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Over the past two decades, improving education usually meant big dollar signs. Rolls-Royce reforms such as class-size reduction and prekindergarten initiatives have cruised through legislatures with the promise of improving student outcomes. However, given current state budget constraints, would-be champions of such popular reforms will have to park their plans or find some way to defer the costs.

There is an upside to a slowdown in these pricey programs. States will at least be able to avoid the buyers' remorse they must feel after spending billions in the past two decades on ineffective education initiatives.

The American Legislative Exchange Council's 14th annual Report Card on American Education high-beams these state efforts to buy their way out of K-12 underperformance. The report shows how state spending on education has increased 54 percent in constant dollars since the mid-1980s.

The result of this investment is an overall class-size reduction of 15 percent but little change in achievement outcomes. A whopping 71 percent of eighth-graders are still performing below proficiency in reading, and 69 percent are performing below proficiency in math.

Fortunately, there's a better way to reform education. Buy a Honda, or at least the education-reform equivalent of a Honda -- school choice. Reforms such as school choice improve educational outcomes without breaking the bank.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has been making a whole lot of calls these days. The topic: protecting her veto of an expansion of a western Kansas coal plant.

A lot is on the line for the two-term Democrat. If a Democrat wins the White House this year, you don't want your resume to show a fresh drubbing. The $3.6 billion coal plant has received media attention nationwide.

And there's her standing within Kansas. It is, after all, the premier issue of the legislative session.

Winning gets exchanged for clout, the standard currency in any state capitol. Losing puts your career in the same position as the dollar -- devalued.

Her public standing appears almost as solid as ever. In a mid-March survey conducted by SurveyUSA, Kansans by 61 to 33 percent approved of the job she was doing.

The following are some reader comments about Barack Obama's statement that some small-town residents are "bitter" about the economy and cling to such things as religion and guns. To read more comments or to join the discussion, visit WE Blog at http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog.

Obama is an elitist snob. There is no way he can wiggle out of this one. Even Obama says, now that he was caught, that this was a poor choice of words on his part. Actually, Obama's words show us exactly who Obama is: a man who looks down, with contempt, on most of the country that he wishes to lead.

I know a lot of Kansans, Democrat and Republican, who are bitter and angry about Bush's misbegotten war, Bush's recession and Bush's misfeasance, nonfeasance and malfeasance in office.

Obama has a complete misunderstanding of small-town USA and what people really value. It could be he has heard the hate and frustration of black Americans one too many times in church, and tried to apply the same to white America.

Pretty funny to watch the wing nuts pile on, given the internecine war in the Republican Party between the big money city folks and the rural, religious base.

Here's the dirty secret: Behind the scenes, President Bush and some environmentalists have been on the same side of Congress' long-running debate over a new farm bill. I just hope they keep their odd alliance. This proposal remains as out of sync with our times as plowing with mule teams.

This is a big week when it comes to legislators finally producing a five-year farm bill. By week's end, congressional negotiators are supposed to finish their policies or extend the existing ones for 12 months.

Washington, including the president and environmentalists, easily could let that deadline drive the debate and feel pressure to cut a deal.

Normally I'm open to half-loaves, but not this time. Bush should not back off his veto threat, and his environmentalist allies shouldn't capitulate. Compromising around this proposal misses the larger point. And that is: There's no way this farm bill makes sense in today's world.

For instance, why are we giving about $40 billion in subsidies to grow corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and rice now? It's a time when:

They wanted to be famous. Of all the troubling aspects of the Lakeland, Fla., tale of thuggery and brutality that recently has made national headlines, that's arguably the most appalling. Not that there isn't plenty more here to disgust any observer with a conscience.

It's disgusting, for instance, that on March 30, 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay allegedly was lured to a home where six girls ambushed her while two boys kept watch. Disgusting that the half-hour attack, recorded on video, shows her taking head shots and kicks while covering up, making no attempt to defend herself. Disgusting that one of the girls yells that there are only 17 seconds of video capacity left, so "make it good." Disgusting that police say the girls show no remorse, one wondering in jail if she'd have to miss cheerleading practice, one giggling at her bail hearing. Disgusting that some parents have attempted to make excuses for their little miscreants; it happened because Lindsay was trash-talking online, one mother said.

