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The Weekender Saturday, February 7, 2015
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Spending cuts Iolan loses sight, but not spirit save budget By RICHARD LUKEN The Iola Register
Education, highways hurt most TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican Gov. Sam Brownback said Thursday he would cut spending on Kansas’ public schools and universities and GOP legislators approved a plan to shift around money to plug a budget hole as the state scrambled to cope with a revenue shortfall following aggressive tax cuts. The spending cuts announced by Brownback and a budget-balancing bill approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature would erase a $344 million deficit projected for June 30, against spending of about $6.3 billion. Top Republicans said lawmakers needed to approve a fix for the current budget by Feb. 13 to ensure the state pays its bills on time through the summer. Their actions also buy time to address a projected shortfall of nearly $600 million in the budget for the state’s next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Brownback
has proposed slowing down future income tax cuts and boosting tobacco and alcohol taxes, and many GOP lawmakers want to pursue further spending cuts. Brownback’s Kansas experiment was hailed by some national conservatives in 2012 and 2013 when he championed personal income tax cuts to stimulate the economy, dropping the top rate by 29 percent and exempting 191,000 business owners altogether. Revenue has since fallen short of forecasts, and Brownback won a closerthan-expected re-election in a heavily Republican state last year after arguing that the tax cuts would not hurt schools or sacrifice core government services. Some Republicans have backed away from using Kansas as a tax-cutting example now that the state faces a fiscal crisis. “We are not doing what Kansas did,” South Carolina See SPENDING | Page A5
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here will come a day when Mike Jewell awakens in total darkness. Choroideremia, a genetic disease that attacks the nerve tissue in the back of his eyes, has progressed to the point that looking outside “is like seeing a Picasso painting,” he said. “It’s just a bunch of smears. Nothing’s very crisp. You just guess at things.” He was diagnosed with the disease at 12, having known something was wrong years earlier. “I was night blind as a kid,” he said. “I’ve never seen stars.” Knowing the disease would eventually rob him of his eyesight, Jewell was undaunted, if not fatalistic. “Honestly, I thought I’d be dead at 25, and that’s the way I tried to live,” he said. “I tried to cram a bunch of living into a small amount of time so I’d feel fulfilled
when I was gone. I just assumed it’d be an accident, or I’d shoot off a bridge at 100 mph.” There were several close calls. A drunk driver once veered into his lane while crossing a bridge near Chanute about 20 years ago, but both drivers came away unscathed. Jewell was a licensed driver for about nine years, from 16 to 25, until being declared legally blind in 1995. From there, Jewell took to his bicycle, until that, too, became impossible with his deteriorating eyesight.
He’s been hit by cars too many times to remember. One car clipped him, and Jewell wound up propped up on the car’s bumper as it pushed him into the intersection. Again, he made it through unhurt, “although I thought I had a heart attack afterward.” But death never happened. “And then one day I felt, I don’t want it to happen,” Jewell recalled. “I needed to live a little slower.” See JEWELL | Page A6
IHS girls ask us to look closer at actions, words By BOB JOHNSON The Iola Register
Three Iola High School girls told Iola Rotarians Thursday how the Four-Way Test, a philosophical guide for the club, could be applied to everyday circumstances. Their presentations were a local competition, with the winner, yet to be determined, advancing to district. The eventual state winner will receive a $1,000 scholarship. Jo Lohman related the four principles to vaccinations; Jerrica Adams talked about mental illness; Emma Piazza
Iola High students Emma Piazza, from left, Jo Lohman and Jerrica Adams spoke to Iola Rotarians Thursday about how to apply the club’s Four-Way Test to everyday life. REGISTER/BOB JOHNSON
used them to interpret the Pledge of Allegiance. Adams is a sophomore, the others seniors. Lohman allowed vaccinations gave populations freedom from disease and that it was unfair for some to deny vaccinations and put others at risk. Benefits obviously are numerous, she said, and dispelled the myth that measles vaccinations could be a precursor to autism. Outbreaks of a specific diseases, such as is the fear today with measles, occur from people being lax about having See ROTARY | Page A6
Kincaid hits grand slam with Home Plate By RICK DANLEY The Iola Register
KINCAID — The Home Plate Café, in the old elementary school at the north end of Kincaid’s miniature downtown, has already become a destination known for good food. Beginning this spring, however, it hopes to call itself the museum restaurant for one of the country’s premier collections of sports trading cards and memorabilia, some dating back to the 1880s. Years ago, when Darrin Daugherty was a student at Kincaid Elementary school,
this thought probably never crossed his mind: one day I’ll own this place. I’ll have a family diner and I’ll put it in the cafeteria. I’ll build a baseball card museum and put it in the band room. *** Rhonda Lorenz-Harris was born in Connecticut, raised in California, “but I’ve lived all over. I’ve been in every state but Alaska.” She was an overthe-road trucker as a young married woman, mostly on the West Coast, a career which lasted until she became “too far pregnant to climb into the sleeper.” Eventually she landed in Wisconsin, near
Quote of the day Vol. 117, No. 67
Eau Claire, where she owned and operated a large restaurant — “I had 10 cooks and 25 waitresses” — until one day, years later, she decided to pack up her car and leave, and drove south with no fixed point in mind. “Pretty soon I just stopped the car in Ottawa, Kansas, decided I was tired of driving.” *** Like his father and grandfather, Daugherty grew up in Kincaid. It was his dad, in fact, who inspired Daugherty’s affection for baseball cards when, in 1976, he preSee RESTAURANT | Page A4
Rhonda Lorenz-Harris runs the Home Plate Cafe, in Kincaid. The restaurant, which is currently open Tuesday-Sunday, will adjoin a sports cards and memorabilia museum scheduled to open this spring. REGISTER/RICK DANLEY
“Nobody got where they are today by living for tomorrow.” — Tom Wilson 75 Cents
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