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Thursday, June 4, 2015

Brownbackistan Gets Yet More, Very Deserved Bad Press


More blistering--but fair--criticism from and in the Washington Post this week on Kansas and their self-created woes:

Kansas Governor Under Investigation For Campaign Finance Irregularities


A bit of the article:

“My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, ‘See, we’ve got a different way, and it works,’ ” Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said in 2013.

Brownback was talking about the massive supply-side tax cuts at the center of his policy agenda, which he had promised would provide “a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.” Instead, it led to a deep hole in the state budget, a downgrade in the state’s credit rating and weak economic growth compared with neighboring states. As top income earners and business owners pocketed their tax cuts, Kansas’s poverty rate went up.


The failure of Brownback’s plan has made headlines not only because of its consequences in Kansas but also because of its potential impact on national politics. Brownback explicitly intended his plan to inform the policy debate in 2016 and beyond, but his gambit didn’t work as planned. As The Post’s editorial board wrotelast year, “Mr. Brownback’s Kansas trial is rapidly becoming a cautionary tale for conservative governors elsewhere who have blithely peddled the theology of tax cuts as a painless panacea for sluggish growth.”

The article goes on to describe the really awful rules of Medicaid for Kansans and how few residents can qualify for it as a result.

What's horrible is that the good Guv was going to use Kansas and his office and this financial experiment, no doubt, as a launching pad for his presidential campaign. As it turns out, it's failed miserably---very miserably---for and on Kansas and its budget and its middle- and lower- and working-class families and homes across the state and now on the schools, too. 

You have to ask, though, at what point, do Kansas voters learn and vote all these boneheads out of office, out of Topeka?

It can't happen soon enough.


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