Tiahrt Travels around on our tax dollars

From Power Trips, by Steve Henn


TIAHRT, TODD W, Republican Party-Kansas
Total number of trips - 13Total
cost of trips - $72,011.41
Average cost per trip - $5,539.34
Total number of days spent traveling - 63 daysRank of representative - 70 (Out of 638).


Sponsor(s) - Heritage Foundation, total cost: Total Cost - $637.74- location -Cambridge, MD.
Sponsor(s) -American Association of Airport Executives, total cost $14,102.00- location -Kauai, HI - took family memembers. He made two more trips on behalf of the same company to Hawaii and took his family.
Sponsor(s)- W.O. Farber Center, total cost: $844.00 - location- Vermillion, SD - Wichita, KS.
Sponsor(s)-Center for First Principles, total cost: $17,819.44- location- Prague, Czech Republic - Vienna, Austria - Budapest, Hungary. He took his family.

Tiahrt gets around - On your tax dollars - suckers!!

Missing in action – the Democratic Party

Recently the local paper pointed out that Rep. Todd Tiahrt is one of the main financial supporters of Tom DeLay, who is now facing corruption charges. Tiahrt’s own history of corruption makes him an easy target for whoever runs against him in the next election. He has openly made a fortune off the office and has sold his votes on a number of issues to the highest bidder. Beating him should be easy. But don’t count on it.
The Democrats have been missing in action for sometime. They just don't get it. They jettisoned thepeople with social interests, Women's groups, unions, Afro American interests and many others. They (as a whole) have not come out strongly against the war, although most of their “would be supporters” want that.
This is a party that needs a backbone. Even die-hard democrats are starting to ask why this party can’t take a clear stand on any issue and stick to it?They have worked hard to win over some white red-necks who are already loyal tothe Republicans. This next election should be a cakewalk for them, yet I'd bet a large sum of money, theyactually loose seats and the presidency. They have to stand for something and give the people a vision before they can beat even the weakest of Republicans.

It’s Campaign time and cash in time for Tiahrt

According toThe Wichita Eagle, Apr. 15, 2006:

“WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt has nearly $1 million in the bank to take on his yet-to-be-determined Democratic opponent in his re-election bid this November.
The $978,149.60 on hand reported in Tiahrt's Federal Election Commission filing Friday is the most he has ever had at this point in any of his six re-election campaigns.”
Yes, Mr. Tiahrt knows how to raise money. He doesn’t know anything else, but he does know how to raise money. And there are many rich corporation that want puppet stooges to represent our districts. Koch Industries has rained the most campaign cash, almost $121,000, on Tiahrt. They get what they want. We get boneheads who don’t know anything about politics or what’s in the best interest of their own constituents.
Then there’s always that zombie religious community that Tiahrt has duped into believing he somehow represents “Christian values.” Those Christian values include mostly greed and selfishness.


Koch Industries is a huge oil conglomerate controlled by brothers Charles and David Koch, two of the country's richest men and among the biggest backers of conservative and libertarian causes. With estimated revenue of about $40 billion last year, Koch is bigger than Microsoft, Merrill Lynch and AT&T. Koch is headquartered In Wichita Kansas.
According to the Eagle:
“His biggest expenses this year have been a $50,000 contribution to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which funds U.S. House Republican campaigns; $25,000 to the Kansas Republican Party; $5,000 for the Kansans For Life Political Action Committee; and $6,000 for other Republican House campaigns, including $4,000 for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.”
In other words, Tiahrt is a major source of corruption for an extremely corrupted party. There have been only a few Democrats who’ve expressed interest in running against Tiahrt, but none have filed.

Tiahrt fails to embarrass Sebelius

Sebelius Praised for "Disposable Worker" Veto

Jesse Nathan, a Lawrence-based writer and photographer, writes a column for San Francisco's largest alternative daily, BeyondChron called "Blue Thoughts From a Red State." His most recent column discussed Governor Kathleen Sebelius' veto of SB 461, "the Disposable Worker" bill. Here's a little of what he says.

"during an election year and Republican Senators and Representatives wanted to stick it to Sebelius by making her veto something that will get her in trouble in November. The Governor, however, has refused to support this legislation simply because it may win her a few votes in the fall. And this, playing politics with money that workers statewide desperately need to support their families, is exactly what the GOPers this state produces—see Senators Brownback and Roberts or Rep. Todd Tiahrt—love to do....

DeLay down – Is Tiahrt next?

According to CBC News:

"DeLay resigns as U.S. House leader after indictment," 28 Sep 2005:

CBC News

"Tom DeLay resigned as U.S. House majority leader on Wednesday after a Texas grand jury indicted him and two associates on charges of conspiracy in fundraising. A defiant DeLay insisted on his innocence and called the prosecutor a "partisan fanatic."

