Seeded With Tax Cuts, Kansas Harvests the Benefits

[DMC]

Kansas. I just spent 5 weeks in that state (oddly no one talked about the taxes). The Jayhawks sure are some big lanky es. They were in the airport at KC and good lord I thought the Orcs were attacking.

[RandomGuy]

I am not a republican so I don't know what their party will advocate.

Okaay.

So what is your preferred tax scheme then? Tax cuts for the rich?

[Splits]

Okaay.

So what is your preferred tax scheme then? Tax cuts for the rich?

He's not rich, so he does't know what they advocate.

[tlongII]

Okaay.

So what is your preferred tax scheme then? Tax cuts for the rich?

My preference would be a simplified tax code with a flat rate for individuals. We should also lower the corporate income tax rate.

[Spurminator]

Sorry for piling on, but...

http://theatln.tc/2yeJrZQ
The regretful Republicans of Kansas have a message for the tax-cutting Republicans of Congress: Don’t follow our lead.

[RandomGuy]

If states are, as Justice Louis Brandeis famously called them, the laboratories of democracy, then Kansas’s experiment in conservative tax reform set off an explosion of red ink. Steep cuts for businesses and individuals failed to produce a promised economic boom, and busted the state’s budget instead. Now, the GOP legislators that oversaw—and ultimately cancelled—that fiscal study are increasingly worried that Washington will ignore its central finding.

A tax-reform plan from the White House and Republican congressional leaders mirrors the structure of the legislation Kansas passed, and it’s been accompanied by the same confident assurances that it will “pay for itself” with economic growth. “That won’t work, so you better learn our lesson,” warned Kansas state Senator Barbara Bollier, a Republican who voted against the tax cuts originally and then fought to undo them earlier this year.

This failed so badly even the GOP pols had to own it.

[RandomGuy]

And now they are trying it at the Federal level.

Holy .

[RandomGuy]

Sorry for piling on, but...

http://theatln.tc/2yeJrZQ
The regretful Republicans of Kansas have a message for the tax-cutting Republicans of Congress: Don’t follow our lead.

Too late.

Its like we have put a bunch of pyromaniacs in charge of the fire department.

[AaronY]

Dang its even worse than we thought lol

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics...r-republicans/

This starter is hilarious tho:

"By now, the whole country knows what a godawful mess Governor Sam Brownback has made out of the state of Kansas"

what percentage of americans are atuned to the kansas GDP statistics or even know about this? like 5% lol

[RandomGuy]

By now, the whole country knows what a godawful mess Governor Sam Brownback has made out of the state of Kansas in his doomed experiment to prove that modern conservative economics make sense. (Pro tip: They don’t.) Brownback, of course, would rather that not have gotten out to the world at large, and he and his government have done their level best to make sure it didn’t, as The Kansas City Star tells us.

A Kansas spokesperson was acknowledging that the state highway department didn’t have the money to rebuild a dangerous stretch of Interstate 70 that had been the scene of multiple wrecks and a grisly motorcycle fatality caught on video. “KDOT has lost a lot of money over the last few years,” the spokesperson said. “There’s just no funding at this point.” Simple, yes. But in Gov. Sam Brownback’s cash-strapped administration, those were fighting words. Days later, the spokesperson was fired. “Your article was the nail in my coffin for being the face of KDOT,” the spokesperson said in an email to The Kansas City Star.

One might conclude from this that Brownback would rather have people die on his state’s highways than admit, in the words of Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall, that his entire fallacy is wrong. One might do that, indeed.

----------------------------

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics...r-republicans/

So the incompetent Republican administration of Kansas tried to hide how bad it was.

Smells like Puerto Rico.

[RandomGuy]

That was people dying because of Republican incompetence.

Pretty clear. Don't maintain the roads, people die.

[RandomGuy]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/seeded-w...its-1431729743

Unemployment has dropped to 4.2% from 5.5% in 2013, and wages and job growth are steadily climbing.

Liberals love to hate Sam Brownback, and for good reason. The Kansas governor threatens a central tenet of liberal orthodoxy: the belief that higher taxes are a price that must be paid for progress.

“If your objective is to grow the economy, would you rather put more money into government, or leave it in the hands of small business?” Mr. Brownback asks during a recent interview in his office at the state capitol. Three years ago Kansas enacted the biggest tax cut of any state, relative to the size of its economy, in recent history. Lawmakers reduced the top rate on the personal income tax to 4.9% from 6.45%. They also eliminated the income tax for small business owners who file as individuals, a broad group that includes sole proprietors, limited liability partnerships and S-corporations.

The governor declared that Kansas was “open for business” in such strong terms that he might as well have donned a sandwich board reading “Come to Kansas / Keep Everything You Earn.” He boasted: “Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.”

