Opinion

GUEST COLUMN, J. Basil Dannebohm

Earlier this summer I wrote a piece entitled, “We are in dangerous, uncharted waters. Goodnight, and good luck." (Available to revisit at www.dannebohm.com.) It addressed the Los Angeles ICE raids and the military deployment in response to the ensuing protests.

I cautioned that the language used by the Trump administration, specifically the use of the words: "insurrection," "invasion," "obstructing," and "abdicated," combined with the overall tone and approach toward the situation, was not coincidental. Rather, it suggested the regime was laying groundwork to justify and declare martial law.

L&T Publisher Earl Watt

The Kansas Senate was a raucous chamber in January when the debate opened up about one of the top issues on the minds of Kansans — property taxes.

While Senate Tax Committee Chair Caryn Tyson didn’t think it was the right time to discuss the issue, she said her chamber and the people of Kansas had made a push that made it impossible to ignore.

Instead, the Kansas Legislature calmed the storm of Kansans concerned about both valuation and mill levy increases despite a proposed 3 percent valuation cap form one year to the next being proposed.

THE POSTSCRIPT, Carrie Classon

Yesterday, I saw a bunch of cousins.

I have a lot of cousins. A few have died by now, but I started out with 36 cousins, and only two were on my father’s side.

My mother came from a large farm family, and her brothers and sisters had a lot of children, and so I got to have a lot of cousins while I was growing up. I thought it was normal, having this second layer of siblings that I would see up at the farm. We ate sitting on the stairs, because there were many more people than chairs. We picked eggs and played in the haymow together.

GUEST COLUMN, Dave Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute

How do you go from having a $3 billion budget surplus and stable tax revenue to broke in just a few years? By repeatedly spending more than you take in.

General Fund spending has pretty much been out of control since 2018, the year after the Legislature passed the largest tax increase in state history. There was a brief dip in 2022 during the Great Recession; however, spending subsequently exploded.

Spending would have been approximately $8.4 billion in FY 2025 (the year ended June 30) if it had merely increased in line with inflation, but actual spending was $10.9 billion. That’s a 64 percent jump over seven years, while inflation was 27 percent.