Kansans! You Need to Watch This Video!

Yes sir, all voting age Kansans should watch this brief but informative video just put out by young Davis Hammet of the Loud Light organization.

I've posted here before who Mr. Hammet is and what good work he does. He came to Kansas from Florida, of all places, and has been doing fantastic work educating now fellow Kansans on their state government. This is just one more of his excellent videos.



Once you've watched it, you'll know more about your government, what it's doing and which way you maybe want to vote this Fall.

Link:

Loud Light

Kansas' Governor Brownback Finally Gets At Least One Thing Right

I can't think of one thing--not one--Kansas Governor Sam Brownback or his Republican cohorts have gotten right in that state in the last several years.

They infamously pulled the tired, old, failed "trickle down economics" wherein taxes for the wealthy and corporations are slashed so "jobs will be created."

Brownback cuts higher ed funding

Kansas slashes annual tax revenue 

estimate $159 million

Governor Sam Brownback's tax reforms 

cast as 'failure'

Only it never took place, as we warned, as we predicted and as is now shown by the states drained coffers. The same Republicans are taking money from children and schools and school budgets and the states pensioners, all because they went down this ignorant road.

I was sure the Guv could not and would not get anything right.

Fortunately for Kansans and now, even Missourians, he finally, finally got and did something good:

Brownback proposes truce in development border war

A bit from the article:

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback made a proposal Thursday to end the economic development border war with Missouri.

Brownback’s plan calls for both states to agree not to actively recruit companies in Wyandotte, Johnson, Leavenworth and Douglas counties in Kansas and Jackson, Clay, Platte, Cass and Ray counties in Missouri.

And thank goodness. This should have taken place years ago. It slashes budgets from schools and all kinds of very necessary government programs. It puts more burden for taxation on the middle and lower and working classes. And finally, it puts the companies in a kind of "catbird seat" where all they have to do is threaten to go across the state line. Then these cities and counties, as well as the state, throw themselves at their mercy and give up money they desperately need just to function.

Hopefully this goes through this time. A year and two ago, Missouri offered this but Kansas didn't take them up on it. Hopefully Missouri will now wisely reach out to this olive branch, of sorts, and stop giving away needed tax money.

Cross your fingers.

What Does Rex Sinquefield Gain By Messing With Kansas City?

So once again, rich, billionaire, St. Louisan Rex Sinquefield tries yet one more time to have Kansas Cititans vote on and, for him, hopefully do away with our 1% city tax.

Here's a guy who's from St. Louis, for pity's sake and a billionaire but he wants to mess with this city across the state, a city he doesn't even live in---and he's already wealthy---yet he has to mess with Kansas City and Kansas Citians and their taxes.

What is his gain in this?

Why doesn't he leave us alone? Why doesn't he leave us all alone?

Is this not one of the best, if not the best example of a wealthy person trying to have his way with the rest of the state, with the middle-, lower- and working-classes, if not the rest of the nation?

Trying to buy the state's next governor  with Catherine Hanaway and the next Lt. Governor as he's been trying to do, I understand. It's still  wrong and deeply so but that I understand.

What he gets,real or imagined, from draining Kansas City's tax coffers, thatI don't get.

Fantastic Documentary

Fantastic, even important film to see.



"We're not accusing you of being illegal. We're accusing you of being immoral."


Hundreds of billions of dollars.

Watch for it.

Are you paying attention, Kansas?

Kansas, a national laughingstock

Yes, Kansas is getting laughed at yet more in the media today and sadly but rightly so:

Jeff Melcher Really Worried That Grocery-Tax Cut Means People Will Never Buy Anything But Groceries

From the article:

The Kansas Senate has passed a measure that would cut the state sales tax on groceries from 6.3 percent to 4.95 percent, setting up what the Kansas City Star calls a "showdown with the [State] House," where "approval" of the plan "is questionable."

There are probably some compelling reasons to cut the sales tax on groceries. For instance, unemployed and impoverished Kansans might starve to death at a slightly lower rate. At the same time, there are probably some compelling reasons to maintain the sales tax on groceries at the current rate -- the revenues collected could provide state residents with services, like police, roads, bridges that don't collapse and the like.But as Raw Story's David Edwards reports, at least one Kansas lawmaker has come up with his own, bespoke concern about this measure:

A Republican state lawmaker in Kansas says that he opposes cutting the taxes on groceries because it would be a form of "social engineering" that encourages people to buy food over other items.

The Kansas Senate on Thursday voted to cut the state sales tax on food from 6.3 percent to 4.95 percent, but Sen. Jeff Melcher (R) led opposition against the measure, arguing that it would lead to people eating more.

