Tag Archives: brownback

Republicans Talk a Better Game on the Economy Than Democrats

by ElisabethFulker Posted on July 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over the weekend Brad DeLong wrote a post about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and how his disastrous tax cuts have decimated the state’s economy. It prompted several of the usual comments, and DeLong highlights this one in particular:

The process Brownback has put the state on isn’t something he regrets. And obviously over the next several years, Kansas will recover in that it won’t get worse and will have growth that more or less tracks national growth. And at that point the state will declare Brownback’s policies to be a “success.”

This reminds me of something I’ve meant to point out for a while: economies always recover eventually.1 Conservatives take advantage of this fact by loudly and clearly insisting that their proposed tax cuts will supercharge economic growth. They know that eventually there will be growth, and when it happens they can then loudly and clearly insist that their tax cuts were responsible. Since they’ve been loudly and clearly saying this all along, ordinary citizens conclude that they’re right.

Democrats don’t really do this. When Barack Obama put together his various economic initiatives in 2009, for example, he was pretty circumspect about what they’d accomplish. Ditto for Bill Clinton in 1993. When they ran for reelection, both of them touted their economic achievements, but only in fairly broad terms. Obama didn’t insist that his stimulus bill was a magic bullet and Clinton didn’t claim that tax hikes and deficit reductions were always and everywhere the key to economic growth. Because of this, ordinary citizens never strongly associated the policies of either man with economic growth.2

Why is this? Stimulus programs and deficit reductions have about as much to do with economic growth as tax cuts: some, but not a lot. And none of them can truthfully claim to be the secret sauce for all economic woes at all times.

But that doesn’t bother Republicans. They’ve been focused like a laser beam on tax cuts as economic miracle workers for more than 30 years now. The fact that virtually no evidence supports this claim doesn’t matter. Democrats, conversely, can’t quite bring themselves to make the same unequivocal claim. Are they too embarrassed to just flatly lie about it? Too disorganized to agree on any one thing? Too muddled to make their points loudly and clearly? It is a mystery.

1Except maybe for Greece. We’ll see.

2Until much later, that is. Bill Clinton is now generally associated with the strong economy of the 90s, but it took a decade of weak economic growth to make him look so good.

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Republicans Talk a Better Game on the Economy Than Democrats

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Q: What’s the Matter With Kansas? A: Sam Brownback

by RusselLoeffler Posted on June 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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From Pema Levy:

In 2012, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback launched a “real live experiment” in conservative governance. He slashed income taxes for top earners and eliminated them for more than 330,000 small businesses, promising the cuts would be “a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.” Instead, the result has been disastrous. By the end of 2015, the state had lost nearly $3 billion in revenue and was behind most other states in job growth. And when the courts challenged the constitutionality of the bare-bones budgets, Brownback and his allies launched an all-out war on the state’s judges.

Click the link to read all about the farcical war that Brownback waged on his state’s judicial system. But if you like some cold, hard numbers to go with your story, Menzie Chinn is your man. Here, for example, is economic growth in Kansas before and after Brownback took office:

Ouch. From 2005 to 2011, Kansas was growing faster than the US economy. This continued for about a year after Brownback took office, at which point economic growth declined and then flatlined. But hey—maybe things are just tough in the Midwest. Not so much, it turns out. Here’s how Kansas compares to her neighboring states since 2011:

Chin has also done a forecast of how well Kansas should have done based on historical trends, and the picture is just as un-pretty as these. Basically, (a) Kansas was doing OK, (b) Brownback rolled in and decided to make Kansas a test bed for conservative economics, and (c) Kansas promptly went to hell.

This, of course, has caused conservatives to think long and hard about their contention that cutting taxes on the rich and slashing bloated budgets will supercharge the economy. Haha. Just kidding. What they’ve actually done is either (a) ignore Kansas or (b) spend lots of time trying to dig up reasons that Kansas is a special case and would have done even worse if Brownback hadn’t stepped in. These reasons tend to be pretty ridiculous, but so far they’ve been good enough to keep the rubes in line. And that’s what matters, right?

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Q: What’s the Matter With Kansas? A: Sam Brownback

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Kansas Republicans Have Come Up with a Disgraceful New Way to Screw the Poor

by ClaudioFitzGibb Posted on May 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Starting in July, a new law in Kansas will restrict the amount of cash a welfare recipient can take out of ATM’s to just $25 a day—a move that critics say introduces a whole new host of financial burdens—including high ATM fees and travel costs—when they access cash.

Max Ehrenfreund at the Washington Post explains:

Since most banking machines are stocked only with $20 bills, the $25 limit is effectively a $20 limit. A family seeking to withdraw even $200 in cash would have to visit an ATM 10 times a month, a real burden for a parent who might not have a car and might not live in a neighborhood where ATMs are easy to find.

The law, backed by a GOP-dominated Kansas legislature and Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, will benefit the pockets of large banks while taking money from poor families who rely on food stamps.

In Kansas’s system, every withdrawal incurs a $1 fee, and if the beneficiary doesn’t have a bank account, they will have to pay the ATM fee, too. Those fees might be worth it for some families, though, because the card issued by the state of Kansas isn’t like a debit card from an ordinary bank. Ordinary debit cards allow their holders to make purchases for free in stores. In Kansas, beneficiaries get two free purchases a month. After that, they pay 40 cents every time they use the card to buy something.

