Quote of the Day -- On Patriotism

"We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.

Such is the logic of patriotism."

--Emma Goldman, "What is Patriotism?", 1908

Kansas Hits a Pretty Ugly List

There is a new 50 states ranking out just now, from Forbes Magazine, showing the top states people are moving into and the bottom ones, in effect, people are moving out of.

Kansas does not fare well

The U.S. States People Are Fleeing 

(And The Ones They Are Moving To)

On the list of states people are leaving, Kansas is in the top 5.

5. Kansas

Total Moves: 2,370
Percentage Moving Out: 56.7%

Let's see.

Bitter cold winter.  Blistering hot summers. No mountains. No oceans. Lots of famous, flat topography and geography. Tepid food and service in restaurants, being the Midwest.

And owned, for the last too many years, by Republicans, the Republican Party, Sam Brownback, the Koch brothers and the Right Wing who slashed taxes for the already wealthy and corporations and drained the state budget and those for schools.

Yeah.

I totally get that.

Another Huge "Gift" From President Trump and the Republican Party

Have you seen this yet?

U.S. national debt exceeds $21 trillion 

for first time 

About a year ago, President Trump pledged to eliminate the national debt "over a period of eight years." But for the first time in history, the national debt surpassed $21 trillion this week, according to the U.S. Treasury.

When Mr. Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017, the national debt was $19.9 trillion, according to U.S. Treasury data. Since then, the GOP-led Congress has passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill and a two-year spending deal which, together, are expected to drive the deficit and debt further upward. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates annual deficits could top $2.1 trillion per year in the next decade, which would send the national debt soaring even higher.

 
Is fiscal conservatism dead?

Republicans railed against the national debt level under the Obama administration, when it jumped from $10.6 trillion to $19.9 trillion, nearly doubling, but few have been as outspoken about the situation with Republicans controlling Capitol Hill and the White House.

Insane. Insanity. Fiscal insanity and irresponsibility.

They're spending their way to huge debt, after railing about over-spending and debt and deficits for the previous 8 years. 

And for what?

So they could hand over yet more of the nation's wealth to the already-wealthy and corporations with their big "trickle down economics" tax bill they just passed.

Nation and middle- and lower- and working-classes be damned.

Now they're coming after Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

We have GOT to vote these people out.

Link:

GOP tax cut plan would add $1.7 trillion 

to the deficit, CBO projects

Trump's and the Republicans' Tax Cuts for the Nation?

Did we learn nothing from the Kansas' Republican Party disaster that was their tax cuts for the already-wealthy and corporations so very recently?

Trump could learn from Kansas' flawed 

tax-reform experiment

Epic fail of Kansas' tax-cut plan offers 

a lesson for us all 

Kansas tax 'experiment' offers lessons to the nation

Eugene Robinson: Kansas' failed tax cuts a lesson

The Kansas Experiment Is Bad News 

For Trump's Tax Cuts

Economist's View: Paul Krugman: Charlatans, 

Cranks and Kansas

Kansas' tax cut failure an economic warning 

to Republicans

The Kansas Economic Experiment--and Hopefully, Lessons--Still Very Much in the News

The very, very failed Republican Party, Governor Sam Brownback "trickle down", "supply side economics" experiment they tried on Kansas from 2012 until just recently is still very much in the news just now. This time it's mentioned with a wise caution by Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

Enlarge

Zombies, Vampires and Republicans

Zombies have long ruled the Republican Party. The good news is that they may finally be losing their grip — although they may still return and resume eating conservative brains. The bad news is that even if zombies are in retreat, vampires are taking their place.

What are these zombies of which I speak? Among wonks, the term refers to policy ideas that should have been abandoned long ago in the face of evidence and experience, but just keep shambling along.

The right’s zombie-in-chief is the insistence that low taxes on the rich are the key to prosperity. This doctrine should have died when Bill Clinton’s tax hike failed to cause the predicted recession and was followed instead by an economic boom. It should have died again when George W. Bush’s tax cuts were followed by lackluster growth, then a crash. And it should have died yet again in the aftermath of the 2013 Obama tax hike — partly expiration of some Bush tax cuts, partly new taxes to pay for Obamacare — when the economy continued jogging along, adding 200,000 jobs a month.

