Sam Brownback's 'Kansas experiment' putting the voodoo back in economics

Kansas is not in Kansas anymore.


Three years later, here we are: Wealthy Kansans are delighted. Poor Kansans are poorer. The state has now gone through its reserves funds and is facing a gaping hole in its current balance sheet as well as a $648-million shortfall for the next fiscal year, according to the Kansas legislature research department.

The revenue gusher hasn't erupted. The promised jobs have not appeared.

Kansas, like most other Republican-run states, does not allow itself to run a deficit, and Brownback is getting desperate.

(There are reports he's even considering signing Kansas up for the federally-provided money of Obamacare, which he has so far shunned as socialism.)

Today, Brownback is slashing. He's reduced education funding by hundreds of millions of dollars, and cut money to build roads.

Because, you know, do Kansans really need education or roadways to build a bright future?

In his 2004 book What's The Matter With Kansas, journalist/historian Tom Frank asked rhetorically why blue-collar American voters so consistently vote against their own economic self-interests.

He concluded it's because they keep falling for the same old con job: A vote for me is a vote for Jesus, and to end abortions and gay marriage and pornography, and restore old-time values and give everybody the shot they deserve at the American dream.

Instead, they just wind up with crappier jobs and higher taxes (or "revenue enhancements").

"It's comical," Frank told me.

But that's what people seem to want. That's America.