks and stumbles. I have felt the pain of people I love leaving my life. I have experienced the sting of betrayal by those I once held close. I have seen people I once respected reveal a version of themselves I hadn’t before witnessed, nor imagined existed. I’ve seen neighbors, Kansans, and Americans display shocking amounts of callousness and venom.

And I also have stared at my own demons, and struggled with my feelings of anger, loss, and fear. There have been times I have betrayed the best in myself, when I behaved contrary to my values. Times when the heaviness of my thoughts overwhelmed me and seemed to trap me under a sort of dark curtain from which I couldn’t find the strength to emerge.

My therapist talked to me recently about the importance of chasing joy, especially in moments when joy seems the least accessible. I know my two most powerful strategies to combat despair and sadness are joy and gratitude. Despite years of therapy to help cultivate such tools, and despite having successfully deployed these tools in my life, it always seems to take some time in the darkness to remember to look for the light coming through the cracks.

Thanks a lot, amygdala (and likely some disrupted serotonin production and too much social media consumption).

Despite sometimes struggling to fully see the joy in my life, I am fortunate that I don’t often need to chase it. I just need to take the time and effort to see what should always be easy to see: The people in my life fill me with Joy, and give me endless new opportunities to feel gratitude.

I have never seen the world through Rose-colored glasses, and I doubt I ever will.

There has always been darkness and despair all around. There are very clear and present dangers to our well-being. Our world is filled with a multitude of evolving challenges. There are people manipulating and abusing systems designed to build our communities, and there are people actively working to silence dissent, to step on the throats of those who dare challenge authority, and who envision a future that is wildly different than many previous generations of us have imagined for ourselves.

Still, we have to resist the cover of darkness and always look for the light.

Thanks to so many of you for being the light that is such a beautiful and important part of my life.

Here’s the Ai computer generated definition of a uniquely human problem:

“Social atomization is the process by which a society becomes fragmented into a collection of isolated individuals due to the erosion of social connections and communal bonds. This leads to a state of alienation, loneliness, and interpersonal disorganization, where people lack meaningful ties to groups, family, and community. The phenomenon is a characteristic of modern society, often accelerated by factors such as technological advancements and the shift towards individualized experiences, which can replace shared public spaces and traditional social structures.”

Modern American life creates an infinite number of ways for us to feel connected to a group of people while we’re completely alone in real life. There’s been some interesting research of the effects of loneliness and social isolation in America. In fact, the former U.S. Surgeon General issued a health warning, saying that evidence shows that social isolation, or atomization, is as bad for a person’s health as smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes each day.

The report also indicates that social isolation leads to an annual increase of nearly $7 billion in excess Medicare spending due to injuries and illness related to isolation. There’s anecdotal information from people who work with older populations that visits to the doctor’s office is a replacement for social interaction - so they create additional reasons to seek medical care.

We also see the effects of social atomization and isolation in our suicide rates, both nationally and in Kansas - where it’s the second leading cause of death among Kansans aged 25-44 and ages 18-24.

Loneliness and a lack of connection is literally killing us.

Even when we do get together with others in person, far too often it’s centered around some singular identity - faith, sports, hobbies, political parties, common activities, etc.

It’s entirely possible to surround yourself only with people who live life very much the same as you - which can and does lead to a dangerous sort of homogeny that encourages “Us vs Them” thinking. That, in turn, encourages the idea that there’s a right way to live and engage with life, and any other interpretation is not only odd, it’s a danger and a threat.

Even our entertainment and information is fragmented in such a way that we can all spend hours each week watching or consuming our favorite shows, videos, music, or podcasts - and never watch the same media as the person that lives next door.

The Kansas State Fair is one of the remaining events that creates space and opportunity for shared experiences and memories that can challenge monolithic thinking, and combat social atomization.

A visitor might not have anything to do with animals or livestock, but at the fair can experience the birth of a calf. A person from Kansas’ largest cities can see the varieties of livestock up close on the grounds, and can visit with the people who care for them. The Kansas State Fair is a place that serves to bring all the elements of Kansas together in one place, where our different life experiences can be shared broadly and openly with others.