Despite the consistent wrongness of their predictions, however, tax-cut fanatics just kept gaining influence in the G.O.P. — until the disaster in Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback promised that deep tax cuts would yield an economic miracle. What the state got instead was weak growth and a fiscal crisis, finally pushing even Republicans to vote for tax hikes, overruling Brownback’s veto.

And here's why it's so important to know and understand and learn the lessons from the Republican Party mess in and from Kansas. The learn and know seemingly nothing President Trump himself wants to institute a lot of these same "trickle down" ideas with his own tax plan. He wants to cut the taxes of the already-wealthy and corporations with his tax plan as well as with his/their "Trumpcare" replacement.

Republican Health Care Bill 

Delivers Big Tax Cut For The Rich

The ACHA Bill Is a Tax Cut 

for Rich Americans

Even the Republican Party's own news source, Fox, reports and admits what it is.

Buffett says AHCA is tax cut for the rich | Fox News

So for pity's sake, America. Let's learn the lessons of the economic boom from the Bill Clinton era when he raised taxes and the George W. Bush era, with its own huge economic downturn and deficits when he lowered taxes. These two, along with the glaring example and lessons from Kansas just now should teach us better.

Here's hoping.

Advertisement In Today's NYT All Kansans and Right Wingers and Americans Should See

There is a terrific, important, even, paid advertisement in today's New York Times on page 2 of the Review section from the President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten on Kansas and what Sam Brownback and his Republican Party did to it.

A free-market failure in the heartland 

Yes, we know Republicans in the Topeka statehouse finally, finally owned up to fiscal and economic reality recently and took back Governor Sam Brownback's and the Republican's 2012 tax cuts for the already-wealthy and corporations. But we need to learn from the nightmare experiment this turned out to be.

It was every supply-side economist’s dream: the promise of achieving economic nirvana by slashing taxes for the wealthy and corporations, and shrinking government. Except it became a nightmare for the people of Kansas, and now the Kansas Legislature has taken a big step toward waking up from it.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback turned his state into a laboratory for the most extreme form of trickle-down economics, promising that it would usher in an economic boom. It didn’t. It never has. Brownback’s five-year experiment caused state revenue to plummet, the deficit to explode, and painful spending cuts to be made—including cuts decimating public schools. Last week, a once-unlikely alliance stopped Brownback’s attempt to double down on his plan: Democratic and Republican lawmakers, urged on by parents, business people, civic activists and unions of working people.

And here's why it's so important to understand and remember what was attempted.

You would think that this revolt by Kansas’ citizens and legislators of both parties would send chills up supply-siders’ spines nationwide. But the essential tenets of Brownback’s plan remain at the center of the tax proposals (link is external) championed by President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Granted, these free-market tenets are well-established conservative orthodoxy. But, as the Kansas experiment demonstrates, they offer a false promise and lead not to prosperity but to deep austerity.

Not only is Kansas an excellent lesson on the hazards of "supply-side economics", but the opposite tactics in government has resulted in much different and far better conditions and in more than one state.

Another Midwest state has taken a different approach, one that invested in its future. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton raised taxes on upper-income individuals and businesses several years ago. Was the move kryptonite to the state’s economy, as Brownback and his fellow tax-cutters would have you believe? To the contrary. Minnesota has the fastest-growing economy in the Midwest, and the state is projecting a $1.65 billion surplus for the next two years. California and New York have chosen similar paths and are growing at twice the rate of Kansas.

So Kansans, Missourians, everyone, in fact, across the nation, for the love of God and all that is good, let's learn these very, very fresh lessons from Republican Governor Sam Brownback, his Republican, supply-side cohorts and the 

Let's not let this President Trump and Paul Ryan and their supply-siders try to pull this again, this time on the entire nation.

