Irresponsible: Ben Chandler v. Ronald McDonald

Not only did Rep. Ben Chandler vote against the bill to keep fast food junkies from suing the restaurants who "make them do it," he voted for an amendment to exempt youngsters under nine years old from the bill.

Hello? Congressman Chandler? These kids would need a parent to think of filing a lawsuit. The same parent who can't avoid eating crap shouldn't be able to seek damages for feeding it to his child. We don't need Congress underwriting more personal irresponsibility and stupidity.

Fortunately, as is usually the case with Chandler's silliness, he was on the short end of both votes.

An Example Of What Is Wrong With Public Schools

Today the Kentucky High School Athletic Association's Delegate Assembly voted to have separate sports championships for public and private schools. This outrageous act of cowardice was intended to benefit the public schools.

It will do the opposite.

Or it would, if this foolishness were to stand. Cooler heads are sure to prevail. But this was the act of school superintendents. It is this kind of thinking that will eventually sink the public schools in America. If you have to change the rules to make it look like you are improving, you aren't really fooling anyone but yourself.

KY Medicaid Reform: Just Follow Florida

The only way to diminish the devastating impact of the Merit Hiring scandal is to positively (and publicly) address some of the real problems facing Kentucky.

We don't have to re-invent the wheel on Medicaid.

Check this out. We may need to open up the market to more insurance companies first, by dropping some of the mandated coverages. But we do need to act.

The big problem with Kentucky's health insurance legislation is that it treats people like idiots. Give us some choices and we may surprise some in their ivory towers with our decision-making ability.

Protect Your Children; Legalize Drugs Now

The War on Drugs has only caused the price of drugs to go higher and the violent crime rate to go up higher still. Think of the huge number of robberies and burglaries committed by drug addicts. They need your money to buy their drugs and they need your money again when they face treatment or incarceration.

Do you agree that drugs would be cheaper if people didn't have to risk their lives to buy or sell them?

Does it make sense to you that if law enforcement resources were removed from trying to stop the drug trade, then we could deal more effectively with the bad effects of the drug trade?

When we put the cart before the horse, we get no gain from either the cart or the horse. Drug criminalization is no different than alcohol prohibition. Ending the 1920's prohibition didn't cause the end of the world. In fact, by lowering the risk premium attached to making and selling alcohol, we reduced significantly the collateral damage caused by those evading that law. Ending the real quagmire, the War on Drugs, will give us a different looking world. Watching someone walk quietly down the street smoking a joint will take some getting used to. But the result would undeniably be safer cities and neighborhoods in which to raise our children. Don't you agree?

Conservative Revolution in Kentucky Coming To Web

Idea #1: Rather than spending time giving away refurbished state computers to kids, Frankfort's leaders would do well to eliminate state income taxes.

The No Child Left Offline initiative doesn't even sound like a good idea. There is no magic involved in giving a child a computer. Give him a fish and he eats for a day. Give him a computer and guarantee easy access to porn (and a learning tool of very limited value). Give him a stack of worn-out paperback classic novels and if he doesn't read them, they will do him more good than an expensive word processor/game box. The smallest public libraries offer online access for free.

We clearly need some fresh ideas. Bringing health insurance companies back into the state could be done and the ideological battle to make it happen would be extremely healthy in the current environment. Balancing the Medicaid budget could work the same way. Instead we are screwing around helping Lexmark market printer cartridges and ISPs expand their reach with a stunt like this.

Conservative Magazine Lists Favorite Legislators

Conservative weekly mag Human Events has issued a list of its ten favorite Senators and House members.

Kentucky got no mention on the Senate side, but freshman Congressman Geoff Davis came in at number nine on the House list.

Rep. Davis' strong support for the war and for making the Bush tax cuts permanent make up for his opposition to Social Security personal accounts. As of our last conversation he was not committed to a particular tax reform plan. At the age of 46, Davis will likely be smacking the left down for a long time.

One suggestion, though: Rep. Davis would do well to join Reps. Northup and Lewis on the Republican Study Committee, the group seeking to cut wasteful government spending to finance the Katrina bailout.

Grayson's Star Keeps Rising

Secretary of State Trey Grayson hits another home run with his proposal to allow gubernatorial hopefuls to hold off on naming a running mate until after the primary. Expect him to get bi-partisan kudos for this. Might such a move benefit the Dems in 2007? Sure, maybe. But it just might help the GOP at the same time.