Disgusting, all around.

From where I sit, though, the capper, the piece de resistance, the brown rat on the garbage barge, is this: These girls beat Lindsay up and recorded it so they could post it on YouTube. They wanted fame. Or, at least, their generation's version thereof.

It's a funny thing, fame. Used to be, we perceived a difference between it and notoriety. Now they seem to have melded in the public mind, to have become all of a piece so that it no longer matters what one is known for, so long as one is known.

I bet Hillary Clinton wishes Bob Johnson would stop trying to help her. Johnson is the billionaire BET founder and Clinton supporter who embarrassed his candidate and himself during the South Carolina primary by clumsily attempting to inject Barack Obama's self-confessed youthful drug use into the campaign and then clumsily denying he was doing it. To judge from his latest comments, he still hasn't learned to engage brain before operating mouth.

In March, Johnson told the Charlotte Observer that he agreed with comments that forced Geraldine Ferraro to resign from Clinton's campaign last month. Ferraro essentially called Obama the affirmative action candidate, saying that if he were not black, he would not be the political phenom he is.

Said Johnson, "What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called 'Jerry Smith' and he says, 'I'm going to run for president,' would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote? And the answer is, probably not."

Naturally, Johnson is wrong. If being black conferred, as he and Ferraro seem to think, some mysterious advantage in politics (unlike in virtually every other field of endeavor), the Rev. Jesse Jackson would have been president years ago. He is, after all, black. As are the Rev. Al Sharpton and Alan Keyes. All tried, yet none came close to winning the presidency.

Johnson is also wrong about black support for Obama. As recently as December, Gallup pollsters found Clinton had significantly "higher" favorable ratings among black voters than Obama. Of course, that was before Obama's resounding victory in Iowa, Clinton's gaffe about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.' s role in the civil rights movement, and clanking attempts by Clinton surrogates such as Johnson to kneecap Obama.

The popular misconception that increased usage of corn for ethanol production is the only factor driving higher food prices is just that -- a misconception.

Ethanol production has added and will continue to add to corn demand, but other factors also are playing major roles in higher food prices.

Global demand for U.S. agricultural products has increased significantly over the past several years. China and India are but two examples where growing affluence is leading to changes in diet and overall food demand. Helping add to export demand is the devaluation of the dollar. This makes corn, soybeans, wheat and other commodities produced in the United States particularly attractive to overseas buyers.

Above the farmer in the food chain are processors, distribution systems and grocery stores. We are all familiar with how energy prices are affecting the retail costs of goods. Food products are no different. And because of the refrigerated nature of much of the food system, those delivery costs can be even higher. Labor costs also are a factor. Finally, food suppliers are raising food prices simply because they can.

And, yes, there is ethanol.

"Just reorganizing from top to bottom in the first week."

-- Interim Wichita school superintendent Martin Libhart, joking when asked about his agenda for the district

"They blew it up in more ways than one."

-- Wichita school board president Connie Dietz on ex-superintendents Stuart Berger and Larry Vaughn, who, unlike the district's next superintendent, were hired to be change agents

"We are definitely carnivores in my family."

As a family member who has helped to care for an aging parent, I understand how frustrating navigating the maze of Medicare can be. We want our loved ones to have good care.

As a senator, I also see Medicare from another perspective -- as a federal program serving 44 million seniors, 400,000 right here in Kansas. That is 13 percent of our population.

Medicare affects physicians, nurses, hospital administrators and staff, pharmacists, and home health care workers. I meet on a regular basis with senior citizens and representatives from all of these groups, continually looking at ways to make Medicare a better and more cost-effective program.

Among the biggest challenges are the payment rates for physicians who serve seniors in Medicare. Because of a complex funding formula, doctors are being asked to take greater cuts in Medicare reimbursements for their services.

