JoeyBahr.com

For all you Kansans who have a hankering to fire off some bottle rockets this weekend even though they are illegal, let me offer an alternative.

45,000 Bottle Rockets shooting off in less than 2 minutes.

Wow, that was pretty.

The most important day of the 2006 Kansas Legislature will be Monday, January 9th, the first day of the session. Normally the first day of the session is a rather uneventful day.

This is the day where Legislators get reacquainted with each other. Any new members will be sworn in and the ceremonial actions will be made to prepare for the State of the State Address. The day ends with the Governor’s speech and the replies by the opposing party leaders.

As the Representatives and Senators head off to their favorite watering holes Monday night, they will have more than the Governor’s speech to mull over. The 9th is also the day that the Legislative Division of Post Audit will finally release their study on school finance in Kansas.

The release of the study will set the direction of the session. If they find that the level of funding is adequate, then the Legislature will still address the issue of Education, but with far less urgency.

If the Division of Post Audit finds that additional funding is needed to meet the Constitutional requirement that the State provide a suitable education, then the war is on. Conservatives will find ways to try and discredit the study. Moderates will seek to find the mix of revenue to reach the goal set in the report. Liberals, the handful that actually are in the Legislature, will say that the amount cited by the auditors is not enough for the kids of Kansas.

This report is so important to the direction of the session that it is logical that the Governor’s staff probably has two State of the State speeches ready. One for if additional money is needed for schools and one for if it is not needed.

Granted other issues will be discussed during the session. Topics such as setting a minimum age for marriage, stiffening the penalties for animal cruelty, rewriting the eminent domain laws to give land owners more protections, another proposal by Wichita Mayor Carlos Mayans to subsidize airlines at Mid-Continent Airport, and the State’s debt load will be broached. Most of these topics will at some time have to deal with how does it mix in with the battle over education funding.

One legislator might have to vote a certain way on a revenue enhancement (fancy way of saying tax or fee increase) bill to get a vote on a topic mentioned earlier. Smart legislative strategists and tacticians will know to watch the education report as that could be the gravy train for the year.

Another element of the education debate to watch will be the simmering battle between the Legislature and the Supreme Court over the Court’s role in appropriating money. Many conservatives began to use the term “Activist Court” after the decisions to throw out the death penalty law and that the State was not funding public schools in a suitable manner as directed by the State Constitution. Many of these legislators felt that the justices were trying to appropriate money from the bench when only the Legislative Branch can appropriate money. This debate is bound to flare up again as many of the conservatives did not get the votes they wanted to tie the hands of the Judicial Branch in future cases.

The final cherry to put on top of a potentially contentious session is the fact that 2006 is an election year. The entire House of Representatives and the Statewide elected offices are up for election this year. Many of the people needed to make a vote successful for a new school funding package might run away out of fear from being branded a tax and spend liberal in their primary or general election race.

Mix all of these components together and you have a recipe for a long, nasty, and not to mention bloody session. Which will make you wonder who said that Kansas politics can be boring?

Kansas Politics keeps getting more and more interesting. For at least the third election in a row, Cindy Neighbor will face off against Mary Pilcher-Cook for control of a House seat in Northern Johnson County. The difference this time? Cindy Neighbor will be running with a “D” behind her name instead of a “R”.

Cindy Neighbor’s announcement of her new party affiliation puts her as the second Johnson County Republican to jump ship to the Democratic Party for the 2006 Election. County Attorney Paul Morrison was the first when he let it be known he was going to run as a Democrat for Attorney General.

Both politicians highlighted how the Republican Party no longer welcomes people with their views. They see the Democratic Party as the party that speaks to the issues that concern them.

Democrats are more that willing to invite these people over to the Party. With registration differences as stark as they are in Kansas–27% of the registered voters in the 2004 Election were Democrats, 46% were Republicans–you will be glad to get as many to come over as you can. (This is assuming that the Party was not actively recruiting an existing Democrat to run against Rep. Pilcher-Cook already.)

Now two people does not make a stampede, but it does cause one to take notice. It shows that maybe Paul Morrison’s change was not an isolated occurrence. So who is the next one to turn in a new voter registration card after Paul Morrison and Cindy Neighbor?

If anyone has a list of the next people to jump the good ship GOP, I am certain it would be some of the hard-core leaders of the Conservative wing of the Kansas Republican Party. Granted this list is more of a wish list than a definite thing, but it would highlight the vicious war the two wings have waged for years.

Moderates now face three choices in how to handle the fractured nature of their party. One, they could stay and fight it out with the Conservatives and see who wins. Two, they can stay and dance to their own drummer and hope the Party will give them the same level of resources in an election as a Conservative candidate. Three, they decide to join the Democratic Party and leave the GOP behind.

