Laura Kelly Gov
Beat 2 mofo
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AN 12 24
Give the people what they want.
That’s the grumbling I’ve heard from more than one progressive in Kansas after voters strengthened GOP supermajorities in the Statehouse. New political math mean legislators likely won’t expand Medicaid or legalize marijuana anytime soon. Rather than support families in need, these lawmakers likely will erect further barriers to nutrition, health care and secure housing.
So what, these profoundly irritated people say. *Voters wanted this. Let them suffer the consequences
The same sentiment can be heard in national post-election dialogue. Voters can select leaders who harm them, experts warn.
“Authoritarianism is often popular. Many people support a strong and decisive leader,” said Timothy Longman, a professor of international relations and of political science at Boston University. “In Africa, which is the focus of my scholarship, military coups have frequently been greeted with dancing in the streets, because people think that military rule will bring order.”
People want a state government that throws the needy to the wolves. Let them feast.*
I understand why people feel this way. I understand the temptation to throw up one’s hands and retreat, leaving callous lawmakers free rein to slash taxes for oligarchs, pare budgets to the bone and legalize discrimination against minority groups. After an election in which consequences were clearly spelled out — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly explicitly connected Medicaid expansion to state legislative races — a majority chose callousness.
But here’s my modest proposal: Forget that nonsense.
What’s right is right, no matter the majority’s whims. In Kansas, sizable numbers either voted another way or chose not to vote at all. Should we blithely accept policy that harms these folks as well?
A rising tide lifts all boats. But a sinking tide lowers all boats. Giving the people what they want could hurt everyone and everything.
Before starting at Kansas Reflector, I spent nearly four years in nonprofit children’s advocacy. My former boss, John Wilson, laid it out in a column published here Wednesday. Children will suffer the consequences of a neglectful Legislature. They can’t vote. They can’t make the kind of decisions that hand political power to one party or another. Their fates are up to the adults who take care of them.
“We cannot let the next legislative session go by without providing targeted relief to Kansas kids in need,” Wilson wrote.
He added: “We need every lawmaker to go into the 2025 session with the belief that there are tangible answers to the complex issues we’re facing.”
That means transcending rigid ideological frameworks. That means working across the aisle. That means accepting that sometimes government can provide solutions rather than simply create problems. That means opening lawmakers’ minds to the possibility that they can build and create, rather than slash and burn. Sometimes, the right thing to do — making sure that children grow up healthy and educated — transcends any one election.
This goes for Kansas’ delegation in Washington, D.C., too. Our U.S. senators and representatives will confront an dizzying array of choices in the coming months, along with great pressure from the new presidential administration. Can they chart an independent course, one that includes the folks who didn’t vote for them last month? Hope springs eternal, as Alexander Pope wrote.
I’m making a narrow point here, one that I don’t want folks to misconstrue. Lawmakers will reflect ideologies and policies supported by the voters who elected them. That’s natural. That’s the electoral name of the game. I raise no objection to such representation, even if I object to the policies that result.
Give the people what they want.
On the other hand, not all governmental functions can or should be viewed through an explicitly political lens.
Basic human rights transcend any election. These include the right to necessities such as housing and health care; the right to live unimpeded by prejudice; and the right to raise one’s voice in opposition, no matter the circumstances. They are elemental. They are foundational. While partisans may view such rights as liberal, they are in fact just reflections of our shared humanity.
In the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, speaking in 1941: “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.”
Some might say Wilson’s column sounds too optimistic. Some might say my column sounds too confrontational. (Some might say Roosevelt was just another liberal Democrat.) They might be correct. Or maybe we — and a huge number of Kansans — understand that politics can only take us so far.
Working together, let’s give the people what they need.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary,[here
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and X.
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an ah 2 23
November 18, 2022
One of the many disappointments that Republicans suffered in the 2022 midterms came when incumbent Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly was reelected and narrowly defeated Republican nominee Derek Schmidt... koch, exxon, monsanto RAGA....
https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/senate-hopeful-kris-kobach-bankrolled-by-billionaire-peter-thiel-says-coronavirus-numbers-are-being-cooked-to-hurt-trump/
no lnx
Senate hopeful Kris Kobach — bankrolled by billionaire Peter Thiel — says coronavirus numbers are ‘being cooked’ to hurt Trump
Written by Alex Henderson July 28, 2020
With Republicans in fear of losing the U.S. Senate in November, the last thing they need is for far-right extremist Kris Kobach to win the state’s GOP senatorial primary this summer and put the seat in play for Democrats. And Kobach’s recent comments on COVID-19 are a prime example of why Democrats believe they could defeat him in the general election: Kobach is claiming that the coronavirus death count is being exaggerated as part of a conspiracy to hurt President Donald Trump. Regardless, Kansas’ former secretary of state continues to pursue the nomination, and he has a major ally in tech billionaire and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
On the YouTube program “National File,” Kobach said of the pandemic, “I believe that the numbers are being cooked.”
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 654,300 people worldwide and over 148,000 in the United States. Truth be told, that 148,000+ figure is probably too low — as the death count in the U.S. focuses on hospital deaths and doesn’t take into account all of the Americans who have died from COVID-19 in their homes and were never hospitalized. But Kobach nonetheless insists that the pandemic isn’t as deadly as Trump’s critics are making it out to be.
