6A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2006
》 KU MED
More than $1 million raised to help cancer patients
KU Medical Center plays host to Treads and Threads benefit
BY ANNA FALTERMEIER
In its most successful money-making year to date, Treads and Threads, an annual benefit for the University of Kansas Medical Center, earned more than $1 million, only $300,000 less than the event's past four years combined.
Proceeds from Treads and Threads will go to the hospital's Cancer Center. This year's event celebrated the 100th anniversary of the hospital.
Country singer LeAnn Rimes headlined the sold out event Saturday night at the Kansas Speedway, located in Kansas City, Kan.
KMBC-TV anchor Larry Moore enceded the event. Moore, a cancer survivor, has enceded Treads and Threads since its first year in 2002.
"Every dollar that we raise here helps to reduce the chance of cancer and helps to increase the likelihood of survival." Moore said.
About 15 years ago Moore underwent treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer, at the University of Kansas Hospital.
"When you go through a challenge like that it's a challenge that you can't really describe," Moore said. "It's a life-changing challenge
Anna Faltermieer/KANSAN
and once you survive there really is an oblitation to give back."
Alicia Reed volunteered to work at Treads and Threads with her husband and sister this year. Reed said she has several family members who have suffered from cancer.
The event was catered by 23 Kansas City metro area restaurants. Besides performances from Rimes and the Chicago's Bill Pollack Group, a fireworks display and rides around the track were part of the night's entertainment.
Single passes for the event were
$175. Patron passes were $275 each.
"Everybody either knows somebody or is related to somebody who has cancer; it's so pervasive in modern society," Reed said. "I think research is the way to go."
The money raised at the event will benefit the Midwest Prostate Center, in Chicago, Ill., expand the Patient Resource Center in KU's Cancer Center and go toward educational training for cancer care team members.
Kansan staff writer Anna Faltermeier can be contacted at afaltermeier@kansan.com.
Country star LeAnn Rimes performs at the Kansas Speedway Friday night during the fifth annual Treads and Threads benefit for the University of Kansas Hospital. This year's sold out event garnered more than $1 million for the hospital's cancer center. This is by far a record amount of proceeds for the event. In the previous four years combined proceeds were $1.3 million. More than 3,000 people attended and 107 sponsors made contributions.
Edited by Kate Shipley
》 ELECTION
Governor, challenger trade 'personal barbs'
Candidates meet Saturday for their first debate, disagree on school finance
BY ROXANA HEGEMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
HUTCHINSON — Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Republican challenger Jim Barnett drew starkly different pictures of the Kansas economy Saturday in their first debate ahead of November's election.
Sharing a stage at the Kansas State Fair, the Democratic incumbent and the GOP state senator from Emporia also clashed on school finance, and traded some personal barbs.
Supporters of Sebelius outnumbered Barnett's backers in an audience of more than 2,000, with the governor's crowd chanting "four
more years" and drowning out Barnett with boos at times.
Also on hand were two abortion opponents in cockroach costumes and Sebelius masks pretending to be the governor's campaign mascot. The display was meant to bring attention to allegedly unsanitary conditions at abortion clinics — a connection few in the crowd seemed to understand.
"You have to ask yourself: Are we better off today than we were four years ago?" Sebelius, elected to her first term in 2002, told the audience.
"Our economy was struggling," she added. "We had a billion-dollar deficit. Our schools had been neglected for years by the Legislature.
And our health and safety concerns had been overlooked."
She said Kansas now has a "robust economy," and she credited a top-to-bottom review of government spending that she ordered in 2003 for helping the state avoid a tax increase. She also took credit for bringing legislators together to make a commitment to public schools.
"We are on the path of a real economic boom in Kansas," Sebelius said. "And that shows up with the U.S. Department of Commerce saying we are moving ahead of the nation, we are moving ahead of neighboring states."
Barnett disagreed, repeatedly
asserting the Kansas economy was not doing as well as neighboring states or the nation in general. He said Kansas should have better-paying jobs.
"Why is our economy lagging behind? Why haven't we not been keeping up? The number one issue business will tell you is the high taxation state we live in," Barnett said.
He vowed if elected to abolish estate taxes, give businesses a 10 percent investment tax credit and boost the income tax exemption for dependents by $500.
Lindsey Bauman/THE HUTCHINSON NEWS
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, left, speaks alongside her Republican challenger State Sen. Jim Barnett (R-Emporia) during a debate held at the Farm Bureau Arena on the Kansas State Fairgrounds on Saturday in Hutchinson. The debate is the first of four planned before the election.
Sebelius responded that Kansas already will be phasing out its estate tax over the next three years. And she noted a state law enacted this year eliminating inventory taxes on new business equipment and machinery that will spur greater investment by the state's businesses.
At one point in the debate, Barnett called the governor's recent trip to the U.S.-Mexican border a photo-op. Kansas National Guard troops had been sent there to help build a fence and patrol the border.