Events like the Kansas State Fair are among the few remaining social gatherings that allow people to have a very personal and individual experience that is also a shared experience with many other people. Every one of us who goes to the fair has our reasons, our own loves, and those are likely different than the reasons other people love and enjoy the fair. Yet, we together share this experience of the fair, and appreciate that we enjoy the same thing, albeit for different reasons.

America is suffering from a sickness. And I don’t really care where you stand politically or who you want to politically blame for that, it doesn’t undo the reality of our current situation. People feel disconnected, and separated. We can all find some little corner of the world where we feel safe, and craft spaces where we never have to engage with people who see the world even slightly differently than we do.

On any given evening, I can retreat to the comfort of my home. I can watch the shows that Netflix thinks I will like. I can read the articles I like on Reddit. I can let Facebook or TikTok feed me videos their algorithm knows I will enjoy - or that will further inflame my angers, fears, and anxieties.

I can retreat to a world of my making - one that is curated and filtered in such a way that I’ll experience little discomfort at all. I’ll never have to meet anyone who disagrees with me, lives a different life than me, or has different ideas from me.

I can, if I want, build a world that is completely different from yours. And I’ll feel happy and safe, validated and vindicated, in that world. I will know with absolute certainty who is right, who is wrong, and my Ai generated experience bubble will make sure my brain gets so much dopamine from my screens that I’ll never want to leave them.

But in that would, we are not really living.

When I was a child, the Kansas State Fair made an imprint on me that has lasted my whole life. I was in awe of all the activity and the opportunity to learn. It was filled with interesting people, which felt quite different than the small town I lived in.

Later, as a teenager, I loved the independence that came with strolling through the grounds with my friends. The state fair was a place of excitement, romance, exhilaration, and community.

That imprint from so many years ago is now in its third generation. My children have the imprint of the Kansas State Fair on their hearts, and now, their children do too. There’s not a world in which we ever consider not going to the fair. I’m confident that in some not-too-distant future, there will be a fourth and fifth generation of my family with such continued love for their fair experiences.

In a world that wants to boil everything down to its dollar value, I’ll argue that there’s incalculable value in creating the opportunity for children to feel connected to an experience, to a community, and to leave a lasting mark on their hearts. What’s the economic value of creating a memory that brings people back to the fair year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation?

The other night, I was watching the wrestling matches at the fair with one of my good friends and his young son - who was enthralled with the action and showmanship of the matches.

As his father and I visited, he said “It’s not about money, it’s about memories.”

That’s true.

And, if that moment left an imprint on that child’s heart, in the long run that memory will pay immeasurable dividends - in the human, community, and financial realms.

1. Jeffery Epstein - There seems to be no bigger story this week in my algorithm than the massive flip-flop and cover-up from the Trump administration on the infamous Jeffery Epstein files. During the campaign, the president promised to release the files so everyone could learn exactly what happened on “Babe Island” and who travelled there aboard Epstien’s jet, named “The Lolita Express.” But now, the president’s Attorney General, who once said she had the files sitting on her desk revealed that there was absolutely nothing to see at all in the files, and that Epstein definitely killed himself in jail and that there’s nothing suspicious at all about the video footage that doesn’t show what happened at the moment of his death. It’s always interesting when I find myself on the same side of an issue as Tucker Carlson. A couple of other suggestions for reading on this topic: Epstein prosecutor Maurene Comey fired by AG for no reason; and this great story from 2020 - I called everyone in Jeffery Epstein’s little black book. There’s a lot of good information in the 2020 story, some I had forgotten. But my favorite passage is this: “The truth is that the elite world that Epstein ascended into, the one I tapped into by way of the black book, is populated with hordes of loathsome, boring, untalented people living their bumbling, idiotic lives while just so happening to wield some share of the preposterous global bounty that he and the rest were after. For all the mystery surrounding Epstein’s fortune, its existence is hardly more inscrutable than the wealth of any of his other billionaire peers. He earned it the same way they all did, which is to say precisely not at all.”

