Kansas: A Conservative Utopia

percicles · Jun 8, 2015

Taking a page out of the Hugo Chavez handbook. I like.

Kansas Governor Threatens To Defund Judiciary If It Rules Against Him

A budget advanced by Kansas legislators would eliminate funding for state courts if a judge strikes down a controversial law passed last year.

Republican senators and representatives agreed Monday on a two-year judicial budget that would self-destruct if any court blocks or overturns a 2014 law that stripped the Kansas Supreme Court of some administrative authority, giving local courts control over their own budgets and leadership.

A lawsuit pending in Shawnee County District Court, in northeastern Kansas, says the 2014 law violates the Kansas Constitution. The bill approved Monday says that if the law is “stayed or is held to be invalid or unconstitutional,” the other provisions including funding for the courts, “are hereby declared to be null and void.”

The legislation provides for $208 million for fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2017 combined and is expected to pass in the Republican-controlled legislature as early as this week. A spokeswoman for Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, declined to comment.

Legal experts said the legislation may be the first to peg the Third Branch’s budget to the outcome of an individual case, and public-interest groups described it as the most pointed challenge to judicial independence in recent memory.

“This is the first time I’m aware of in which funding for the courts is being specifically linked to courts’ decisions,” said William E. Raftery, an analyst for the National Center for State Courts who also runs a blog that tracks legislation affecting state courts.

Kansas Democrats said the bill was an attempt by Republicans to force the judiciary’s hand. “It says, ‘You do what we want you to do or we’re going to shut you down,’’ said Sen. Laura Kelly, a Democrat whose district includes Topeka.

Republicans denied that the language in the bill was directed at the lawsuit. GOP Sen. Steve Fitzgerald said the 2014 law and the language in the budget proposal were part of a push by the Kansas legislature to introduce more local control over the courts.

The language, known in legislative parlance as a non-severability clause, “just keeps the whole thing together so we can keep it as a package,” he said.

It is unclear what would happen if the clause were triggered. Democrats predicted court closures and a legal scramble to block the law. A spokeswoman for the Kansas courts system declined to comment on the litigation or the budget language.

Advocacy groups and Kansas Democrats say bad blood between the legislature and the courts has its origins in a dispute over education funding.

Twice in the past decade, the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled public-school funding was unconstitutionally inadequate. Soon after the most recent ruling, the legislature passed the law limiting the administrative authority of the court.

The suit challenging the law, filed in February by a Kansas judge represented by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, says it violates a 1972 amendment to the state constitution giving the Kansas Supreme Court “general administrative authority over all courts in the state.”

Richard E. Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, said a Kansas court could rule that the language in the budget bill is not binding, but it is unclear what would happen if the legislature refuses to recognize that ruling as binding in turn.

Mr. Levy said the budget bill runs headlong into constitutional problems, purporting to tell the courts what they must do and potentially defunding a co-equal branch of government.

“Right now relations between the judicial and political branches of the state are not cordial,” he said.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/kansas-lawmakers-budget-move-links-court-funding-to-court-decisions-1432067876

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g1184 · Jun 9, 2015

geeimsobored · Jun 9, 2015

Kansas has to win the award for worst state government in the US. Texas looks damn good in comparison. (although every time I look at the list of who's retiring in the Texas House and Senate, I get more worried)

larsv8 · Jun 9, 2015

I feel bad for the people of Kansas, but it seems like it is almost necessary to illustrate just how corrupt and incompetent the conservatives are.

CometsWin · Jun 9, 2015

Defunding the judiciary because they overrule you? Wow, talk about crazy. He must have learned that from Rick Perry.

Amiga · Mar 19, 2016

Kansas continue to struggle under Conservative Utopia. Now add Louisiana as another example of the great Conservative idea of tax cut as the ultimate solution to everything and failing miserably due to it.

Over the course of 12 debates, the Republican presidential candidates were never asked to address the budget problems in Kansas. That may not sound like an odd omission but it is. To see why, let’s take a quick trip to a parallel political universe:

In Bizarro America, the tea party never happened. Instead, the Great Recession sparked a left-wing populist movement that swept democratic socialists into statehouses all across the country. In Vermont, these Denmark-worshippers took full control of state government and implemented their radical agenda. They raised income taxes to unprecedented heights, upped the minimum wage to $15 an hour, made all state universities tuition-free, and established a single-payer health-care system. As he signed the last of these programs into law, Governor Bernie Sanders declared that Vermont would serve as a blue-state model, one that the Democratic Party’s 2016 ticket could use to say, “See, we’ve got a different way, and it works.”

