The reason liberal Democrat cronies and minions are wrong so often in general is because they have the whole premise of the argument wrong. Most of them don't understand politics, or economics, deeper than the talking points they are told by their Marxist heroes in the Democrat Party. The progressive rah rah writers come to the wrong conclusions because their line of thought is agenda driven, and erroneously supported by a flawed foundation. They blindly gloss over the truth seeking instead only information they believe supports their government-control utopian dream. They are so convinced of the the "truth" of their silence-the-opposition rhetoric that they have begun to believe their own twisted propaganda. Racism, sexism, phobias, and various accusations of war against particular groups like women, gays and minorities has lost the original flavor and are now nothing more than blind tools for a plantation mentality agenda. Blacks can now be racist against blacks (Stacey Dash), women can be sexist against other women (Jessa Duggar), and phobias run amok regarding everything from Muslims to homosexuals to tattoos, simply because those people dare to stand against the liberal left progressive agenda.
Liberal left progressive democrat commie bastards nurture their preconceived notions regarding who their opposition is, regardless of facts. If you disagree with the leftwing agenda, you are a gun clinging, Bible thumping, toothless redneck from the hills that is probably sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, or some other crazy, racist, radical group. . . like perhaps that radical, racist, anti-government clan of Tea Party nuts.
Reality has been blurred, and the facts mean little to these people. All they care about it forwarding their big government agenda, even if it means mandating it is taught in schools (from the "theory" of evolution to the man-made global warming myth to homosexual behavior), forcing businesses to comply through their business practices (Obamacare and wedding cakes comes to mind), to demanding the sermons of pastors be delivered to a Houston mayor (she's backed off a bit since that silly attack on religion) or threatening preachers because their messages inside the four walls have been changed from biblical to political. . . so hush, or be arrested. The Idaho pastors being fined by a judge, with threat of jailtime, for refusing to conduct gay weddings, comes to mind.
As Republican Governors, and conservative legislators, fight to correct the damage caused by the liberal left Democrats, often in the terms of the economic health of their community or States, the leftists spew as factual their cockamamie theories of Keynesian economics and the flawed concept of "higher taxes for higher revenue."
Targets for attack appear on the screen readily, and all the leftists know is they must destroy those that dare oppose them. The big government democrat sympathizers work tirelessly to silence their enemy, and often use tactics to discredit the accomplishments of those people through a series of lies, misrepresentations, and flawed diagnoses. The cheerleaders of leftism do not discriminate, they are equal opportunity suppressors. If you disagree with them, you will be a target, regardless of who you are, though their really nasty hate is usually pointed at conservatives who succeed in standing against the liberal left progressive commie agenda, and then succeed in the endeavor by creating economic growth in their community, or State.
The attacks are not only launched by Democrat Politicians, or communists sympathizers deep in the halls of liberal left progressive political punditry. The liberal left progressives have overtaken the courts, the media, and the entertainment industry, as well, realizing they needed to go where the youth was, and where the opposition dares to try to stand against them. In the process, the liberal left has conditioned an entire generation of young zombies to march to the Democrat Reich's drumbeat. But they don't stop there. The message must be continually hammered, no matter how ridiculous it may come across. The National Youth Movement of Brash Obey Obama Bots (Which I like to call New Young Mindless B.O.O.B.s) must continuously be reinforced with the state mantra, filled with the proper propaganda, and taught to not only challenge traditional, constitutional, and conservative thought, but they must come to truly hate the opposing agenda, and all those that dare to stand against the rising Democrat Regime.
Enter, stage left, Rolling Stone Magazine. The article is titled "The Great Kansas Tea Party Disaster." The title is specifically designed to slam the Tea Party, to build upon the image already created by those that wish to destroy any opposition to the Democrat Party's big government agenda. And, Governor Brownback is lumped into the Tea Party, because he is a conservative, and he is using age-old conservative methods proven to work (Scott Walker showed us that in Wisconsin, also while under assault by the liberal left, and the labor unions) as if they are these new Tea Party tactics that just can't be allowed because they must be born from small minds who know nothing about anything except guns, Bibles, sexism, and racism.
Note, politicians are not normally considered Tea Partiers, since the whole point of the Tea Party is that it is a grassroots citizen's movement devoid of any of the cockroaches from government.
Early on Rolling Stone declares that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback is a failed presidential candidate (FAIL is a favorite word of theirs, though it only applies to Republicans, or anyone else that dares to stand against them), and he is "God's Senator" (once again, they have been working to get people to associate believing in God as being some kind of mental instability or flaw). The name-calling increases steadily in the early paragraphs, using words like "radical," "extreme," "disastrous," "grim" and "desperate" to describe Brownback's campaign, policies, and the man himself.
