Gov. Sam Brownback’s leadership of Kansas came to be synonymous with a single, unyielding philosophy: Cut taxes, cut the size of government, and the state will thrive.
But this week, Mr. Brownback’s deeply conservative state turned on him and his austere approach. Fed up with gaping budget shortfalls, inadequate education funding and insufficient revenue, the Republican-controlled Legislature capped months of turmoil by overriding the governor’s veto of a bill that would undo some of his tax cuts and raise $1.2 billion over two years.
.. “Email after email after email I get from constituents, say, ‘Please, let’s stop this experiment,’” she said.
.. First elected governor of Kansas seven years ago by a wide margin, Mr. Brownback wasted no time steering the Republican Party on a hard-right turn. In his first term, he helped push out moderate Republicans from the Legislature. Under his leadership, Kansas loosened restrictions on guns, made it harder for women to get abortions and passed some of the strictest voting laws in the country.
Most famously, he instituted the largest income tax cuts in Kansas history, a move that he promised would act “like a shot of adrenaline in the heart of the Kansas economy.”
.. In 2014, Kansans paid $700 million less in state taxes than the previous fiscal year
.. And in March, the Kansas Supreme Court found that the state’s spending on public education was unconstitutionally low
.. Democrats, like Senator Tom Holland, of Baldwin City, cheered the end of “Sam’s march to zero.”
.. [Kris Kobach] .. “Kansas does not have a taxation problem; it has a spending problem,”
Trump Gratuitously Rejects the Paris Climate Accord
This has nothing to do with serving America’s national interest. The U.S. economy, in particular, would do just fine under the Paris accord. This isn’t about nationalism; mainly, it’s about sheer spite.
.. it’s quite possible that lower health care costs would all by themselves make up for the costs of energy transition, even ignoring the whole saving-civilization-from-catastrophic-climate-change thing.
.. while tackling climate change in the way envisaged by the Paris accord used to look like a hard engineering and economic problem, these days it looks fairly easy. We have almost all the technology we need, and can be quite confident of developing the rest
.. pretending that environmental irresponsibility will somehow bring back jobs lost to strip mining and mountaintop removal.
.. you find deep hostility to any notion that some problems require collective action beyond shooting people and blowing things up.
.. driven above all by animus toward liberals rather than specific issues. If liberals are for it, they’re against it. If liberals hate it, it’s good. Add to this the anti-intellectualism of the G.O.P. base
Is Trump Russia’s Manchurian Candidate? No. Here’s Why
Trump’s alignment with nearly every Russian foreign policy objective grew in increments, eerily coinciding with the entrance of key aides and advocates into his campaign, not through his own study.
.. he urged Russia to find Hilary Clinton’s missing emails – a public call a “Manchurian Candidate” (see Scenario 4 below) would not likely make.
.. altering the Republican platform to support a Russian position over a Ukrainian ally. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager who previously worked in Ukraine on behalf of Russia, mistakenly cited a debunked Russia false news story about a terrorist attack on Incirlik airbase in Turkey as a final show of Russian influence before being fired.
.. This sort of meddling provides the Kremlin plausible deniability and still achieves Russia’s objectives: breaking up the European Union, dissolving NATO, and weakening of American influence.
.. The former British intelligence officer’s dossier made salacious claims of sexual misconduct by Trump during a visit to St. Petersburg.
.. President Trump compromised himself in this fashion, and the voters didn’t seem to care. Should Russia release the alleged provocative video tape now, they would only confirm their meddling and achieve nothing – the dossier leak and U.S. government discussion of the dossier likely inoculated the president from any compromise on a sexual basis if anything even existed.
.. More recently, President Trump’s son appears to have received $50,000 from a pro-Russia group in the weeks leading up to the election.
.. This scenario is unlikely to be the case for several reasons. Trump’s behavior and policy positions sway with the wind. The famous former British intelligence officer dossier argued that Trump’s behavior in the lead up to the election caused unease amongst Kremlin leaders backing him. Trump openly discusses Russian connections and seems to be unaware of his closest aides ties and contacts to Russian diplomats and intelligence assets.
.. The Russians started their second Cold War with the U.S. years ago, and they are winning. They don’t need a Manchurian candidate
x A Texas Republican called ICE on protesters. Then lawmakers started to scuffle.
Video of the scuffle shows lawmakers pushing one another, yelling and gesticulating. Later, Democrats said, Rinaldi repeatedly got in their faces and cursed at them.
“There was a threat made from Representative Rinaldi to put a bullet in one of my colleagues’ heads,” state Rep. Justin Rodriguez said during the news conference. “That kind of threatening language, he needs to be called out and held accountable for.”
But Rinaldi said the threat went the other way — that state Rep. Poncho Nevárez (D) “threatened my life on the House floor.”
“I called ICE on several illegal immigrants who held signs in the gallery that said, ‘I am an illegal immigrant and here to stay,’ ” he said in a statement after the incident. Rinaldi went on to detail purported threats against him from Democratic lawmakers, saying he was assaulted and had sought the protection of law enforcement officials.