Links:

What happened after California raised taxes and Kansas cut them

Robert Reich (California versus Trumpland)

Kansas cut taxes, California raised them. What happened

How Kansas and California Debunked 

the GOP's Tax Cuts Argument

Fantastic Kansas News Tonight!

News just broke:

Kansas Legislators Repudiate Governor 

by Overriding Tax Veto

House, Senate override veto; 

tax bill to become law

It took five years of creating nothing but debt and bad budgets and red ink all across Kansas, from Topeka and the statehouse, out to schools and universities and all the state offices but fiscal reality finally, finally hit the Kansas Republican legislators.

It would be so nice now if all Republicans and Right Wingers would stop pushing and promoting "trickle down economics" where they think, if you give enough tax breaks to the already-wealthy and corporations, it will get down to the rest of America and Americans.

It won't happen but it would be nice.

America, Who You Are, In Three Statistics

America, I don't think you know who you are.

Oh, sure, you kind of know but I don't think you're really looking at yourself and seeing who and what you are.

So with that in mind, America, Americans, I give you three--just three--statistics, just three facts that really show who you are, what you support and what you're about. Forsooth:

Number one.  Health care.

Once again, U.S. has most expensive, least effective health care

US Spends More on Health Care Than Other High-Income Nations But  Has Lower Life Expectancy, Worse Health

U.S. Healthcare: Most Expensive and Worst Performing

Our health care and health care system is, far and away, the most expensive health care system in the world, bar none.

For all we pay, we have lousy health and even extremely poor health outcomes.

Of the top 17 industrialized nations, we have the worst mortality rates. Translation: We die sooner than the 16 nations before us on that list.

Second, number two of our statistics, on top of all that spending and costs, we are ranked number 31, in 31st place in life expectancy, internationally. Check it out.

List of countries by life expectancy

Of the 30 nations ahead of us on this list of life expectancy, all have universal health care. Imagine that. Oh, yeah, and most are---GASP--SOCIALIST nations. Heaven forbid, right?

Third and finally, there is this statistic and fact, America. Again, this is who you are.

U.S. Military Spending Dwarfs Rest of World

US Spends More on Military Than Next Seven Countries Combined

How Military and Education Spending Compare in America

US spends more on military than next 8 nations combined

These, my fellow Americans, are your--our--priorities.

Sure, we bemoan our students and schools failing and sure, we lament our health care is outrageously high--so high we can't afford it and that it's also the number one cause of bankruptcy in the nation. And yes, we don't have enough money, we think and say, for our roads and bridges and highways and sewers and airports and infrastructure or anything else, really, but BY GOD, WE HAVE BILLIONS AND TRILLIONS FOR "DEFENSE"! Nobody has more money for bombs and jets and warships or blows things up better than us.

So there you go, America. In three quick little "nutshells", so to speak, this is who and what you are.

Apparently, you think this is all not just a good idea but that it's also somehow sustainable.

Links:  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

Gross, wasteful defense spending

The 10 Most Blatantly Wasteful Defense Items

Our Obscene, Huge, Immoral Defense Spending

Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion 

in bureaucratic waste

The Pentagon Could Reach a Historic Level 

of Wasteful Spending

5 Insanely Wasteful Projects the Pentagon 

is Spending Your Money

Our Obscene, Huge, Immoral Defense Spending

Nearly half of states are facing budget shortfalls. 

Here’s why that matters.

The Most Expensive Presidency Ever?

I saw this article today out on FB:

Trump Tower security is costing the 

US taxpayer $400000 every single day

There are so many things about this to know and keep in mind, it's pretty stunning.

That figure alone, $400,000 per day---nearly one half million dollars a day for security for the man in the White House who has not divested and who will not divest from his portfolio, Emoluments Clause or no.

Screw you, America. He has money to make.

Forget that it could--and likely would--cloud his decision making for and on the nation. He and his money are far too important to be bothered with our legality and laws.

Second, think about this. Do some math.