Kentucky Democrats' Next Line of Attack

Wondering where the next attack on Gov. Ernie Fletcher is going to come from? Think Governor's Mansion renovation. The effort to fix up the poorly maintained Frankfort residence obviously requires a lot of money. That means fundraising. And clearly that means charges of shakedown and influence peddling. How the Governor's political team handles this hanging curveball will show quickly if any lessons have been learned during the merit hiring debacle.

Here's hoping...

$172,500 A Year?!?!

Any time a newspaper story has the byline John Cheves, you know that any Republican in the story is going to be portrayed in a negative light.

Jerry Lundergan and Charles Wells get paid to say bad things about Republicans and they have a field day on this one.

The problem is that they have a point about the new Office of Merit System Referrals and the Fletcher Administration is just going to look worse the more they try to spin this back the other way.

Has anyone talked to Hal Rogers since that story about which members of Congress support the Governor? The Louisville Arena, another dime on the cigarette tax, and now this.

What's next? I hate to even think about it.

LexTran Taxer Running For City Council

Local tax bills are hitting mailboxes this week and they include a line for the "LexTran Tax." Fayette county voters passed a referendum last year to hit themselves with this one and the time has come to pay up.

The good news is that the manager of the campaign to hit you with this tax is running for the Lexington City Council's 7th district. His name is Justin Dobbs. Conservatives in the District have a candidate to beat him. (Not ready to go public with the name yet, though.) When she does announce though, conservatives from all over the state would do well to send her a few dollars.

Whither the Conservative Movement?

I'm not too upset about the Harriet Miers nomination. I think too many conservative pundits are forgetting that a half dozen Republican U.S. Senators are admittedly pro-abortion and not part of the conservative movement. That leaves the President with the challenge of getting Supreme Court nominees through a chamber ruled by liberals.

I was eager for a fight over a serious conservative jurist as well, but Miers will get confirmed. Better to get a so-so candidate through than to see the perfect nominee squashed by our own Judiciary Committee Chairman.

More important is the work going on behind the scenes at the President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform. Yesterday, the panel voted to discard the Fair Tax from consideration. Short-sighted partisanship has so far prevented elected Democrats from getting on board with this, but a lot of normal people registered as Democrats (and are less interested in empowering liberal politicians than in getting government off the backs of the middle class) are climbing on board.

The 2004 election cycle saw a lot of Democrat "leaders" lie about the Fair Tax. The interesting thing to me is that as we watch the President's people coming up short on another issue, we have the prospect of a Reaganesque conservative revolution seemingly building up a head of steam as a revolt against a Republican administration.

That Karl Rove really is a genius, isn't he?

A Fight Worth Fighting

You thought 2005 was not going to be an election year in Kentucky. You may still be right, but if the KY Supreme Court caves in to some kooky Lexington xenophobics' desire to steal Kentucky American Water Company, Fayette county voters will head to the polls November 8.

It probably won't happen. The elected city council already decided early this year to end the condemnation effort of a handful of sclerotic leftists and their dutiful supporters. The Supreme Court should be able to quash their kibitzing based solely on this fact.

But the overreaching power grab of a dangerous opponent must be addressed quickly and decisively. This latest outrage by the people who call themselves Let Us Vote Lexington deserves swift retribution whether or not this issue comes to a vote four weeks from today.

Cuddly little muddle-headed Kentucky liberals have tried feebly for years to prop up their brand of public policy initiatives through judicial fiat. Their current day media-savvy comrades draw blood with bare knuckles, snappy slogans, and tight-fisted media control.

Their brand of persuasion works when most people aren't paying attention and get off the main issue.

The main issue here is that eminent domain abusers on the left have sought to overturn the 2004 Lexington city council races with an unconstitutional court battle to spend more public dollars for an unneccesary extra election to promote their political careers. Teresa Isaac and Ben Chandler are the two heads of this monster.

If you live in Lexington, go here and learn how you can help turn these people back. And if you don't live in Lexington but do live in Kentucky's Sixth district, call Ben Chandler and tell him to tell the FLOW people to quit crying and try to promote their government takings during election years. He won't do it, but he should be forced to talk about why he is on the unconstitutional side of this issue.

The Republican Opportunity For 2006

Primaries aren't a lot of fun, but they can help a truly dominant political party reload for future victories. Before its rapid decline, the Kentucky Democratic Party understood this. The old line about fighting like cats in May and having more cats by November has been told over and over as the reason for a nearly unbroken string of Democrat electoral wins.

KDP Chairman Jerry Lundergan doesn't want to play it that way any more. Lundergan told the Courier Journal that he is encouraging potential 2006 Democrat candidates not to engage in primaries. That sounds good to me.

