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Opinions on Kansas 2008 Political Issues

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by Thomas A. Stobie, SFO

Prelude

In this webpage, I will discuss my views on various political issues in the state of Kansas.

For a broader discussion on issues in the United States see my issues page.

Kansas 2008 Issues

Human Rights Issues

Restore Marriage to Traditional Marriage

Problem: - Marriage used to a covenant bond between an adult male human and an adult female human for the purpose of life-long support of each other and forming a family to raise children (in most cases). Today in some states, marriage has become equated to a state-sanction of sexual activities that can be easily dissolved and causes significant problems in society particularly with broken families, immmature adults, and sexual abuse.

Solutions: -

  1. Establish a multi-tier marriage recognization structure. - Marriage has both social and religious aspects and the state should recognize this. Marriage types should include from (1) Religious Covenant marriages (such as the Catholic Church defines marriages), (2) Religious Contract marriages, and (3) Secular Contract marriages. Covenant marriages should be very hard to dissolve. Religious marriages are defined by religious organizations as to the requirement to enter and dissolve. Every marriage should be between an adult male human and a female adult human with a limit of one marriage at a time per person.
  2. Do not Recognize so-called "marriages" from states without a solid marriage definition - Laws need to be established declaring that the state of Kansas does not recognize marriages from any state that defines marriage to include same-sex partners, multiple partners, or non-human partners. Individuals who move to Kansas should be able to apply to the state to get recognition of their marriage as a valid marriage if it qualifies under the Kansas definition of marriage. If required to recognize them by the United States Government they shoud be recognized only as state-sanctioned fornication.
  3. Kansas should favor more stable Marriages - Marriage types that result in more stable families should get preferential treatment in Kansas law and be encouraged over other types of Marriage.
See my webpage discussing marriage for more information.

Restore Religious Freedom

Problem: - The Kansas Government and public education systems discriminate against organized religions in favor of the religion of Hedonism. This promotes sexual abuse, the using of other people, sexual diseases, and many other problems. It violates the religious rights and parent rights. It forces those who do not want their children abused to pay twice for educating their children. Organizations are often forced by the state to perform actions against their moral beliefs. Government health organizations violate the religious rights of health professionals and restrict the quality of health care.

Solutions: -

  1. Grant the Right for Organizations to be governed by Religious Principles. - Organizations should be able to declare that they follow the moral teachings of organized religion, apply for and recieve conscience exemptions to state laws concerning moral behaviors, and require conformance of employees or purchasers to a code of behavior. This should include both for profit and non-profit organizations, medical, educational, and housing organizations.
  2. Recognize different forms of marriage by religion.
  3. Reform Kansas Education to eliminate Religious Discrimination. - see the section on education.
  4. Reform Health Care laws to permit Religious-based medicine. - see the section on health care.

Promote Parential Rights and Responsibilities

Problem: - Kansas current violates certain parential rights on how they raise their children.

Solutions: -

  1. Recognize Parential Rights in Law - Parental rights come from their responsibilities as a parent and include their rights to (1) choose how their children will be raised and educated, what religion they will practice, with whom their children can associate, & how they will discipline their children and (2) use appropriate means to protect their children from harm and care for their physical, mental, spiritual, and social needs. These rights are conditional on the parents properly take care of and safegaurding their children in a non-abusive manner. Laws need to be established to protect these rights which exists from the conception of the child and go until the child gains adulthood.
  2. Recognize Statuses of Development - Currently Kansas has four statuses of development, fetal (between conception and birth), child (between birth to Age 18), mostly adult (between Age 18 and Age 21), and adult (21 years old and older). The statuses should be based on the mental abilities of the child. I recommend child (between conception and completion of 8th grade or Age 14), pre-adult (between completion of 8th grade and the completion of high school), and adult (completion of high school or Age 18). I would further allow the declaration of dependent pre-adult and dependent adult for those with handicaps and are dependent on their parents for their support. Courts could also rule for the mentally handicapped to delay a status granting a longer or indefinite period of guardianship. Laws should defined when pre-adults accussed of crimes can be tried as adults. Completion of 8th grade and high school should include understanding of civics.

