Zombies are in the news again. Not actual zombies, but instead the growing governmental awareness that the citizenry needs to be prepared against any possible future zombie attack. And, no, I'm not kidding. It's the time of the season.

The more astute of readers will notice that the previous sentence is a line from a song... by the 1960s British rock band "The Zombies," no less. This was today's gratuitous pop culture reference; or, in other words: "I just couldn't stop myself." Ahem.

It's pretty easy to poke fun at spending taxpayer dollars for zombie preparedness plans. Which was my first inclination upon hearing that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback is about to sign a proclamation which declares October to be "Zombie Preparedness Month" in the state.

But I have to offer up a few words of praise, instead, before I help dig Brownback's grave. Twice previously I have poked fun at governmental efforts at zombie preparedness, once about the Centers For Disease Control and once about the Pentagon. In both cases, the news broke in May. On the C.D.C. plan, I wrote:

On a C.D.C. official blog, Ali S. Khan (Trekkies, you may insert your own "Wrath of Khan" joke here, if you must) wrote a tongue-in-cheek post about how to prepare for a zombie attack. Or, as he refers to it in the helpful "A Brief History of Zombies" section, the result of your neighbors all contracting "Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome."

A word here about timing is necessary, I think. While the blog post is quite obviously meant as a semi-joke, wouldn't this have been more fun in, say, mid-October -- a few weeks before Hallowe'en?

So, I have to now say, Brownback has indeed improved the timing -- October will be Zombie Preparedness Month, which is entirely fitting and perfectly appropriate (in more ways than one).

Of course, I can't really get too worked up over this sort of thing (in all seriousness), because while obviously highly amusing, the real agenda is an admirable one: to get people to think about disaster preparedness, which is usually an incredibly boring subject. At least, this is true in the case of Kansas -- the C.D.C. zombie warnings seem more like one incredibly bored government worker with access to an official blog and way too much time on his hands, and I must admit I have no idea what the Pentagon one ("CONOP 8888") is all about.

In Kansas, the zombie defense plan comes from the state's Division of Emergency Management. The theme is: "If you're prepared for zombies, you're prepared for anything." Which makes a lot of sense. An official spokesman expounded on the idea: "If you're equipped to handle the zombie apocalypse then you're prepared for tornadoes, severe storms, fire and any other natural disaster Kansas usually faces. This is a fun and low-stress way to get families involved." Which is all a good point -- it's a fun way to get people to do something that usually ranks up there on the excitement scale with watching paint dry. So more power to them, especially considering that Kansas is the sixth-most disaster-prone state in the country. It's always good to get people prepared before disaster strikes, after all.

In fact, I might even urge Kansans to take it all one step further, since they are in the midst of their own self-induced slow-motion economic disaster. When Governor Brownback took the helm of the state, he declared that Kansas would soon become a shining example (a "real live experiment," in his words) to the rest of the country of how to successfully run a state on bedrock conservative Republican principles. Taxes were quickly slashed, with rosy predictions of economic booms to soon come.

Instead, what happened was nothing short of disastrous. As the Washington Post editorial board helpfully explains: "Wall Street's bond rating agencies, taking note of plummeting tax revenue and a siphoning off of the state's reserves to cover current and projected deficits, have weighed in with their own verdict: Moody's cut Kansas's credit rating last spring, and Standard & Poor's followed suit last month." The state is facing billions in deficit spending because, once again, the trickle-down economic theory just doesn't work.

Brownback is now facing a tough re-election fight and is trailing his Democratic opponent. Things have gotten so bad that over a hundred current and former Kansas Republican officials have thrown their support behind the Democrat, in a "please save us from ourselves" desperation move. This is in a state, mind you, where every single statewide office is currently held by Republicans.

Blind faith in conservative economic dogma is what caused this disaster. Refusing to do real-world math, in other words. The Post explains further:

Other Republican-led states have embarked on tax-cutting programs. But few if any have done so without a fail-safe designed to protect essential state services, such as mechanisms that would abort tax cuts if revenue drops, or allow them only after revenue rises. In the special case of Texas, a combination of rising immigration rates and a robust oil and gas sector buffered the economy from the effects of tax cuts.

Kansas has no such innate advantages. To the contrary, non-partisan budget analysts for the state legislature project that without new sources of revenue or even deeper spending cuts, the state faces some $1.3 billion in deficits in the coming five years. That's a big hill to climb in a state whose budget for general expenses is $6.3 billion.

Compare this economic record to another one-party state: California. You can easily see the difference between Democratic and Republican economic theory, in practice, by comparing the two states. California was in such an enormous ditch a few years back that the state's deficits were larger than most states' entire budgets. Governor Jerry Brown raised taxes on the wealthy, and is now poised to become the F.D.R. of California (he is up for re-election and is expected to skate easily to an unprecedented fourth term as governor), as California's economy roars back.

Which brings us back to our theme: the difference between the living and the dead. In reality, the only "walking dead" in Kansas is what might be called the reanimated corpse of Ronald Reagan's "voodoo economics." So here's hoping the state's voters think about zombies all throughout October, and then go to the ballot box in November and save Kansas from it's own imminent Republican economic apocalypse. By voting for the Democrat. That would be some real "disaster preparedness," wouldn't it?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant