Anti-Immigration Lies and the Fundamentals of Propaganda

There are three essential, defining characteristics of propaganda.

The first characteristic is that it is fully, substantially, or significantly false, not accidentally but deliberately inaccurate.

The second characteristic is that it elicits emotional thinking rather than logical or critical thinking. The emotions it is supposed to arouse are usually negative, most often fear and/or suspicion, anger, resentment or hatred, and intolerance and bias such as racism or anti-religious feeling leading to demonizing or demeaning an individual or group, or both, by linking them together.

The third characteristic is that it is part of a larger pattern demonstrating that it is part of a planned, intentional, calculated agenda that serves someone's purpose, usually political in nature, such as contrived wedge issues used to turn out voters. A perfect example of that would be the anti-gay marriage campaign issue used by Karl Rove and George W. Bush, for which the Bush campaign leadership later apologized, or the use of racial politics, dog whistle for ginning up racism, especially southern conservative racism.

A fourth characteristic, not as essential as the preceding three, but common, is to create a sense of belonging to an aggrieved group of people with shared negative feelings towards the individual or group targeted as the subject of the propaganda. Examples would be Islamophobic propaganda, anti-LGBT propaganda, and anti-immigrant or racist propaganda.

The following image from Face Book features all of the defining characteristics.



The clear implication is that Obama is offering preferential treatment in employment to undocumented immigrants, and that Obama is somehow responsible for anyone who is not employed.

This is factually inaccurate -- the first criteria or characteristic of propaganda.

From fact check.org, back in 2010 (conclusions which continue to be true as supported by additional years of data and research):

Summary

Do immigrants take American jobs? It’s a common refrain among those who want to tighten limits on legal immigration and deny a "path to citizenship" — which they call "amnesty" — to the millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. There’s even a new Reclaim American Jobs Caucus in the House, with at least 41 members.
But most economists and other experts say there’s little to support the claim. Study after study has shown that immigrants grow the economy, expanding demand for goods and services that the foreign-born workers and their families consume, and thereby creating jobs. There is even broad agreement among economists that while immigrants may push down wages for some, the overall effect is to increase average wages for American-born workers.

So, who are those economists, those experts?  What studies?

Nat Journal has some specifics, from 2013:

Left and Right Agree: Immigrants Don't Take American Jobs

March 22, 2013 As Congress considers immigration reform, experts across the political spectrum say American jobs are safe.

That immigrants take the jobs of American-born citizens is “something that virtually no learned person believes in,” Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, said at a Thursday panel. “It’s sort of a silly thing.”

Most economists don’t find immigrants driving down wages or jobs, the Brookings Institution's Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney wrote in May. In fact, “on average, immigrant workers increase the opportunities and incomes of Americans,” they write. Foreign-born workers don’t affect the employment rate positively or negatively, according to a 2011 analysis from the conservative American Enterprise Institute. And a study released Wednesday by the liberal Center for American Progress suggests that granting legal status to undocumented workers might even create jobs.

The CAP study, led by the visiting head of the Washington College economics department, sought to predict what would happen under immigration reform. The researchers considered a handful of scenarios. In each, it was presumed that the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants would be immediately granted legal status. They then looked at the effect of those undocumented immigrants not being granted citizenship at all over a decade, getting it immediately, or getting it in five years.

Legal status alone would lead to the creation of 121,000 extra jobs annually over the next 10 years, they found. Getting citizenship within five years would increase that to 159,000 jobs per year. And receiving both legal status and citizenship this year would create an extra 203,000 jobs annually.

So, clearly NOT FACTUAL; tick off the first requirement of propaganda.

Undocumented people STEALING American jobs? That gins up fear, resentment, anger, a sense of being victimized, especially if you accept the premise without fact checking or critical thinking. Tick the box for the second requirement of propaganda as well; this propaganda creates the perception of a threat.

This kind of propaganda is rife on the internet, routine on right wing sources like F*cks News, and other right wing 'media' and right wing politicians.  For example we have this from Sarah Palin, via the propaganda site Breitbart.com:

To make matters worse, Palin said that the “forgotten man” who cannot catch a break will now see their tax dollars go to help take care of illegal immigrants while they are forced to compete with them for shrinking resources and jobs.

And we have Ted Cruz, presidential candidate in the running for the 2016 election, making the same claim as Palin -- and while Palin is an empty-headed dunce, clearly Cruz knows, or should be expected to know that his claims about joblessness is a lie.  Cruz is well educated, but all too willing to pander to the worst elements on the right.
From the Washington Examiner:

Ted Cruz: Immigration will increase US joblessness

But March organizers — including the Black American Leadership Alliance and Tea Party groups — do support curbing legal immigration, saying it could take jobs away from “millions of American citizens.” Cruz also claimed the Senate immigration reform would cost Americans’ jobs but without specific reference to legal immigrants.
“If this bill is passed, it will increase unemployment,” Cruz, R-Texas, said. “If this bill is passed it will increase African American unemployment. If this bill is passed it will increase youth unemployment. If this bill is passed it will increase Hispanic unemployment.”

Palin and Cruz are just two of many pushing this propaganda lie, giving us the third criteria of propaganda, that it is repetitive in serving a larger, calculated agenda; tick off that box as well.

And lastly, we see the demonizing of immigrants (both documented and undocumented)and the link to the president in an attempt to discredit him, and to portray both immigrants and President Obama as the enemy, as the villain, as the bad guys, when they are the opposite factually.

We have conservatives banding together in their ignorant, manipulated animosity. Tick off the fourth box identifying the criterion of propaganda.

Propaganda is the tool of tyrants and dictators, of the corrupt in power, or seeking power.  It is propaganda and those manipulated by it, not immigrants, that is the enemy of democracy and of America.

Take some responsibility

Thank you Abraham Lincoln, thank you liberal abolitionists who saw injustice and pushed back against it.

We're not done yet. It's better. But we are not done yet.

Conservatives - consistently on the wrong side of history

I can name one exception; it was a Republican woman (a fairly conservative one, although more of an elite than tea bagger type) who initiated the movement for the repeal of Prohibition.  But that was before the Republicans were so consistently just nuts.

Today is the 150th Anniversary of the Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln

Today is the anniversary of the assassination of our president by traitors to the United States as part of their attempt to wage war on America.  Lincoln was one of the early Republicans, back when the GOP was liberal.  I doubt he would recognize the party he helped found today.

Remember this treason AS BLOODY TREASON every time you see a confederate flag of any variety.  Remember this every time you see or hear or read about some jackasses who want to secede, especially by violence, or who try to deny the existence or legitimacy of the federal government (like Cliven Bundy and his ilk).

The silk top hat worn by Abraham Lincoln wore to Ford's Theater on the night of the assassination.