2. Federal tampering of voting machines - Despite right wing claims of voter fraud and stolen elections, it’s actually quite difficult to pull off in the United States, thanks to a system that is decentralized across states and counties. That means for any large scale theft to occur, every county clerk and election official in the country would have to in on the fix. Or at least enough of them to change an outcome - and they would all have to keep it quiet. But that system is under threat thanks to an over reaching federal government that is trying to insert itself into state business by requesting voter date and access to voting machines in several key states. An excerpt: “The Post said "the most unusual activity" was taking place in Colorado, where it said a consultant who was working with the White House had asked county clerks whether they would let federal officials or a third party examine voting machines.” Combine that with a quietly developing lawsuit in New York about potentially insidious remote updates to voting machines, and there’s a concerning recipe developing about the true nature of election interference. An excerpt: “Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review. These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.” As with the Epstein boondoggle, we will soon have an opportunity to see if extreme partisans have enough intellectual or moral integrity left to put principles above the good of the party.

3. News about the flooding in Texas that killed more than 100 people is starting to fade to the background, but it remains one of the more heartbreaking tragedies of the year. Some of the stories coming out of Kerr County are nearly unbearable to read.

4. Trump administration fires immigration judges, while also poised to infuse upwards of $170 billion - BILLION - dollars into ICE in an effort to further the administration’s mass deportation efforts. Already, the administration has helped erect a massive concentration camp in the Florida swamps, and is set to hire more agents to interact with more people. This is another area where there’s a lack of consistency from the right. The One Big Beautiful Bill includes funding to completely bloat ICE and grow a division of government. There’s $45 billion for detention, most of which will find its way to private companies like CoreCivic. Under this recently passed and signed legislation, ICE swells to become the largest law enforcement agency in the United States. If that doesn’t say big government, I don’t know what does.

5. CBS is cancelling next year the top rated late night show, Late Night with Stephen Colbert. And it, according to executives, has nothing at all to do with its planned merger with SkyDance - which needs approval from the Trump administration. Currently, CBS is owned by Paramount, which agreed to a financial settlement with Trump after he sued the network over a 60 Minutes broadcast he didn’t like. Colbert called it a Big Fat Bribe on the air, and made fun of the company for caving in to Trump’s demands.

6. The U.S. government seems to be less a government for and by the people, and more of a government for and by the wealthiest people in the world. The tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill mainly go to the richest folks in the country, while cutting programs for the rest of us. Trump properties are making millions, as people who wish to curry favor with the president book gatherings at his resorts and hotels. The president has abandoned the rules of divestiture that every other president has followed, and he’s publicly hawking everything from Bibles to Cryptocurrency.

7. I’m getting a lot of ads for the new Superman movie, and I think it looks really good. I’m planning to watch it soon, so I’d like to hear your thoughts if you’ve watched it.

8. I have long argued that our economic models are largely built on lies, created by the people who benefit from them and fed to every generation so that things will stay exactly the way they are. Oh, how many people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, even 70s who still believe they’re just one lucky break away from making their millions. The system is rigged. It always has been, and the people in power, the people who make all that money from your effort, hope that it will stay rigged. So I’m always thrilled when I stumble upon something that reassures me that my sense of the world isn’t wrong. It’s a lonely place sometimes to live inside a system that I view as inherently bad and corrupt, but it seems to also be a place I find myself in quite often. I hope you’ll enjoy this little clip as much as I did. But mostly, I hope it makes as much sense to you as it did to me.

I hope you all have a good weekend, enjoying all of the things that bring joy to your life.

There’s a line about fish swimming in a tank. The older fish says to the younger fish “How’s the water?” To which, the younger fish, somewhat confused, replies, “What’s water?”

We all live in some sort of water that was formed and put in the tank by some combination of circumstances, social norms, family history, and other people. Without effort, we’ll not even realize what water is, that we’re in it, or that it could ever be anything else.

The best explanation of the concept of becoming aware of water is from David Foster Wallace, one of the best minds of my generation, sadly lost at age 46 to suicide.

The water we all live in, have lived in for most of our lives, is stagnant. And it’s time to change it out for something fresher and healthier.