On the July 13 edition of K-File, Kobach claimed, “The books are being cooked, and the purpose, at least on the political left, is to use those numbers to scare the public and to scare the political leadership into shutting down. Now, they want to continue the government shutdown for — the business shutdown — with government pressure, for as long as they can. If they can slow it down by using masks as a signal that things are not back to normal— and therefore, you should not go out, you should not buy, you shouldn’t open up your business yet — whatever, but the reason is obvious.”
Such claims are a prime example of why Democrats believe they could defeat Kobach if he wins the Republican senatorial primary in Kansas and makes it to the general election — especially in light of the fact that Democrats defeated him once before. In Kansas’ gubernatorial election in 2018, Kobach (who served as chairman of the Kansas Republican Party from 2007-2009 and as Kansas’ secretary of state from 2011-2019) lost to a Democrat: centrist Laura Kelly, now Kansas’ governor.And as deep red as Kansas is, Kobach’s defeat in 2018 demonstrated that a Democrat can win a statewide race in that state if the GOP nominee is extreme enough.
But as extreme as Kobach is, he has found a major ally in Thiel. According to Vox’s Theodore Schleifer, Thiel held a fundraiser for the Republican in Manhattan and has since “pumped $850,000 into a super PAC behind Kobach.”
Schleifer reports, “If Kobach is elected, it could give Thiel a loyal ally in the Senate because of how powerful he is proving to be in the race. That alliance becomes all the more key if Trump loses this fall, which would weaken the Washington influence of Thiel — a board member at Facebook and a founder of Palantir, which has deep ties to the government.”
Patrick Miller, who teaches political science at the University of Kansas, believes that Thiel has become indispensable to Kobach’s Senate campaign. Miller told Vox, “I don’t want to overstate it and say that Kobach wouldn’t have a campaign without him. But I think the money that that super PAC is putting into the race — primarily through this one rich guy — is absolutely the lifeblood of the pro-Kobach campaign at this moment. You take that money away, and Kobach doesn’t have a lot of campaign left.”
Kobach is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, who is retiring. In the primary, he is up against Rep. Roger Marshall — and the GOP strategists who fear that Kobach, if nominated, would lose to a Democrat are rallying around Marshall aggressively and hoping to God he becomes the nominee. Scott Reed, a political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told Politico, “A Kobach victory would definitely put the Republican majority in jeopardy because it would add another state that would need serious resources.”
According to Steven Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is hoping that Kobach becomes the nominee because he believes that Kobach would be easier to defeat than Marshall. Law told Politico, “The latest ad from Schumer’s Kansas pop-up PAC shows that they want to start the general election early by going after Marshall, and we aren’t going to let them get the jump on us.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/what-kansas-rebounding-economy-tells-us-about-the-farce-of-republican-tax-cuts/
Kansas had one of the worst economies in the Midwest when, in June 2017, its state legislature reversed former Gov. Sam Brownback’s disastrous tax cuts for the wealthy. And according to CNBC America’s Top States for Business study, Kansas is now the state with the most improved economy in the U.S. and is enjoying a budget surplus.
In 2018, Kansas’ economy came in at an embarrassing #45 in the Top States for Business study and at #35 overall — and since then, it has improved by 16 points in general as well as by 16 points in the economy category, according to CNBC.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a centrist Democrat, was delighted with the news, telling CNBC, “We are returning to our roots as a very progressive, thoughtful, forward-looking state.” The Democrat went on to say, “Kansas, for years now, has been at the low end of all economic metrics. That’s changing.”
The economic problems that Kansas suffered under Brownback’s watch were the exact opposite of what the far-right Republican claimed would happen. When the GOP-controlled state legislature dramatically cut taxes for Kansas’ wealthiest residents and its largest businesses and Brownback signed the tax cuts into law, Republicans insisted that the state would boom economically.Instead, Kansas’ economy plummeted, and in 2017, a combination of Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature reversed the tax cuts.7
Brownback, whoresignedas governor in January 2018, was wildly unpopular during his final year in office. According to a Morning Consult poll, his approval rating was only 25% in July 2017. In contrast, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker — a Republican in a very Democratic state where Sen. Elizabeth Warren was reelected by a landslide in 2018 — enjoyed 71% approval in that poll and was cited as the most popular governor in the United States.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Kansas had a $351 million revenue shortfall for fiscal year 2018. But with the reversal of Brownback’s tax cuts having taken effect, Kansas now has a budget surplus.
However, some Republicans in Kansas’ state legislature are pushing to restore some of the tax cuts and are arguing that the problem with Brownback’s economic program wasn’t the tax cuts — it was a failure to reduce spending.
A major shock in Kansas politics occurred in 2018 when the deeply Republican state elected a Democratic governor: Kelly, who defeated far-right Republican gubernatorial nominee Kris Kobach (Kansas’ former secretary of state and a one-time promoter of the racist “birther” conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama wasn’t really born in the United States).
Although Kansas’ economy has improved, according to CNBC’s study, Kelly stressed that there is still work to be done in that state.
“We will be studying our entire tax structure because it’s way out of whack right now,” Kelly told CNBC. “We want to take us back to what works for Kansas, which is really essentially what we call the three-legged stool: balance out our property taxes, our sales tax and our income taxes.”
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