From the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian:

Among the museum's most treasured objects in the Lincoln collection, and certainly its most iconic, is his silk hat. At six feet four inches tall, Lincoln towered over most of his contemporaries. He chose to stand out even more by regularly wearing high top hats.
Lincoln famously stored papers inside the crowns of his hats, removed them humbly when speaking to constituents, and threw them down in front of generals to emphasize his anger. On April 4, 1865, Lincoln toured the fallen Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. A writer for the Atlantic Monthly recorded that Lincoln was approached by an elderly African American man who removed his hat and bowed before the President. Lincoln in turn, "removed his own hat, and bowed in silence; but it was a bow which upset the forms, laws, customs, and ceremonies of centuries. It was a death-shock to chivalry, and a mortal wound to caste."
Lincoln acquired this silk hat from J. Y. Davis, a Washington hat maker, whose label appears inside the crown. The hat, approximately a modern size 7 1/8, is trimmed with two bands, a thin 3/8" ribbon with a small metal buckle and a 3" grosgrain black mourning band. The stitching on the second band indicates that it had been added after the hat had been purchased and signaled Lincoln's ongoing mourning for his son Willie, who died of typhoid fever on February 20, 1862. In a very public way, Lincoln was linking his loss with the losses of so many during the war. We do not know when he purchased the hat, or how often he wore it. We do know that the last time he put it on was to attend the play, Our American Cousin, at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865.
The Lincolns and their two guests, Clara Harris and Major Henry Rathbone, arrived late. When the party took their seats in the presidential box, the crowd wildly cheered and the orchestra played "Hail to the Chief." Lincoln removed his hat and the actors resumed the play where they had left off.
At about 10:15 p.m., John Wilkes Booth entered the box, pointed a derringer pistol at the back of the president's head, and fired. Fatally wounded, Lincoln was carried across the street to the home of William Petersen where he would die at 7:22 the next morning. The hat was left behind in the presidential box. The War Department that guarded the theatre recovered the hat, along with the chair used by Lincoln, and took the items back to its offices.
Once the trial of Booth's co-conspirators had concluded, the two items were no longer held as evidence, and the War Department transferred the hat and chair to the Interior Department to be safely stored with other national relics that the department maintained at the U.S. Patent Office. The hat was briefly exhibited next to a case with George Washington relics. In 1867, the Smithsonian Institution received the delivery from the Patent Office of Lincoln’s hat and chair. No one at the Smithsonian recorded the actual date.


read more here

Cruzin' for Losin'

Flag Propgaganda 4: Olympia, Washington and Old Glory......and the Chinese flag

Once again, the rational adults effectively and conscientiously engaged in administration and governance are unfairly maligned by right wing nut propaganda.

The local Kitsap Sun from the Puget Sound area of Washington covered it pretty well, but then local media usually does a pretty good job of professional, ethical journalism, unlike the right wing propaganda machine.  A h/t to Steven Gardner; this is exemplary blogging.

I first learned of the controversy from a Facebook thread started by Mason County Republican Party Chairman Travis Couture, who asked, “So can someone please explain to me why the hell we are flying a communist Chinese flag at our capitol? (Rhetorical) We cant have a ‘Christmas’ tree or a Gadson flag but we can have a communist flag?”

As for the tree question, that call is made by the Association of Washington Business, because it’s their tree and it’s part of a fundraiser they’ve been doing for kids for 26 years, according to this story from the (Spokane) Spokesman-Review.I asked state officials from the governor’s office and from the Department of Enterprise Services some additional info. Some on Facebook are asking about flag protocol.

Smith sent me a list of other nations’ flags that have flown in the same place for the same reasons. Here they are.

Austria 2015
Finland 2015
Germany 2014
Peru 2014
United Kingdom 2014
Japan 2013 and 2014
India 2013
Italy 2013
Canada 2013

We also received a detailed explanation from Smith on the flag’s placement and the criteria for when a foreign flag gets raised.

“We fly the flag of a foreign country in the Flag Circle when a high level government representative of a country recognized by our government meets with a statewide official. Countries like Iran and North Korea are not recognized and we would not fly their national flag under any circumstance.

“The US government formally recognizes countries. A state does not. In 1980 the United States formally recognized the People’s Republic of China.

“International flag standards and the flag code of the United States specifically state that the flags of sovereign nations need to be flown from separate staffs and at equal height. No national flag should be higher than any other national flag. State flags and banners are different.

“When the US and other national flags are flown together, the U.S. flag should be in the position of honor and to the right of other flags. We orient our flags to the north steps of the Legislative building as the prominent feature of the most significant building. So looking at the flags from the steps, the U.S. flag is always to the right and a foreign flag is to its left. If you look at the flags from the Temple of Justice, however, it looks backwards. The flags have been oriented in this way for more than 20 years. With the flags in the conference room they are oriented to whomever is speaking at the podium, so to the speaker’s right, but audience’s left.”

Lets let the HuffPo set up the scenario of this not-a-real-story, right-wing-flag-propaganda. It is a classic, has all the flag propaganda elements -- a story circulated (at least at first) by exclusively right wing media, claiming some terrible disrespect to our flag that demonstrates very visually and viscerally that THOSE PEOPLE, from whom they have to retake our nation, THOSE PEOPLE who are out to DESTROY AMERICA, or some variation of that theme, are subverting patriotism and our very national soul (or at least identity) by doing something bad re: the stars and stripes. A recurring theme is to associate an inaccurate attack on another popular right wing sore spot - religion, or veterans are the two most common, with some imaginary concentration camp reference thrown in gratuitously.  This has two of the usual.  A falsified sense of being victimized is essential to the propaganda process.

Invariably the story is not factually true, is misrepresented, and does not deserve any media attention whatsoever except in the delusional minds of tin foil hat wearing right wing nut (RWN for short). Usually there is some unwarranted and unjustified attack on a "liburl fascist, Marxist, Socialist, Communist politician" made by some RWN who could not correctly identify what any of those adjectives actually mean, other than "bad" (one of the few words teabaggers can reliably spell, so they don't use it).

The Washington state capitol put up the Chinese flag last week in honor of Gov. Jay Inslee's (D) trade meeting with Cui Tiankai, China's ambassador to the United States. But on Saturday morning, a small group of tea party activists went and protested the flag, outraged that it was flying alongside the U.S. and state flags.
A video posted by conservative activist Maria Bosworth showed the individuals -- some carrying the Gadsden flag that has become a symbol of the tea party movement -- watching as the Chinese flag was lowered. A man who appears to be a state trooper stands nearby and observes the proceedings.
One participant, who appears to be conservative activist Anthony Bosworth, Maria's husband, points to him and says, "Now that's an Oath Keeper there, making sure the Communist flag comes down. That's an officer that I can support."

