Forum for Wichita mayor, council candidates to be held Feb. 10

http://www.kansas.com/2011/02/03/1704586/forum-for-wichita-mayor-council.html

America Might Be a More Gilded Cage than Egypt … But It Still Looks Like a Cage

This is not generally that widely known or understood, this article is a great compendium of info on our ten-year-long national emergency and the implications of this annually renewed declaration.

George Washington:

“The United States has been in a declared state of emergency from September 2001, to the present. Specifically, on September 11, 2001, the government declared a state of emergency. That declared state of emergency was formally put in writing on 9/14/2001″:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/02/us-might-be-much-more-gilded-cage-than.html

Education/Degrees:

Escaped the debt-trap of college with 77 credit hours. After spending a year studying the Great Books of Western Civilization at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM, returned to KS to study Linguistics, Psychology, Literature and a bit of Music at WSU. I was the person who asked too many difficult questions and spent more time in Ablah Library than in class, doing research to get them answered.

Where are the Prosecutions?

Bill Black on Mortgage Crisis Fraud (the new F-word):

Krugman: FO And STARVE, Peasant!

Denninger:

See, the CPI’s weighting is an average for “all urban” residents, formally called “CPI-U”, and the claim is made that about 40% of your expenses are housing, and 15% or thereabouts are food and transport, respectively.

This of course is an average. I, for example, pay dramatically less than that for my housing as a percentage of my income, because I own my home outright. I therefore pay property taxes, hazard insurance and utilities and maintenance (the latter, incidentally, is essentially missing as a sub-category on the CPI-U, and that’s a load of crap – ask anyone what the amortized per-year is on a roof, or a water heater, or a furnace or AC unit. They claim “operations” is 0.8% of income – for a $50,000 income household they claim that the total spend on all such items, from lawn care to maintenance and upkeep of the residence, is less than $500 a year?)

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=178955

After Trillions Pumped into the Top of the Pyramid, Why is Unemployment Still So High?

via zerohedge.com, Tyler Durden:

Ron Paul has announced that the first Monetary Policy subcommittee meeting will focus on one of those two now forgotten Fed mandates, that of creating jobs. “I’m very pleased to hold our first subcommittee hearing in the new Congress on a topic that could not be more critical, namely unemployment. Despite enormous amounts of monetary and credit expansion by the Federal Reserve in recent years, the nation’s unemployment picture remains bleak. While many focus on the impact of fiscal policies on employment, the effect of monetary policy often goes unexamined. In my view we are now experiencing the bust that inevitably results from the misallocation of capital and human resources in a period of artificially cheap credit. It is important to understand the Federal Reserve’s role in creating today’s unemployment crisis, while also highlighting that high unemployment and low economic growth can persist even in the face of tremendous monetary inflation.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/ron-paul-ask-fed-why-after-trillions-free-money-unemployment-still-sky-high

Why do you want to be mayor?

To show how well it might be done. Besides, this is the city where I live. It’s where I’ve taken up teepee living. Where my child resides. Many of my friends. People I care about very much. I notice how this government robs them of their voice, their dignity, their riches and their trust. What was I supposed to do, just sit and take it? Not anymore, and neither should any of you.

How would you lead the city?

Hold on. The sheer presumption that this city needs any leading whatsoever is an insult to the capable people of Wichita. Like we’re children or something. As a matter of fact, we are an incredible people who are by-and-large quite fully grown, and who would like to be treated like the powerful human beings we are. Without even the dignity of proper defense by their mayor, the people are restless for a simple change in character and harmonic from their government.

What are your top three priorities for the city and how would you accomplish them?

Jobs for everyone who needs one, because in our society nearly every shred of human dignity has been enshrined in the almighty job. But we actually DO have a lot of work to do–to invent, build, restore, and cleanse the vital life-giving and saving parts, while deliberately deploying local solutions designed to help us weather the gathering financial and geopolitical storms. We need to look to durability and stability in our policies, to secure an economic environment that will expand our competitive advantages of businesses who have found a home here, as well as attract a diversity of other enterprises to this entrepreneurial center.

The city’s budget is at deficit this year, and more cuts probably will be needed. Where do you think the city can trim expenses, how much money do you think that could save and how do you think it would affect residents? Please be as specific as you can.

We must ensure that the City has all the equipment, personnel and budgets necessary for those essential services for which we have municipal governments. To do anything else crowds out the entrepreneurship for which this city is known, and discourages those companies who would enter our market if they did not have to compete against government-sponsored and funded competitors. We should reconsider the necessity of charging a $100 million dollar “preparedness center.” on our grandchildren’s credit cards.

