Kansas = Epic Conservative Ideology Failure

Conservatives believe things which demonstrably are not true.

Conservatives continue desperately to cling to ideology-driven policies even as they go under the waves of epic failure for the third time, rather than change, rather than repudiate their failed ideology, and rather than fact-check the results.

There IS such a thing as a bottom line, such a thing as a valid metric of success or failure by which we all can and must evaluate success or failure OTHER than ideology.  When ideology requires that, as a requirement of faith, you ignore objective reality, then ideology is wrong.

Kansas, like Wisconsin and other red states, became a victim of the Tea Party economics policies in the 2010 election cycle.  Kansas proved that cutting taxes does not result in growth or adequate revenue — just like similar measures failed with the Bush tax cuts in the first decade of the 21st century (and every other time, after time, after time it has been tried, either short term OR long term).

As Bloomberg Businessweek recently noted:

Sam Brownback has been a Tea Partier since before the Tea Party was born. When he became governor of Kansas in 2011, he set about making the state a testing ground for conservative principles, including cutting funding for some public education and the eventual elimination of the state’s income tax. “Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy,” he wrote in a 2012 op-ed. He predicted cutting taxes would “pave the way to the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs, bring tens of thousands of people to Kansas, and help make our state the best place in America to start and grow a small business.”
The Kansas experiment attracted the attention of both conservatives and liberals around the country, who saw it as an acid test for the Tea Party agenda. Brownback, a former U.S. senator who briefly ran for president in 2007, crept up the long list of dark horse candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination.
A little more than a year has passed since the first phase of the Brownback tax cuts went into effect on Jan. 1, 2013, so it’s possible to make a preliminary assessment of their effects. The early verdict: not too good. The jury is still out on whether lower taxes will stimulate businesses to expand and hire over the long term. But the immediate effect has been to blow a hole in the state’s finances without noticeable economic growth.
In Kansas, one of the nation’s reddest states, the relevant political split isn’t between Republicans and Democrats but between conservative Republicans and somewhat more moderate ones. National Journal recently ranked Kansas’s four-member congressional delegation the most right-leaning in the country. That describes Brownback, too. A convert to Catholicism from evangelical Protestantism, he is as conservative socially as he is fiscally, opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. His campaigns have long been supported by billionaires Charles and David Koch, the conservative majority owners of Koch Industries, based in Wichita.
The most authoritative study of the effect of these measures is a January report by the Kansas Legislative Research Department, a nonpartisan arm of the legislature. It found that revenue isn’t keeping up with expenses even after cuts in spending on K-12 schools, colleges, libraries, local health departments, courts, and welfare. If nothing changed, the research department’s numbers show, the state’s general fund would have a shortfall of about $900 million by fiscal year 2019, or 14 percent of expenses that year. The state’s constitution requires a balanced budget, so either taxes will have to go back up or spending will have to come down even more. “The tax cuts don’t pay for themselves,” says Duane Goossen, who served as state budget director under both Republican and Democratic governors. “That just is not happening.”

Conservatives claim to hate government, scathingly deprecating what they term ‘big government’. What that really means is they don’t like it when government acts on behalf of all citizens to stop conservatives from doing bad things, like voter suppression, pollution, selling off public assets at a fraction of their value in the name of privatization that does not operate more efficiently and costs more, serving special interests to the detriment of ordinary people including letting the special interests draft their own legislation, discrimination against minorities, culture wars on the LGBT community, pushing creationism and other theology as science when it is not,  promoting revisionist history, etc.

If one looks honestly at what the ideal size of government should be, as has been done, in many different kinds of analysis, smaller government does not make anyone more free, it tends actually to make people more oppressed by big money and special interests. If one looks honestly at the functions of government, we all do better and succeed more with a healhty functioning government of a size suitable to our size in area, population and economy, both state and nationally. There is absolutely zero indication that smaller government correlates to a healthier economy at any level, or more individual freedom for anyone. You have only to look at the size of government and the higher rates of taxation of those nations which outperform us by every metric. Like economic policies, ideology about government needs a vigorous, rigorous reality check to see if assertions are true or false.

