Democrats May Be Poised to Take Back Multiple Governorships

The Democrat goal: electing more Ralph Northams to governorship's across America. 

The far left of the Democrat Party - think Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren - has been taking it on the chin in many state level primaries where moderate, common sense approach Democrats have been winning the primary elections.  Elections, after all are about WINNING as opposed to anointing one's perfect candidate or staying home in a huff if one's preferred candidate doesn't win the Party nomination.  This concept was lost by many in 2016 and, as a result, we have the utterly foul and toxic Trump/Pence regime in the White House.  In the run up to the 2018 midterm elections - as was the case in Virginia in 2027 where the more moderate candidate won the primary and went on to win the general election - moderate Democrats who can appeal to independents and even moderate Republicans sickened by Trump's lies and moral bankruptcy  are winning gubernatorial nominations.  If they win in November, such successes could cause major problems for the GOP as Democrat governors are poised to block Republican gerrymandering of districts.  The long term impact could be significant.  Yes, Democrats need to retake control of Congress, but they also need to win back governorship's.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the Democrat opportunity.  Here are highlights:

The backlash against President Trump and the steady rightward journey of the Republican Party could sharply shift the distribution of political power in state capitals across the nation in this fall’s elections. And because reapportionment is coming, this could change the contours of American politics for more than a decade.

Strengthening that possibility is the success of pragmatic Democrats in gubernatorial primaries who are stressing issues that appeal simultaneously to the center and the left.

 

On Tuesday, Wisconsin Democrats chose Tony Evers, the state schools superintendent, to face two-term Republican Gov. Scott Walker. In Minnesota, Democrats nominated Rep. Tim Walz to defend his party’s hold on the state’s governorship. Both Evers and Walz advance progressive priorities in areas such as education and health care but cannot be cast as ideologues.

Democratic gubernatorial nominees are similarly positioned in Ohio, Iowa and Michigan, all pickup opportunities.

At the same time, Trump’s dominance of the Republican primary electorate and the long-term flight of moderates from an increasingly conservative party have led to victories by right-wing candidates who may not be attractive to a broader electorate.

One of Tuesday’s headline results was the defeat of former governor Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota by Trump-supporting Jeff Johnson, a county commissioner who castigated Pawlenty for criticizing Trump toward the end of the 2016 campaign following the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape.

 

And in Kansas on Tuesday, Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer finally conceded the GOP primary race to Secretary of State Kris Kobach, after a week of tallying ballots. Kobach is a Trump loyalist with far-right views on immigration and restricting access to voting. Kobach’s victory greatly increases the chances of the Democrats’ nominee, state Sen. Laura Kelly. The Cook Political Report immediately reclassified the race as a toss-up in a traditionally Republican state.

 

Like many Democrats, Kelly is focusing on schools. It’s an issue with particular power in Kansas. Former governor Sam Brownback (R) — he left office before his term was out — had reduced education spending to pay for large tax cuts.

 

The program became so unpopular that it was rolled back on a bipartisan vote in the legislature, and Kelly has targeted the Brownback plan (she calls it his “big tax-cut experiment”) in her advertising. “Sam Brownback’s massive education cuts weren’t numbers on a spreadsheet,” she says. “They were an attack on who we are as Kansans.”

 

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, says Kansas offers a particularly dramatic example of what is happening in many other Republican-led states. “Everyone knows about the Trump effect, but the untold story is Republican governors going on ideological tears in their states,” Inslee said in a telephone interview. “You have a one-two punch to Republican prospects both from the White House and from the damage that’s been wrought out of the statehouses.”

11 of the Republicans’ 26 governorships at stake this year appear vulnerable. Illinois and New Mexico already lean Democratic, and seven others are toss-ups. These include the powerhouse states of Florida, Michigan and Ohio. The GOP will also have to struggle to hold on to Wisconsin and Georgia.

 

The governments elected this year will be key to drawing congressional and state legislative district lines after the 2020 Census. So even Republicans who demonstrated slavish loyalty to Trump to win primaries are likely to regret his presidency (and their own ideological enthusiasms) if 2018 leads to a statehouse catastrophe. They have been playing with fire, and it could consume them.

One can only hope that these pragmatic Democrats replicate the ground game used by Ralph Northam in 2017.  While defeating Republican gubernatorial candidates is the goal, defeating the by significant margins would be even sweeter - and would send terror through the GOP.

Insurance Companies Say "No" to Arming Teachers

In the wake of school mass shootings, the NRA - a front organization for gun manufacturers - and its political prostitutes within the Republican Party insanely say the solution is more guns.  Indeed, they propose arming teachers and school staff embers, most of whom want nothing to do with the idiotic proposal. Nonetheless, Republicans in a number of states have passed laws allowing the arming of teachers; however, they are hitting a roadblock: insurance carriers who are refusing to offer insurance coverage -  something we need to see start happening to gun owners in the home insurance realm as intimated in a prior post.  As is their norm insurance carriers typically eagerly accept premium payments, but want to minimize as much as possible the risk that they might actually have to pay out on claims.  The analysis of these companies is that more guns in schools is a very bad idea.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at insurance carrier's refusal in most cases to issue policies to school districts arming teachers and staff.  Here are highlights:

Kansas has a problem: It has a law allowing teachers to carry guns in the classroom, but almost no schools are using it because insurance companies refuse to provide coverage if they do. As EMC Insurance, the largest insurer of schools in Kansas, explained in a letter to its agents, the company “has concluded that concealed handguns on school premises poses a heightened liability risk.”

Then came the Parkland, Fla., school shooting in February, leading frustrated Republican legislators in Kansas to try forcing the issue with a bill banning “unfair, discriminatory” rates for schools that arm staff. The insurance industry held firm. Last month, the bill failed.

As proposals to arm teachers sweep across the nation, insurance companies are being forced to weigh the risks of these controversial plans. Some insurers are balking. Some are agreeing to provide policies but lamenting the lack of evidence about whether it makes schools safer — or increases the chances of people getting shot. Others are raising rates.  The reaction of insurance companies is notable because they are supposed to evaluate dangers through the dry eye of actuarial science, largely avoiding the heated emotions of the nation’s gun debate, in which one side condemns guns and the other side claims, as Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) did last week, that the best way to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun.  Insurance companies are not so certain, worried more guns in schools might not only fail to stop mass shootings but lead to more accidents. The epidemic of mass shootings in schools and other public venues has put new pressure on the insurance industry to take a stand. They face huge potential liabilities from these tragedies. The 2017 Las Vegas shooting, where a gunman fatally shot 58 people, could cost insurers more than $1 billion, including potential lawsuits and covering lost business income from the incident and its fallout, according to the International Risk Management Institute. Adding trained police officers to schools is generally viewed favorably, industry officials say. But giving guns to school janitors or history teachers — even with some training — raises concerns. More guns make insurers nervous in other situations, too, said Scott Kennedy, president of CCIG, an insurance company in Colorado. He pointed to the common preference among insurers that nightclub bouncers remain unarmed, while off-duty police officers working security are usually allowed to carry firearms. Joe Carter, a vice president of United Educators, which specializes in insuring schools, said he frequently hears from insurance executives at industry events worried about whether they will be asked to cover armed teachers and school staff.  “I don’t know anyone out there who is ready to offer liability coverage for schools when they’re arming their teachers,” Carter said.

Kansas passed its law arming teachers in 2013, after the mass shooting the previous year in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That immediately led EMC Insurance to announce it would rather exit the school insurance market than cover armed teachers and staff. Republican lawmakers were upset but couldn’t find another insurer willing to take on the policies.

Let's hope this common sense spreads to the residential insurance market and to homeowners having to discard their guns or lose insurance mandated by their mortgage companies.  With luck, it could also lead to landlords to ban guns in their rental properties. 

Oklahoma Tried the GOP’s Tax Plan. Now, It’s Electing Democrats.

Congressional Republicans are strive to pass on a national level what Oklahoma Republicans tried a few years ago with disastrous results (Kansas likewise used this template with equally horrific results).  Here in Virginia Ed Gillespie's attempt to do the same thing as in Oklahoma and Kansas went down in flames when he lost by 9% to Democrat Ralph Northam.  Apparently, Virginians are smarter than their countrymen/women in the Mid-West. What is telling about Congressional Republicans is that they care nothing about how the Oklahoma and Oklahoma tax cuts for the rich combined with slashing spending on education and social programs (i) nearly bankrupted the states and (ii) seems to have Oklahomans now electing Democrats.  It would seem that the only thing that counts with Republicans is giving huge tax cuts to the very wealthy and large corporations while they can.  The long term consequences be damned.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the Oklahoma example.  Here are highlights:

The backlash to the Republican tax agenda is already getting Democrats elected — in Oklahoma. On Tuesday night, 26-year-old mental-health counselor Allison Ikley-Freeman won election to the Sooner State’s Senate, in a district that backed Donald Trump by 40 points last November.

Ikley-Freeman did not win on the strength of her fundraising or political experience. She boasted little of the former and none of the latter. But like the three other Oklahoma Democrats who have evicted Republicans from state-house seats this year, Ikley-Freeman enjoyed one decisive advantage: She bore no responsibility for the regressive tax policies that had left the state in fiscal ruin.

Oklahoma was a low-tax state even before the 2010 GOP wave crashed over it. But tea-party Republican governor Mary Fallin and her conservative allies weren’t content with the low baseline they’d inherited. Like President Trump and congressional Republicans, Fallin believed that cutting taxes on wealthy individuals and businesses was the way to grow an economy, no matter what level those taxes were currently at, or how novel circumstances might change the government’s budgetary needs.

So, when global oil prices crashed in 2014, and took Oklahoma’s budget down with them, Fallin was unfazed. Faced with giant, annual revenue shortfalls, the governor didn’t just refuse to raise taxes — she cut them even further. Last year, the Sooner State found itself with a $1.3 billion budget gap — and Fallin responded by implementing a $147 million tax cut for Oklahoma’s highest earners, and preserving a $470 million tax break for oil companies that start new horizontal wells.