"It seems to me we are encouraging the behavior of purchasing food and discouraging the behavior of purchasing anything else," Melcher reportedly told his colleagues.

Here are just two of the comments I saw this morning, in response to Senator Melcher's comments:

DUMB. ASS.

They have their own special kind of crazy going on in Kansas.

Kansans, you voted 'em in. It's up to you to vote them out.

Next time, vote in some smarter ones.

Maybe some that care more about the entire state and the middle- and lower-classes instead of the wealthy, the corporations and, oh yeah, the Koch brothers.

Kansas poor and their schools take another beating

Not just Kansas schools take a financial blow but the poorest of Kansas schools, at that:

Federal cuts announced for poorest Kansas schools

From the article:

School districts across the state received word Thursday of significant cuts to federal funding reserved for the highest-poverty schools.

What stuns me, besides the cuts in funding, is how this is even legal.

Forget that it's immoral and nearly unconscionable, how is this legal given that "separate but equal" was ruled patently unconstitutional, so many years ago?

In this case I'm not talking about schools for blacks vs. schools for whites, as the original Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education court ruling came out, I'm talking about schools for wealthy vs. schools for the poor.  That's what this seems to be also, further setting up, just as the school vouchers would, if we implement them.

You can't have one set of schools well-funded and the others stripped of that same equal level of funding. That's not just immoral, it's obscene and it should absolutely be illegal.

It just keeps getting worse over there in Kansas. First the governor gives tax breaks to the corporations and wealthy, then he and too many Republicans in Topeka propose raising the sales tax to make up for lost revenue which would nothing but hurt the poor and middle class, now this.

No one's going to WANT to be in Kansas, Dorothy.

And in the meantime, Representatives are trying to add in money for golf tournaments for themselves but no new, additional money for schools, yes they are:

Bring home the bacon: Budget funds staff hikes, golf events

I'm trying to decide if it's ignorance, stupidity or greed that's the source here. Regardless, chutzpah is definitely involved.

Breaking Kansas News

According to Kansas Representative Paul Davis on his Facebook page just now:

A few minutes ago, a three judge panel declared the current school finance funding unconstitutional. We're still reading through the ruling, but it appears that the court is ordering the Kansas Legislature to restore per-pupil funding to $4,492 by FY2014.

As he said, that is some big news. 

This will make Governor Brownback and all his Republican cohorts in the Legislature have to go back and come up with a big pile of money.

So much for those brilliant tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, eh, Sam? 

 Link:  Paul Davis

An important read most Americans won't see

From economist Robert Reich today, from his Facebook page. Since most won't read it due to length, anyway, maybe at least read the parts in bold type:

I'm amazed how little attention official Washington pays to a large and growing segment of our workforce. Lower-wage workers -- people earning under $25,000 a year -- are invisible in our capital city. As a result, the drama in Washington over the “fiscal cliff” isn't understood as being connected to the strikes and work stoppages among America’s lowest-paid workers at Walmart, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Domino’s Pizza.

But the connection is important. Here's why.

Jobs are slowly returning to America, but most of them pay lousy wages and low if non-existent benefits. That’s why the median wage keeps dropping, especially for the 80 percent of the workforce that’s paid by the hour.

It’s also part of the reason why the percent of Americans living below the poverty line has been increasing even as the economy has started to recover — from 12.3 percent in 2006 to about 15 percent now. More than 46 million Americans are living below the poverty line.

Many of them have jobs. The problem is these jobs just don’t pay enough to lift their families out of poverty.

So, encouraged by the economic recovery and perhaps also by the election returns, low-wage workers have started to organize.

In New York on Thursday hundreds of workers at dozens of fast-food chain stores went on strike, demanding a raise to $15-an-hour from their current pay of $8 to $10 an hour (the median hourly wage for food service and prep workers in New York is $8.90 an hour).

Last week, Walmart workers staged demonstrations and walkouts at thousands of Walmart stores, also demanding better pay.

These workers aren't teenagers. Most have to support their families. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median age of fast-food workers is over 28; and women, who comprise two-thirds of the industry, are over 32. The median age of big-box retail workers is over 30.

Organizing makes economic sense.

Unlike industrial jobs, these can’t be outsourced abroad. Nor are they likely to be replaced by automated machinery and computers. The service these workers provide is personal and direct: Someone has to be on hand to help customers and dole out the burgers.

And few of any wage gains they receive are likely to be passed on to consumers in higher prices because big-box retailers and fast-food chains have to compete intensely for consumers. They have no choice but to keep their prices low.

