Wingnut new Kentucky Governor will bring state down like Kansas

[Nasty Jack]

With an approval rating of 18%, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has joined the pitiful state he has brought Kansas to. As an example Kansas has a 2015 deficit of $600 million. It was accomplished by drastically cutting taxes, making education one of the biggest losers. Just another example of a dimwit conservative who thinks the answer to everything is making the rich richer with tax cuts.

Well, monkey see, monkey do. In Kentucky where Tea Party candidate, Matt Bevin, was elected Governor in November, and promptly lowered the Minimum Wage By $3, while revoking Voting Rights For 140,000 Kentuckians. It is yet another case of a wacky TPer going off the deep end pursuing ideology just to satisfy a bunch of double-digit IQs. What has happened to this country that someone who obviously hasn't the slightest idea of what the hell he is doing can be elected to head up a state?

Tea Party support has dropped to its lowest level ever, with only 17% backing the organization. Sorta in the category of John Brownback, also a Tea Party loser. The LA Times did a 2014 article about Brownback that says it all: "How Tea Party tax cuts are turning Kansas into a smoking ruin." It's only a matter of time until Kentucky duplicates the Kansas "success."

Nasty Jack Blog

[elleng]

1. WHY the HELL do these formerly 'rational' midwesterners keep DOING THIS???

[CincyDem]

2. There is nothing rational about the majority of rural Kentucky.

These are communities that are struggling and all they want to know is who to blame. Driving through KY once, we got detoured off the expressway into backwoods rural areas. Wow is all I can say. A confederate flag in any window. Remember...this is the state that gave us Rand Paul. Bershear was the anomaly - Bevin is who these folks are.

Apologies to any of our urban KY members. I'm sure there's sanity in the city but out on the farm - you have to be kidding.

[elleng]

4. I'll give you that for rural Kentucky.

I was thinking of Wisconsin, Kansas, Michigan, etc etc etc.

[HereSince1628]

13. It's mostly the same story everywhere...people want to feel -relatively- secure

pursuit of that mostly enables making other people much less secure.

[A Little Weird]

7. Well

If you got detoured off the expressway one time then you are clearly an expert on the state.

[CincyDem]

8. And last night I slept in a Holiday Inn Express so that seals it.

I'll use that as my resume on KY (versus living 10 miles north of the state for 38 years, working in Northern KY for a dozen or so years, and having more that a few interactions with people from many areas). But that's ok - you go ahead and assume that my ONLY interaction was a detour and from ONLY that, I would have chosen to make the comments I did. Yeah - that makes sense.

Thanks for the training block in always assuming the worst in others. I haven't had one in a while and this is a great example.

Have a great day.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

9. Based on what you wrote

it was a valid assumption.

[A Little Weird]

10. "There is nothing rational about the majority of rural Kentucky."

Did you seriously just accuse me of assuming the worst in others??

[Hortensis]

16. No. Politics is no longer local. Conservatives are voting

for conservative candidates in local as well as state and national races, regardless of which party they are technically registered under, and similarly liberals vote liberal.

That many conservative Kentuckians are registered Democrats is irrelevant. They vote against liberal candidates. No matter how immoral and dysfunctional the conservative option may be, it is believed to be the better choice.

[A Little Weird]

20. I'm not sure how that relates to my post but I don't entirely disagree with you

The bigger problem is that a growing majority of the population can't even be bothered to show up. The election that gave us Bevin saw 1/3 or fewer Kentuckians show up to cast their vote. This is a serious issue. Do they have logistical reasons they can't get to the polls? Do they not care? (and if not why?) Do they not feel represented by either party? Were they just not inspired by the candidates? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I think it is a little more complex than just assuming that a million+ people are just insane or irrational.

[Hortensis]

21. Hi, A Little. I was responding to the entire conversation

and offering a very broadly general reason for why they are doing these things. People across the nation are voting party across the board.

Oh, boy, do I also wonder every election that people won't vote, but I agree -- they have their reasons, even if most won't stand up well to scrutiny. Somehow I also doubt more people in impoverished conservative areas lack the "voter" genes that have been identified so far.

Kentucky is one of the whitest states with least benefit from diversity, and sociologists are apparently recognizing in the Obama era, and now the Trump candidacy, that bias against outliers is a more widespread and intractable factor than realized.

The very interesting NY Times article linked below has maps that reveal striking, but unsurprising, similarities between where Trump supporters live and where racist terms (apparently mainly those favored by whites) are googled most.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/upshot/donald-trumps-strongest-supporters-a-certain-kind-of-democrat.html

[A Little Weird]

23. I agree - we are becoming very polarized.

I think a lot of that can be traced back to Fox News. I've seen it with my own eyes. People that I care about who were once capable of at least understanding the perspective of someone else and discussing issues rationally have been reduced to spouting talking points and seeing everything in absolutes. It's truly frightening to see how easily people can be manipulated.

