Sam Brownback's Kansas

lol. what a disaster of epic proportions. What a joke. Does anyone here live in that sh!thole?

 

It has now been four years since TP Sam and his band of GOP co-conspirators giddily imposed their crackpot Laffer fantasy upon Kansas.

Today, he can boast of feeble job growth, gutting education, medicaid, and highway maintenance projects, soaring deficits despite having had to impose the highest tax increase in the state's history in the form of a bloated sales tax to squeeze the poor, lowered bond ratings, and the personal distinction of being voted the worst governor in the nation by his victimized constituents for the second year in a row.

When they're not running away from the mess, the zealots who once embraced Governor Brownout's "shot of adrenalin" to the Kansas economy must be thinking of marketing whatever he had in his syringe as a reliable lethal injection for states still in the business of killing people.

 

Disaster for liberal policy or from a liberal mindset. Otherwise the state is heading in the right direction.

 

Disaster from the mindset of the flaming liberal SJW homos at Standard and Poor's: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article73789707.html

 

Yes to fix years of liberal policy you must make some tough economic choices.

 

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"Good morning. I'm going to sign this bill. I'm excited about the prospects for it, and I'm very thankful how God has blessed our state!”

— Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback on the day in 2012 that he signed that massive tax-cut package.​

At the start of the 2016 legislative session, the governor flatly stated: “The tax plan is working! I hope we don’t have a tax policy debate during this legislative session.”

By virtually all accounts, in January 2016, the tax plan was not working. In terms of revenues, income tax reductions had proved a huge failure. As former Republican Gov. Mike Hayden recently observed, Brownback’s myopic partisanship has driven Kansas into a “financial ditch.”

http://www.kansas.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article78889452.html

 

And those "flaming liberals" of Kansas that elected Governor Brownout have voted him the worst in the nation for the second year in a row.

 

It looks as if the duped folks of Kansas are ready to strike back at the TP zealots who have befouled their state with their extremist ideological fantasy.

 

The people of Kansas are guinea pigs dying for TP Sam's caprice, so it is incumbent upon us to respect his ideological "experiment" by learning from its results.

Brownback took office in January of 2011, got his right wing Republican majorities in both legislative houses, and implemented what Rolling Stone has called “the Republicans’ wet dream agenda.”

They passed huge tax cuts for the wealthy along with tax cuts on business profits, significantly reduced business regulations, and at the same time cut spending on welfare, rejected federal Medicaid money, and put the delivery of Medicaid services into private hands.​

As New York magazine recently reported in an article characterizing Kansas as a “parallel political universe,” the “revolution in the cornfield” has left the state in a world of hurt.

Marginal gains at the municipal level were dwarfed by the $688 million loss that Brownback’s budget wrought in its first year of operation. Meanwhile, Kansas’s job growth actually trailed that of its neighboring states. With that nearly $700 million deficit, the state had bought itself a 1.1 percent increase in jobs, just below Missouri’s 1.5 percent and Colorado’s 3.3.

Those numbers have hardly improved in the intervening years. In 2015, job growth in Kansas was a mere 0.1 percent, even as the nation’s economy grew 1.9 percent. Brownback pledged to bring 100,000 new jobs to the state in his second term; as of January, he has brought 700. What’s more, personal income growth slowed dramatically since the tax cuts went into effect. Between 2010 and 2012, Kansas saw income growth of 6.1 percent, good for 12th in the nation; from 2013 to 2015, that rate was 3.6 percent, good for 41st.

Meanwhile, revenue shortfalls have devastated the state’s public sector along with its most vulnerable citizens. Since Brownback’s inauguration, 1,414 Kansans with disabilities have been thrown off Medicaid. In 2015, six school districts in the state were forced to end their years early for lack of funding. Cuts to health and human services are expected to cause 65 preventable deaths this year in Sedgwick County alone. In February, tax receipts came in $53 million below estimates; Brownback immediately cut $17 million from the state’s university system. This data is not lost on the people of Kansas — as of November, Brownback’s approval rating was 26 percent, the lowest of any governor in the United States.​

 

Off a cliff is the "right direction"?

 

So prior to Sinkhole Sam there were years of "liberal policy"? Really? Pray tell under whom and what legislature and what your definition of "liberal" is? I was unaware that Kansas was ever "liberal" in a conventionally understood way.

This should be good...............

 

Simply amazing.

Failure after failure doesn't seem to affect these ultra conservatives one bit.

 

Didn't really expect an answer because we both know Kansas was always conservative but under Brownback it just got MUCH MORE conservative and.....voila! Instant 3rd world state!

 

Oh, so Kansas is in Detroit? Interesting. I did not know that.

 

Huh? More Jesuitical thinking from the fever swamp? There can be - sit down for this - more than one thing of a kind on the planet at the same time.

Normal Person: Lebron James is a helluva ballplayer!

PoFo Patriot: OH, SO HE IS MICHAEL JORDAN?!?!

