What the hell is the matter with Kansas?

It’s not even worth getting worked up about anymore…Dems win big in high voter turnout elections; lower turnout favors the GOP.So the GOP has won big in the midterms and they’ve taken control of state and local houses too. They’ve also consolidated a number of Governor’s seats. That was a surprise!

Because Sam Brownback put forward legislation that slashed taxes, but also contributed to a huge budget shortfall in Kansas. Yet they voted him in again and that’s not all. They also re-elected a Congressman from Staten Island, Michael Grimm, who is currently facing indictment on 19 counts of tax fraud. And in Florida, my home state, Rick Scott was considered one of the most vulnerable and least popular Governors in the Nation. Yet he won a narrow margin of victory.

Rick Scott poured millions of dollars of his own money into the race in the final days. And Florida became one of the most expensive races in the country. That’s saying a lot. 4 billion dollars in total was spent on this election cycle. All of this occurred in order to bring us the same old group of players: John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were all re-elected as leaders of their respective parties in Congress.

And the Koch Brothers? Instead of simply wasting money on ad campaigns, they worked behind the scenes in many states, including Florida, and funneled undisclosed amounts of dark money to seed the ground game for 2016. While governors like Rick Scott worked tirelessly above ground to continue his get-out-of-the-voting booth campaign, the Koch brothers astutely worked below the radar to fund lots of undisclosed organization groups. We’ll never know, thanks to Citizens United. It turns out we have the best government that money can buy. That is, dark money funneled in through undisclosed sources.

It’s the Perfect Storm. And until the Citizens actually do unite and rise up against the Corporate Takeover of our Political system, we have only ourselves to blame. As Barney Frank so astutely pointed out, “These people didn’t just suddenly parachute through the roof of the Capitol Dome. They were voted in to office!” It’s not just Kansas that I have a funny feeling about these days. I have a feeling we’re never going to be back in Kansas again. Thanks to dark money and Citizens United, we may never return to a government duly elected by the people, made up of the people and elected to enact laws for the people.

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