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By C.J. JANOVY

I can’t let this tax day pass without thanking the nice anti-war activists over at PeaceWorks Kansas City. A couple of weeks ago, they delivered a pizza to The Pitch offices – half a pizza, actually, meant to illustrate how the military gets more than half of the U.S. budget.

Along with the pie, and a pie chart, they gave us handouts showing the country’s astronomical defense spending – which wasn’t news to us, but it never hurts to stop and think about these things once in awhile, if you’re trying to be a good citizen. Among the food-for-thought items: The organization estimates that the U.S. defense budget made up nearly half of the total worldwide defense spending for 2004-2005, according to information from the Center for Defense Information in Washington, DC. If you added in an additional $25 billion appropriated to the Defense Department in 2005 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, CDI reports, “the total U.S. military spending would exceed the total defense spending by the rest of the world combined.”

Hoo-ah!

Apparently the PeaceWorks folks didn’t have updated numbers for ’06 and ’07, but that’s OK. If you really want to celebrate tax day, you can log onto their Web site and watch the cost of the Iraq war escalate in real time.

After staring at that for awhile, if your head hasn’t exploded, you can click on this link, which will send you to the National Priorities Project’s cost-of-war counter, where you can break down the cost of the Iraq war by city and state. I’d give you the totals for Kansas City, but if you’re reading this just a few minutes after I wrote it, they’re already old.

By C.J. JANOVY

Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver’s certainty that Barack Obama will win the Democratic nomination and the presidency in November made Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night (and maybe the other news shows too, but I only watched MSNBC).

Also exposed: Cleaver’s dissing of Obama’s speechifying, saying that in the black church, Obama’s rhetorical skills would be considered “mediocre.”

Cleaver sounding a lot like Geraldine Ferraro: “I think for many white Americans, they are looking at Barack Obama and saying, ‘This is our chance to demonstrate that we have been able to get this boogeyman called race behind us, and so they’re going to vote for him, whether he has credentials or not, whether he has any experience, I think all that’s out the window.”

But Olbermann missed what I thought was Cleaver’s most effed-up comment in his March 30 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which came just after his Ferraro-style statement:

“It’s this country’s opportunity to say, ‘We’ve solved the [racism] problem, it’s all over. And frankly that is causing many African Americans to tremble, because after November -- and if I had to make a prediction right now I’d say Barack Obama’s going to be the next president – after November, any redress on racial issues will be met with rejection, because we’ve already demonstrated that we’re not a racist nation.”

So, what, I’m not supposed to vote for Obama so that African Americans can still legitimately claim that the country is racist? C’mon, Rev. I think enough of us are smarter than that, and we understand that electing a black president won’t end racism in the U.S.

But hey, what do I know. I’m just a white voter.

For another opinion, I’m liking what former state Rep. Lloyd Daniel – also a poet and activist -- has to say about Cleaver’s support of Sen. Hillary Clinton. This post on Daniel’s Web site starts like this:

“Congressman Emanuel Cleaver is standing on the wrong side of history. It was during the mid-to-late 1950s and early ’60s, at the height of the civil rights movement, before the rise of the Black power movement, many older and once radical Negro leaders failed to support and even, in some cases, lobbied against a number of the young, dynamic and up and coming leaders including people like John Lewis, Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael), Bernice Johnson Reagon and James Foreman, who were all leading members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). They even bad-mouthed a then young preacher by the name of King.”

And it just gets better from there:

“Cleaver, despite the Clinton campaign’s, cynical and misleading statements, lies and race baiting, “throw a rock and hide your hand” attacks, continues to serve as a mouthpiece for them.”

By C.J. JANOVY

After yesterday’s events at the Big 12 Women's basketball tournament, I have one thing to say to the Kansas State team: Quit yer cryin’! Oh, sure, it was agony to watch that game-winning ball circle the rim a couple of times before falling out, but it was even more agonizing to see girls acting like… girls after losing to Iowa State. If I have to watch athletes cry after tough losses, I’d much rather it be dudes.

