This is the fifth part of a series on politics that is geared toward the 2014 elections. The first part was entitled “Democrats Need To Stop Relying On Their Daddies.” The second part was entitled “The Future Of The USA’s Democracy Is At Stake.” The third part was entitled “Americans Are Ignorant About History.” The fourth part was entitled “The Best And Worst Presidents In American History.”
A few days ago, I wrote in “The Future Of The USA’s Democracy Is At Stake” that the most crucial elections of 2014 were the gubernatorial elections in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. I came to this conclusion because Republicans nationwide are trying to destroy American democracy through poll taxes that could prevent millions of Americans from voting and those efforts could flip the five Dem leaning states to the Republicans in the future.
The most interesting election, though, and the one that might reveal the most about the character of Americans is the gubernatorial election in Kansas between Republican incumbent Sam Brownback and Democrat Paul Davis.
The election should be a referendum on what Governor Brownback called his “experiment” with the Kansas economy. Brownback’s experiment consisted of eliminating income taxes for 191,000 owners of small businesses, cutting the income taxes of the state’s wealthiest people by about 26 percent, raising sales taxes, and slashing the social safety net by, among other things, becoming the first governor to ever fully privatize Medicaid and slashing benefits for disabled people.
Brownback’s experiment has been a disaster. The state now has a huge deficit because revenues were $330 million less in fiscal year 2014 than anticipated. The deficit has caused the state to dramatically cut funding for grammar schools, high schools, colleges, libraries, health departments, courts, and financial assistance for impoverished families, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Many public schools for kindergartners through 12th-graders have been closed thanks to Brownback’s outrageous policies, while other schools have had to significantly increase the amount of students per class because they’ve had to fire many teachers. In addition, the state’s credit rating has been downgraded and the state has added significantly fewer jobs than neighboring states despite the dramatic increase in the wealth of the already very wealthy.
Anyone who ever believed that Brownback’s policies would be beneficial to anyone other than his wealthy friends and donors is a stone-cold moron. This wasn’t an “experiment.” Anyone with a brain who has been paying attention to what has happened in the United States knew these policies would fail.
From the 1930s through the 1970s, the U.S. government made huge investments in education, health care, and infrastructure while the tax rate for the wealthy was very high. The middle class boomed.
In the decades since, the U.S. government has gone in the opposite direction, even as costs for education and health care soared. The tax cuts for the wealthy, including the corporate welfare beggars who are always receiving handouts, has spurred record corporate profits while corporate taxes are near an all-time low, according to “In the Future We'll All Be Renters: America's Disappearing Middle Class.”
The about-face in American policy has caused pain for tens of millions of Americans. “The Middle Class Is Steadily Eroding. Just Ask the Business World” details how the wealthy have been faring significantly better in the past few decades, while most Americans have been faring significantly worse.
Americans have seen what works and what doesn’t, but tens of millions of conservatives have continued to vote for politicians who support these policies because they are sociopaths who don’t care about their fellow Americans.
Brownback knew his policies would fail for the people at large, but he pursued them anyway because he is a sociopath. Hundreds of prominent Republicans in Kansas were so outraged by his extremism that they endorsed Davis. The polls, though, show the race is even as Republicans focus on Davis’ 1998 trip to a strip club when he was single and 26. I heard GOP poobahs Karl Rove and Grover Norquist rant on Sunday talk shows that Davis lacks Kansas values because of his long-ago visit. Hey idiots, the strip club must represent Kansas values because it is IN KANSAS.
A Brownback win on Election Day means that the majority of Kansans, or at least a majority of those who voted, care more about an ideology that has been a proven failure for decades than the obligation of government officials to make decisions that are in the best interests of their constituents.
Wisconsin’s Scott Walker is a contender, but Sam Brownback is the most incompetent governor in the United States. If the people of Kansas re-elect him, they are sociopaths who should be ashamed of themselves.
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