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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

President Obama, Kansas and the Likely Brilliant Move


By now, most who follow politics and/or President Obama know he's taking his State of the Union messages on the road. He was in Idaho today and will be in Kansas tomorrow, two very "red", Republican states.

And if you think about it, his going to Kansas is likely pretty brilliant.

Kansas' Republican Governor Sam Brownback and all the Republicans in the statehouse all slashed taxes for the wealthy and corporations a few years ago, claiming money and people would come flooding in.

Yeah, I know, right? Flooding in to Kansas?

For what, the beaches or the mountains?

Anyway, as predicted and even warned, not only did people and companies and jobs and money not flow in to the state, the only thing that did happen is that Kansas coffers are now not only pretty empty but Kansas needs to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars, due to all the slashing. This is where they were last August:

Adjusted Kansas numbers show $238 million budget shortfall


In this article, The New York Times points out Kansas' tax cuts could cost them as much as 9 billion dollars through 2019:


So what's all this got to do with President Obama and his trip now?

What could be great is if he rubs the Republicans' "trickle down" economic theories not only don't work but they put public budgets in debt---possibly deep debt---while rewarding the already-wealthy and corporations.

Now, clearly he can't get too obvious and punishing with this message---however fun that would be---but still, I expect it will be at least easy to rather gently but obviously point out that tax cuts only for corporations and the wealthy, again, that "trickly down" nonsense, only makes corporations have bigger profits and send yet more money to the already wealthy. None of this helps the middle class, the lower classes or working class. It not only doesn't help the broadest swaths of America, much of the nation, it actually hurts them because it puts the burdens of tax payments on, again, the working-, middle- and lower classes.

So let's hope for some fun barbs tomorrow from the President, directly into the faces of all the Republicans who supported and maybe still support the voodoo economics nonsense of "trickle down" economic theory.

It doesn't work, Kansas and our nation proves it doesn't work and we need to get beyond it.


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