Here’s another way that Putin might have his puppet Trump attack the USA, by introducing the kind of destructive tax policies that have brought Kansas to its knees under Brownback.
President Trump's tax plan doesn't have a lot of details yet, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin gave us one big clue — a proposed 15% business tax rate, a big drop from the current 35%. But ask some Kansans and you'll learn how that kind of tax cut could have serious unintended consequences. In 2013, as part of the state's largest-ever tax cuts, Kansas slashed its business tax rate down to 0%. It was supposed to spur economic growth. After all, if businesses have more money in hand, they can, theoretically, hire more people and invest in making new products. Instead, researchers from a number of institutions say it turned more into a "tax avoidance" program, rather than encouraging investment. A lot of white-collar workers like law partners, accountants, and doctors stopped taking salaries and instead started claiming the profits of the business. For them, state income tax essentially went from a maximum of 4.6% to nothing. This has led to the ongoing budget crisis. “Kansas has been an unmitigated budgetary disaster," says Dr Lori McMillan, a tax-law professor at Washburn University told Business Insider. “It was a very messy, blunt club when a scalpel was needed."It's clear that the entire republican movement in the US has gone completely off the tracks, Donald Trump is their president and he just fired the Director of the FBI for investigating his involvement with the Russian government and the rigging of the election that brought him to office. With obligations to Russia we don't even know about yet. In Kansas the Republicans have revolted against their extreme far right governor and moderate Republicans have replaced the hard liners that backed Brownback. Kansas moderate Republicans are in revolt against the kind of extremism that has overtaken their party there and hopefully the same will happen to take the party back from the extremists that have seized power in the US Congress. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/us/sam-brownback-kansas-budget-override.html?_r=0
Gov. Sam Brownback’s leadership of Kansas came to be synonymous with a single, unyielding philosophy: Cut taxes, cut the size of government, and the state will thrive. But this week, Mr. Brownback’s deeply conservative state turned on him and his austere approach. Fed up with gaping budget shortfalls, inadequate education funding and insufficient revenue, the Republican-controlled Legislature capped months of turmoil by overriding the governor’s veto of a bill that would undo some of his tax cuts and raise $1.2 billion over two years. The move amounted to a shocking rejection of the tax-cutting experiment Mr. Brownback had held up as the centerpiece of his conservative governing. But economic growth and revenues lagged, and even his allies began to publicly criticize the tax cuts. The results were a warning of the risks for other Republican-controlled states that have tested similar approaches, and a dizzying descent for Mr. Brownback’s legacy and any future political aspirations.For far too long disinformation and myth has been the guiding force among conservatives with economic, social and foreign policies that are highly destructive to America. Do I really need to point out once again that a hedonistic, pathological liar likely at least partly under the control of Putin is now the republican president of the US. If it wants to remain relevant at all the Republican party needs to move back to a fact based center, not stay off in the fringes where complete nut jobs like Brownback can wreak havoc. Or Trump, the next few years are going to be a very unpleasant wake up call for America as its "president" does as much damage as he can before he's removed from power. Right now the GOP extremists from the Tea Party hold sway in congress but that will likely change as it did in Kansas when people realize just what the hell it is they have been supporting. At which point the cover behind which Trump is waging Putin's war against the US will be removed and so will he...