Instead of asking wealthy citizens and businesses to pay a bit more (or, in the former case, to pay as much as they had been previously), Fallin decided to strip resources from the state’s beleaguered public-school system. Between 2008 and 2015, Oklahoma had slashed its per-student education spending by 23.6 percent, more than any other state in the country. But Republicans felt there was still more fat to cut: While rich Sooners collected their tax breaks, Oklahoma schools suffered a 16.5 percent funding cut in the latter half of 2016. Many of the state’s school districts now make due with four-day weeks. Others struggle to find competent teachers, as the state’s refusal to pay competitive salaries has chased talented educators out of state or into other professions. Oklahoma’s health-care and criminal-justice systems are plagued by similarly draconian cuts. Bridges in the state are literally crumbling. Potholes litter roads.

But even this austerity has not been nearly enough to plug the state’s budget holes. Fallin and the GOP have become reliant on raiding emergency reserves to make up the rest. This has left Oklahoma profoundly vulnerable to the next recession.

This week, Republicans in Oklahoma’s House of Representatives passed an emergency budget bill in a special session. The legislation does increase taxes on oil production. But instead of raising taxes on the wealthy, or ending the state’s exemption for capital gains — as Oklahoma Democrats had proposed — Republicans opted to cut $60 million from state agencies, and drain another few million dollars from the state’s rainy-day funds.

Oklahoma’s overwhelmingly Republican voters do not like this idea. As polling by the (left-leaning) Oklahoma Policy Institute demonstrates, there is no majoritarian support for gutting public schools, so as to let rich people pay low taxes, even in the heart of red America.

That poll also found 74 percent of Oklahomans saying that increasing teacher pay should be a major priority for their government — and 64 percent saying that expanding health-care access should be one — compared to just 38 percent who said the same about “lowering taxes.” This goes a ways toward explaining why Democrats keep winning special elections in the state. . . . Now, the discrepancy between the GOP’s fiscal priorities, and its voters’ material needs, has become stark enough to challenge partisan loyalties.

In Washington, Republicans are working hard to make Oklahoma’s experience a national one. On Thursday, the House passed multitrillion-dollar tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy, even as exigent circumstances — among them, increasingly frequent hurricanes, the decay of long-neglected infrastructure, a drug-overdose epidemic, and the retirement of the baby-boomers — are making it more expensive for the federal government to meet its basic obligations to the American people.

[L]ike Kansas and Louisiana before it, Oklahoma has demonstrated that the Republican Party’s prescription for prosperity is a snake-oil tonic with life-threatening side effects.

And when “conservative” voters see what the trade-offs of small government actually are — bigger McMansions for the elite, four-day school weeks for the rabble — they start longing for a new deal.

Congressional Republicans don’t seem the least bit concerned by the abject failure of their economic model in these states.  A Quinnipiac poll released this week found that only 16 percent of Americans believe President Trump’s tax plan will lower their taxes, while 59 percent say the plan will favor the wealthy over the middle class. These are shocking figures given how much money Republicans and conservative outside groups have devoted to propaganda for their bill.

Republican voters in deep-red states like Oklahoma may cling to their partisan identities tighter than most. But they also know the true costs of the GOP’s economic orthodoxy on a more visceral level than other Americans do. On Tuesday, that knowledge helped a 26-year-old, lesbian Democrat win a seat in the Oklahoma Senate. Someday, it just might turn large swathes of the American heartland purple — if Democratic donors decide to spend a bit less on pointless, pro-impeachment ad campaigns, and a lot more on liberating red states from reactionary rule.

Republicans Find Themselves Trapped by Their Own Flimflam

Yesterday I noted that both the Donald Trump "tax reform" plan and the tax cut proposals of GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie are based on the long disproved GOP economics that tax cuts for the wealthy will somehow miraculously cause an expansion of economic activity and replace the revenues lost to massive tax cuts.  It did not happen under the Reagan tax reform and more recently it utterly failed in Kansas where extremist governor Sam Brownback and a GOP controlled legislature imposed a GOP dream approach to tax cuts on that state. the results were disastrous and eventually many Republicans joined with Democrats to raise taxes to avoid junk bond status for the state's borrowings and to fund needed services such as roads, public schools and higher education.  Thus the question becomes one of why does the GOP continue to cling to economic and tax policies that have been documented to never work in any way except to put money in the pockets of the super rich and large corporations?  A column in the New York Times gives and explanation.  Here are excerpts:

Last week the Trump administration and its congressional allies working on tax reform achieved something remarkable. They released a tax plan — or, actually, a vague sketch of a plan — that manages both to add trillions to the deficit and to raise taxes on a large fraction of the population. That takes talent.

But like the G.O.P.’s terrible, no good, very bad health plans, this tax debacle was years in the making. On taxes, as with health, leading Republicans have been lying for years. And now the fraud has caught up with the fraudsters.

The road to this tax-cut turkey began in 2010, when Paul Ryan — now speaker of the House — unveiled the first of a series of much-hyped budget plans, all purporting to offer a blueprint for eliminating the U.S. budget deficit.

In fact, they did no such thing. They proposed major tax cuts — primarily benefiting the rich, of course — then simply asserted that no revenue would be lost, because reduced tax rates would be offset by closing loopholes and eliminating deductions. Which loopholes and deductions? Ryan didn’t say.

