KC Buzz Blog

Money! It's a hit

    Have you noticed that Prosecutor Mike Sanders is running around a lot with his hand stretched out asking folks to take out their checkbooks? It's no secret that Sanders has held several fund raisers over the past couple of weeks for his bid for county executive. Just this week he had a swell one at the Uptown kicked off by vanquished primary opponent Charles Wheeler.

  Why is Sanders needing money now considering his Republican challenger Bob Gough says he expects to spend less than $1,000? And most Repubican heavyweights are now backing Sanders, including Warren Erdman, who recently co-hosted an event for Sanders. Well that hard-fought primary win didn't come without a price.

   Sanders started September almost $41,000 in debt from the primary and he needs to get that paid off. After all, he's got a campaign war chest to replenish for future campaigns.

  Speaking of Erdman, we should know next week whether all the deal making going around lately with Democrats has secured him a seat on the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority.

Posted by DeAnn Smith

You've got to hide your love away...

   Florida GOP Rep. Mark Foley resigned from Congress on Friday, effective immediately, in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former teenage male page.

   "I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent," he said in a statement issued by his office.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Ain't talkin' bout art

    The law firm of Spencer Fane Britt & Browne threw a swell shin-dig last night at the Kemper Museum.

   And a hot topic of conversation overheard in multiple groups last night was a natural one in a place surrounded by modern art. That would be Katheryn Shields and her mural. Some defended the inclusion of the outgoing county executive's picture among those depicted. They said artists have hundreds of years of history of showcasing their benefactors.

   Others groused about Shields' enormous ego, the waste of tax dollars, a possible mayoral bid and the fact that the county for some time to come will be paying interest on the $100,000 fresco. The quality of the depiction of Shields was a hot topic with one developer quipping that Steven Spielberg and his staff at Dreamworks couldn't have made her look good.

   That prompted a swift reaction from two image-conscious ladies saying it's so sexist and unfair that elected officials who are women face criticism over their looks and men never do. But a third lady interjected that Mayor Kay Barnes would have never faced criticism if she had been included in such a project. That comment only fueled the debate.

   One thing was for sure. At least at this party on this night, Shields will prove to be a lightning rod for criticism and praise if she makes a mayoral run official.

Posted by DeAnn Smith

'Hot' tip

   The monthly tip sheet for September from "Hotline," a daily digest of political news, continues to rank the Missouri Senate race as the fifth most likely contest to switch sides. It ranks behind Pennsylvania, Montana Ohio and Rhode Island in that order. All are seats currently held by Republicans, like Missouri, where the Sen. Jim Talent-Claire McCaskill race remains a dead heat.   

   Hotline editor Chuck Todd writes, "While most of the major Senate battles feature candidates who are less and less liked by the voters every day, this is one race where both nominees are still well-liked."

   Rounding out "Hotline's" top 10 Senate races are New Jersey, Tennessee, Maryland, Virginia and Washington.

Posted by David Goldstein 

Kicks just keep getting harder to find

   The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce says, in an e-mail, that it has endorsed the $75 million Johnson county bond issue to build youth soccer fields.

Posted by Dave Helling

This weekend in The Star's Ed pages

Editorial topics

• Saturday: On the war in Iraq; and on Hooked on Books.
• Sunday: On Phill Kline; and on the ceiling adornments at the Jackson County Courthouse.
• Monday: On Japan; and on Hewlett-Packard.

Local columnists

• Saturday: Midwest Voices columnist Walter Winch on the dangers of apathy.
• Sunday: E. Thomas McClanahan on the November elections and the consequences for Iraq.
• Sunday: Rhonda Chriss Lokeman on TSA bans on airline travelers.

Friday's open thread

   Time for the Friday funnies and a possible open thread topic:

    If you've recently dreamed about sex with a stranger, flying or the dead coming back to life, chances are you're probably a liberal instead of a conservative.

    A dream researcher from John F. Kennedy University in California has discovered fundamental differences between the dream worlds of people on the ideological left and the ideological right.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski

Mideast open thread

   Comments about the Mideast and the Arab-Israeli conflict go here.

Doctor my eyes

   Claire McCaskill has criticized opponent Jim Talent for votes to cut the growith in spending for Medicaid, the joint federal-state program to provide health care for the poor.  A TV ad implies Talent's votes were related to a decision to "kick off" 90,000 people from Medicaid.

    And Thursday she called on Talent to support additional money for the health care program for some children in the state, called SCHIP.

   In 2004, as state auditor, McCaskill reported that up to 41 percent of all Medicaid recipients in the state -- 383,004 people -- had not had their eligibility checked in a year or more. 

   As of June 30, 2003, she wrote, "management decisions and weak internal controls have resulted in thousands of ineligible or potentially ineligible recipients continuing to receive services under Medicaid and other state medical assistance programs."

    She also said $1.3 million had been improperly paid to more than 2,500 children who were no longer children -- they were older than 19.

   A Democrat, Bob Holden, was governor at the time of the audit.

Posted by Dave Helling

Morning buzz

• The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.  The warning is described in “State of Denial,” which says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq. As late as November 2003, Bush is quoted as saying: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”
• Apparently, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is portrayed most unpleasantly in the Woodward book.
• Sen. Hillary Clinton takes a backhanded swipe at party chairman Howard Dean: "The RNC is pouring tens of millions of dollars into races and we're not matching that."
• New York Post columnist Maggie Haberman writes about George Soros' declaration at the Council on Foreign Relations that he'd like to get out of the business of politics and focus on policy instead.
• Here's The Washington Post on the history of leaking and its often close proximity to elections.

Posted by Keith Chrostowski