$400,000 per day turns out to be--wait for it--146 million dollars per year.

Just for this President. And only because he won't, again, divest himself of his business portfolio and hey, it's more fun flying back to NEW YORKE SITTY so he can be in his own tower on whatever floor, surrounded by very tacky, lowbrow gold furniture and furnishings.

New Yorkers have to love the inconvenience of having this bonehead in town, too, don't you know? Blocking the streets, making traffic yet more impassable. It must be even more awful.

Then, let's do some more math, fellow Americans.

Over four years---if, God forbid, he makes it that long, given what we've seen of the first two weeks--Mr. Trump and his very reckless, impetuous presidency would cost us, cost you and I, cost the nation 584 million dollars.

Just to keep his tower, his building and him, secure.

That's just under two thirds of a billion dollars.

For security.

For this one President.

Understand and keep in mind not just that this is unprecedented (spelled and used correctly here, please note), but how completely unprecedented this all is. No president has ever needed or required or asked for this kind of security and protection. We've never had this kind of additional, unnecessary expense before. 

This, on top of the fact that Mr. Trump never divested of his business holdings, make this one of the most dangerous and expensive presidencies in the history of the nation, without question.  It's a dangerous presidency because of the risks we incur getting him in and out of New York City but also because of those same risks just having him there, fulfilling his selfish whims.

That it's the most expensive presidency we have ever seen or will likely ever see is shown just in the math, above.

So much for Right Wingers, "Conservatives" and Republicans wanting to be the government of small spending, eh?

Jeff City Republicans Seem to Want To Go Down the Kansas Deficit Rabbithole

What is it about these Republicans down in Jefferson City? 

You'd think they could and would look just across the state line, to Kansas and their budgets and budget problems since 2012 with their "trickle down economics" tax cuts for the already-wealthy and corporations and learn their lessons. 

New Revenue Numbers Grow the Kansas 

Budget Deficit

Kansas budget still facing $348 million shortfall

New revenue numbers show growing 

Kansas budget deficit 

Kansas is still bleeding, thanks to 

tea party economics

And these were just some of the ugly, unnecessary results:

S&P drops Kansas credit rating, citing 

lack of cash reserves

Kansas' credit rating on negative watch at S&P

S&P Downgrades Kansas' Credit Rating, Again

Under Brownback, Kansas' credit faces 

another downgrade

And there's been plenty of evidence that the path they chose for taxes was a mistake, too, those Kansas Republicans.

How Kansas and California Debunked 

the GOP's Tax Cuts Argument

What happened after California raised taxes 

and Kansas cut them

California Raised Taxes, Economy Grew 4.1%; Kansas Lowered Taxes, Economy Grew 0.2%

So, with all that history, from 2012, when the Kansas Republicans set all this in motion, to today, do you think Missouri Republicans in our statehouse in Jefferson City would take any and all of it into consideration and respond accordingly?

Wouldn't you?

Oh, heck no. Take a look. This just hit from Yael Abouhalkah on his blog.

ERIC GREITENS SLICES MISSOURI BUDGET, FAILS TO BLAST GOP’S IRRESPONSIBLE TAX CUTS

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens on Monday slashed $146 million from the current budget — more than half coming from higher education spending — to try to keep it balanced for the fiscal year.

Missourians and Kansans, both, naturally want to have good education systems but where do state representatives slash the money from when they've screwed up the budget? You guessed it, education. Wonderful. To heck with you students and the state's future, we've got budget cuts to make---for our irresponsibility.

Yael goes on to point out:

...for a guy who keeps telling people he’s going to be a truth-teller, someone not beholden to the old ways of doing business in Jefferson City, Greitens partly misled the public about why he had to do that.

In a message delivered on Twitter, the new Republican chief executive trotted out Obamacare and the “previous administration” as the main culprits for these detailed cuts. Wrong — at least for the most part.

In reality, the budget was approved by the GOP-dominated General Assembly. That’s right: Greitens’ own party.