The comment was subsequently picked up by critics who wondered why the Kansas economy wasn’t suddenly leaping ahead at, say, 4%-5% growth annually. When Mr. Brownback ran for re-election last year, national reporters descended on the Sunflower State and quickly made Kansas the national symbol for the alleged depredations of “trickle-down economics.” A sampling of headlines includes: “How Tea Party tax cuts are turning Kansas into a smoking ruin,” L.A. Times, July 9; “Kansas’ Ruinous Tax Cuts,” the New York Times, July 13; and “The Great Kansas Tea Party Disaster,” Rolling Stone, Oct. 23.

Yet voters re-elected Mr. Brownback by a four-point margin. What the news coverage missed was that if Kansas hasn’t exactly catapulted into the front ranks in economic growth and employment, then it has at least moved a long way from the stagnation of recent decades. Consider:

• In March 2013, unemployment in Kansas stood at 5.5%. It has since dropped to 4.2%, tied for 14th lowest in the country.

• From 1998-2012, Kansas ranked 38th in private-sector job growth, according Bureau of Labor Statistics data crunched by the Kansas Policy Ins ute. In 2013—the first year after the tax reform—the state climbed to 27th place, and in 2014 it moved to 21st, placing it in the top half of states.

• In the second half of 2014, hourly wages in Kansas grew 3.5%, according to BLS data, far faster than the national average of 1.9%.

So we have people dying as a direct result of starving state agencies of the funds they need to do their core missions.

What else does state government do? Oh yeah, protect abused children.

Children known to the state’s Department for Children and Families suffer horrific abuse, while the agency cloaks its involvement with their cases, even shredding notes after meetings where children’s deaths are discussed, according to a former high-ranking DCF official. One grieving father told The Star he was pressured to sign a “gag order” days after his son was killed that would prevent him from discussing DCF’s role in the case. Even lawmakers trying to fix the troubled system say they cannot trust information coming from agency officials

The incompetent Republican administration actively had to hide how they knew about children being tortured and beaten to death.

But hey, you got your magic tax cuts.

Do you think it worked out well for Kansas?

[RandomGuy]

Kansas. I just spent 5 weeks in that state (oddly no one talked about the taxes). The Jayhawks sure are some big lanky es. They were in the airport at KC and good lord I thought the Orcs were attacking.

But wait, there's more.

What else is state government responsible for... oh yeah, Medicaid.

▪ Kansas became the first state to fully privatize Medicaid services in 2013, and now some caregivers for people with disabilities say they have been asked to sign off on blank treatment plans — without knowing what’s being provided. In some of those cases, caregivers later discovered their services had been dramatically cut.

Because as we all know, profit incentives never distort behavior.

[RandomGuy]

Oooh, here is another great Republican idea from Kansas.

Let's check in and see how well that is doing.

How about anonymous authoring of bills in the legislature? So that voters can't know who to vote out of the Lege when they constantly propose stupid ?

How secrecy in Kansas is hurting its citizens
http://www.kansascity.com/news/state...183770421.html

[AaronY]

Oooh, here is another great Republican idea from Kansas.

Let's check in and see how well that is doing.

How about anonymous authoring of bills in the legislature? So that voters can't know who to vote out of the Lege when they constantly propose stupid ?

How secrecy in Kansas is hurting its citizens
http://www.kansascity.com/news/state...183770421.html

Article I linked to originally said several other states do that too though. Would be interested to see if they were all red or blue states

[RandomGuy]

Article I linked to originally said several other states do that too though. Would be interested to see if they were all red or blue states

Interesting to find out.

Play the odds, probably mostly red, if not all. Time to find out.

[RandomGuy]

Article I linked to originally said several other states do that too though. Would be interested to see if they were all red or blue states

Lawmakers across the political spectrum defend the practice, saying it has strategic value and a bill’s source isn’t as important as the stances legislators take during debates and by voting.

http://cjonline.com/news-legislature...onymous-nation

To compare with procedures in the 49 other states, The Capital-Journal contacted legislative bill-drafting, research and clerk offices in their statehouses and pored over bill lists and chamber rules. This research indicates Kansas is alone in conducting business this way.

Also:

Lawmakers across the political spectrum defend the practice, saying it has strategic value and a bill’s source isn’t as important as the stances legislators take during debates and by voting.

Any Democrat who defends this should be voted out of office, as should Republicans.

Very bad.

[tlongII]

At least they aren’t Illinois.

[Chucho]

At least they aren’t Illinois.

Or California.

[TeyshaBlue]

"play the odds."

[Spurminator]

This thread has aged like a fine milkshake.

[Quadzilla99]

This thread has aged like a fine milkshake.

You notice Republicans only come in here to change the subject now

[Quadzilla99]

"I'm gonna go in the Kansas thread and see if we can talk about stuff that's not Kansas"

[monosylab1k]

At least they aren’t Illinois.

I hear black people shoot each other there.

[boutons_deux]

I hear black people shoot each other there.

.... even with gun control, the horrors!

Trash was gonna send Feds to help the corrupt Chicago police, but of course, just another lie