The Republican Land of Oz

[PoliticalPizza]

I am sure that Kansas is a wonderful place, but if Leavenworth Penitentiary is your best known landmark and a fictitious 12 year old girl from the "Land of Oz" is your most famous resident...then you might want to question why you are living in a state, where all everybody does...is dream about leaving!!!

Dorothy had to be hit on the head, threatened by a wicked witch and followed by three possible pedophiles with no first names...before wanting to come home.

If she had known that the Republicans now controlled both legislative chambers and the Governorship, she might have decided to still just be clicking her heels.

While Munchkin Land was a fantasy, Governor Sam Brownback has described the new reality of a unanimous conservative Republican state government as a "Grand Experiment" and model for other states to follow.

Unlike the experiment that forced a frightened monkey 75 miles into space last week on an Iranian rocket ship, Kansans voted to go along for this tumultuous ride.

The monkey landed back safely, but Kansans may not have as soft a landing after they see how the blueprint to implement Republican principles of small government and lower taxes, might leave John Gotti's 12x6 cell at Leavenworth, as the only affordable government housing plan.

So far this month as reported by the NYT..."the largest tax cut in Kansas history took effect, Medicaid was handed over to private insurers and the states welfare rolls and work force has been significantly slashed".

Next month they will be working on lowering pensions, reducing education financing and changing the way that judges are selected to insure that conservative social principles will not be undone by liberal activist judges. Or in other words...close the only medical clinic left in the state that still performs abortions, allow prayer in public schools and authorize Glen Beck's picture to be printed on a commemorative $3.00 bill.

As the Governor brandishes his record for legislating the "conservative dream", it is estimated that the tax cuts, "that never pay for themselves",...will cost the government $850 million in revenue in the coming fiscal year... to be paid for by raising the sales tax, repealing tax credits for food, rental housing, child care, mortgage interest deductions and by selling the soundtrack of "Les Miserables" as the new state song.

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, if this program of lowering income taxes by raising sales taxes, gets implemented, it will cost the poorest 20% of Kansans on average, about a $148 per year and save the top 1% approximately $21,087 per year.

This is why the Republicans now seem to be willing to compromise with the President at the national level, because as the ultimate believer in "State Rights"...they finally understand it is better to control a Grand Experiment at the state level than negotiate a Grand Bargain. And with complete Republican control in 23 more states...winning the "Debt Ceiling" debate is a lot less important to people when they no longer have a roof over their head.

Before Sen. John Edwards could tell Gov. Mark Sanford...that "nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning"...is only true if the National Enquirer is not on your front lawn...he talked about two Americas.

But even he, didn't envision that his battle for "One America" would be won and lost between each and every state. That it is not democracy that is the Grand Experiment, but a map drawn of Red and Blue States, that may need a white flag waved to restore American values back into our government.

http://www.politicalpizza.net/2013/01/the-republican-land-of-oz.html

[archiemo]

1. Unbelievable!!!

[Cosmocat]

2. Just stunning that a population will sit back

and willfully allow the tax shifting that you are seeing in states like this and Louisianna.

People just smiling and slapping themselves on the back for raising their own taxes.