I'm not saying that the GOP should actively seek primaries. We will be better off when widespread Republican primaries are more the rule than the exception, but it will have to develop on its own. I am just enjoying the fact that Democrats are having to come to grips with their erosion of support that is causing them to admit to fixing primaries. Your county clerk may still tell new voters that they have to register Democrat to vote in the primaries, but the reality is that those days are over.

The simple fact remains that the far-left segment of our society is propped up by the more sane Democrats. We can rage against Ernesto Scorsone and Mary Lou Marzian all we want to, but their districts keep sending them back. The Republican party will only reach majority status in Kentucky by pointing out that "conservative" Democrats are the real problem. Continuing to take those of sensible middle-American values out of the Democratic Party causes the anti-war, anti-capitalist goons lose their voice and their influence.

The target for 2006 in Kentucky must be disaffected conservative Democrat-registered voters. The message is that the middle-of-the-road Democrat office holders are lending credibility to those with the worst ideas. Giving so-called "conservative" Democrats a pass because they "aren't so bad" misses the point and stands as the major roadblock to real progress in our state. Problematic Republicans will become much easier to deal with in a single-front effort.

KDP is holding the door open for us. We just have to bust on through.

Go Ahead: Overturn Roe V. Wade

Maybe you have heard the liberal talking point that conservatives don't really want to overturn Roe V. Wade because we would then no longer have the "abortion issue" to campaign on.

That's bunk.

While I don't doubt that some Republicans may subscribe to this line of reasoning, it couldn't be further from reality.

Overturning Roe, first of all, won't make abortion illegal everywhere. It would just return the decision to the states. Secondly, the phantom "privacy rights" used to interpret abortion on demand into the Constitution could just as easily be interpreted back in if a conservative Supreme Court were to one day be reversed. The battle would rage on unabated.

President Bush may well get a third Supreme Court nominee. After out-flanking the Democrats again with the Miers nomination, we may well see some progress on this front. I hope we embrace it.

Capitol Hill sources say that the President's initiatives will pop up in rapid-fire succession just after the middle of this month. Conservatism itself faces a put up or shut up moment. Do not flinch.

The Rep. Carr party switch is nice, but little more. Saying that the Democratic Party is no place for a conservative Christian is true, but it is merely stating the obvious. Now is not the time to take our eye of the ball by cheering a minor victory. Social Security reform, Medicaid reform, and federal tax reform are coming very soon. Democrats will be out to wreck the 2006 Ky. General Assembly session just as their Washington counterparts have done on the federal level. These are historic times. May we take full advantage of them.

Is The Lexington Herald Leader A Racist Paper?

Two Lexington H-L articles jumped out at me today. One was a news story based on an African American state legislator's concerns about increasing academic standards and the resulting decrease in the admission of black freshmen. The other was an editorial that criticized the University of Kentucky for not graduating a sufficient number of African American students.

I knew in college several African American students who benefitted from special admissions preferences. They got help getting in the door, but those who got degrees earned them.

Community colleges, private schools, and online courses make higher education available to just about anyone. I think that a case can be made, however, for racial preferences in the admissions process at public universities. In any event, I'm not much interested in that fight here.

What is astounding to me is that the Lexington Herald Leader would, in 2005, suggest that UK President Lee Todd deserves punishment for not handing out more degrees to African American students.

Another fine example of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" indeed.

Rare Bipartisanship Shines Light On Frankfort

A raging battle between the Bowling Green think tank Bluegrass Institute (the Courier Journal called them a "conservative propaganda mill") and Frankfort's Legislative Research Commission over online publication of legislators' voting records seems to have broken in favor of the public interest.

Legislators who have hidden behind phony labels for years will soon have to face greater scrutiny for their official actions.

The LRC today agreed to make complete voting records publicly available on their website January 3, 2006. This action comes after weeks of LRC intransigence in the face of repeated requests from the Bluegrass Institute to make the records available electronically. BI has put up a website at www.KentuckyVotes.org that will give citizens unprecedented ability to analyze their representatives' actions.

It took both Senate President David Williams and House Speaker Jody Richards to get this done. Kudos to both of them.

Bringing Delaware To Kentucky

The Kentucky Democratic Party is bringing in Senator Joe "Howard Dean does not speak for me" Biden to the Bluegrass State October 22 to raise money.

So it's official. Republican-lite is in and Smash-mouth Deaniac ranting is out. While that is welcome progress for a state party that refused to renounce Dean's screams this summer, bringing in America's most famous plagiarist surely won't do anything to inspire the party's "Surrender Now To Terrorists Abroad And Raise Taxes At Home" base.

The slogan for next year can be "Vote Democrat: We're Like Little Republicans."

