Fly-over news

It turned out to be a pretty good week in the on-again-off-again-frozen-then-thawed-then-frozen area of Northeast Kansas. Mid-week we had the exciting basketball game between rivals Kansas State University Wildcats and Kansas University Jayhawks. The favored were the Jayhawks. The 'Hawks are always favored over the 'Cats. It is a much bigger school, with more funding and more national recognition, especially in basketball.

I have always felt more at ease around the KSU crowd than the KU crowd. KSU started out as a agriculture and mechanical school. And it still pretty much is. Which is probably why I like the people there better. They are less pretentious than the folks over at KU. I'm glad that KSU won that game. It seemed...I don't know...just - somehow.

That was followed by the news that No. 1 Son was promoted to Lance Corporal in his MJROTC unit, along with making the high school's Honor Roll. His grandmother took him to the Japanese restaurant to celebrate. He was excited about it all, and the food was good.

So things were going pretty well. The the Super Bowl comes around. I was rooting for the Giants because, like KU, I thought it was time for the Patriots to lose. I was getting tired of always seeing them win the Super Bowl. Call me the champion of the underdog or whatever.

No. 1 Son was rooting for the Pats. Poor kid, he was also rooting for the 'Hawks. I kept asking him, as the seconds ticked away at the end of the game what it felt like to back two losers in the same week. He did a horrible job of trying to deflect my taunting. I know he felt bad because I'm pretty certain he chose those teams specifically because I hadn't chosen them.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again; the Internet is such a wonderful creation. The best friend I have in the world I met while working in Alaska. He is now in North Dakota, while I'm stuck here in Kansas. But that didn't keep us for watching the Super Bowl together (if even virtually). We fired up the computers and IMed the hell out of each other, commenting on commercials and plays. It was almost-but-not-quite exactly like sitting right next to him - except, him being in North Dakota, and me being in Kansas, he couldn't drink all my beer!

The city council here in Topeka is still in somewhat hot water regarding their actions (hey, there's a surprise, someone finally catches on that the council is full of a bunch of corrupt pinheads). A couple of years ago, the citizens of this city, fed up with the crap the council and mayor were heaping upon us, voted to change the city charter to convert the government to a city manager form. We still have the council and we still have the mayor, but the city is pretty much run by the manager (and not very well, I might add) with the big decisions (the ones that affect our pocketbooks) being made by the council.

The council voted to approve several things, a new over-priced, under performing computer system, a raise in court fees, a (second) new helicopter for the police department, which the mayor vetoed (and rightly so). These were expenditures which were unnecessary, and generously unpopular with the citizens. Greater than 80% of citizens that weighed in on the matters didn't want these things that the council approved anyway. After the mayor vetoed the bills, the council voted and overturned the vetoes.

While all that seems normal on the surface, the problem lies in that the new city charter does not specify that the council has any authority to override a mayoral veto. This is a bad thing. The mayor, in essence, has the ability to squash any legislation the council comes up with, and there is nothing the council can do about it. The good part of it is that the city may be forced to back out of all of these stupid deals that were made, thus saving the average Joe taxpayers millions of dollars.