Though it's important to be cost-effective with tax dollars, it's to the point that doctors' costs often outweigh the payments they receive. As a result, fewer doctors can participate in Medicare. That's an extra hardship in rural areas where seniors face greater difficulty finding another doctor.

Wichita and south-central Kansas reached a significant milestone last week that will positively resonate for years to come.

The Wichita City Council and the Sedgwick County Commission showed the rest of the country -- and the world -- that we are serious about protecting and growing our aviation industry. Their approval of $10 million in local incentives for Cessna Aircraft joined the state effort to secure this new plant here.

Our local elected officials demonstrated both visionary leadership and sound business sense, especially when we consider the return on investment of these public dollars. Behind the scenes, our local elected leaders and county and city staffs worked together to make sure we sent a clear message to other states that are trying to lure our aviation companies and their jobs away from Kansas.

Our officials were prepared and responded with creative and responsible policy for an opportunity that other communities dream about. As a result, Cessna -- already an incredible corporate citizen -- is investing almost $800 million in our local economy to build a new large-cabin business jet, which means more than 1,000 high-paying jobs at Cessna and thousands more for local businesses providing goods and services for the planemaker and its new employees.

An economic development win of this magnitude requires public and private partners pursuing a seamless effort that features everyone pushing hard for an overall community victory. The return on investment is significant in terms of dollars, but the strength of our competitive culture produced a number of far-reaching qualitative benefits, including:

Congress already has authorized billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies for farmers who grow corn and the producers who turn it into the fuel that's pumped into your car.

Never mind that ethanol is helping spike food prices. Corn prices have increased by 70 percent since 2005, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects they will rise an additional 10 to 20 percent this year.

But that's not the half of it. Corn-dependent livestock also are increasing in price. The USDA estimates that corn feed price increases added nearly 9 percent to the price of beef last year. But this doesn't include the indirect costs. U.S. beef cattle herds declined by 338,000 in 2007, increasing beef prices further, in part, because of higher prices for feed, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Ethanol advocates claim that rising corn costs have contributed only modestly to the overall increase in food prices. They're not being entirely honest, as they're only counting the direct costs of ethanol. They don't count, for example, increases in soybean prices resulting from farmers switching to the more lucrative corn crop.

The ethanol program also is not reducing greenhouse-gas emissions as promised, but increasing them. That's according to two new independent, scientific studies published in the journal Science.

The environment appears to be the forgotten issue during this year's presidential election. That's why we should view this year's Earth Day celebration as an occasion to put environmental issues on the table.

Here are four crucial ones:

• Fuel economy standards. Motor vehicles generate about one-fourth of all carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere in the United States, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Controlling the emission of carbon dioxide, the chief cause of climate change, will require a reduction in the amount of fuel used.

Which candidate advocates that we drive less and rely more on mass transit? Which one insists that we improve fuel economy standards and plug a loophole that holds light trucks and some SUVs to a lower standard? And which one wants to invest in new technologies and renewable fuels and support electric, hybrid and fuel-cell cars?

• Reducing our reliance on and eventually ending our use of coal to generate electricity. Electricity generation is responsible for about 40 percent of fossil fuel-generated carbon dioxide, with coal making up about half the total, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Back in Iowa, Barack Obama promised to be something new -- an unconventional leader who would confront unpleasant truths, embrace novel policies and unify the country. If he had knocked Hillary Clinton out in New Hampshire and entered general election mode early, this enormously thoughtful man would have become that.

But he did not knock her out, and the aura around Obama has changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal.

He sprinkled his debate performance last week with the sorts of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of conventional politics. He claimed falsely that his handwriting wasn't on a questionnaire about gun control. He claimed that he had never attacked Clinton for her exaggerations about the Tuzla airport, though his campaign was all over it. Obama piously condemned the practice of lifting other candidates' words out of context, but he has been doing exactly the same thing to John McCain, especially over his 100-years-in-Iraq comment.

Obama also made a pair of cynical promises that are the sign of someone who is thinking more about campaigning than governing.