But by 2016, that model had collapsed. Every warning that conservatives had made about Sanders’s program proved prescient. The tax hikes chased all the job creators out of state. The new minimum wage didn’t raise low-income workers’ living standards; it raised their unemployment rate. The costs of free college and universal health care proved so onerous, the state was forced to raid its rainy-day funds and borrow at high interest rates just to keep the government running. Vermont now faced a billion-dollar deficit. Schools were shuttered. Pensions were cut. The state’s department of social services could no longer afford to investigate child abuse. The legal system could no longer provide indigent defendants with representation. Nonetheless, in the race for the White House, every Democratic candidate ran on some version of Sanders’s economic model.

Wouldn’t it be important for those candidates to explain why their program wouldn’t fail the country in the same way it had failed the Green Mountain State? If you think yes, then you should demand that Donald Trump, John Kasich, and Ted Cruz explain why their tax policies won’t fail America in the same way they’ve failed the people of Kansas.

In 2010, the tea-party wave put Sam Brownback into the Sunflower State’s governor’s mansion and Republican majorities in both houses of its legislature. Together, they implemented the conservative movement’s blueprint for Utopia: They passed massive tax breaks for the wealthy and repealed all income taxes on more than 100,000 businesses. They tightened welfare requirements, privatized the delivery of Medicaid, cut $200 million from the education budget, eliminated four state agencies and 2,000 government employees. In 2012, Brownback helped replace the few remaining moderate Republicans in the legislature with conservative true believers. The following January, after signing the largest tax cut in Kansas history, Brownback told the Wall Street Journal, “My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, 'See, we've got a different way, and it works.' "

As you’ve probably guessed, that model collapsed. Like the budget plans of every Republican presidential candidate, Brownback’s “real live experiment” proceeded from the hypothesis that tax cuts for the wealthy are such a boon to economic growth, they actually end up paying for themselves (so long as you kick the undeserving poor out of their welfare hammocks). The Koch-backed Kansas Policy Institute predicted that Brownback’s 2013 tax plan would generate $323 million in new revenue. During its first full year in operation, the plan produced a $688 million loss. Meanwhile, Kansas’s job growth actually trailed that of its neighboring states. With that nearly $700 million deficit, the state had bought itself a 1.1 percent increase in jobs, just below Missouri’s 1.5 percent and Colorado’s 3.3.

Those numbers have hardly improved in the intervening years. In 2015, job growth in Kansas was a mere 0.1 percent, even as the nation’s economy grew 1.9 percent. Brownback pledged to bring 25,000 new jobs to the state in his second term; as of January, he has brought 700. What’s more, personal income growth slowed dramatically since the tax cuts went into effect. Between 2010 and 2012, Kansas saw income growth of 6.1 percent, good for 12th in the nation; from 2013 to 2015, that rate was 3.6 percent, good for 41st.

Meanwhile, revenue shortfalls have devastated the state’s public sector along with its most vulnerable citizens. Since Brownback’s inauguration, 1,414 Kansans with disabilities have been thrown off Medicaid. In 2015, six school districts in the state were forced to end their years early for lack of funding. Cuts to health and human services are expected to cause 65 preventable deaths this year in Sedgwick County alone. In February, tax receipts came in $53 million below estimates; Brownback immediately cut $17 million from the state’s university system. This data is not lost on the people of Kansas — as of November, Brownback’s approval rating was 26 percent, the lowest of any governor in the United States.

Louisiana has replicated these results. When Bobby Jindal moved into the governor’s mansion in 2008, he inherited a $1 billion surplus. When he moved out last year, Louisiana faced a $1.6 billion projected deficit. Part of that budgetary collapse can be put on the past year's plummeting oil prices. The rest should be placed on Jindal passing the largest tax cut in the state's history and then refusing to reverse course when the state's biggest industry started tanking. Jindal's giveaway to the wealthiest citizens in the country's second-poorest state cost Louisiana roughly $800 million every year. To make up that gap, Jindal slashed social services, raided the state’s rainy-day funds, and papered over the rest with reckless borrowing. Today, the state is scrambling to resolve a $940 million budget gap for this fiscal year, with a $2 billion shortfall projected for 2017. Like Bizarro Vermont, Louisiana can no longer afford to provide public defenders for all its criminal defendants. Its Department of Children and Family Services may soon be unable to investigate every reported instance of child abuse. Education funding is down 44 percent since Jindal took office. The state’s hospitals are likely to see at least $64 million in funding cuts this year.