 

Could somebody explain what Brownback's plan is? Somebody mentioned TP, so I'm going to guess it involves cutting taxes, slimming down government, and a balanced budget.

Yet in this very thread it talks of budget shortfalls. This can't be due to a balanced budget so I'm going to guess that his plan has nothing to do with conservative values

 

As an economist, I have tried to explain Kansas quite a few times to our Liberal friends and why yes, Sam Brownback failed but it's truly not all his fault. There are economic factors at play for Kansas. I'll try, one more time to elaborate on Kansas's issues:

Debt-revenue: Simply put, there are two ways(and only two ways) that state government(any state, not just Kansas) can raise revenue: It can either raise taxes to pay for government programs, or it could cut the government programs(ie: Debt). Why are there only two ways? Because the States do not have the Treasury power of the Federal Reserve. Only the dollars in circulation in Kansas's economy are in play. That's it.

Very simply, Mr.Brownback chose to cut taxes but Kansas had no way of increasing revenues. The thought was that the cut taxes would increase consumerism in Kansas and thereby state revenues. But the cuts were far too small for that kind of effect, and the people didn't necessarily have THAT kind of money to stimulate Kansas's economy.

I know, Liberals are going to scream "whut", but it's really true. The strategy was a failure, because you'd have to do much more than that. It's not just Kansas, it's all over the Union. The government has replaced the self-service sector of the country and our revenues as a whole have dried up completely in the last 15 years. What faces Kansas today, is being faced everywhere else right now. Even in deep blue States.

So what's the solution: Not just for Kansas, but again: Virtually every other State is facing this. The solution is this: If you're going to cut, CUT. You can't run big government programs with a shorter budget. That's just lunacy. That's not the TP Model(Fiscal Conservatism). That's Brownback wanting it both ways. And if you're going to spend, spend with an intent of reduplication.

There's a difference between spending for some overbloated office to get another 20 chairs, and spending that will create jobs(and therefore more production). Right now, government WASTES money. You can't call that spending. Real spending, an actual INVESTMENT is what's going to lift Kansas, and everybody, out of the crisis.

 

Kansas is a disaster but it is not all Sam's fault. OK. Sure. Some in the ObamaHate fever swamp will not like this kind of thinking applied to the general economy and you-know-who. But acceptable if applied to the guy before you-know-who.

 

Obama isn't at fault for the economy. He's at fault for allowing the cronyist bailouts after speaking to "living within their means". That and his Democratic Party have literally NO ideas of their own on building the economy besides "#fightfor15".

I'm starting to think we economists should be like Germans and have an Economic Party. Insert a bunch of people with economic experience in Washington. Our sole issue will be working economic levers because Republicans and Democrats suck at the economy.

 

I love the Rube Goldberg type of causality and inconsistent logic warps the union label propagandists who are so terrified of state belt-tightening try to apply selectively. I mean WHO FALLS FOR THIS CRAP?

Kansas proves failure of some "red state model" and it couldn't possibly ever be that the state could be in a slump no matter what the tax policy. It simply must be Brownback's tax policy "failing." CAUSATION CAUSATION CAUSATION! I mean an Op-ed shill in Kansas sez! Let's link all his warped and biased op eds as if we have made a "case." (not necessarily talking about this thread, but all the union label Kansas Brownback drivel posted here and all over the net by public union PR flacks and hacks... all repeating the hackery of the same hack op ed writer).

Texas could never be an example of a successful "red state model," it simply must be a fluke, a boom, or due to oil subsidies, or.... never ever could Texas' more conservative tax policy be the cause of economic success. CORRELATION ~ = CAUSATION! CORRELATION ~ = CAUSATION! CORRELATION ~ = CAUSATION!

This kind of thing would be funny if it weren't so pathetic, and the people who fall for it weren't so pathetically self-absorbed that they will believe anything to avoid feeling like a creep for wanting to take even more of the fruits of honest people's labor using government violence.

Seriously, when are we going to rise up and revolt until public unions are banned outright?

 

It's the post card of what the GOP wants to do on a national scale.
You see, the conservatives think that if you just try it enough and hard enough and give the rich all the money, it will work!
we just haven't haven't tried hard enough, and the rich still don't have all the money.

- - - Updated - - -

LOL!
Really?
How?
Please explain.....

 

Only in a lefties mind.

Cutting off the head of a bloated government is good for everyone.

Stop wasting the people's money!!!!!

 

Union members are bigger and stronger than you are and could probably eat you for breakfast if you approached one.

Libertarians/ancaps on the other hand come in two distinctive flavors: 1) scrawny, anti-social pencilneck, or 2) fat, disgusting, slobbering anti-social neckbeard

 

Oops, there goes your poker face, together with any scintilla of credibility you might have had before the above post.

 

This is politicalforum.com, a "safe space" for right wingnuts, libertarians and other assorted crackpots to share their conspiracy theories and very interesting (e.g. not based in reality) economic theories. It's not a place for debate.