The Oath Keepers is a right-wing group of current and former law enforcement and military officers who vow to disobey "unconstitutional" orders from the government. There is no evidence that the officer was actually an Oath Keeper.

Anthony Bosworth also posted photos from the event on his Facebook page and put up a post about Washington state's "liberal, communist loving Governor."

Jaime Smith, Inslee's director of media relations, said it was simply a matter of protocol to fly the Chinese flag. State workers were lowering the flag while the protesters watched.
"The governor will often meet with dignitaries when they come to town. It's a matter of protocol to fly their home country's flag during their visit," said Smith. "Our state's Department of Enterprise Services was going to lower the flag shortly after that anyway."
>Some Republican politicians were also not pleased with the flag's appearance.

"I was not amused to see this flag flying over our state capitol, particularly when our governor just made a big show out of ‘shaming’ Indiana for joining 19 other states with legislation to protect freedom of conscience," state Rep. Elizabeth Scott (R) told the conservative website PolitiStick. "So it’s okay to threaten a flower shop owner in our state with the loss of her house, business, etc., and we can mock other states for their attempts to protect freedom of conscience, but we’re totally fine flying the flag of a country that still throws people into prison camps because of their beliefs?"

The American flag was NOT by conventional protocol in any way treated with disrespect by flying the Chinese flag (and the Washington state flag) alongside and at the same height as the United States flag. Arguably it was showing far more respect than those who like to fly the various treasonous flags of the Confederacy, celebrating a bloody, traitorous attack on the United States. But Americans wrongly attacking other Americans is one of the hallmarks of the radical, ridiculous right.  I suppose we should be happy this is one occasion where they didn't use guns to kill anyone.

It is worth noting that after the Chinese flag came down -- and the state of Washington is eager to do business with China, in spite of the ignorant bitching by the idiots present at the flag lowering -- the Chinese flag was replaced by other national flags, notably Austria and Finland, and on Tartan Day, the flag of Scotland was flown as well.

So, contrary to say....F*cks News, or the dumbest people on the internet over at The Gateway Pundit, there was nothing wrong or bad or unpatriotic going on. And no, no Patriots fixed the situation, taking back 'Murika for Murikans' either. It was just a bunch of right wingers having an inappropriate hissy fit that became another example in the ongoing bullshit the right promotes to keep their incredibly ignorant, ill-informed and immature base ginned up and manipulated to dance like predictable angry little wooden-headed puppets. Watch them dance, watch their little wooden heads be manipulated to vote the right wing propaganda way, and to give the nice right wing propaganda people (or their candidates) all their hard earned money.

It would be funny if it were not that these manipulated and misinformed and disinformed right wingers act, and vote, and sincerely believe nonsense, based on lies. Time for someone to give them a metaphorical kick in the rear end and demand that the crazies start acting like rational adults.

Left out of this list -- paid off the substantial war debt for WW II

Flag propaganda 3: Conyers, Georgia and Old Glory

We have, almost on cue, another couple of flag propaganda stories.  Flag propaganda stories are where the right wing propaganda 'machine' cranks out stories designed to gin up outrage, and to create an us vs them mentality.  This is essential for any call to 'take back America' to work in the 2016 election cycle, because unless there is a segment of America to hate, there is no one to oppose vehemently or violently.  The story and the propaganda agenda needs a villain, a bad guy, a Snidely Whiplash with a flag.

These stories are really not news; they are given a slant and an emphasis that the subject content does not merit, and then they are reported in a biased and incomplete and inaccurate way to create the desired manipulative effect.  They are generated on a regular basis, the predictable repetition of the big lie being told over and over until it is taken as true, when it is false.  I started looking for the 'next' flag propaganda story a week ago, figuring once the Easter holiday was over, given the candidate declarations (specifically the KIND of declaration they made) that we would be seeing more flag propaganda.

The right wing propaganda manipulators did not disappoint.

73-Year-Old Veteran Is Ordered to Remove His American Flag From Flag Pole Outside His Home–REFUSES

73-year-old Tony Cumberworth fought for our country in Vietnam and in his own words is a “proud veteran.” But that didn’t stop a homeowner’s association in his Georgia neighborhood from demanding that he remove his flag pole and U.S. flag from his yard.
Cumberworth’s flag and pole has been in his yard for 20 years and never once has he had a complaint. But this week the association sent him a notice that if he didn’t remove his flag and flag pole he would be charged $50 a day in fines until he does.
The veteran told the TV folks that he scoured the association’s contract and could find no mention of flags and flag poles in it.
And asked by a local TV news station, this proud veteran said he refused to remove his flag.
He also proudly proclaimed that he wouldn’t pay these people a penny for his flag.
When the local TV folks started asking members of the homowner board what they heck their problem was… well, unsurprisingly they refused to talk about it. But the did suddenly send Cumberworth an email saying…
Please disregard the code violation notice. It was sent to your home in error.
We truly thank you for your service in Vietnam and your American flag can stay in your yard as long as you desire.
Yeah. “A mistake.” BS. They just got called out is all.

This was never a real story.  There does not appear to EVER have been a notice sent to this man specifically about his flag or flag pole.

You can easily tell a real story from a fake story, because of the lack of details (we do not know for example if there was a mass mailing to HOA members about displays), and most of all because it will pop up exclusively on many right wing sources, always the same propaganda machine members, but not in legit news.  I was struck with this story by the absence of the content of the notice to Cumberworth, and the absence of an inquiry as to anyone else receiving a routine notice about displays.  It seems highly improbable to me that after 20 years, suddenly a flag and flag pole would be non-compliant with HOA rules; rather it is more likely this was a semi-regular generic notice.  It also explains why the HOA has no idea what this fuss was all about, and it is consistent with the pattern of flag propaganda.

 

Typically the way these stories go is that a false narrative is started on the right, on sites with no journalistic ethics or professional standards, and where accuracy and equal coverage of more than one side, and multi-sourcing are ignored in favor of a manipulative agenda that consistently misinforms and misleads.  Their hope is that legitimate media might notice, and then become curious -- which is what appears to have happened in this case.
 

Home Owners Associations are not a threat to America (however petty they might sometimes be.)  But they are not anti-American; rather they get tasked with issues like changing civil ordinances relating to boring, tedious issues like fire department access and other minutiae like the size and type of displays.  Home Owners Associations are not government, they are voluntary groups.  At no point did the HOA refuse to answer questions.  They offered to get back to the media with specifics because the person queried did not have an immediate answer available about this particular complaint.
 

