Kansas Libertarian Failure Hurting Republican Office Holders!

Yes, he's pretty conservative relative to past Illinois governors, but that's not saying much. And he's been in office for a few years. Hardly representative of Illinois politics.

 

And now we have another update on the Kansas Republican/Libertarian failures and the pushback by Dems and moderate Republicans.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politi...nd-democrats-say-politics-changing-in-kansas/

Sure sounds like the good citizens of Kansas don't like what was done to them and their state and want to see a return to normalcy.

They agree that it is going to a coalition of Dems and moderate Republicans to push back against the failures of mindless tax cuts that have defunded healthcare and education and increased the burden on the middle and lower classes while the wealthy just pocket their ill gotten gains.

Interesting to note this from the farmers;

When not even the farmers support those policies that says volumes.

 

Indeed it is.

GDP/Capita
California: 61,924
Kansas: 50,218

 

Conservative state fiscal policies continue to terrify the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-MSM Complex that their various state gravy trains will be diminished if conservative government continues to spread among the states. Union reps and their media buds work overtime salting the press with this latest Op-ed which does not address:

1. The university study ranking state fiscal health ranks Kansas in the middle of the pack, and far above the biggest "blue state model" tax and spend states.
2. CNBC ranks Kansas as middle of the pack in states for business, higher than most blue state model tax and spend states.

So to repeat, in estimating Kansas' health and the efficacy of its governing "model" compared to other states, you can take partisan-motivated Op-eds and terrified Complex propaganda at face value or objective, comparative factual data. Choice is yours.

 

As has been established in the thread, GDP data alone is utterly meaningless out of context. Folks can take the word of cherry-picking partisans offering out of context fallacies or comprehensive, objective data such as in the university study and CNBC. Kansas ranks higher than California in fiscal health and in the ten factors CNBC weighed in its calculations.

 

It is not trickle down. The lowest income earners in Kansas are the first to enjoy zero income tax. Just about all small business owners got a tax cut; all except the wealthiest.

The liberal narrative created by Democrat strategists isn't the reality of the Kansas economy. The Democrats want people to believe these are old economic policies that haven't worked. The fact is they are a combination of old policies that actually do work, and new policies aimed at addressing current problems, such as Medicare and an aging population.

The fact people are upset and there is infighting is a sign of success, not failure. It means there will be pain from service cuts, which takes political backbone; something not found in Democrat policies, ever.

 

The Kansas economy is also heavily dependent on the Missouri economy, particularly along the border between Johnson County, KS (wealthiest county in KS) a co-dependent with Jackson County, MO. Kansas City, MO is included in BLS data for Kansas, as it should be. Wyandotte County, KS is also heavily dependent on the Missouri economy.

For you coasties who know nothing about Kansas other than what you read at Mother Jones, and the fact that it looks flat when you fly over; there are two Kansas City's. The smaller one, which is in Wyandotte County, KS, is heavily dependent on the larger one, which is in Kansas City, MO (Jackson County).

 

California's COST of living is higher. I'd hope it'd have a higher GDP. Want to compare the two States in a meaningful way? Compare what each state holds as a percentage of debt(or hell, raw totals. Pick which one.)

California clocks in at 17%

Kansas somehow clocks a few percentage points ahead.

That's actually incredible. Kansas has a much smaller economy than California, yet holds as much of a percentage of debt. And that's WITH the cuts. If Kansas became a liberal State(without the influx of capital that most Liberal States enjoy), it would be a disaster of new sorts for Kansas.

Due to Kansas's smaller economy and smaller work force, the government there will have to make decisions on budgeting in the future. But it's a lot more complex than simply raising the taxes, especially if the dollar is just going to fly out of the coffer with social legislation/services.

 

For all your bloviating, kansas is a broke. You call infighting while the state goes broke a success? Those tax breaks have done nothing to help their economy or job creation, and they needed supreme court intervention to barely fund their schools. All of this has happened under solid republican majorities in ALL houses of government. Right wing economic policies continue to be an utter failure, and the idiots in Kansas who voted for the morons are feeling it the most.

 

Sure is easy to be a Democrat.

 

Libertarian economic ideology destroy economies. Everything about them is a disaster. Their social policies are somewhat tolerable. I personally would rather have Trump over a Libertarian. At least he'd spend money.

 

I'll take your lack of a meaningful response as a white flag.

 

There's much I typed you failed to reply to, such as the KC Missouri influence and its inclusion in BLS stats. If you're unfamiliar with it, you're missing a key variable. Much of these policies were aimed at attracting businesses from Jackson County, MO, which they've done with some success. What really irks liberals about Kansas is its renewed commitment to business and less reliance on government. I understand why you're angry and disillusioned.

 

The lowest income earners in the state suffered from a massive TAX INCREASE because Libertarian Brownback raised the sales tax.

 

How is that commitment working for Kansas? How has all these business friendly right wing policies fared? The state is in the crapper, worse than it already was. I'd feel sorry for the people of Kansas, but that's what you get when you trust one party to run a state.

 

There's a whole lot of things not really addressed in this thread that are wrong, and as a resident of Kansas for 60 years I can tell you that Brownback has not made anything better and a lot of things worse. We're broke. The influx of new business has been weak to nonexistent. He's robbing Peter to pay Paul constantly to keep any illusion of prosperity alive. Schools have cut back to bare minimum or closed completely, lord only knows how bad it could have been without the ongoing intervention by the courts. He's robbing from the highway fund. College tuitions at state colleges are soaring. We've historically had excellent schools, affordable college and good roads. Brownback and his cronies have been a disaster.

 

Actually to understand Libertarianism is quite complex and it's not even close to being a "Republican" political ideology.

Libertarians are not opposed to welfare assistance for those in need although a hierarchy is established for providing the assistance with each higher level in that hierarchy acting as a safety net for the lower levels inability and/or unwillingness to fulfill the need.

We would prefer that the needs of the person, that can't fully provide for themselves, be provided with the welfare assistance they require by the local community and/or private charity but there are two pragmatic considerations related to this. First is that communities are generally based upon economic isolation (e.g. poor people live in poor communities) so the community is incapable of providing the assistance. Second it that in the history of civilization private charities have never been able to provide even a small percentage of the assistance necessary for the poor.

This leaves the state government as the next level in the safety net in providing for the poor. The problem here is that this requires taxation to fund and it's simply too easy for state legislature and/or the people, by the referendum process, to limit the taxation imposed when it comes to providing welfare assistance.

Of course when it comes to Republican controlled state legislatures with their anti-tax/anti-welfare agendas they don't even come close to fulfilling the need which moves the responsibility to the next higher level of government, and the final safety net, which is federal welfare assistance. So when we have a state like Kansas where tax cuts by Republicans result in a failure to fund the welfare assistance necessary then it simply increases the welfare burden and costs on the federal government.

Additionally, as I've mentioned previously, Libertarians support core principles that arguably require all employers to provide a "living wage" ensuring the economic liberty of the worker so that no working household should require welfare assistance at all. The government should not be subsidizing under-compensation by employers that creates the need for welfare assistance by their employees.

 

And Brownback is a Republican and not a Libertarian.