The water we currently live in tells us that budgetary items for parks, trails, community amenities are “expenses” that cost taxpayers money. But we consider budgetary expenses for business incentives, tax cuts, credits or exemptions, direct payments, infrastructure improvements as “investments.”

Completely different framing for budget items that both cost taxpayers money.

I was reminded of this locally when the Hutchinson City Council recently opted against investing $500,000 for a planned park in the Grace Arbor neighborhood, near the Salvation Army in one of the less affluent neighborhoods in Hutchinson.

Early this year the city approved $100,000 over 5 years ($20,000 a year) to Prairie Dunes Country Club to help offset the cost of hosting a PGA tournament in 2029. And among the normally fiscally conservative Reno County Commission, only one member voted against giving the world-class private golf club $100,000 in taxpayer funds.

I’ll not dwell on the economic disparities between Prairie Dunes members and residents of the Grace Arbor neighborhood - or on their respective abilities to self-finance the things they want and value in their neighborhoods. But we also owe it to ourselves to have an honest conversation about whether country club members couldn’t just pull themselves up by their very fine bootstraps.

The bigger issue is the way we consider investments in people vs the way we consider investments in business, and how we’ve allowed a narrative that harms most of us to become the accepted reality for all of us.

The water we are in tells us that investments in people carry very little to no direct economic benefit, therefore, they are expenses to be contained, controlled, managed, and eliminated. That same water tells us that investments in anything that supports business, furthers the accumulation of wealth, or encourages people to spend money, is a wise way to invest taxpayer dollars.

This line of thinking - this water - runs up and down government, and society. And the people, groups, and companies that benefit from this structure astutely understand how to leverage it against policymakers at every level. They know how to pinch elected officials in a way that voting against “pro-growth” or “pro-business” policies and budget requests will be twisted and misused during campaign seasons. The ingrained idea that these sort of investments are inherently “good” puts every elected official on the defensive if they dare push back against such investments.

In my experience in Topeka, a good number of legislators suspected or knew when something wasn’t the best use of resources, yet many also knew that explaining it to voters would be impossible - especially when the dark money pro-business groups could spend unlimited amounts to outright lie. So I can’t really blame local elected officials who find themselves in much the same position.

At the state level, we consider education, special education, access to healthcare, increasing daycare capacity, investing in public spaces unwieldy budget costs. They are rarely, and usually in limited circles, discussed as investments in our communities and the people who live there.

Right now at the federal level we in the throes of a massive realignment of priorities - where in its simplest form we’ve placed our nation’s highest value in giving upper incomes and corporations trillions of dollars in tax cuts, while slashing essential programs poor folks use for survival. And because we have lived in a world that has told us investment in high earners and business is good, and investments in people are burdens, even people who will be harmed by this legislation have adopted the common language of trickle-down economics.

We’ve lived in this water since the 1980s. We’ve become so used to it, we don’t even notice how bad it smells anymore. I’d ask you for a moment to consider how we might see the world differently if we’re willing to consider whether the water we’re in is the only way water that could ever be - and to remember that there was a time when the water was altogether different.

What if investing in a family’s food security led to better learning at school? And what if investments in education meant that the quality of your education didn’t rely on your Zip code?

What if having parks and green spaces within walking distance improved individuals’ health, and reduced the risk of chronic disease and expensive medical care?

What if investing in access to affordable healthcare reduced financial and emotional strain, leading to better health outcomes for families, and more financial freedom due to lessened medical debt?

And what if all of these things led to less instability in adult life? What if it resulted in fewer teenage pregnancies, lower incarceration rates, higher lifetime earning potential, increased rates of home ownership, and better parenting of their children?

And what if all of that actually produced an incredible return on investment for the rest of us?

We don’t have to imagine much of this.

The Federal Reserve of Minneapolis has been a leader in research in this field for many years, namely looking at the longitudinal economic impact of investments in early childhood development, including the fairly well known Perry School in Michigan. Over time, the research has expanded its look at several other community efforts.