Instead, wage gains are likely to come out of profits – which, in turn, affect the return to shareholders and the total compensation of top executives.

That wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

According to a recent report by the National Employment Law Project, most low-wage workers are employed by large corporations that have been enjoying healthy profits. Three-quarters of these employers (the fifty biggest employers of low-wage workers) are raking in higher revenues now than they did before the recession.

McDonald’s — bellwether for the fast-food industry — posted strong results during the recession by attracting cash-strapped customers, and its sales have continued to rise.

Its CEO, Jim Skinner, got $8.8 million last year. In addition to annual bonuses, McDonald’s also gives its executives a long-term bonus once every three years; Skinner received an $8.3 million long-term bonus in 2009 and is due for another this year. The value of Skinner’s other perks — including personal use of the company aircraft, physical exams and security — rose 19% last year to $752,000.

Yum!Brands, which operates and licenses Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut, has also been doing well. Its CEO, David Novak, received $29.67 million in total compensation last year, placing him number 23 on Forbes’ list of highest paid chief executives.

Walmart – the trendsetter for big-box retailers – is also doing well. And it pays its executives handsomely. The total compensation for Walmart’s CEO, Michael Duke, was $18.7 million last year – putting him number 82 on Forbes’ list.

As I pointed out last week, the wealth of the Walton family – which still owns the lion’s share of Walmart stock — now exceeds the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of American families combined, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.

Walmart just announced that the next Wal-Mart dividend will be issued December 27 instead of January 2, after the Bush tax cut for dividends expires — thereby saving the Walmart family as much as $180 million. (According to the online weekly “Too Much,” this $180 million would be enough to give 72,000 Wal-Mart workers now making $8 an hour a 20 percent annual pay hike. That hike would still leave those workers making under the poverty line for a family of three.)

America is becoming more unequal by the day. So wouldn’t it be sensible to encourage unionization at fast-food and big-box retailers?

Yes, but here’s the problem.

The unemployment rate among people with just a high school degree – which describes most (but not all) fast-food and big-box retail workers – is still in the stratosphere. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts it at 12.2 percent, and that’s conservative estimate. It was 7.7 percent at the start of 2008.

High unemployment makes it much harder to organize a union because workers are even more fearful than usual of losing their jobs. Eight dollars an hour is better than no dollars an hour. And employers at big-box and fast-food chains have not been reluctant to give the boot to employees associated with attempts to organize for higher wages.

Meanwhile, only half of the people who lose their jobs qualify for unemployment insurance these days. Retail workers in big-boxes and fast-food chains rarely qualify because they haven’t been on the job long enough or are there only part-time. This makes the risk of job loss even greater.

Which brings us back to what’s happening in Washington.

Washington’s obsession with deficit reduction makes it all the more likely these workers will face continuing high unemployment – even higher if the nation succumbs to deficit hysteria. That’s because cutting government spending reduces overall demand, which hits low-wage workers hardest. They and their families are the biggest casualties of austerity economics.

And if the spending cuts Washington is contemplating fall on low-wage workers whose families are under the poverty line – reducing not only the availability of unemployment insurance but also food stamps, housing assistance, infant and child nutrition, child health care, and Medicaid – it will be even worse. (It’s worth recalling, in this regard, that 62 percent of the cuts in the Republican budget engineered by Paul Ryan fell on America’s poor.)

By contrast, low levels of unemployment invite wage gains and make it easier to organize unions. The last time America’s low-wage workers got a real raise (apart from the last hike in the minimum wage) was the late 1990s when unemployment dropped to 4 percent nationally – compelling employers to raise wages in order to recruit and retain them, and prompting a round of labor organizing.

That’s one reason why job growth must be the nation’s number one priority. Not deficit reduction.

Yet neither side in the current “fiscal cliff” negotiations is talking about America’s low-wage workers. They’re invisible in official Washington.

Not only are they unorganized for the purpose of getting a larger share of the profits at Walmart, McDonalds, and other giant firms, they’re also unorganized for the purpose of being heard in our nation’s capital. There’s no national association of low-wage workers. They don’t contribute much to political campaigns. They have no Super-PAC. They don’t have Washington lobbyists.

But if this nation is to reverse the scourge of widening inequality, Washington needs to start paying attention to them. And the rest of us should do everything we can to pressure Washington and big-box retailers and fast-food chains to raise their pay.

Link to original post here: https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/528169610528973

On Robert Reich: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich

We will now watch the State of Kansas self-destruct

With this move by Governor Sam Brownback:

Kansas legislature sends $14.3 billion budget to governor

"After 99 days of anger and anguish, Kansas lawmakers went home following a rare Sunday session, leaving the governor to sign a bill slashing taxes and letting judges draw new election districts."

