Pat Knueven, we know the tea party is funded by billionaire special interests like oil men Charles and David Koch of KS. We know the tea party is composed by many factions, some religious groups that are opposed to equal rights for women and gays, and want to legislate their religious beliefs into law. Perhaps the most egregious, dishonest factions represent big business agriculture. In a recent hiking trip to UT my husband and I were asked by a cowboy to move our vehicle at a trail head so he could get his cattle out of public land. We hiked a trail watching for slippery cow pies covered with flies and so much urine near streams this hiking trail smelled like a feedlot! Not to mention it led to the Dark Canyon Wilderness area also full of cattle waste. Driving through KS, CO and UT we passed through tens of thousands of acres of row crops, and not one farmhouse in sight. These tea party folks want an end to big government but assuredly we will not see an end to the billions of dollars of big agriculture handouts to CAFOs in the Midwest or grazing in the West (tax payers pay for fences that keep the cattle in and public out, for maintained federal roads to transport cattle,to mention a few, while ranchers pay a small fee to graze on public land). Pat, don't you remember the egg recall and why they were recalled and that Jack De Coster has not spent one day in jail? If I dumped De Coster's kind of pollution in your yard I would go to jail!

I heard the Vice Chair of Iowa Heritage Foundation speak so powerfully why we should vote for our Land and Water proposal, saying Farm Bureau is the only opposition. FB represents people like Jack De Coster. The tea party is helping sway this election because of the billions of dollars from special interest who want no regulation for air and water pollution or toxins in our food. Donations to environmental supporter candidates from Sierra Club members, many retired and on fixed incomes, and all the other environmental groups put together, can't match the funding from billionaires like Charles and David Koch--oil men from KS. Pat we are outspent by tea party supporters by billions of dollars!

The final insult on our journey through KS was at a rest stop West of Salina. Tourist information at the rest stop--remember this is a federal highway, ended with "The tall grass prairie was a desert that the people of Kansas turned into the breadbasket of America". Pat, please explain why you think the tea party makes common sense? Phyllis Mains