by Andrew Moss You can’t have a living wage without sufficient affordable housing, and you can’t afford decent housing without a living wage. These claims are being championed by the workers of one local, UNITE HERE Local 11, which represents more than 32,000 workers in hotels, restaurants, food service facilities, and concessions throughout Southern California and Arizona.
Glenn Brunkow, Pottawatomie County farmer and rancher It’s farm bill time again. The discussions are beginning to happen and starting to heat up. Over the past couple of months, the talks have switched from continuing on with a farm bill with similar policies as the 2018 version or options that are dramatically different. What will happen is really anyone’s guess, and that is both a challenge and an opportunity for Kansas Farm Bureau and agriculture in general.
Senate President Ty Masterson isn’t even subtle when he says that he intends to do away with the food sales tax so that the state can afford to cut income taxes for the highest wage earners. And now that bill has passed the Senate and will go to the House.
Dear Doctors: I am 69 years old and have two cups of coffee each morning. Once or twice a week, I wake up with a dull ache at the back of my head, toward the left side. It always goes away with my first cup of coffee. Is this caffeine withdrawal? My doctors have found no physical causes.
If two bills moving through the Kansas legislature become law, together they could destabilize public schools, prove disastrous for Kansas students and reduce the state general tax fund. As currently written, the bills would shift funding to private and home schools plus permit affluent parents to donate enough to an existing scholarship fund to write off the entire cost of private schooling.
Dear Doctors: One of my roommates went to the ER because of abdominal pain and nausea. It turned out to be appendicitis, and we all thought he would need to have surgery. But the doctors did something they called nonoperative management, and he got better. What is that? Is it safe?
The grand potentates in charge of the Kansas Legislature believe that lowering tax rates on the rich will transform our state. I have some bad news for them. You can fiddle with percentages all you want, but you can’t relocate Kansas to the Gulf Coast.
“Learning losses from COVID-19 could cost this generation of students close to $17 trillion in lifetime earnings,” according to a report from the World Bank on December 6, 2021. Senator Everett Dirksen long ago famously observed: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” But this is trillion, with a “t.”
As a kid I always looked forward to seeing the hedge apples first appearing toward the end of the summer, little tiny things that grew larger as autumn came on until they were as large as softballs. The male hedge trees didn’t have apples, but some of the female trees more than made up for it with a myriad of fruit. I remember my first try at tasting a hedge apple (or hedge ball or Osage orange). Once was enough—talk about bitter!
Dear Doctors: My sister and I have gotten serious about reaching a healthy weight. We are following the Mediterranean diet, and we’re walking 2 miles each day. We have both lost weight, but she’s losing faster. The only difference is she says she’s doing time-restricted eating. What is that?