Some hope for Kentucky public education

In a surprising Friday afternoon move, Kentucky's education bureaucracy gave House Democrats permission to vote for higher math standards in Kentucky schools.

Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence Executive Director Robert Sexton gave the official green light.

"Senator Dan Kelly has introduced Senate Joint Resolution 19," Sexton said, "aimed at revising the state’s mathematics content standards and related assessments based upon National Council of Teachers of Mathematics recommendations. I like this legislation because it starts to move Kentucky toward fewer, clearer, and deeper standards."

Now we need to take similar steps for English and science instruction.

Day five of Newberry videotape scandal

Still no word from the city of Lexington about where they hid the thirty minutes of embarrassing video of Fayette County Detention Center Director Ron Bishop catching flak for just a tiny bit of the problems relating to his mismanagement of the city jail.

Also, there can be no doubt that Lexington's fearless watchdogs in the mainstream media would be all over this if they weren't covering for Newberry.

It's the same story again and again.

Ohio Gov. Strickland: move to Kentucky

Funny quote about proposed education reforms by Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland in yesterday's Cincinnati.com:

"Earlier in the day, Strickland took a hard line on one of the most radical ideas - adding almost a full month to the school year. If new teachers are unhappy with a longer school year in Ohio, or his proposed four-year resident-training requirement, he said they are welcome to work in other states such as Kentucky."

""... If a teacher says, 'I'm going to teach in Kentucky instead of Ohio because the school day or the school year is longer in Ohio,' I would say to them, 'Move to Lexington or Louisville or Hazard," Strickland said."

Must be some pretty good stuff in that Ohio reform proposal, right?

Not so fast, says Bluegrass Institute education analyst Richard Innes:

"What Ohio’s situation really shows is the deplorable lack of decent education research to guide policymakers about what really does work in education. That problem has seen Kentucky chasing expensive education fads since 1990. Sadly, it now it looks like the same lack of data to support intelligent education choices is going to wreck havoc on the north side of the Ohio River."

Get more of Mr. Innes' analysis here.

Wonder how much this job pays?

The image below shows site reader data of this blog captured from a Lexington city government computer.

I think I liked Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry better when he was blocking this site from the view of on-the-clock employees.

Will Democrats be "racists" now?

The Republican National Committee appears to be about to elect Michael Steele to a two-year term as chairman.

Democrats will be dismissive and may well avoid, at least for the most part, the usual slurs a conservative African-American usually gets from the left.

Steele and the Republicans get to claim they are ready to move in a new direction.

We certainly need a viable alternative to the new regime in Washington. It will be interesting to watch.

Pull down one charade, put up another

Remember last November when the Louisville Courier Journal sent three reporters out to find substantial support in the Kentucky Senate for raising taxes?

They "found" it, but it just didn't pass the smell test. This passage from Bluegrass Policy Blog sums it up:

"The "substantial" support includes twenty Senators who said they would either vote for, consider, or not rule out a cigarette tax increase."

"In other words, there is insufficient support in the Senate for a cigarette tax increase."

Reality is slowly setting in:

A noncommittal answer from a politician is the same as a polite "no." The big tax increase parade to save the state from spending cut doom just isn't going to happen. Accept it and get ready for a combination of smallish spending cuts that solve nothing and massive borrowing we can't afford.

Tape erasing scandal belongs to Newberry

A full 24 hours since a report surfaced of erased videotape testimony in the ongoing Fayette County Detention Center scandals (here, here, here, and here), Lexington officials have neither responded nor provided the missing tape.

Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry shouldn't be allowed to hide from this one. Also, Councilman Kevin Stinnett, who chaired the meeting with the erased tape, has not returned a phone message from Wednesday.

Lessons about Rocky Mountain moochers

A report on Colorado's health insurance market suggests the much-repeated claim about government health insurance lowering healthcare costs is about as solid as the case for bigger government bailouts expanding failing government programs:

"This suggests that aside from gorging the coffers of those who want dysfunctional government health care programs expanded in order to crowd out all private medical arrangements, the massive SCHIP and Medicaid expansions in the pork-filled stimulus package will also raise costs for responsible people who pay for their own health care and health insurance."

More details here.

These are, of course, the same kind of reforms being brought to Kentuckians by our own Gov. Steve Beshear as fast as he can round up our money.

Didn't Richard Nixon try erasing tapes, too?

Online viewers eager to see Lexington Councilman Ed Lane blister Fayette County Detention Center Director Ron Bishop for his bad audit yesterday will be disappointed to see someone at the city edited out half of the Budget & Finance Committee meeting.

Missing is the half of the meeting in which Bishop was brought in to speak.

Wonder who would have done such a thing?

See it for yourself here. The first thirty minutes of the tape is full of commercials. Then the meeting starts at that point and the video ends mid-sentence at the one hour point.

Jack Conway's predatory rhetoric

Gov. Steve Beshear and Attorney General Jack Conway had a big time last fall calling gasoline retailers nasty names when worldwide oil demand caused prices to increase.

