Kansas: Experiment in the Already Failed

Kansas is geographically at the center of the U.S., though it is not at all the country's centerpiece; that distinction usually belongs to wherever I happen to be at any particular moment. Kansas is notable for having been the home place of the woman who birthed and raised the current President of the U.S., whom the Republicans are now as busy as can be trying to portray as being the biggest Satan ever to exist, though that paint keeps being washed off quicker by the cold rain of facts than they can keep spraying it. But most importantly Kansas, before it became a state, was the territory that had even more to do than always-foaming-at-the-mouth South Carolina with launching the U.S. into its terrible Civil War, due to having "settlers" who wanted to bring in slaves and fighting hard against others who wanted to have no part of that "peculiar" institution existing on their newly stolen lands.

Today Kansas is shaping up as having become the scene once again of a classic clash between the forces of good and evil -- this time between descendants of Quantril's Raiders who want to impose on Kansas the policy of tax-cutting in a major way, and those who know that that is all just another big load of horse puckey that will inevitably reduce Kansas to being one of the worst of the U.S. state basket cases. And for once the battle is not between Democrats and Republicans, for the simple reason that Kansas is so politically benighted that Democrats there are few and far between. Instead it's between right wing Republicans and moderate Republicans, the latter being an endangered species that yet still seems to exist in Kansas in enough numbers to keep the state from blowing away in the drought winds entirely.

An article and its accompanying comments that appeared yesterday on the Huffington Post tells the whole story, especially as it applies to the way the very same struggle is being waged across the much larger stage of the whole country. Meanwhile the Kansas right wing Repubs openly admit that in trying to push through their drastic, draconian taxcutting policies, they are subjecting their state to a big "experiment." I wonder what the good citizens of Kansas think about that.

Kansas is famous for producing corn and tornados, not sheep, or guinea pigs.