The Electron Pencil

Hurt Us, Please!

Who’s the worst state governor in America? Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, whose claims to fame are his gleeful union-busting and obeisant coat-holding for the Koch Boys? Billionaire Bruce Rauner, who virtually purchased the guv’s mansion, office, and…, hell, the whole of Illinois? Can either ever be a fraction as bad as half-term slacker/grifter Sarah Palin?

At least her damage was limited to a truncated 31-month sorta term. She did do one thing spectacularly well and beneficial to the people of her state: She quit.

So Walker and Rauner duke it out in contiguous states for the heavyweight title of rotten. Except a third contender might well wrest the belt from the two. He is Sam Brownback of Kansas.

Sam Brownback

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Here’s his mortal sin: He claims to have cut Kansas taxes. Actually, he did; only for the wealthy — those who make more than half a million a year. Acc’d’g to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Public Policy, under Brownback’s new tax schedule, unfortunates making less than $23,000 a year (read: the working poor) will pay $197 more a year in state taxes. A couple of c-notes is real dough to someone making $442 a week at best. It’s like Bruce Rauner (2013 income: $67,780,000) having to fork over an extra $5,227,000 to the state, disregarding the fact that even if he had to, Rauner still would have tens and tens and tens of millions of bucks to maintain his lifestyle of Croesus.

That poor sap making $442 bucks a week would have to forgo (choose one or more):

• Paying the electric bill
• Paying the gas bill
• Paying the cable/broadband bill
• Getting new tires for the car
• Going to the doctor for that troublesome mole
• Beef
• A new pair of shoes, a pair of trousers, a shirt, and six pairs of socks

The list can go on.

And the sick-as-hell aspect of this Kansas mess? A majority of people making $23,000 or less in that state actually voted for the dirty bastard who’s fleecing them today.

They got what they deserve.

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The What & The Whys

Prof. Rich Lloyd of Vanderbilt University asks a compelling triad of Q.’s about former Spokane NAACP head Rachel Dolezal:

• What prompted her estranged parents to publicly out her?
• Why now?
• And why is no one questioning this?

Count me in: I wanna know, too.

As for the corporate media, they’re loving this story because they can spin it off in a bazillion different directions, all predicated on this holy land’s singular historical malignant tumor: Blacks ain’t Whites and vice versa.

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As usual, the professional wits and wags are way off on this one. The Dolezal affair has nothing in the world to do with the state of race relations in America. It has only to do with her demonstrable craziness that, quite frankly, borders on the criminal.

As Sigmund Freud never said, Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

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