Starving the Kansas Beast! (Thanks, Obama!)

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Originally Posted by FuzzyLumpkins

Insulting my intelligence without basis is typical but not very compelling. Makes you seem weak in your position frankly.

Rentier is a french word, jackass. I speak English. Its also not 'capitalism.' A renter is one that charges usage fees and contribute nothing themselves in the Marxist paradigm. I chose my words intentionally and I speak in English.

I just linked two media sources. You should be able to figure it out. If not, I don't care.

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you don't have a clue

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Originally Posted by boutons_deux

btw, Fuzzy Brain

the VRWC from the early 90s IS the VRWC of today and since the 1970s, and is exactly the same the Mrax, Piketty have illuminated.

As we see with the Repug witch hunting of the Clintons for 9+ years, and the 100% obstructionism of the Repugs since 2009, the profoundly anti-Constitutional, anti-democratic VRWC/Repugs DENY THE LEGITIMACY of any and all opposition, be it another political party or govt itself. iow, theirs is not "(democtratic) politics as usual", it's smash-mouth destruction of all countervailing opposition.

It's objective is to be the sole source of power in America, an authoritarian oligarchy which has allied itself with the authoritarian Christian supremacists, who in parallel, deny the legitimacy of any non-Protestant Christians (I know a few who despise Catholics as false Christians).

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So what do you think of the notion of personal property? You okay with people owning land?

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Originally Posted by boutons_deux

you don't have a clue

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oh we both know that is not true.

parasitic landowners -bourgeois- renting to the common man -proletariat- is central to the marxist narrative. The translation of das kapital that I read was in english. it is what it is.

Poll Roundup: Kansas Governor Sam Brownback Is ‘Fighting For His Life’

Kansas

Governor Sam Brownback (R) is “fighting for his life” against Democrat Paul Davis, according to SurveyUSA’s latest poll, released on Thursday. Davis leads Brownback by 6 points (47 percent to 41 percent), with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.

The poll shows that Davis has the support of 26 percent of Republicans, plus 89 percent of his Democratic base. Independents back Davis over Brownback by 19 points. Davis also leads among female voters by 14 points.

SurveyUSA notes that voters are primarily focused on education funding and taxes. Voters who prioritize education support Davis by 54 points, and those who prioritize tax rates favor Brownback by 16 percent. This reflects the divide over Brownback’s massive tax cuts, which drastically decreased funding for Kansas public education.

The Real Clear Politics poll average shows the two candidates essentially tied, with Brownback ahead by only 0.3 points.

Brownback still has five months to attempt to retain voters, but that’s a lot of time for Davis, the lesser-known candidate, to make his case to voters and to make the race a referendum against Brownback’s policies.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/poll-rou...fighting-life/

Repugs just HATE (public) education.

Notice Wisconsin is converging to Kansas’s dismal outlook. Wisconsin and Kansas are fairly highly ranked according the ALEC-Laffer index (2014 edition).

In contrast, Minnesota, performing on par with the United States since 2011M01 was ranked 46th. And California, far outperforming Wiconsin and Kansas, was ranked 47th. As noted in this post, the correlation between the ALEC-Laffer rank and growth rank is negative, if anything.

There’s also a lot of non-thinking out there…especially in Kansas. Just how long-term do you have to look out before you can declare something a failed policy? Telling us that Gov Walker’s policies and Gov Brownback’s policies will lead to better growth 10 years down the line is both useless and untestable.

You haven’t even advanced a coherent theory that would tell us why tax cuts for the rich would help long term growth. This is what I meant by mumbo-jumbo economics. Look at the graph. Both Wisconsin and Kansas are doing worse than the country at large, not better.

This trend has continued unabated for over three years. What kind of empirical evidence would convince you that tax cuts for the rich and rentier classes are not the cure for every economic problem?

As I’ve said before, there’s not a lot that governors and state legislatures can do to overcome larger macroeconomic forces. Dealing with the business cycle is primarily a job for the federal government. But there are lots of things that governors and state legislatures can do to make things worse than they otherwise have to be. Walker and Brownback seem to be going out of their way to find the dumbest, most hurtful policies imaginable.

http://firedoglake.com/2014/06/14/do...-to-brownback/

What? cutting taxes, ALEC STYLE, esp on the wealthy and corps DOESN'T MAGICALLY SPUR GROWTH in ECONOMY AND JOBS??

Could ALEC and the Repugs be LYING TO US just so they could enrich/protect the wealthy and corps? NAH, they NEVER LIE TO US.

Another Republican Down as FBI Investigates Lobbyists Close To Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is exploring whether confidantes of Gov. Sam Brownback operated influence-peddling operations in Kansas pivoting on personal access to the Republican governor and top administration officials.


The Topeka Capital-Journal learned the months-long inquiry involves Parallel Strategies, a rapidly expanding Topeka consulting and lobbying firm created in 2013 by a trio of veteran Brownback employees who left government service to work in an environment where coziness with former colleagues could pay dividends.Of concern to the FBI were behind-the-scenes financial arrangements related to Brownback’s privatization of the state’s $3 billion Medicaid program. The governor’s branding of KanCare handed to three for-profit insurance companies exclusive contracts to provide Medicaid services to 380,000 of Kansas’ disabled and poor.

