Good bye and good riddance Governor Sam Brownback

By SJ Otto

We are finally rid of Governor Sam Brownback. We do have a Republican governor, Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer and he may be as bad as Sam Brownback—but there is a chance that he is an improvement, and it wouldn’t take a lot to be an improvement over the governor.

Brownback barely won re-election and in the six years he has reigned over Kansas, he has cause massive damage to our educational system, brought a massive deficit and flooded the state with unnecessary far to the right, conservative policies.

Brownback admitted he was running an experiment in Kansas and that experiment has failed and failed miserably. He slashed taxes for wealthy businesses, and as most conservatives he tried to balance the budget on the backs of working people. Kansas's budget has for years resembled a wallet with a hole in it—every time the state's bookkeepers peek inside, they find less money than the government thought would be there. He took a lot of money out of our education system as if it had no value.

Brownback treated poor Kansans as if they were some kind of enemy. He has slashed the welfare system until it barely exists at all. He has come up with some of the most draconian and humiliating rules for public assistance that have ever been conceived.

He has refused to take part in any part of the Obamacare and he actually sent back federal funding for that program, which cost the Kansas taxpayer’s money and services that were already paid for. He refused to increase Medicaid spending for poor people and that has caused a lot of poor people to die from lack of health care needlessly.

It will take years to fix all the damage this man has done to our state. His leaving is a welcome breath of fresh air. He is going off as an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom around the world for President Donald Trump. Brownback’s selection was criticized by Equality Kansas, the state’s leading LGBT rights group that has repeatedly clashed with Brownback on the issue of religious freedom.

“Governor Brownback is unsuited to represent American values of freedom, liberty and justice, whether at home or abroad,” said Tom Witt, the group’s executive director. “His use of religion is little different than that of a bully wielding a club. His goal is not to use religion as a way to expand freedom, but to use a narrow, bigoted interpretation of religion to deny freedom to his fellow citizens.”

Brownback leaves as one of the most unpopular governors in the history of Kansas. And he deserves that.  

Good Bye and Good Riddance!

Pix by Adventures of a Curly Girl.