    Note: Until abortion is prohibited, a fourth status may be required to give the child within the womb some rights until the status of child can truly include children in the womb.
  3. Grant Father's Rights toward their children within the womb. - As Fathers are responsible for the child after it is born, it is unfair to not grant than rights to protect the child in the womb as well. Laws need to be written granting fathers the right to prohibit the abortion of their child.
  4. Require Parential Consent for all medical procedures. - Any medical procedure performed on a child in the State of Kansas should have the consent of the child's legal guardian.
  5. Reform Kansas Education to eliminate Religious Discrimination. - see the section on education.
  6. Reform Health Care laws to permit Religious-based medicine. - see the section on health care.

Protect Human Life

Problem: - The fundamental right to life of human beings is being denied to those aborted directly or indirectly via abortifacient contraceptives and those destroyed for embriotic stem cell research.

Solutions: -

  1. Define Personhood beginning at Conception. - Amend the Kansas Constitution to define personhood beginning at conception of the human being and granting full protection of the law to these human persons.
  2. Ban Surgical Abortions, Chemical Abortions, and Abortificiant Contraceptives. - Laws should be establish to prohibit abortions through Surgical, Chemical, and abortificiant contraceptive means. People who deliberately commit abortions should be charged with murder.
  3. Ban All Research that results in the taking of a human life. - All research that kills a human person including destructive embroitic stem cell research should be banned in Kansas with heavy penalties for violators.
  4. Do as much as Possible - If the previous can not be fulling implemented, go as far as possible to protect human life in all stages of life.

Promote Low-Cost Medicine

Problem: - The Medical industry has a number of current problems that I address on my webpage on heathcare. On this webpage I also address an approach to solving these problems. Here I will address Kansas goverment specific actions.

Solutions: -

  1. Permit & Encourage Diversity in Healthcare - Kansas should permit and encourage health care plans to provide a wide variety of plans, including (1) plans designed for specific groups, such as people of the same moral bent, (2) options on how medical malpractive would be handled (ligitation, arbitators, oversight boards, etc., (3) the amount of coverage (comprehensive with low deductables, umbrella with Medical Savings Accounts, umbrella catastrophic coverage only, etc.), and (4) coverage exclusions (cosmetic surgery, contraceptives, abortive services, certain transplants, etc.).
  2. Permit any Kansas Resident to buy into State Employee Health Plans.
  3. Promote Diversity in Healthcare Oversight - Kansas should permit multiple health care oversight organizations to monitor and guide health care. This should allow for faith-based assocations as well as secular ones. This would medical organizations that want to offer a particular flavor of health care to be assocated with and monitored by oversight organizations that share their moral views.
  4. Establish Heavy Penalties for Healthcare Fraud - There should be heavy penalities for fraud that include personal liability for fraud committed even on behalf of a business. In general, anyone caught defrauding the Kansas government should be required to pay Kansas at least 10 times the amount of fraud, serve prison time, and be watched carefully from there on. It would be beneficial if the same sort of penalities could apply to any fraud within the medical community.
  5. Cap Medical Ligitation Awards - Some litigation awards are way out of proportion to the damage done. Caps on awards should be established to better manage the cost of malpractive insurance. Medical personnel who regularly perform medicine poorly should be resisted in what they can do in the professions.

Fix Education in Kansas

Problem: - Public K-12 Education in Kansas discriminates against the individualness, the sex, and the religion of those being taught and exposes them to educational sexual abuse. For more discussion, See my general discussion on education.

Solutions: -

  1. Support Parential Choice - Parents should be more involved in choosing what their children are taught, where their children are taught, and how their children are taught. This should include allowing parents to choose alternatives such as private schools, adjacent schools (territorially), and home schooling with state funding or partial funding of these alternatives. One or more schools in each area such be designated as schools of last resort who must take any student who wants to go there and additional compensation provided to these schools.

    Note: I realize that immediate full funding for alternative schools in not fiscally feasible but can be ramped up and be based on family income.
  2. All Kansas schools must teach civis, ethics, and manners.
  3. Permit multiple teacher unions in a school district.
  4. Stop preferential treatment of the teaching of Hedonism. - No public school should teach exclusively hedonism. If religious alternatives are not permited, neither should be Hedonism. If religious alternatives are provided, parents must have the right to decide which alternative is taught to their children.
  5. Promote Skill-based Education - Student are not factory items and should not be treated like units produced in a factory. Each student should be recognized as an individual and evaluated by subject with an educational plan suited to the student.
  6. Require Teacher Profiles Provided to Parents - Each school should provide detailed teacher profiles to parents and give them to right to opt out of a given teacher.
  7. Home Schooled permited into public school extra-curricular activities - Home-Schooled students should be permitted into public school extra-curricular activities with only the fees charged its own students.
  8. Teach both Evolution and Intelligent Design in the Schools. - This should be science-based, so both Spontaneous Evolution and Bible Creationism should not be taught, while Microevolution, Macroevolution and Intelligent Design should be.
  9. Permit full income tax deduction of tuitions.