HOA try to manage issues like dealing with how well maintained lawns are kept in order for everyone who belongs to the HOA to keep up the value of their properties.  This is about the people who annoy their neighbors by still having up their Christmas displays in July including scruffy looking snow men, or similar behavior, not insidious attacks on patriotism, or the favorite manipulative touchstone of the propagandist, the grumpy old veteran.
 

This should never have INVOLVED television crews.  There is no evidence whatsoever that the HOA was unreasonable or unresponsive in promptly correcting their errors; it would not surprise me to see that these emails are sent out routinely any time someone complains.  What does appear to be involved is that some old codger, who did not really have a significant problem, got undeserved attention for a non-issue.
 

There is no attack on America; there is no insidious movement of unpatriotic Americans (OR maybe secret foreigners like our falsely alleged Kenyan president) attempting to do dirt to the flag or those who are patriotic veterans.
 

THIS IS PROPAGANDA from the right; the right are gullible sheep who consume it, get angry, and want to shoot someone - or to give money to charlatans and crooks who take advantage of them after they are primed by this rubbish.  It is fake, it is a LIE, and NO ONE who is a person capable of critical thinking should find it credible, or act on the basis if this false version of events.

It's Friday - end of the week fun day

and along with the cartoon fun, enjoy a little Friday science geek, appropriately following the declaration of more candidates for the conservative candidacy for president.  This is applicable for multiple reasons, ranging from how this demonstrates evolution where right wing candidates have repudiated and denied evolution science, and because of the right wing nut move here and abroad to keep Europe (and apparently by extension, America) for Europeans, culturally, linguistically and yes, racially.  Our conservative candidates ALL believe some people are white because that's how Jesus made us, and that Santa Claus is white, too.  

Conservatives, and especially conservative candidates, are, in these areas as in most things, wrong on all counts.

From Science Magazine

Common European traits like pale skin evolved relatively recently in central and southern Europe.
How Europeans evolved white skin

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI—Most of us think of Europe as the ancestral home of white people. But a new study shows that pale skin, as well as other traits such as tallness and the ability to digest milk as adults, arrived in most of the continent relatively recently. The work, presented here last week at the 84th annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, offers dramatic evidence of recent evolution in Europe and shows that most modern Europeans don’t look much like those of 8000 years ago.
The origins of Europeans have come into sharp focus in the past year as researchers have sequenced the genomes of ancient populations, rather than only a few individuals. By comparing key parts of the DNA across the genomes of 83 ancient individuals from archaeological sites throughout Europe, the international team of researchers reported earlier this year that Europeans today are a mix of the blending of at least three ancient populations of hunter-gatherers and farmers who moved into Europe in separate migrations over the past 8000 years. The study revealed that a massive migration of Yamnaya herders from the steppes north of the Black Sea may have brought Indo-European languages to Europe about 4500 years ago.
Now, a new study from the same team drills down further into that remarkable data to search for genes that were under strong natural selection—including traits so favorable that they spread rapidly throughout Europe in the past 8000 years. By comparing the ancient European genomes with those of recent ones from the 1000 Genomes Project, population geneticist Iain Mathieson, a postdoc in the Harvard University lab of population geneticist David Reich, found five genes associated with changes in diet and skin pigmentation that underwent strong natural selection.
First, the scientists confirmed an earlier report that the hunter-gatherers in Europe could not digest the sugars in milk 8000 years ago, according to a poster. They also noted an interesting twist: The first farmers also couldn’t digest milk. The farmers who came from the Near East about 7800 years ago and the Yamnaya pastoralists who came from the steppes 4800 years ago lacked the version of the LCT gene that allows adults to digest sugars in milk. It wasn’t until about 4300 years ago that lactose tolerance swept through Europe.
When it comes to skin color, the team found a patchwork of evolution in different places, and three separate genes that produce light skin, telling a complex story for how European’s skin evolved to be much lighter during the past 8000 years. The modern humans who came out of Africa to originally settle Europe about 40,000 years are presumed to have had dark skin, which is advantageous in sunny latitudes. And the new data confirm that about 8500 years ago, early hunter-gatherers in Spain, Luxembourg, and Hungary also had darker skin: They lacked versions of two genes—SLC24A5 and SLC45A2—that lead to depigmentation and, therefore, pale skin in Europeans today.
But in the far north—where low light levels would favor pale skin—the team found a different picture in hunter-gatherers: Seven people from the 7700-year-old Motala archaeological site in southern Sweden had both light skin gene variants, SLC24A5 and SLC45A2. They also had a third gene, HERC2/OCA2, which causes blue eyes and may also contribute to light skin and blond hair. Thus ancient hunter-gatherers of the far north were already pale and blue-eyed, but those of central and southern Europe had darker skin.
Then, the first farmers from the Near East arrived in Europe; they carried both genes for light skin. As they interbred with the indigenous hunter-gatherers, one of their light-skin genes swept through Europe, so that central and southern Europeans also began to have lighter skin. The other gene variant, SLC45A2, was at low levels until about 5800 years ago when it swept up to high frequency.
The team also tracked complex traits, such as height, which are the result of the interaction of many genes. They found that selection strongly favored several gene variants for tallness in northern and central Europeans, starting 8000 years ago, with a boost coming from the Yamnaya migration, starting 4800 years ago. The Yamnaya have the greatest genetic potential for being tall of any of the populations, which is consistent with measurements of their ancient skeletons. In contrast, selection favored shorter people in Italy and Spain starting 8000 years ago, according to the paper now posted on the bioRxiv preprint server. Spaniards, in particular, shrank in stature 6000 years ago, perhaps as a result of adapting to colder temperatures and a poor diet.
Surprisingly, the team found no immune genes under intense selection, which is counter to hypotheses that diseases would have increased after the development of agriculture.
The paper doesn’t specify why these genes might have been under such strong selection. But the likely explanation for the pigmentation genes is to maximize vitamin D synthesis, said paleoanthropologist Nina Jablonski of Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), University Park, as she looked at the poster’s results at the meeting. People living in northern latitudes often don’t get enough UV to synthesize vitamin D in their skin so natural selection has favored two genetic solutions to that problem—evolving pale skin that absorbs UV more efficiently or favoring lactose tolerance to be able to digest the sugars and vitamin D naturally found in milk. “What we thought was a fairly simple picture of the emergence of depigmented skin in Europe is an exciting patchwork of selection as populations disperse into northern latitudes,” Jablonski says. “This data is fun because it shows how much recent evolution has taken place.”
Anthropological geneticist George Perry, also of Penn State, notes that the work reveals how an individual’s genetic potential is shaped by their diet and adaptation to their habitat. “We’re getting a much more detailed picture now of how selection works.”

