Posted by caleb on Feb 20, 2011 in
Local and State Politics Democratic State Representatives from Southeast Kansas have been trying for years to get a destination casino to come to the area, even though several highly advertised casinos are located only a few miles over the state line in Oklahoma’s Northeast – Green Country gaming region. With so many Oklahoma casinos located so close to the Kansas border, and with the failure of the Camptown Greyhound Park in Frontenac, KS, the sensibility of building a state-sponsored gaming center in the southeast corner of the state has been doubted.
In fact, one of the Camptown developers even mentioned this in 2008: “We would not be able to compete in that region of Kansas effectively with the tax rate and competing against a $300 million casino just a few miles away.”
After all of these setbacks, one might imagine our state representatives might realize a destination gaming center is simply not going to be successful due to the region’s relative geography.
Junction City, KS Rep. James Fawcett filed a bill late last week that put another nail in the Southeast Gaming Zone’s coffin. His bill creates an “either/or” option – meaning a state-sponsored destination gaming center could be built in either the proposed Northwest Gaming Zone, or the Southeast Gaming Zone surrounding Pittsburg, KS. Obviously, the point is to shift the focus from the dead-in-the-water SE Zone to anything else.
One SE Representative expressed his surprise in a rather surprising and uncouth way:
“I’ll tell you what, you want to talk about surprised,” said Rep. Bob Grant, a Cherokee Democrat. “I know what the Americans who were left a Pearl Harbor felt like.” (Pittsburg Morning Sun, “New gaming bill could ace out SEK” – 19 Feb 2011)
Is Kansas State Representative Bob Grant really comparing the impending loss of a gaming center to the devastation the nation felt on December 7, 1941 when a hostile enemy ruthlessly bombed our soil and killed thousands of Americans? Bob Grant has represented Kansas House District 2 since 1991. Perhaps the time has come for him to retire while he still has an ounce of dignity remaining.
Tags: Bob Grant, Camptown Greyhound Park, Grant, Kansas House District 2, KS House, KS House Dist 2, KSLeg, Oklahoma, Pearl Harbor, sek, southeast kansas
[As many of you know, I serve as the Events Coordinator for the Pitt State College Republicans. This post is related to one of our events]
On the way home from our Arkansas Tea Party tour over the Independence Day holiday, Virginia Crossland-Macha began talking with me about her plans to host another large 400+ person event in SE Kansas on the Pittsburg State University Campus. We wanted to help people put to use some of the energy they’d built up over the summer to help defeat the government takeover of healthcare.
In the end, we settled on a theme for the event, based mostly on our location at the backside of the PSU Football Stadium, as “Tailgate Tea Party.” We figured it would be a great way to draw in college students and local citizens who otherwise wouldn’t attend a political event.
We lived up to the “tailgate” moniker, as well, with live music performed by Josh Hucke and the Goin’ Nowhere Band and free hot dogs and bottled water.
We had some direct resistance from the Campus Police Department, resulting in a logistical stand-off that forced our headlining speaker, Bob Basso, to use a trailer graciously provided by Josh Hucke as his dressing room. With some attendees traveling over an hour and speakers flying for several, it was terribly embarrassing to the students, faculty, and alumni of the university who were in attendance. Some participants even vowed to reconsider their donations to the school because of their treatment of our peaceful, educational event. How’s that for serious?
Frankly, our speaker list was terribly impressive, if I may brag on Virginia’s connections for a minute. We had big names in to speak from D.C., California, and, of course, more local places, such as Iola, KS, Topeka, KS, Joplin, MO, and Rogers, AR.
Bob Basso‘s Thomas Paine
Derrick Sontag, Americans for Prosperity-Kansas
Rebecca Wales, Smart Girl Politics
Teresa Oelke, Americans for Prosperity-Arkansas
Bud Sifers, Citizen from Iola, KS
AM 1310/102.9 FM KZRG, Joplin, MO provided the emcee for the evening
Also represented was AmericanMajority‘s new initiative, CampusMajority.
Pitt State College Republicans
In all, I consider the event to have been a great success. We hosted nearly 400 people from all over the four state area at a liberal university in a strongly Democratic area of the through-and-through red state of Kansas. I continue to believe tea parties are one of the most effective ways to engage the everyday, average right-of- center American where they are right now. Our organization has surely felt this influence, and we are very appreciative of the support we’ve gained.
Tags: AmericanMajority, americans for prosperity, Arkansas, Bob Basso, Bud Sifers, CampusMajority, College Repubicans, Derrick Sontag, kansas, KZRG, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pitt State CRs, Pittsburg State University, Rebecca Wales, Smart Girl Politics, Teresa Oelke, Thomas Paine, Virginia Crossland
