Brownback under fire at rally / LJWorld.com

Archive for Saturday, September 17, 2011

Brownback under fire at rally

Group gathers at Capitol to protest cuts to arts, schools, social services

September 17, 2011

Topeka — About 250 people on Friday rallied at the Capitol, upset with Gov. Sam Brownback’s agenda and vowing to do something about it.

“Our Kansas way of life is in jeopardy,” said Crystal McComas, of Lawrence. McComas, a social worker, and Tamara Werth, a psychologist from Lawrence, organized the event to protest recent Brownback decisions.

They formed a group called Kansans United in Voice & Spirit and said they hoped the rally would initiate local chapters across the state.

Speakers at the rally criticized Brownback, a Republican who took office in January, for cutting funding to public schools, social services and the arts.

Mark Desetti, a lobbyist for the Kansas National Education Association, said Brownback’s cut of $232 in base state aid per student amounted to a nearly $110,000 cut to Quail Run School in Lawrence.

He asked how cuts like those across the state would affect schools’ abilities to replace textbooks and to hire teachers and paraprofessionals. He said the state has shed nearly 1,300 teacher positions and 935 support-personnel positions between the 2008-09 and 2010-11 school years.

And he warned that Brownback’s plan to cut income taxes would further erode the state’s ability to pay for needed services.

“The state will have no choice but to enact massive cuts,” he said.

Brownback has defended his budget cuts as necessary in tough economic times. And he says reducing the state income tax would attract more businesses to Kansas and grow the economy.

Diana Gibson said budget cuts and policy changes under Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services Secretary Robert Siedlecki Jr. have hurt her 85-year-old uncle, who is a World War II combat veteran.

Gibson said her uncle lives with her brother and sister-in-law in south-central Kansas and receives home-based care with her sister-in-law being designated as the caretaker.

But the state has cut the hours of care that it will pay for from 34 hours per week to seven hours per week and doesn’t want the sister-in-law to be the provider, she said. The state has said it will pay for Gibson’s uncle to go into a nursing home, which will cost three times as much than if he stayed at home, she said. And her uncle wants to stay home.

“In less than nine months, they (the Brownback administration) have pretty much destroyed the program,” she said.

John Divine, of Salina, and former chairman of the Kansas Arts Commission, said Brownback’s veto of funding for the arts has sent a negative message throughout the country.

The message is, he said, “If you want to be creative, go to Colorado, go to Nebraska, go to Missouri. Don’t come to Kansas.”

Brownback has said arts funding is not a core function of state government, and the funding loss can be made up through private donations.

Douglas County Commissioner Nancy Thellman, who attended the rally, said of Brownback, “He is not representing Kansas values.”

Thellman agreed that the state economy was in tough shape, but said Brownback’s moves were part of his “commitment to corporate America.”

In response to the rally, Brownback’s spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said, “In the past eight months, Kansas has added more than 13,000 private-sector jobs and turned a budget deficit into a $100 million surplus, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Total unemployment, however, has increased. The Kansas jobless rate increased in August for the first time in more than two years, going from 6.8 percent in July to 6.9 percent.

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frankfussman 1 year, 8 months ago

Impeach Brownback.

akuna 1 year, 8 months ago

tomatogrower 1 year, 8 months ago

bartstop 1 year, 8 months ago

wounded_soldier 1 year, 8 months ago

+3

SnakeFist 1 year, 8 months ago

+5. But ultimate responsibility is always with the short-sighted, uninformed people who vote crazies like Brownback into office.

geekin_topekan 1 year, 8 months ago

Vote for BB is saying "yes" to Jayzus,,,and "No" to brown people.

coryweber 1 year, 8 months ago

You're an idiot.

WHY 1 year, 8 months ago

Why is he an idiot. BB is a jesus freak who doesn't care about poor people. Like Jesus said "blessed are the rich for they deserve to keep what they take, and screw all you little people."

lainey 1 year, 8 months ago

Where did Jesus say that?

chootspa 1 year, 8 months ago

In the Book of Brownback, where Jesus also said, "Blessed is the fetus until the moment of birth, at which point we no longer care about its wellbeing."

scott3460 1 year, 8 months ago

What has BB done that you support?

hujiko 1 year, 8 months ago

"Shrinking our bloated government."

So Brownback's campaign to end abortion with several bouts of legislation counts as "shrinking our bloated government"?

Please.

vertigo 1 year, 8 months ago

"Shrinking our bloated government."

And he's done this by creating a new Office of the Repealer and creating a new position of Director of Faith Based Initiatives.

