Now, what's the matter with Kansas

This Kansas Day, we must start an honest conversation about our state

Today, I decided to have a little fun by combining one of the most well-known Kansas editorials with some modern-day concerns.

Enjoy.

And Happy Birthday, Kansas.

The U.S. Census Bureau recently sent out a statement that Kansas stands alone among Midwestern states in losing far more residents than it took in - costing Kansas more than 7,400 people to domestic migration in the last year alone. 

This has been going on for the better part of a decade, even more. 

If there had been a high brick wall around the state and not a soul had been admitted or permitted to leave, Kansas would have been better off than she is today. Instead, while our neighboring states prosper, Kansas has apparently been a plague spot. In this very garden of the world, thousands of our residents decided that the grass looks greener just about any place else. 

Not only has she lost population, she’s lost money. While our neighbors provide for the health of their people, capture national investments and opportunities, and update laws to make life easier for its residents, a stalwart group of know-it-alls will decide what’s best for you. They smugly reject $6 billion in healthcare dollars, and laugh while telling the poor what they must endure to get a single crumb of government bread. We don’t need what those other states got, and we don’t want any kind of handout - at least not any that makes its way to the hands of people. Kansas is surrounded by states that have expanded Medicaid, legalized marijuana, and made the most of federal investments. While our neighbors have gained in just about every way, Kansas has gone downhill. 

Take it by any standard you please Kansas is not it. 

Take a look and you’ll see the state’s been on the same track nearly all its life. Its towns are shrinking, its costs are growing, its opportunities restricted. The whole Midwest is ahead of Kansas. The newspaper columns and magazines once devoted to praise of her, to boastful facts and startling figures concerning her resources are now filled with cartoons, jibes, and Pefferian speeches. Kansas just naturally isn’t it. She’s traded places with Arkansas and Timbuktu. 

Now, what’s the matter with Kansas?

We all know; yet here we are at it again. We have those old mossback trickle-down disciples who snort and howl because the people might have a fighting chance, or worse yet, get a helping hand. We have yet another ceaseless round of wild-eyed, rattle-brained, rusty industrialists telling us that all Kansas needs is a better business environment, lower taxes for corporations, and more investment for the people at the top. We don’t need modern ideas, federal investments, or new ways of thinking. The same folks who have been running this state since its birth will keep raking through the old ash heap of worn out and failed ideas, propping them up with shiny new wrappings. Then, for fear some hint that the state had become respectable might percolate through the civilized portions of the nation, the legislature has decided it will ignore the people’s vote and just do as it pleases - telling people that Kansas is raising hell and letting the corn go to weed. 

Oh this IS a state to be proud of! We are a people who can hold up our heads! What we need is not more investment in its people, healthcare, childcare, small business, or innovation. 

We need several thousand gibbering idiots to scream about the “Good Ole’ Days” We don’t need new opportunities for our people, we don’t need new types of energy, new federal investments, educated school children, or new ways of supporting families. What we are after is the power of keeping things the same. Because we have become poorer and ornerier and meaner than a spavined, distempered mule, we, the people of Kansas, propose to kick; we don’t care to build up, we wish to tear down. Let those other states welcome the future, but Kansas will stand defiant and will protect the federal budget from itself, no matter the cost to us. There are those who believe if you legislate to make the well-to-prosperous, this prosperity will leak through on those below. That’s Kansas through-and-through and we ain’t about to change it now.   

That’s the stuff! Give the common man the dickens! Legislate women into compliance. Tell the oddballs, the different, and any of those “others” to find somewhere else to live. We don’t want their money or their ideas anyways. 

Whoop it up for the traditionalist! Put the money hoarder up on the altar, and bow down and worship him. Let the state ideal be high. What we need is not the respect of our fellow men, but the chance to keep missing any progress at all. 

Oh, yes, Kansas is a great state. Here are people fleeing from it by the score every day. Labor, and talent in every industry going out of the state - paralyzing and crippling every sector because they can’t find enough workers. Let’s don’t stop this year. Let’s drive all the decent self-respecting men and women out of the state. Let’s encourage the man who already has enough to gather up more. What Kansas needs is more men of means who can talk, who have large leisure to argue about the worrisome future, and time to wait for more dividends. 

Now what’s the matter with Kansas?

Nothing under the shining sun. She is losing her wealth, health, population, and standing. She has got her statesmen, and the working man is leaving her. Kansas is all right. She has started in to raise hell, and seems to have an over-production. But that doesn’t matter. Kansas never did believe in diversified crops. Kansas is alright. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Kansas. 

A couple of notes:

I can already anticipate the complaints -

I know. William Allen White was complaining about populism when he wrote this in 1896. But I’d argue he was writing about a mindset at the time that was harmful to Kansas - and I’d argue that there’s a new form of populism today that is likewise harmful to Kansas.

Yes, I probably should be more cheery on Kansas birthday. I do love Kansas - probably more than a lot of people do. That’s why I get upset and want people to stop doing things that aren’t helpful to our state.

No, I don’t fancy myself akin to William Allen White. That’s why I openly borrowed his structure and phrasing. Because I can’t really be much cleaver than him.

But here’s the real deal - we keep having conversations about the lack of an adequate workforce, and we keep hearing the same old things. Every business group in Kansas will scream that we need lower taxes, more robust incentives, and a better business environment. We’ve been having the same conversation my entire adult life, and it’s not fixing the problem. I’d say that’s because it’s not the problem. Kansas (or at least the Kansas legislature) makes it hard to love this place. We won’t expand Medicaid, even though that could help entire employees in the restaurant, childcare, and hospitality industry - and make investments in our rural communities. We won’t legalize marijuana, even though neighbors on three sides of us already have - and no matter what anyone thinks about it, people use that in their decision making. The legacy energy industries fight tooth-and-nail if there’s even a passing glance at anything even a shade of green - and Kansas loses out because that is where the business and government investment is taking place. We have a reservoir of untapped wealth potential in Kansas - and a whole bunch of people who want to keep the old money for themselves.

Kansas keeps losing because we keep holding on tightly to ideas that don’t make sense anymore - and we keep electing people who promise that they’re going to keep progress, fairness, and new ideas, as far away from Kansas as humanly possible.

And that, to me, is Now What’s the Matter with Kansas.