Plus, slow revenue growth has caused some of Missouri’s problems. That’s not because of former Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon or the Affordable Care Act.

That gets us to this inconvenient fact for Greitens and the GOP.

One of the main problems with the current budget has been a collapse in corporate tax revenue. The tax collections dropped more than $150 million last year and are down an estimated $65 million more this year. Why?

Because bills passed in 2013 and 2015 have made it easier for some businesses “to reduce their Missouri tax liability,” according to this detailed explanation from the Missouri Budget Project.

And things could get even worse in the next fiscal year budget, which Greitens plans to unveil in February.

That’s because even more Republican-approved tax cuts (over the veto of Nixon) are expected to kick in by then. The tax reductions could slice state revenues by $50 million in the first year, which isn’t a huge deal.

But the GOP-passed bill calls for bigger tax cuts as the years roll by. The Missouri Budget Project says the fully implemented bill could cost the state “at least $620 million a year….”

The hardest hit in Greiten’s message were major state universities, with up to $76 million in cuts.

Apparently, new Missouri Governor Greitens is being a good, political party Republican so he's not knocking anyone in his party or their actions. That's all well and good but once again, these people need to put their constituents first, not that political party.

So these Republicans, both in Washington and in the state capitols are still, still, to this day bent on, as I said above, "trickle down economics" and how they think it will work. Just to give yet one more huge example of how it doesn't and how it, instead, creates huge deficits, check out red state Oklahoma's current experience:

Oklahoma budget shortfall nearly 

$900 million: report - Business Insider

And again, where do they take the money?

$900 million budget shortfall expected 

to impact Oklahoma education

They, Republicans, don't learn. They want to keep slashing taxes for the already-wealthy and corporations, promising it will create jobs and tax revenue.

It doesn't. It patently, absolutely does not. It does neither.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is "trickle down economics", let there be no doubt.

Links:

Yael T. Abouhalkah

Yael on the Trail – Opinions from the Midwest

What Trump's Proposed Economic Plans Already Did To Kansas and Oklahoma

Donald Trump's plans of cutting taxes further for businesses and corporations and the already-wealthy have already, famously been tried before. Heck, we've seen this for some time, right next door in Kansas, since 2012 and Governor Sam Brownback's and the Republican's "trickle down economics."

Kansas expects budget shortfall 

around $350 million this fiscal year

As if that isn't and hasn't been horrible enough, check out what the rocket scientist Republicans have done in their beloved red state Oklahoma.

Oklahoma budget hole nearly $900 million

And besides these plans, of cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, Mr. Trump also wants to beef up our military and their budget, as though they don't waste millions and billions enough already.

Trump appears to subtweet Putin as both express desire to beef up nuclear capabilities

US Army fudged its accounts by trillions 

of dollars, auditor finds

So get ready, America. Those pesky, hard-headed Republicans, with their ideas of shoveling yet more money to corporations and again, the already-wealthy and the military are now coming at the entire nation.

God help us all.

And thanks, Republicans, once again, in advance!

How Dangerous Would/Will A Trump Presidency Be?

How bad could a Donald Trump presidency be, you ask?

This dangerous.

From Professor Robert Reich's Facebook page today.

Trump has named Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) as his director of the Office of Management and Budget. Among Mulvaney’s chief duties will be overseeing the most dramatic overhaul of the nation’s tax code since President Ronald Reagan – cutting taxes on corporations from 35% to 15% and on wealthy individuals. 

How will Mulvaney accomplish this while avoiding larger budget deficits? By cutting spending. Since Trump wants to increase military spending, where will those spending cuts come from? Medicare and Social Security.

Here are 4 things you need to know about Mulvaney:

1. When Mulvaney, 49, was elected to Congress in 2010, he quickly staked out ground as one of Congress’s most outspoken fiscal hawks — playing a key role in the 2011 showdown between President Obama and House Republicans that ended in the passage of strict budget caps.

2. Mulvaney is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about three dozen conservative hard-liners that has used its leverage to push Republican leaders to the right, and pushed House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) out of power in 2015.