Please explain how your experiences in your job and education qualify you for the job of mayor.

The qualifications to run for Mayor don’t say anything about job or education. Anyone who has held a position in a bureaucracy anywhere similar to government should probably be disqualified to serve on the Council. There’s a reason we have a professional management staff that actually runs our government. Although the Mayor may want to pretend he’s the City Manager or vice versa, those roles are perfectly and properly distinct from each other. I’m not running for City Manager. I’m running to be the peoples’ representative on the Council.

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http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tale-outright-fraud-ex-member-citis-corporate-derivatives-team

Fools and their Taxes

Wichita has seemed to like to fool around with taxes. The state is likely to give us the opportunity to try some new ones. I don’t like the tiny, targeted tax-messing-around-with districts and whatever. If we were going to be on the leading edge of all of that, the first application should have been for a core area tax to fill the arts funding cut at the state level. If every time I buy a drink or a candybar downtown, I know I’m tipping the musicians and the artists, I’d be exceptionally fine with that.

But that’s just dinking around at the fringes in the grander scheme. We could build Wichita into a tax oasis, such that businesses would be moving to Wichita rather than holding our Council hostage for payoff money.

How would this work? Well, we would need to do a bit of social de-engineering, and pretend for a moment that if we were to relax our tendency to want to pick winners and losers, let’s forget what someone is paying for, forget the valuation of the properties, forget the income level of the individual or business, or whether anyone should pay any particular tax or not.

Then take the entirety of everyone’s tax bill, moving out into the onion, including the federal. Determine what percentage of every monetary transaction would need to be collected to pay that bill? That would be the whole of the equation.

A derivative of this sort of model could be simple the monetary export tax, where every transaction is tax-free so long as the money stays here in Wichita. As soon as it hits the wire to some fatty on Wall Street, we’d hit that with a tax. We aren’t exporting money here, we’re exporting products and trying to hold on to what we’ve made.

I like that version in a way, because the tax burden for Wal-Mart, for example, doesn’t kick in until they ship it out. They would pay their employees tax-free, pay health care benefits tax-free, yet the profit export would see that burden.

Yes. It is a protectionist policy, but also an aggressive move to keep those great companies we have, lower the barrier to entry to entrepreneurs, foster a keeping it local attitude, while attracting other businesses to the American Tax Haven.

I had always really been working on this plan at a national level. The central banks of the world have considered something like this for themselves, but those systems by now are on their last legs.

The most straightforward case I’ve ever heard made about corporate taxes was by “Timothy” AntiTerrorist: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAntiTerrorist#p/u/1/kBt8xEWP7RU

Anyway. Corporate taxes have the opposite effect of what is advertised. This is true of nearly any incentives proffered like rat bait, to try to draw some company or corporation in to maybe help us pay our taxes and offer a couple jobs. It’s honestly a strange inducement the way it plays.

Corporations pit communities against one another to maximize the size of their heist. I don’t particularly hold any ill will to anyone involved, because that’s simply how things are done in this world, and if we do not have a response to that sort of arbitrage, then we’re going to be held hostage to some degree.

So instead of playing into that, we sweeten the deal with a city-wide local enterprise fund, designed to offset all higher-level taxation. This turns the current regime on its ear, because it allows home rule to interpose itself between it’s commerce, and the filthy hands of politicians in far-off places.

I would love to host the celebration of the presentation of the largest tax-offset checks, because that would highlight how effectively we can innovate and nullify where we don’t as a community agree with regards to how it would be imposed upon us.

Most people don’t realize that for every dollar KS gets from the federal government, we sent them $1.50. As it seems that the state government has been interested in abolishing the corporate income tax, I say we can do them one further, and extend that same break to individuals as well.

If anyone is interested in the numbers behind this, I’ll go on, and I know it could be years before such a plan could be phased in, but we owe it to ourselves and our community to do as much for ourselves as we can, and to stand against dictates from distant, compromised powers.