Shrinking government by creating more government... yup.

scott3460 1 year, 8 months ago

Vote your own economic interests, not the social issues that right wingers use to divide the middle and working classes. They NEVER deliver on those issues and yet ALWAYS find a way to steal you blind.

think_about_it 1 year, 8 months ago

250 moonbat lefties from one snobby little town show up to try and impose their socialist programs on the rest of us real Americans. This is news.

coryweber 1 year, 8 months ago

Well said.

beatrice 1 year, 8 months ago

Really? You couldn't have said it better than a sorry attempt at insulting fellow Americans for practicing their freedom of speech by calling them childish and silly names? That is just sad.

We should have a kids section on here, so the adults could converse like ... well ... adults.

Liberty275 1 year, 8 months ago

What do you call phred phelps, B?

beatrice 1 year, 8 months ago

Apples and oranges, unless you are suggesting that those who attended this rally are comparable to felps. However, I would call felps a misguided individual who is driven by his hatred of others not like himself (or possibly exactly like himself). There are many ways to describe him without resorting to calling him non-descriptive terms like "moonbat."

voevoda 1 year, 8 months ago

Government funding for the arts and for needy citizens isn't "socialism," think_about_it, coryweber, ksfbcoach. Governments have been doing that for centuries, long before socialism appeared as a philosophical system. Most people think that it's important to provide charity and promote beauty, and they want their government to share this value.

travelinggeek 1 year, 8 months ago

If unemployment has increased since he took office, what he is doing isn't helping, it's hurting! If he keeps cutting schools, kids are not going to get the education they need. They are our country's future and if they aren't educated, what's going to happen when we are old? Who will be running the country? Uneducated folks? My husband said today he doesn't think we will come back from this. The divide is just going to continue to grow between the have's and the have not's. We are going to lose our middle class, we are quickly on our way to becoming another 3rd world country. If you think this is going to be good for the country, you are sadly mistaken. The thought of that scares the crap out of me. My children are old enough that they will hopefully be ok, but my grandkids? I am worried about what is in their future. It's not looking good. And if you think that taking away these "socialist" programs as you consider them is going to save you money, think again. When all of these uneducated, poor folks need healthcare, they will still get it. You and I will still pay for it, in the form of our insurance premiums. When our premiums get so high we can't pay them, then what are you going to do? Health care is quickly becoming so expensive it is going to cost more than your mortgage soon, if it doesn't already. I have a friend whose health insurance does cost more than their mortgage. Can you afford that??? As for the arts, a lot of that goes to children, and even though you don't think it is necessary, it is teaching them about things that they can do that will keep them out of trouble as they get older. Learning to dance, paint, build things with clay, wood or other materials, it is all things that make people well rounded and attributes to mental health also. It's so much more than just "art".

Erin Graham 1 year, 8 months ago

Ohhh, my dear troll... There were in fact people that drove from other corners of the state to be there, farming communities and such, that weren't there to stuff socialist programs down anyone's throat. Rather, that were fed up about BB's two-faced wishy-washy policy making and nutso 'values' he tries to impose.

PS, I hope if you hate Lawrence so much, you don't live here. Plenty of the rest of Kansas would LOVE to have you (ha...ha)

think_about_it 1 year, 8 months ago

250 moonbat lefties from one snobby little town show up to try and impose their socialist programs on the rest of us real Americans. This is news.

cheeseburger 1 year, 8 months ago

Jimo 1 year, 8 months ago

Sorry, but most of us don't speak Wingnut-ese. Would you restate this in English, please?

I got the part about Average Joes and battling against government for the interests of the wealthy but I didn't catch the rest of your brain fart. Something about Ayn Rand devotees posing as Christian-ists cheering on the deaths of human beings? Please be more clear.

Fossick 1 year, 8 months ago

"Sorry, but most of us don't speak Wingnut-ese. Would you restate this in English, please?"

250 people who live off the government lobby the government to give them even more. This is news.

snap_pop_no_crackle 1 year, 8 months ago

In other shocking news, disappointed progressives are disappointed.

cait48 1 year, 8 months ago

Ummm they didn't just come from "one little town". They came from "little towns" all over Kansas. Towns like Pratt, Hays, Fort Scott and bigger towns like Wichita and even Topeka itself. I actually think a crowd of 250 was pretty impressive for only a couple of weeks of organization. I have family in Pratt and word on the street there is that their PTBs are none to pleased with the Govelytizer since they had to cough up 60K of their tax dollars to keep their SRS open.

Yeoman2 1 year, 8 months ago

Spoken like a truly disconnected, ignorant, uniformed, hateful jerk who thinks that social problems are like a fabrication of imaginary "socialists" who are just out to get on the public dole. You obviously have no family members who are born with disabilities or who are living in abject poverty because of circumstances beyond their control. A pox on you and all your kind.