What has happened to these states should be a national story; because we are one election away from it being our national story. Ted Cruz claims his tax plan will cost less than $1 trillion in lost revenue over the next ten years. Leaving aside the low bar the Texas senator sets for himself — my giveaway to the one percent will cost a bit less than the Iraq War! — Cruz only stays beneath $1 trillion when you employ the kind of “dynamic scoring” that has consistently underestimated the costs of tax cuts in Kansas. Under a conventional analysis, the bill runs well over $3 trillion, with 44 percent of that lost money accruing to the one percent. John Kasich’s tax plan includes cutting the top marginal rate by more than ten percent along with a similar cut to the rates on capital gains and business taxes. Even considering Kasich’s appetite for Social Security cuts, his plan must rely on the same supply-side voodoo that Kansas has so thoroughly discredited. As for the most likely GOP nominee, even with dynamic scoring, his tax cuts would cost $10 trillion over the next ten years, with 40 percent of that gargantuan sum filling the pockets of Trump’s economic peers.

If any of these men are elected president, they will almost certainly take office with a House and Senate eager to scale up the “red-state model.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said of Brownback’s Kansas, “This is exactly the sort of thing we (Republicans) want to do here, in Washington, but can’t, at least for now.” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s celebrated budgets all depend on the same magical growth that has somehow escaped the Sunflower State.

This campaign cycle has inspired an unusual amount of soul-searching in Republican circles. The rise of Trump has forced many conservatives to reckon with the moral odiousness of Nixon’s Southern Strategy — a blueprint for GOP electoral success that relied on coded appeals to white racial animus. Unfortunately, the fall of Kansas has failed to inspire a similar reckoning with the policies that those ugly advertisements were designed to sell. The GOP front-runner’s praise of mob violence and religious discrimination has spurred much righteous outrage from the National Review. Kansas’s shortened school-years have spurred none.

When Donald Trump makes a gaffe, reporters confront Republican leaders and demand a response. When the GOP's economic platform decimates two U.S. states, a similar confrontation is in order.
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rocketsjudoka · May 16, 2016

In a related story another conservative state that resisted the ACA now looks to accept the Medicaid expansion.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/surpr...s-medicaid-expansion-051849585--politics.html

In surprising turnabout, Oklahoma eyes Medicaid expansion

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Despite bitter resistance in Oklahoma for years to President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, Republican leaders in this conservative state are now confronting something that alarms them even more: a huge $1.3 billion hole in the budget that threatens to do widespread damage to the state's health care system.

So, in what would be the grandest about-face among rightward leaning states, Oklahoma is now moving toward a plan to expand its Medicaid program to bring in billions of federal dollars from Obama's new health care system.

What's more, GOP leaders are considering a tax hike to cover the state's share of the costs.

"We're to the point where the provider rates are going to be cut so much that providers won't be able to survive, particularly the nursing homes," said Republican state Rep. Doug Cox, referring to possible cuts in state funds for indigent care that could cause some hospitals and nursing homes to close.

Despite furious opposition by conservative groups, Republican Gov. Mary Fallin and some GOP legislative leaders are pushing the plan, and support appears to be growing in the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature. Details have not been ironed out but the proposal is based on an Indiana program that received federal approval.

Obama called on states to expand their Medicaid insurance for low-income residents as part of his 2014 health overhaul designed to shrink the population of uninsured Americans. Most Democratic-led states did so, along with a handful of GOP states.

But in Oklahoma, even with 20 percent of its population on Medicaid, it's been no way, no how. Until now.

A bust in the oil patch has decimated state revenues, compounded by years of income tax cuts and growing corporate subsidies intended to make the state more business-friendly.

Oklahoma's Medicaid agency has warned doctors and other health care providers of cuts of up to 25 percent in what the state pays under Medicaid.

"We are nearing a colossal collapse of our health care system in Oklahoma," warned Craig Jones, the president of the Oklahoma Hospital Association, which represents more than 135 hospitals and health care systems in the state. "We have doctors turning away patients. We have people with mental illnesses who are going without treatment. Hospitals are closing, and this is only going to get worse this summer if the Legislature does not act immediately to turn this around."

In the poverty-wracked southeastern corner of the state, where 96 percent of babies in the McCurtain Memorial Hospital are born to Medicaid patients, most health care would end, said hospital CEO Jahni Tapley.

"A 25 percent cut to Medicaid would not put my hospital in jeopardy, because we are already in jeopardy," Tapley said. "A 25 percent cut would shutter our doors for good, leaving 33,000 people without access to health care."

