Our idiot Governor Brownback loses in court on school funding

Trashing this generation’s public education has been a major goal of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. So it is not surprising he said it was "disappointing" when he found out a three-judge panel ruled last Friday against his cuts to per-pupil spending, to avoid what he has label “the recession.”

Brownback has proven since he took over the governorship of Kansas that folks, such as he, just don’t care if the next generation can do anything that requires education. When the next generation is looking for jobs that require math, computer or writing skills, Brownback and his cronies know they won’t be alive to see these poor suckers trying to grapple with a society they can’t maneuver in or understand how it works.

Brownback is a looks-at-the-short-run kind of guy. He never cuts the budget for road work.

From Voice For Liberty in Wichita;

“An example in Kansas is the special interest group that benefits from highway construction. They formed a group called Economic Lifelines. It says it was formed to “provide the grassroots support for Comprehensive Transportation Programs in Kansas.” Its motto is “Stimulating economic vitality through leadership in infrastructure development.”

A look at the membership role, however, lets us know whose economic roots are being stimulated. Membership is stocked with names like AFL-CIO, Foley Equipment Company, Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City, Kansas Aggregate & Concrete Associations, Kansas Asphalt Pavement Association, Kansas Contractors Association, Kansas Society of Professional Engineers, and PCA South Central Cement Promotion Association. Groups and companies like these have an economic interest in building more roads and highways, whether or not the state actually needs them. And although there is a 10-year, $8 billion spending program in place, this group is fighting a proposal to divert $24 million to other programs….”

For the rest click here.

He likes a good drive and knows a lot of Kansans do. He knows they don’t care thing one about the next generation and the problems this generation is leaving them.

Brownback probably keeps his calculator close at hand, because math and logic just aren’t his strong suites. Who knows how long it took him to learn to tie his own shoe laces or walk and chew bubble gum at the same time?

"The legislative process is the appropriate venue for debating and resolving issues of taxation and spending," Brownback said in a statement, according to The Wichita Eagle. Brownback knows many of his supporters are really cheap. They don’t want their taxes wasted on an entire generation of people that they won’t have to deal with once they are all dead and today’s pupils will be attempting to take their place.

Brownback has plenty of supporters such as the Incoming Senate President Susan Wagle, a conservative Wichita Republican who said the judges had "defied the will of Kansas voters."

She, as well as Brownback, realizes that here in Kansas a lot of people just don’t believe things really need to change from century to century. The election of Brownback and Wagle are proof of this. For example, many of their supporters believe there is no global warming or climate change. The drought and unusually hot weather over the last few years don’t really prove anything to the narrow and simple minded far-right Republicans that support them.

For many of these Kansas Republicans, their religion proves that evolution doesn’t exist at all. So who needs all that science? Why fill these poor kid’s heads with a bunch of unnecessary and untrue facts that many folks living here don’t believe in?

Brownback must feel that people did fine in the 1980s without education. Some people couldn’t write their own name. All we have to do is read Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to see how well folks did without education. Now seriously, how different can this century be from the 19th?

Another thing being cut is foreign languages. Even though experts are telling us that much of Wichita’s future business is going to be with foreign countries, every right-wing Republican knows that “them thar fereners should speak English like God intended.”

A person can get through high school with only one semester of foreign studies and yet we have a Junior ROTC program in the middle-schools called “leadership class.”

From Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner;

“After spending an afternoon in one of these “leadership classrooms,” at Wichita’s Hamilton Middle School, it becomes obvious that they are misnamed. They should be called military indoctrination class.
The room is filled with all kinds of military flags, the US Navy, Marines and all other branches of the military. They have patches that military personnel can earn all around the walls. They have a hallway with pictures of sleek military weapons that the US now has, including the unmanned drones that President Barack Obama is using to assassinate alleged leaders of groups the US has chosen to condemn, along with innocent people who are nearby, including children, where students learn how the military works and if they are ever in the military there will be no reason to understand the language or the culture of the people they have been sent to shoot. They will spend as little time with the locals as possible and just kill people. That is what our public schools are training our middle-school students to do.”

As in high school there is very few classes for the students on foreign culture, in comparison to enfaces on the military killing of people.

Arthur Chalmers, a Wichita attorney hired to defend these Republican's position, told the panel, in June 2012, that lawmakers did their best to mitigate the effects on schools of the recession, begun in 2008. He argued that legislators had to weigh how much money was available for funding all state programs, placing school funding at the top of the list.  

According to The Wichita Eagle, statistics from the article include;

“The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by attorneys John Robb and Alan Rupe, representing students and school districts, including Dodge City, Hutchinson, Kansas City and Wichita. They argued that despite the 2006 Supreme Court order, achievement gaps remained, dropout levels are high and students in general are completing school "with less opportunity and less education than the generation before."

Districts don't receive just the base state aid per student but a greater amount based on the formula, which calculates additional funding based on student demographics such as poverty and English language skills. As a result, districts receive an average of $6,000 to $10,000 per student.

The Shawnee County District Court judges said the spending cuts in recent legislative sessions caused an "unconstitutional eroding" of education funding. They ordered the state to reverse those declines effective with the 2014 budget, which begins July 1, which would raise the base aid per student to $4,492 as required by law. The current level is $3,783 and was set by legislators in May 2012 based on available state revenues.

Kansas allocated about $3 billion to spend on schools this fiscal year. To reach the court's threshold, the state would have to allocate an additional $440 million toward schools next fiscal year.”

The court didn’t care about the state government is facing a projected budget deficit of $267 million. 

Once again we see that any idiot can be elected to our state government or actual governor of Kansas if they can get the right PACs and financial supporters, as well as counting on the ultra-conservative dim-wit Kansans who are just too dumb to vote for what is in their own best interest or think only of themselves. And Brownback is one of the worst idiots this state has ever had as a governor. This legislative session he will have plenty of egotistical jerks to back him up. -សតិវ អតុ

Ya’all come back now…he’ye!