Sebelius shot back that Barnett did not understand the governor's role as commander.
School financing also proved a contentious topic. Legislators, responding to a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in a lawsuit brought by several school districts, approved a large increase this year in state funding.
Barnett said he would deal differently, with the court, "which is appropriating money, and it has no business appropriating money." He also said he would work to change the way Supreme Court justices are selected, so they would better reflect what he called Kansas values.
But Sebelius said the state has made a commitment to its school children, and it cannot back off.
Tribe tries to save endangered fox species
WILDLIFE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Native to Plains grasslands, the swift fox — small and speedy, averaging less than 10 pounds — disappeared over the decades from entire swaths of North American habitat, including the 221,000-acre reservation of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe
in central South Dakota
"We don't have any foxes on the reservation," said biologist Shaun Grassel, who led the tribe's team. About two-thirds of South Dakota is the animal's historical range, Grassel added, but "for a variety of reasons, they pretty much went extinct."
Setting up camp Sept. 1 at Scott State Park in Logan County, the team spent several days trapping 20 male and 20 female swift foxes. Once caught, each animal is vaccinated and has a blood sample drawn.
The tribe's effort is the third
"We're all independent." Grassel said, "but we're all working together. We're all doing things simultaneously."
in South Dakota. The Turner Endangered Species Fund and the Badlands National Park are also working to reintroduce the fox.
The tribe's project has been in the works since 2004, when Grassel first looked at the feasibility of the effort. That's when he made contact with other states, including Kansas, that have surplus populations of the swift fox.
Before he could start trapping, Grassel needed a permit from the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. He had nothing but positive words for the agency and for the state, which — like South Dakota — is a member of the Swift Fox Conservation Team.
"Kansas has been wonderful to work with," Grassel said. "They didn't require any other wildlife species in return."
This year's expedition was the first of what Grassel expects; will be several trapping trips.
GOVERNMENT
U.S. Vice President Cheney defends invasion in Iraq
BY TOM RAUM ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday defended his lightning-rod role as a leading advocate for invading Iraq, for a warrantless surveillance program and for harsh treatment of suspected terrorists.
"Part of my job is to think about the unthinkable, to focus what in fact the terrorists may have in store for us." Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" when asked about his "dark side."
Cheney said he now recognizes that the insurgency in Iraq was not "in its last threes," as he said in May 2005. "I think there no question
"It's still difficult. Obviously, major, major work to do is ahead of us. But the fact is.
"I think there is no question that we did not anticipate an insurgency that would last this long."
Cheney disputed that he ever directly said Saddam had any role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I think we've done a pretty good job of securing the nation against terrorists. You know, we're here on the fifth anniversary (of the 9/11 attacks). And there has not been another attack on the United States. And that's not an
accident, because we've done a hell of a job here at home," Cheney said in the broadcast interview. "I don't know how much better you can do than no, no attacks for the past five years."
He said the U.S. had done a good job on "homeland security, in terms of the terrorist surveillance program we put in place, the financial tracking we put in place, and because of our detainee policy"
He defended his past statements both on links between Iraq and the al-Qaida network, and on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, saying the pro-
Cheney challenged polls suggesting that a majority of people in the United States do not believe the Bush administration's claim that the war in Iraq is the central front in the fight against terrorism.
Cheney shrugged off news reports that his influence was waning, partly as a result of foreign policy miscalculations and partly as other advisers, especially Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, were getting more attention from President Bush.
the world is better off today with Saddam Hussein out of power. Think where wed be if he was still there." Chenev said.
DICK CHENEY Vice President
Rice told "Fox News Sunday" that these stories float around Washington — who's up, who's down. The vice president remains a crucial adviser to the president. His role is different than my role. ... These stories are simply ridiculous."
The vice president said the reports were about as valid "as the ones that said I was in charge of everything."
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nouncements were based on the best intelligence he had at the time. No such weapons were found, nor is there clear evidence of links between Saddam's government and
The vice president was asked on NBC whether there were more terrorists in the world now than there were before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"It's hard to say. Hard to put a precise number on it," Cheney said.
Asked whether the U.S. still would have invaded Iraq had the CIA told Bush and him that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction in 2003, Cheney answered yes. He said Iraq had the capability of obtaining such weapons and would have done so once U.N. penalties were eased. Democrats poured.
Cheney cited various statements by former CIA Director George Tenet, both on Iraqi links to al-Qaida and weapons programs, including Tenet's often-quoted comment to Bush that it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq had such weapons.
Osama bin Laden's organization.
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"Vice President Cheney's influence over our nation's foreign policy has made America less safe," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Vice President Cheney's appearance today proves that he just doesn't get it."
Host Tim Russert asked Cheney whether he should be relieved that the vice president did not show up for the interview with a shotgun.
"I wouldn't worry about it.
You're not in season" Cheney said.