Kansas: What a Teapublican Paradise looks like...and it ain't pretty

Kansas lawmakers concluded the longest legislative session in state history Friday night by approving a slate of regressive tax hikes that will balance the state’s budget by targeting low-income workers and their families. More than half of the $384 million in new revenue expected from the tax hike will come from cigarette taxes and sales taxes, two policies described as “regressive” because they fall more heavily on lower-income taxpayers than on the wealthy. Even though everyone who shops will pay the new 6.5 percent sales tax rate - up from 6.15 percent in previous years, and the 8th-highest of any state according to the Tax Foundation - the move is regressive because poorer shoppers already have to stretch each dollar farther than their more flush counterparts.

It would be difficult to overstate the degree of mean-spirited incompetence and misguided abuse of the poor that’s becoming the legacy of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R-Mordor). The devastation in virtually all areas of public life being visited upon Kansans should serve as convincing evidence that the Tea Party may be great at advocating for compassion-free slash-and-burn public policy, but they’re singularly unqualified to govern.

By passing the Conservative movement’s laughably named “blueprint for utopia”, the Kansas Legislature has proven themselves to be beyond the point of mere incompetence. They gave Brownback’s “real live experiment”- the hypothesis that tax cuts for the wealthy are such a boon to economic growth they actually end up paying for themselves- the force of law, and they succeeded in forcing Kansas’ poor to get out of their recliners. Or so they’re telling themselves. They also made it virtually impossible to adequately fund government services from health care to education to infrastructure maintenance.

Who neadz edumication (or anything else)? Wee haz Jeezus!!

Now that Kansas Republicans have succeeded in cutting taxes on the wealthiest among them, they’re taking the very characteristically Conservative step of paying for those tax cuts by raising taxes on Kansas’ poorest citizens- because guess what? Tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, sheeple!

Congratulations, Kansas! You have exactly the quality of leadership you deserve. The surprise is just how abysmally low you’ve demonstrated your standards to be.