[T]he Ryan plans also assumed drastic cuts in spending outside Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. What programs would be cut? The budget office again: “No proposals were specified that would generate that path.”

And what was the Ryan plan if you took out those mysterious revenue raisers and spending cuts? A plan to drastically cut taxes on the rich, savagely cut benefits for the poor and the middle class, and increase the overall deficit.

In other words, it was all a con. As I wrote in a 2010 column titled “The Flimflam Man,” “The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.” That judgment looks as valid now as it did then.

And the con went on for years. To this day one sometimes reads articles portraying Ryan as a serious policy wonk, despite abundant evidence of his unseriousness and real questions about his actual command of policy.

But then Republicans regained the White House, meaning that they had to come up with actual tax legislation. And this has put the con under terrible strain.

True, Republicans could just cut taxes on rich people — always their overriding priority — not worry about paying for it, and blow up the deficit. After all, their supposed concern about federal debt was always just a pose, applying only when a Democrat was president. But after all those years of pretending to be deficit hawks, they feel the need to be seen doing something to offset their high-income tax cuts, to close some loophole somewhere.

So they came up with what probably seemed like a clever idea: eliminate the deductibility of state and local taxes. Hey, that would mainly punish people in tax-and-spend blue states, right? Not their problem.

But this turns out to be a much bigger deal than they seemed to realize. (As with health care, they appear to have no idea what they’re doing.) . . . . But eliminating deductions would make many Americans, especially in the upper reaches of the middle class, directly worse off: Almost 60 percent of households between the 80th and 90th percentiles of the income distribution would face tax increases.

And this would happen even though the plan would add several trillion dollars to the deficit. Did I mention that many of those facing tax hikes vote Republican?

In broad outlines, the tax story is a lot like health care. In both cases, Republicans have spent years getting away with big promises backed by lies. Now, with real policy to be made, the lies won’t work anymore. And they can’t handle the truth.

Trump and Gillespie Seek to Reprise Kansas' Failed Tax Plan

In 2012, Kansas far right GOP governor Sam Brownback of Kansas signed a massive tax cut into law.  Brownback and his GOP allies promised that the massive tax cuts would boost the state's economy.  Among his goals, Brownback and the Kansas GOP he hoped to eliminate individual income taxes entirely.  Brownback's administration claimed the bill would create 23,000 jobs by 2020, and would lead 35,000 more people to move to Kansas.  Saying that the promised economic benefits never materialized would be far too kind.  The state was nearly left bankrupt, essential services, including highway maintenance, were slashed and public education funding dropped to far below 2008 levels, triggering significant program reductions in schools across the state. Class sizes have increased, teachers and staff members have been laid off, essential services for at-risk students were eliminated, some schools were forced to reduce the class week to four days. Now we have Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and other toadies of the likes of the Koch brothers seeking to take the Kansas disaster national.  Meanwhile, here in Virginia, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie is seeking to mimic the failed Kansas model with his promise of an across the board tax cut (Virginia already has a relative low tax rate).  A piece in Politico looks at how Democrats are pushing back against this ready-made disaster.  Here are excerpts:

In a warning shot to Republicans crafting landmark tax legislation, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Sunday that Kansas’ experiment with tax cuts foreshadows what can happen if the GOP relies on “fake numbers” to support its effort.

Speaking on CBS’ "Face the Nation," Schumer rebutted assertions by the Trump administration that the president’s tax plan is not designed to cut taxes for rich Americans.

“It's completely focused on the wealthy and the powerful. Not on the middle class,” Schumer said.

The New York Democrat also attacked Republicans’ assertion that the tax plan won’t add to the deficit. Kansas’ 2012 tax cuts led to a budget deficit that forced the state to cut funding for schools and infrastructure, Schumer said. Facing a major budget deficit, Kansas lawmakers in June approved legislation that rolled back many of Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts.

“This idea that cutting taxes on the wealthy, this trickle-down economics which the Republican Party loves, does not create growth,” Schumer said. “It never has."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was dubious of the idea that the plan wouldn't overwhelmingly benefit the rich.

"For Trump to go on television that, oh, this doesn't benefit the wealthy is absolutely outrageous," he said on CNN's "State of the Union." "Of course, it benefits the wealthy. And of course it benefits large multinational corporations."  . . . "We are living in a moment of massive income and wealth inequality. The very, very rich are getting richer. Middle class is shrinking."

Republicans' trickle down lies have never worked.  Despite the proof of objective reality in Kansas and elsewhere the lie persists.  Hopefully, Virginians do not fall for this lie next moth in our statewide elections.

