Get out your barf bags people, because look who's coming to Kansas:
http://www.kansas.com/...
Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum will join Gov. Sam Brownback on the campaign trail next week.
The Pennsylvania Republican will appear with Brownback at a rally at Warren Theatres, 11611 E. 13th St. in Wichita, on Monday afternoon. The event will include a screening of “Knute Rockne, All American,” a movie that features Ronald Reagan in his iconic role of George Gipp. Doors open at 3 p.m.
Cost of attendance will be $10 per person and $25 per family. Brownback and Santorum will hold a free event at Cars4Less in Olathe at 11:30 a.m. that day.
Santorum has been outspoken in his opposition to abortion and gay marriage. His hard-line positions on social issues have made him popular with religious conservatives nationally, but have also drawn controversy and criticism. - The Wichita Eagle, 7/8/14
Yep, my former Senator who went on to lose re-election by the biggest margin in Pennsylvania history will be helping out his fellow extremist who is trailing Paul Davis (D. KS) by six points in the most recent polls. Brownback is going to need all the help he can get because his tax cuts are killing Kansas' economy:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Two years ago Kansas embarked on a remarkable fiscal experiment: It sharply slashed income taxes without any clear idea of what would replace the lost revenue. Sam Brownback, the governor, proposed the legislation — in percentage terms, the largest tax cut in one year any state has ever enacted — in close consultation with the economist Arthur Laffer. And Mr. Brownback predicted that the cuts would jump-start an economic boom — “Look out, Texas,” he proclaimed.
But Kansas isn’t booming — in fact, its economy is lagging both neighboring states and America as a whole. Meanwhile, the state’s budget has plunged deep into deficit, provoking a Moody’s downgrade of its debt.
There’s an important lesson here — but it’s not what you think. Yes, the Kansas debacle shows that tax cuts don’t have magical powers, but we already knew that. The real lesson from Kansas is the enduring power of bad ideas, as long as those ideas serve the interests of the right people.
Why, after all, should anyone believe at this late date in supply-side economics, which claims that tax cuts boost the economy so much that they largely if not entirely pay for themselves? The doctrine crashed and burned two decades ago, when just about everyone on the right — after claiming, speciously, that the economy’s performance under Ronald Reagan validated their doctrine — went on to predict that Bill Clinton’s tax hike on the wealthy would cause a recession if not an outright depression. What actually happened was a spectacular economic expansion.
Nor is it just liberals who have long considered supply-side economics and those promoting it to have been discredited by experience. In 1998, in the first edition of his best-selling economics textbook, Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw — very much a Republican, and later chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers — famously wrote about the damage done by “charlatans and cranks.” In particular, he highlighted the role of “a small group of economists” who “advised presidential candidate Ronald Reagan that an across-the-board cut in income tax rates would raise tax revenue.” Chief among that “small group” was none other than Art Laffer.
And it’s not as if supply-siders later redeemed themselves. On the contrary, they’ve been as ludicrously wrong in recent years as they were in the 1990s. For example, five years have passed since Mr. Laffer warned Americans that “we can expect rapidly rising prices and much, much higher interest rates over the next four or five years.” Just about everyone in his camp agreed. But what we got instead was low inflation and record-low interest rates.
So how did the charlatans and cranks end up dictating policy in Kansas, and to a more limited extent in other states? Follow the money.
For the Brownback tax cuts didn’t emerge out of thin air. They closely followed a blueprint laid out by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which has also supported a series of economic studies purporting to show that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will promote rapid economic growth. The studies are embarrassingly bad, and the council’s Board of Scholars — which includes both Mr. Laffer and Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation — doesn’t exactly shout credibility. But it’s good enough for antigovernment work. - Paul Krugman, New York Times, 6/29/14
And no one is buying what Brownback is selling:
http://www.kansascity.com/...
On May 29, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback passionately defended his economic policies in a speech to conservatives at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.
“Day one, when I entered office, I was handed a projection that if we did nothing as a state, we would have a $500 million deficit at the end of that fiscal year in six months,” Brownback said.
A casual listener — or voter — might conclude that Brownback faced a $500 million budget shortfall in June 2011, six months after he took office.
He did not.
According to documents provided by his Department of Revenue, Brownback was actually told on “day one” that he faced a deficit of just $60 million in six months.