My Favorite Quote This Week

Billy Graham, center, with President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan, circa early 1980's

I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.
Billy Graham - Parade (1 February 1981)

I have added this quotation to the permanent content of the blog, on the left hand column.

Billy Graham was the famously bi-partisan golf buddy and religious Christian guru to presidents for decades, in a very real sense he was one of the first really big televangelists, a sort of America's preacher. He was moderate conservative, unlike his rabid son Franklin, who has inherited his father's religious enterprise.


There really is no longer such a thing as a moderate Republican. There are only far right extremists, and fanatical far right extreme crazy right remaining under the umbrella of the GOP and the bastard subset of the Tea Party. Moderates were last seen in the GOP in roughly the 1950's and 1960's, with the likes of candidates like Eisenhower and leaders in Congress like Edward Dirksen, or the right wing political intelligentsia like William F. Buckley Jr. While Buckley held some abhorrent views in his day, including both racism and homophobia, he was a well educated man who evolved politically over time to less extreme positions, and who was significant in his day for driving out the crazies and the wackos such as the John Birch Society (founded by the father of the Koch brothers manipulating right wing politics today).


Sadly, too many on the right, even those who were active in it, back in the period contemporaneous with the elder Graham seem oblivious to the right's shift to the extremes, and the abandonment of the center for the lunatic fringes. Too few of the remaining right even acknowledge that political parties substantially change over time generally, as a fact of history, which in turn somewhat invalidates political party claims of legacy. Those parties themselves abandon their own legacy in favor of views, policies and political platforms which in fact repudiate those of earlier versions of their party. The GOP in the era of Lincoln was a largely liberal organization; the party of Teddy Roosevelt less liberal, but still more on the liberal side of the political spectrum than conservative. The party of Eisenhower was likewise, more conservative than Roosevelt, and Lincoln, but still relatively liberal and centrist in contrast to the party of Reagan to present. Even Ronnie Ray-gun was distinctly more liberal than any of the extant GOP. THAT is the important context for both the above quote and the accompanying photo.


That political parties change over time has been true going back to before the American Revolution in this country; it is not unique to the 20th and 21st centuries. This larger pattern of change in which the Billy Graham quote applies as a warning is not the factual version of history that the right would permit to be taught, deeming it unpatriotic because it does not serve their propaganda agenda. Instead the radical religious right would like to teach fake history in public schools, using it to insert religious doctrine, for example that Moses was one of the founding fathers, requiring it in textbooks for public schools.

On Friday [Nov. 21 2014] the Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education voted along party lines 10-5 to approve the biased and inaccurate textbooks. The vote signals a victory for Christian conservatives in Texas, and a disappointing defeat for historical accuracy and the education of innocent children.

The textbooks were written to align with instructional standards that the Board of Education approved back in 2010 with the explicit intention of forcing social studies teaching to adhere to a conservative Christian agenda. The standards require teachers to emphasize America’s so called “Christian heritage.”

In essence, Christian conservatives in Texas have successfully forced a false historical narrative into public school textbooks that portray Moses as an influence on the Constitution and the Old Testament as the root of democracy.

Emile Lester, a professor of history in the Department of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of Mary Washington, claim the textbooks contain “inventions and exaggerations” about Christianity’s influence on the Founding Fathers and, by extension, the formation of American democracy.

Credible historians warn the misguided attempt to suggest biblical origins for the Constitution would lead students to believe that “Moses was the first American.”

Scholars claim the decision to include the biblical figure of Moses in social studies education is part of a concerted effort by Christian extremists to promote the idea that the United States is a “redeemer nation” – giving a divine justification for supposed American exceptionalism.

The proposed textbooks are deeply flawed, and have no place in a public school classroom.

Franklin is one of the worst of the modern day fundies, a professional bigot popular exclusively among the most radical of the far right, peddling an equally extreme version of religion. It is a shame that Billy Graham did not apparently teach the content of my favorite quote of the week sufficiently under his own roof for it to be internalized by his family members. This does not make the content of the quotation any less true.


This is significant in so far as every one of the declared or likely candidates running for president on the right appear to be basing their primary level contention for the nomination on securing the approval of the religious right, the Christian fundamentalists. Every potential candidate on the right is far removed from being a centrist, and most are of questionable rationality, replacing hateful respect for facts and science and diplomacy and even some modicum of basic integrity with an extremist ideology of intolerance and a toxic parody of legitimate spiritual belief. And this makes religion the justification for voting AGAINST not in support of every one of the conservative candidates in the 2016 election.

To the Theocrat Fanatic Right

The reason Conservative Economic Policy fails -- it is based on false premises Reich calls out the facts

Rand Paul Wants to Take America Back........to When?

2016 Rand Paul campaign button

That would make Jesus cry, and maybe a founding fatherl not Ron Paul --- Moses.

The questions the boring thinkers are asking are the obvious questions, which are the wrong questions.

Who does Rand Paul want to take America away from that has it, and what does he intend to do with it?  The obvious answer would seem to be the dominance of old white crabby flabby theocrats, given his previous positions on race and religion, economics and civil rights.  He wants life to be like the good old days, where those minorities and women stayed in their subordinate, subjective places, and didn't make waves about eating at every lunch counter, or controlling their own lady parts, or that voting stuff.  That is strictly for conservative Christian white men, and right thinking corporations to run government.

And definitely none of those false religions that other people in the world believe in.  No. No. No.


Definitely "no mo of the homo" either.  Absolutely no more science; we have too

Rand Paul, Tea Party pose

much of THAT already, and clearly there is a big PROBLEM with reality and all those facts leaning liberal.  Those have to go.

No, no voting or lunch counter sitting or equal pay or reproductive choice, no no no.  None of that modern stuff when Rand gets his hands on America for 'HIS' 'Murikans (good Christians all, the right wing fundie Evangelical kind only).


A better question to ask is WHEN does Rand Paul want to take America back?

Would he be aiming at 1950?

Or is pro-confederacy, pro-session, pro-white supremacy Rand Paul aiming to send us backward even further, to the 1850s?

Inquiring minds want to know, but only from curiosity.  WE do NOT want him taking America away from a broadly diverse America, with whom he and his fringie-bots do not want to share power, or to have the backward culture wars that make people second class citizens imposed on us by the delusional right wing nuts.

Rand Paul -- not back to the future, just backward, and downward.

Why Obama is better than secular right wing nut saint Ronnie Ray-gun

Happy Holiday of Choice to Our Gentle Readers

Happy Passover and Happy Easter, respectively, and an interesting comparative religious context beyond the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).  It emphasizes, in an unusual way, how much our religions have in common,, where that is so often a source of division. h/t to the Witty Liberal for the image.

(And our very secular congrats to our next door neighbors on their Final Four victory.)

