Kentucky approves another handout for the rich

It's another day of fascism in Kentucky - courtesy of the Republican Party of Kentucky, even as it's embroiled in scandal after scandal.

The Kentucky legislature has just approved a tax bill that would give free money to the rich by changing the state income tax to a flat rate - replacing the progressive income tax. This runs afoul of the constitutional mandate for progressive taxation.

The bill also expands the 6% sales tax to a variety of services. Luckily, proposals to increase the sales tax to 8% and to apply it to all food items were scrapped at the last minute - probably because of the potential political backlash. (Expanding the sales tax to cover food is a longtime dream of "low tax" Kentucky conservatives.)

Lawmakers approved this bill before the text of it was even made public.

This bill will also worsen the state's budget, because revenues from consumption-based taxes grow much slower than from income taxes.

All this is going down after lawmakers passed a bill to gut teachers' pensions - in an attempt to solve the state's pension crisis that itself was completely made up by Republicans for political reasons.

The fascist thievery continues.