Kentucky's GOP must not miss this great opportunity to bounce these bozos to permanent minority party status.

Socialized Medicine Goes For Smoke

These are ugly times for those who want to drain taxpayers to fund a government takeover of the healthcare industry.

Federal legislators from both parties are getting the message from constituents that government spending has gone too far. That would make it a bad time to try to sell HillaryCare to a public who knows better.

So here comes Plan B.

A group called Tobacco Free Alliance is pushing a scheme to get states to mandate coverage of smoking cessation products by health insurers.

The mandated coverages that have been forced on Kentucky's health insurers have kept premiums high here. This one is being sold as a cost-saver because of the social costs of smoking that, proponents assume, would decrease if only non-smokers are forced to pay for smokers' patches and nicotine gum. It's just another half-step toward a Canadian-style healthcare system.

No thanks. We need fewer mandates, not more.

There is a bill before Congress that would allow Kentuckians to buy health insurance from other states. That is what we really need. The slim Democrat House majority we are stuck with through the 2006 General Assembly session will cling to what remains of their disastrous 1994 reforms that destroyed the Kentucky health insurance market.

Time To Act On Merit Hiring Scandal

If you are not sick of hearing about the Merit Hiring Scandal, you haven't been paying attention.

The developments in this episode have reached a critical mass; news stories are writing themselves nearly every day and political opponents get to look smart by saying nothing.

And while the best legal defense strategy may well be underway, denying that there are serious problems with the political strategy is getting to be a little tough.

I know that the public hasn't been fully engrossed in this debacle yet, but the Governor's own people have already written the Democrats' fundraising letters, speeches, and campaign commercials for them. Under normal circumstances, I'm all for waiting for the pendulum to reverse course, but this isn't your garden variety failure to communicate.

Lots of people are whispering about what might happen next. Here's a likely scenario: the 2006 legislative session is going to include several bills on merit hiring. Public discussion of each will dredge back up the whole thing. The environment for the 2006 elections can be saved, but not at the rate and in the direction we are going now. The scene in 2007 could be even worse.

The governor's race for 2007 has indeed started. The '06 House and Senate races will be impacted by all this too. Actually, it has already happened. GOP candidate recruitment is way down from this time in the last cycle, when first-time candidates were jumping up to get involved in the conservative revolution in Kentucky.

Making a clean break from recent events is looking more imperative every day.

I worked hard to help get Governor Fletcher elected. I would do it again. In fact, if he is the nominee in 2007, I will support him again. But I would be hoping for a very weak Democrat nominee. Governor Fletcher was very brave to attempt a fumigation of Frankfort. Smoking out the insurgents left over from previous administrations and set on destroying his was a battle he could have won, perhaps, but didn't.

Clumsiness and overeagerness may have been the primary culprits in this scandal. Maybe it was worse than that. I don't know. But it really doesn't matter much anymore, does it? The damage has been done and repairing it must begin immediately.

Maybe Governor Fletcher thrives on the chaos. Maybe he can cobble together enough of a list of accomplishments to garner support and win re-election. Maybe.

The Kentucky GOP Executive Committee did the right thing in refusing to throw Darrell Brock overboard when Governor Fletcher asked them to. It didn't take a great deal of insight to see that coming. Too many active Republicans are too disgusted over this whole mess to play along when given the opportunity to express discontent. Not that Darrell has cause to rest easy. But this isn't about him yet.

Kentucky Republicans' greatest strength right now is that Democrats have no coherent vision and no ideas. That may help Republicans win an election or two more, but it doesn't help us regain the moral authority to govern. Only Ernie Fletcher's resignation can do that.

Louie Nunn couldn't run for re-election, but the aftermath of his term was thirty two years of Democrat domination. The current situation is much more applicable to Richard Nixon. He resigned before his troubles destroyed his party. Ernie Fletcher should do the same.

Or... quit fighting Greg Stumbo and start fighting for Kentuckians. The widespread perception that this isn't happening is the real reason for the depth of the current mess. The Governor may have one last chance, but the window is closing very quickly.

Senate's Top Democrat Stuck On No

Harry Reid's threat to vote against John Roberts for the Supreme Court is merely the first shot in the battle for the next nominee. As it becomes increasingly likely that Chief Justice Rehnquist will be replaced by another conservative, the left has to hope that they can force President Bush to nominate a moderate next.

Bush won't play Reid's game. The fireworks that result from this clash will likely bring back up the filibuster. And that re-opens the door for his second term agenda to go into high gear. That's Social Security reform and Tax reform, folks.

And now that Tom Delay has everyone talking about cutting spending, expect some big news on that front very soon as well.