Opinion

L&T Publisher Earl Watt

Ask any Republican older than 50 who they most admire in their lifetime, and the answer will almost assuredly be Ronald Reagan.

Reagan won 49 states in his re-election in 1984 and united the country in a way no one had seen since he left office.

It’s hard to fathom his re-election was 40 years ago.

GUEST COLUMN, Michael Ryan, The Heartlander

Kansas’ U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids is taking money from a funder of some of the groups involved in the anti-Israel protests, according to a report by Fox News.

Davids, who represents the state’s 3rd Congressional District in the Kansas City area, is reported to have accepted campaign contributions from the Pritzker family, described as “heir to the Hyatt Hotel empire.”

GUEST COLUMN, Ganon Evans, Kansas Policy Institute

Kansas’s 2024 legislative session can be characterized as a constant back-and-forth between the Legislature and Governor Kelly on tax reform, with several vetoes, failed overrides, and dozens of policies added or scraped at each new bill. Indeed, it seems like a special session is in the offing as the back-and-forth continues. The 2024 Green Book demonstrates why Kansas needs to walk away with reform this year. The election-year politics during these votes have overshadowed tax reform’s core justification: empowering Kansans and boosting Kansas’s economy, which continues to lag behind other states.

The basic economic theory is this: states can create economic opportunities by reducing costs for people and businesses. Those businesses range from the local restaurant down the road to the new entrepreneur and his office to a large company deciding to put a new headquarters in Kansas (without additional government subsidies). More people choosing to do business in Kansas at lesser costs leads to more jobs, higher wages, and standard of living increases.

GUEST COLUMN, David Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute

The bipartisan Open Enrollment legislation signed into law in 2022 offered hope for students who are trapped by their zip code in underperforming school districts.  The law requires districts to accept students within self-determined capacity limits for each grade level unless the transfer applicants have poor records for behavior or attendance.

One might think Open Enrollment would be embraced in the home state of Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned the separate-but-equal principle and outlawed segregation in public schools.