States of Disaster

You've heard of them.  The states taken over by the tea party endorsed republicans like Sam Brownback in Kansas, Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, Scott Walker in Wisconsin and a handful of other ideologues who want to cut their way to prosperity and shift the burden of taxation from the 1% to the 99%.  How's that working for them.  Well, the early returns are not too encouraging.   After gouging the state's unions and schools, Walker's Wisconsin is falling behind neighboring states in job creation.  Brownback's Kansas is flirting with bankruptcy and Jindal has become a punchline as he tries to gin up a national profile.  The doctrine these politicians share is the belief that if we only shred the social safety net and make "every man for himself" the slogan, we will sooner or later arrive in utopia.  The abject failure of this to take place is not the point for them.  As one wag put it, "the beatings will continue until morale improves".  Welcome to 21st century America.