“The High/Scope study conducted a benefit-cost analysis by converting the benefits and costs found in the study into monetary values in constant 1992 dollars discounted annually at 3 percent. The researchers found that for every dollar invested in the program during the early 1960s, over $8 in benefits were returned to the program participants and society as a whole (see Table 1A).

Further analysis found that later rates of return reached as high as 16 percent, and when adjusted, averaged around a 12-percent rate of return from the investment in creating secure and stable environments for children.

“While program participants directly benefited from their increase in after-tax earnings and fringe benefits, these benefits were smaller than those gained by the general public. Based on present value estimates, about 80 percent of the benefits went to the general public (students were less disruptive in class and went on to commit fewer crimes), yielding over a 12 percent internal rate of return for society in general….

The study went on to draw some comparisons between the return of investment on early childhood development and traditional economic development.

“Tax increment financing and other subsidies have recently been used to locate a discount retail store and an entertainment center in downtown Minneapolis, and to relocate a major corporate headquarters to suburban Richfield and a computer software firm to downtown St. Paul. Can any of these projects, which combined represent an estimated quarter of a billion dollars in public subsidies, stand up to a 12 percent public return on investment? From the state's point of view, if the subsidy is simply moving businesses within the state, the public return is zero. If the subsidy is required for the business to survive, the risk-adjusted public return is not merely small but could be negative.”

The frank truth is that investing in children, families, and people is economic development. Working to enhance the health, stability, and economic flexibility of people and families in the smartest, longest-lasting, and best investment we could ever make as a society.

These charts are a follow up study on the children of the children of the original Perry study.

And I’m not talking about the sort of limited investments that keep people from dying in the streets so we get to feel good about ourselves. I’m talking about investments that create a healthy, safe baseline existence from which people do more than survive, but actually thrive.

This isn’t a foreign concept, though it does seem to be one that is fading.

I don’t use every road that my taxes help build and maintain. But I sure do use some of them a great deal. I don’t benefit from every freshwater tap, every sewer line, or every storm water drain culvert. But I sure do appreciate that I get to participate in these systems. I have paid into Medicare and Social Security for a number of years, though it’s uncertain whether I’ll see a cent in return. But I’m glad my mother and her friends have some stability and healthcare in their final years.

Yet, I can scarcely envision a world today where our we’d have a conversation about creating a truly dedicated funding stream to build a series of parks around town. I can hear the wails from the halls of the Capitol in Topeka if we dared talk about doing away with the nearly $12 billion in annual state tax exemptions and credits and instead invested that money directly into our communities and our residents’ wellbeing. In fact, in Kansas we’ll spend extra taxpayer money to make sure poor families can’t get the resources the federal government has already allocated for them.

Nationally, we currently spend close to 20 percent of GDP on the for-profit mess we call healthcare and get terrible outcomes compared to our peer nations. We are not getting what we’re paying for, yet we keep looking to the “market” that is screwing us over to also deliver the solution. Dare talk about finding a way to create a taxpayer funded solution, and that’s socialism. Or communism. However, talk about throwing taxpayer dollars to support the oil and gas industry - which we’ve done for more than 90 years - create tax havens for the uber-wealthy, and carve out decades-long public investments for multi-national corporations, and we’ll call that being smart.

In one of the oddest cost cutting moves I’ve even seen, the Kansas Legislature originally planned to all but scrap the very popular Sunflower Summer program, which gives children free admission to museums, zoos, historical attractions, and nature centers.

Parents and day care centers loved it, because it offered a low-cost way to engage, enrich, and entertain children during the summer break - which every parent knows is a big task. When parents pushed back, the legislature relented, but only part way - so it didn’t die, but the program doesn’t actually begin until July 12, and will end in early August, just as kids go back to school.

Not only is Sunflower Summer a way to make life better for children, it is also an economic driver for Kansas communities. Families were using the app to build day or weekend trips - and while kids were getting free admission, their caregivers were buying gas, picking up lunch, and shopping all over Kansas.

A waterpark in Derby reported that Sunflower Summer users accounted for 40 percent of its total attendance in 2024. Combined with other Derby parks - like Field Station -the economic impact of Sunflower Summer in Derby alone was $1.8 million.

