Coming soon to the USA - Hard times for Kansas as economic ‘experiment’

[Olde Hornet]

http://www.dispatch.com/content/sto...ic-experiment-creates-gaping-budget-hole.html

Hard times for Kansas as economic ‘experiment’ creates gaping budget hole


COLUMBUS, Kan. — In February 2015, three years into the supply-side economics experiment that would upend a once steady Midwestern economy, a hole appeared in Kansas’ finances.

To fill it, Gov. Sam Brownback took $45 million in public education funding. By April of this year, with the hole at $290 million, Brownback took highway money to plug it. A month later, state money for Medicaid coverage went into the hole, but the gap continued to grow.

Today, the state’s budget hole is $345 million and threatens the foundation of this state, which was supposed to be the setting for a grand economic expansion but now more closely resembles a battleground, with accusations and lawsuits flying over how to get the state’s finances in order.

The yawning deficits were caused by huge tax cuts, championed by Brownback and the Republican-dominated Legislature, that were supposed to set the economy roaring. They didn’t. The budget shortfalls have been felt across the state, particularly by public schools, and have embroiled the Kansas Supreme Court along with state lawmakers and the governor.

 

[JAG89]

This would help Kansas to become more of a Democratic state. Eventually a few White folks will realize that they are only voting against their own best interest. This is how Louisiana ended up with a Democratic Governor.

 

[In_The_662]

I'm hoping this happens to Mississippi within my lifetime. At the rate Bryant is going, it might happen before his term is up.

 

[Olde Hornet]

they are still voting in republicans

 

[CEE DOG]

Poor whites will still vote Republican because they're voting against minorities in their hearts.

 

[J C]

They believe their tax dollars support blacks, immigrants and others who they identity as none deserving

 

[J C]

They believe their tax dollars support blacks, immigrants and other non deserving.

 

[MetroPhillyTiger]

They believe their tax dollars support blacks, immigrants and others who they identity as none deserving

Kansas Terrorists Wanted Anti-Muslim Attack to End in “Bloodbath
They planned to carry out the attack one day after the November election.
“They discussed obtaining four vehicles, filling them with explosives and parking them at the four corners of the apartment complex to create a large explosion,” the Department of Justice said.

“They chose the target location based on their hatred of these groups, their perception that these groups represent a threat to American society, a desire to inspire other militia groups, and a desire to ‘wake people up,’ ” according to the criminal complaint.

About 120 people live and worship in the apartment complex they planned to attack.

The complaint also notes that during one conversation Stein said that “the only **** way this country’s ever going to get turned around is it will be a bloodbath and it will be a nasty, messy *****. Unless a lot more people in this country wake up and smell the **** coffee and decide they want this country back … we might be too late, if they do wake up … I think we can get it done. But it ain’t going to be nothing nice about it.” At one point Stein made it clear he was ready to kill babies: “When we go on operations there’s no leaving anyone behind, even if it’s a one-year old, I’m serious.”

 

[Olde Hornet]

Republicans Keep Repeating the Same Tax Mistake

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-15/republicans-keep-repeating-the-same-tax-mistake


It looks as if Governor Sam Brownback may be leaving Kansas to take up a job at the United Nations. Brownback’s critics, of which there are many, charge that having led his state into a fiscal crisis, he’s bailing out on the wagon train while the rest of his party staggers onward over the cliff. “Brownback would be fleeing a political and economic crisis,” writes Alan Pyke of ThinkProgress, “leaving about 3 million Kansans behind in a budgetary inferno of his own devising.”

You can certainly see why Brownback would want to get out. After Republicans pushed through aggressive tax cuts in 2012 and 2013, the state keeps coming up with deep budget holes that have to be patched in an annual scramble. This year’s drama is still being played out after the governor vetoed a plan to raise taxes, and the state Senate responded by crushing Brownback’s proposed alternative.

For budget wonks, the saga of the Kansas budget will be reminiscent of the Reagan years, when supply-side tax cuts resulted in big deficits. The administration had hoped that the tax cuts could be paid for by a combination of faster economic growth unleashed by lower marginal rates, and the infamous “magic asterisk” (in which unidentified spending cuts were promised, details to come later).