3. Mulvaney is also an advocate of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

4. Mulvaney is a close ally of Paul Ryan (who wants to turn Medicare into vouchers) and of Scott Pruitt (Trump’s pick to head Health and Human Services, who wants to repeal Obamacare).

So if you like 

--cutting tax rates for the already-wealthy because, hey, they need more money, right?

--and cutting taxes still farther for corporations because why should they have to help pay for the nation's infrastructure?

--and if you like the idea of increasing our military spending still further because hey, we only outspend the rest of the nation's military budgets several times over. Let's go bigger!

--and if you like huge, multi-billion dollar budget deficits 

--and if you think cutting Medicare so Americans get still less medical needs met

--and if you think cutting Social Security to grandma and grandpa is a good idea because hey, they're moochers....

THIS IS THE PLAN FOR YOU, AMERICA!

Why be fiscally responsible?

If you like the Kansas "trickle down economics" and their results, with all the budget deficits--$359 million, to date---you're going to LOVE the Donald Trump administration.

Let's never forget, too, folks---these are Republicans. This is the Republican Party doing this to you, to us all. They did it to Kansas and now they want to do it to America.

Links:

The Dangers of Donald Trump

Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?

The clear and present danger of Donald Trump

The dangerous fantasy behind Trump's normalisation

Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy

The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump

Trump's Choice For Budget Director Doesn't Understand Debt Ceiling Default

On Those Kansas', Republican Tax Cuts

Seth Myers gets it right on Kansas' Republican tax cuts and the wider implications for possible our national, fiscal  future, given what Republican candidates for the presidency are still proposing.

The Failed Brownback/Republican Experiment That Is Kansas Gets Yet More National Press

When your very failing and failed economic and taxation policies of and for your state cut the state's financial coffers drastically so you have to cut state spending budgets and steal money from children's funds, literally, you're bound to get some press. Bad press. We've seen it repeatedly, understandably, coming out of Kansas.

Well, they just got more today, this time from The New York Times and economist Paul Krugman.

The Time-Loop Party

...there’s the assertion that taxing the rich has terrible effects on economic growth, and conversely that tax cuts at the top can be counted on to produce an economic miracle.

This doctrine was tested more than two decades ago, when Bill Clinton raised tax rates on high incomes; Republicans predicted disaster, but what we got was the economy’s best run since the 1960s. It was tested again when George W. Bush cut taxes on the wealthy; Republicans predicted a “Bush boom,” but actually got a lackluster expansion followed by the worst slump since the Great Depression. And it got tested a third time after President Obama won re-election, and tax rates at the top went up substantially; since then we’ve gained eight million private-sector jobs.

Oh, and there’s also the spectacular failure of the Kansas experiment, where huge tax cuts have created a budget crisis without delivering any hint of the promised economic miracle.

With all this coverage of the debacle that is Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's and his Republican Party's rather large economic and governing failure, how long will it be until Kansans finally, finally wake up and vote all those people out of office over there in Topeka?

It can't be soon enough those poor things.

Kansas Republicans in Topeka Have Their Priorities Set

Indeed, those Kansas Republicans over in Topeka, from the Governor all through the state capitol, surely have their priorities set. In stone.

Years ago now, they cut taxes for the already-wealthy and corporations, raised them on the middle- and lower- and so, working-classes and set about just the chain of events they wanted. They were sure it would produce grand, paying results for the state. So the economists said they'd be wrong! So what?

Turns out, as we've found, as the same economists predicted, the economists were, in fact, correct and those same Right Wing legislators were dead wrong. Colossally, fiscally wrong:

Kansas faces nearly $120 million shortfall 

for fiscal year

Gov. Sam Brownback will pull money from the state’s highway fund and other sources after state economists projected a $118 million budget shortfall Friday.

Even after those adjustments, the state is projected to have a cash balance of $5.6 million at the end of June and to face a shortfall of $175.6 million for 2017, the economists said.

Asked whether the state is in the red, Budget Director Shawn Sullivan replied: “Depends on what you look at. We’re basically at zero right now, so yes.”

