Today In Secession News

The original, 55 yrs. old this winter.Reminder to pathetic remainder of the United Snakes: You need us, losers, we don't need you. Better be nice!

California Overtakes France to Become Sixth-Largest Economy

California has overtaken France as the world’s sixth-largest economy, fueled by strong growth and the U.S. dollar’s gains against foreign currencies, state data released Tuesday show.

The most-populous U.S. state, with a gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion, has also eclipsed recession-plagued Brazil.

“This is the result of both good growth in California and exchange-rate movements of the U.S. dollar versus other currencies,” said Irena Asmundson, chief economist in the California Department of Finance.

Governor Jerry Brown, 78, is running the state during an economic turnaround driven by technology companies including Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc., along with agricultural and manufacturing industries that lead the U.S. Since taking office in 2011, Brown steered the state away from fiscal turmoil and persistent deficits to budget surpluses.

In comparison, the fly-blown fly-over state of Kansas:

There's a green one and a pink one/And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky/And they all look just the same.

In recent years, Kansas has become a battleground for conservative ideals. Traditionally, Kansas was a moderate state, with the governorship switching every other election between Democratic and Republican governors. But the election of hyper-conservative Sam Brownback as governor heralded a new age of far right wing ideology.

It wasn’t just that Brownback was conservative; it was that he is seen as a tool of the Koch brothers and ALEC, a conservative think tank and lobbying organization. Brownback used his influence and funding to eliminate “moderate” republicans from the Kansas legislature and install his hand-picked conservative cronies.  He couldn’t do the same with the Kansas Supreme Court, which has ruled a number of the conservative legislature’s laws as unconstitutional, so Brownback’s administration decided to threaten to cut off funding to the court system and is actively pursuing legislation to impeach the Supreme Court.

Kansas has become a test center of “trickle down” economics, espoused by economist Arthur Laffer during the Reagan years. Nowhere has there been as thorough an implementation of Laffer’s policy recommendations… and nowhere has there been as dramatic a failure of government.

Under Brownback’s direction, Kansas implemented an unprecedented tax cut in 2012, eliminating taxes for LLCs and professional firms (for full disclosure, PHI is a C Corporation) and making the largest cuts in the highest tax brackets. He shifted taxes to create a heavier burden on property and sales taxes, which typically represent a larger burden on lower income brackets. Brownback declared that this tax cut would be a “shot of adrenaline” for the Kansas economy, but the reality is that the tax cuts have had the opposite effect. Kansas lags neighboring states in job growth. For 11 of the last 12 months, Kansas has dramatically missed revenue targets, falling deeper in debt and facing another round of degraded bond ratings.

The worst part is that the burdens for the shortfalls rest on the shoulders of those who can least afford it – children and the developmentally disabled.

From the keyboard of a C.E.O. who's moving his corporate entity from Kansas to Missouri because Kansas is becoming hell on earth. L.A., in contrast, is hell on the oceanSanta Monica Bay.