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Here are important dates to know for Kansas 2024 elections, including new primary system

By
Guest Columnist
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Kansas is having a presidential preference primary for the first time since 1992. The new system is expected to increase voter participation but comes with new dates and deadlines that may diverge from what voters are used to.

 We’ve compiled important election dates to add to your calendar this year.

Presidential Preference Primary Election Dates

The presidential preference primary transfers responsibility for candidate selection from political parties to the state. Vote total will be given to each party, which will then allocate delegates to go to the national convention in the summer.

Political parties could technically chose to allow unaffiliated voters to participate, but primaries in Kansas are effectively closed. The more than 30% of registered voters who are independent will have to wait for the general election to vote.

2024: Off & Running

By
Milo Yield
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Thayne Cozart
Milo Yield

Well, the new year 2024 has arrived and Nevah and I are off and running into it as well as our ages will let us.

We celebrated New Year’s Eve with just the two of us, but we vowed to stay awake to ring in 2024 and we made it — thanks to late football games and a lengthy country/western music show on TV. Our celebration was not much — a smooch, a “Happy New Year,” followed soon after by snores.

***

I did gather in a couple of good stories over the holidays. Here’s the first one:

In a small Ozarks town there was a “Nativity Scene” on the town square that showed great skill and talent had gone into creating it — even live camels.

However, there wuz one small feature that bothered the young “up-north educated” new editor of the local paper. She couldn’t figure out why the three wise men were wearing firemen’s helmets and not the tradition holy mens’ garb.

It so perplexed the new editor that she felt compelled to find out the reason for the fireman helmets. So, when she got back to the newspaper office, she put the question to the long-time reporter of all the local news and community columns.

The local old-timer pretty much exploded at the new editor’s question about the helmets. He yelling back at the new editor, “You Yankees never do read the Bible! If you did, you wouldn’t ask such a silly question.”

Taken aback a bit, the new editor assured the local news guy that she did indeed read the Bible, but simply couldn’t recall anything about firemen in the Bible.

The local jerked his dog-eared Bible from behind the counter, ruffled thru some pages, and finally jabbed his finger at a passage. Sticking it into the new editor’s face, he said

“See, it says right here, ‘The three wise men came from afar.”

***

Here’s the second funny story: Thanks to the faithful reader for e-mailing it to me.

A young farmer, wearing uncomfortable fancy clothes, is speeding down a paved country road when he notices red lights flashing behind him in his rearview mirror. So, he pulls over to the side of the road and rolls down his window.

A deputy sheriff approaches his car and quizzes him, “Son, do you realize how fast you were going?”

The young farmer replies, “Yes, I know I was speeding. I’m really sorry about that officer, but I have to go right this minute or I’ll miss an important meeting.”

The deputy interrupts him, “Not so fast. You’re coming with me. No meeting is worth the danger you were putting the public, and yourself, into. So, just pipe down and follow me.”

The deputy puts the young farmer behind bars and tells him, “You’re going to have to wait for the Justice of the Peace to get back. He’ll be here in a few hours.”

After a few hours have passed, the deputy tells the young farmer, “Well, you’re lucky. The JP radioed that he’s just about here. He’s on his way back from his daughter’s wedding, so he’ll be in a good mood.”

The young man replies, “I doubt it.”

The deputy snaps back, “Why do you say that? I know the JP well.”

The farmer replies, “Because I’m the groom who missed his daughter’s wedding!”

***

I watched a lot of football over the holiday — both college and pro. I’m happy to report that my two college alma maters — Bea Wilder U I & II — won their bowl games. After the games I came to this conclusion: If your team wins with skill and preparation, it is the most satisfying. But, if your teams wins mainly because of luck, well, that’s the most fun.

Ask the Dallas Cowboys about the fun in luck.

Plus, the Kansas City Chiefs finally won again. I’m gonna take partial credit for the win. Here’s why. During their last three losing games, I wore red Chief gear for the game, even red underwear. So, I decided my wearing red wuz bad luck. So, I didn’t wear red for last Sunday’s game — and the Chiefs won. Go figure.

***

My hearing wuz finally getting so bad, even with my old hearing aids, that I took the plunge. I went to my hearing professional, Dr. A. Justin deTones, and ended up ordering a set of new hearing aids that will use a smartphone to, hopefully, fine tune my hearing. The danged things cost an arm and a leg, plus I had to buy a new expensive compatible iPhone.

It will be interesting when the new hearing aids arrive. If I can’t hear as well as I could with the demo in Doc’s office, he and I are gonna have words and I’ll be talking loud enuf he’ll be able to hear me.

***

Just three more columns to go before I reach 50 years of writing it.

My words of wisdom for this week were overheard one morning at the Old Geezer Gang Gathering: The discussion centered upon how our memories get fuzzier and fuzzier as we continue to add on years.

One Geezer, ol’ Tee Raveler, said it best. He said, “Guys, I’m so old that I’ve lost all memory of my teenage and college years … and I’m scared to death that they’ll come back to me some day.”

I think he might still be worried about the statute of limitations. Happy New Year and here’s hoping we all manage somehow to get through it.

Have a good ‘un.