Here’s what made me weep: Watching the University of Kansas women, who started their game against Oklahoma State with skill and grace, disintegrate after 10 short minutes. Last night’s game was so hard to watch that I began to amuse myself by wondering how hard it must be for the OSU staff to dress in orange and black all the time, as if every night was Halloween back in Stillwater. Or how their coach, Kurt Budke, bore an uncanny resemblance to Ruben Kincaid.

I also enjoyed a pack of rowdy Colorado fans. Having no real team to cheer for since the Buffalo gals got knocked out in the first game, they’d adopted OSU – and behaved mercilessly toward KU player LaChelda Jacobs, who wears number “00.” They yelled things like, “That’s the worst number in the world!” and “How could you choose double zeros?” They also had a repertoire of well-rehearsed nonsense cheers (one had something to do with cheeseburgers) that were fun, if confounding.

The best part of the night, though, was the OSU band. With half the tubas of the Kansas band – hell, let’s just say half the brass – they kicked the Jayhawks’ ass. Most impressive was their cool, cool drummer. That’s one of those crazy Colorado fans dancing in the aisle.

By C.J. JANOVY

Homegirls carried the day yesterday, the first day of the Big 12 Women’s Basketball Championship at Municipal Auditorium. Yeah, Mizzou pulled of a big upset win over Oklahoma. But the homegirls who were clearly the most hardcore were the folks from Ames. The Cyclones played the first game yesterday, but at 10 p.m., fans dressed in red and yellow still filled out half of three sections behind the north goal for the Kansas-Nebraska game -- apparently just for the hell of it.

Oh, sure, most of the attention is on the sold-out men’s tourney at the Sprint Center. But the women’s action has its own unique charms – especially for anyone who enjoys seeing tall, tough gals show their stuff. I missed the Mizzou game early in the day (something about having to send a newspaper to the printer yesterday), but the KU women earned my respect last night. It was a sloppy, physical game, and it seemed as if players spent as much time crashing to the floor as they did driving to the basket in the first 10 minutes. Nebraska couldn’t seem to sink anything – by the end of the night, a pack of middle-aged Husker fans behind me were wailing that it was as if the team had never played a game before.

Other observations from the tourney’s first day:

• Municipal Auditorium might have been recently redone, and its Art Deco architecture is charming, but did they have to repaint the concourse walls in that same pinkish color left over from, I don’t know, 1950? It’s the color of Silly Putty, the shade of a flesh-colored crayon – a color that, no matter how new it is, can only be described as “Dinge.” And I don’t know about the men’s bathrooms, but it’s weird in the women’s, where stalls have cool marble dividers that only go up so high – I’m 5-foot-10, and the dividers only come up to my shoulders. I’m no basketball player, but if there were one standing in the next stall, we could have had a face-to-face conversation while zipping up. Couldn’t they have fixed that in the renovations?

• At one point, hyping all the fan activities just four blocks away, the announcer had trouble spitting out “the Sprint Center,” calling it instead the “Spring” Center.

• The most annoying – and, therefore, best – pep band was from the University of Texas, where the fight song seems to be a mashup of “In Heaven There Is No Beer” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” It’s been awhile since I’ve heard that song, but it’ll be stuck in my head for the next few months.

• Best pom-pom squad: Texas Tech, which had the tightest abs, tightest smiles, tightest black pants – and tightest routines. These four gals, with their glittery red-and-black poms, moved like Stepford-hot girlfriends on speed. But the best cheerleader outfits were definitely Nebraska’s: along with the requisite short red skirts, the girls wore red tanks with retro-’08s on the front, and – this was the best – knee-high tube socks with two white stripes.

• That didn’t help their team win last night, though. And afterwards, despite the sandwich board outside Municipal advertising the fan-fest four blocks away, 13th Street was so empty and quiet that it wouldn’t have been surprising to see a tumbleweed blow through.

