RIP Kansas!

By Jeff Simpson

Jason Probst, news editor at The Hutchinson News wrote this brilliant editorial about what happened when an extreme right wing republican and legislature took over Kansas! 

 TOPEKA — The Great State of Kansas passed away on March 31, 2013, after a long and difficult battle with extremism that became markedly more aggressive in 2010. The struggle left the state so weakened it could no longer fight against the relentless attacks by the fatal disease.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4171966/rip-the-once-great-state-of-kansas.html#storylink=cpy

Kansas was born on Jan. 29, 1861.

The state is preceded in death by fair taxation, good highways, strong education, family farms, a good public parks and wildlife system, open government, neighborliness and belief in helping each other out, freely elected public servants, and political moderation.

Kansas is survived by widespread poverty, low-wage jobs, high property taxes, pollution, poorly educated children, out-migration and rural depopulation, foreign land and farm ownership, lobbyist-funded legislators, chronic mistreatment of the disabled, a maniacal hatred of government and children who dream of living anywhere else.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4171966/rip-the-once-great-state-of-kansas.html#storylink=cpy

Yes right wing extremism is a "disease"!   You can say that, hasn't Kansas always been crazy?  As Probst points out, Surprisingly no! 

Throughout its life, Kansas often aligned with leading progressive causes. William Allen White, one of the state’s most notable residents, once wrote that “if it’s going to happen, it happens first in Kansas.” That once was true. Kansas was the first state to ban the Ku Klux Klan, and the first to elect women to public office — one as mayor and another as sheriff.

Kansas was a leader in public education, with one-room school houses dotting the plains. A full 12 years before it was a national concern, Kansas established child labor laws that restricted employment of children in potentially dangerous industries.

Along with its compassionate nature, Kansas proved to be a state teeming with inventiveness, ingenuity, determination and a savvy sense of business.

Cessna, Beech and Stearman helped establish Kansas as a center of the aviation industry. Coleman launched an international company that became a household name. Pizza Hut and White Castle — two iconic eateries — both got their start in Kansas.

Kansas’ history is filled with dynamic people: settlers who claimed land once described as a desert and turned it into the world’s garden; immigrants who came by the train-load and brought with them the winter wheat that germinated the state’s prosperity. Kansans endured drought, grasshopper plagues, depression and fierce weather, yet its people worked to hold tight to their land. In spite of those hardships, the state produced world-renowned artists, writers, inventors, business leaders, astronauts, even a president.

 So what happened to this once great state?  The elections of 2010!

The elections of 2010 and 2012 brought the poison pills that would bring about Kansas’ untimely end. The first election seated a governor who tossed aside Kansas’ storied history and replaced it with a vision of his own design. In 2012, record-setting campaign money from out-of-state donors financed the defeat of those moderate Republicans who had spent the last of their political careers keeping Kansas alive.

Big money came in and chased anyone with a sense of moderation out, what caused that Disease to truly get a stranglehold on the once great state of Kansas?   Apathy(which we know all too well)!  

 Along the way, the state’s defenders — the farmer, the laborer, the property owner and the shop keeper — stood mute and passive, hoping for a day when the state would spark back to life, as it had always done before. They remained silent too long.

Sound Familiar Wisconsin?

 

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4171966/rip-the-once-great-state-of-kansas.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4171966/rip-the-once-great-state-of-kansas.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4171966/rip-the-once-great-state-of-kansas.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/09/4171966/rip-the-once-great-state-of-kansas.html#storylink=cpy

Will Scott Walker Follow Sam Brownback's Lead?

Kansas, just like Wisconsin and every other state in this country, is facing serious budgetary problems. Their newly elected governor, who has to deal with their budgetary issues, is Sam Brownback, former U.S. Senator and failed presidential candidate, who had at one time touted the misnomer of "compassionate conservatism."

But now, as the governor of Kansas, instead of showing any sort of compassion, Brownback is showing nothing but amorality.

Instead of balancing the budget by judicious use of finding new revenue and making responsible cuts in the budget, Brownback has decided to abandon that state's most vulnerable and passing the buck onto the municipalities:

Yet perhaps the most brutal cut in Brownback’s budget comes to the Kansas Neurological Institute (KNI). The governor proposes completely eliminating funding to the institution by 2014, which would force it to close down. KNI serves nearly 160 people with severe mental disabilities; two-thirds of its patients cannot walk and four-fifths are unable to speak.

This proposal, as one could imagine, is causing quite the uproar among that fine state's legislators, from both sides of the aisle.

But simply abandoning the mentally ill and the developmentally delayed isn't enough for Brownback. He would nonchalantly toss the expense of caring for these people onto the laps of the community health agencies, regardless of whether they have the resources for these vulnerable citizens or not:

The Brownback administration claims that community health services will be able to take up the patients after the closure of KNI. This would likely pass on the cost of caring for the patients to cash-strapped municipalities. It’s also unclear if there is even room for the patients among community services. In 2009, a government commission voted to close KNI, but the recommendations were never followed through, partly because there was a waiting list of “approximately 4,000 people with disabilities who are already waiting for home- and community-based services.”

So, now that one fool as set the bar ever the lower for irresponsible budgeting, unethical treatment of vulnerable citizens, and the willful failure to take on any responsibility, how will other Republican governors, especially Scott Walker, react?

This should be a genuine concern for Wisconsinites in general, and especially for advocates for the disabled as well as municipal and county leaders.

As Milwaukee County Executive, Scott Walker has shown a remarkable disregard for the vulnerable citizens. He's allowed the mental health complex facility to fall into such a state of disrepair that it was labelled as "shoddy" by inspectors, and would cost millions to fix. He's continuously cut back on staffing to the point of making it unsafe for patients, staff members and even members of the neighboring community. He has closed down several wards, forcing those patients into the community whether they were ready for such a huge transition or not.

Indeed, Walker is already showing the same disregard as governor, with one of his first moves was to issue a proposal to allow nursing homes to avoid their responsibility for poor care or maltreatment.

Walker's budgetary prowess is no better than his track record in caring for the vulnerable. His last two budgets as county executive were illegally laden with massive deficits. It has already been shown that his first proposals to "fix the budget," create jobs and reduce the deficit are doing the exact opposite of those stated goals.

And can anyone tell me when Walker has ever taken responsibility for any of his actions? I can't think of one.

It also wouldn't be hard to imagine Walker being more than willing to pass the tough decisions and the hard problem solving to the mayors and the county leaders in this state. Before one would dismiss this notion, think for one minute on how he, as county executive, regularly passed the buck to the Milwaukee County Board to fix his mistakes, or at least to take the blame when he had failed in one area or another.

Is it any wonder that Walker and his faithful sidekick, Rebecca "Get Real" Kleefisch are spending more time acting like they're still in campaign mode, just to gain even a modicum of popularity, much less respectability?