Wisconsin and Kansas are now basket cases. GOP leadership has destroyed both of these states....

[UCmeNdc]

The press will not discuss just how badly these Governors have ruined their respective states.

Scott Walker (Republican governor of Wisconsin, the Koch brothers' favorite politician, and failed presidential candidate) is continuing to destroy the great state of Wisconsin. When he first came into office, he enacted massive tax cuts for the top 1%. In fact, 78% of those tax cuts went to people making more than $1 million a year. The idea, as usual with all Republican economics, was that if we cut taxes for the top 1% in Wisconsin they're going to turn around and invest that money right back into the state.

[B Calm]

1. Illinois too. State employees fear week to week if they will get a paycheck.

[Dustlawyer]

2. Further evidence of the pay to play nature of our campaign finance system.

Our whole system is based on campaign bribes and the Quid Pro Quo!

This is why we need Publicly Funded Elections!

[Vogon_Glory]

3. Which is one of the problems KS and WI face

Which is one of the problems those states face. The local presses won't discuss what Walker and Brownbach are doing.

I believe that our founding fathers saw free and independent presses as being low-cost, low-capital operations that could draw on a large pool of printers who could afford to go to press and challenge crooks and would-be tyrants. They did not see how much it would cost to open a radio station or a modern paper.

I think all too many voters who get their news from incurious small-town newspapers and sanitized local broadcast news aren't getting enough info to make better-informed choices.

[procon]

5. It boils down to arbitrary control of media access.

If a reporter writes a negative article about a politician he may find that his, or even his entire media organization, get their press passes revoked and banned from entry into their events. When they can't report competitively with other news organizations, especially with the parochial, small town media outlets, that affects their revenue by a drop in viewership, which lowers their ratings, and that results in less ad revenue.

We aspire to have total transparency in the activities of our public figures, but when an observant and critical press is shut out for exposing an uncomfortable truth, that undermines the whole Constitutional concept of Freedom of the Press. Restrictions on the press, even the tilted effects churned out by the biased propaganada mills like Fox and their handmaidens in hate radio, should be illegal.

[MrScorpio]

4. Republicans destroyed a city here in Michigan

And disenfranchised black voters in several regions, simply to seize public assets and transfer them to private entities.