Governor Sam Brownback is the matter with Kansas.
The Wall Street Journal is now reporting:
More than 100 Republican former officeholders, elected officials and past party officials endorsed the Democratic opponent of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback Tuesday, the latest sign of re-election troubles for one of the nation’s most conservative governors.
How did this happen? What’s the matter with Kansas? Governor Sam Brownback is one of the most religious politicians on the right, and he accepted as received wisdom that tax cuts for the rich create jobs. Just like religion, if you repeat economic nonsense enough times only the ignorant except it as the truth.
Brownback’s tax cuts have destroyed Kansas, just like the tax cuts from George Bush, whose favorite philosopher was Jesus, almost destroyed America.
According to Sunday’s New York Times:
There was only one reason for the state’s plummeting revenues, and that was the spectacularly ill-advised income tax cuts that Mr. Brownback and his fellow Republicans engineered in 2012 and 2013. The cuts, which largely benefited the wealthy, cost the state 8 percent of the revenue it needs for schools and other government services. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, that’s about the same as the effect of a midsize recession. Moody’s cut the state’s debt rating in April for the first time in at least 13 years, citing the cuts and a lack of confidence in the state’s fiscal management.
Brownback says we need to give the cuts more time. Easy for him, he still has a job, at least until November.
Austerity on the backs of the poor coupled with tax breaks for the rich has been completely discredited. Locally, nationally and in Europe. Only a religious zealot could ignore the evidence and still believe.
These people, of all religious stripes including mine, have to be purged from our government. Blind faith only works when you’re listening to Ginger Baker.
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