Another Bloomberg Businessweek article made a similar finding:

Innovative States Aren’t Low-Tax States
It’s intriguing to compare the fiscally conservative lists with those designed to highlight science, technology, human capital, and innovation. A very different story emerges. Take the Milken Institute’s State Technology and Science Index 2012 (pdf). Massachusetts, Maryland, California, Colorado, and Washington are its top five, while Wyoming, Nevada, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Mississippi rank lowest. The 2010 State New Economy Index, by the Kauffman Foundation, praises Massachusetts, Washington, Maryland, New Jersey, and Connecticut, while South Dakota, Wyoming, Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Mississippi are in last place.
…going through the various lists, it’s striking how low-tax states such as South Dakota and Wyoming hold a place of pride in fiscal rankings, while such states as California and Minnesota dominate innovation lists.
In general, low-tax states have historically been dependent on natural resources or on mass production industries, relying on low costs rather than innovative capacity to gain a competitive advantage. “But innovative capacity (derived through universities, R&D investments, scientists and engineers and entrepreneurial drive) is increasingly what drives competitive success,” write the Kauffman study scholars. (my emphasis added)
A similar insight informs an economic analysis into how New York City developed one of the nation’s largest and most vibrant tech/information sectors, second only to finance as an engine of economic growth in the city. Among the public policies that contributed to growth in the tech/information industry are the “funding of multiple tech incubators and training programs for entrepreneurs and small businesses; the rapid extension of broadband access throughout the city, including free Wi-Fi in key public spaces; NYC’s broad-reaching Open Data initiative; and the Applied Sciences competition, which has put Cornell-Technion on track to open a 2 million-square-foot campus on Roosevelt Island plus the expansions at Columbia University and NYU-Poly in Brooklyn,” observes Michael Mandel of South Mountain Economics in a report (pdf) prepared for the Bloomberg Technology Summit last September. Going through the report, taxes aren’t even mentioned.
Of course, New York City is anything but a low-tax regime, yet the metropolitan area is thriving in the global economy. The same goes for Minnesota and California. The lesson isn’t that high taxes are good or lead to dynamic growth, but that investment in human capital, technology, science, and knowledge matter in an intensely competitive global economy. The Milken Institute scholars hit the right note. “Technology and science are important to states and by extension the nation because innovation drives economic growth and bolsters the ability to compete in the global economy,” the Milken Report says. “State governments must recognize this and adopt policies that maximize their ability to innovate.”

It is not an accident that Minnesota is more successful than Kansas, in education, in economic growth, in a low unemployment rate, in a government budget surplus – or any of the other states which emulate Kansas conservative taxation and other economic policies. It is not an accident that conservatives in those states try to blame everyone but themselves, from Obama on down, with false claims that federal policies stunted their economic growth, when clearly states with liberal legislatures and governors (aka blue states) are dramatically outperforming conservative states (aka red states).

Blue states tax more, spend more on education and infrastructure, and generally understand what drives economic success and what does not. Blue states rely on facts, not blind ideology that refuses to acknowledge reality when it diverges from that ideology.

If we support so-called liberal fact-driven reality-based economic and government choices, both in policies and politicians, we will do better as a state, and better as a nation.

The recent Franken ad nails it:



Government is not the enemy that the radical right portrays it to be. 

Investment in education pays off in educational and economic outcomes.  Shrinking government and then strangling government in the bathtub only serves to harm us all, it does not create a more vigorous or growing economy, or a well educated citizenry.

We need to REALLY hold government accountable, with bottom line honest measurements of what succeeds and what fails, not blind ideology.   So-called “Common sense ideas” coming from the mouths of conservatives equate to “don’t look too closely for results” and demonstrate a complete and utter failure to recognize that simplistic bumper-sticker thinking is a failure, or that sometimes solutions might be counter-intuitive and more complicated in the real world of adults.

Fact Check.org Bust Another Bachmann Lie - and bad lip reading sends up Bachmann

Why is it that these statements, part of an egregious pattern of such statements,don't offend the right wing that supports Bachmann? This is one more instance of them selecting ideology over reality and fact. If that was not true, there would be no reason for Bachmann to make statements like this. As with Palin, who as I predicted, had no genuine interest in running for President, but rather used it as a money making ploy, I would argue to our readers that Bachmann is simply looking for pretexts nominally to stay in this race only to make more money off her book in December by claiming to be a presidential candidate contender.  She is not, she is a lying poseur exploiting the public interest.

But it is always fun to watch the right go after each other like this, facts be damned.

As always, kudos to factcheck.org!