By C.J. JANOVY

Oh, Kathleen. As such a widely considered “rising star” in the Democratic Party, couldn’t you have given a more exciting response to George Bush’s State of the Union address?

You had such a great dig, there at the beginning, for media hacks like me who were watching you oh-so-closely:

“Right now, tonight, as political pundits discuss the President's speech, chances are, they'll obsess over the reactions of members of Congress. ‘How many times was the President interrupted by applause? Did Republicans stand? Did Democrats sit?’ And the rest of us will roll our eyes and think, ‘What in the world does any of that have to do with me?’"

Sure, that was a great line separating you from the Washington establishment and its foamy press core, but did you have to deliver it like you had a corncob stuck somewhere? Talk about stiff!

You know what? I watched your speech with a dozen people at a coffee shop in Quindaro, in the poorest neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. The man sitting next to me made note of how many times the president was interrupted by applause and how many times the Republicans stood and the Democrats stood. He wondered how you’d teach a civics class these days and explain to school kids how a president could be giving the most important speech of the year and half the room would snub him. What in the world does any of that have to do with him, you ask? He was disgusted by all the lies that had spewed out of George W. Bush’s mouth (rising test scores thanks to No Child Left Behind? “He ain’t been to Missouri,” my fellow SOTU watcher snorted).

And that thing you said, Gov. Sebelius, about Greensburg rebuilding green after a tornado wiped it out?

You talked up your environmental record, saying, “Greensburg is not alone. You and I stand ready to protect our environment for future generations and stay economically competitive. Mayors have committed their cities to going green; governors have joined together, leading efforts for energy security and independence; and the majority in Congress is ready to tackle the challenge of reducing global warming and creating a new energy future for America. So we ask you, Mr. President, will you join us? It's time to get to work.”

You weren’t exactly leading environmental efforts back when The Pitch published this story about those coal plants in western Kansas, governor. We’re glad your administration at least came around to the 21st century on that one.

Anyway, guv, you may be the most stylish and attractive governor in the country right now, but you gave the most boring speech ever. At least pull that cob out, will you?

By C.J. JANOVY

Over at Prime Buzz yesterday and in the Star’s print version today, there’s a little item about Mayor Mark Funkhouser’s suggestion that a Wednesday-night town hall audience consider, just think about, the idea of waiving the requirement that police recruits be felony-free. Felonies and drug convictions for things people did when they were young and stupid, Funkhouser said, shouldn’t prevent people who’ve turned their lives around from serving on the police force. At the meeting, Funkhouser made it clear that he wasn’t actually proposing this, but just asking people to think about it.

The whole thing came up during a discussion of the KCPD’s alarmingly low percentage of minority officers. But in the Star’s eagerness to grab the most sensational thing out of that otherwise mostly wonky meeting (and hey, over here at The Pitch, we know sensationalism when we see it), DeAnn Smith has so far failed to report the most shocking thing anyone said about minority recruitment.

According to 3rd District City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks, who was also at the meeting, police officials say that too many applicants haven’t been able to pass the written exam. She let the audience know that there was a test-prep session on Saturday in advance of next week’s entrance exam. “Individuals can go on the force with only a GED,” she said. “Beat officers can make up to $70,000 a year and the department will pay for them to go to college regardless of their major.”

Too many people who want to be cops can’t pass the written test? That sounds like a problem with the Kansas City, Missouri, School District more than anything else. Let’s talk about that, instead of the mayor’s random unofficial thoughts on felonies.

By C.J. JANOVY

More evidence that the chipper airheads in the Star’s FYI department don’t read their own paper, or perhaps any newspaper: Monica Watrous’ column today expressing surprise that there’s a branch of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City (admitting that she didn’t even know what the Fed was). But a quick database search indicates that the phrase “Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City” showed up 85 times in the Star over the previous year; the name of Fed President Tom Hoenig was mentioned 24 times just in the past year. (He’s been president of the local Fed for 17 years.) And just so you know, Monica, the Fed’s been in downtown Kansas City since 19-frickin’-14. That’s what we love about FYI. They’re so informed.