A $492 million deficit was predicted for 18 months later — June 30, 2012, the end of the 2012 fiscal year. The end of the federal stimulus program caused a cash crunch in Kansas and most other states.
On July 2, Brownback clarified his statement in an email to The Star.
“After taking office in January 2011, I was presented with an FY 2012 budget which … had a projected deficit of $500 million if the administration took no action,” he said, a much clearer description of what actually happened.
Politicians often exaggerate statistics, cherry-picking facts and figures to bolster their policy choices. Rep. Paul Davis, Brownback’s Democratic opponent for governor, for example, inflated teacher layoffs in Kansas. After a round of sharp criticism, he stopped making the claim.
But Brownback’s extensive comments supporting his dramatic fiscal efforts in Kansas have attracted intense scrutiny of the state’s financial performance.
Articles and commentary in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, U.S. News, Esquire, Politico, The Huffington Post and Washington Monthly have all examined the Republican’s budget policies. So have academics.
Brownback does not object to such a review.
“You run on a series of numbers that are measurable,” he told a conference sponsored by Politico in February.
Those measurements are underway.
“It’s entirely fair and appropriate to hold Gov. Brownback accountable,” said an email from Nick Johnson of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a group that sharply attacked the Brownback budget. “The kinds of claims that he made were just begging to be evaluated.” - Kansas City Star, 7/4/14
Read the Kansas City Star to see how it brilliantly debunks all of Brownback's bull shit:
http://www.kansascity.com/...
Both Brownback and Santorum hype up how super religious they are but looking at Brownback's actions, they're not very Christ-like:
http://www2.ljworld.com/...
Agencies that had agreed to participate in a new Medicaid program have ample reason to be upset with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Last week, less than 24 hours before the new program was supposed to launch, KDHE officials notified agencies — by email, no less — that they had decided to delay the program for at least six months, until Jan. 1, 2015. They apparently were unconcerned that many of the agencies, including Heartland Community Health Center in Lawrence, already had hired staff and taken other steps to implement the service, known as “health home.”
The new service is intended to provide a “health home” to help coordinate care for Kansans who have either severe mental illness or suffer from chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes, asthma or heart disease. The program is part of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Although many state leaders still adamantly oppose the implementation of that law, the state has decided to accept the health home program, which will be 90 percent funded by the federal government for the first two years.
The state had planned to start signing up participants for both programs on July 1. Agencies, like Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, were able to move ahead on plans to provide health home services for people with mental illness. However, on June 30, the Heartland center and other agencies were informed the kickoff for health home services for people with chronic illnesses would be delayed because KDHE had been unable to sign up enough contractors to provide adequate services throughout the state.
KDHE had been working with the three private contractors that manage Medicaid services in the state, but apparently those contractors weren’t able to meet the federal requirement that the health home service not only be available statewide but that patients have a choice of providers. It’s disappointing the state couldn’t meet its own deadline, but the least it could have done is communicate adequately with agencies like Heartland, that were gearing up to provide the service. A KDHE representative said department officials waited until the last minute to notify those agencies because they continued to hope that they could meet the federal coverage requirement.
That isn’t a lot of help to Heartland, which already had hired two new employees and identified 300-500 patients that would qualify for the service. “We put a ton of time and energy into making this happen. … But this delay, it was incredibly disruptive,” said Heartland CEO Jon Stewart. - Lawrence Journal-World, 7/8/14
And according to this, Brownback is certainly not a protector of the Constitution like most conservatives claim to be:
http://m.cjonline.com/...
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence issued notice Monday of its intention to file a lawsuit against Gov. Sam Brownback to challenge a sweeping state law nullifying enforcement of federal firearms restrictions in Kansas.
Brownback said in response that attorneys for the state would vigorously defend the gun rights of Kansans.
Attorneys working for the Brady Center plan to challenge the constitutionality of Kansas' law, known as the Second Amendment Protection Act, in U.S. District Court. Details of a legal argument that the state law undermines federal gun laws in Kansas are to be revealed Wednesday during news conferences.
In April 2013, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Brownback asserting the Kansas law was unconstitutional. He cited the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution to contest the state's position that federal employees could be blocked from carrying out their responsibilities.
