By KHI News Service

Tuesday, June 24, arrived like most mornings in Finney County. The only difference – humidity levels were high and the dew point skied off the chart.

Two inches of rain the last couple days after nearly four years of drought concerned veteran farmer Dwane Roth. He believed conditions were ripe for a serious storm.

Shortly after noon, a cloud bank began forming on the northern horizon. Throughout the afternoon it gradually moved closer and closer to his fields north of Highway 50.  At 3:45, the rain began falling slow and easy.

But not for long. In little more than a minute marble-sized hail stones dropped straight down. A couple minutes later, hail the size of golf balls started blowing horizontally.

Within five minutes, the sky turned white and the wind blew so hard visibility dropped to less than 100 feet. Reports of hail a foot deep were not uncommon.

The white combine (hail) left a swath of destruction seven miles long and five miles wide approximately eight miles northwest of Holcomb. The aftermath was devastating.

Wheat ready for harvest was hammered by the storm. The next day, the heads, stripped clean by the hail, drooped in the bright morning sun. Plump, golden berries covered the ground between rows and the promise of a 70 bushel-per-acre irrigated crops evaporated as the white combine reaped its wrath.

A beautiful, chest-high corn crop also met a similar fate. Stalks lay twisted and broken while the leaves were left torn and tattered. Some of the crop lay pummeled into the soil and the corn left standing stood less than knee high.

Bruised and battered corn stalks are prone to disease, especially when they’re growing as fast like they are at this time, Roth said. Stock rot and lodging could result in major losses.

“My dad always told me after a bad storm you should take off and go fishing for a week, but he never did.”

One veteran farmer pulled up in his pickup, stepped out and looked to the west at one of his fields of corn.

“It looked pretty crappy,” he said. “My dad always told me after a bad storm you should take off and go fishing for a week, but he never did.”

When asked how he slept the night after the storm and before he could survey the damage the next morning, he replied while interjecting some patented western Kansas humor.

“I slept just fine,” he smiled. “I’m a good Catholic with a clean conscience and we always sleep well – even after farming for nearly 50 years.”

Then he added as he cocked his head to the right and looked me squarely in the eyes, “I’d much rather be looking at this crop than looking at you, if you were my doctor, telling me I had six weeks to live.”

Always able to look at the bigger picture, many of the Finney County farmers surveying the damage believed their corn crop would come back. Some even hoped they’d harvest at least half a crop if no more hail hit their farms.

With years of farming under their belts, most of these farmers understand that by the end of June there’s little they can do but wait and see how the rest of the growing season pans out.

“This is usually the way it goes out here,” Roth said rolling the battered corn stalk in his hands. “When you come out of a drought you’re going to get some significant weather. So many times the results aren’t what you hope for.”

And what about the drought that has lasted for years, especially in southwestern Kansas?

“You know they say farmers are the eternal optimists and I’m hoping it’s over, Roth says. “I’m not certain it is. But hey – I’m breathing, we’re going to be okay.”

John Schlageck, a Hoxie native, is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon will be leading a panel discussion about employing military veterans during a National Governors Association conference this weekend.

Nixon is chairman of the association’s Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee.

On Saturday, he will be presiding over a discussion about how states can help veterans transition into civilian jobs. The event will include representatives from two St. Louis area businesses — Enterprise Holdings and Express Scripts — that have hired veterans through a Missouri initiative launched by Nixon in 2010.

Nixon spokesman Scott Holste says the governor left for the conference Thursday in Nashville, Tennessee.

The opening session Friday was featuring Vice President Joe Biden.

KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) — Health care companies say they’re losing millions of dollars that are tied up in appeals because of increasing numbers of Medicare audits. But a new report says the rise in the often duplicative audits has failed to reduce Medicare fraud.

A report released Wednesday by the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging reveals Medicare fraud in the fee-for-service program has steadily declined since 2009. But improper payments rose between from $30 billion to $36 billion between 2011 and 2012, according to the report that cites the most recent data available.

Around that same time, officials started using a $77 million technology screening system designed to fight fraud the way credit card companies scan charges and can freeze accounts.

Health care companies and other stakeholder are meeting with committee chairman Sen. Bill Nelson on Wednesday to discuss what they call burdensome audits and reviews.