Zombies, Vampires and Republicans

Republicans have been peddling the same voodoo economics since 1980 and, despite their formula's failure to ever work as claimed, they are back pushing it with a vengeance both in terms of proposed tax cuts (including ending the estate tax that would only benefit married couples with a combined estate of almost $11 million) and through healthcare "reform" which would provide enormous tax cuts to the very wealthy.  Most recently Kansas Republicans led by homophobic nutcase Sam Brownback implemented the full package of Republican economic principles and it proved to be an utter disaster that led to severe cuts in governmental services and budget crisis.  Only tax increases save the state's operations and economy.  Yet despite this real life experience, the Congressional Republicans appear posed to implement a still secret revised version of Trumpcare that will likely harm literally millions of Americans, including many of the fools who fell for Trump's calls appealing to their racism and bigotry and put a wholly unfit individual in the White House.  A column in the New York Times looks at the brain dead GOP:

Zombies have long ruled the Republican Party. The good news is that they may finally be losing their grip — although they may still return and resume eating conservative brains. The bad news is that even if zombies are in retreat, vampires are taking their place.

What are these zombies of which I speak? Among wonks, the term refers to policy ideas that should have been abandoned long ago in the face of evidence and experience, but just keep shambling along.

The right’s zombie-in-chief is the insistence that low taxes on the rich are the key to prosperity. This doctrine should have died when Bill Clinton’s tax hike failed to cause the predicted recession and was followed instead by an economic boom. It should have died again when George W. Bush’s tax cuts were followed by lackluster growth, then a crash. And it should have died yet again in the aftermath of the 2013 Obama tax hike — partly expiration of some Bush tax cuts, partly new taxes to pay for Obamacare — when the economy continued jogging along, adding 200,000 jobs a month.

Despite the consistent wrongness of their predictions, however, tax-cut fanatics just kept gaining influence in the G.O.P. — until the disaster in Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback promised that deep tax cuts would yield an economic miracle. What the state got instead was weak growth and a fiscal crisis, finally pushing even Republicans to vote for tax hikes, overruling Brownback’s veto.

Will this banish the tax-cut zombie? Maybe — although the economists behind the Kansas debacle, who have of course learned nothing, appear to be the principal movers behind the Trump tax plan, such as it is.

But even as the zombies move offstage, vampire policies — so-called not so much because of their bloodsucking nature, although that too, as because they can’t survive daylight — have taken their place.

Consider what’s happening right now on health care.

Last month House Republicans rammed through one of the worst, cruelest pieces of legislation in history. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the American Health Care Act would take coverage away from 23 million Americans, and send premiums soaring for millions more, especially older workers with relatively low incomes.

This bill is, as it should be, wildly unpopular. Nonetheless, Republican Senate leaders are now trying to ram through their own version of the A.H.C.A., one that, all reports suggest, will differ only in minor, cosmetic ways. And they’re trying to do it in total secrecy. . . . Clearly, the goal is to pass legislation that will have devastating effects on tens of millions of Americans without giving those expected to pass it, let alone the general public, any real chance to understand what they’re voting for.

Why this combination of secrecy and speed? Obviously, this legislation can’t survive sunlight — and I’m by no means the first to make the analogy with vampires.

This is unprecedented. Ignore Republican lies about how Obamacare was passed: the Affordable Care Act went through extensive discussion, and Democrats were always very clear about what they were trying to do and how they were trying to do it.

When it comes to the Republican replacement for Obamacare, however, it’s not just the process that’s secretive; so is the purpose. . . . . the one obvious payoff to taking health care away from millions: a big tax cut for the wealthy.

So this isn’t a Trump story; it’s about the cynicism and corruption of the whole congressional G.O.P. Remember, it would take just a few conservatives with conscience — specifically, three Republican senators — to stop this outrage in its tracks. But right now, it looks as if those principled Republicans don’t exist.

 The other element to all of this, of course, is the hypocrisy.  The GOP pretends to be the party of "Christian values" but there is NOTHING Christian about the party's reverse Robin Hood agenda of taking from the poor and middle class and giving the stolen wealth to the very rich./  

Is a Progressive Blue Wave Beginning?

With off year elections, Virginia is always seen as a bell weather of the popularity of the party controlling the White House.  But special elections can also point to the popularity - or lack thereof - of the party in power in Washington, DC.  Here in Virginia, extraordinary efforts will be made to deliver a Democrat sweep of the statewide elections in November - plus gains in the General Assembly - to send a rebuke to Der Trumpenführer and the GOP controlled Congress.  However, as a piece in Salon reports, special elections in certain congressional districts could prove most embarrassing to Trump and the foul GOP congressional leadership.  Here are story highlights:

Multiple upcoming special elections for seats that are traditionally Republican may serve as a productive model on how the Democratic Party can start winning and building back its base.

On April 18, voters from Georgia’s 6th Congressional District will head out to the polls in order to fill the seat vacated by Health & Human Services Secretary Tom Price. In the general election, Donald Trump carried the district over Hillary Clinton with a narrow margin, despite it being a longtime Republican chair. The current leading candidate is former Capitol Hill aide Jon Ossoff. At just 30 years old, the former investigative journalist managed to raise an unprecedented $8.3 million in only the first three months of the year — which is unheard of for a House candidate.

The majority of public and private polls have Ossoff leading the field by quite the margin, while holding percentages in the low to mid-40s according to Roll Call.

Video WATCH: Humorist P. J. O’Rourke on Donald Trump’s impending doom: “You could be really unpleasantly surprised” by how it happens.