Freedom from the Crazy and the Freakishy Weird and the Bloody-Minded

Evangelical Conservatives are a small group of people who have tried to be very controlling of others. Do what they say, or they will make you pay, in whatever way they can.

They want to control the Republican Party. They want to control government by any means possible; if not through a majority, through obstruction.


They want to control -- and limit -- freedom and civil rights; always have. Before 'the gays' it was controlling and restricting minorities. They want to control what people do in their bedrooms as well. And when they don't get their way, when they don't get the control they want, they make threats. Threats that God will HATE America, threats of earthquakes, threats that global warming related droughts are GOD punishing everyone for not conforming to their religion. "Demons will getcha!" and other rubbish suitable ONLY for scaring foolish or very young children is their fall back position. These are people who fear children will 'catch the Gay' from Common Core, or who will 'catch the Hindu' from gym class, like it was athlete's foot lurking in the showers.

There is no rational limit on the scope of what crazy Evangelicals will try to blame on gays, or for occasional variety in their religious insanity, abortion.  Most of these Evangelical extremists are very flexible; they can flip between the two with gymnast-like agility.

It is not rational adult thinking; it is an irrational emotional position, one of ugly emotions, not nice emotions. It is vindictive and revenge driven. Losing the marriage equality battle, and most likely the entire culture war, they seek their last possible way to lash out, to hurt others. These are the people, these mean, mostly old, mostly white Evangelicals FROM WHOM WE NEED PROTECTION to ensure civil rights and true liberty. They are the people who want to create second class citizens, whom they can threaten with losing their employment, losing their housing, or being treated badly when they celebrate a happy life milestone. People should be free to believe whatever they like, reasonable or crazy, personally and privately; but it is also appropriate to draw the line at intruding the discriminatory or the freakishly weird into the public square and then imposing it on everyone else. This is NOT an attack on religion nor is it a criticism leveled at all religion; freedom of religion is freedom to believe whatever you like, but it is not freedom from criticism or freedom from reason.


One of the most apt statements I've seen so far is that Evangelicals desperately want religious freedom, they want YOU to be FREE TO FOLLOW THEIR RELIGION, not your religion (or absence of religion) of choice and conscience.


The most extreme of these people want to declare open hunting season on anyone they perceive to be LGBT, with it being legal to murder them at will. That was the legislation proposed in California by a particularly hateful bigoted Evangelical. Because...Jesus?

I could re-type in all the numbers, the breakdowns, but this analysis by both party affiliation, age, and religious affiliation does a much better, more dynamic job of it, and shows why this will be important in the 2016 election:



Individually, most of these Evangelicals are nice people, but their religion and their politics are ugly and hateful, and as a political movement, they should be repudiated and rejected. They use the word freedom, often; but they seek to stifle it and to control people, to coerce people to conform to their beliefs. They wail and rant against big government overreach and intrusion, but they seek to expand it. They smear lipstick on their pig,, discrimination, by calling it religion and freedom.

Instead of Being HAPPY, the Greater the Obama Administration's Successthe Greater AMERICA's SUCCESS, the Greater the Unhappiness on the Right

Same-sex Marriage, Law and Customs: the Minnesota Connection, and a Brief History

As we see the religious right take another hit or two on the chin from the masters of the conservatives -- Business, NOT Jesus, not conservative organized religion -- it is worth a mention of some of the history behind legislation against same sex marriage.

Conservatives want us all to take their sloppy scholarship view that marriage has always been exclusively between one man and one woman.  Apart from the painfully obvious facts that monogamy is not a societal or historical by any stretch of the imagination, the idea that same sex marriages have not been a fixture in human history is also a mistaken one. 

For those of you contemplating sitting across from crotchety old relatives as likely to be wearing a tin foil as wrapping up holiday leftovers with it, here is a bit of background for you, should you opt to present the facts to the minds inside those tin foil hats.

The current challenge for the legality of same-sex unions arguably can be traced to Hennepin County,  Minnesot, back in 1971, when two gay men attempted to get married.  The case went all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which found that while there were no actual laws defining marriage one way or the other, they found instead that a basis for exclusively heterosexual marriage existed in common law.  That argument is still being pushed -- factually falsely -- by some conservatives, including the radical (one might say rabid) religious right.

From an article about the case, in the HuffPo back  in 2012:

Jack Baker And Michael McConnell, Couple In 1971 Minnesota Gay Marriage Case, Still United
"I am convinced that same-sex marriage will be legalized in the United States," Baker told a group of lawyers on Oct. 21, 1971, quoted then by the St. Paul Pioneer Press (in a story that described him as an "admitted homosexual"). But for years after the high court refused to hear arguments in Baker v. Nelson, its single sentence was cited as precedent by federal courts that ruled against same-sex unions.

.."The fear then wasn't that you'd be discriminated against, that was a given," said Jean Tretter, a member of FREE who went on to decades of gay activism in Minnesota. "You were a lot more afraid that someone might come after you with a shotgun."

Baker and McConnell – educated, clean-cut and handsome – contrasted with the typically scruffy counterculture activists of the era. But the Hennepin County attorney blocked their bid for a marriage license, a decision upheld by a district judge and affirmed by the state Supreme Court with reasoning that echoes in today's arguments against gay marriage: "The institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the Book of Genesis."

It was a stormy time for the couple. Soon after McConnell relocated to Minnesota, the University of Minnesota's Board of Regents yanked his job offer because he was openly gay; the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his separate lawsuit to get it back. In April 1971, amid both legal dramas, Baker was elected and then a year later re-elected as president of the university's student government.

Two decades after the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Baker v. Nelson, the Hawaii Supreme Court in 1993 ruled that homosexuals had a constitutional right to marry. It started the ball rolling on a movement that has seen many victories and setbacks since.

"Jack was the politician – outgoing and effective, manipulating the material world," said Roger Lynn, a retired Methodist pastor who performed a marriage ceremony for the men in 1971, and who remains in touch with them occasionally. "Michael was the librarian, detail-oriented, more introverted. They were a good match, and they're still making it work."

In a strange twist to their story, Baker wrote via email that he and McConnell would be personally unaffected if Minnesota legalizes gay marriage. In 1971, about 18 months after Hennepin County rejected their application, the couple traveled to southern Minnesota's Blue Earth County, where they obtained a marriage license on which Baker was listed with an altered, gender-neutral name.

That license was later challenged in court but was never explicitly invalidated by a judge.

So this was the first legally gay married couple in Minnesota -- well before any passage of same-sex marriage equality laws anywhere else in the U.S., and well before any 21st century law was passed here.

