www.sunpublications.com OPINION STATEWIDE POLITICS The former Republican state hether we are ready or chairman, who switched parties to not, the 2010 election is run with the incumbent governor, already in low gear in stood to pick up a lot of moderate Kansas. Republican U.S. GOP votes, particularly against an Sen. Sam Brownback ultraconservative Republican. set up his fundraising mechanism Parkinson blew all of this sky high. last week in preparation for a run for He announced he was returning to governor. He joins Ron Thornburgh, private life. GOP secretary of state since 1995, We have not had many who established his finance governors over the decades. organization in June 2007. Bob Bennett was one of They, and perhaps others the few Johnson Countians in the coming months, to rise to the governor’s are vying to succeed Gov. office in modern times The Kathleen Sebelius, who is onetime Prairie Village barred from seeking a third mayor parlayed distinguished consecutive term. service in the Kansas Senate Here is my question. into a run for governor in the Where are the hopefuls troubled 1970s. from Johnson County in However, Bennett could statewide politics, next year, not shake the “rich Johnson and in recent times? County lawyer” image Obviously MIA. Opinion Page Editor painted by his opponents, It is odd. We are the most even Republicans. He lost a populated county in the state, bid for re-election to a second so we have a large cache of voters. We pay from a quarter to a third term in 1978. John Anderson Jr., Olathe, stepped of the taxes collected in Kansas, so from the attorney general’s office to the we have a big stake in how the state is position of governor in 1961, serving governed. two two-year terms. Frank Hagaman, Yet in statewide politics, especially Fairway, advanced from lieutenant governor, we hardly ever have a player governor to governor, serving from in the game. Nov. 28, 1950, to Jan. 8, 1951, to fill a We thought we had a gubernatorial vacancy. competitor until recent days. I posed the Johnson County puzzle Democratic Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson, to State Sen. John Vratil, R-Leawood, Olathe, was assumed to be the handwho has observed statewide politics picked Democratic candidate for from a seat in the Legislature for more governor next year. than a decade. Sebelius, looking for a strong Geography and lifestyle influence candidate to keep the governor’s office politics, Vratil said. in the hands of Kansas’ minority party, In rural areas, the months of persuaded him to be her running mate January through March are “down in 2006. Jan. 14, 2009 The Sun Newspapers 5A ACTION IN KANSAS LEGISLATURE I Wysong seeks smoke ban f Sen. David Wysong were easily discouraged, he would have given up long ago on his quest for a statewide smoking ban. That is not the case. The Mission Hills Republican is back at the newly convened Kansas Legislature, armed with new ammunition that tobacco smoke is demonstrably detrimental to those who inhale it. Wysong said the latest revelation in Pueblo, Colo., reinforces his effort. A study there showed hospitalizations from heart attacks plummeted 41 percent in the three years after a workplace smoking prohibition took effect in 2003. A similar decrease did not occur in two areas near Pueblo that are not smoke-free, according to researchers for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That led them to conclude the ban is responsible for the sharp drop. In recent days this pattern played out in our area. Deaths from heart attacks dropped in tandem with fewer smokers. Wysong said in an interview that a bill to prohibit smoking in public places in Kansas will be considered soon by the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee. He believes a comfortable majority of the members, including the committee chairman, Sen. Jim Barnett, REmporia, favors the legislation. This is Wysong’s third attempt. The loss of three relatives to tobacco-related diseases prompted him to begin his campaign in 2007. Since then, his wife, Kathy, has suffered breast cancer. Taking her to the University of Kansas Medical Center for treatment made him more determined than ever to pass the ban, Wysong said. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius advocates a smokefree Kansas, as does the Kansas Health Policy Authority, the agency established by the Legislature to improve health in Kansas. That should help. If Kansas were to approve a ban, our state would join a national trend. Wysong wrote in a Sun Guest Column last year that more than half the states, including Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado and Oklahoma in this region, have approved smoke-free legislation. Locally, Johnson County is virtually smoke-free. Wysong cites the expense: $1 billion is spent annually to treat tobacco-related diseases in Kansas. Some 4,000 Kansans die a year from these maladies. Given the known dangers of tobacco smoke, it would be scandalous if the entire Legislature does not act quickly on this bill. Comment on this editorial at www. sunpublications.com. W Slim pickin’ for county time” on the farm. That coincides with the time the Legislature is in session. Thus it is much more convenient for people in agricultural areas to serve in the Legislature, than, say, an insurance agent here. That is where many rural Kansas politicos launch their careers. In Johnson County, he said, a lot of likely politicians are enmeshed in the corporate/professional culture. “Down time” is not available. Indeed, many companies and law firms tend to discourage their employees from seeking public office. This deprives the political system of some of the brightest and best talent that could be available for public service. Vratil believes that many are turned off by politics. They think it is a dirty game. Further, some are not motivated because they are poorly informed about government and its importance. “That is a shame,” Vratil said of the discouraging factors. Two former governors in the last 30 years are examples of rural politicians who rose to the top of Kansas politics. John Carlin, a dairy farmer from Smolan, served as governor from 1979 to 1987. Mike Hayden, Atwood, who engaged in farming, held the office from 1987 to 1991. Both got their start in the Kansas Legislature. They worked their way up to be speaker of the House and from that platform were elected governor. Contact Bob Sigman at 385-6034 or e-mail bsigman@sunpublications. com. Comment on this column at www.sunpublications.com. Bob Sigman 381-4884 Costly wishes The Sun and other publications have published a list of wishes and predictions for 2009, but how are we going to pay for all of these things? Somebody is going to have to bailout the bailout before we can pay for all these new things that people are talking about. TALK BACK Don’t want to call? Send an e-mail to talkback@sunpublications.com. Waiting for ‘Frost/Bush’ I went to the movies and saw “Frost/ Nixon.” I can’t wait until the “Frost/Bush” movie comes out, and then maybe we will get the real truth from this administration. 