NBC reports:

But while backing from party leaders like Nancy Pelosi has gotten him to the low 40s in most polls, Ossoff needs to shed his partisan edges to make Republicans and independents feel comfortable voting for him.

Under the unusual rules of election, all 18 candidates — 11 Republicans, five Democrats and two independents — will appear on the ballot. The top two vote-getters of any party will advance to a June runoff election, unless one candidate gets more than 50 percent, in which case they win outright.

Ossoff’s best chance at victory is to carry the day against a divided field this month, rather than face off against one GOP candidate and a united Republican Party in June. So he’s doing everything he can to climb above 50 percent.

Another special election Republicans are attempting to make sure they have under control will take place on April 11. Voters in Kansas’ 4th Congressional District will look to fill the seat of Mike Pompeo, who was chosen by President Trump to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The race has generally invoked little attention and will be between Republican State Treasurer Ron Estes, and Democrat James Thompson, a lawyer. Both local and national democrats have put little effort into race while the National Republican Congressional Committee launched an ad campaign in a district comfortably won by Trump during the general election. However, there is still some concern over GOP willingness to vote, as well as the overall quality of the Estes campaign, according to Roll Call.

In Montana, democrats were losing hope after the general election and generally concerned on how to bounce back. When Trump tapped Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke as secretary of the Interior Department, it was a small blessing in disguise. Legendary folk singer Rob Quist emerged as a democratic hopeful to win the vacant seat in a predominantly red state. His rallies are now regularly drawing hundreds, according to the Huffington Post, but Washington has paid little to no attention. The election will be held on May 25.

Kansas Republicans Vote to Expand Medicaid Under Obamacare

Even as Republican efforts in the House of Representatives to repeal Obamacare were crashing and burning, Kansas Republicans were taking steps to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.  Why? Because it is backed by the hospital industry and the business community and because it will aid many of Kansas' poorer citizens.  This is a sharp turn around from the Kansas GOP's agenda that cut taxes and cut funding to public education and other critical programs only to leave the state a financial basket case, proving that a "pure" GOP economic plan is the road to disaster. A piece in Mother Jones looks at this ironic approach by Kansas Republicans that is moving forward in spite of the threatened veto by nutcase GOP Gov. Sam Brownback, an architect of the state's economic and budgetary disaster.  Here are excerpts:

On the same day the House was supposed to pass a bill dismantling Medicaid, Kansas Republicans took a big step toward expanding the program in their state.

In a voice vote Thursday morning, a committee in the Kansas Senate approved legislation that would enable the state to take advantage of an Obamacare provision offering Medicaid health insurance coverage to a wider group of poor people. The federal government would provide the vast majority of the funding.

Many deep-red states like Kansas have rejected Medicaid expansion based largely on their ideological objections to Obamacare. But as I reported earlier this week, a new bloc of moderate Republicans in the state—backed by the health care industry and business community—have teamed up with Democrats to push Medicaid expansion. They point out that the state has given up, to date, nearly $2 billion in federal funds that could have helped both improve the health of the state's low-income communities while also boosting its economy.

The Kansas House overwhelming passed Medicaid expansion earlier this year. The full state Senate is expected to vote on the issue Monday, according to KCUR. But they would likely need to cobble together a veto-proof majority, since Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has vocally opposed to adopting the program.

More coverage on this development is here at Mother Jones:

According to a study by the nonpartisan Kansas Health Institute, about 152,000 people would join KanCare, the state's Medicaid program, if Kansas adopted the ACA expansion. Roughly 80,000 of those people currently lack health insurance coverage, while 71,000 would ditch their current coverage to jump onto Medicaid.

Now, Eplee has joined a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats that is trying to make that happen. They want their state to accept everything Obamacare has to offer before their brethren at the national level can tear it apart—and they've got the state business and medical communities on their side. Voters agree, too, with 82 percent supporting Medicaid expansion in a poll sponsored by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

"I'm out here in the rural area practicing [medicine], and I see it every day," Eplee says. "When I gave my testimony [in favor of Medicaid expansion], I gave examples of the working poor and their inability to get health insurance and to get the help they need. It puts them in very dire, precarious financial situations of being made medically bankrupt by one illness or one disease. It just takes one event, and then they're wiped out financially."

When the Kansas House collected testimony on the issue earlier this year, more than 160 organizations and individuals supported expansion. Just four offered testimony that opposed the idea—mostly national conservative organizations.

Koesten was part of a group of moderate Republicans that last year reclaimed control of the state legislature from the far right of the party. Five years earlier, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback had waged an electoral war to purge the party of legislators who opposed his ambitious tax cuts, ushering in a conservative takeover executed with the help of the Koch brothers' organization Americans for Prosperity. But after Brownback's policies left an enormous hole in the state budget, the moderates roared back in the 2016 elections. Moderate Republicans primaried sitting conservatives, and Democrats knocked off others. Out of 165 total lawmakers in the state Senate and House, there are 49 new members this year.

The consequences became clear late last month, when the state House voted 81-44 in favor of Medicaid expansion. "There was just enough change in the primary and the general election that tweaked the control over to the moderate side, where this was unstoppable at this point in time," explains Robert St. Peter, president and CEO of the Kansas Health Institute.

