Kansas GOP Insider (wannabe): Follow the yellow brick road map

Friday, November 15, 2013

Follow the yellow brick road map

I'm trying super hard to care about the recent outrage of Andy Marso

The Topeka Capital-Journal reporter recently penned a tome about the evil Brownback administration shifting $9 million in temporary family assistance reserve funds to a literacy initiative.

"Prominent" children's advocates are concerned that the plan will take food out of the mouths of needy children. 

I don't want to sound like a mean girl, but whatever. 


Why does the state have $48 million sitting around in reserves? That's the real question, which of course, hatchetman Marso either didn't ask or didn't seek to include.

$48 million seems like an awful lot of extra cash for temporary family assistance. To me, temporary assistance means they need food, shelter, etc. immediately until a better plan of survival can be worked out. 

Maybe I'm just not understanding the intricacies of the program. Prior to Brownback's raiding of needy children, the reserve fund held enough money to provide every man, woman and child in Kansas with $17. But, not everyone in Kansas is poor.

Statistics that I don't completely buy suggest that approximately 20 percent of Kansans live in poverty, or about 560,000 people. 

And I think it's safe to assume that of those 560,000, most have the most basic of needs met. (They probably also have televisions-- plural -- in their homes; cell phones, food and clothing.) What they may not be receiving is the gift of literacy. (Thanks, Kansas public schools!)

I've already wasted too many words on a topic I consider, meh. I'm pretty disturbed that there's a program in Kansas with millions of dollars laying around in reserve.

I'm not certain the state government should be doing half of the things it does. I would prefer that government butt out of "helping" people in general.

Remember the good old days when people looked to churches and their neighbors for assistance rather than the cold and impersonal hand of money-grubbing bureaucrats? Yeah, me neither, but still. Sounds like a nicer, less complicated time.

Finally, Brownback made his literacy funding announcement flanked by people from the Boys and Girls Club and others. I note that Joyce Glasscock was quoted in Brownback's announcement

There are two Glasscocks who were at one time active in Kansas politics. The former Speaker of the Kansas House, Kent; and the former Deputy Secretary of Aging, Terry. Which one belongs to Joyce? (They are of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, and if I remember correctly, there was some sort of scandal involving the Department of Aging at the time. I do not remember the details and am too lazy to look them up.)



 

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