Then the real kicker comes in, once again early in the article, because the editors of Rolling Stone know that their music-centered readers don't usually comprehend much beyond the first few paragraphs unless the article is about sex, drugs, and the latest in something Rolling Stone still finds the intestinal fortitude to call music: "In 2012, he enacted the largest package of tax cuts in Kansas history, essentially transforming his state into a lab experiment for extreme free-market ideology. The results (disastrous) have reduced the governor to making appearances at grim strip malls like this one in a desperate attempt to salvage his re-election bid."
The message from those couple sentences? Tax cuts bad, free market is a crazy lab experiment, everything the governor did was disastrous because Rolling Stone said so, and Brownback, as a result of his "disastrous" policies, was reduced to something akin to a homeless person begging at grim strip malls (the insinuation that it was his policies that made those strip malls so grim) in a "desperate" attempt to "salvage" his re-election bid. . . might we add, as is pointed out in the article, in the reddest of States.
So, we are told Brownback is so radical that even members of the GOP are second-guessing him.
The writer says that the last time he was in Kansas, Brownback could be found "wandering the halls of the State Capitol," as if Brownback has nothing else to do. It's not like the Governor is a hard-working man like Barack Obama, I suppose. Perhaps Sam needs to learn golf.
Then the article goes into how Texas Governor Rick Perry came up north to Kansas to help save Brownback's campaign, speaking about how Brownback's policies have sent Kansas in an upward trajectory in the sense of new business. . . and then poo poos Perry's remarks by pointing out that Wichita's own Boeing plant packed up and took off for Seattle, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio.
Brownback's "experiment" in "extreme" free market economics (perhaps the Rolling Stone writer should spend some time reading about Adam Smith), has been praised by, according to Rolling Stone, by the likes of great conservative minds like Arthur Laffer, the Reagan-era godfather of supply-side economics. Rolling Stone then points out that Laffer was a "paid consultant" consultant by Brownback, and that the visiting Laffer "sounded like an exiled Marxist theoretician who'd lived to see a junta leader finally turn his words into deeds." Wow, talk about projection.
Rolling Stone also points out that Brownback got praise from others, as well. Veteran Kansas political reporter John Gramlich, a more impartial observer, described Brownback as being in pursuit of "what may be the boldest agenda of any governor in the nation," not only cutting taxes but also slashing spending on education, social services and the arts, and, later, privatizing the entire state Medicaid system. Brownback himself went around the country telling anyone who'd listen that Kansas could be seen as a sort of test case, in which unfettered libertarian economic policy could be held up and compared right alongside the socialistic overreach of the Obama administration, and may the best theory of government win. "We'll see how it works," he bragged on Morning Joe in 2012. "We'll have a real live experiment."
Now for the dagger. Now for how leftists believe those policies have failed. The writer from Rolling Stone, poised for destroying Sam Brownback's policies, and therefore conservative policies of those radical Tea Party nuts nationwide, points out: "The governor promised his 'pro-growth tax policy' would act 'like a shot of adrenaline in the heart of the Kansas economy,' but, instead, state revenues plummeted by nearly $700 million in a single fiscal year, both Moody's and Standard & Poor's downgraded the state's credit rating, and job growth sagged behind all four of Kansas' neighbors. Brownback wound up nixing a planned sales-tax cut to make up for some of the shortfall, but not before he'd enacted what his opponents call the largest cuts in education spending in the history of Kansas."
But how did Brownback, if he is so crazy, get elected in the first place? It couldn't be because people wanted such crazy policies, right? The Rolling Stone writer says Brownback achieved office because he was "among the class of Republican governors who managed to get themselves elected four years ago as part of the anti-Obama Tea Party wave by peddling musty supply-side fallacies."
Fallacies?
Okay, time for the truth.
According to Forbes: "...results from [Brownback's] experiment in state income tax policy just might provide other states with a roadmap to real growth... the forward thinking [of] Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s tax plan flattened and simplified the tax code, cut personal income tax rates for most earners from 6.45% to 4.9%, and got rid of small business income taxes. Gov. Brownback’s singular goal was to grow the economy of his state. At the time Kansas had the second highest tax burden in the region, a cash balance of less than $1,000, a projected deficit of $500 million and an unemployment rate of 6.9%. In addition, 73% of the counties in Kansas had witnessed a decline in population.
"Instead of continuing to watch billions of dollars in Net Adjusted Gross Income leave Kansas to other states, such as Florida, Texas and Tennessee (all no-income tax states), the legislature and governor identified and seized the opportunity to increase its competitive advantage with neighboring states. It was a bold political move to say the least, but an idea that ultimately struck a chord with politicians, employers and workers across the state.
"Just one year later, a close look at the data backs up the economic projections of Brownback’s visionary leadership. Lower income tax rates have in fact stimulated the economy by reducing the price both of work and conducting business in the state, not to mention that lower rates have predictably proven effective when it comes to luring out-of-state businesses to Kansas’ friendlier business environment.
