Like compromising with a grizzly bear

Former DNC Chairman Howard Dean's political organization is trying to sneak socialized medicine through in America by offering to allow American "the freedom to choose" between their private plan and a government plan like Medicare.

Don't take the bait. This will look great until the expanded Medicare program figures out that covering the only sickest people is too expensive. When the government program gets a politically unstoppable constituency built up, they will come after everyone else.

Obamanation pays its taxes

The Tax Foundation has out a new report showing that, if you count the projected budget deficit, Americans will spend more time working to pay taxes than ever before.

Tax Freedom Day is May 29.

By the way, Tax Freedom Day without the deficit is April 13. This is earlier than last year because incomes -- and tax receipts -- are down. That does us no good, of course, because spending keeps going up.

Kentucky's Tax Freedom Day is this Friday, April 3. It's also earlier than last year. It also doesn't help anything.

Lowering dependency on government isn't on the agenda, but that would help a lot.

Picking two points and hammering them home

The Kentucky Club for Growth's Andy Hightower has a great way of putting things:

"It's the most irresponsible thing our leadership regularly practices, and it's apparently killing people."

He's talking about, of course, the $30 billion public employee benefits disaster in Frankfort. There are really two points that matter in this discussion: that benefits are too high for government employees and that even that would be okay if we had properly funded them for the last few decades.

Andy jumps all over both of them right here.

Kentucky American Water still running strong

If former Lexington Mayor Teresa Isaac had her way in taking over Lexington's private water company, the April 7 Public Service Commission rate hearing at Bryan Station High School wouldn't be scheduled.

Instead, the city would ram through any rate increase it wanted in addition to making interest payments it couldn't afford to buy the company.

Kentucky American had requested an $18.5 million annual rate increase. Instead, they are now applying for a $10.3 million increase.

McConnell sounding more like Bunning

Sen. Mitch McConnell had this to say today about the continuing bailout mess:

"In spite of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and many promises to reform the way they do business, it’s clear that management, unions and investors have not yet produced viable plans that would allow the companies to survive without massive infusions of taxpayer dollars. This is a disappointment: How many times do the taxpayers have to provide bailout money on the promise of reform?"
"We are now told these two companies are getting their last check from the taxpayers, and that if they don't finally come up with truly viable plans then they'll be forced into bankruptcy. Unfortunately, we've heard this before, from both this and the previous administrations."

Paper gears up for April Fool's Day Massacre

Two days before Kentucky's cigarette taxes go up, the Lexington Herald Leader just had to send a reporter out to learn the obvious about people changing their buying behaviors ahead of the April 1 increase.

Of course, they didn't manage to find anyone who will be shipping cigarettes in from Missouri. They darn sure didn't talk to any taxpayers who are concerned that these increases won't be enough and that something other than just more tax increases, more reckless borrowing, and more pension raids might help.

Will David Williams betray us again?

Last fall when the Louisville Courier Journal ran a news story about how the Senate was warming to the idea of raising taxes, it was pretty easy to be skeptical. After all, Sen. David Williams and the Republican majority had spoken clearly about their opposition.

We all know how that worked out.

So, when the CJ reported on Sunday -- without quoting anyone -- that legislators are coming around to House Speaker Greg Stumbo's side on expanding government with casino gambling, it was tough not to imagine that Williams is going squishy again.

In fact, I'd almost bet on it.

Conway not so hot on Mongiardo

Lieutenant Dan Goes to Washington?
By Leland Conway
So Lieutenant Dan (Lt. Governor, Dr. Daniel Mongiardo) wants to become the Jr. Senator from Kentucky? Let’s examine this proposal for a moment.

Lieutenant Dan was one of the first major Kentucky politicians to endorse President Obama who lost the state of Kentucky by a nearly 20 point margin in the presidential election. Contrary to left wing media fabrications, Obama did not lose Kentucky because we are racist, but because we were smart enough to recognize that the platform upon which Obama ran was dangerous to our economic future and contradictory to our system of values.