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said the Legislature would start the 2016 session “basically where we were at the beginning of the 2015 session,” facing the question of how to right the state’s finances.

Lawmakers ended a record-long session in June by increasing sales taxes to cover a budget deficit caused in large part by income tax cuts...

...The latest shortfall comes after sales tax revenue fell short of projections. The state’s economists lowered the estimate for sales tax revenue by $91 million for the year while lowering the estimate for overall revenue by $159 million.

As for just a glimmer of what this means for Kansas, the article goes on:

Brownback will make a combination of budget cuts and funding sweeps to balance the budget.

He will take $50 million from the Kansas Department of Transportation. Sullivan said this would not affect previously announced highway projects.

He also will take $9 million from the Children’s Initiative Fund, which goes to support early childhood programs such as Early Head Start.

Sullivan said this would not affect the programs’ funding for this year. But the advocacy group Kansas Action for Children said that this would affect long-term funding for children’s programs, which have been cut in recent years...

...Brownback will also sweep $5 million from the Kansas Bioscience Authority, a quasi-governmental agency meant to spur investment in the biotech sector. The Eagle reported in July that the KBA was already on the brink of collapse and halting new investment in the face of reduced state funding.

As for Kansas schools, you might ask?

The governor made no cuts to education, but Scott Rothschild, spokesman for the Kansas Association of School Boards, said that the budget news was still a cause for concern for schools.

“The future doesn’t look good. We’re going to have to keep our eye on this,” he said. “Obviously, we have tax cuts that were implemented that have put us in a perpetual budget crisis.”

Then there's this budget cut:

Budget Shift Will Cut Childhood Program Funds

An advocacy group says a budget adjustment that took $9 million from Kansas’ Children’s Initiatives Fund will mean a cut in money promised to 20 children’s programs.

The Kansas City Star reports a review by Kansas Action for Children says the budget adjustment will cost early childhood grant programs about 6.5 percent in funding for fiscal year 2016 and about 3 percent in fiscal year 2017.

Stealing from children. And the poor. Nice, huh? Real Christians, those, eh?

But did they take care of themselves? Did the Republican legislators over there in Topeka make sure they, themselves were taken care of? Why don't be silly! OF COURSE they did!

Kansas legislators get 8.5 percent raise 

in allowance

Check out this wonderful stuff:

Kansas lawmakers quietly and automatically got an 8.5 percent raise in their allowance last month.

The raise is because of an escalator clause in state law that has increased lawmakers’ daily “subsistence payments” by more than 28 percent through the past seven years of fiscal woes, employee pay freezes and cuts in other government departments.

The payments, also known as per diem, are the set amount lawmakers get to pay their living expenses each day they work in Topeka.

As of Oct. 1, it’s $140 a day, up from $129.

The per diem payments are actually about 45 percent more than legislators earn in salary, and the money is theirs to keep and spend however they want.

For the legislators, those automatic raises in per diem essentially represent an increase in their compensation, without them having to make the politically difficult floor vote to raise their salaries.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article44382441.html#storylink=cpy

So first, they got a pay raise. 

Second, it's automatic. They don't have to have a messy---and possibly reported on---vote about it.

Third and finally, whatever they don't spend, they get to keep. Not like in the business sector, which these people say they like to emulate. If they don't spend it, they get to stash it.

Can you imagine getting $140 per day from your boss for "expenses", on top of your pay? Wouldn't that be a sweet deal? You think you wouldn't "brown bag" it to work or eat on the cheap so you could keep that for yourself?

Don'tcha just love government representatives like these?

Don'tcha just love "small government", Right Wing, Republican legislators who always harp how they're "for the people" and low spending?

Don'tcha just love Kansans who vote for these people?

Doesn't it make you want to move and live there?

Additional links:

Yael T. Abouhalkah: Kansas lawmakers' allowance increases faster than teachers' pay and, well, almost everything else

Where Republicans Went Wrong in Kansas