We took a learning tool away from children, hurt summer tourism, and damaged small businesses - all in the spirit of trimming around $2 or $3 million from the state’s budget.

Meanwhile, we gave a 25-year comprehensive no-questions-asked tax exemption to giant computer data centers built in the state by the world’s wealthiest and biggest companies like Google and Amazon. It’s so rich, there’s no way to predict what it will cost taxpayers - and these places don’t create jobs or wealth, and generally depress home values in the communities that house them. (They also created a flat income tax that grossly favors the wealthy - and lowers the corporate income tax rate - while also saying they’ve done all they possibly can to help you out on property taxes).

In our current environment, one of these programs is called socialism or communism, and the other is called a really smart, pro-growth investment of taxpayer dollars. The truth is that one concentrates wealth in a few players’ hands, and the other spreads the benefit around to children, families, and communities throughout Kansas.

The stagnant water of 50-years of Neo-Liberalism economic reality has told us investments in community or systemic assets that improve our quality of life have far less economic value than investments that build, attract, or enrich a large business. That belief system says if you or your family needs help navigating the difficulties of our modern economy, it’s a taxpayer expense and you best figure out a way to right your own ship. If a giant corporation needs help, that’s economic development essential to help them compete in a global marketplace.

Our water - and that thinking - has left a lot of people struggling to breathe.

Investments in people, in communities, is a smart business investment. When people are more healthy, more stable, and less worried about their economic well-being they live a richer life. They’ll better care for their families, be better employees who are more productive, they’ll more actively participate in their communities, and our economies.

Disinvestment in systems that support people and our communities compromises our health outcomes, depresses social engagement, decreases economic freedom, and increases the blight, flight, and criminal activity in our neighborhoods.

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I’d argue that more balanced investments in people and business would create the conditions needed for broad-based, sustainable growth for more of our community, state, and country.

A healthy ecosystem, and economic system, can’t flourish when it favors the Apex Predator, or the world’s richest people. Both ecosystems and economies require enough nutrients to feed the entirety of the food chain, from the single cell amoebas in the water, to the birds of prey in the air.

Knock out the bottom of the food chain, and degradation continues until eventually everything above it collapses and dies, too.

Late last night, Senate Republicans and Democrats came together, joined hands, sang campfire songs, and voted as one to end unemployment benefits for individuals who had been fired AND had an income of over $1 million in the previous year. It was part of the one big, beautiful bill, or whatever marketing nonsense the administration is calling it.

For years, I’ve listened to all this talk about how poor people are gaming the system, and how the unemployment system needs to be changed and tweaked to keep folks who have lost their jobs from getting benefits they don’t really deserve. I watched in Kansas as the legislature created barrier after barrier to make it harder for working people to get help if they got laid off or fired.

Good thing we’re doing all we can to save these sort of benefits for people who really need and deserve them.

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You are living in a ruse.

Rich people rule the world. They game the system for themselves and screw you to make sure you never have enough extra time or money to put up much of a fight. Just this morning I was thinking about how I’ve had some sort of side hustle all my life. Most people I know do, too, or a second job - because we’ve been squeezed so hard that we have no breathing room with one job. In two generations, we’ve moved from decent viability for one-income families, to needing two incomes to make it, to needing two incomes and something on the side to get by. I don’t know how much more evidence we need before people stop buying the rhetoric and lies of self-serving policymakers, corporate executives, and trust-fund babies.

This bill represents the biggest upwards redistribution of wealth most of us will ever see. It is a very clear effort to step on the throats of working people, take away resources that give them any semblance of freedom from corporate enslavement, all to finance the fever dream desires of the elite.

This legislation that is almost certain to pass Congress raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion dollars, and increases our budget deficit by $3 trillion dollars. Most of the cost is to pay for tax cuts that you’ll never enjoy because you don’t make enough money. To pay for that, we’ll kick your mom out of her nursing home, make life harder for hungry children, and fail to follow through on our promises to veterans.