When Governor Steve Beshear endorsed Lieutenant Dan for Senate last week, he said that Mongiardo’s priorities "mirror the priorities being articulated by the Obama administration at this defining hour for our country." The implications of this statement are staggering.
First and foremost there is the economy. President Barack Obama’s economic policies, which include cap and trade will do nothing less than obliterate the Kentucky economy. Our state gets over 70% of its energy from coal. We’re not a very business friendly state, which the current governor has done nothing to fix, but one of the few advantages we still have over lower taxing neighbor states is cheap energy. Coal produced energy is also one of our largest exports. Many of the liberals from western states who condemn us for our use of “dirty coal”, actually enjoy the fruits of our labor.

President Obama plans to introduce cap and trade legislation to save the planet from mythical global warming. Actually, this is the largest wealth confiscation in global history. Obama is on the record as saying that “energy prices will skyrocket.” His Vice President Joe Biden has said, “There’s no such thing as clean coal” and “No more coal fired plants in America…build them in China if they want to build them.” What does this say about the Kentucky economy? Prepare to be laid waste to.

Another important issue to Kentuckians is values. Obama not only supported, but fought for legislation in the Illinois State House that would terminate the lives of babies who survived abortion procedures. Maybe that’s ok in Chicago, but In Kentucky we consider life to be pretty important. Religious arguments aside, Life is an American value. That’s why the founding fathers listed it first when they said we all had the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Kentuckians are also a member of that now infamous group that President Obama said “clings to our guns and our God…” As a member of this group, I am not ashamed. But Obama has displayed his antagonism toward gun owners clearly. While saying on the campaign trail that he favors the second amendment for “hunting purposes” he has also been a stalwart supporter of anti-gun legislation throughout his entire political career.

People in the main stream media are catching on to Barack Obama now. One Main Stream report pointed out that he has broken no less than fourteen major campaign promises in the two months since taking office.

These reports are wrong. He’s not breaking promises, he’s keeping them. Only the promises he’s keeping are the ones he made to his more radical left wing supporters long before he became known to the rest of America. What we are seeing now is the real character of the left wing extremist who we’ve elected to “change America.”

With that in mind, and given that Lieutenant Dan would “mirror the priorities being articulated by the Obama administration...” we must ask if it is possible then for him to truly mirror the priorities of his constituents?

Next up: Madison County Tea Party

The Bluegrass Institute is helping put together a Tea Party in Richmond on Saturday, April 11 from 4 pm to 6 pm in front of Wallingford Broadcasting at 128 Big Hill Avenue.

They don't want you to know about health freedom

A Lexington attorney representing plaintiffs seeking only to opt out of the federal Medicare program is getting more national attention online as his case heats up:

"Why, though, would someone choose to forgo health coverage for which one has already paid? Opting out of Medicare may be legal, but is it smart? Mr Brown explained that there are many reasons why someone might choose to decline it, including the desire to make one's own health care decisions without government intervention. Folks see what's happening in England, for example, and want no part of that."

Kent Masterson Brown got a lot of attention locally as a speaker at the Kentucky Tea Party.

You may have read about this case first last fall in the Bluegrass Policy Blog, but the state's two largest newspapers have slept through the story.

Obama kiss of death smooches Mongiardo

Gov. Steve Beshear endorsed Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo's candidacy for U.S. Senate Friday afternoon, saying that Mongiardo's priorities "mirror the priorities being articulated by the Obama administration at this defining hour for our country."

That should go over well here, Governor.

Bush killed Nessie!

Some guy on ABC's Good Morning America just suggested that global warming killed the Loch Ness Monster.

Yeah, I thought that would do it.

If only we had passed an economy-killing environmental tax years earlier, Nessie would surely still be alive.