Bachmann’s Wrong on Texas Tuition

Posted on September 30, 2011

Michele Bachmann is wrong to say allowing illegal immigrants in Texas to pay in-state tuition is “an abuse of an executive power.” Gov. Rick Perry did not impose the policy by executive fiat. The Legislature overwhelmingly passed the bill in 2001, and Perry signed it.

Minnesota Rep. Bachmann — who has criticized Perry’s executive order on HPV vaccines as an inappropriate use of power — made her statement in a Web video posted Sept. 29.

(note - I tried to post the web video provided by factcheck.org, but had a problem with the embed code not working .  If you want to see the original video, go here. -- DG)

Bachmann, Sept. 29: We can’t settle for a president who would encourage more illegal immigration through magnet policies, like tuition breaks for illegal aliens or their children. That’s an abuse of an executive power.

That’s just not true. The change in tuition policy followed the usual legislative process.

The bill passed by votes of 142-1 in the House and 27-3 in the Senate. The Houston Chronicle wrote: “The surprise at such potentially polarizing issues passing the House and Senate is surpassed only by wonder at the ease with which they have been approved.”

Of course, Perry could have chosen not to sign the bill. But he signed it on June 16, 2001 — four months after it was introduced. “We want bright, new Texans to stay here, and contribute great things to our future,” he said in a speech six days after signing the bill.

– Eugene Kiely

Given the number of inaccurate statements Bachmann makes, or the illogical reasoning that she posits, she might as well be talking like the video below - thanks to Microdot over on the brain police blog (see our blog roll) for bringing this tomy attention.  Offered to our readers because we all need a good laugh in the midst of the serious stuff, and because the parody makes about as much sense as the real Michele Bachmann statements.

The Connection between Recess......and our Military Recruitment

All work and no play make Jack a dull boy;
All play and no work make Jack a mere toy.
--Maria Edgeworth

It is becoming increasingly clear through research on the brain as well as in other areas of
study, that childhood needs play. Play acts as a forward feed mechanism into
courageous, creative, rigorous thinking in adulthood.
--Tina Bruce, Professor, London Metropolitan University
 
Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.

--Kay Redfield Jamison, Contemporary American professor of psychiatry

Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.

--O. Fred Donaldson, Contemporary American martial arts master

If animals play, this is because play is useful in the struggle for survival; because play practices and so perfects the skills needed in adult life.

--Susanna Miller

I saw a segment of Good Morning America which focused on the decrease in the amount of recess in some schools, in an effort to deal with the pressures of producing better test results on mandatory standardized tests, and as a result of budget constraints.  Although somewhat counter intuitive, it turns out that recess actually helps learning rather thank taking time away from it, as well as helping battle the problem of childhood obesity.  The numerous studies in support of recess were impressive.

This intrigued me after having heard a segment on NPR ten days ago, on a Sunday about the national security issue that we have too few potential military recruits who have sufficient education, or who are in adequate physical condition.

He's A NERD, Not a Nazi, Damn It! In Defense of Rich Iott's Historic Reenactment Hobby

UPDATE:  Criticism of candidate Iott has continued, most recently with Glenn Beck being designated as Keith Olbermann's 'worst person' for supporting Richard Iott's choice of hobby.

There has been far too fast and loose Nazi name calling; in this campaign, and regarding previous politicl figures.  Sadly, far too few of the name callers seem to be conversant with WW II history; they don't actually know very much other than Hitler equates to generic 'bad', and is vaguely despotic. 

I give credit to Iott for taking a hard look at who the Nazis really were, actual individual people, not simply relying on vague and largely erroneous notions about Nazis and Hitler that appears to be the case with those most recently carrying Tea Party signs portraying Obama as Hitler.  It was equally wrong to portray other American political figures as Hitler.

Why believe that the choices of individuals who were grouped under the heading of being Nazis is more nuanced, more complex, more appropriately a subject for closer scrutiny and study?

The best example I can offer is the current Pope.  John Ratzinger was conscripted into the Hitler Youth movement when he was 14.  He was technically a Nazi; when he was older, he was in the anti-aircraft Luftwaffenhelfer corps.  He was a real Nazi, not a pretend Nazi.  I doubt that anyone reasonably believes that he embraced the Nazi cause, at any time.  Particularly in view of his cousin with Down's Syndrome having been taken by the Nazis, and killed, as part of the Nazi eugenics program.

