The Brownback miracle (?!?) in Kansas

Paul Krugman in Left Coast Rising New York Times 07/24/2014 and How's California Doing? 07/23/2014 describes the success of Jerry Brown's Keynesian economics on the state level in California with some reference to the contrasting failure of Tea Party economics in Kansas under Republican ideologue Gov. Sam Brownback.

The Young Turks also recently took a look at Kansas Gov Sam Brownback Fulfills Promise To Destroy Kansas 07/08/2014:

Dave Helling and Brad Cooper did an analysis of Brownback's record A look at Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback's economic claims Kansas City Star 07/04/2014. One example of their findings:

Claim: The Kansas poverty level has been "flat" during the current administration. — March 2014

This claim depends on the definition of "flat" and the definition of poverty.

Census Bureau figures show poverty in Kansas grew during the first two years of the Brownback administration.

In 2010, the year before Brownback took office, 13.6 percent of Kansans were living below the poverty level. In 2012, 14 percent of Kansans lived below the poverty level, the highest percentage since at least 2008.

Figures for 2013 are not yet available. In an email, Brownback’s office said the poverty claim is related to poverty for children, not the overall rate.

Brownback’s office points to data showing the percentage of children living in poverty was essentially flat in 2011 and 2012, although the actual number of those children grew by about 1,000.

In a March speech when he was asked about the state’s poverty level, Brownback conceded that he had not made a lot of progress on the problem of child poverty.

"We really haven't had enough time to get at that issue," he said. "We've really got to do a lot more work in that area."

Josh Barro also notes a lesson from the Brownback experience, Yes, if You Cut Taxes, You Get Less Tax Revenue New York Times 06/27/2014. Here he raises and important caution about a common assumption that politicians make, at least in their public statements (bold in original):

It’s not clear that there’s anything special about small businesses for the purpose of job creation.

A 2013 study by economists from the Census Bureau and the University of Maryland found that while young firms add jobs more quickly than older ones, the size of a firm does not appear to drive job growth.

And indeed, while Governor Brownback wrote last month that the tax cuts were allowing businesses to "hire more people and invest in needed equipment," job growth in Kansas has been modest since he signed the bill, trailing the national average and the rate in three of its four neighboring states.

Krugman does remind us "that the recession and recovery have had differential effects across states" (Moore of the Same 07/26/2014), so we always need to exercise some realistic caution in comparing state economic performance. In California's case, the state economy is large enough that state-level stimulus probably has a disproportionate effect there compared to other states.

Tags: kansas, sam brownback

Confederate "Heritage" Month - April 11: The March 1855 election in Kansas (1)

The Howard Committe Report leaves no doubt about the systematic theft of the March 1855 election in Kansas by the Missouri Border Ruffians:

On the same day that the census was completed, the governor issued his proclamation tor an election to be held on the 30th of March, A. D. 1855, for members of the legislative assembly of the Territory. It prescribed the boundaries of districts, the places for polls, the names of judges, the apportionment of members, and recited the qualification of voters. If it had been observed, a just and fair election would have reflected the will of the people of the Territory, Before the election, false and inflammatory rumors were busily circulated among the people of western Missouri. The number and character of the emigration then passing into the Territory were grossly exaggerated and misrepresented. Through the active exertions of many of its leading citizens, aided by the secret society before referred to, the passions and prejudices of the people of that State were greatly excited, Several residents there have testified to the character of the reports circulated among and credited by the people. These efforts were successful. By an organized movement, which extended from Andrew county in the north, to Jasper county in the south, and as far eastward as Boone and Cole counties, Missouri, companies of men were arranged in irregular parties and sent into every council district in the Territory, and into every representative district but one. The numbers were so distributed as to control the election in each district. They went to vote, and with the avowed design to make Kansas a slave State. They were generally armed and equipped, carried with them their own provisions and tents, and so marched into the Territory.

