"This Is What's the Matter With Kansas"

[applegrove]

This Is What's the Matter With Kansas

By John B. Judis at the New Republic

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119574/sam-brownbacks-conservative-utopia-kansas-has-become-hell

"SNIP..........................



The midterm elections of 2010 were good for Republicans nearly everywhere, but amid the national Tea Party insurgency, it was easy to overlook the revolution that was brewing in Kansas. That year, the GOP won every federal and statewide office. Sam Brownback, a genial U.S. senator best known for his ardent social conservatism, captured the governor’s mansion with nearly double the votes of his Democratic opponent. And having conquered Kansas so convincingly, he was determined not to squander the opportunity. His administration, he declared, would be a “real live experiment” that would prove, once and for all, that the way to achieve prosperity was by eliminating government from economic life.

Brownback’s agenda bore the imprint of three decades of right-wing agitation, particularly that of the anti-government radicals Charles and David Koch and their Wichita-based Koch Industries, the single largest contributors to Brownback’s campaigns. Brownback appointed accountant Steve Anderson, who had developed a model budget for the Kochs’ advocacy arm, Americans for Prosperity, as his budget director. Another Koch-linked group, the Kansas Policy Institute, supported his controversial tax proposals. As Brownback later explained to The Wall Street Journal, “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.’”

Brownback established an Office of the Repealer to take a scythe to regulations on business, he slashed spending on the poor by tightening welfare requirements, he rejected federal Medicaid subsidies and privatized the delivery of Medicaid, and he dissolved four state agencies and eliminated 2,000 state jobs. The heart of his program consisted of drastic tax cuts for the wealthy and eliminating taxes on income from profits for more than 100,000 Kansas businesses. No other state had gone this far. He was advised by the godfather of supply-side economics himself, the Reagan-era economist Arthur Laffer, who described the reforms as “a revolution in a cornfield.”

Other Midwestern Republican governors had attempted similar experiments, but they were hemmed in by reluctant legislatures and restive electorates. Brownback had Republican majorities in Topeka, which became more decidedly right-wing after the 2012 elections. This gave him near-complete freedom to create a conservative utopia.




..........................SNIP"

[Prophet 451]

1. In other words

Fascism turned out to be, well, fascism.

[applegrove]

2. Lipstick on a pig is the GOP's platform.

[Kablooie]

3. No.

Lipstick on a pig's asshole is their platforms.

[Gothmog]

4. Brownback is an idiot

Kansas is really suffering due to his stupidity

[Doctor_J]

5. As are the Kansas voters

[FiveGoodMen]

9. I'd say Kansas is suffering due to its OWN stupidity

[Doctor_J]

6. This will continue to worsen until one of three things happens

1. Get rid of the right wing media monopoly
2. Roll out the guillotines
3. Split into two pieces - one run and inhabited by the Cock brothers and their followers, and another run by real Americans like Bernie sanders. I really wouldn't give a shit where the civilized piece was located, or how big it was, as long as anyone in favor of corporate healthcare, corporate schools, religious rule, and other red state and DINO ideals was quickly and summarily dealt with - preferably deportation to the Red Hell.

I don't think the current situation is tenable. I almost have enough money to retire and move to Canada or Europe for my last 10-15 years. The thought of living my golden years under the rule of Beck and the Cocks and their whores and zombies is not palatable.

[world wide wally]

7. So, it seems that in Kansas, they would vote for Beezebub himself as long as he had an "R"

after his name.
So, my question is: Why do they hate democrats so much? Is it just brainwashing or some actual reason?

[Doctor_J]

8. brainwashed

Limpballs and Fox "News" are the two worst things to ever happen to the US

[FiveGoodMen]

10. Agreed!