Right now, most of the Moderates will opt for the first two choices. For many of them, they identify themselves, the Moderate Republicans, with the Abolitionists who founded the state and with the Republican power structure that has ran Kansas ever since. To many, it would be very hard to see a “D” after their name on the ballot.

Would Republicans like former State Senate Presidents Dick Bond and Dave Kerr join to the Democratic Party? What about former Governor Mike Hayden? Hayden currently serves in the current administration as the Secretary of Wildlife and Parks but remains a Republican even though Governor Kathleen Sebelius is a Democrat.

Sure Democrats would welcome these Moderates into the party with open arms. (Well maybe not quite so open for Sen. Kerr.) Democratic Party leaders would know that snatching Moderate heavyweights such as those just listed could cause others on the fence to cross over. Yet, that is probably the reason many of the big Moderates will retain the “R.”

They know that a stampede to the Democratic Party would give the Republican Party over to the Conservatives and possibly even spell doom to the GOP in Kansas. Many of these Moderates would not want the blood of a dead Kansas Republican Party on their hands.

Those who have been in politics for a long while also know that the real test of the jump will come not in the beginning but after the honeymoon of the successful elections, when the Moderates must deal the the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Which would make for even more interesting times.

It is amazing how one life experience can translate into another. For almost six years I worked in Kansas state politics, including five sessions in the Kansas House of Representatives. But it was not until I worked as a substitute teacher’s aide for a Kindergarten class that I gained some perspective on my past work.

One evening after substituting, I began to realize the parallels that exist between a Kindergartner and a Legislator. For instance, the second most dangerous space in the Statehouse was the distance between a legislator and a free meal. Likewise, one of the most dangerous spaces in a Kindergarten classroom is the distance between a kid and the cabinet holding the graham crackers. (If you are interested, the first most dangerous space in the Statehouse is the distance between a TV camera and an elected official.)

The deep personal relationships formed in either situation stands as another great similarity. When the kids walk into the classroom on the first day, they will meet the friends they will have for the next thirteen years and quite possibly longer. For legislators, they will meet fellow elected officials, lobbyists, staffers, interns, and even reporters who they will count as some of there best friends.

Now sure, I could go for the cheap shot and say that many times legislators act like kindergartners. To be honest, at times that would be the truth. While the tantrums thrown are far from similar-a kindergartner might throw something or stomp off, a legislator will slash a budget or kill a bill instead-the results can be the same, getting attention or stroking an ego.

One cannot deny that when looking at a class of kindergartners and the assembled body of a legislature, that a great potential exists. Look into the eyes of the children and you could see the doctor to finally cure cancer or AIDS. You can see the mind of an artist that will bring beauty and enjoyment to the masses. You see someone who will be a loving and caring parent to the children they bring into the world.

In the legislature you see people from a diverse background coming together to solve the common problems. You see people who might walk in with little knowledge in a given topic and when they leave they are the chamber’s expert in the area. You see the person who might not be that active on the floor or in the halls, but they will do all they can to meet the needs of their constituents. You see the shy freshman legislator with a glint in his or her eye that tells you this is one to watch as they will be going places.

While you can see a great potential, it is hard to miss seeing those who are the opposite. You hate to have the thoughts, but even in Kindergarten, you can already see the kids who will be problems throughout their school years. Kids that you can only hope someone will be able to turn around before they go too far down the wrong path.

Likewise, in the legislature it does not take long to see which members are there to make a difference for everyone or for just a few. Many times that few is either some benefactor or the career of the legislator.

Now that I have laid out what I saw as the similarities between Kindergartners and Legislators, you might be wondering which one I would prefer to work with. Well, I will punt here and say high schoolers. I know that with a high school student, I can have an intelligent conversation, which is not easy with a five or six year old, and I won’t have to worry about being asked to walk over to Wendy’s and getting them a chicken sandwich before the next class starts.

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Joey Bahr is a former political hack currently working as a teacher’s aide and living in Great Bend, Kansas. You can reach him at letterstojoey@gmail.com.

Right now I’m trying to figure out what to do with two ideas I have floating around my mind. The first, and most likely to happen, is to try and become a syndicated columnist mainly here in Kansas or even nationally. The other, is far more ambitious. I have thought about creating at the very least a podcast/videocast of a 5 minute or longer “hard” newscast.

The columnist part will hopefully go through with at least one or two columns for sure. I plan to write about Kansas and national politics and the occassional article about technology, sports, culture, or life. I’m not sure if anyone would want to pick me up, but who knows.

The bigger idea, and in many ways prohibitive, is the newscast. What my initial idea is to create a short 5 maybe even 10 minute newscast that would basically be reguritating the day’s news. Now the hard part for this would be finding legal to use pics or video to help better illustrate the stories. I have a place in mind for the pics, the video would be far more difficult to find.

Now down the road, I can see this becoming something much bigger. What would be some of the ways it would be bigger?

• Have correspondts to actually cover the news.
• Create more than one newscast a day.
• Actually have a real news bureau somewhere.
• Maybe even become one of the main names in news.

Sure some of these ideas are pretty damned pie in the sky, well for right now. I’m not sure if I will follow through with this, but I might give it a go for an episode or two and hope that someone sees it and let’s me know if I should go forward with more or not.

So who knows what the future will hold, but at least I have a few options to consider.

Will it get to that point, I really can’t say.

Thank you, Oh thank you.

Yes, you, all of you tireless Firefox coders. Right now, you just injested your seventh Mountain Dew in the last three hours. I know that the Mac OS X version is, well, not exactly on the top of the list when it comes to your priorities.

But, finally, you guys got around to making the delete key on my iBook act as the keyboard shortcut for “Back” in the Firefox Version 1.5 Release Candidate 1.

All you highly caffinated souls probably fail to grasp how much I desired this. Having to use the Command and Left Arrow soured me on using Firefox on my Mac. I used Safari for a while, but hated how many pop up windows, ummm, popped up. I then went to Camino for another while, I loved having a Gecko based browser, but I didn’t like the lack of flexibility that Firefox gives me.

I bit the bullet and went back to Firefox, which was my main browser before I left Windows in the dust. Earlier today, the 1.5 Beta copy I was using automatically downloaded the new RC1 copy. When I saw the “What’s New” page for this, yet once again I saw the words “Better support for Mac OS X.”

Many times, my eyes have read those words only to be disappointed that the one feature I wanted remained missing.

So now you know why my heart is filled with joy now.

As I watch the CIA Leak Probe unfold, I cannot help thinking that
sooner or later, one of the principals in the case was going to lash
out. From
this morning’s Washington Post, it looks like that happened last
Friday.

The article states that Karl Rove claimed to hear from Scooter Libby
that Joe Wilson’s wife was Valerie Plame and she was a covert agent
for the CIA.

I am not the least bit surprised at this. Rove’s modus operandi all
along has been to use whatever possible to win. He probably thinks
that by fingering Libby, he will get a smaller indictment or even walk
free. This testimony is just the same as him using surrogates to
spread horrible rumors about Sen. John McCain during the 2000 South
Carolina Primary or using the Swift Boat Veterans to sully the service
record of Sen. John Kerry.

The only problem for Rove is that this time, his dirty tricks will
probably backfire on him.

As U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald gets closer to handing down indictments in the CIA leak probe, political insiders are spreading rumors, lies, half truths, and–god forbid–the actual truth.

One of the tales being thrown out for consumption now is that the probe is looking hard at how much of a role Vice-President Cheney had in the leaking of the name of Valerie Plame in retaliation for her husband’s NY Times article. The story goes that the Vice-President is contemplating resigning his office. No word on if this would happen before or after an indictment and or conviction. The story goes on to say that Secretary of State Condolezza Rice would then be nominated to take Cheney’s office, thus giving the nation its first female Vice-President.

Do you realize what this means?

The United States of America would be one pretzel, consumed while watching football, away from having the first female President.

Only time, and Mister Fitzgerald, will tell how this whole thing plays out.

Ok, so I dipped my toe into the water of actually hosting my own domain and all. I do have to say that I did enjoy some of the freedom that came with it. Nothing like having complete control over the look and all.

Just one problem, it costs money. Sure there are cheap hosting companies out there. I actually found a great deal with West Host. But the one thing I did not like was having to live under a bandwith allowence. Then I saw something on LifeHacker about a Free Podcast Hosting and I took a look at it.

What the link on the LifeHacker page leads to is OurMedia.org. The goal of the site is to have a large, open hosting service for media files. Oh, and did I mention it’s free? Yeah, it will host files for free.

So if you want a place to put up a video file or a podcast or anything like that, this could be the place for you.

Granted you can’t run a full fledged site from it. But that’s what this site is for.

So I’m going to give this arrangement a try for a while. Time will see how it works out.

Check out the website for Sci-Fi’s Battlestar Galactica, not only is this for the best Sci-Fi show on TV now, but it also has many qualities of a good DVD.

This is especially true if you check out the Video Features page. On there are twelve featurettes that could easily be an extra on a DVD of a season.

For the now seemingly standard creator/writer/producer/director’s commentary on a work, the site also features downloadable mp3 podcasts of Executive Producer and Head Writer Ronald D. Moore talking about individual episodes. (If you are currently hip to the Podcast phenomenon, click on this link for iTunes or this link for other Podcast aggregators.

What’s cool is that when Sci-Fi’s ready to put out the DVD for the first season, most of the material for it is already in the can.

Now just to wait for when they put it out.