These men had a genuine reason to fear violence as well as sexual orientation discrimination in employment -- or housing, or anywhere else that might involve "public accommodation" with discrimination of services. On June 5, 1979, a gay man, Terry Knudsen, was beaten to death by three men in Loring Park, Minneapolis, Minnesota. On September 7, 1979, another gay man, Robert Allen Taylor, was stabbed to death in the same area, by a murderer who made the statement, "I don't like gays, OK?".

Baker and McConnell were not the only LGBT individuals attempting to marry legally in that period, which in turn seems to have been the catalyst for the codification in law of exclusively heterosexual marriage:

Another couple challenged same-sex marriages in 1971. Faygele Ben-Miriam and Paul Barwick applied for a marriage license in Seattle as a statement of equality between homosexuals and heterosexuals. The county auditor refused their application. However, other couples that encountered rejection took notice of their action, helping to spark a media flurry and the popular lawsuitSinger vs. Hara. Ultimately, the Washington State Court Appeals rejected their case with a unanimous decision in 1974.

Those two cases were among the first of many concerning same-sex relationships to emerge in the 1970s. In 1973, the state of Maryland banned same-sex marriage. In 1975, the Arizona Supreme Court invalidated a same-sex marriage license granted to a couple by reason of "trespassing biblical principles." In Colorado, a county clerk issued six same-sex marriage licenses, which, despite the efforts of a Colorado lawyer on behalf of the same-sex couples, later which became invalidated by state's DA's office later.

It's too bad that the scholarship back in 1970-71 was not what it is today; that court decision might have been very different.  Now we know that being gay is normal, not deviant - something established in this same era.  We also know that contrary to the statement about heterosexual marriage being the standard, the norm, cited in the legal decision on the initial attempt of Baker and McConnell to marry, that same sex marriage has existed across history, including within all branches of Christianity, and from pre-history to present in all parts of the globe.

From the LawyersGunsMoneyblog:

“If you have access via a library to the latest edition of the Journal of American History, I highly recommend Rachel Hope Cleves’ article on the prehistory of same-sex marriage. And if you can’t read it, she did a podcast you can listen to. She basically tracks down a long history of gay marriage, going back to berdaches among southwestern indigenous peoples through gold miners in 19th century California and to many cases throughout American history of people accepting marriage and marriage-like arrangements between same-sex couples."

And as also noted by Legal Match Law Library:

The Ancient Roman Empire did not shy away from same-sex unions, and there was widespread acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality among the Roman citizens. Moreover, many of the early Roman emperors were in homosexual relationships. Nero, an early Roman emperor, was known for his homosexuality, and had been married to two men at different points in time.

Then there was the definitive work of the chair of the History Department at Yale, the late Professor Boswell, via the Anthropologist Live Journal:

Records of Christian same sex unions have been discovered in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Istanbul and in the Sinai, covering a thousand-years from the 8th to the 18th century.

The Dominican missionary and Prior, Jacques Goar (1601-1653), includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek Orthodox prayer books, “Euchologion Sive Rituale Graecorum Complectens Ritus Et Ordines Divinae Liturgiae” (Paris, 1667).

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, homophobic writings didn’t appear in Western Europe until the late 14th century. Even then, church-consecrated same sex unions continued to take place.

At St. John Lateran in Rome (traditionally the Pope's parish church) in 1578, as many as thirteen same-gender couples were joined during a high Mass and with the cooperation of the Vatican clergy, "taking communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together" according to a contemporary report. Another woman to woman union is recorded in Dalmatia in the 18th century.

Prof. Boswell's academic study is so well researched and documented that it poses fundamental questions for both modern church leaders and heterosexual Christians about their own modern attitudes towards homosexuality.

For the Church to ignore the evidence in its own archives would be cowardly and deceptive. The evidence convincingly shows that what the modern church claims has always been its unchanging attitude towards homosexuality is, in fact, nothing of the sort.

It proves that for the last two millennia, in parish churches and cathedrals throughout Christendom, from Ireland to Istanbul and even in the heart of Rome itself, homosexual relationships were accepted as valid expressions of a God-given love and committment [sic] to another person, a love that could be celebrated, honored and blessed, through the Eucharist in the name of, and in the presence of, Jesus Christ.

All good -- and the right has NO alternative, much less one as good or better

It's Friday Fun-day!

I hope you will laugh at this as much as I did.

The moon will however have an effect on your life - it will affect the tides. The sun will have an effect on your life as well; if you go outside, you should probably apply sun screen.

Hobby Lobby and Citizens United

Citizen's United paved the way for Hobby Lobby, by declaring companies to be entitled to the protections of people, and Hobby Lobby declared the owners of a company can object, on religious grounds, to the expenditures of their company - in this case on contraceptives.

So, I have some other ideas.

I believe Caribou Coffee, which is owned by the Prince (Sultan) of Dubai, should refuse to employ anyone who eats pork, because pork is unclean.

Following the logic of the new Indiana "defense of religious freedom law", they should also be allowed to refuse to serve (and for that matter be exempt from having to employ) any woman who does not wear a burkha within sight of the store's employees.

Any company held by any aetheists (privately presumably, but if stock holders chose to vote that way, then those too), should be allowed to refuse service to anyone who wears any form of religious item into the store.  They should also be allowed to fire anyone (or at least not pay them from their "personal" funds) and so "protect" them from providing material support for a religious choice with which they don't agree and see as a fallacy, for any paycheck could at least in part, be given to a religious institution as a charitable donation.

Any business owned by Hindus should be allowed to refuse service to anyone who eats beef, and should be allowed to refuse to pay anyone who advocates or even discusses eating beef while on their premises. They should be allowed to quiz current employees to find out who is and who is not eating beef and refuse to pay anyone who may spend funds on beef.

This is fun, and far from the end of this stupid, asinine slope.  Feel free to add your own ideas of "religious protections" for business owners which are in fact nothing other than absurdly thinly veiled allowances of discriminatory practices and the use of corporate profits to sponsor political candidates the majority prefers.  Very VERY stupid and very dangerous.  Those of you who complain business runs the country and that's not good, if you voted for Republicans, you only screwed yourself, but hey, when you lose your paycheck because your personal choices "offend" the religious sensibilities of the owners, blame yourself.

Kansas --- Brownback and his administration are taking the state down the toilet

There's nothing but bad news in Kansas on revenue and their economy:

Kansas tax revenue $11.2 million less than expected in March

Weak sales, corporate income and oil tax revenue to blame

Tax revenue to the state of Kansas slipped $11.2 million below estimates in March, state officials said Tuesday.
Collection of sales, corporate income, and oil and gas severance taxes fell below forecasts developed by state officials in November. Projections were revised downward at that time to reflect diminished optimism about the state’s short-term economic future.