This description of events in the 2nd district gives an idea of the character of the gentlemen who came over from Missouri.  After stealing the poll books:

They then chose two new judges and proceeded with the election. They also threatened to kill the judges if they did not receive their votes without swearing them, or else resign. They said no man should vote who would submit to be sworn; that they would kill any man who would offer to do so, "Shoot him;" "Cut his guts out," &c. They said no man should vote this day unless he voted an open ticket, and was all right on the goose [i.e., pro-slavery]; and that if they could not vote by fair means, they would by foul means. They said they had as much right to vote if they had been in the Territory two minutes as if they had been there two years, and they would vote. Some of the citizens who were about the window, but had not voted when the crowd of Missourians marched up there, upon attempting to vote were driven back by the mob, or driven off. One of them, Mr. I. M. Mace, was asked if he would take the oath [which only legal residents who were Free State would be expected to agree to]; and upon his replying that he would if the judges required it, he was dragged through the crowd away from the polls, amid cries of "kill the damned nigger-thief," "cut his throat," "tear his heart out," After they got him to the outside of the crowd, they stood around him with cocked revolvers and drawn bowie-knives; one man putting a knife to his breast so that it touched him; another holding a cocked pistol to his ear, while another struck at him with a club.

The Missourians said they had a right to vote, if they had been in the Territory but five minutes. Some said they had been hired to come there and vote, and got a dollar a day, and by God they would vote or die there. (my emphasis)

Such was the slaveowners idea of "democracy". It's no wonder the Missouri Border Ruffians were also known as "Pukes".

In Missouri, US Senator David Atchison recruited Missourians to go vote illegally in Kansas.  James McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988) quotes the honorable Senator's lieutenant John Stringfellow as follows speaking to a crowd in St. Joseph, Missouri:

Mark every scoundrel among you that is the least tainted with free-soilism, or abolitionism, and exterminate him.  To those having qualms of conscience ... the time has come when such impositions must be disregarded, as your lives and property are in danger. ... Enter every election district in Kansas ... and vote at the point of a Bowie knife or revolver!

Obviously, the Missourians from the 2nd district followed that latter advice. Sen. Atchison himself led a band of Pukes into Kansas to vote illegally. He told them, "There are eleven hundred men coming over from Platte County [Missouri] to vote, and if that ain't enough we can send five thousand - enough to kill every God-damned abolitionist in the Territory". (Also quoted by McPherson)

This was obviously an intense situation.  And the pro-slavery forces had every intent of preventing a fair election by force and violence.  And did so. Throw away your qualms of conscience, this pro-slavery agitators said. We can "kill every God-damned abolitionist in the Territory," the distinguished Senator told his followers in election-stealing.

An Index to Confederate "Heritage" Month 2006 postings is available.

Confederate "Heritage" Month - April 10: The November 1854 election in Kansas

The Howard Committee Report gives us a valuable resource to get something of the tenor of the times in the Kansas crisis, because they took testimony in Kansas relatively close to the time of the events they report. (The testimony is from the first half of 1956.) Their descriptions of the November 1854 elections and how the Border Ruffians from Missouri stole them are an example:

The election in the 15th district was held at Penseneau's, on Stranger creek, a few miles from Weston, Missouri. On the day of the election a large number'of citizens of Platte county, but chiefly from Westoa and Platte City, Missouri, came in small parties, in wagons and on horseback, to the polls. Among them were several leading citizens of that town; and the names of many of them are given by the witnesses. They generally insisted upon their right to vote, on the ground that every man having a claim in the Territory could vote, no matter where he lived. All voted who chose. No man was challenged or sworn. Some of the residents did not vote. The purpose of me strangers in voting was declared to be to make Kansas a slave State.  Your committee find, by the poll-books, that 306 votes were cast; of these we find but 57 are on the census-rolls as legal voters in February following. Your committee are satisfied, from the testimony, that not over 100 of those who voted had any right so to do, leaving at least 208 illegal votes cast. (my emphasis)

John Landis, who became a resident in Kansas just after this election, testified:

I moved into the Territory in December, 1854, and into the Doniphan precinct, fourteenth district, and have resided there ever since.  I cam from Buchanan county, Missouri.  At the time of the first election [Nov. 1854] I was solicited there by some of my friends to go over into Kansas and vote. The inducements held out was to make Kansas a slave State. I did not go. I knew a number crossed the river. They said they were going over to vote.(my emphasis)

John Scott of Missouri was apparently fairly frank, or perhaps openly cynical, about his general approach to that election:

Prior to the election in Burr Oak precinct, in the fourteenth district on the 29th of November, 1854, I had been a resident of Missouri and I then determined, if I found it necessary, to become a resident of Kansas Territory. On the day previous to that election I settled up my board at my boarding-house in St. Joseph's, Missouri, and went over to the Territory and took boarding with Mr. Bryant, near whose house the polls were held the next day, for one month, so that I might have it in my power, by merely determining to do so, to become a resident of the Territory on the day of election. I was present at Mr. Harding's when the polls were held on the morning of election prior to and at the time the judges were appointed. When my name was suggested as a judge of the election, no such suggestion had been made to or in regard to me that I was aware of, until the hour of opening the polls had arrived, when, by the absence of two judges appointed by the governor, it became necessary to select others ia their places. When my name was proposed as a judge of election, objections were made by two persons only, so far I knew, Messrs. Harding and Larzelere, in regard to my want of residence in the Territory.   I then publicly informed those present that I had a claim in the Territory; that I had taken board in the Territory for a month, and that I could at any moment become an actual resident and legal voter in the Territory, and that I would do so if I concluded at any time during the day that my vote would be necessary to carry that precinct in favor of the pro-slavery candidate for delegate to Congress, and that I knew of no law requiring a judge of that election selected by the voters to be a resident of the Territory. ... I did not during the day consider it necessary to become a resident of the Territory for the purpose mentioned, and did not vote or offer to vote at that election. (my emphasis)

And this guy was one of the judges presiding  over the election in that district!  On cross-examination, he said:

General Whitfield was regarded as the pro-slavery candidate, and had been selected as the pro-slavery candidate by the pro-slavery party. I regarded the the question of slavery as the primarily prominent issue at that election, and, so far as I know, all parties agreed in making that question the issue of that election.  ... It is my intention, and the intention of a great many other Missourians, now resident in Missouri, whenever the slavery issue is to be determined upon by the people of this Territory in the adoption, of the State constitution, to remove to this Territory in time to acquire the right to become legal voters upon that question. The leading purpose of onr intended removal to the Territory is to determine the domestic institutions of this Territory when it comes to be a State, and we would not come but for that purpose, and would never think of coming here but for that purpose. I believe there are a great many in Missouri who are so situated. This is one of the means decided upon by Missourians to counteract the movements of the [Free State] Emigrant Aid Society to determine the character of the institutions of this Territory when it comes to be a State.(my emphasis)

The Committee report describes the 1854 election in the 16th district as follows:

The election in the 16th district was held at Leavenworth. It was then a small village of three or four houses, located on the Delaware reservation.  There were but comparatively few settlers then in the district, but the number rapidly increased afterwards. On the day before, and on the day of the election, a great many citizens of Platte, Clay, and Bay counties, Missouri, crossed the river, most of them camping in tents and wagons about the town, "like a camp-meeting." They were in companies or messes of 10 to 15 in each, and numbered in all several hundred. They brought their own provision, and cooked it themselves, and were generally armed. Many of them were known by the witnesses, and their names are given, which are found upon the poll-books. Among them were several persons of influence where they resided in Missouri, and held, or had held, high official position in that State. They claimed to be residents of the Territory from the fact that they were there present, and insisted upon, the right to vote, and did vote. Their avowed purpose in doing so was to make Kansas a slave State. These strangers crowded around the polls, and it was with great difficulty that the settlers could get to the polls.  One resident attempted to get to the polls in the afternoon, but was crowded and pulled back. He then went outside of the crowd, and hurrahed for Gen. Whitfield; and some of those who did not know him said, "There's a good pro-slavery man," and lifted him up over their heads, so that he crawled on their heads and put in his vote. A person who saw, from the color of his ticket, that it was not for Gen, Whitfleld, cried out, "He is a damned abolitionist - let him down;" and they dropped him. Others were passed to the polls In the same way, and others crowded up in the best way they conld. After this mockery of an election was over the non-residents returned to their homes in Missouri. Of the 312 votes cast, not 150 were by legal voters.

An important part of the pro-slavery "heritage" is crooked elections like these.  The techniques used in that election would be employed again in 1855. And some of the election-stealing techniques employed by the Border Ruffians to keep legal voters from the polls would reappear during the mid-1870s during the overthrow of the democratic Reconstruction governments.

"This mockery of an election" is a good description for the 1854 Kansas vote as a whole, as well as for the one in March, 1855.

An Index to Confederate "Heritage" Month 2006 postings is available.