HENRY C. JACKSON, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture says farmers and ranchers who suffered heavy livestock and grazing losses due to extreme weather in the past three years have been quick to take advantage of newly available disaster relief funds.

The agency said in a progress report released Wednesday that it has distributed more than $1 billion in relief funds — a little less than half the overall amount predicted in the recently passed farm bill — in just over three months.

The USDA says it has processed and delivered more than 106,000 payments to farmers in 40 states as of July 2.

The agency estimates it will spend $2.5 billion overall on disaster relief cases from 2011 to 2014.

WASHINGTON – Any Veterans Affairs employee found to have retaliated against a whistleblower would be fired under legislation announced today by U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill.

The announcement of McCaskill’s bill comes the day after the VA announced a restructuring of the Office of the Medical Inspector in the wake of an investigation that found the office covered up whistleblower complaints at numerous VA facilities.

“Whistleblowers are critical to our efforts to guard against waste and misconduct in government—and in the case of the VA, against the compromise of patient care,” said McCaskill, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial & Contracting Oversight, and a champion for whistleblower protections. “This bill requires the firing of any VA employee found to have retaliated against a whistleblower—no ifs, ands, or buts—and I’m hopeful it will be a step in the right direction to change the culture of the VA and ensure our veterans are receiving the highest level of care.”

The bill will require the termination of any employee found to have retaliated against a whistleblower. Currently, a finding of retaliation against a whistleblower in punishable by a range of procedures, including fines and reprimand.

McCaskill, the daughter of a World War II veteran, previously called for swift action and requested additional information from the Office of Special Counsel on its investigation of whistleblower retaliation by Veterans Affairs employees. OSC is currently investigating nearly 60 cases of whistleblower retaliation at the VA. McCaskill requested the information from OSC to determine the scope of the retaliation problem and protect future whistleblowers.

Last month, McCaskill used a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing to call for expanded whistleblower protections for intelligence contractors—to better protect those who blow the whistle on waste, fraud and abuse in the intelligence community. She also recently introduced bipartisan legislation to bolster the independence of the National Security Agency’s Inspector General—in part by requiring the office to conduct annual reviews of whistleblower protections for agency employees and contractors, and provide recommendations to improve those mechanisms.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas health officials say a person from the Kansas City area has died of a rare infection caused by an amoeba that lives in freshwater lakes and rivers.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said Friday it’s only the state’s second known case of a person contracting primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, or “PAM.”

The agency identified the person who died as a resident of Johnson County but did not give other details. Officials said the person had been exposed to several bodies of fresh water in Kansas.

PAM is typically contracted when the amoeba enters the nose of someone diving or swimming underwater and travels to the brain.

The infection is not contagious among people. It cannot be contracted from a properly maintained swimming pool.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), along with U.S. Representatives Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.), Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) and Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), have requested that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) postpone Friday’s scheduled vote on reforms proposed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to E-Rate – a program intended to support communications services for schools and libraries nationwide. Sen. Moran recently penned a column in The Wichita Eagle along with FCC member Ajit Pai, a Kansas native, outlining their serious concerns that the E-Rate program – which is meant to close the digital divide – is actually making it worse for rural schools. Sen. Moran and Commissioner Pai have proposed commonsense reforms, including simplifying the application process and providing certainty to schools, which could fix that.

Please find the full text of the letter to Chairman Wheeler below:

Chairman Wheeler,

We write to express concerns about the E-Rate modernization plan that will soon be considered by the Commission. We share the goal of providing every American student an opportunity to obtain a 21st Century education, including access to broadband, but we are concerned the plan you have put forward warrants further deliberation.

When the E-Rate modernization plan was first proposed, the Commission touted the plan as a bipartisan effort to make commonsense changes to the program for the first time in 18 years. As the public has learned more about the FCC’s plan, significant bipartisan opposition to the plan has emerged. There is great benefit to simplifying the application process, transitioning the fund to support modern technology, and making certain both rural and urban schools can benefit while providing Americans the most value for their dollar. We are concerned the plan falls short on these goals.

American students deserve the tools necessary to compete in the digital economy for next-generation jobs. While modernizing the E-Rate program is critical to helping achieve that goal, the underlying policy is too important to quickly rush to a vote. We urge you to delay the vote on the E-Rate modernization plan so that the Commission can make certain the proposed changes will serve all American students in the most efficient and effective manner possible.