KANSAS GETS A SPOONFUL OF FISCAL SANITY

The GOP-controlled legislatures and Gov. Brownback have agreed to raise taxes but it's mostly on poor* to middle income folks.

Kansas legislators approve tax increases to balance budget
By JOHN HANNA and NICHOLAS CLAYTON
1 hour ago

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican legislators in Kansas narrowly approved tax increases Friday, responding to pleas from their leaders and a warning from GOP Gov. Sam Brownback's aides about draconian spending cuts that could result if they didn't erase a budget deficit.

The plan, drafted by Republicans, raises sales and cigarette taxes to generate $384 million in new revenues during the next fiscal year.

One bill raises the state sales tax to 6.5 percent, from 6.15 percent. The House approved it 63-44 early Friday, and the Senate passed it 21-19 Friday afternoon. A second bill raises the cigarette tax by 50 cents a pack, to $1.29. It also includes a modest increase in taxes for business owners and farmers.

One contentious issue was how much to increase taxes for the 281,000 business owners and 53,000 farmers who no longer pay income taxes on their profits under a 2012 policy championed by Brownback....Lawmakers agreed to raise their taxes by $24 million during the next fiscal year, the top amount acceptable to Brownback.

*The CDC reported in 2013 that people below the poverty level are more likely to smoke:

UPDATE: The Topeka Capitol-Journal and the Kansas City Star have additional coverage and plenty of interesting comments.

CONSERVATIVE FOLLIES

- A U.S. Senator uses ghetto talk to smack down one of his colleagues:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is a “bro with no ho,” according to his colleague, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.).

- The Free Market Fairy strikes again: The RNC has lost control of voting programs to the Koch brothers.

- A prominent right-wing blogger thinks the police were justified in shooting 12-year old Tamir Rice.

- Niall Ferguson, a very well-paid conservative gasbag, is whining about people calling out his bullshit.

- Child molestation is becoming a defining characteristic of high-profile conservatives.

JAIME DIMON HAS GOT A LOT OF NERVE

He came out with this stunner:

JPM CEO Jamie Dimon on Senator Elizabeth Warren: “I don’t know if she fully understands the global banking system."

Dimon was the nominal Big Boss of the London Whale when the latter cost JP Morgan $6.2 billion.

A FOOTNOTE TO "WHITE PRIVILEGE"

There is no doubt that white privilege exists but it needs to be refined a bit to take into account class structure in America: a poor white has much less white privilege than a rich white.  Of course,  a poor black faces both kinds of discrimination

WILL THIS STATEMENT GET A REPRIMAND?

Arizona is dominate by conservative Republicans at the state level so I expect this government employee to get attacked for accepting the fact of global warming.

Ducey: Don't punish Arizona for its water conservation
Brandon Loomis, The Republic | azcentral.com
10:13 p.m. MST June 9, 2015

Phoenix water services director Kathryn Sorensen said the state's water providers are starting to talk about a California threat. One potential area of concern is a California drought-relief bill now being envisioned in Congress.

"California has not shared what they're doing," she said.

Arizona is well positioned for drought because of its past planning," Sorensen said. "In an era of climate change, ironically one of the advantages that a desert city has is it knows it's limitations and plans for them."

That doesn't mean more work isn't needed to assure and conserve supplies, she said, and soon.

"Over the next couple of years things are going to get weird," Sorensen said.

HANNITY & BECK ARE ANTI-AMERICAN BECAUSE THEY SPREAD SOCIAL DECAY

Each one has the unmitigated gall to compare himself to Martin Luther King (Hannity, Beck) and that should be enough to convince any normal person that they are unfit to be taken at all seriously.

IRAQ THEN AND NOW

Remember when Pollyanna Petraeus wrote an op-ed before the 2004 Presidential election assuring us that Iraq's security forces were "developing steadily"?  Eleven years later, some people have the courage to write the truth: The Iraqi Army No Longer Exists.

A GREAT REPLY TO LIMBAUGH'S HATE

These are the last four sentences of a moving op-ed by Leonard Pitts:

Because these days, what isn't normal is the small-minded need to stigmatize those who walk a different path through life. What isn't normal is the bigot's siren call to our basest and most baseless fears. What isn't normal is hatred and terror of the new.
Poor Rush. It turns out that what isn't "normal," is him.

BILLY CUNNINGHAM IS STILL A FOOL

I haven't listened to Billy for months before tonight and he's still a clown. Tonight he tried to defend Denny Hastert by attacking Bill Clinton and that simply won't work for most registered voters because we've been over Bill's sex life so many times that it turns off people.