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2006 - April 9: The troubles in Kansas (2)

The major events in the Kansas controversy can be easily defined. Over the period from the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854 to late 1856, a mini-civil war took place in Kansas, with an illegitimately elected pro-slavery government, pro-slavery settlers and Border Ruffians from Missouri fighting in sporadic guerrilla warfare, and sometimes in regular military engagements, with the Free States settlers.

It is this period in particular that is remembered as "Bleeding Kansas". (The title of the linked article says "Bleeding Kansas 1853-1861", but the text makes it clear that 1854-6 was the key period of violence.) Although Kansas remained a point of contention between North and South up until the Civil War began in 1861, the Free State forces had clearly gained the upper hand by 1857, despite pro-slavery administrations in Washington. Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1861 after the Confederate states seceded.

The historical and political significance of events can't be easily quantified. But some numbers will help put the Kansas conflict into some context. First of all, something like 55 people are said to have lost their lives in the 1854-6 conflict there. Since it's not unusual these days to hear about that many people or more being killed in the combined insurgency and civil war in Iraq, it would be easy for present-day readers to brush the Kansas conflict off as an insignificant set of skirmishes. Particularly when the "butcher's bill" for the Civil War came in at over 600,000 dead.

But this was 1854, and the armed rebellion of the Slave Power was still years ahead in an uncertain future.

The Howard Committee Report provides several tables that give us some valuable figures. In a table showing the number of votes on November 29, 1854, showed the number of eligible voters at 2,905. The settlements in Kansas were clustered near the Missouri border, which made it convenient for the Border Ruffians from that slave state to interfere in Kansas affairs, as they surely did.  That same table shows that 1,114 legal voters participating in the election, along with 1,729 illegal ones, probably all from Missouri.

Immigration was active at this time. So by January-February of 1855, as a subsequent table shows, a total of 8,601 settlers were in Kansas, of which 3,383 were female, 3,469 were children and 192 were slaves. To do a gruesome piece of math to put things in perspective, if we think of present-day Iraq levels of civil war deaths at 50 a day or so, with a population of 9,000 in February of 1855, a number equal to the entire population of Kansas would have been wiped out by the end of August, 1855.

The political significance of the Kansas events can't be measured in absolute numbers of casualties. One final example for comparison. It's not unusual for large American cities to have 55 murders in a year from family fights or crime. But, for all the venom in American politics, how many people have been killed lately in partisan political shootouts in the United States? And think about California, with upwards of 30 million people, and imagine that there had been 55 partisan political killings in violent clashes in the last two years. It would be regarded as a terrifying trend.

So with a few thousand people in Kansas in 1854-6, that level of violence seemed like intense conflict. And the partisans of both sides in the rest of the country regarded it so, as well.

With that for context, the major events of 1854-6 in Kansas can be summarized as follows. The first election in November, 1854, is stolen by the Missouri Border Ruffians. The same happens with the elections in March, 1855, known as the "Shawnee Mission" government and then in 1856 and thereafter as the "Lecompton" government. The pro-slavery legislature then passes draconian laws against any sort of abolitionist activity. The Free State partisans organized their own state government in the fall of 1855, known as the "Topeka" government but whose real stronghold was Lawrence. In November, 1855, an armed group of 1,500 pro-slavery men surrounded Lawrence, where about 500 Free State men prepared to give battle. A peace agreement, known rather grandly as the "Wakarusa treaty", averted the clash, which was even more grandly called the Wakarusa War.

In March, 1856, the Free State legislature met in Topeka and petitioned Congress to admit Kansas as a free state. The pro-slavery government moved against the Topeka government by another attack on Lawrence on May 21. The Topeka forces decided not to fight at that point, and the "sack of Lawrence" occurred. As coincidence would have it, on Thursday, May 22, the thuggish Southern gentleman Preston Brooks assaulted Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate with a cane and beat him badly after Sumner had given a fiery speech about the conduct of the pro-slavery forces and the Franklin Pierce administration in Kansas. That weekend, the Kansas conflict was intensified when a small group headed by John Brown killed five pro-slavery settlers, in what would be known as the Pottawatomie massacre.

More clashes followed. In the Battle of Black Jack in early June, Brown's band captured a much larger band of Missouri Border Ruffian militia. Another Missouri invasion followed in August, and they defeated Free State fighters, again including John Brown, at Osawatomie. Brown was nevertheless regarded as a hero in that battle, and was nicknamed "Osawatomie Brown". In September, John Geary arrived as the new governor of the territory. He soon succeeded in discouraging the guerrilla fighters on both sides, assisted by the US Army which intervened with 2,700 troops to prevent another attack on Lawrence by the Lecomptom partisans that same month. The territory calmed down after that. Neither the political conflict nor the violence was over, but it's most intense period was done.

