Blogs

BY DAVID MARTIN

U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s hairline has made a dramatic comeback.

The 62-year-old politician and minister is rocking a full head of hair in television spots that encourage residents to build rain gardens. Robust growth covers a forehead that had started to become exposed when Cleaver was mayor of Kansas City in the 1990s.

The congressman, it seems, got his new hair in surgery, not a wig shop. Cleaver spokesman Danny Rotert says the congressman is not wearing a hairpiece. Asked if Cleaver had undergone hair transplantation, Rotert says: “He may have.”

By Justin Kendall

Some in the anti-abortion movement are not happy with Kansas U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback's endorsement of Steve Howe for Johnson County District Attorney.

In her World Net Daily column, Jill Stanek wonders if Brownback is betraying the anti-abortion movement and trading the Howe endorsement for support from moderate Republicans in his expected 2010 gubernatorial bid.

Anti-abortion types were so displeased with Brownback’s early support of Howe, Stanek writes, that they ambushed the senator at his D.C. office last week, asking him to rethink the endorsement. Brownback was noncommittal.

“Brownback needs to stand with [Phill] Kline,” Stanek writes, “who has been taking hits for five years straight like no other for simply trying to enforce Kansas abortion law.”

But how can Brownback support someone (Kline) who supposedly isn’t running? And why is

Kline and the family  

Last week, KMBC reported that anti-abortion groups are encouraging Kline to run for re-election. Kline hasn’t commented on a possible run since declaring last September that he would not seek re-election.

Kline will likely keep Johnson Countians in suspense until the filing deadline at noon on June 10. If he doesn't run, Kline could always continue his speaking career.

BY DAVID MARTIN

The developer of the Power & Light District is threatening to sue if city officials continue to support a bill that would allow Westport and other business districts to sponsor festivals where alcohol can be carried freely.

As I wrote in February, the Cordish Co. opposes a piece of state legislation authorizing the Westport Business League and other promotional associations to apply for special festival permits. These 48-hour permits would make legal for visitors to imbibe in common areas tote drinks from one establishment to the next.

The bill is a more restrictive version of a law passed on behalf of the Power & Light District before it opened. In an effort to protect a competitive advantage, Cordish has come out against the new proposal. Cordish spokesman Jon Stephens suggests that that the legislation would create “multiple ‘Bourbon Streets’ throughout the neighborhoods of Kansas City.” Stephens’ prepared statement continues: “Festival license districts belong in downtowns, not in neighborhoods.”

Cordish reps lobbied against the bill in Jefferson City and now they’ve brought out the lawyers. Earlier this month, Cordish attorney David Frantze wrote this four-page letter to City Attorney Galen Beaufort outlining the company’s objections and accusing the city of acting in bad faith. The city, meanwhile, says it is under no obligation to protect the uniqueness of Power & Light District’s liquor license.

It’s not often that developers clash so openly with city officials. Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the disagreement is the passage in Frantze’s letter stating Cordish’s belief that the current proposal is “motivated solely by individual political contributions to individual political Council persons.”

It’s a somewhat strange position to take, given Cordish officials’ willingness to throw around the campaign cash.

One of the main champions of the Power & Light District, former Mayor Kay Barnes, who is now running for Congress, has received $6,000 in donations from Cordish officials.

Frantze has also given to Barnes. Campaign-finance records indicate that he gave $4,600 to Barnes in 2007, with half of the money arriving on December 31, the same day the former mayor collected all the Cordish money.

Stephens declined to comment on the contributions. Frantze, a development lawyer who’s done a lot of business at City Hall, did not immediately respond to an e-mail inquiring about the possible “motivations” behind his giving to Barnes and other candidates.

By DAVID MARTIN

Mayor Mark Funkhouser and the Kansas City, Missouri, Council recently accepted previously approved pay raises. Funkhouser defended the move, saying he took a “substantial pay cut” to serve as mayor.

It’s not the first time that we’ve heard this. Gloria Squitiro, Funkhouser’s wife, complained last year about the first family making financial sacrifices.

But as critics have pointed out, Funkhouser actually takes home more city cabbage when his pension is added to what he makes as mayor. Funkhouser cleared $146,791 in salary and pension in 2007, bettering the $140,928 he made in his last year as city auditor. As mayor, he also receives $600 a month to keep his crappy Corolla on the road.

Confronted with these not insignificant details, the mayor has pointed to the teaching positions he once held. He told The Kansas City Star this week that he made as much as $5,000 per class per semester.

I contacted the universities where Funkhouser taught in an effort to get a grip on his teacher pay. Turns out, he’s not fooling.

Funkhouser made $15,000 in 2005 and $15,500 in 2006 lecturing at the University of Kansas, according to the office of Human Resources & Equal Opportunity. Funkhouser also taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he made $1,000 a month, according to a school spokeswoman.

