By David Norlin

Life on my grandfather’s farm in some ways epitomized the rural farm life I still envision as the ideal Kansas life.  Neighbors helped each other, there was plenty of fresh air and beautiful country.  Everywhere there was (with small exceptions) an atmosphere of trust.

 
If there were problems, they could usually be handled ‘in-neighborhood.’  Until they couldn’t.   For example, one neighbor raised a large number of chickens.   Although he knew wild critters ran the creeks nearby, he was confident his hen house and collie dog were sufficient for protection.   Until they weren’t. 
 
One day the farmer awoke, dressed, and walked out to feed his chickens.   Only half were left.  Both farmer and chickens were traumatized.  The slaughter was widespread and ugly.  Few spots were left unbloodied.   Feathers still drifted, as if still frantically attempting escape, in the early morning breeze.  The hens never knew what hit them. 
 
Years later, we Kansans awoke to a much larger, more devastating, raid.   The Kansas Teagislature, at 4 a.m. on a Sundaymorning, raided the public treasury of up to 10 million dollars annually, handing that $10-million gift to corporations (they deduct 70%) to siphon off from public schools to private schools, for “scholarships.”   This allows them to teach their choice of curriculum to their choice of students, at your expense.
 
Not only that, they simultaneously slaughtered teacher’s due process rights, courtesy of our own non-Senator, Republican Tom Arpke.   That due process chicken house had been safe for 60 years—yet both blows to public education were done in one dastardly late-night raid. 
 
With no opportunity for debate, the amendments to the Education Funding bill can only be characterized as a surprise attack.
 
The process echoed Sam Brownback’s earlier perversion of the legislative process.   The one which shot a cannonball through the general welfare.  The “experiment” making Kansas perhaps the leading example of irresponsible, regressive, unfair tax policy.  The tax giveaway handing tank car loads of state money over to—not 1,900, not 19,100–but 191,000–that’s One-Hundred-Ninety-One-THOUSAND relatively well-off partnerships and limited liability corporations. 
 
Making it worse, they didn’t ASK for it.  Many or most would just as soon have that tax money kept to help others in the state.   But the Brownback/ Americans for Prosperity/ American Legislative Exchange Council juggernaut of lies-in-advertising seems to have blinded enough Kansans to this reality:  The chickens—no, in this case a huge nest of foxes—have come home to roost in their hen house. 
 
According to the Kansas City Star,  “Urged on by conservative special interests such as Americans for Prosperity, Republican leaders pressed hard to eliminate due process rights for teachers.” The AFP agenda often mirrors that of ALEC, and both are heavily funded by the right-wing big-bucks boys.  The Nation previously reported that “untold sums of cash” have been poured into ALEC by the Koch brothers.
 
But Kansans are waking up.  Hopefully in time to clean up the bloodletting and restore the hen house population. 
 
We Kansans remember Sam Brownback’s calling in a large group of lobbyists to demand they donate to his list of replacement candidates.  Brownback’s chosen frozen replaced legislators who actively asked questions, who did not knuckle under to the Brownback/AFP/ALEC agenda, who served the people, not Sam’s special-interest underwriters.  Thus did hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars in false advertising subvert the will of the people.  The latest example:  A television ad showing the Guv cavorting with kindergartners while his cohorts undercut public education.    Kansans should not buy it. 
 
We Kansans remember the raids on education and social services, the huge budget hole in the ship of state, sinking it under waves of debt, the general lack of compassion, concern—or sanity—in the making of public policy.
 
We Kansans now recognize similar local ‘anti-tax’ candidates who have no clue about sound public policy, who know the Price of everything and the value of nothing.   You’ve heard of the Saline County Commissioners?
 
We Kansans take little comfort in the discovery that ALEC has now sired a little (big) brother, the  “American City County Exchange (ACCE) that will target policymakers from “villages, towns, cities and counties.”  Thus could some already clueless local lawmakers become even more susceptible to deception.  
 
But we Kansans still have the vote.  As Richard Crowson, Wichita media commentator, recently noted, “If you’re just blaming cowardly, anti-education legislators, you are wrong. Our Legislature was not beamed to earth from another planet. They were elected.”  And they can be un-elected.
 
There’s more than one way to guard a henhouse.

 

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