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One of the consequences of Meredith Whitney’s recent prognostications that we could be facing hundreds of billions worth of municipal defaults, is that after tens of billions of investor capital have been pulled out of municipal funds, with last week seen record $5.8 billion in redemptions alone, virtually the bulk of this money has been recycled in the form of inflows into equity instruments. As such, it is surprising why so much energy is wasted to attempt to debunk Whitney’s thesis: after all, she has done more to stimulate equity inflows than years of government/CNBC propaganda ever could. Yet one firm which certainly stands to lose should the ongoing muni redemption wave not moderate, is everybody’s favorite PIMCO, which is oh so good at bashing the Fed and Satan Bernanke with one half of its mouth, while with the other investing tens if not hundreds of billions in federally subsidized Build America Bonds, which for the past month have been in free fall. It is therefore not surprising that as Charlie Gasparino points out, Bill Gross “has launched an all-out war to discredit Whitney’s research in an attempt to restore confidence in the $3 trillion municipal-bond market.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/pimco-vs-whitney-muni-war-words-turns-ugly-equity-mutual-funds-welcome-wipeout-mub

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Hit me with your best shots now, because I only have about 30 hours until the submission deadline.

What is the worst decision the City Council made in 2010? Why do you feel it was the wrong move and what would you have done differently?

Likely their biggest mistake was to meet in the first place. After that, I would think that officially turning our fair city into a federal experiment in prison-grid quality tyranny by breaking ground on the Heartland Preparedness Center. Emergency preparedness is great, but taking a $100 Million bribe from FEMA and the Defense Department to spread their “fusion center” scourge into our city limits, to be paid for by our children and grandchildren, might take the cake.

What should be the city’s role in downtown revitalization? What would you do as mayor to further that view?

To keep the streets clean in the summer and clear in the winter. To respond to distress when called. To maintain and develop the community-owned infrastructure so important to the arts and commerce that the utopian, marketeering planners always trot out to decently cover tax-captured revenues being funneled into questionable projects with exorbitant price tags. Generally it is best to simply get out of the way.

Under what circumstances — including any specific criteria, such as cost-to-benefit or return on investment ratios — do you think industrial revenue bonds should be used in Wichita?

By lowering the cost-burden of government, all boats rise. Frighteningly simple. We are too often lured into expensive, pie-in-the-sky schemes under the promises of a few jobs. Corporations are sitting on a lot of cash right now, trying to navigate the economic turmoil, and government givaways to businesses in these times will only make the dream of cutting taxes for the rest of Wichita’s residents and businesses more distant.

Under what circumstances — including any specific criteria, such as cost-to-benefit or return on investment ratios — do you think tax increment financing districts should be used in Wichita?

Once every single property owner has the same option to finance improvements of their own properties the same way. I’d like a driveway and some landscaping, and some new, energy-efficient wondows, and some more insulation, and a more efficient furnace, and some new stain on my porch, and would love to commission a local artist for a statue or two. TIF’s all around, I say! Green Jobs, Less Blight!

Under what circumstances do you think community improvement districts should be used in Wichita? What do you think of the council’s decision requiring a business to post a sign indicating it is taking part in a CID but not revealing how much the extra sales tax is?

Never. How about turning Wichita into tax haven, instead? Forcible “reinvestment” (redististribution) is exactly backwards. Develop tax-free zones where you want to draw commerce into. This idea does the opposite. How about a downtown tax to fill gaps in new state arts funding? We need a lot more debate before we just sign off on these schemes.

Under what circumstances do you think community improvement districts should be used in Wichita? What do you think of the council’s decision requiring a business to post a sign indicating it is taking part in a CID but not revealing how much the extra sales tax is?

Why not turn the whole city into a CID, and use the proceeds purely to uniformly lower property taxes?. Ultimately it’s all robbing Peter to pay Paul, but turning taxing authority over to the private sector is a perversion we should not suffer. I could rob my penny jar to make my nickel bank heavier, but what has that accomplished? I’m all for re-inventing taxation, but CID’s are a hideous idea.

Should city government pursue further consolidation with county government? If so, how or in what areas?

Generally, I am for keeping power as close to its source, the People. I support decreasing the cost of government, but generally not if that means ceding our sovereignty to a more distant “consolidation.” What can be sold as greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness might sometimes really only be a new power grab, which should be resisted, rather than heralded.

What do you see as the city’s role in creating and retaining jobs in the area? What would you do as mayor to further that role?

Here’s my jobs plan: Make Wichita a sanctuary city for employers and entrepreneurs. Instead of feeding the diseases with giveaways to failing companies, invite the People to start new businesses, and allow current employers to flourish, with the starting advantage of having the lowest overhead with regards to employment. Let’s lower the cost of government, further honey in the pot.

Explain why you do or do not support the proposed trash hauling cooperative. What would have to change for you to support it — or, what do you think could improve it?

No! There are much better ideas than what is being proposed. We have to back off this whole idea in a hurry. Many of the reasons we are supposedly testing these waters can be well-served with some fresh ideas that end up better serving everyones interest, while increasing the opportunities to current and future haulers. We can do recycling, bulk-hauling, clean-ups and the like without setting up some new, coercive regime.

