By now, the whole country knows what a godawful mess Governor Sam Brownback has made out of the state of Kansas in his doomed experiment to prove that modern conservative economics make sense. (Pro tip: They don’t.) Brownback, of course, would rather that not have gotten out to the world at large, and he and his government have done their level best to make sure it didn’t, as The Kansas City Star tells us.

A Kansas spokesperson was acknowledging that the state highway department didn’t have the money to rebuild a dangerous stretch of Interstate 70 that had been the scene of multiple wrecks and a grisly motorcycle fatality caught on video. “KDOT has lost a lot of money over the last few years,” the spokesperson said. “There’s just no funding at this point.” Simple, yes. But in Gov. Sam Brownback’s cash-strapped administration, those were fighting words. Days later, the spokesperson was fired. “Your article was the nail in my coffin for being the face of KDOT,” the spokesperson said in an email to The Kansas City Star.

One might conclude from this that Brownback would rather have people die on his state’s highways than admit, in the words of Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall, that his entire fallacy is wrong. One might do that, indeed.

The Star’s investigation was six-months long, and it touches upon every aspect of the state government. You can decide for yourselves what findings are the most grotesque.

▪ Children known to the state’s Department for Children and Families suffer horrific abuse, while the agency cloaks its involvement with their cases, even shredding notes after meetings where children’s deaths are discussed, according to a former high-ranking DCF official. One grieving father told The Star he was pressured to sign a “gag order” days after his son was killed that would prevent him from discussing DCF’s role in the case. Even lawmakers trying to fix the troubled system say they cannot trust information coming from agency officials

▪ In the past decade, more than 90 percent of the laws passed by the Kansas Legislature have come from anonymous authors. Kansans often had no way of knowing who was pushing which legislation and why, and the topics have included abortion, concealed weapons and school funding. Kansas is one of only a few states that allow the practice.

▪ When Kansas police shoot and kill someone, law enforcement agencies often escape scrutiny because they are allowed to provide scant details to the public. The release of body-cam video has become common practice around the country after several high-profile, police-involved shootings. But in Kansas, a new state law is one of the most restrictive in the nation, allowing agencies to shelve footage that could shed more light on controversial cases.

▪ Kansas became the first state to fully privatize Medicaid services in 2013, and now some caregivers for people with disabilities say they have been asked to sign off on blank treatment plans — without knowing what’s being provided. In some of those cases, caregivers later discovered their services had been dramatically cut.

Me? I’ll go for forcing a non-disclosure agreement on a grieving parent and/or caregivers being asked to sign blank treatment plans.



The series in the Star is worth reading in full, because what happened in Kansas is precisely what the Republican Party has in mind for the country. This will necessarily including burying the evidence the way Brownback and his government have in Kansas. What happened there was a pure experiment in the supply-side, laissez-faire economics that are the primary foundation of respectable conservative crazy. They don’t work. They never will work. Their impact on the lives of ordinary people is inevitably and profoundly destructive.

Sam Brownback is a devout Catholic, you know. The president has nominated him to be some sort of half-assed ambassador for religious liberty. The Democrats in the Congress have slow-walked this nomination, and various wingnut word mills are getting antsy about it.

Even Brownback's fans should think twice about taking a midnight drive down that stretch of I-70.



Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.



Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io