The key is "leaving the governor to sign a bill slashing taxes..."

Sad.

It is truly sad what the Kansas legislature and what they've been doing has become.

It's so sad what Governor Brownback has done and is doing to the state.

It's all so pathetic and downright scary.

The state will both have no money and create no new jobs.

Man the exits.

Link: http://midwestdemocracy.com/articles/kansas-legislature-sends-143-billion-budget-to-governor/

Quote of the day--on the income tax

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."  --Albert Einstein

A splash of ice water to the face

It's the holidays, technically, and I had some time on my hands, so I was putzing around out here on the internets, reading different things I wanted to check out when I ran across the following article, resplendent with facts, figures, statistics...

And a dire forecast.  (Don't miss statistics no. 6 and 8, below, too--they're doozies).

The Working Poor

As the middle class in America continues to be slowly wiped out, the number of working poor continues to increase. Today, nearly one out of every three families in the United States is considered to be "low income". Millions of American families are finding that they can barely make it from month to month even with both parents working as hard as they possibly can. Blue collar American workers from coast to coast are having their wages decreased at a time when it seems like the cost of virtually every monthly bill is going up. Unfortunately, there is every indication that things are only going to get worse and that average American families are going to be financially squeezed even more in the months and years to come.

The Working Poor Families Project has just released their policy brief for the winter of 2010-11. What they have discovered is that the number of working poor in the United States is higher than they have ever seen it before and it continues to increase at a staggering pace. The following are some of the key findings for 2009 that were pulled right out of their report....

* There were more than 10 million low-income working families in the United States, an increase of nearly a quarter million from the previous year.

* Forty-five million people, including 22 million children, lived in low-income working families, an increase of 1.7 million people from 2008.

* Forty-three percent of working families with at least one minority parent were low income, nearly twice the proportion of white working families (22 percent).

* Income inequality continued to grow with the richest 20 percent of working families taking home 47 percent of all income and earning 10 times that of low-income working families.

* More than half of the U.S. labor force (55 percent) has “suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers” since the recession began in December 2007.

Unfortunately, things are not going to be getting any better for the working poor.  In the new "one world economy" that our politicians keep insisting is so good for us, millions upon millions of American workers now find that they have to compete for work with laborers on the other side of the globe that are willing to work for slave labor wages.  This is causing millions of jobs to leave the United States and it is forcing wages down.

Millions of Americans now find that they are making substantially less than they used to.  If that has happened to you, perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that you are not alone.  Or perhaps it is not that comforting.  In any event, American workers are not just competing with each other anymore.  Now there is the constant threat that all the jobs could just be sent overseas.

As wages are forced down, a record number of working Americans are finding themselves forced to turn to food stamps and to other government anti-poverty programs.  Millions of Americans have been forced to take part-time jobs in order to supplement their incomes.  Millions of others have been forced to take part-time jobs because that is all they can find.

This is all part of a long-term trend.  The numbers don't lie.  About the only people doing well are those on Wall Street and the very rich.  Nearly every other segment of the population is getting poorer.

The following are 10 statistics that I have shared previously, but I think that they do a really good job of highlighting the plight that the working poor in this country are now facing....

#1 In 2009, total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined in the United States.

#2 Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs.  In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.  Meanwhile, our population is getting larger.

#3 As 2007 began, only 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but now42 million Americans are on food stamps and that number keeps rising every single month.

#4 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.

#5 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.

#6 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#7 The number of Americans working part-time jobs "for economic reasons" is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.

#8 Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult.  In 2010, the United States has fallen to seventh.

#9 In 1976, the top 1 percent of earners in the United States took in 8.9 percent of all income.  By 2007, that number had risen to 23.5 percent.

#10 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.

The United States is becoming poorer as a nation even as the boys up on Wall Street are busy grabbing a bigger share for themselves.

We are rapidly becoming a nation that will have a very small privileged class of ultra-wealthy and a very large class of "workers" that is just barely trying to survive.

So is the answer even more government handouts and even more government social programs?

Of course not.

What middle class Americans need are middle class jobs.

But as I have written about previously, the United States is rapidly bleeding middle class jobs with no end in sight.

Globalism has permanently changed the game.  The middle class way of life that so many millions of Americans have been enjoying for so many decades is disappearing.

Just because things were a certain way yesterday does not mean that things are going to be the same way tomorrow.  The long-term economic trends that this column keeps talking about day after day after day are taking us all to a very dark economic place.

