February 19, 2018

Republicans Are Trying Out a Shiny New Excuse For the Great Kansas Failure

Last week a reader emailed me about a new meme he had just come across:

Heard a random Republican talking head on NPR recently, and when the interviewer questioned him on the “Kansas experiment,” his automatic response was a) Kansas “massively” increased spending when they cut taxes, so that’s why they have problems; and b) North Carolina has done the same thing without the increased spending and it’s working great.

Of course this smells like bullshit to me, but I don’t actually know. Are either of these assertions correct?

I’m too lazy to waste time on North Carolina right now, but spending in Kansas is easy enough to check. Here it is:

Since 2011, when Sam Brownback took office promising a “red state experiment,” general fund spending has been flat while spending from all sources has declined by 1.7 percent. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t count as “massively” increasing spending.

Bottom line: Brownback slashed taxes, kept spending flat, wrecked Kansas schools, and turned in lousy economic performance compared to his neighboring states:

By just about any measure, the red-state experiment failed, and Republicans can hardly run away from Kansas fast enough. I guess their latest wheeze is to pretend that Brownback was a faker all along and it was really North Carolina we should have kept an eye on. Uh huh.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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