The ostensible rationale for this redistribution of wealth is to minimize waste and prevent low income residents from spending their money on non-essentials like alcohol and the much-feared lobster feast. This is the demonizing-the-poor trope that Republican lawmakers frequently deploy to justify punitive control over how low income people spend their money. In addition to the limit on withdrawals, the state’s new law carries restrictions to ludicrous levels by prohibiting spending on items such as swimming pools and fortune telling sessions.

As Mother Jones has written in the past, such concerns are wildly misplaced and seriously hurt the poor. President Obama recently addressed this conservative characterization, calling out Fox News for portraying the poor as lazy “leeches” eager to waste government funds.

Fortunately, Kansas’ controversial new provision may actually turn out to be illegal, violating federal law that mandates welfare recipients “have adequate access to their cash assistance” without enduring high fees.

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Kansas Republicans Have Come Up with a Disgraceful New Way to Screw the Poor

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How the World Series Might Just Help the GOP Win the Senate

by KishaAnsell Posted on October 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Kansas City sports fans aren’t used to celebrating. The town’s NFL team, the Chiefs, hasn’t won a playoff game since 1994. The Royals, the other major sports franchise in town, hadn’t made a playoff appearance since 1985. But local baseball fans are experiencing a rare bit of jubilation this year. Not only did the Royals sneak into the playoffs as a wild card, they won the AL pennant last week and are hosting the San Francisco Giants in game one of the World Series Tuesday night.

That’s an exciting development for any millennial-aged sports fan from Kansas City who has lived a full life without post-season baseball. It’s also welcome news for a pair of Republican politicians from Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback and Sen. Pat Roberts, both of whom are battling their way through tight reelection bids: Research has shown that important wins by local sports teams around election season can boost an incumbent’s performance.

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Post by Governor Sam Brownback.

A 2010 study by researchers from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and Stanford University’s business school looked at presidential, gubernatorial, and senate elections between 1964 and 2008, and overlaid their outcomes with results from college football games. When the local team won within two weeks of the election, the incumbent on the ballot received 1.05 to 1.47 percent more of the vote on Election Day.

But not all sports fandom is created equally, with certain victories carrying extra weight. When one of the teams that the researchers termed “locally important” won ahead of an election, they found that it could boost the incumbent’s vote share by as much as 2.42 percent—a large enough margin to swing any close contest. “We find clear evidence that the successes and failures of the local college football team before Election Day significantly influence the electoral prospects of the incumbent party,” the researchers wrote, “suggesting that voters reward and punish incumbents for changes in their well-being unrelated to government performance.”

The researchers attributed these results to an improvement in overall happiness among voters around the election, boosting a willingness to support the political status quo when they’re feeling content about other parts of their lives. The recent success of the long-struggling Royals reaching the championship round would certainly make the cut as a now important team. “These are different times in Kansas City,” declares the Boston Globe. “Passengers arriving at Kansas City International Airport on Monday were greeted with stacks of blue and white balloons with yellow crowns on top.”

Though the Royals are actually from Kansas City, Missouri, they’ve got plenty of boosters just across the border in the Sunflower State. About 20 percent of Kansas’ population resides in Johnson County, the ring of suburbs outside Kansas City and one of the pivotal electoral zones that could decide whether Brownback and Roberts get to keep their jobs next year.

Brownback, who won by 30 points four years ago, has struggled in polls against his Democratic opponent all year as voters have turned against him over his giant tax cuts and efforts to purify the state GOP. And questions about Roberts’ residency hurt his image enough that independent Greg Orman has run about even with Roberts since the Democratic candidate dropped out of the race. Both races have tightened as Election Day approaches, so don’t be surprised if Roberts and Brownback strut around town in royal blue until November 4.

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How the World Series Might Just Help the GOP Win the Senate

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Kris Kobach Wants Immigrants to Self-Deport. Now Voters May Send Him Packing.

by KaiGerowspeox Posted on September 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Republican Kris Kobach has managed to established an outsized persona for only being a one-term secretary of state in Kansas. Kobach became a national liberal scourge after he won office in 2010. He loaned out his services to help governors in Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia craft anti-immigration legislation, pioneering the idea of self-deportation that Mitt Romney touted in his presidential campaign. In Kansas, he imposed harsh voter ID laws to keep Democrat-inclined voters away from the ballot; just last week, he went to court against Chad Taylor—a Dem who wanted to drop his Senate campaign—in order to keep Taylor’s name on the ballot and improve the Republican candidate’s odds (the state Supreme Court ruled against Kobach last week).

Yet after becoming a hero to the right, Kobach is now struggling to hold onto office, trailing or tied in recent polls. And he can thank Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback for his troubles, since Brownback’s decisions to alienate moderate Republicans ended up driving Kobach’s opponent out of the party and made her determined to take Kobach down.

“We have a secretary of state who has been AWOL from Kansas,” Jean Schodorf, the Democrat challenging Kobach, told me last month. “He would rather be representing Arizona. Because he has been gone and had a personal agenda, the secretary of state’s office is falling apart.”

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Kris Kobach Wants Immigrants to Self-Deport. Now Voters May Send Him Packing.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Kris Kobach Wants Immigrants to Self-Deport. Now Voters May Send Him Packing.