[UPDATE]:
As goes Kansas, so goes Louisiana.
——————————————————
Republican magical thinking on taxes has smacked up against the cold hard windshield of reality in Kansas, and now the unthinkable has happened: taxes will have to be raised to fill the state’s gaping budget hole caused by Republican tax cuts. Hate to say we told ya so but ….
Mr. Donovan said the results of the tax law were “never as good as we hoped.”
“We hoped they would just be a magic lantern and everybody would react to it,” he said. “But, eh, it’s hard to get a company to uproot their business when they’re established and move to another place just because of this difference in tax policy.”
Oh noes. You mean taxes aren’t the one and only driver of business decisions? Say it ain’t so! I love it when Republicans face the growing realization that their cherished ideas are built on bullshit. Still denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, folks:
Still, supporters of the tax bills are not necessarily willing to concede that the cuts were the reason for the state’s fiscal problems.
Senator Terry Bruce, the Republican majority leader, said that when the cuts were passed, the Department of Revenue gave estimates of how much the changes would cost that ended up being inaccurate.
While initial estimates, for instance, were that the small business tax exemption would affect about 191,000 entities and cost about $160 million, for the 2013 tax year, 333,000 filers took advantage of the exemption at a cost of $206.8 million, according to the Revenue Department.
“I don’t know if it was a mistake and the intention was wrong or the effect is wrong,” Mr. Bruce said of the tax law. “It was very aggressive, very quick.”
So more people took advantage of your tax cuts than you expected, and the resulting “magic lantern” of jobs jobs jobs and growth growth growth and revenue revenue revenue never happened and yet your policy still isn’t wrong? How on earth do you figure that? Tax cuts either create jobs and prosperity or they don’t.
Kansas was supposed to be a petri dish of Reaganomics. Gov. Brownback was committed to proving that cutting taxes would increase revenue because magic! Instead, Kansas is a fiscal mess. Yet the power of wishful thinking remains strong. Oh, Kansas. You can’t just click your heels three times and wish your way out of this.
Yes, I really want to believe that I can lose 15 pounds on a diet of beer, guacamole & chips and chocolate ice cream, but I don’t, because I’m a grown-up. Republicans are children who want to have their cake and their ice cream. Grow the fuck up, people.
Southern Beale 
I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard one of them admit that their policies require a belief in magic. Maybe there is some hope for them after all. Admitting you gave a problem is the fist step!
🙂
Perhaps the problem is that they failed to take into consideration the second part of Reaganomics: as Dick Cheney said, “deficits don’t matter. Reagan proved it!” See if you just run everything up on the credit card, then you CAN have your cake and your ice cream!
No, I’m not selling penis pills or designer handbags, but the Kansas Republican party was selling that stuff to their dim-witted voters. I’ve watching the Kansas “experiment” for a couple of years now, and think, finally, the masses of idiots who voted for this are finally waking up to the realities of “lower taxes”.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving state.
We just finished our primaries here in Kentucky. All four of the Republican candidates for governor were promising to institute the Kansas program here because they are businessmen and they know how to create jobs. And, of course, they plan to get rid of that “job-killing” Obamacare. Apparently no evidence will shake their faith. [I am sorry to hear that the beer, chips and chocolate diet won’t help me lose weight, however.]
But will the beer, chips, and guacamole diet without chocolate ice cream allow me to lose weight? Because that’s pretty much the diet I’m on, and so far it’s not working any better than Reaganomics.
I’m trying the beer diet, forget the ice cream and chips. That doesn’t work either. Damn.
STAY THE COURSE!!! BEER, ICE CREAM, CHIPS, AND BROWNIES!!!
U S A!!! U S A!!! U S A!!!
[/snrk] ~>X[
Well, our State TEA Government worked it out a different way. In order for Haslam to balance the budget, here is his method:
Fired over 2,000 State employees and of course cancelled all their benefits including State provided health care. And now they can’t pay taxes, what with no income. Brilliant.
Refused ANY Federal money, PERIOD, including Infrastructure bills, of course $1.2 billion, all that TN would get for medical insurance that low income people could afford.
As a result of the medical insurance crisis, 4 hospitals have closed, so there goes MORE JOBS LOST..
Since 2013, he has removed hundreds of patients from TennCare to “save the State money” so some of those very ill folks have died.
As my good friend, John McKamey said: “NO STATE can have a healthy economy unless it has more than SALES TAXES to support its economy.