Many of those who did at one time embrace and support Hitler changed their allegiance.  I would remind readers that there was a conspiracy of Hitler's generals to assassinate him, at great personal risk.  They were Nazis too.  To fail to understand and acknowledge the strengths of the opposition, the instances of courage, or even gallantry, simply because those others are the opposition is stupid, small minded, and ignorant of the reality of history.  Likewise, anyone who refuses to acknowledge what we did on the allies side  that was less than wonderful is failing to understand history.  I applaud Iott's interest in complexities, and the realities of WW II history, instead of stupid oversimplification.

For people to continue to try to extrapolate an interest, a curiosity, about this era of world history is wrong.  Just plain wrong, the worst kind of well-meaning ignorant wrong that has, unfortunately, so characterized the entire 2010 election cycle.
___________________________
Candidate for Congress in Ohio Richard Iott is being badly treated by the left for having participated in the very legitimate history reenactment hobby.  To play the role of one of the participants in this era of history does not automatically equate to supporting what those participants did.  There is not necessarily any identification with their politics, there is not necessarily any support or approval of their actions by the participating reenacters, aka re-creators.

Possibly the very worst example of the ignorant statements that have been made - so far (they could get worse) - has been Chris Matthews on his MSNBC cable show Hardball. Matthews asked if dressing up in WWII Nazi Germany clothing was some kind of homoerotic behavior,wondering if it involved 'dancing  around'. Ed Shultz,on the same network, claimed this was a 'big deal' to some Americans.

It shouldn't be.

Lightning DOES Strike Twice in the Same Place

Why Say Yes to Comprehensive Sex Ed?

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. "
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Victorian Era Poet
1806-1861

"Does it really matter what these affectionate people do-- so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!"
Mrs. Patrick Campbell
British Stage Actress
1865 - 1940


While the Republican party has become the party of 'Nope', serious harm has been done to our country by the right wing saying 'yes' to abstinence only education. Decisions made promoting the mandate and funding of abstinence only sexual education have a serious impact not only on the educational goals of producing literate, knowledgeable and informed students graduating from our public and private educational system. The resulting ignorance that is associated with abstinence only sex ed has an equally serious impact on our public health policies and expenditures.

I reviewed the research on abstinence only sex ed, and also reviewed the arguments for any kind of sexuality education to be included as an appropriate and desirable subject matter. There were a lot of arguments in support of sex as a legitimate subject of study, and very few arguments against it; most of the against arguments boiled down to a few people who are still too embarrassed to deal with the subject in any objective manner.

The overwhelming statistics indicate that the teaching of comprehensive sex ed in schools is supported by parents, teachers, and the students themselves. According to SIECUS in 2005, more than 90% of high school and middle school parents support funding sexual education in schools, with majorities supporting that sexual education be comprehensive, include accurate information on contraceptives and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

The majority of objections to teaching sex ed at all, and the majority of support for abstinence only sex ed seem to have a close correlation to promoting a specific religious view that the minority objectors would like to impose on the larger majority. For example, a report in 2004 by Congressman Waxman's special investigation committee reviewing the abstinence only sex education programs supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that over 80% of them used curricula containing false, misleading, or distorted information about the effectiveness of contraceptives and the risks of abortion. According to this paper, http://www.scribd.com/doc/16415796/ARGComprehensive-Sex-Education ,
Waxman's committee also "found gender stereotypes and religious beliefs treated as fact, as well as deliberate scientific errors." I think it is a fair statement that religion should be personal, and that the religious beliefs of a single segment of society should not be presented as fact; and I would hope even more strongly that we should insist on accuracy, including scientific accuracy, in our educational system.

The next best reason for discarding any further funding for abstinence only sex ed is that it doesn't work. A 2006 study by McKeon found that despite the existence of abstinence only until marriage sex ed existing for more than two decades, no peer-review study found abstinence only sex ed effective in either delaying the first sexual experience, or in any other impact either long or short term. But it makes neo-puritans happy, so for far too many years, it continued to be funded, one more terrible waste of tax payers money trying to force religion and religious belief into more and more areas of politics and government improperly.