381-4884 Taxed out I see the schools are running low on money again. My taxes on my house are over $2,700 a year and 65 percent of that goes to either K-12 or the Taj Mahal at College and Quivira Road. I haven’t had a kid in school in 30 years and my main income now is Social Security. What’s wrong with this picture? Wrong response This comment has to do with the Middle East escalation. I am very outraged with Israel for disproportion response they took to counter the rocket fire from the Palestinians. It’s important to understand the conditions under which Palestinians have had to live for decades, generations in fact. So this is about like if someone throws rocks at you and you pull out a machine gun and blast them all away. It is totally disproportionate and irresponsible and there needs to be an immediate cease fire. Downtown grocery I don’t actually live downtown, but I am so happy for those people who now have a regular grocery store. Many of them have been eating canned chili from the local drug store for years. Great American This is my comment to ‘Filling up’ in your paper of Jan. 7. Thank you to whoever left that message. It made me feel so good to be reminded that my son died in a useless war, and here I thought and he thought of himself as a great American. Expensive embassy The United States has opened the largest U.S. embassy in the world in Baghdad. It’s a $700 million embassy that we built and it’s going to house over 1,200 people for the State Department in Washington. What are these people going to do? Start all over This is about the serious economic situation we’re having. I think that the cost of living for Americans is in deflation right now. I think we are rolling back the prices of cars, homes, and the amount of money you make per hour on your job. It will probably all be rolled back to about what it was in year 2000. So everything is going to start all over again from the year 2000. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Hamas must stop It has been six years that Israel has endured constant attacks by Hamas and Hamas supporters that have led to Israel’s attack on Gaza. Israel has an obligation to protect its citizens. I don’t believe there is any argument on this fact. The request for a ceasefire is a plea to save the lives of innocents. This fight is so ingrained in Palestinian culture that it does not seem that a cease-fire alone will accomplish what is necessary for peace in the region. But it will stop the killing of civilians who did not ask for this war. The world organizations must get Hamas to stop firing on Israel so there can be some negotiations to stop hurting innocent people. Much like a crazed individual will keep his family hostage with threats to kill all of them, the police go in full force, negotiating and prepared for the prospect of “taking out” the perpetrator, so too, the U.N. must go into Gaza and be prepared to stop Hamas from hurting its own family. I humbly request that Hamas be put in check of this barrage on Israel. Jeff Greenapple Shawnee Gossip ruins lives I wish someone would write an article about the terrible damage that gossip causes. I have seen gossip absolutely ruin lives, and it is a tragedy. People have to be vicious to do it to another human being. Disrespectful Is it part of liberalism to be mean and disrespectful to any conservative, especially President Bush? Money system a big problem Many have commented but I don’t recall anyone mentioning one of our biggest problems: our flawed money system. Since 1913, we have been warring over the globe with borrowed money from The Fed. We have been borrowing money from the likes of Japan and China (two of our very biggest lenders) and creating huge debt which will one day have to be repaid – by our children, theirs and theirs. If we had a valid money system, one backed by a precious (limited) metal such as gold or silver, we would simply be unable to protect the citizens of the world from their evil rulers and trying to help them develop a democracy such as we have. Americans are not stupid, per se, but because our media does not see fit to publish this kind of news, they do not know what they are doing to the offspring. Let the light shine on our people! Myron McNown Fairway Missing dollars Congress has authorized the U.S. Mint to produce millions of presidential dollar coins. Why is it not possible to go to our local banks and get these coins more than two weeks after they become available? Where are these dollar coins being stockpiled? None are available at any local bank I can find. Why Obama won I would just like to make a comment about Obama’s election. We didn’t elect him because he is black. As a matter of fact, he is as much white as he is black. We elected him because of his extreme intelligence, he has good common sense and his heart is in the right place. Same Sprint song So Sprint is going to lay off more employees in 2009. Same song, different verse. Maybe some day they will change that campus into what it looks like: a prison. THE Share your opinion NEWSPAPERS Talk Back is dedicated 24 hours a day to your comments at 381-4884. All calls are considered for publication within the bounds of fairness and good taste and are subject to editing. Because of space limitations, we are not always able to run all calls. The Sun does not endorse any comments listed and offers this as a community sounding board. Letters to the editor are welcome. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and libelous content, and we do not guarantee that all letters will be published. Some letters not published will be posted on The Sun’s Web site. Letters should not exceed 150 words. 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