But instead of facing reality, our federal government, our state governments and our local governments just keep borrowing massive amounts of dollars to try to paper over all of our problems.

It is not going to work.  Unless something is done to fix our structural economic problems, the economic decay is just going to get worse and all of this debt is eventually going to collapse our entire financial system.

If you are a member of the working poor I wish I had better news for you.  Things are not going to be getting better, and unfortunately millions more Americans will probably be joining you soon.

Link to original post:  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-working-poor

Renewing the Bush tax cuts is like,,,

..driving your car off the cliff, paying a tow truck twice the price of the car to haul it back up,
then driving it back over because your brother-in-law's cousin's friend told you this time it will fly.

..celebrating your one day sobriety pin with a cognac and crack party.

...getting gonorrhea from unprotected sex, and after you get rid of it, going back to the bath house to see if you can get something incurable this time.

...a 400 pound person going on all McDonald's diet.

...after the drunk British football hooligans have rioted and burned down the stadium, you rebuild the stadium and, this time, to make it better, you offer free all-you-can-drink beer.

...a prostitute getting out of 'the life' by switching from cash to credit cards.

...losing all your money with Bernie Madoff, then convincing the rest of your family to break him out of jail so they can invest all their money with him too.

...after the earthquake rebuilding your house on the fault line, instead of just next to it.

...giving your local alchemist your life savings to turn lead into gold, and after the lead remains lead, robbing the bank to pay him to do it again.

...invading Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, then, after you fail, invading Iraq to get weapons of mass destruction that don't exist.

...putting poison in your food to teach the dog not to eat off the table, then forgetting what you did and eating it yourself.

..after you get lung cancer, smoking again because the worst has already happened.

...is like knowingly doing 2001-2009 all over again, a few people get rich, no new jobs are created, and the whole economy collapses.

This is a contest. It's open to everyone. The writer of the best comparison gets to live with the consequences of whatever our loony legislators and waffling president do. Go to the link below to add your contribution.

Link to original post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-beinhart/renewing-the-bush-tax-cut_b_795362.html

Quote of the day--on rich vs. everyone else in America

"In my view, it is a moral outrage that at a time when this country has a $13.8 trillion national debt, a collapsing middle class and a growing gap between the very rich and everybody else that the Republicans would deny extended unemployment benefits to 2 million workers who are desperately struggling to pay their bills and maintain their dignity. It is also beyond comprehension that the Republicans would hold hostage the entire middle class of this country so that millionaires and billionaires would receive huge tax breaks. In my view, that is not what this country is about and it is not what the American people want to see. Our job is to save the disappearing middle class, not lower taxes for people who are already extraordinarily wealthy and increase the national debt that our children and grandchildren would have to pay.

"The immediate political task in front of us is to rally the American people so that in the next several weeks we can find at least a few Republicans who will join us in saying no to increasing the deficit by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and no to holding the unemployed and the middle class hostage.

"I believe that we have the American people on our side on this issue. My office, and I come from a small state, has received more than 600 calls today, 99 percent of them in opposition to this so-called compromise that the president negotiated with the Republicans.

"I will do everything in my power to stand up for the American middle class and defeat this agreement."  --Senator Bernie Sanders, (D, VT)

Thank you, Senator Sanders.  At least there is one person willing to stand up for the people without all the money in the US.

Link:  http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/07-12

On the "new" GOP "Pledge to America"

From The New York Times, today: The best way to understand the pledge is as a bid to co-opt the Tea Party by a Republican leadership that wants to sound insurrectionist but is the same old Washington elite. These are the folks who slashed taxes on the rich, turned a surplus into a crushing deficit, and helped unleash the financial crisis that has thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes. Not only are the players the same, the policies are the same. Just more tax cuts for the rich and more deficit spending. We find it hard to believe that even the most disaffected voters will be taken in. But again, these are strange and worrying times. Let's face it, there are two--and only two--things the Republicans can or should promise to the country that they would do, if returned to office in Washington. Those are cut spending---and truly, honestly and seriously do so--and shrink government. (Some of the cutting and shrinking for whoever is in power, too, will have to be at the Pentagon and across the entire military, something they are highly unlikely to do). Nothing else matters and nothing else means anything. If they only keep doing what they have been, that is, cutting taxes for the wealthy and reducing regulation on businesses, they are possibly likely to be overrun by the Tea Party. I don't think they're capable of either of these jobs, to date, but who knows? Maybe those old dogs could learn some new tricks. And keep their promises. Link to original story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/opinion/26sun1.html?th&emc=th