Other Issues

Corruption within the Kansas Government

Problem: - In the current Kansas Government, members of the government in the executive and judicial branches are deliberately obstructing enforcement of certain Kansas laws protecting organized criminal activity in the area of late term abortions. Kansas laws currently prohibit late term abortions except when absolutely necessary to save the life of the mother. Certain players in the abortion industry aided by supporters in the government routinely ignore the law. In addition, the parties involved invoke privacy supposedly to protect those involve but truly to conceal their crimes. Individuals within the government are not protected from retribution when they report possible corruption and may be gagged from reporting them by the corrupt courts. It is made worse by a mainstream media that helps cover up the corruption.

Considering that if a person is corrupt in one area they tend to be open to corruption in other areas, other areas with Kansas government may be corrupt as well.

Note: This issue is about respecting and enforcing Kansas Laws and not about abortion.

Solutions: -

  1. Establish Laws to deal with Corruption - Laws need to be established to permit special investigations that can not be obstructed by corrupt government officals and judges to check out the corruption and bring the facts to public attention. Those guilty of corruption should be removed for office, fined, imprisioned, and prohibited from further office holding or employment by the Kansas government. Laws need to protect corruption whistle-blowers and restrict gag orders against them.
  2. Create Laws giving investigations access to all applicable records - Legimate investigation should have a right to any record concerning the crimes possibly committed and being investigated. While the investigators should protect the privacy of the non-criminals involved, criminal actions should never be protected by privacy laws.

Establish a Sound Energy & Environmental Policy

Problem: - The State of Kansas lacks a coherent policy on energy and the environment.

Solutions: -

  1. Develop a coherent Energy and Environmental Policy. - Kansas needs a coherent Energy and Environmental policy that is published and available for energy producers and manufacturors. This policy should give priority to clean energy production including wind power, solar power, geothermal power, hydroelectric power, and nuclear power. It should encourage migration from dirty and non-renewable sources such as coal and fossil fuels. This policy should encourage reduction in the levels of all forms of pollution.
  2. Promote Alternative Clean Fuel Incentives - This could be tax breaks to encourage research and development of clean fuels and vehicles that use clean energy. This could also be encouragement to waste management providers to produce biodiesel from waste products they collect and contracts from the state to purchase this biodiesel fuel.
  3. Permit Light-Weight Clean Energy Vehicles - Kansas Law should be modified to permit light-weight clean energy vehicles to use most Kansas roads (expressways only if they can maintain the speed).
  4. Promote Clean Renewable Energy for Farming.
  5. This may include a Oil Extraction Tax.
  6. This may include a Pollution Tax.

Require Open Government Accounting

Problem: - The true cost of providing government services is concealed in totals that combine to costs of services provided with the cost of adminstration them.

Solutions: -

  1. Require Separate Reporting of Adminstration Costs - The government should be required to separate the costs of services provided from the cost of adminstrating the service.

Encourage Quality Low-Cost Housing

Problem: - The public media encourages large residental houses with lots of property and outdoing your neighbors. This however is not best for most people. People end up buying homes that they cannot truly afford and do not truly need.

Solutions: -

  1. Provide Tax Incentives for Alternative Low-Cost Housing - Kansas needs to encourage developers to develop housing designed for functionally, inexpensiveness, and flexibility for residents to reside in. There are many good alternatives that are pretty much today ignored by developers including Extended family residences, apartment communities with communal eating and recreational areas, faith-based communities, etc.
  2. Recognize the Religious Rights of Religion-based Housing.

Promote Competition

Problem: - Many monopolies exist in Kansas that do not truly seek the best interests of the individual Kansan. These monopolies include utilities, labor unions, public school systems, and medical regulators.

Solutions: -

  1. Prohibit Exclusive State Contracts - Kansas should not enter exclusive contracts with any organization, including labor unions, utilities, and service providers.
  2. Encourage Competition - Kansas should encourage organizations within Kansas to have available to them multiple providers of each service and good including labor.
  3. Penalize Monopolistic Competition Thwarting - Kansas should heavily penalize those who use monopolistic practices to eliminate competition and restrict mergers among near monopolies.
  4. Promote competition in Education.