Haslam has made many secret deals to coax new businesses to come here by telling them “NO taxes are required for the next 10 years” Any Questions? I don’t sell penis pills; not necessary here. The good ole boys get them free as soon as they are elected.
And Tennessee has one of the worst sales taxes in the country……affecting those on the lower economic end greatly. In Ohio ours was 6.5 and here in Knoxville it is almost 10. But hey, no personal income tax……..like THAT was a biggie, anyway. AND you get the “right, to work for less pay, no benefits”, and shut up about it!
Including county taxes, we in Nashville pay 9.25%. Which of course hurts the poor the most.
Meantime…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dennis-hasterts-rise-based-on-being-the-no-skeletons-guy–until-this-week/2015/05/29/9a891dfa-0604-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html
Poor Denny H. And all of this came as a complete surprise to Johnny Boner and Newturd Gingrich. Sure it did.
This:
“Before I ever took office, our residents had their taxes raised by 43% in one year,” he said. “They haven’t seen the return on that money. Our residents deserve to have paved streets. They deserve to have neighboring properties, rental or otherwise, held to proper standards. They deserve to have clear streets in the winter. These are issues that involve management and leadership in the executive branch of city government.”
Is our spanking new, 25yo (R) candidate’s opening salvo in his campaign for the mayor’s job in Oswego.
He’s going to save the city money AND pave the streets and, and, and.
That 43% tax increase, btw, is the result of previous city councils refusing to spend money to upgrade sewer and water infrastructure until the State of NY and the EPA slapped the city with a lawsuit and got them to sign a consent decree. Of course, a dem was in the corner office when the shit hit the fan, so THEY did it.
That whole story is so bizarre to me, I just don’t get it. So he had a sexually inappropriate relationship with some MALE high school student who waited until AFTER he was out of the House leadership to begin blackmailing him? Or has this been going on for years and years and years? I find it so weird.
It is weird, indeed. Teacher/student relationship is inexcusable. Abso-freakin’-lutely. If I could, I would cast him into the pit myself. However, this is what trying to live in the closet does to some men. The truth about who and what you are will out, eventually, and usually bite you hard on the ass.
The weirdest to me, however, was that he got in trouble for moving money inappropriately. Why didn’t he just fess up then that he was being blackmailed? Yeah, I know, it’s damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, but why mess with federal prosecutors? Did he really think that he could pull his flaming legacy out of the fire at that point?
They probably nailed him with they could.
IIRC from the Josh Duggar case, there is a statute of limitations on sexual molestation. Whatever Hastert did (and I don’t think we know the details but it sounds like he had some kind of sexual contact with one of his students, who would have been a minor), they couldn’t nail him for that. I guess technically he could have stepped forward and told the FBI he was being blackmailed, but it’s easy to see why he wouldn’t have done that, and preferred to try to go along with the blackmail. Shame is a powerful motivator on things like this. You just gotta wonder … but how did this all come out? Did the blackmailer come forward? Were there other victims?
Guess i need to read up on this some more.
A friend of mine suggested that anyone who doesn’t think that straight men have closeted relationships should take a look at a website called Craigslist.
…anyone have a cardboard box open? i =really= wanna move somewhere that’s less bat-shit insane…
Trying to think where that place would be …. someone told me they were moving to Iceland because Southern California was too batshit for them. LOL.
hell, Greece is on my short-list at this rate…
Find yourself a nice little island, it’s quite affordable … I know someone who lived on one of the little Cyclades islands for years. You’re kind of cut off from the world but on the plus side, CATS! Lots and lots of CATS!
Yes. In a young girl’s heart. That same girl still has the same heart decades later. The magic does not go away. Nothing to do with republicans or taxes. I have mostly led a charmed life. I still have access to magic. That doesn’t mean that I am happy all of the time. But I am pretty happy.
Marijuana seeds are a form of magic.
The problems are temporary, remember? They’re gathering riches for heaven.
” So he had a sexually inappropriate relationship with some MALE high school student who waited until AFTER he was out of the House leadership to begin blackmailing him?”
According to a piece I saw on the CBS local affiliate, Hastert didn’t haz no Benjamins till AFTER he got offa the gummint teat and attached himself (like a tick) to the rich vein of corporate moolah that’s always available to ex-pols.
Oh, well that makes sense.
“How Bobby Jindal lost everything: A one-time GOP hope, gutted by Grover Norquist worship and his own ambition”
Poor BobbyJi Piyush, looks he’ll be ridin’ off into the sunset on a rail–at least till 2017 when he’ll start warmin’ up teh roobz for a WH run.