8 July 2017 Currents
> continued from page 7
Republicanism : a nonpartisan commission that recommends judicial nominees .”
While the debate over which governing-style produces the best results for its residents , most states will continue with status quo , as it the path of least resistance to keeping one ' s office .
Of course , if one of the experiments were to have a full trial run factual conclusions may be available . Enter Kansas . The number of LLC companies , the main tax cut recipients , doubled . But only twelve thousand jobs were created .
The tax ? “ I probably get $ 5,000 to $ 10,000 a year extra . That ' s great , but if I take a step back , where is it coming from ? I ' d rather it went back into the community . When you see the impact it ' s having on education , it ' s scary , they are making this state worse . For what ? I think we ' d all pay a little extra to make it better ” said the owner of a trucking company which is an LLC .
Schools were saved only by Moderate judges and the legislature finally declared the experiment on life support if not dead .
LKJ : [ T ] he Republican-controlled Kansas legislature took the remarkable step of overriding the governor ' s veto , finally repealing his signature tax cuts . Those tax cuts , which reduced personal income tax rates and imposed no tax at all on many kinds of business income , went into effect in 2013 , and were touted by Brownback and other leading supply-side figures as the best way to boost growth , bring back jobs , and make Kansas richer . But now , almost five years into Brownback ' s “ real live experiment ” in trickle-down economics , the evidence from the experiment is in . Brownback ' s hypothesis about taxes and growth was decidedly not proved . And even Kansas Republicans have had enough . On the day that the tax cuts were enacted , the Kansas City Star ran a story in which the governor ' s revenue secretary , Nick Jordan , promised that the tax cuts would yield big benefits for Kansas . It ' s worth quoting a paragraph from that report in full since it sets out Brownback ' s own terms for his tax " experiment ."
“ Nick Jordan , the state ' s revenue secretary , said the administration ultimately imagines the creation of 22,000 more jobs over ' normal growth ' and
continued on page 9 >