Trade blackmail

By
John Marshall
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john marshal

Word from Republicans is that the party’s odds-on presidential nominee, Donald Trump, plans to reverse President Biden’s foreign trade policy soon after he is back in office. The crackdown will start with a “universal baseline tariff” on China and other U.S. free trade partners.

This tax will bend others to our will, Trump believes.

History is layered with warnings that blackmail is lousy foreign policy. Trump embraced it and plans to embrace it again. Biden waffles. The whipsaw also hurts Kansas but in Washington, who cares?

In the early 1970s, when Jim Pearson and Bob Dole spoke for us in Washington, a vote was taken to cut off credit to Russia and deny it favored trade status. The idea was to pressure the Soviets into allowing Jews to emigrate freely. Congress had taken its cue from the Arabs, who were cutting our oil supplies until we persuaded Israel to give up Palestine lands it had grabbed in the 1967 war. (See how that worked out.)

But Congress went further than the Arabs. It meddled in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union. Pearson, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there was much about the Kremlin that we don’t like. In fact, many nations conduct their affairs contrary to our ideals. By the same token, he noted, many nations are unhappy with the way we run our show.

*

When we use trade blackmail to tell other folks what to do, we invite trouble, or war. This has been the inevitable result of our Puritan complex in foreign policy, our passion for running the lives of other people.

We got those wars with decades of provoking conflict across the Middle East after the 1958 Suez crisis with Egypt that involved the French and British. The warring continues yet, three years after we left Afghanistan to the Taliban and three months since Hamas provoked Israel to destroy Gaza.

We especially hurt ourselves in lives lost or wrecked, a treasury drained and business burned. Before Ukraine, America abandoned the Russian markets and now risks losing the Chinese and other profitable outlets, including Kansas farm products and industrial techniques. Last year Kansas international trade topped $15 billion, most of it in aircraft (and parts), meat, grains and seeds. Our prime customers are Mexico, Canada, Japan and China.

*

More trouble looms. Republican free-market champions are on edge with reports of Trump’s plan for a ten percent universal tariff on all imports. The prime targets are China and two dozen nations that have free trade agreements with the U.S. The idea, apparently, is to remove the U.S. from the global economy and steer us toward “self-sufficiency,” producing more of what we consume and moving to singular trade agreements with other countries.

Such raw extortion would likely bring higher prices for everyday goods, massive job losses and leave U.S. trade and diplomacy in ruins.

Carried to an absurd end, trade blackmail might reduce America to a provincial backwater with neither exports nor imports, spinning along without critical raw materials, or with supplies that bring a usurious invoice. China has provided the lesson before; Brexit is an example today, Israel and perhaps the Arabs, tomorrow.

We endorse by imitation the trade techniques of those we say we oppose, and we gain nothing but the distrust of former allies and the possibility of more war.

How can we be so recklessly and dangerously stupid after all these years of folly and bloodshed, all those lessons in history?

Digital Edition 01.10.24

By
tammiehoeme
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digital edition

Digital Edition 01.10.24

Gov. Laura Kelly said she has ‘political capital’ to spend on water issues this year

By
Guest Columnist
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0

Gov. Laura Kelly said she is planning to spend a significant amount of political capital on water during the upcoming legislative session.

The aquifers under several western Kansas towns are depleted beyond the minimum threshold for aquifer density, meaning what remains couldn’t support things like center-pivot irrigation. Other areas are luckier, with an estimated 25 to 100 years of water use.

Still, those areas need to change water use to be able to support agriculture long term. Kelly said since the water shortages reached crisis levels, there hasn’t been a politician in the unique position she’s in as a second-term governor who isn’t planning to run for higher office again.

“I decided that, should I be reelected, that I would elevate water to be one of my highest priorities because it’s sort of an interesting moment in time and one that we’ve never experienced, where you have a governor in their second term, who never plans to do anything else, never be on the ballot again,” Kelly told The Capital-Journal. “So, I’ve got political capital and I can afford to spend it because it’ll be a very political sensitive issue.”

Kelly said the issue became a top priority while campaigning in western Kansas. It didn’t take long for residents to bring up water.

“It didn’t matter if it was northwestern or southwestern. Even though I thought they were going to be talking about schools and roads and health care, it always went to water almost immediately everywhere,” Kelly said.

In November, Kelly created a subcabinet on water that will attempt to formalize systems of cross-agency coordination and planning on the sometimes byzantine approach to water management. Kelly hopes agency and an influx of federal cash could move the needle on water in the coming year.

“We’ve got money — which is another thing that we really have not had in the amount that you need to even begin to approach this — but because of all of the funding that came in, during the pandemic, and some of the funding that’s coming in now, through the various infrastructure, programs that have been passed in Congress, we have we have some resources that we can spend,” Kelly said.

Money can only go so far, though, and some change will be needed by agricultural producers to conserve water to the point of sustainability. In December, Kelly’s special adviser on water touted Local Enhanced Management Areas, which is a voluntary association between landowners to meet specific conservation goals.

Some LEMAs saved 30% of their water without losing production.

“I think there is more recognition on the part of water users with particularly our producers,” Kelly said. “All the stars are aligning at this point. If ever we can come up with a plan and implement, it’s now.”

As reported in the Topeka Capital Journal

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