Yet, where are the cries from the budget hawks? Where are the protestations from leaders who claim to represent the working class? Where are those who have long said we can’t invest in the wellbeing of Americans, lest it increase our debt and ruin our nation’s finances?

They are silent, because they serve their party, their corporate backers, their wealthy friends, and themselves.

I appreciate what Sen. Angus King had to say during debate on the bill yesterday, and think it sums up pretty well what’s happening right now in Washington, D.C.

“This bill is a farce,” said Senator Angus King (I-ME). “Imagine a bunch of guys sitting around a table, saying, ‘I've got a great idea. Let's give $32,000 worth of tax breaks to a millionaire and we’ll pay for it by taking health insurance away from lower-income and middle-income people. And to top it off, how about we cut food stamps, we cut SNAP, we cut food aid to people?’... I've been in this business of public policy now for 20 years, eight years as governor, 12 years in the United States Senate. I have never seen a bill this bad. I have never seen a bill that is this irresponsible, regressive, and downright cruel.”

“When I worked here in the 70's,” King said, “I had insurance as a…junior staff member in this body 50 years ago. Because I had that insurance that covered a free checkup, I went in and had my first physical in eight years…and the doctors found a little mole on my back. And they took it out. And I didn't think much of it. And I went in a week later and the doctor said, ‘You better sit down, Angus. That was malignant melanoma. You're going to have to have serious surgery.’… And I had the surgery and here I am. If I hadn’t had insurance, I wouldn’t be here. And it’s always haunted me that some young man in America that same year had malignant melanoma, he didn’t have insurance, he didn’t get that checkup, and he died. That’s wrong. It’s immoral.”

Senator King continued: “I don’t understand the obsession and I never have…with taking health insurance away from people. I don’t get it. Trying to take away the Affordable Care Act in 2017 or 2018 and now this. What’s driving this? What’s the cruelty to do this, to take health insurance away from people knowing that it’s going to cost them…up to and including…their lives.”

Here’s an excerpt from a story published on Military.com and the right-leaning Washington Times:

“On Wednesday, as he was about to depart from a NATO summit, President Donald Trump seemed to make a stunning admission: He gave Iran the green light to attack a U.S. military base in retaliation for his own strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.

The Iranians "were very nice. They gave us warning," Trump told reporters. "They said, 'We're going to shoot 'em. Is one o'clock OK?' I said, 'It's fine,'" he added.

I haven't heard a word about this from the Bengazi/Afghanistan pullout crowd that screamed so loudly not too long ago. For years, Republican groups and politicians have pretended to put country first, and to care about our troops. They've jumped on the bandwagon any time there's a failure or security breakdown that threatens our service men and women during a Democratic administration.”

Here, no group is worse about this than the Kansas Republican Party, whose social media today seems to be focused on trolling opponents and ginning up the emotions of their political base. Its feed has the emotional and intellectual depth of an over-tired toddler. I’ll never stop laughing at how the same folks that proudly display “F@#k Your Feelings” stickers and wave their F@#k Joe Biden flags for all to see, sure do seem to get their feelings hurt by just about everything imaginable.

But while they’re inventing things to be upset about, they’re actively ignoring something that seems actually worth being upset about - regardless of political affiliation.

An American president publicly stated that he was OK with a foreign adversary striking a U.S. military installation with U.S. Service men and women on site, potentially being placed in harm’s way. That the military of an adversarial nation called up the Commander in Chief of the U.S. forces, said they planned to attack, and the President of the United States basically was like “OK, that’s cool, we’ll just pencil it in at 1 p.m. That’s fine.”

That’s a far cry from the obnoxious and tough-acting “Bomb Iran” video the administration posted on its social media feed recently.

And it feels to me like it brushes against language in the U.S. Constitution on treason.

Article III, Section 3, Clause 1:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort….

I get that we live in a period of time where much of politics is viewed as a sport. Where so long as my team is winning, we can justify any sort of behavior in the name of advancing our own individual causes.

But it feels like some things should supersede our allegiance to political parties and positions.

Having a president who doesn’t confer with our enemies about attack plans, put our troops in harm’s way, and then proudly crow about it is probably as good a place as any to start.