COLBY, Kan. - The following is a little snip taken from a Kansas City Star article:

"The Revenue Department's analysis of the Brownback plan examined income tax data from 2009 and breaks down taxpayers into six income brackets. The only bracket with a tax increase ranges from zero up to $25,000.

"That group, made up of 564,328 tax filers, would pay $88.2 million more in taxes under the governor's tax plan. Meanwhile, the highest income bracket making $250,000 a year would pay $110 million less in taxes."

I don't have the resources at my finger tips to validate these figures. But, I've learned that tax reform reflects an advantage for those proposing the reform. Most of Gov. Brownback's agenda is benefiting the upper crust far more than the the hard tack biscuit eaters in the lower income brackets.

WICHITA, Kan. - According to the Wichita Eagle, Congressman Mike Pompeo is announcing an 'America Flies' aviation campaign.

That's right. Pompeo seems to think Americans need to be educated about what an indispensable asset aviation is for Wichita and America as well.

Yes, just after Boeing stuck it to the people of Wichita and has run out of Dodge with its Tanker deal, Pompeo has shown real political courage by reminding us how much we rely on the aviation industry for jobs and the need to bow down and prostrate ourselves to the gods of aviation.

This "I love airplanes and flying along with my congressional job" campaign, is an about face from last week's performance of outrage and protestations. Pompeo, along with other politicians were lined up like jilted lovers.

SALINA, Kan. - First impressions are lasting. And mine was very positive. In November I had the good fortune to be part of a group from Salina that traveled to China for ten days. After a fourteen-hour flight from Los Angeles we arrived at the Beijing International Airport and stepped into another world. Inside the spacious terminal everything was sparkling. The pristine scene contributed to our sense of excitement as we contemplated the adventure that lay ahead of us.

By now I've had time to reflect on the many experiences of our trip. And as I try to sum up my sense of this rising power I keep coming back to the feeling I had when I first arrived.

BOGUE, Kan. - Here's a three-part essay about gifts: wildly exaggerated, sadly expensive, and stupid.

Part I

You probably won't remember, but a couple of columns back I wrote that estimates of new jobs promised by the Keystone XL pipeline carrying tar sands oil varied wildly. Last week, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) claimed 20,000. So where'd he get that?
CNNMoney took a closer look. The 20,000 estimate comes from TransCanada, the corporation who would build the pipeline. They figured 13,000 construction jobs plus 7,000 manufacturing jobs making pipe, etc. But, whoa.

In 'TransCanada-speak' 20,000 means 10,000 jobs lasting for the two years of construction. Using the same formula, one job lasting 5 years would be 5 jobs.

COLBY, Kan. - I just read a recent contribution of Rep. Tim Huelscamp (KS-1) in our local paper. He was right when he said we had a spending problem, but he certainly wasn't very coherent in his math accounting for taxes and individual taxes paid.

When he validated that Warren Buffet appeared to only pay 17% taxes on his actual income, he was probably close. But when he claimed that the bottom 50% of earners paid an average of less than 2% of their annual income in taxes, he was a bit lacking in honest assessment of reality.

BOGUE, Kan. - It was past time, he said.

"We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes make it possible for millionaires to pay nothing while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary and that's crazy." He paused.

Then with a wide grin, "You think the millionaire ought to pay more taxes than the bus driver ... or less?" A thunderous "MORE!" from the crowd.

It's Obama and his class war .... W-w-w-wait. You're shaking your head. Not Oba..? Wha... Reagan? Reagan, a Marxist economic justice'er?

Well, indeed. It was Ronald Reagan. He was speaking at Northside HIgh School in Atlanta on June 6, 1985, shortly after starting his second term.

But as always there's more to the story. Even as he grinned and wagged, the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us kept right on growing while we were kept distracted by fear-mongering and ramped up jingoism. Today, the gap is wider than at any time since the Great Depression and, yes, keeps widening as you read.

Demagogues through history have known that big lies, repeated often enough, start being believed -- unless they're rebutted. These seven economic whoppers are just plain wrong. Make sure you know the truth - and spread it on. (The Seven Biggest Economic Lies, Robert Reich)

BOGUE, Kan. - The Occupy protesters are sometimes faulted for being "unfocused" -- meaning, I suppose that there are a variety of concerns -- thus far not sufficiently sewn together.

But I'd say the economic disparity between the rich and the rest of us -- now greater than at any time since the Great Depression and which has been widening since the "government is the problem" heyday of Grandpa Ronnie -- is the common denominator. If you agree with what Reich is saying, I hope you'll spread the word. Without a doubt, the banksters and corporate fat cats are nervous now, and will do all they can to discredit, disrupt, and dismantle any informed citizen activism threatening their power and greed. Part of that effort is to lie often and eagerly.

Reich will dismantle their propaganda ....

WICHITA, Kan. - The Occupy Wall Street movement sparked by demonstrations on Wall Street has spread across the country, even to Kansas.

Here is a video from Wichita's first occupy moment on Sunday, October 2.

COLBY, Kan. - It takes radical demonstrations in the street, sometimes, to focus public attention on police brutality. It took radical demonstrations in the streets to bring the civil rights issues into public scrutiny in the late fifties and sixties of the 20th century. Those demonstrators didn't have the power to enact legislation or laws, but they had the power to wake up a nation to the inequities of our social structures.

Taken from an editorial published in the New York Times, Oct 8.

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That's the job of the nation's leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.

DODGE CITY, Kan. - Occupy Wall Street is now in its 8th day! It is finally happening -- a grassroots uprising! Where I live in Western Kansas, the deepest grassroots are of a prairie grass aptly called "buffalo grass." It takes its name from the fact that it was the major food source for the gigantic buffalo herds that once roamed this vast prairie. It is a short grass that only extends a very few inches above the ground, and sometimes seems to cling to the ground.

But, let me tell you, this is nourishing grass with roots so deep they have been known to extend more than twenty feet downward to reach the water source which is buried far down in this dry land. When the "dirty thirties" happened, it was because too many farmers had cut up this wonderful sod to raise crops instead. Without the grass and its deep roots, there was little to hold the land and the strong winds whipped much of it away.

I was born in Western Kansas and, like the guy in the song who was "born the next of kin to the wayward wind," i was born related to the family of the deep roots of buffalo grass. Perhaps that is why I was always skeptical of what others called a "grassroots" movement.