Nursing homes have been warning residents that they may be closing. Asked where she would go if the Beadles Nursing Home in the small town of Alva closes, Jeanie Yohn, 89, said: "I just can't imagine. I have three daughters, but they don't live here."

Under the proposal, which would be funded in part with a $1.50-per-pack tax on cigarettes, Oklahoma would shift 175,000 people from its Medicaid rolls onto the federal health exchange created by the Affordable Care Act. That would make room for adding to Medicaid roughly the same number of working poor who are currently uninsured. Participants would pay nominal premiums and co-pays.

The move, by increasing the number of uninsured people covered, would allow the state to tap into the extra money offered under the federal law. Beginning in 2017, the federal government would cover 95 percent of the state's Medicaid costs, decreasing to 90 percent of the share in 2020.

Fallin, a former congresswoman who voted against Obama's health plan when it came before the House, argues that the plan doesn't amount to expanding Medicaid because the program's rolls don't grow. Rather, she said, it "transitions 175,000 Medicaid enrollees to the private insurance market."

No matter what state leaders call it, conservative groups aren't happy about the idea of more government health spending.

"They can call it Medicaid rebalancing, but there's only one federal program that offers a 9-to-1 federal match, and that's Obamacare," said Johnathan Small, president of Oklahoma Council on Public Affairs, a free-market think-tank that opposes higher taxes. The opponents have called for covering health costs by cutting spending for less essential programs.

Americans for Prosperity, another conservative think-tank backed by the billionaire philanthropist Koch brothers, David and Charles, also has launched a campaign against the proposal and is hosting a "NobamaCare" event at the state Capitol to voice their opposition.

Carl Herrera · Aug 2, 2016

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">KS, where moderate Rs made push to oust Brownback's conservative allies: I count about 13-15 incumbent R legislators who lost primary today.</p>— Taniel (@Taniel) <a href="https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/760676435501744129">August 3, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

cml750 · Aug 3, 2016

lol at the premise of this thread.

g1184 · Aug 4, 2016

cml750 said: ↑

lol at the premise of this thread.
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You and me both, brother. As if conservatives know how to spell the word "utopia," much less create one.

ima_drummer2k · Aug 5, 2016

Moronic tea party chairman Tim Huelskamp OUT, sensible Republican Roger Marshall in. A small glimmer of hope, perhaps?

Tea party takes a hit after Republican primary battle in Kansas

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Rep. Tim Huelskamp has been a thorn in the side of the Republican establishment since his election to Congress amid the tea party wave of 2010, and his clashes with former House Speaker John Boehner and other GOP leaders helped get him booted from the House Agriculture Committee.

That proved costly for the third-term congressman on Tuesday, as he lost the GOP nomination to continue representing Kansas’ largely rural 1st District to Roger Marshall, a political newcomer who had the backing of powerful farming and business groups.

The contest was unusual because GOP primary challengers usually accuse incumbents of being insufficiently conservative. Marshall, an obstetrician from Great Bend, cast himself as a conservative willing to reach across the aisle, saying after his win that he wasn’t sure the House Freedom Caucus would even have him. He will be the heavy favorite in November, when he’ll square off against only an independent challenger — the Democrats aren’t fielding a candidate.

The primary contest, which Marshall won with 56.5 percent of the vote, became a proxy battle between GOP conservatives and pragmatists. The anti-tax Club for Growth spent $400,000 to help Huelskamp and members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus campaigned for him. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Ending Spending Action Fund, which wants to curb federal expenditures, spent big dollars against him.

Marshall cast Huelskamp as too unyielding and combative, saying his clashes with Boehner and others had hurt the district. After Huelskamp lost his seat on the Agriculture Committee in 2012, farm groups turned against him, and many voters saw it as a crucial issue in their farming state.

“Getting kicked off the Agriculture Committee is a crime that can’t be forgiven,” Brian Scheideman, a 52-year-old driver’s education instructor, said after voting in his hometown of Wamego for Marshall. “I don’t mind the independent voice, but you’ve got to figure out how to work with people.”

Marshall credited his win as “all about agriculture,” and won the endorsements of the Kansas Farm Bureau, Kansas Livestock Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, among other groups.

Huelskamp, who got 43.5 percent of the vote, blamed his loss on $3 million of super PAC money that went to support his opponent.

“Half-truths and smears were spread by billionaires that bought a seat in Kansas,” said Heulskamp, who is from the small southwestern Kansas community of Fowler.