By C.J. JANOVY

Here’s some New Year’s reading for anyone who really cares about Kansas City: Please Underestimate Me — The Blood, Guts, and Soul of Richard G. Tripp.

Probably best-known to churchgoers and synagogue attendees who’ve heard his story and KFKF 94.1 FM listeners who’ve donated to radio-thons in support of his efforts, Tripp is a formerly homeless cab driver who organizes massive potluck dinners and clothing giveaways a couple of times a year. (His next event, Spring Break for the Homeless, is scheduled for April 26 at the Levitt Warehouse at 21st and Central.) Full disclosure: Tripp’s an old friend of mine; I wrote a Pitch story about him in the early ’90s — so long ago, I barely remember what it was about, other than that it exposed some less-than-brotherly behavior at some area homeless shelters. (Tripp recaps the episode in a short chapter in his book.) And I’ve kept up with him over the years.

Once, when Tripp was driving his cab, he picked up a fare who turned out to be Mark Victor Hansen of the Chicken Soup for the Soul line of inspirational books. Moved by Tripp’s story of going from alcoholism to homelessness to forming an organization called Care of Poor People Inc. (COPP), Hansen wrote about Tripp in one of his Chicken Soup books. Soon Tripp was hooked up with Hansen’s confab of motivational speakers and authors. If you’re into that kind of thing, you’ll appreciate it in Please Underestimate Me; conversely, if the Chicken Soup shtick makes you want to gag (I'm in that camp), it's easy to forgive here because Tripp doesn't preach it too hard. His writing style is salt-of-the-earth conversational. His stories about life on Kansas City’s edges are hard-earned, and he tells them like the barroom regaler he once must have been.

At times, Tripp lays it on a little thick, but he’s earned that right as far as I’m concerned. Lots of people talk about writing a book someday, but few people actually do it — especially ninth-grade dropouts.

If you’ve seen Tripp at a metro church or heard him on the radio, do him a favor and buy a copy of his book. He promises it will bankroll more efforts on behalf of Kansas City’s poor people. He knows he’s not solving any big, systemic problems. But I’ve seen the guy in action, and he’s doing more than most of us.

By C.J. JANOVY

Earlier this week came news that Overland Park’s director of planning, a guy named Roger Peterson, is retiring after nearly 30 years. Normally the departure of a bureaucrat isn’t especially noteworthy, but Peterson’s exit deserves a bit more attention. After all, he helped map out three decades of what most Johnson Countians would call fantastic growth – but a few of us would call disturbingly unchecked sprawl.

When I called him up this week, Peterson told me that one of the things he’s most proud of was working with three cities – Overland Park, Olathe and Leawood – on an innovative approach to access roads around 135th Street, which allowed for more development of yet another thoroughfare farther south of existing strip-mall streets. (OK, Peterson didn’t put it exactly that way. He’s real proud of his unique approach to access roads.)

The OP’s next big challenge, he said, will be “balancing the needs for development in the south with redevelopment and revitalization in the north.” As sprawl – he calls it development – continues now farther south of 151st Street, he says, “at the same time our northern areas are becoming a little tired. If you haven’t been down Metcalf in 15 years you’ll notice it’s kind of tired, with payday loans, used car lots, car title loan companies, pawn shops.”

Seems like it’s harder to interest people in reviving shabby old parts of town when it’s cheap to chew up more farmland ever farther south for clean, new homes and strip malls. But Peterson said he’s encouraged by young people investing in older ranches and Cape Cod homes in older suburbs like Mission, Prairie Village and Merriam.

Early JoCo settlers, caught here on Metcalf, didn't know the sprawl that was coming. That's Metcalf today, below.

Finally I just asked him, point blank, what he thought about sprawl.

“That depends on the person. In my view, Overland Park is not sprawl as compared to the exurban development in outer parts of county, where you have one house on five acres -- now that’s sprawl. So I don’t see the development that occurs in Overland Park or most Johnson County communities as sprawl. I see it as a reasonable approach to accommodating development that the market wants to occur.”