Bunning: Audit the Federal Reserve

Sen. Jim Bunning joined Sen. Russ Feingold and Sen. Bernie Sanders in sponsoring a budget amendment to force an audit of the Federal Reserve. The amendment would also require the Fed to say who it lends money to:

"The Federal Reserve has been printing money that the United States government doesn’t have the backing for and handing it out to banks with no accountability to the American taxpayers. I have asked the Fed repeatedly to disclose who is benefitting from all this printed money, but have yet to receive an answer."

Broke, stoned, and moving to Kentucky?

West Virginia is considering drug testing welfare recipients.

Kentucky's previous efforts to do the same have failed in the House of Representatives.

Republicans and, oh, just all the facts

The Herald Leader and Courier Journal have been wailing for weeks on their news and editorial pages about the successful effort to end CATS testing, so it is no surprise to see them continue that today as Gov. Steve Beshear signed Senate Bill 1 into law.

But it is disappointing to see the many problems with CATS that have been repeatedly and thoroughly documented by the Bluegrass Institute for several years dismissed by reporter Beth Musgrave like this:

No doubt that as the Kentucky mainstream media rolls out continued coverage of this story they will quote heavily education bureaucrats and people like the Prichard Committee who have making up excuses (and worse) for CATS non-stop over the years.

A newspaperman ponders economics

Alan Mutter, former editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, doesn't see the need to go along with Sen. Benjamin Cardin's (D-MD) plan to convert newspapers to non-profit status:

"While it was a nice gesture for the Democrat from Maryland to suggest a Newspaper Revitalization Act to enable non-profit ownership, he might as well try to repeal the laws of economics or gravity, instead. Regardless of whether a paper is owned by a non-profit organization or an unreconstructed capitalist, it has to take in more money than it spends – or it will perish. The form of ownership doesn’t change this fundamental truth."

Okay. Now that we have established that, can we somehow get past this silly idea that newspapers are the very glue holding our free society together?

Maybe then we can have a serious discussion about ending the practice of forcing taxpayers in Kentucky to fund newspapers here.

Good week for blogs, bad one for MSM

A day after bloggers clobbered the Lexington Herald Leader for trying to ignore the Kentucky Tea Party, little known Member of Parliament Daniel Hannan has the most watched video on YouTube.

For the uninitiated, that is a very big deal.

"How did it happen, in the absence of any media coverage? The answer is that political reporters no longer get to decide what’s news."

It's worth a few minutes to learn more about this tipping point. Read it here.

Is he a Blue Dog or an Obama Puppy?

Congressman Ben Chandler's silence about President Barack Obama's $3.6 trillion budget speaks volumes even though he has not made his position clear.


Put down the Kool-Aid, Congressman. Maybe it's time for someone to send him some tea.

Some needed perspective on CATS

The Louisville Courier Journal editorial board has never bothered to address the many problems with Kentucky's CATS school testing, mercifully laid to rest this spring. They were too busy calling teachers "lazy" and dreaming up more ways to slap at the Bluegrass Institute without actually printing the name.

Here's their latest from Wednesday's editorial page:

"That's more than one can say for the odd alliance of (1) Republicans who have opposed the Kentucky Education Reform Act since its passage; (2) reflexive right-wing opponents of public schools, and (3) teacher groups that find KERA too demanding."

Their latest approach is to complain about the three year period in which Kentucky transitions from inflated, discredited CATS testing to a something (anything) better.

Fortunately, Bluegrass Institute's education analyst Richard Innes explains why the three years is probably a good idea:

"Right now, relying on our teachers to carry the ball for a short period of time seems like a much better path to take than following the outdated and misguided CATS path for another three years. Apparently, our legislators agree, because they overwhelmingly passed the bill to revise our assessment program in both houses despite the tantrums a few are throwing in the print media."

Innes' four page report is available here.

A case study in common sense

A Kentucky Department of Insurance press release described the circumstances behind a guilty plea for insurance fraud. Seems a 70 year old woman hit another car with her car, left the scene, and then reported in her insurance claim that she hit a concrete post.

In Barack Obama-land, her auto insurer would be forced to keep her and would be prohibited from increasing her premiums.