The hospitals have good reason to be upset about the money the state is leaving on the table. Many hospitals, especially in rural parts of the state, are under increasing financial strain from treating uninsured patients. In 2015, Mercy Hospital in Independence, Kansas, closed. Independence has just 9,500 residents, but the closure attracted media coverage from around the state. . . . an industry advisory group, found that out of 107 rural hospitals in Kansas, 31 are considered "vulnerable" and at risk of closure. The report didn't name the hospitals in trouble, leaving each community worried that its hospital could be next.

Kansas is one of the last places one would expect to see Republicans regaining a grasp on objective reality and actually pushing policies that help poorer citizens.  It is the exact opposite of Paul Ryan's reverse Robin Hood agenda. 

Catholic School Reserves Right to Expel Students With LGBT Siblings

While masochistic LGBT Catholics continue to cling to the (in my view, disingenuous) statements  of Pope Francis to tell themselves that the Roman Catholic Church is backing off of its anti-LGBT jihad, we see daily reminders that remaining Catholic and LGBT ought to be mutually exclusive. Indeed, despite Pope Francis' cheery picked statements, NOTHING has changed in terms of the Church's position on LGBT individuals who in official writings continue to be "inherently disordered," "inclined toward evil," and even "demonic."   Now, a Catholic high school is reminding LGBT individuals that even their family members are not welcome.  The school statement of understanding is here.  The Advocate has details:

Prospective students may want to read the fine print when applying to Trinity Academy.

The private Catholic high school in Wichita, Kan., maintains it has the right to expel students with LGBT siblings in its “Statement of Understanding,” an agreement form signed by applicants and parents prior to admission.

The form was published online to the blog Patheos, where it was submitted by “someone with a connection” to the school.

The statement outlines a list of required “beliefs and practices,” which includes standard dogma: devotion to Christ and the teachings of the Bible, and abstinence from sex outside of marriage. Yet the final and lengthiest bullet point on the form regards acceptance of LGBT people, which the school considers “counter to the standing of a Biblical lifestyle.”

Here is the full clause:

Given the debate and confusion in our society about marriage and human sexuality it is vital that Trinity families agree with and support the school’s traditional, Christian understanding of those issues. Therefore, when the atmosphere or conduct within a particular home is counter to the school’s understanding of a biblical lifestyle, including the practice or promotion of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) lifestyle or alternative gender identity, the school should have the right, in its sole discretion, to deny the admission of an applicant or discontinue enrollment of a current student.

Under these restrictions, any young person who identifies as LGBT, is an ally, or has an LGBT family member could be rejected or expelled from Trinity Academy.

Beneath this bullet point, there are three signatures required: “mother’s,” father’s,” and “student’s,” which also excludes the possibility of nontraditional families.

Perhaps I am harsh, but I view gays who remain Catholic as having far too much internalized homophobia.   

GOP Policies Cause Louisiana to Falls into Budget Crisis

The blog has looked at the economic disaster that the implementation of "true conservative" policies under Gov. Brownback and Republicans brought to Kansas.  Less mentioned is what similar policies under Bobby Jindal brought to Louisiana.  What is particularly frightening is that the failed policies implemented in Kansas and Louisiana are almost virtually the same as those being espoused by every one of the Republican presidential candidates save Donald Trump who has yet to lay out in any detail what he would seek to do.  Stated another way, the GOP presidential candidates want to bring economic and budget disasters nationwide as they once again espouse voodoo economics and trickle down economics that have twice devastated the U.S. economy and budget deficit. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had to undo the budget wreckage wrought by Reagan and Chimperator George W. Bush.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the Louisiana disaster which ought to send off alarm bells for anyone contemplating voting Republican in November.  Here are highlights:

Already, the state of Louisiana had gutted university spending and depleted its rainy-day funds. It had cut 30,000 employees and furloughed others. It had slashed the number of child services staffers, including those devoted to foster family recruitment, and young abuse victims for the first time were spending nights at government offices.

And then, the state’s new governor, John Bel Edwards (D), came on TV and said the worst was yet to come..

Edwards, in a prime-time address on Feb. 11, said he’d learned of “devastating facts” about the extent of the state’s budget shortfall and said that Louisiana was plunging into a “historic fiscal crisis.” Despite all the cuts of the previous years, the nation’s second-poorest state still needed nearly $3 billion — almost $650 per person — just to maintain its regular services over the next 16 months. Edwards  gave the state’s lawmakers three weeks to figure out a solution,

Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities and certain programs for the needy. A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships. Select hospitals will close. Patients will lose funding for treatment of disabilities. Some reports of child abuse will go un-investigated.

But even if Louisiana’s Republican-dominated legislature approves certain tax increases, as most expect, the state still would grapple with problems. The taxes — which could include hikes on everything from groceries to salaries — would dig into the pockets of citizens in a state where 18 percent live in poverty and where the median income is 20 percent below the national average. 

