The election season has been officially kicked off with our Walk the Vote event this past Saturday. Five hundred people came out to downtown Overland Park to meet candidates, meet each other, and walk with signs and chants to keep Kansas moving forward. It was a fantastic event, raised awareness and money for these elections, and served to set the stage for the primaries in August.

Welcome to the election. This past Friday was the deadline to both register to run for office in 2018, and also to change your existing party affiliation. If you're not registered to vote yet (and you're reading this? Welcome!) you can still register to vote in August if you do so by July 17. You can do so at ksvotes.org.

Happy Memorial Day, when we celebrate the sacrifices and patriotism of the men and women of our armed forces. The last few years, as we have been lead by those who want to "Make America Great Again," we've seen a rise in nationalistic attitudes often labeled "patriotism." At MainStream, we don't presume to know what makes a patriot, because love of country can be intensely personal, or intensely public.

We're in the final countdown to Walk the Vote on June 9. Sign up to show up here!

Not coming? Haven't donated? Here are some reasons you should.

As we begin to reflect on this past Kansas Legislative Session, and a possible Special Session to come, we are reminded that almost to a person, the legislators in Topeka have come to serve. We may disagree with their positions, sometimes vehemently, but they all chose, at one time, to serve the public. For that, we are grateful.

As we watched the Kansas Legislature vote for state-sanctioned discrimination of LGBT families last week, one Twitter user said, "This is not my Kansas." This is a state where, apparently, the religious beliefs of the majority trump civil rights. In this Kansas, the poor get higher food taxes while the rich get to itemize their charity giving. Here, public schools are demonized as inefficient (proven false), teachers are denied due process, and taxes go to parochial school scholarships. In Kansas, we want to eliminate the checks and balances of our government because judges dare protect the Constitution.

No, this is not our Kansas, either.

The Kansas Legislative Session is over. In the end, we saw some successes where MainStream's values are concerned, and some setbacks. What can you do now to make sure Kansas keeps moving forward?

Today marks the beginning of the last week of the Kansas Legislative Session. There are still three major topics to finish up: fixing the school finance bill "error," turning back the Senate's irresponsible tax cut bill, and passing the state's budget for the next fiscal year. Here's where we are on all of these topics.

Ask the Kansas Legislature to do right by schools and fix the education bill the right way! Do it today! They go back into session tomorrow!

• Ready to act now? Click to send email to your legislators and Leadership to fix the bill

By now you’ve heard about SB 423, the education finance bill that passed two weeks ago with an error resulting in most Kansas school districts getting less money than was intended by the bill. In total, this error reduces the amount for schools by $80 million. Some large districts, like SMSD, are slated to lose as much as $2 million, an amount described as catastrophic to schools.

This week we present a guest column by Heidi Holliday, Executive Director of the Kansas Center for Economic Growth. KCEG has been at the forefront of demystifying tax policy and promoting responsible fiscal solutions for Kansas, and has been a partner for MainStream in economic topics. At issue in this column, the bill passed by the Senate to refuse almost $500 million in taxes owed to Kansas due to the Federal tax cuts. Quite simply, Kansas cannot afford to turn this money away. And who would be receiving this "windfall?" Not the poorest of Kansans. Not those who would most benefit from infrastructure jobs, a lowered sales tax on food, fully funded public education, or a stronger safety net. They claim taxes are theft? Just who is stealing from whom here?