archives

If you truly want March Madness to pour dollars into Kansas City, root for Iowa State.

The Cyclones will bring a hefty bunch of fans to their Thursday game against Texas A&M in the Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament. The Aggies, based on the past, won't.

So if Iowa State wins on Thursday, it sticks around to play Kansas State on Friday.

That means another day for Cyclones fans to eat, drink and sleep in Kansas City. They will be spending money and helping local taxpayers finance the bonds used to build the Power & Light District, while also paying for the new Sprint Center with their hotel bills.

Supporters of Barack Obama seem almost giddy about their chances of winning Kansas in the 2008 presidential contest this November.

History shows they shouldn't be.

Sure, one recent poll showed Obama close to GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain. And boosters point out Obama's Kansas ties, including the facts that his grandparents lived in El Dorado and his mother was born at Ft. Leavenworth.

Now a few other facts:

The Republican presidential candidate has won the Kansas electoral votes in every single modern-day election.

That stretches from Richard Nixon in 1968 and '72 through Gerald Ford in 1976 through Ronald Reagan in 1980 and '84 through George Bush I in 1988 and '92 through Bob Dole in 1996 through George Bush II in 2000 and 2004.

You can't blame Kansas City-based H&R Block executives if they are enjoying seeing New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer twist in the wind.

Spitzer's reckless involvement with a group of high-priced prostitutes will kill his political career.

But his reputation was far less blemished back in 2006, when Spitzer was New York's attorney general. He went into pit-bull mode and filed lawsuits against H&R Block.

Spitzer accused Block of failing to disclose fees charged to clients who had opened the company's Express IRA retirement accounts.

Spitzer's lawsuit claimed Block had "abused its access to customers who trust it to do their taxes -- for many the most important financial transaction of the year."

Here we are again, wondering why a guy like Eliot Spitzer (aka Mr. Clean) risked everything, if federal charges are accurate, by becoming Client 9 in a high-priced prostitution gambit.

Below are several theories I've heard since yesterday. Cast your vote or propose your own. But remember, this is a newspaper blog. We need to keep it clean.

Theory One: He thought he was too smart to get caught.

Theory Two: He thought even if he got caught his position would insulate him.

Theory Three: He thrived on the risks.

While it remains to be seen whether New York Governor Eliot Spitzer will be charged with a crime, it's clear from his statement yesterday that the man who has ruined more than one career put his own at enormous risk with involvement in a prostitution ring.

Why did he do it? Go to Open Slate to vote on some theories or propose your own.

Moody's has downgraded Kansas City in the bond markets, lowering its outlook from "stable" to "negative."

Why? Mostly because the city under former Mayor Kay Barnes took on a lot of variable rate debt, especially hundreds of millions with no dedicated tax to pay it off.

Can you say "Power & Light District?"

More bad news: All of KC's suburbs have relied for years on Kansas City's stable bond rating. Take a look, for example, at the recent sales by Lenexa and Raymore of their cities' bonds.

In both cases, the bonds benefited from being sold within the KC market, where the region's biggest city has long had a "stable" rating.

Why do some public officials take potentially career-ending risks in their private lives? Add your comment here.

wife is smarter than I am, is far more educated, works harder and longer (at least twice as much) than I do, and deals with much more serious and important issues. She helps mold the future of our society, dealing with combative parents and disruptive children, often filling in doing the parents' job when the parents can't or won't do it themselves. And for all this, she gets paid barely half what I do, gets little to no respect for doing it, and ends up spending her own money just to have the supplies to do her job.

Well, if we were willing to move to New York, some of that could change -- the pay part anyway. A new charter school for grades five through eight is opening up and the salaries for teachers will be $125,000 per year, plus bonuses. That is two-and-a-half times the national average salary for teachers.

Why should there be a “do over” in Florida?

When the primary was held in Florida, many independents and Democrats, thinking Hillary had the nomination locked up, voted on the Republican side. Most voted for McCain but that’s neither here nor there. My point is this; if there is a re-vote then those who crossed over and voted in the Republican primary will get to vote again, this time in the Democrat primary. They essentially get two votes counted.

Re-votes should only happen when there is overwhelming evidence of voter fraud.

What are your thoughts?

Ross Balano Midwest