paraphrastic redux - sfa - August 2004 Frank's Kansas Chapter Three - God, Meet Mammon --------- [paragraph# (page# first word)] 147 (p67 one) In Kansas almost all millionaires, trailer-park dwellers, farmers, thrift-store managers, slaughterhouse workers and utility managers are Republicans. Wichita has changed from a place where Democrats were influential into one the most conservative places in Kansas. 148 (p67 not) [nothing of significance] 149 (p68 not) Nowadays significant numbers of Kansans react to personal economic decline not by the traditional remedies such as unions and antitrust law, but by joining conservative causes such as the Republican Party, the John Birch Society and antiabortion protesters. 150 (p68 the) Many Kansans react inappropriately to problems such as depopulation, empowerment of the food processors, and systemic favor for the rich. 151 (p68 it's) Many Kansans are angry about ills which are caused by entities other than those at which they direct their anger. 152 (p68 Kansans) Republican Senator Sam Brownback thinks that Kansans do not care about economic issues, and he thinks that poverty's causes are spiritual. To many Kansans, eliminating the teaching of evolution from schools is far more important than good wages, fair farming policies and what becomes of small towns. 153 (p68 hear) [Frank quotes several persons prominent in Kansas warning about moral degeneracy.] 154 (p69 the) There is a sense in which the state of Kansas can be understood to have a strategy to save America's soul. Through such a strategy Kansas has placed aggressively pious persons in prominent public positions of responsibility. For example, the leader of the GOP in Wyandotte County once said his goal was to build the Kingdom of God. 155 (p69 and) [Frank describes several displays of extreme Christion behavior and pronouncements of extreme Christian doctrine on the part of US representative Jim Ryun of Kansas.] 156 (p70 from) [Frank describes Representative Todd Tiahrt from Wichita-- as using biblical references in conversation, campaigning in Wichita's evangelical churches, and saying he wants to bring America back to God.] 157 (p70 where) [Frank describes Brownback's intellectual and religious style, and some of his affiliations with "right-wing quasi cults" such as Opus Dei.] 158 (p71 however) It is typical of Kansas lawmakers to exhibit a "flamboyant" public piety which advocating free-market doctrine and promoting policies that worsen Kansas's material conditions. 159 (p71 each) Jim Ryun has compared pre-Reagan economic policy to the Soviet Union and has justified tax cuts for the rich as an incentive for them to continue contributing to society. He claimed that repeal of the estate tax would help family farms. He said that the California energy crisis was caused by political interference with the free-market rather than by deregulation. 160 (p72 Todd) Tiahrt is hostile towards the DOE and organized labor. He wants prisons privatized and there are some poor people who are determined to be poor. Koch Industries is a Wichita business involved in oil and gas which supports rightwing magazines and think tanks, and Tiahrt including. The Wichita Eagle newspaper reported that Tiahrt is mostly known for his social views, while his economic views are more interesting to company officials. 161 (p73 of) Sam Brownback's family is rich. He lives frugally in DC and has publicly opposed human cloning and has supported persecuted third-world Christians. Brownback used to hold the office of secretary of agriculture in Kansas, and he was chosen for that office by the leaders of the agricultural industry itself. This structural arrangement in which the office promoted the interests of industry over the public (and Brownback did so) was later found unconstitutional [endnote cites 14th amendment]. 162 (p74 as) Brownback denounced the impact of PAC money when he was a new congressman. He wrote of a distinction between spiritual ambitions and worldly ambition. 163 (p74 before) A couple of years later Brownback ran for the Senate with the assistance of Triad Management Services, which was a "front group" for something. Brownback's foe had messages to the public that most people did not hear because of the way money contributed by Triad Management Services was spent. A lobbying group, US Telecom Association, sponsored a victory celebration for Brownback, and later Brownback promoted their interests in deregulation. Brownback voted against the McCain-Feingold finance reform. 164 (p74 so) Brownback has often denounced the "culture industry" for its vulgarity and bad values. Robert McChesney claims that vulgarity is "linked" to corporate control and insufficiently competitive markets; this belief motivated some rightwingers to resist relaxation of radio ownership rules, but not Brownback. Brownback considers deregulation towards a free-market to be a higher value than the elimination of vulgarity from radio. 165 (p75 mixing) This practice of both promoting capitalism and decrying certain cultural value deficiencies was explicit in the 1998 Kansas Republican Party Platform. [Frank describes parts of that platform evidencing his point, including several platform goals as well as complaints about cultural degeneracies.] 166 (p76 let) To abstract a bit, Kansas has been terribly harmed by deregulation and privatization during the Reagan and Bush administrations, these harms including depopulation of its rural areas, "disintegration" of towns, urban stagnation. Some small groups of persons in Kansas, however, are rich. The political reaction of much of the state has been to want further economic measures of the kind which, whether they realize it or not, have ruined many of the people of Kansas. 167 (p76 this) This is a mysterious phenomenon, similar to a larger American phenomenon of historical shift. 168 (p76 in) This shift is this: the majority of Kansans nowadays prefer economic policies that are opposite to what majorities of past Kansans have preferred in response the the same economic forces. =========