Do you support continuing to subsidize the Affordable Airfares campaign? Would you support a revenue guarantee for Southwest Airlines if requested?

In general, I am against government subsidies, but what may seem a small disadvantage ends up making all the difference when attempting to court large conventions, and to keep and attract corporate headquarters, as examples. There are few such investments that our City could make that can pack as much potential upside for all Wichitans than this program.

At least six homes in the Maple Shade subdivision in southeast Wichita are crumbling because of problems with their slab foundations. What more — if anything — do you think the city should do to protect consumers from these types of problems?

I think that the Office of Central Inspection has taken a great deal more heat than they deserved in this issue. If the building codes had been followed, these problems would not have arisen. OCI should pressure industry groups and their developers to police their own, and licences should be suspended or revoked on those firms who did not demonstrate their ability to build these homes in a workmanlike manner.

What do you think the city should do to be more transparent to taxpayers?

First of all, it should adhere to the Kansas Open Records Act and the Kansas Open Meetings act. They have openly flaunted their responsibility to follow these laws. Second of all, the City should overhaul the wichita.gov website to streamline access to the most telling documents, and to do away with old and proprietary media formats. Thirdly, I would encouraging the local press to be more investigative with City Hall, so casual observers may be better informed.

What do you believe city government’s role should be as it relates to helping the homeless and hungry?

Our respect for human life and simple dignity are more telling about our character as a city than any shiny new building, statue, or road ever will. We can shirk our responsibility as human beings by expecting government to cleanse our guilt, but one way or another we must support every effort to care for those in need. I hereby pledge 10% of my salary as Mayor to this end.

Name someone who is relatively famous, who you admire, and explain why you admire them.

R. Buckminster Fuller, a one-time Wichitan who dedicated his life to finding out just how much a difference in the world one person could make. His writings and “artifacts” are a treasure-trove of springboard ideas about “doing more with less” that attempt to lead us out of the cold night of scarcity and killing, towards a brighter tomorrow of abundance, stewardship and a durable future centered on supporting human life, rather than destroying it.

Have you ever been convicted of a crime? If so, what and when? Do you believe that affects your ability to lead?

Yes and No, it wouldn’t. Recently I got a speeding ticket traveling for Thanksgiving. I paid the ticket. I also have a misdemeanor conviction for an untidy lawn. A few years ago I was arrested for non-payment of a parking ticket (that I got for parking in front of my house). I paid the ticket. That was when I learned from the Wichita Police that I “lived in the ‘hood.’” I was offended by the remark.

The Main Reason I Have Forgone Political Fundraising and Political Endorsements and the Like

Here’s an example of why I won’t do fundraising or endorsements, and consider my non-participation in local government an asset of my candidacy. wichitaliberty.org is a good place to learn about the sort of elitism and insider-ism that clouds many expensive decisions our Council makes. It’s going to take a new guard to flush out these sorts of relationships, because apparently our local media outlets (besides the internet) doesn’t seem to want to dig around much.

A random starting place, some good comments, too.:

http://wichitaliberty.org/uncategorized/williams-king-minnesota-guys-connection-raises-concern/

Blowing Bubbles: Did the City’s Pension Plan Contribute to the Housing Bubble?

I researched this article about a year ago as part of my investigation of the City’s StopBlight program begun in 2006. My desire as Mayor would be to keep a larger portion of this investment safely at home. I would not normally have an opinion about such things, but the pensions seem to have turned some corner, and is now no longer 100% funded. That money is taxpayer dollars invested directly into the retirements of its employees. If nothing else, we should diversify the offerings available, so that at least those with retirement plans with the city may hedge Wall Street shenanigans with local investments.

http://grandmasterplan.com/gmp/Blowing_Bubbles.html

Now We’re Pressing Word.

No posting rules here.

This is Free Speech.

Critics are especially welcome.

Anonymity shall not be frowned upon.

Occupation:

Head Rigger/Flyman/Carpenter, IA Local 190; also specializing in theatrical installations in Wichita and surrounding areas for Theatrical Services, Inc., primarily counterweight and dimming systems. Occasional technical writing, web programming, motion picture and scenic carpentry work as it comes along.

Eagle Voters Guide

I’ll be posting a question at a time, so discussion may commence in a more structured manner.

I didn’t really want to be flooding facebook too badly so here’s and alternative I think we can take advantage of.

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Getting there. Want to change the colors.