Many of the state’s economic analysts say a structural budget deficit emerged and then grew under former governor Bobby Jindal, who, during his eight years in office, reduced the state’s revenue by offering tax breaks to the middle class and wealthy. He also created new subsidies aimed at luring and keeping businesses. Those policies, state data show, didn’t deliver the desired economic growth. This year, Louisiana has doled out $210 million more to corporations in the form of credits and subsidies than it has collected from them in taxes.

The math is daunting: For the fiscal year that ends June 30, Louisiana is facing a $940 million deficit, roughly one-eighth of what the state typically doles out from its general fund in a year. For 2016-2017, which begins July 1, the gap is $2 billion.

On Jindal’s watch, nearly every agency in Louisiana shed employees, and state lawmakers say some teetered because of the losses. The Department of Children and Family Services shrank to 3,400 employees, from 5,000 in 2008, and social workers began carrying caseloads larger than national standards. The state also cut funding for youth services and mental health treatment.

In recent days, lawmakers have zeroed in on a plan that would somewhat narrow the deficit for the rest of this fiscal year but barely make a dent in the $2 billion gap for next year. Lawmakers would raise sales and cigarette taxes while dipping further into a rainy-day fund. They would also use settlement funds from BP, the company responsible for a 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Still, massive cuts would still be required for hospitals and universities.

Since the 2007-08 school year, Louisiana has cut funding for higher education by 44 percent, the sharpest pullback in the nation; Southern has seen its funding cut 49 percent. During that time, the burden of supporting education has flipped: Whereas the state once provided 70 percent of the money its schools spent, now the students support the bulk of the costs — in the form of higher tuition.

A popular “TOPS” scholarship fund — available to anybody in the state with a 20 ACT score and a 2.5 GPA — is depleted. Some students will lose their scholarships, and for a future batch of high schoolers, the fund will be unavailable. Belton said that many students were taking out new loans to deal with the rising tuition or stressing about how they would remain enrolled.

“We’re trying to provide for a middle class in America,” he said. “And to compromise that mission compromises the promise for the state.”

Republicans, despite lip service to the contrary, do not give a damn about America's middle class or average workers.  Rather, corporate welfare and tax cuts for the wealthy are the only real agenda.  Take a good look at Kansas and Louisiana - this could be all of America if the GOP wins the White House and retains control of Congress.

Kansas Teacher Won’t Resign After Showing Anti-Gay Bullying Film

Conway Springs Middle School - things are rotten in Kansas

In a recent post I noted how a new study has documented that children raised in religious homes are less kind and less generous than those raised in secular homes, thus disproving the myth that religion is a positive force for better social behavior.  Events in Kansas show where these children get their nastiness from: their parents and churches. After seeing disturbing anti-gay behavior in his classes, Tom Leahy, a teacher at Conway Springs Middle School, showed the movie Love Is All You Need? in which same-sex relationships are conventional and a young girl is picked on for being heterosexual. The film culminates in the fictional heterosexual protagonist killing herself as a result of the bullying.   As one might expect, the "godly folk" went ape shit and demanded Leahy's resignation.   Leahy has decided that he will not cooperate and will force the school system to face the situation head on and hopefully in the process show the ugliness of the "godly Christian" crowd and the hate and bigotry that define them.  Here are highlights from The Raw Story:

Kansas schoolteacher says he has changed his mind about resigning after showing a graphic anti-bullying short film to his history class, which led to vociferous complaints from parents.
The Wichita Eagle reported that Tom Leahy, a teacher at Conway Springs Middle School, was expected to hand in his resignation after showing Love Is All You Need? to three eighth-grade history classes (which would normally contain children aged 13 to 14). The 19-minute satirical film depicts a society in which same-sex relationships are conventional and a young girl is picked on for being heterosexual. The film, directed by Kim Rocco Shields and produced in 2011, culminates in the fictional protagonist killing herself.

Leahy has been on leave since 21 October and was expected to resign at a Conway Springs school board meeting on 9 November. Yesterday, he cancelled a joint press conference with the school superintendent and said he did not plan to resign . He told the Eagle: “There’s a lot of people who don’t want me to give up on this. People I don’t even know … I’d like to have the chance to tell [the school board] my side of things.”

Leahy said he decided to show the film after some of his students demonstrated disturbing anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender behavior during a history class exercise in which different groups were asked to draw up a bill of rights for their fictional “colony”. He said: “I was expecting fairly positive kinds of colonies … But it just kind of got twisted around … Then the issue of gay v straight came up, and a lot of them were not allowing gays into their colony and stuff like that … There were some hard feelings. Kids were getting upset.”

According to Leahy, parents’ complaints were made to the school principal and superintendent, focusing on the graphic nature of the film’s ending and a scene emphasising the Catholic church’s inflexibility.

On being contacted by the Eagle, superintendent Clay Murphy said he couldn’t comment directly because it was a personnel matter.

The hypocrisy of these parents, of course, is that their little darlings see all kinds of graphic violence all the time on television and in movies.  The real issue is that this movie challenges the religious faith fantasy world these folks live in and shows that their self-proclaimed piety is a lie and that they are actually modern day Pharisees. If you want to find someone truly decent and moral, more often than not, you will not find them in the church pews, especially in right wing and "conservative" denominations.