A provision of Senate Bill 102 exempts firearms manufactured and owned in Kansas from being subjected to federal law, regulation or authority. The bill's supporters did soften the measure by dropping language calling for arrest or detention of federal agents who sought to enforce federal gun control in Kansas.
"In purporting to override federal law and to criminalize the official acts of federal officers, (the law) directly conflicts with federal law and is therefore unconstitutional," Holder said.
Brownback said the reform bill he signed earned bipartisan support and wasn't worthy of intervention in a federal court. Kansans have repeatedly affirmed a commitment to protection of their fundamental right to bear arms and to preserve sovereignty of the state of Kansas, the governor said.
"It is a right enshrined not only in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, but also protected by the Kansas Bill of Rights," Brownback said. "The Obama administration attacked this legislation when I signed it more than one year ago. It now appears that they have found some Washington, D.C., lawyers to do their bidding."
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt anticipated a legal challenge to the law and requested the Legislature budget $225,000 over a two-year period to cover costs of a legal contest.
In 2014, Brownback followed last year's law targeting federal enforcement by signing a bill that eliminated a patchwork of city and county restrictions on firearms. The latest measure implemented July 1 made it legal statewide to openly carry firearms and established new standards for lawful carrying of concealed weapons.
In a Monday news advisory, attorneys for the plaintiffs in Brady Campaign v. Brownback contend the 2013 state law to be unconstitutional. They argued the law allowed gun manufacturers in the state to make guns without serial numbers and to build guns designed to avoid metal detectors.
In addition, the law prohibited background checks for guns made in Kansas and the tracking of guns used in crimes. The law prevented local authorities from referring gun crimes to federal agencies. - Topeka Capitol-Journal, 7/7/14
With Brownback's awful record as Governor, Davis is getting praise for his common sense ideas:
http://www.kansascity.com/...
Kansas Democrat Paul Davis has offered a holistic approach to long-term growth. It presents a welcome contrast to Gov. Sam Brownback’s false promise of deep income tax cuts magically transforming the state’s economy.
More a statement of principles than an actual plan, Davis’ “economic vision” correctly names strong schools and universities, well-kept roads and highways, and smart energy and technology policies as the building blocks of a thriving economy.
Davis accurately observes that Brownback’s income tax cuts threaten all of those assets. The cuts have created a full-blown financial crisis. Davis wants to postpone scheduled additional income tax cuts that would make matters worse.
That clearly needs to be done. Kansas spent $350 million more than it gathered in revenues in the just-completed fiscal year, and the budget approved for the current year was out of balance when Brownback signed it.
The state is relying on a rapidly dwindling reserve fund to pay its bills. More income tax cuts would decimate schools and services. - Kansas City Star, 7/7/14
And Davis is making education a top issue in his campaign:
http://www.gctelegram.com/...
State Rep. Paul Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate who is hoping to unseat incumbent Republican Sam Brownback in November, brought his campaign message to Salina on Sunday night, hammering Brownback on his agenda over the past 3 1/2 years that he said has had a deleterious effect on Kansas, particularly the education of its students.
“We as Kansans believe we have a moral obligation to give our children the very best public school education that we can possibly give them,” said Davis, the featured speaker at a Democratic fundraiser at Martinelli’s Little Italy.
“I know this moral commitment we have to our schools and our children ... is part of our state history, it runs in our blood. Sam Brownback sees things differently.”
He cited Brownback’s statement shortly after taking office that public education is to Kansas what the national defense is to the federal government.
Davis said his first budget that included cuts to education didn’t reflect that.
“It was the largest single cut to public school funding in state history,” Davis said.
When he signed it into law, Brownback called it a victory for Kansas, Davis said.
“We need a governor whose policies will revere public education. We need a governor whose policies will truly reward hard work. We need a governor who is absolutely committed to rebuilding the middle class,” Davis said. “To accomplish those things, we must have a governor who understands cooperation, another true Kansas value. These are the things that bind us together as Kansans, and it is why I’m running for governor.”
- Garden City Telegraph, 7/9/14
We have a very serious shot here at winning this race. Democrats have always been competitive in Governor's races in Kansas and this time our chances are looking even better. Of course nut jobs like Santorum and the Kochs will spend big to try and save Brownback by duping voters so we can't let them get away with it. Click here to donate and get involved with Davis' campaign:
http://davisforkansas.com/