So, Funk’s W-2 pile is a little less robust than it was before he started wearing orange ties all the time — although he’s hinting that he may try to teach while in office, what with all the free time he has after solving the city’s problems in a mere 12 months.

Still, the mayor and the light of his life would be smart to put socks in the talk of pay cuts. His preraise, prepension salary still exceeds the $40,920 median household income in the city he governs by $68,565.

Besides, once he leaves office, Funkhouser will not only have raised the price of his lecturing and speaking engagements; he will have created an entirely new pension stream. A substantial pay cut’s going to look like a substantial raise in 2011 or 2015.

By ERIC BARTON

Last night, NBC News aired this story about the recent gun violence in Chicago and offered up this quote from Police Superintendent Jody Weiss:

"Why in the world do we allow citizens to own assault rifles?"

Funny timing, Jody. Just yesterday, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed a bill into law that allows Kansas residents to buy those very weapons.

Sebelius' signature on Senate Bill 46 allows Kansans to buy silencers, sawed-off shotguns and fully automatic machine guns. Supporters of the bill argued that the 1933 Kansas ban on such guns kept collectors from these prized items. Sebelius, according to the Associated Press, didn't elaborate on her reasoning for singing the bill, and a spokeswoman didn't immediately return a call from The Pitch this morning.

The bill actually began its life as a proposal to increase the penalty for those who scrape serial numbers off guns, according to this article in the Fort Scott Tribune. Thanks to the miracle of the legislative amendment process, the law now allows firearms collectors access to things so often wanted in target practice, such as silencers and fully automatic AK-47s.

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 DAVID MARTIN

Voters in Kansas City, Missouri, chose a new mayor more than a year ago. Yet a billboard promoting a candidate who failed to make it out of the primary looms over midtown.

Nearly 14 months since her name appeared on a ballot, Janice Ellis continues to ask for support from a billboard near 36th and Main. Ellis, it turns out, is not forgetful or a sore loser. She says she's talked to the the billboard owner about papering over her face and her campaign slogan of "No excuses. Just results."

But, as Ellis tells it, Phil Goode, the president of Emerald House Convention Center, to which the billboard is attached, is unwilling to send someone up the ladder until a new client wants to rent the space.

“He said, ‘It’s my billboard, my property.'” Ellis says.

Before I spoke with Ellis, I called a phone number on a second billboard affixed to Emerald House. "Yeah, what's your point?" a man barked when the Ellis ad was described. A follow-up question met with a similar response: "Maybe you ought to call her [Ellis] and talk to her about it."

I assume the charmer was Goode, but the man on the phone refused to give his name, calling it "not important."

BY DAVID MARTIN

The mystery man behind the ad campaign against the bus tax chooses to remain in the shadows.

A lawyer named Philip N. Krause incorporated American Democracy Alliance, the outfit that reportedly gave $75,000 to the last-minute campaign against the sales tax that benefits the bus system. The tax is up for a renewal on Tuesday.

Krause has an office on the fifth floor of the handsome New England Building in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. The door was open to Krause's office, so I walked in and stood by a reception desk.

Seconds after I arrived, a casually dressed man in his late 40s or 50s walked through the door. He said he was Philip Krause, but he declined to answer any questions about himself or the alliance. And with a friendly pat on the shoulder, I was on my way.

American Democracy Alliance made the one and apparently only contribution to Kansas Citians Against Taxpayer Abuse, a heretofore unheard from group that began a television ad campaign this week. Advocates for the bus tax are complaining about all the anonymity, as well the content of the group's message. The television spot mentions that tax-increment financing captures some of the money raised by the 0.375 percent sales tax for the buses. The ad says the money is being diverted to "wealthy developers and City Hall pork-barrel projects."

City Councilman Ed Ford said on Thursday that if TIF is the opponents' beef, they should try to change the state law that created it.

Records indicate that Krause incorporated American Democracy Alliance last summer. He filed paperwork on behalf of a group called Missouri Limited Government Alliance at the same time.

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

In this interview with Canada's CBC Radio, U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver -- a Hillary Clinton holdout, despite enormous pressure from other African Americans -- says he thinks Clinton will not get the nomination. "If I had to make a prediction right now, I'd say Barack Obama is going to be the next president," Cleaver said. "I will be stunned if he's not the next president of the United States."

By Justin Kendall

In case you missed it, here's the video of the Daily Show episode with Lt. General William B. Caldwell, commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth. Caldwell tiptoed around political questions and defended the “dull” Army field manual that he helped author. When Stewart asked if the stories about soldiers not getting the body armor they need, Caldwell said he could only speak about his 13 months in Iraq.

“Every soldier was able to get what he or she needed to in order to properly prosecute their mission,” Caldwell said. “I never saw an instance where somebody did not have the equipment they needed.”

The seven-minute interview also touches on Caldwell’s “clenched fist,” the lack of an “explicit mission” and Stewart’s desire to topple a country.