Given real-world concerns over possible supply disruptions and shortages in the wake of this week's ice storm, Conway is at it again. While some hot air might do us a little good, Conway's is at least good for one laugh:

Someone please buy Jack Conway a thesaurus before he tries to run for the U.S. Senate. Predatory pricing occurs when retailers seek competitive advantage by lowering retail prices below cost.

I'm assuming that's not what he meant to say.

Prichard should get out of the kitchen

The last thing Kentucky can afford now is clinging to the status quo, especially in cases where it has proven to be ineffective and counterproductive.

Enter the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, the chief protector of failed bureaucratic education policies that have held Kentucky back for decades.

The Bluegrass Institute's education analyst Richard Innes congratulated the Prichard folks for coming out of hiding to debate their policy positions a week ago when they started their own blog.

But now they appear to not be posting his comments. Bad form, Prichard. Here is my attempt to smoke them out:

Withstanding criticism of your ideas is hard work. And what kind of watchdog organization prohibits comments about unethical conduct? Could it be that Prichard just isn't up to the task of defending its practices?

They really don't have a clue, do they?

The following email just arrived from someone trying to help Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) run us into the ground even faster.

Read it. They are actually giddy about the money they get to spend.

God bless Jim Bunning.

If Sen. Mitch McConnell is upset with Sen. Jim Bunning for being right about the federal bailouts, he should say so. From the Lexington Herald Leader:

Stick it in his ear, Jim!

Rightsizing Knoxville

One Knox County, Tennessee commissioner has the right idea.

Knox County and Knoxville are facing growing pension deficits and County Commissioner Paul Pinkston suggests the county should sell the nursing home it owns.

What is a county doing owning a nursing home, anyway?

This is terrific. I know this isn't an ideal time for anyone to be selling off assets, but the principle is more important here. Getting government tenacles out of people's lives is worth taking a bath on a few assets.

Kentucky and its cities and counties should be taking notes.

By the way, a great quote from Knoxville Mayor Mike Ragsdale:

"We're going to have to be creative and do things more differently than we have in the past."

More differently, indeed.

Why Beshear might make Obama mad

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich famously embarrassed President Barack Obama, so Obama had him written out of the state bailout plan. Here is the language from the "stimulus package" bill:

Some have interpreted this to mean that if Blago isn't ousted, Illinois doesn't get the money. But that is not correct. Maybe if the "or" were an "and," but the way this is written it simply means the legislature would control the spending decisions rather than Blago, if he is still around.

Given Gov. Steve Beshear's hesitancy to make decisions in a timely manner on most things, maybe he will tick off Obama and get the same deal for Kentucky. I sure don't want to see Greg Stumbo and David Williams fighting over how to spend borrowed federal tax dollars, but Beshear might find this a handy way to take the pressure off himself.

Can Edye Dabney dance?

Lexington's joint airport strippers and jail phone account scandals may be about to grow a third leg now that the Fayette County Detention Center is refusing to account for their "recreation" budget with the YMCA of Central Kentucky.

Meanwhile, jail officials are skirting the hiring freeze in Lexington as well as city job posting ordinances by sneaking Acting Assistant Director Edye Dabney into a permanent position.

I'm sure Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry's spokeswoman Susan Straub will tell any members of the media who call that none of this is true.

More proof Kentucky turning into France

This should help make the case for cutting out state welfare for Kentucky newspapers. Specifically, Kentucky must immediately stop forcing government agencies to buy newspaper advertising for public announcements. As a fine example of what this kind of cronyism can lead to, France is pulling out all the stops to bail out their dead tree media:

Thanks to Andy Roth at the national Club for Growth (not to be confused with the Kentucky Club) for passing this along.

Dead Chinese student roils Lexington jail

Federal investigators appear to be digging deeply into Fayette County Detention Center Corporal Charlotte Trotter's role in the suspicious death of a University of Kentucky doctoral student named Dong Zhang back on June 22, 2004 at the jail.

FCDC Director Ron Bishop doesn't want you to know about this. Neither, one assumes, does the Lexington Herald Leader.

(Also, I'd really like to know why college students all over the world are coming to this site via Google to read about Dong Zhang. Will someone please tell me?)

Are Beshear and Newberry on same page?

The World Equestrian Games is shaping up to be a massive taxpayer soaking.

Even if the 2010 event in Lexington goes well, it will be much more expensive than we are being lead to believe. If it gets ugly -- and it looks pretty ugly now -- it will be very embarrassing as well as costly.

We need some public assurances that organizers know what they are doing. Maybe we should get Gov. Steve Beshear and Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry in separate rooms and see who gives up the other one first.

Finally, an optimist!

Don't let them fool you: opportunities are plentiful in a recession. Fortunes will be made buying distressed assets from distressed owners. Stronger manufacturers and service providers will emerge as inefficient ones find other things to do better.

And, on the flip side, big-government politicians will use general feelings of uncertainty to increase their own power.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford will have none of that, though. He says he is actually having fun right-sizing government in the current environment.

From Stateline.org: