SALINA, Kan. - Voter fraud is indeed a Kansas problem, as Secretary of State Kris Kobach points out. Not the kind he alleges. The kind he perpetrates.

The real fraud is perpetrated upon voters, not by them. Kobach's failure to account for just under $80 thousand in contributions and expenses, in a campaign that raised just over $157 thousand, is breath-taking for a man who is presently the watchdog, or rather WatchFox, over the chicken house of Kansas' electoral machinery. Was his staff incompetent or did he just flout the law? Choose your poison.

Whatever the case, Kansas voters, beware! One of Kobach's most egregious fellow-perpetrators is U.S. First District Rep Tim Huelskamp. A leading example is Tim's Town Hall Phone meetings.

At first blush, they seem the essence of Democracy. Call in, talk to Rep. Tim firsthand, and hear other Kansans' questions. Efficient, direct -- what could be better?

SALINA, Kan. - Monday, Aug. 22, Kansas staged its own contribution to one of the most important national climate change discussions in decades, thanks to the Eisenhower Center and the KSU Institute for Civil Discourse. The topic: TransCanada's Keystone XL oil pipeline for Alberta tar sands oil. Final decision on XL's final leg is due soon from the U.S. State Department.

TransCanada (TC) wields a big stick: Canada is our single largest oil supplier, ahead of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

The Aug. 23 Salina Journal story noted the strong audience response to one suggestion. The Kansas Legislature gift-wrapped a present of an estimated $50 million tax abatement that TC doesn't need -- and that no other states gave. When Jim Prescott, TransCanada's representative, insisted his company is a responsible, good neighbor, one citizen suggested TC's good neighbor policy should extend to gifting that $50 million to desperate Kansas kids and schools, where most of the taxes would/should have gone anyway. This reverse-gift idea received strong audience applause.

Prescott did not make that offer.

SALINA, Kan. - I will never understand why the women of Kansas (and sympathetic men) don't simply revolt -- or at least vote smarter.

When a drumbeat of letters to the editor oppose abortion.  When most of those letter-writers are men. When women's private lives seem incessantly dragged into the public square.  Why no revolt?

A more direct manifestation of men's apparent urge to control women's lives is seen in this year's tsunami of anti-abortion legislation.  

A 72% male legislature (Kansas now has 46 women among 165 lawmakers, or 28 percent, down from 50 before our last election.), cheered on by a male anti-choice governor, thus has diverted attention from a wholesale gutting of public education and infrastructure.    Of course, gender does not automatically predict attitude, but such statistics at least indicate a strong trend line.

The last I heard, no one has sought an abortion who wasn't a woman, and pregnant.  

SALINA, Kan. - Alan Jilka, on these pages, has presented a sterling case for opposition to Kris Kobach. Wednesday, May 4th, at the state county clerks conference, some folks outside Salina's Ramada Inn created an outdoor 'free our voters,' anti-Kobach presence. Equally important, there was an indoor presence, up close and personal, for Kobach himself.

Besides a Kobachi presentation which gained applause only from one-third of the county clerks, his press conference found him face to face with Koch Bros. impersonators Gary Swartzendruber and Bob Homolka. Some pointed questions followed.

Kobach said they would be surprised at the grades he received at Harvard, but he did not indicate he would produce his Wisconsin birth certificate. When asked about E-Verifying cattle, immigrants, voters, and feral pigs, he demurred.

SALINA, Kan. - Growing up in a small town near Hays, I thought I lived in Western Kansas -- that is, until I came to teach at Garden City Community College. Driving west through Great Bend, my wife complained softly of the distance: another hour to grain-elevator Kalvesta; yet another to big-town Garden City, pop. 13,254 (now 27,000 plus).

Wide-open spaces seemed wider yet as I worked my summer job with the Soil Conservation Service.  Most days, nearly an hour's drive was our minimum to reach Finney County farmers.  Plains stretched from horizon to horizon, interrupted only by the occasional farmstead, tree, tractor, or cattle herd. Isolation was easy to come by and difficult to overcome.

There was no public radio.

That is, until two young, ambitious Garden City grads, Quentin Hope and Malcolm Smith, came back with high hopes and a big idea -- creating an area public radio station.

SALINA, Kan. - "Boon!"  was the headline for Tim Unruh's Salina Journal piece Sunday, Sept. 26.  It laid out how Clay Center (and Herington, Junction City, Abilene, and many others) are laying out the welcome mat for TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline.

Count the benefits:  Bud's Tire service sales tripling, with guaranteed overstock buyout/bailout; referrals for boat sales, doctors, and dentists; full restaurants; swelling campground rentals; pipeline spouses as public service volunteers; pump station/power generation cash cutting Clay Center's electric rates "up to" twenty percent; six million dollars for a 14.5-mile transmission line; and most heart-warmingly, 1,000 charity bucks from TransCanada and 500 from the pipeline company for Clay Center's Orchestra, which just lost funding from the Kansas Arts Commission. 

This headline's more accurate, long-term: "Boondoggle!"  These transient benefits last only till November -- with potential damage to our land lasting at least a hundred years, perhaps far longer.  Or, there's "Boom!"  And later,  "Bust!"

SALINA, Kan. - Few folks are against free speech. But what one says is always limited to what one sees. Many good talkers are not necessarily good seers.

Case in point: Chapman Rackaway's recent editorial on the Supreme Court Citizens United case. His misguided missile, intended to strike its critics, instead winds up wounding the very free speech he advocates.

That arrow struck especially deep, given Rackaway's solid contributions to free speech, particularly through his hosting of candidate forums on Smoky Hills Public Television and his college teaching at Fort Hays State. His achievements illustrate, however, that all truth is relative, and easily blinded.

To defend free speech, Rackaway scaled Mount Everest rhetorical heights, only to fall off the cliff of corporate, moneyed influence. It's a common error.

SALINA, Kan. - This is not about Sarah Palin. Instead, let's talk petro-states. Like Oman. And its sister state, Alaska. In 2007, Alaska produced approximately 719,000 barrels of oil per day. That puts it in the same ballpark as Egypt (710,000), Oman (718,000) and Malaysia (755,000). Its economy parallels Oman's. Its oil revenues account for about 75 percent of export earnings.

Oil rents provide 42 percent of Alaska's annual revenue, more than any other source. Without federal subsidies (the highest per capita in the nation), Alaska's oil rents would account for 53 percent of income.