Brownback would be the third Republican governor who is caught up in an investigation. Texas Gov. Rick Perry and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are also being investigated. What is being investigated is a possible pay to play scandal which could mirror much of the ugly relationship between money and politics that makes Capitol Hill go. Brownback has taken the DC environment that he lived in as a senator, and transferred it to the state of Kansas.

As the governor, Brownback passed what liberal and conservative experts agree is the worst piece of tax reform legislation in the country. Brownback led a 2012 movement that purged moderate Republicans from the state senate, and replaced them with tea partiers. All of these actions have cost him the support of moderate Republicans in the state.

A recent, and notoriously unreliable, Rasmussen poll :lol :lol :lol has Brownback leading his Democratic challenger by 7 points, despite the fact that his approval rating remains upsidedown.

http://www.politicususa.com/2014/04/...iticus+USA+%29

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More than 100 current and former Republican officials endorsed Democratic state Rep. Paul Davis's bid to unseat Gov. Sam Brownback (R) Tuesday, marking a new setback for the incumbent, who was already facing a competitive reelection campaign.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...v-brownback-r/

http://www.kansascity.com/news/gover...shortfall.html

S.E.C. Finds Bond Fraud in Kansas

Federal regulators said Monday that Kansas had defrauded investors by bringing $273 million of bonds to market in 2009 and 2010 without disclosing that its pension system was deeply underwater and that the investors ran a risk of not being fully repaid.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint singling out bonds issued by the Kansas Development Finance Authority to raise money for a range of projects, including hospital improvements, public libraries, water systems, public housing and improvements at Kansas State University.

“Kansas failed to adequately disclose its multibillion-dollar pension liability in bond offering documents, leaving investors with an incomplete picture of the state’s finances and its ability to repay the bonds amid competing strains on the state budget,” said LeeAnn Ghazil Gaunt, head of the S.E.C.’s municipal securities and public pensions unit.

The troubles with the S.E.C. started several years before the bonds in question were sold, the complaint said, when Kansas officials removed critical pension information from the state’s audited financial reports as well as the official statements that underwriters use to market municipal bonds. The S.E.C. said unidentified “outside accountants” had told state officials that they were not required to include the information.

By doing things this way, the regulators said, Kansas removed information that investors should have had — especially after the crash of 2008, when the state pension system developed an $8.3 billion shortfall and urgently needed more cash. The hole in the system had grown to more than twice the value of the state’s outstanding taxpayer-supported debt, $3.1 billion.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/u-s-finds-bond-fraud-in-kansas/?_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

KS is a model Kock Bros/ALEC state, what Repugs/SCOTUS want to do to the entire USA.

In Brownbackistan, everything is awesome! And don’t let any liberal tell you different

Sam Brownback's wrecking crew built "model red state" with huge tax cuts. They gutted Kansas and people now know it

If you visit the campaign web site of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, who is fighting a difficult battle for re-election, you will see a series of large-type boasts about his nonexistent economic achievements, and then you will read this:

“Our administration has accomplished this and so much more in my first term as Governor. . . . Help me stand up for Kansas against an over-reaching federal government. Join Lt Governor Colyer and I today.” ( :lol Repug education delivers perfect English grammar! :lol )

Yes: Join I today. The governor of Kansas wrote this—or signed it, anyway—and just above a list item declaring “Investing in Education.”

It is a small matter, and yet it is typical in its own careless way of the man’s calamitous administration of my home state since he ascended to the governorship in 2010.

Everything was supposed to be so awesome in Kansas, so godly and upright, and everything has gone so very wrong. The little things, the big things, and everything in between.

You might recall that Sam Brownback was, in his days in Congress and the Senate, one of the most prominent national leaders of the Republican Party’s moral-purity wing; he even briefly ran for president in 2007. Matters of the spirit were quite the thing in conservative rhetoric in those days, and Brownback was always in that movement’s fore, crusading against offensive entertainment, stem cell research, and other abominations. Put a man like Brownback in charge of an executive branch, however, and a different figure emerges. He wanted to build a “red-state model” in Kansas, he used to say, a community of righteousness that could “show the way back to being America again.”

What he has constructed instead is a microcosm of everything that is wrong and disastrous with conservative governance.

It is as though Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay had been transplanted to Topeka and given a free hand to sculpt the state however they chose. You’ve got runaway incompetence in the state administration; heavy-handed partisanship, with conservative Republicanscrushing moderate Republicans after the familiar pattern; corporate money—Koch Industries is based in Wichita—sloshing around like a vast underground aquifer. You’ve got privatization, deregulation, and an enthusiastic race to the bottom. (Gotta be more business-friendly than those people in Missouri!)

In a 2013 speech about his red-state model, for example, he talked about the “principles” that undergirded his plan, and insisted they were not of the kind detectable by ratiocination: “it can’t be mental principles, it’s got to be things that connect through the heart.” :lol
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/in_b...you_different/

Thanks, Repugs, and thanks all you assholes who vote Repug.