Huelskamp built a reputation by clashing with GOP leaders over farm and budget legislation. He was a vocal critic of Boehner and his supporters argued that he gave his conservative, safely GOP district an independent voice.

“I think he has a better record than what he is given credit for,” said Doris O’Neal, a 76-year-old Hutchinson homemaker who voted for Huelskamp. “If you listen for reasons he voted as he has, I think you will find he is doing the best he can for Kansas.”

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, issued a statement Wednesday decrying the result, saying Huelskamp has stood up for the values of those he represents and has consistently said “no to ‘business as usual’ in Washington.”

“In an ugly and dishonest campaign, Tim’s record was attacked and misrepresented by big money special interest groups who wanted to exact their revenge,” Jordan said.

Both candidates raised more than $700,000 for their campaigns — a healthy sum for Kansas — but Marshall loaned his campaign more than $280,000. Interest groups also spent more than $2.7 million on the race, with Marshall benefiting significantly more.

With no Democrat running, Marshall will run in November against independent Alan LaPolice, a farmer and educator from Clifton who ran for the GOP nomination in 2014 and lost a closer-than-expected race against Huelskamp.

Huelskamp is one of only a few House members to be ousted during this year’s primary season.

Rep. Renee Ellmers fell to fellow North Carolina GOP Rep. George Holding, and Virginia Republican Rep. Randy Forbes also lost, victims of court-ordered, redrawn district lines. Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., was defeated in April after indictment on federal corruption charges. He was later convicted and quit Congress.

In other Kansas races, U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran and U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder in the 3rd District in the Kansas City area cruised to easy GOP primary victories over lesser known opponents. U.S. Reps. Lynn Jenkins in the 2nd District of eastern Kansas and Mike Pompeo in the 4th District of south-central Kansas had no opponents in their Republican primaries.

LINK
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pirc1 · Aug 5, 2016

ima_drummer2k said: ↑

Moronic tea party chairman Tim Huelskamp OUT, sensible Republican Roger Marshall in. A small glimmer of hope, perhaps?
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Tea party was the worst thing to happen to US politics in the last fifty years.

Cohete Rojo · Aug 7, 2016

pirc1 said: ↑

Tea party was the worst thing to happen to US politics in the last fifty years.
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Worse than the Segregation Party winning presidential electoral votes?

If you say so, captain!

peleincubus · Aug 7, 2016

Cohete Rojo said: ↑

Worse than the Segregation Party winning presidential electoral votes?

If you say so, captain!
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Worse as a whole. In how it has impacted this country? I would say so.

Cohete Rojo · Aug 7, 2016

peleincubus said: ↑

Worse as a whole. In how it has impacted this country? I would say so.
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You can't make this stuff up can you folks.

A group of "don't tax us so much" supporters is worse than a 4-state winning movement in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 to segregate blacks from whites and restore pre-CRA Jim Crow.

Gotcha!

Commodore · Aug 7, 2016

if you anger The Chamber of Crony Capitalism, they will primary you

very tough for any conservative to compete with that

Dubious · Aug 7, 2016

Nothing motivates us more than a disaster, we all pitch in and help. So maybe the tea party is going to serve a purpose. The demographic weight of a backlash could flip some party power. You have to crack the majority power before you can address anything like repealing gerrymandering.

Kansas panel's scolding gives Brownback preview of future

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback's administration got a taste of what working with a less conservative Legislature could look like Friday in the form of an oversight committee's angry, bipartisan scolding over issues within the state's Medicaid program....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kansas-p...medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

Commodore · Aug 7, 2016

I live in Kansas (well, KC MO) and have lived all over the country

always amusing that people think it's some sort of dysfunctional wasteland (like say, inner-city America)

it has low cost of living, decent weather, centrally located, low crime, and midwest people are some of the friendliest in the country

GladiatoRowdy · Aug 8, 2016

Cohete Rojo said: ↑

A group of "don't tax us so much" supporters...
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...who are apparently unaware that federal marginal tax rates are already at or near historic lows...

DonnyMost · Aug 8, 2016

Commodore said: ↑

I live in Kansas (well, KC MO) and have lived all over the country

always amusing that people think it's some sort of dysfunctional wasteland (like say, inner-city America)

it has low cost of living, decent weather, centrally located, low crime, and midwest people are some of the friendliest in the country
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Kansas is a dysfunctional, backwards, toilet-bowl-circling wasteland.

Saying you're from KC-MO is like saying you're from Mars as far as rural Kansas and municipal government are concerned.

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