Promote Political Fairness

Problem: - The current two-party duopoly inhibits politic debate, political reform, and true citizen involvement. It disenfranchises many Kansans, encourages candidates for hiding some of those positions from the voters, makes third parties very difficult to elect, and discourages third party candidates. Money often decides election by confusing voters with misleading ads, not helped by a biased media advocating their view point as the truth rather than as their opinion.

Solutions: -

  1. Modify Kansas Law to Support Political Competition - The current duopoly existing for political parties and supported by the laws of Kansas should be replaced to allow multiple political parties and membership of individuals with multiple political parties. A candidate may be chosen to represent more than one political party. Political Parties should be able to define membership requirements both of member and candidates.
  2. Tax Political Contributions.
  3. Tax Gifts to Government Employees and Officals.
  4. Help fund Elections - Some of the money raised through the above taxes should be available to help promote fair elections and give all candidates some ability to get their messages and views out to the public.

Tax Reform

Problem: - Kansas Taxes need some reforms to promote a fair government for all Kansans.

Solutions: -

  1. Establish a Fairer Sales Tax - Sales taxes should be reduced on groceries and basic clothing while increased on entertainment and travel. This would be fairer to the poor.
  2. Establish an Oil Extraction Tax - Establish a Tax on extracting oil from the ground within Kansas. This tax should be based on a percentage (such as 40%) between 20% over the cost of extraction and current world market price when extracted. Huge profits are made on this oil as its profitability soars as oil price soar without a rise in cost to extract.
  3. Pollution Tax - Establish a Tax on Pollution to encourage pollution producers to reduce that amount of pollution they generate. Pollution taxes can be applied to manufactors, energy producers, and vehicle fuels (that generate pollution when consumed).
  4. Allow full deduction of K-12 education out-of-pocket costs from income prior to income taxes being assessed. - This is a step towards fairness in education. Possibly even make this or some of it a tax refundable credit for low income families to give them more choice in education.
  5. Tax on Taking a Human Life - All Human life is precious and to discourage the deliberate taking of a human life whether by murder or abortion, a tax on the taking of the life should be assessed. This tax should be at least $10,000 per life taken.
  6. Illegal Substance Sales Tax - The state of Kansas should apply a 100% sales tax to retail and non-retail sales of illegal substances with a penalty for non-payment 100x the amount of the tax.
  7. Tax Criminal Activities - All criminal activities should have a tax on them with the proceeds going to pay for the courts, law enforcement, and the prison system.
  8. Tax on Political Contributions - All Political contributions should be taxed. For contributions from Kansans this should be a gradual tax starting at 10% for the 1st $1000, 20% the next, 30% the next, 40% the next, 50% the next, 60% the next, 70% the next, 80% the next, 90% the next, 100%, the next with 1000% for all contributions above $10,000. For non Kansan individuals and all organizations this tax should be 1000%. This tax is assessed on what the candidate recieves and is paid by the giver.
  9. Tax on Gifts to Government Employees and Officals - A tax of 1000% should be applied to gifts to government employees and officals form an organization.
  10. Kansas Assistance Repayment Tax - a Kansas version of the Government Assistance Repayment Tax would be useful and should be linked to a federal one once established.

Other Suggestions

  1. Non-Luxious Prisons - Prisons should be provided basic services with additional services such as cable television purchasable by the prisoners.
  2. Corporate Officals who defraud should be personally liable. - An Offical of a corporation should be personally liable if they defraud people, organizations, or governments in their fullfilment of their role in the corporation.
  3. Smoke-Free Public Buildings & Entrances - Smoking should be heavily restricted to provide a safe breathing environment for non-smokers. All entrances to public and health care facilities should be smoke-free with at least a 50 foot buffer zone outside with no smoking allowed. Smoking near children should be treated as child abuse.
  4. Kansas should not fund sports or arts.
  5. Consistant Healthcare Regulation - All Facilities that provide medical care should be required to meet the same standards for the level of care they provide. Abortion facilities should not be exempted from a ny statewide medical requirements.
  6. Limit Travel by Kansas Officials - There currently is too much travel by Kansas Officials paid for by the state of Kansas, but not of significant benefit to the state. Laws should regulate the quantity and types of travel permitted.

© 2008 by Thomas A. Stobie, SFO - permission to copy for personal use is granted.

See my general discussion on political issues and strategy.

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Last modified on 4 Jun 2008.