DeLay is the first leader of the House of Representatives to be indicted while in office in at least a century, according to congressional historians."

And what did our representative in the House from Kansas say:
"TomDeLay did nothing wrong," said Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan, last May. "There is no evidence of any breaking of the House rules, no evidence of breaking any laws of the land or of the laws of Texas."

That’s not how it looks right now.

Last year, MoveOn said for Tiahrt to give the money back.
The organization MoveOn called up Tiahrt and ask him to give back the $10,071 in PAC money he received from Republican Leader Tom Delay.

Do rotten apples fall like dominoes?

When it comes to the Iraqi War – Tiahrt just doesn’t get it!

Once again Rep. Todd Tiahrt has tried to sure up support for a war that was never needed, has killed thousands of both Americans and Iraqis and is nothing more than an ambitious scheme by Whitehouse officials to gain full control of the Middle East and its oil.

Congressman Todd Tiahrt’s
U.S. Capitol Update
March 31, 2006

Back from Iraq

Last week during the Congressional recess, I joined other members of the House Intelligence Committee on a fact finding mission to Iraq and other countries in the region. This was my second trip to Iraq and noticeable improvement has been made. There are conflicting reports about what is actually happening in Iraq, and being on the ground talking to our troops and visiting with Iraqi government officials is the best way to discover the truth.

Despite reports of civil war, both our top military official in Iraq, General Casey, and senior Iraqi government officials disputed that claim. They indicated that terrorists are actually attacking both the Sunni and the Shii people to provoke attacks on each other. Fortunately, religious leaders of both groups have called for peace and restraint.

The most exciting part of our mission was talking to our troops. I had a chance to visit with several Kansans while I was there, including Aaron White of Wichita, Eric Page of Wellington and Matt Clemens of El Dorado. Their morale is high because they understand and believe in their mission, and they are proud to serve the people of the United States of America. We should be even more proud of them.

Another view of this is:

Revolution #040, March 26, 2006:

From March 12-27, throughout neighborhoods across Tijuana, San Diego, Santa Ana, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—covering over 241 miles—the Caminata por la paz (March for Peace) is protesting the war and bloodshed in Iraq and the escalating attacks on immigrants. Some of their stops include the border region between Tijuana and San Diego, Camp Pendleton, several high schools in East L.A., the March 18 anti-war demonstration in L.A., farmworker communities in Fresno and Watsonville, and the Mission District in San Francisco.

The initiators for this march are Fernando Suarez del Solar, whose son Jesus was the first Latino to die in the current U.S. war in Iraq after stepping on an illegal U.S. cluster bomb; Pablo Paredes, naval officer who refused to board an Iraq-bound naval ship; Camilo Mejia, a National Guard war resister who was jailed for nine months for his opposition to the war; and Aidan Delgado, who is a conscientious objector of the Iraq war who served at Abu Ghraib. March 27 is the third anniversary of Fernando’s son's death.

At the opening press conference in Tijuana, Pablo Paredes said, “We live in a country where 2/3 of the population is against the war, and we want to give people the opportunity to express their opposition. We want to do this not just through polls or on the internet, but we want this to be seen on the streets and have the people’s voices to be heard. This is the call that we are making today and will make these next few days.”

Gaining strength from the recent outpourings of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in Chicago stepping forward against the intensifying anti-immigrant climate in this country and bills like HR 4437 (that could make it a felony to be undocumented and a crime to provide any kind of service to an undocumented person), the March for Peace aims to rouse resistance to put an end to the war and the anti-immigrant attacks.

Protesters in the UK

On this day we honor all the fools of the world, including Kansas

Bob Corkins: Commissioner of Edjerkashion

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline

this day we honor all the fools of the world, including Kansas!

The Idiot

Tiahrt worries about Illegal aliens

"If evolution is a fraud, then so is the idea that there is no life on Venus.
The idea that there is no life on Venus is full of holes. Many scientists are beginning to rethink their position on this theory.
Has anyone actually gone to the surface of Venus and proven there are no dangerous life forms there. What about an invasion from space? Can we really take such a chance?

After all, we need the Patriot Act because dangerous aliens can come from anywhere. If Mexicans can sneak atomic bombs across our southern border, we better not take any chances."

-The logic of the right-wing of the Republican Party

This picture shows what the Soviet Union (the evil empire) said they found on the surface of Venus using Venera 9 picture of the surface.