He made a sweeping read-my-lips pledge never to raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year. That will make it impossible to address entitlement reform anytime in an Obama presidency. It will also make it much harder to afford the vast array of middle-class tax breaks, health care reforms and energy policy projects that he promises to deliver.

Imagine if President Bush announced a plan for Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs that declared: They will cease accumulating nuclear weapons by 2025. We will accomplish this through incentives and voluntary action, without mandates.

Bush would be ridiculed, but in essence, that's the plan he announced for climate change last week. He set a target for halting the growth in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025, without specific mandates to achieve that, and in the meantime he blasted proposed Senate legislation for tougher measures as unnecessary.

Unnecessary? When scientists detect accelerating melting in the Arctic and confidently predict centuries of coastal retreats and climate shifts, endangering the only planet we have?

Three respected climate experts made that troubling argument in an important essay in Nature this month, offering a sobering warning that the climate problem is much bigger than anticipated. That's largely because of increased use of coal in booming Asian economies.

For example, imagine that we instituted a brutally high gas tax that reduced emissions from American vehicles by 25 percent. That would be a stunning achievement -- and in just nine months, China's increased emissions would have more than made up the difference.

What this country needs is a bipartisan effort to reform health care. Fortunately, such an effort has just been announced. It couldn't come at a better time.

Americans pay more for health care than any other nation on the planet.

More Americans go bankrupt because of medical bills than in other countries.

Worse, Americans have a lower life expectancy than citizens of other developed nations while also experiencing higher infant mortality rates.

Health care reform is one of those chronic problems that everyone knows must be resolved for the sake of both the citizens and the nation. The issue is so politically charged, however, that nothing gets done while the problem grows bigger.

I have epilepsy, a disability, but may not be considered disabled in a legal sense. I also have cerebral palsy, another disability.

Does the fact that I use a power wheelchair make me not disabled in the eyes of our courts? I don't know, but it might.

I'm being serious here.

When Congress passed the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, it meant the law to cover anyone with a disability or a history of being disabled or who was perceived as being disabled.

The ADA was a bipartisan measure. In the Senate, its chief sponsors were Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan. In the House, former Rep. Tony Coelho, D-Calif., was a main backer.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 7-2 that the death penalty by lethal injection in Kentucky, which uses a cocktail of three drugs, is not a violation of the Constitution's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment." Other states, which had placed their lethal injection methods on hold pending a court ruling, are now expected to proceed.

No news report I saw appreciated the irony of the 7-2 vote, the same margin by which the court decided in 1973 that unborn babies could be killed in any manner, with or without drugs to dull their pain.

In self-defense, most see nothing wrong with taking a life if another person is about to take theirs. It is only if the killer succeeds that some strange notion kicks in that the killer's life suddenly inherits value and comes under constitutional protection.

Conversely, the unborn child, according to the same court, only has a right to live if the woman carrying it gives it that right. Should she decide not to give birth, any method, including drug cocktails, is allowed. It mocks life when anti-death penalty people advocate for the guilty while caring nothing for the unborn.

In one of the written opinions, Justice Samuel Alito referred to the ethics rules of the medical profession, which, he said, bar physicians from taking part in executions. This was one of the issues in the Kentucky case, where it was argued that nonprofessionals might not administer the drugs properly and thus might inflict excruciating pain.

Nine years ago the Economist ran a big story on oil, which was then selling for $10 a barrel. The magazine warned that this might not last. Instead, it suggested, oil might well fall to $5 a barrel.

In any case, the Economist asserted, the world faced "the prospect of cheap, plentiful oil for the foreseeable future."

Oil closed above $117 Monday.

It's not just oil that has defied the complacency of a few years back. Food prices have also soared, as have the prices of basic metals. And the global surge in commodity prices is reviving a question we haven't heard much since the 1970s: Will limited supplies of natural resources pose an obstacle to future world economic growth?

How you answer this question depends largely on what you believe is driving the rise in resource prices. Broadly speaking, there are three competing views.