By NADIA PFLAUM

Why two old men with families of their own would waste legislative time meddling with the

Salva  

Last week, when the Missouri House was considering a bill meant to fight methamphetamine production, Missouri Rep. Ray Salva, a Democrat who lives in Sugar Creek, tacked on language restricting women’s reproductive rights. The original bill was written to increase reporting requirements on sales of pseudoephedrine, a cold medicine ingredient abused by meth cookers. Salva’s amendment would add mifepristone, better known as RU-486, a drug that induces abortion, to the list of Schedule 1 Controlled Substances, putting RU-486 in the same category as cocaine and heroin.

Taking a dose of RU-486 is nothing like getting a bump off a key in the bathroom of a club. It requires a doctor’s prescription, the first of the two-pill dose must be taken in a doctor’s presence and the second pill is usually taken at home, in private. It’s prescribed only during the first seven weeks of pregnancy. No one uses it for recreational giggles.

As for State Rep. Ed Emery, a Republican from Lamar, he’s responsible for introducing House Bill 1625, which would shield pharmacies from lawsuits if they refuse to “perform, assist, recommend, refer to, or participate in any act or service in connection with any drug or device that causes an abortion.” Emery thinks pharmacists should be allowed to opt out of filling a prescription for RU-486 and opt out of dispensing Plan B, the morning-after pill — even though Plan B does not cause an abortion. Plan B prevents the need for abortion. If taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, it prevents a pregnancy.

Ed Emery's clothing-coordinated family  

Emery tells The Pitch he didn’t write this bill to complicate the lives of women he’s never met. He just wanted to help small-town pharmacists who don’t receive enough demand for RU-486 or Plan B to keep the drugs in stock at all times. Stocking drugs that expire on the shelves wastes money, Emery says.

Which made us wonder: Are small-town condoms more break-resistant?

Emery also managed to sneak the topic of Roe v. Wade into a report by the House Special Committee on Immigration, which he chairs. “This whole immigration problem would not even be an issue if it weren't for Roe vs. Wade,” he said. “Twenty million potential workers have been needlessly killed. We would not need any immigrant workers at all if those 20 million aborted fetuses were contributing to the economy."

Who knew? If we overturn Roe v. Wade, that pesky immigration problem is solved!

These two reps have more in common than pharmaceutical ignorance. In 2006, police charged Emery with driving on the wrong side of the road, and cops arrested Salva in February on a charge of drunken driving. Perhaps they can trade notes on women’s issues if they’re put in the same court-ordered remedial driver’s-ed class.

By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI

Move over Obama Girl, this Kansas City baby has a crush on the smooth-talking senator, too.

James Pfeiffer, an architect with the local firm BNIM, is the proud father of an Obama-loving toddler. Whenever Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama hits the airwaves, Pfeiffer says, his 16-month-old daughter lights up.

“She runs to the TV and starts making out with it,” he says with a laugh.

When the Pfeiffers left a copy of Time magazine lying around, their daughter gravitated toward the issue with Obama on the cover. Her mom, Bridget MacNevin-Pfeiffer, posted this video for their family to see.

Then, the clip was picked up by CNN and used in this montage of “The Kisser-in-Chief: Smooching on the Campaign Trail.”

“We didn’t program her, there was no coaching or anything like that,” Pfeiffer says. “She just gets very excited.”

So are her parents supporting the junior senator from Illinois, too?

“Luckily, we are,” Pfeiffer says. “It’d be a little awkward if we were, like, Mitt Romney supporters.”

By NADIA PFLAUM

Approximation of the van in question.

A volunteer with the Sen. Barack Obama campaign (who happens to be a former police officer) just called to say that two of the five-passenger vans being used to transport campaign volunteers were pulled over by Kansas City, Missouri, police. The occupants were handcuffed, our tipster says.

According to Officer Darin Snapp of the KCPD, the police were called at 11:30 this morning by someone at Research Medical Center, who reported that some customers had left the hospital cafeteria without paying. On their way out the doors, the same customers allegedly helped an old woman who was entering the hospital, and the woman thought that one of her helpers took money out of her open purse.

The police arrived at the hospital and followed a Research security vehicle that was trailing a van full of Obama volunteers. They pulled the van over, and Obama door-hangers spilled out. The occupants were detained for about 20 minutes, Snapp says, but the woman who reported the theft of her money couldn’t positively identify any of the van’s occupants as the people she'd seen, so the police let the Obama volunteers go. Snapp says he heard from one of the officers at the scene that the van’s crew chief said, “Man, we’re gonna be in trouble. We weren’t supposed to take this long for lunch — these door hangers are already supposed to be on doors by now.”

By PETER RUGG

Kay Barnes’ campaign went on YouTube recently with this sub-JibJab video narrated by a chipmunk-voiced version of Congressman Sam Graves. The spoof is intended as a fundraising tool for the former KCMO mayor, who has already raised $1 million to run for Graves' seat in Congress. It's unclear whether this video will hurt or help.