pitch | Suicides are up in Kansas — way up.
An October report from the Kansas Department of Health and
Environment revealed that 505 Kansans killed themselves in 2012, a
startling 31.5 percent jump from the 384 suicides committed in 2011.
That sobering increase can be attributed, in part, to ripple effects
from the recession. Suicide numbers tend to climb in economically
challenging times.
But the spike also correlates to state policy. From 2009 to 2012,
Kansas cut 12.4 percent from its mental-health budget — the
ninth-largest decrease in the nation over that period. In Sedgwick
County, where 88 people took their lives in 2012, the community
mental-health center has lost more than half its state funding since
2009.
The KDHE's report shines a morbid light on one of the consequences of
a business-obsessed state ignoring the needs of its citizens: More
people die.
Poke around Kansas and you'll see variations on this theme.
Government agencies and institutions that are already squeezed end up
starved by the state and further stretched, and citizens struggle to
receive basic services. In Kansas, this isn't merely the product of a
lousy national economy. It's the result of Gov. Sam Brownback and a
willing state Legislature testing the crackpot tea-party idea that
gutting government operations, while eliminating business and income
taxes, makes Kansas a desirable place to live and work.
But life under Brownback is a bewildering existence, and some days
that seems almost by political design. Every week, there's news of some
new budgetary atrocity or comically backward piece of legislation being
floated. Are guns really allowed in courthouses now? Are public schools
actually so underfunded that the revenue formula is unconstitutional?
What was that thing about outlawing all sustainable practices? Was that
an Onion article? How are you even supposed to keep up with all this nonsense, let alone keep your head above the mudslide?
Before the clowns in the Kansas Legislature suit up for another season of high jinks in January, here's The Pitch's
guide to all the depressing events occurring in the state. Remember:
Brownback is up for re-election next year, and his approval rating is
hovering around 35 percent. No flower blooms forever, not even in the
Sunflower State.
