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| Brownback is a 1%er too! |
Greetings from The Topeka Capital-Journal.
The Capital-Journal is requesting your assistance with our general election Voter Guide. The objective is to be a conduit of information to your prospective voters.
In advance of the November vote, The Capital-Journal is asking candidates to answer six essay questions and six yes-or-no questions. In addition, we're requesting basic biographical information. The same inquiries will be posed to all Senate and House candidates for the Kansas Legislature.
We recommend essay answers run from 100 words to 300 words. These responses will be published online as submitted, but may be edited for length in print.
The deadline for submitting answers is Sept. 15.
Please send replies to reporter Tim Carpenter at the following email: timothy.carpenter@cjonline.com.
Here are the essay questions: (No more than 300 words for each.)
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Explain why you are the best candidate for the office you seek and highlight a position held by your opponent that you admire.
I admire and respect my opponent, Ronald Ellis for his position within the 47th District communities; he is widely respected both as a livestock breeder and a retired Oskaloosa high school teacher.
I’ve studied and reported on local, state and national issues for 30 years and never witnessed such a suffocating atmosphere of extreme cynicism against the poor, sick and elderly. Reactionary policies favoring the robber baron period of the early 20th century is dangerously stupid.
I am proud the statewide organization of Women for Kansas graded me “A” with 100% for my positions on the issues facing all Kansans.
I have been a lifelong political independent until March 2016. When filing as a candidate for this office I became a reluctant member of the Democratic Party. I am not beholden to any interest group and at odds with the current Brownback administration on virtually every item.
My opponent, a long-time leader of the Jefferson County Republican Party lays forth a blanket record of support for state-wide party leadership.
I strongly suspect based on his lack of any published policy statements, he is another shadow candidate for the retrograde Brownback agenda. Today he and many candidates declare themselves as “moderate” and “independent” without offering any debate for credible solutions.
Too many elected state-level officials seem to consider privileged communications and insider relationships as more important than a public record of considered positions.
Relying on empty allegiances to party membership for votes, rather than rigorous public issue-centered debate, is a horrible hallmark of contemporary governance.
My opponent, Ron Ellis, hasn’t published any positions that I can find other than being anti-abortion, which I consider inherently biased against women and obsessed with one public health care issue.
This questionnaire may change that, but will he debate?
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Outline revenue and spending changes you support to eliminate the state's structural deficit. Be specific in setting out your tax and budget reforms.
Kansas paycheck taxpayers are unfairly now the muscle of the general revenue funding of the state. The abominable state sales tax on food must be abolished.
I am on record in both newspaper and new media describing as "borderline criminal behavior" what the majority of lawmakers have engaged in with their tax structure “reforms”.
I will advocate and coalesce with those who take a “hard and fast” rule to the 1% at the top who have been benefiting the most from the regressive tax “reform.”
An increased income tax on the top 1% to 13.5% will immediately right the ship of state and provide a launch pad to not only restore funding deficits, but enhance economic growth.
A January 2015 study by the Economic Policy Institute determined that the average 2012 income for the top 1% in Kansas was $1,093,986 alongside that of the 99% at $48,312.
The economic disparity between the disaffected in Kansas; being those paycheck taxpayers and the .01% becomes grotesque in that their threshold income average for 2012 was $7,985,550 while averaging $25,879,120.
It can be safely assumed that Gov. Brownback and other state functionaries approach a threshold income of $358,000 annually making them part of the 1% problem. I consider significant number of lawmakers in Topeka as tax avoiding looters after passing the regressive tax schedules of 2012-13.
We should immediately review the LLC tax cuts to ensure it doesn’t provide windfalls to large corporations.
How would you modify the Kansas Open Records Act and the Kansas Open Meetings Act to improve the public's access to work of government officials in Kansas?
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Creation of an inspector general office empowered with a whistleblowers protection statute; including remuneration and severance allowances for any public employee granted such protections.
· Facilitate and make available public applications for records and meeting minutes at all government offices
· Implement a mandatory electronic document transfer option thereby drastically reducing the cost of reproduction of government documents.
· State government committee hearings held with audio live stream available free to all internet users
If you were writing a bill to enhance public safety across the state, what would be three features of that legislation?
· Mandatory KBI fingerprinting, licensed lethal force trainers, liability insurance of all CDW bearers, computer flag and require a CDW insignia on any state mandated identification
· mandatory background checks for ANY and ALL gun transactions
· prohibit CDW from all state funded educational and government facilities
Articulate your strategy for folding citizens without adequate access to health care into a system in Kansas that provides for their physical and mental well-being.
· Expand Medicaid to the federal mandate and initiate restoration of all previous programs for the disabled, elderly and low-income.
· Require all licensed Kansas physicians to take a mandatory percentage number of Medicaid and Medicare patients.
Chronicle what you believe ought to be the central elements of a new school-finance formula for public schools in Kansas.
· Adequate and equitable funding for rural school districts are not the current standards under the clumsy and slapped together policy of the majority in the legislature.
· I will oppose the underhanded motives of many in the legislature toward privatization; i.e. vouchers for charter and private schools, so-called “virtual” homeschooling schemes (operated by vulture corporate speculators) that defund and further undermine rural public schools.
· I will advocate the hard and fast tax policy of 13.5% income tax on the top 1% which will more than adequately fund our state funded public schools.
Here are the yes-or-no questions:
Do you support a state requirement that all Kansas law enforcement officers wear body cameras?
YES
Will you vote to modify or repeal the 2012 state tax law providing an income tax exemption to owners of businesses formed as an LLC?
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| The 1%ers return Kansas to the "Gilded Age." |
YES, but more interested in personal income tax changes than the LLC small business owner tax exemptions. I strongly feel that the top 1% should receive a hard and fast punitive personal income tax rate of 13.5% till Gov. Sam Brownback’s term ends.
Are you a supporter of government requirements that children be vaccinated for preventable diseases?
YES
Have you ever voted for a candidate for public office who represents a political party other than your own?
YES
Do you believe the state should adopt an increase in the minimum wage?
YES
Do you favor ouster of more than one member of the Kansas Supreme Court subject to retention vote on the November ballot?
NO
In terms of biographical information, please provide an outline highlighting your personal employment, public service, volunteerism, education, family, age and a hobby.
I am 61 years old semi-retired having lived in Jefferson County for the last 16 years. I am the executive producer and part-time host of the podcast call in show Radio Free Kansas, 7 years and over 2000 daily shows from the New York based BlogTalkRadio network. I was a state licensed private detective from 1995-2005 my duties included; counter-industrial espionage, installation and training in surveillance techniques, process services for domestic abuse victims, close protection and security chief for four Kansas women clinics providing abortions. I was publisher and editor of three country weekly newspapers based in north central Kansas for three years and the Alternative Index, “the only weekly voice of dissent” in the state.
My companion in life for over 30 years has been fellow native Kansan, Ann Kristin Neuhaus, M.D., M.P.H., and we share our love with son Tristan, aged 19 years, who is attending Highland Community College.
Thank you for sharing your insights with voters in Shawnee County and your willingness to serve the state. It's a hard job.
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