Of course Tiahrt supports the war – What’s Vietnam

Rep. Todd Tiahrt is still trying to justify the war in Iraq. According The Wichita Eagle, March 19, 2008:

Tiahrt justified his vote to go to war on the grounds there were weapons of mass destruction and both he and Democrat Rep. Dennis Moore believed he would have nuclear weapons in a year.
That turned out to be false. There has been no evidence at all for any weapons of mass destruction.
Tiahrt said much of the information he based his vote on is still valid and the threat was real enough to justify war.
If that wasn’t bad enough, nearly all our lawmakers, including Democrat Moore, refuse to denounce the war effort. It’s as if we learned nothing from Vietnam.

Unfortunately, the same Kansans who voted in total idiots to run the Kansas School Board also have not learned anything from Vietnam.

According to the same Eagle edition:

“By a sizable majority, Kansans support the war in Iraq, but they think less of the way the White House is handling the conflict than they did two years ago.
A KWCH-12 Eyewitness News-Wichita Eagle poll conducted earlier this week shows that 59 percent of Kansans think the decision to invade Iraq was the right decision. In 2004, 66 percent of Kansans said they supported that decision in a similar poll.

By comparison, the number of Kansans who thought the decision to invade was the wrong one grew from 25 percent in 2004 to 36 percent now.

Those numbers suggest that Kansans seem to be more supportive of the war than the nation as whole is.”

Not everyone was duped by George Bush. According to Diane Wahto Peace_and_Justice_Kansas@yahoogroups.com:

“You wouldn’t know it by reading the Eagle this morning, but we had a successful, and peaceful, march yesterday with 110 people of all ages, including babies, and a few dogs participating. KAKE News ran a short video, but I can’t find it on the web site.

Thanks to everyone who helped organize this march. Despite the misleading headline in today’s Eagle, I believe the people of Kansas are sick of Bush’s war and the statistics in the story support that.”
Marches took part all across the country, Wichita included. Many of us know the war was started on a lie and control of Middle East oil is the main motivation. The “war on terrorism” is a crock and a lot of us know it. It has been used to justify denying our civil liberties and fighting wars on behalf of oil companies for the phony excuse that we are trying to “stop terrorists.”

The local march was designed to coordinate with marches across the country.

Tiahrt sheds crocodile tears over job losses

According the The Wichita Eagle, Mar. 08, 2006:

Rep. Todd Tiahrt has opposed new user fees on general aviation to boost revenues for the Aviation Trust Fund.
According to Tiahrt, The fees carry the threat of decreasing aircraft sales and that could affect jobs in Kansas, Tiahrt said. General aviation operators now contribute to the trust fund by paying taxes on fuel.
Effect jobs?
Has Tiahrt looked at figures over the last several years showing that high paying manufacturing jobs are leaving Wichita and Kansas?

According to The Wichita Eagle, Mar. 09, 2003:

“The Wichita metropolitan area has lost 10,100 transportation-manufacturing jobs since December 1998, according to Wichita State University's Center for Economic Development and Business Research.
Aviation jobs lost since Sept 11, 2001, represent as much as 17 percent of the $50,000-and-over jobs in the Wichita area that were counted by the 2000 census.
Other communities have faced similar -- or worse --job losses in aerospace and bounced back stronger.
But recovery takes strategic planning and hard work by government and the private sector to identify and attract new industries.”

Tiahrt hasn’t done that. He put a lot into his tanker aircraft deal that fell flat on its face. This is just one more example of Tiahrt using non-existent jobs as an excuse to help out his friends in big business.

Once again Tiahrt leaves his constituents like a sinking ship (or tanker).

Bob Corkins, Kansas Education Commissioner - The other IDIOT

Normally this blog if for Todd Tiahrt, but it is called “The Idiot Factor” and being an idiot and serving in a public office is becoming more common here in Kansas. So this is a comment about the “other idiot,” Bob Corkins, Kansas Education Commissioner.
Having just finished obtaining my teaching certificate, I had to spend many long hours of classroom work, practice with an actual classroom and I must recertify. There are many tests and background checks done on us before we get certified. All this cost us money.
The average teacher is not making the kind of money that Corkins and is making and the only reason Corkins got that job is to help the present school board find ways to tear down our public school system and replace it with some program to promote private schools.
This man is an insult to any intelligent person who is or has worked to become an educator in Kansas. Many of us have worked hard and invested a lot of money in our careers only to see a state school elected that seems to want to run us out of the state. Corkins has not worked in an actual classroom setting. He has no serious credentials. He simply shares the far-right’s agenda for destroying public schools.
He has insulted the everyday educators of this state. The best and brightest will certainly “see the light”and leave the state. That is a consideration I am giving serious thought to right now. Kansans have proven with this board they don’t respect teachers and they don’t respect our public schools.
So don’t be surprised when there’s a shortage of “GOOD” teachers because the state has allowed these wing-nuts to destroy our schools to the point of running off our most gifted teachers.