An Index to Confederate "Heritage" Month 2006 postings is available.

Confederate "Heritage" Month - April 8: The troubles in Kansas (1)

In last year’s post for April 13, I gave a brief overview of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas crisis.

The Compromise of 1850 was an important turning point for Northern opinion.  This undated PBS summary (The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act) talks about the impression that the Fugitive Slave Act in particular made on the North.

Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act made abolitionists all the more resolved to put an end to slavery. The Underground Railroad became more active, reaching its peak between 1850 and 1860. The act also brought the subject of slavery before the nation. Many who had previously been ambivalent about slavery now took a definitive stance against the institution.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier years’ posts, the Fugitive Slave Act included strong federal regulations that overrode any consideration of “states rights”. It’s a key fact about the prewar period that in the 1850s, Northerners felt themselves increasingly pressured by the Slave Power, while the Southern slaveowners and their supporters became increasingly hysterical about real and imagined threats from the North.  And also that, as in the case of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the slaveowners were always ready to override states rights in defense of slavery.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act made Kansas Territory into a literal battleground between pro- and antislavery forces.

Kansas was not finally admitted to the Union as a free state until 1861.  But the most intense period of conflict, the period of “Bleeding Kansas”, was 1854-6.  In 1854, the New England Emigrant Aid Company sponsored the migration of antislavery settlers to Kansas.  While the Southern slaveowners encouraged proslavery immigration.

In particular, groups of proslavery partisans from the neighboring slave state of Missouri were ready to intervene with force and violence in the Kansas Territory.  Known as “Border Ruffians” and also as “Pukes”, in November of 1854 and again in March of 1855, they poured across the border to vote illegally in Kansas elections and also to prevent Free State voters from going to the polls.

The illegitimate proslavery government was initially known as the Topeka government because of where it was seated, and in 1856 it moved to the city of Lecompton and became known as the Lecompton government.

Thanks to the Internet, we can quickly see an important contemporary document about the events in Kansas. Formally known as the Report of the special committee appointed to investigate the troubles in Kansas,: with the views of the minority of said committee (July 1856), it is usually referred to as the Howard Committee report, after Congressman William Alanson Howard who chaired the Committee.

The majority report describes the immediate result of Stephen Douglas’ misbegotten Kansas-Nebraska Act:

The testimony clearly shows that before the proposition to repeal the Missouri compromise was introduced into Congress, the people of western Missouri appeared indifferent to the prohibition of slavery in the Territory, and neither asked nor desired its repeal.

In other words, despite Douglas’ claims that his “popular sovereignty” notion was democratic rather than proslavery, its practical effect was a great encouragement to advocates of the extension of slavery.

When, however, the prohibition was removed by the Action of Congress, the aspect of affairs entirely changed. The whole country was agitated by the reopening of a controversy which conservative men in different sections believed had been settled in every State and Territory by some law beyond the danger of repeal. The excitement which has always accompanied the discussion of the slavery question was greatly increased by the hope, on the one hand of extending slavery into a region from which it had been excluded by law; and, on the other, by a sense of wrong done by what was regarded as a dishonor of a national compact. This excitement was naturally transferred into the border counties of Missouri and the Territory, as settler favoring fee or slave institutions moved into it. ...

Within a few days alter the organic law passed, and as soon as its passage could be known on the border, leading citizens of Missouri crossed into the Territory, held squatter meetings and then returned to their homes.  Among their resolutions are the following:

"That we will afford protection to no abolitionist as a settler of this Territory."

"That we recognise the institution of slavery as already existing in this Territory, and advise slaveholders to introduce their property as early as possible."

Similar resolutions were passed in various parts of the Territory and by meetings in several counties of Missouri.  Thus the first effect of the repeal of the restriction against slavery [pursuant to Douglas’ “popular sovereignty” slogan] was to substitute the resolves of squatter meetings, composed almost exclusively of citizens of a single State [Missouri], for the deliberate action of Congress acquiesced in for thirty-five years. (my emphasis)

An Index to Confederate "Heritage" Month 2006 postings is available.