Tag Archives: Brownback

Reality Virus Infects Kansas Legislators, Brownback Immune

By William K. Black
March 28, 2017      Bloomington, MN

The good news is that the Kansas legislature, the land of the lunatics, experienced an outbreak of the reality virus (first diagnosed and named by Steve Keen among neoclassical economists).  The bad news is that the Kansas’ Crazy-in-Chief, Governor Sam Brownback, has proven immune to the virus.

Brownback decided to put Art Laffer in charge of Kansas’ taxation policy.  Even neoclassical economists roll their eyes when it comes to Laffer’s claims that dramatic tax decreases lead to significantly increased net tax revenues.  Laffer’s batting average on this claim is .000 and his “proof” of his claim is a graph (the “Laffer curve”) that he drew that contradicts reality.  Brownback knew that Laffer was batting .000 on his claims and that Laffer never drops his claims when reality (repeatedly) falsifies his graph.  To no one’s surprise, Brownback’s tax cuts produced a fiscal disaster for Kansas.

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Another Reason to Retire Sam Brownback: The Senate Subprime Car Loan Sleaze

By William K. Black

When Sam Brownback was a Senator he carried water for the sleaziest of auto lenders – the subprime lenders that specialize in making “liar’s” loans.  His successful mission was to carve out an exemption from the Dodd-Frank bill’s protection for borrowers.  We had just seen the CEOs controlling similar home lending specialists lead the three mortgage fraud epidemics that blew up the global financial system.  The bill’s drafters and President Obama strongly opposed the Brownback carve out, but Brownback’s brigade of auto lobbyists made road kill of their opponents.

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Brownbackian Science in Kansas v. “Atheistic Theology Posing as Science”

By William K. Black

This is my fifth installment describing the assault on education, science, sex, and modernity in Kansas that was inspired by the Koch brothers.  The leader of Koch brothers’ retinue of politicians in Kansas is Governor Sam Brownback.  In my prior column I explained how Steve Abrams, a leader of the Koch’s shock troops, demonstrated the wisdom of our family’s twin rules whenever he wrote an op ed.  Our family rules are:

  1. It is impossible to compete with unintentional self-parody, and
  2. When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging

Abrams’ op eds were not the only gift to scientists and educators resisting the Kochs’ assaults on education, science, and modernity in Kansas.  Political wonks will recall that (then) U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, in a May 2007 Republican debate among candidates for the 2008 Party nomination for the presidency, was one of three of those candidates who held up his hand when the moderator asked how many of them did not believe in evolution.

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