House Minority Leader Tom Burroughs, D-Kansas City, said sweeping state income tax reductions were marketed by the Republican-led Legislature and Gov. Sam Brownback as a “shot of adrenaline” to the heart of Kansas’ economy. After three years, Burroughs said, the GOP’s tax policy had been exposed as “more like an ax wound.”
“Kansas continues to bleed revenue as is evident by this month’s numbers," he said. "How we resolve this issue remains unknown as the legislative session is nearly over and we haven’t seen a comprehensive balanced budget.”

State revenue has fallen hundreds of millions of dollars since implementation of legislation approved by the 2012 Legislature and Brownback to repeal state income tax on owners of more than 300,000 businesses and to reduce individual income tax rates.

Kansas is in such bad shape, unable to manage the minimally necessary safety maintenance on its infrastructure that the state is starting to fall down in rubble.  You can be confident that the Republican majorities at the Federal level are doing the same slighting of infrastructure; they won't make up the gaps.  From the Wichita Business Journal:

No April Fools' Day Joke: 2,416 of Kansas's Bridges Need Structural Repair, New Analysis of U.S. Department of Transportation Data Finds

Federal Highway & Bridge Funding Facing May 31 Deadline

The analysis of the federal government data, conducted by American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) Chief Economist Dr. Alison Premo Black, shows cars, trucks and school buses cross Kansas's 2,416 structurally compromised bridges 787,632 times every day.  Not surprisingly, the most heavily traveled are on the Interstate Highway System, which carries the bulk of truck traffic and passenger vehicles

....The ARTBA analysis of the bridge data supplied by the states to the U.S. DOT also found:

• Kansas ranks 7th place nationally in the number of structurally deficient bridges—2,416.
• Kansas ranks 22nd place in the percentage of its bridges that are classified as structurally deficient—10 percent.

Sam Brownback's policies are literally jeopardizing the safety of Kansas citizens and anyone traveling in or through Kansas.

Sam Brownback has promised his policies would work given time.  The architect of those policies is failed Reaganomics trickle-down economist Arthur Laffer - famous, or infamous, for the Laffer curve.

Here is what Laffer was saying back in January 2015, and in 2012.

Back in August 2012, Laffer told a crowd at the Johnson County Community College, if Kansas would slash its income tax rates, it would result in “enormous prosperity.”
He told a reporter at the time that he had not produced an economic model on when Kansas will notice meaningful economic growth.
Two-and-a-half years later, Kansas is staring at a budget crisis, with more than a billion dollar gap between revenues and expenses projected in the current and next budget years. The state is also experiencing a low private job growth rate, as well as a slow-growing economy.
In a 45-minute phone interview, Laffer said while he is “not surprised,” he didn’t know why the deficits have occurred. He still believes adamantly in his supply-side economic theory: If you reduce income taxes, you will raise more revenue, not less.

...The 74-year-old former economist for President Ronald Reagan, who remains controversial among mainstream economists, was paid $75,000 to consult with Brownback and his staff before the tax-cut legislation passed in 2012. Some say Laffer was the inspiration for the Kansas tax-cut plan, if not its architect.
He has stayed in touch with Brownback. Laffer told me the two talked just before the November election.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/steve-rose/article7024256.html#storylink=cpy

No one in Kansas is laughing.  The state is swirling around on its final go-around down the crapper.  Kansas is severely under-performing the economies of adjoining states and the national averages, while facing a continuing severe revenue shortfall.  While Laffer -- and presumably Brownback -- want to wait to see results in ten years, the state doesn't have that long.  Further, there is ZERO evidence that following this economic model and policies will EVER produce the desired results.

These are the same policies touted in other red states, and by conservatives at the federal government level.  NEVER have these policies produced the promised economic results.  What they do produce is a more rapidly expanding instability from the enormously widening chasm of wealth and income inequality.

Like fictional cartoon figure Bullwinkle the Moose,  Governor Brownback continues with the line "this time, for sure!", believed only by the most gullible, the most credulous, and possibly a handful of toddlers.

The latest news refutes the promises and claims made by Brownback.

As noted by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

• The tax cuts delivered lopsided benefits to the wealthy.  Kansas’ tax cuts didn’t benefit everyone.  Most of the benefits went to high-income households.  Kansas even raised taxes for low-income families to offset a portion of the revenue loss; otherwise the cuts to schools and other services would have been greater still.
• Kansas’ tax cuts haven’t boosted its economy.  Since the tax cuts took effect at the beginning of 2013, Kansas has added jobs at a pace modestly slower than the country as a whole.  The earnings and incomes of Kansans have performed slightly worse than the U.S. as a whole as well.  (An exception is farmers, whose incomes improved as the state recovered from a drought.)  And so far there’s no evidence that Kansas is enjoying exceptional business growth: the number of registered business grew more slowly last year than in 2012, and the state’s share of all U.S. business establishments fell over the first three quarters of last year, the latest data available.
• There’s little evidence to suggest that Kansas’ tax cuts will improve its economy in the future.  No one knows for certain how Kansas’ economy will perform in the years ahead, but it isn’t likely to stand out from other states.  The latest official state revenue forecast, from November 2013, projects Kansas personal income will grow more slowly than total national personal income in 2014 and 2015.[1]

Evidence from other states and academic studies casts further doubt on claims that the tax cuts will cause the state’s economy to boom.  States that cut taxes the most in the 1990s performed worse, on average, over the course of the next economic cycle than states that were more prudent.[2]  And the academic literature overwhelmingly finds that states with lower personal income taxes perform no better economically than their peers.[3]

It's not just Kansas; every other Republican administered state with Republican majority or super-majority legislatures that emulated these policies is having similar problems.  Conservative Economics, like Republican Math, DO NOT WORK.  Today from Yahoo Finance News:

Why State Tax Cuts Aren’t Driving Job Growth

But the dramatic tax cutting doesn’t appear to have done nearly as much for job growth as promised. 

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says that Wisconsin ranked 35^th of the 50 states in job growth during the first three years of Scott Walker’s term, and dead last among its immediate neighbors, including, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Ohio.

Kansas hasn’t fared much better. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state’s rate of job growth has lagged the national average since Brownback’s tax cuts took effect.

North Carolina, at least, matched the national average in job creation in 2013. But the total number of jobs added to the state’s economy in the second half of the year – when the tax cuts went into effect, was actually smaller than the total number added in 2012.

Repeat after me: REPUBLICAN ECONOMIC POLICIES SUCK, THEY DO NOT WORK, THEY DO NOT DELIVER AS PROMISED.  And if you're planning to travel to any of these red states, you might want to find routes that don't require any kind of bridge crossing.  That is, just to be on the safe side.

Conservative Economic Polices Are Epic Failures -- and have been since post-Eisenhower