Racism and general insularism are problems as are poverty and lack of opportunity. How so many voters in this area (or any area for that matter) can identify with Trump is something I can't quite wrap my head around. But I do see change in racist attitudes happening, even if it isn't as fast as I would like it to be. Figuring out how to hasten that change is something I'm very interested in.

[Hortensis]

33. Oh, boy do I agree. We live in a now-semi-rural

area of Georgia, and Fox and right-wing radio are huge here. Not long ago a conservative friend told me that he was just in despair over what was happening to our country, that he felt it was too late to save. That's typical noise from the right, of course, except that in his case the depression and despair were dreadfully real. He was SO unhappy that I can't get the sound of his voice out of my mind.

He's a good one because he knows I'm very liberal but talks to me anyway. I can't change his mind, of course, so all I said was that although the problems he worried about existed I felt they were much, much smaller than he believed. I wanted to add an exclamation point to that second "much," but didn't.

Right after that came news of the study reporting record suicides and increasing death rates in his general, white, middle-aged demographic. I strongly suspect I can name one of the factors involved in that. Right-wing despair-news is extremely pervasive, not just encouraging people to think everything is going wrong but carefully destroying perspective and propagating confusion and lack of understanding to build fear and insecurity.

[tazkcmo]

26. Kansas? Rational?

I've never heard those two words in the same sentence while growing up there nor in my adulthood in Kansas City.

[Initech]

3. Who is funding these assholes and how do they get elected?

[elleng]

5. Rover, Koch, etc,

& do NOT educate!

[Hortensis]

17. Wealthy Chinese businessmen are huge McConnell

donors. He's been their main man in Congress, acting as their agent in a mutually very beneficial alliance, ever since the Tienanmen Square uprising threatened them with severe economic losses if the U.S. imposed sanctions on China.

How does this extremely uncharming man who's betrayed his constituents for 30 years get reelected? He uses whatever amount of special interest funding is needed to swamp his opponents with lies and smears until voters finally come to doubt enough to turn away. leaving him seeming to be the better choice by default.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

18. They seem to get elected in off years when not enough of us bother to show up at the polls.

At least in states with the potential to go blue. That's what happened here in Illinois with Ruiner. Walker in Wisconsin slid through this way too, I believe. And Brownback in KS. One side has figured out the deal and it ain't us.

[tazkcmo]

27. No.

Brownback was re-elected. He'll be re-elected again if he runs or his appointed successor will win. Same with Walker. Re-elected and won a recall election. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

30. But did those elections coincide with presidential elections?

[onecaliberal]

6. I do not understand how these people continue to win elections.

They've got to be cheating, or the majority in those states are ever more stupid than I think they are, and that is saying something.

[flygal]

14. Religion. The churches were pretty active getting members to vote bc of the Kim Davis thing

[onecaliberal]

15. Then I guess they will get what they voted for.

[tazkcmo]

28. Exactly.

And like in Kansas, they'll re-elect him just so they can vote against a Libtard.

[KamaAina]

11. Someone who has no idea of what the hell s/he is doing can be elected to head up a state?

You don't say.

[Archae]

12. Don't forget this is the state with the creationist "museum"

According to a couple sources, that fundy "museum" is headed for bankruptcy.

[Gloria]

19. He better not mess with the Secretariat Festival...

but I'm sure he can find a way....

[B Calm]

22. Lowered the minimum wage by $3, and working class idiots voted for him. Sounds like

someone shooting their foot just to entertain their boss.

[A Little Weird]

24. The minimum wage in Kentucky is the same as the Federal minimum

Governor Beshear had passed a law that would increase the minimum to $10.10 for government workers and contractors and that is what Bevin overturned (also breaking a campaign promise in the process). Government workers primarily did not vote for him so I kind of think it was payback on his part.

I still think the people who voted for him were idiots who are shooting themselves in the foot. But most of them are probably cheering him on for this move since so many right-wingers seem to hate government workers. (I'm a government worker so I see it a lot).

[Vinca]

25. This is what not voting looks like.

If we have a similar turnout in the general we'll be discussing President Trump. (Well, you'll be discussing Trump. I'll be discussing my husband's dual Canadian/American citizenship and browsing real estate ads in the Maritimes.)

[tazkcmo]

29. And this is what LO2E voting gets.

Lesser Of 2 Evils results in people throwing up their hands and saying, "What's the use? They both suck!".

[dembotoz]

31. their gotv just works better than ours

fear, stupidity, religion whatever

they show up

[pampango]

32. As Paul Krugman says: Elections Have Consequences

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opinion/elections-have-consequences.html?_r=0

That is true nationally and in Kentucky.