As part of my research for the preceding post Just Say No to Abstinence Only Sex Ed, I researched a variety of documents that included statistically reviewing a comparison of the rates of teen pregnancies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries in the world, reflecting varying degrees of development and industrialization, with the results cross referenced to the types of sexual education provided in the schools of each country. This reflects the issues that correlate sexual education with public health policy (I almost made the typo pubic health policy). One of the most liberal countries in openly teaching comprehensive sexual education is the Netherlands, which had the lowest rate of pregnancies in young women between the ages of 15 to 19, at 8 per 1000. The US and the UK, with a preponderance of abstinence only sex ed were among the worst, at 93 per 1000 women in the same age range; while England and Wales had a rate for the same age group of 63 per 1000. There are compelling numbers available from the study of sex ed as it is practiced world wide; this is not unique to a few countries.

These statistics represent real people, not just abstract numbers. They represent real costs as well, to the individuals involved, to their families, to their communities, all the way up to the national level. This makes how and IF we teach Sex Ed a valid interest of our government and of our educational system. It is sufficiently important to us as a nation to deserve a fair and objective approach, rather than to be dominated by the religious beliefs of anyone over fact.

Comprehensive Sex Ed is endorsed by the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, and the American College Health Association, among MANY others. Some scientific studies suggest that far from achieving the desired goal of abstinence until marriage, abstinence only sex ed actually correlated to an INCREASE in teen pregnancy. At approximately the same time, a study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teenage Pregnancy showed that sex ed that includes discussion of contraception does NOT increase sexual activity, the great fear of those who oppose comprehensive sex ed.

Someone I know, outside of this blog, wanted to know what business it is of government to be involved in sex ed. THIS is why it is the business of government, and of us all, to be involved in seeing there is objective not belief-based sexual education in our schools.

Just Say NO -- to Abstinence Only Sex Ed

"There is no end. There is no beginning.
There is only the infinite passion of life"
Frederico Fellini

On Tuesday evening, September 29, 2009 Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican senator from Utah, succeeded in getting passed in the Senate Finance Committee a new measure to re-fund the disastrous Abstinence Only Sex Education that clearly was so ineffective under the eight years of the Bush Administration. The measure would restore funding to the tune of $50 million dollars, in order to promote teaching children in schools to refrain from sex until marriage, while excluding teaching children age appropriate information about a variety of topics, including prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and contraception. I hope we can all succeed in getting our congressional representatives and senators to remove this funding from the final health care reform proposal.

Let me be clear; I am all in favor of not having a nation of pregnant teenage girls, or a nation of boys and girls that are suffering from sexually transmitted diseases. I am concerned that the ages of beginning sexual activity, not just sexual intercourse, are getting younger and younger. I am concerned that the sexualization and maturity of our nation's girls is getting younger and younger, including concerns about the increasingly earlier onset of menstruation. With physical changes, comes behavioral changes, including changes in libido.

An excellent paper from Pacific Lutheran University, "Sex Education in Schools", by Boyle, Ely, Karanasos, Long, Pena, Shook, and Waggoner published in late August 2009, lists some alarming statistics (http://www.scribd.com/doc/19213552/Sex-Education). By age 17, 50% of high school teens have engaged in oral sex; between 5% and 30% of 13 year olds have engaged in actual intercourse, and 9 MILLION new cases of STDs have occurred in people between the ages of 15 and 24 EVERY YEAR. As of 2006, 31% of our teens in this country had experienced a pregnancy, and this country had the highest teenage pregnancy rate of similarly developed countries.

Abstinence only sex education programs have been the ONLY kind of sex ed federally funded for the past eight years. Abstinence only sex education teaches one thing; to abstain from sex until marriage. Abstinence only sex ed drastically limits what questions may be answered by teachers, including limiting the ONLY information they may provide about condoms, for example, to the failure rate. Abstinence only programs were developed around the idea that if students are taught about preventing pregnancy or protection from Sexually Transmitted Diseases like HIV/AIDS, it is the same thing as promoting pre-marital sex, a bad assumption. Ignorance may be bliss for parents, but stupid is never better than smart, and ignorant is never better than informed.

In contrast, a comprehensive approach to sex education teaches not only about abstinence, but also provides age appropriate medically accurate information about contraception, as well as age appropriate information about relationships, decision making, assertiveness, resisting peer pressure, STDs and about unintended pregnancies. And comprehensive sex ed includes parents or caretakers as partners with teachers.

The final sentences of the "Sex Education in Schools" says it well. "Teens are going to do what they want to do despite what we teach them. Hopefully, having more knowledge will lead them to make smarter choices whether they chose to remain abstinent until marriage or become sexually active before."

The famous actress, Marlene Dietrich said it well too, "In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact."