Dodges, cons, scams and tricks: That’s what Kansas Republican politicians offer

It’s a huge problem, these big boys transitioning just so they can compete against frail girls on athletic teams. We must have laws to stop them, Republicans tell us, as they scrabble for something to talk about other than actually governing Kansas, Missouri and the United States of America.

This is a brilliant ploy, since by now voters increasingly wonder why the whole issue is any of our business. But yes, Republicans scream. This is our business, because of these “frail” girls (who are seldom quoted).

So how gigantic is this crisis? The Williams Center at the University of California-Los Angeles estimates that about 1.4% of youths 13 to 17 identify as transgender.

How many of that teeny fraction will we find on our high school or college athletic teams? Hardly any. Yet it’s a huge problem, Republicans shout. Meanwhile, forget about new laws for the state’s serious problems.

For instance, Kansas Republican leaders have refused for a decade to expand federal Medicaid to most poor citizens. Full Medicaid expansion would have come free to Kansas for the first three years, only then beginning to cost our state 10% of the bill.

Republicans made us the Mississippi of the Midwest, just one of 12 states so stingy we have robbed our Kansas hospitals and the poor of more than $5 billion in federal Medicaid. Lacking the boost of those billions, five rural Kansas hospitals closed since 2010 with more now threatened. The other 38 states, including all four that surround Kansas (three of them also Republican), did expand Medicaid.

Thus, our Kansas Republican leaders ruled in effect that a single mother with two children cannot qualify for medical care if her income is more than $8,345 yearly. The federal poverty level for a family of three is $21,960 annually. Still, they insist that this mother is too “rich” to be helped.

While 30 other states, many with Republican majorities, have raised the minimum wage for workers, Kansas Republican leaders said no. So we still have the miserly $7.25 minimum they fixed in 2009. Not one dime of wage increase for the working poor. That’s no problem for our Republican legislators, who focus on important stuff like tax giveaways to the rich and trans kids.

Republicans legislators do not tackle real problems. They just work brilliantly thinking up dodges, cons, scams and tricks. As a Republican friend of mine keeps telling me, “Politics is a joke.” Remember former Gov. Sam Brownback’s Hope Act?

It prohibits poor Kansans from spending public aid on cruise ship tickets, gambling, tattoos, massages, body piercings, fortune tellers, dog or horse races, lingerie, bail bonds and adult entertainment “in which performers disrobe.” Don’t you know these desperately poor people are just awful, the way they get massages, body piercings and tattoos while taking ocean cruises? That law made Kansas a laughing stock across the nation.

For the last election, the Republican Party didn’t even draft a fresh platform. Their platform is Donald Trump, who at various times promised the American people a “terrific” and “phenomenal” and “fantastic” new health plan to replace the nation’s health care law, enacted under former President Obama. That fantastic new plan never appeared.

In Kansas they exhaust energy battling an incredibly small number of trans boys on athletic teams, while refusing to expand Medicaid for 150,000 poor people and denying a minimum wage raise to thousands more. What would Jesus do? Good question for the party that often bills itself as Christian.

Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.