"A progress report issued recently by the state’s former budget director, Steve Anderson, one published in the Kansas City Star, shows many indicators of improvement. According to Anderson, the state’s cash balance has risen to $585 million today and they are projecting a surplus in 2014 of nearly $510 million. In addition, the unemployment rate fell from near 7% to 5.8%, as 45,000 jobs were created and the state’s population grew by 27,000. All this while the state reduced the tax burden on workers to the second lowest in the region, and handed just under $250 million back to workers.
"And just how have these changes improved Kansas’ position in competing against its neighboring, higher income tax states? According to Anderson, “The Kansas portion of the Kansas City Metro area gained 9,500 jobs from May 2012 to May 2013 while the Missouri side registered no change in total nonfarm employment over the year. Employment on the Kansas side of the metro area reached 454,800 and surpassed the all‐time high of 452,800 recorded in June 2008.”
Not exactly the disaster that Rolling Stone Magazine made Brownback's policies out to be.
Okay, fine, that's from Forbes, and we all know that more often than not Forbes aligns closer to Republicans than Democrats.
Fine. Let's see what U.S. News and World Report has to say about Brownback's "radical" policies. . .
"Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has put the state on the path to abolishing its income tax. It was a bold move, one that required him to recruit candidates to run for the state legislature against members of his own party in order to get the votes to do it.
"He won the policy battle and – if he wins re-election – he’s established a model other Republicans can and no doubt will follow going forward.
"This, of course, is the most dangerous development of all. The modern Democratic coalition is based on the idea that the revenue the government collects will be spread around among its constituent political parts. It’s a kind of “share the wealth” program on steroids that allows for everyone to get along because no one walks away from the table without their share of the vigorish, which justifies the amount of money that the unions, the environmental groups, the trial lawyers and the civil rights groups take from their members to get Democrats elected in the first place.
"If Brownback triumphs, the pie shrinks – which means there just won’t be as much taxpayer money to divide up in the future. So the Democratic coalition groups have to win and make sure no one ever tries to abolish a tax again, even if they have to stretch the truth to do it.
"Interestingly enough, rather than attack Brownback on the spending side – which is how the left went after Ronald Reagan – the left-liberal writers who are carrying water for his political opponents are burning the midnight oil finding ways to show the state’s historic 2012 and 2013 tax cuts (the down payment on the income tax’s abolition) are responsible for a so-called revenue shortfall that will eventually bankrupt the state.
"It’s true that the tax cuts did, in the short run, lead to lower revenues than would have be otherwise realized had the rates remained where they were. But that’s not the whole story – something folks like the New York Times' Paul Krugman (who despite his Nobel prize apparently knows as much about economics as I know about fly-fishing) are either unable or unwilling to explain.
"Let’s break down what’s really going on. As this short analysis by Americans for Tax Reform confirms is the case, the Kansas Department of Revenues estimates the budget gap for fiscal year 2014 at $338 million. Part of that comes not because of any economic change but from a statistical revision made by the Kansas Division of the Budget late in the process that mistakenly upped the revenue estimates by $103 million based on what they believed were strong economic indicators. A third of the deficit, therefore, can be attributed to an accounting change, a manipulation of numbers on paper.
"Data from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office suggests as much as $147 million of the remaining gap was created by the decision of those who owed taxes on capital gains to shift those payments into prior fiscal years when the rate was lower. In a very real sense, President Barack Obama’s insistence that many of the Bush tax cuts be allowed to expire (including the lower rate on some capital gains) is more responsible for the current Kansas deficit than anything Brownback did – but it requires a greater familiarity with economics than most political reporters have to understand, let alone explain that. Another $10 million can be attributed to a decrease in excise tax receipts. People simply don’t buy as much in a bad economy as they do in a good one, meaning sales tax revenue declines.
"Brownback’s tax strategy for Kansas embraces the thrice-proven idea (under Coolidge, under JFK and under Reagan) that lower rates are an incentive for people to be more productive, to work harder because they get to keep more of what they earn. This leads to economic growth, creates new jobs, produces an environment in which new businesses start up and existing businesses expand and everyone – those at the top end of the income scales as well as those on the bottom – do better, meaning the gap between rich and poor actually narrows. It’s good public policy that is good for most everyone who does not depend on their ability to derive rents from the government for their economic well-being.
"At best, the Brownback tax cuts account for less than $100 million of the actual gap between revenues and expense – which is really a drop in the bucket, especially when the state’s economy starts to pick up thanks to the improvements in the business climate his policies have created. Which means time is short – for the Democrats – to turn things around."
Hmmmmm. Interesting.
It turns out the only fallacy about Governor Brownback's conservative policies is the bogus premise used in the Rolling Stone article written specifically to try to discredit Brownback's successful record.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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