Is anyone talking about sprawl as a problem?

“It’s not on anybody’s radar screen. I don’t know. I don’t know if we should or not. I don’t think it can happen until somebody gets enough people together to try to make it happen.” The metro’s spreading north, south, east and west, he noted. “I don’t think any one city is going to step forward and do it [question sprawl] on its own. It would take a huge political sea change in order to have a place like Overland Park or Leawood or Olathe say, ‘We’re going to put this line around the city and we’re not going to get any bigger.”

Would Peterson say it’s time to start thinking about it?

“I’m not the one to ask.”

Seemed to me he was the perfect one to ask, but Peterson was having none of it. “I just don’t want to get into that. I’m calling it a career. I’ve done everything I can do.”

He’ll be turning his stained-glass hobby into a business and working in his vegetable garden, while the metro just keeps paving more prairies.

By C.J. JANOVY

Saturday night’s big football game at Arrowhead was exciting for all of Kansas City, sure. But I have only one thing to say about the experience of watching it at home. The only thing I really remember about the night is this Aflac commercial that perversely bastardizes the classic 1964 stop-motion animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer television special. I’m old enough to have witnessed all sorts of commercial degradation of once-great pop-culture artifacts, and I’m cynical enough not to be surprised when it happens. But this one caught me off guard. Apparently this commercial isn’t new, but I’d never seen it before. Now, Christmas will never be the same. Fuck you, Aflac.

Yesterday, The New York Times ran a front-page story reported from Fort Leavenworth, which writer Elisabeth Bumiller calls “the intellectual center of the United States Army.” There, on a campus officially known as the Combined Arms Center, which includes the midcareer officers’ Command and General Staff College, the elite School of Advanced Military Studies and the Center for Army Lessons Learned, Bumiller describes elite officers “deep in debate… over who bore more responsibility for mistakes in Iraq – the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, or the generals who acquiesced to him.”

Sprint advertised Garth Brooks' November concert as "THE ELECTRIFYING RETURN OF THE MOST POTENT, EXPLOSIVE FORCE IN AMERICAN MUSIC HISTORY!"

The most potent, explosive force in American music? Such eruptions of hyperbole might prophylactically be reserved for artists who truly had a seminal influence on the way American music sounds, like James Brown or Elvis. But over the weekend, Garth proved nothing if not potent and explosive.

Tonight’s installment of KCPT Channel 19’s Week in Review involves yours truly, along with my media colleagues Micheal Mahoney from KMBC Channel 9, Dave Helling from the Star and Jim Davis from the Business Journal. Host Nick Haines had a lot for us to talk about, and we blew through quick punditry on the Sprint Center ticket madness (i.e., Kansas City discovers that big-name concerts sell out fast and are very, very expensive); various discomforts related to parks board and Minuteman member Frances Semler; Matt Blunt’s craven political pandering – uh, excuse me, big-hearted effort – to restore health coverage to poor people (which he took away a couple of years ago); and the possibility of casinos around the Kansas Speedway. The show airs at 7:30 tonight and again at 11 a.m. on Sunday, September 30.

The discussion was moving so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to say this about the Sprint Center ticket craziness. It’s an extremely painful point to make, but here it is: Hearne Christopher Jr. is doing the Star’s best reporting on the issue so far. (My fingers exploded as soon as I wrote that, so now I’m typing with my chin.)

As we enter a week of relative calm – so far – regarding controversial KCMO parks board appointee Frances Semler, I’m using the quiet time to try to sort out all of the various race-related arguments that coursed through The Kansas City Star at the end of last week.

Last Friday’s Star was an amazing historical document.

Regardless of whatever important news might be in this morning's Kansas City Star, the only thing I remember after reading it front-to-back is FYI columnist Jeneé Osterheldt complaining about her mosquito bites and lamenting her inability to operate a tube of Benadryl. I shit you not. -- C.J. Janovy