Group to confront Tiahrt on his taxpayer’s supplied socialized medical coverage he opposes for the rest of us

A number of people from Wichita’s Peace_and_Justice_Kansas@yahoogroups.com are planning a visit to Rep. Todd Tiahrt’s office to ask him what kind of health care benefits the taxpayers are providing him with.

For those who don’t know, all US Congress people are given free health care benefits, even though the majority of them have opposed any kind of “socialized medicine” or any other government sponsored health care protection. It apparently works for them, but can’t work for us.
The main reason it can’t work for us is that it is opposed by medical lobbyist who fear loosing money.
Government leaders, such as Tiahrt, have done nothing to stop private companies from cutting their medical benefits.
The meeting from the Peace and Social Justice group has been postponed. But they will confront Tiahrt on the issue of taxpayers paying for his healthcare when they can’t afford their own.

Tiahrt’s lackeys are kicked out of Venezuela

According to The Wichita Eagle, Feb. 10, 2006:

“CARACAS, Venezuela -- U.S. missionaries accused by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of espionage have been forced from their remote outposts among jungle tribes by a government order, the final pair leaving Thursday after years of evangelical work.
The New Tribes Mission flew those two out of the rain forest to regroup with other missionaries in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz. There they will decide what to do next: leave the country or continue with a legal battle seeking to overturn the government's order to expel them from indigenous areas by Sunday.”

Chavez is wise to push them out. These groups are conservative Evangelicals linked to US Reprehensive Todd Tiahrt (R) and other conservatives that seek to destroy the local culture of these people and reinforce conservative governments. There impact on these countries is almost always negative.
Most of the group's missionaries are Americans.
To get a good idea of how those groups interfere I local politics, get a copy of In the Presence of My Enemies, By Gracia Burnham.(See F5). I this book, Burnham and her husband are captured by local Muslim guerrillas, Abu Sayyaf and Tiahrt pushed for the blotched military operation where two of the three hostages were killed and as many as 45 Philippine government soldiers (according to Gen. Roy Cimatu of the Philippine Army, or AFP). An unknown number of rebels were also killed. Burnham made her politics known when she campaigned for Tiahrt, during his reelection bid for the US House. Burnham's book has been used by the present Republican administration and members of Congress as a tool to inspire even more military meddling in the Philippines. the US has sent more than 700 troops to help train the Philippine military, according the New York Times.
Tiahrt also made irresponsible and ignorant statements that the guerrillas in the Philippines were nothing more than street gangs. He ignored the historical relationship between the US and the Philippines, which includes the US making the islands a colony from 1901 to 1945. The US crushed a guerrilla uprising by Filipinos trying to win independence. Their leader, Emilio Aquinalda, was captured and killed, even though he had helped the US in its war against Spain. The US also supported President Marcos after he declared martial law in 1972 and set up a dictatorship.

Tiahrt bombs out as majority whip!

A major crisis had been averted as Rep. Todd Tiahrt learned he would not be chosen as the majority whip. The Republicans may be stupid at times, but they weren’t stupid enough to put one of the dumbest politicians from Kansas in one of the most important positions of power in the US House or Representatives.

According to The Wichita Eagle, February 02, 2006:

”Tiahrt didn’t get a chance to compete for the majority whip job, because that was dependent on current whip Roy Blunt of Missouri being elected the new House majority leader. But Blunt lost in today’s election to Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.”

Much as our mission in Iraq, Tiahrt has bombed.

From WASHINGTON – “U.S. Representative Todd Tiahrt had already announced that Committee Chairmen, Steve Buyer (R-IN) Veterans’ Affairs and Donald Manzullo (R-IL) Small Business, would have Co-Chaired his campaign for House Majority Whip. Buyers has been accused of treating veteran’s benefits as welfare.” See: Larry Scott: "Welfarizing" the VA

Tiahrt is once again, a sinking ship.

Tiahrt says “no gambling for the little people” he gambles with our tax money all the time

According to The Wichita Eagle, January 28, 2006:

“The odds that gambling will expand in Kansas were bad to begin with, given how competing interests tend to cancel one another out in Topeka. Those odds just got worse, though, with declarations by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, that they’ll work against the efforts to get federal approval for off-reservation tribal casinos in Kansas.”


He doesn’t believe in letting us gamble with our own money, but he sure gambles with our tax money and the money of his campaign people. He gambled with Jack Abramoff’s money and Rep. Tom DeLay’s money. He also wants to be the majority Whip so he can really gable with OUR future and the future of his own political party. I guess it’s only immoral when we common folks gamble with our money. When politicians gamble with big time contributor’s money, that’s perfectly moral. When us little people gamble, it’s immoral.