Education Liberals Go Wobbly in Kentucky

What exactly does The Prichard Committee on Academic Excellence do in Kentucky? Since they have been "on" academic excellence since 1983, a cynic might conclude that they haven't been doing very much.

But I wasn't that cynical until I went and looked at their website and found that they seem to be little more than a lobbying group for education bureaucrats to demand more money for "education."

Sometimes they do say good things, like that students should work hard and parents should get involved, but their credibility was dealt a crushing blow today.

In much the same way that war protestors say Arabs can't handle democracy, teacher's union officials were thought to be the only people who could claim with a straight face that school choice wouldn't improve schools in poor Kentucky like it does in nearly all the states that outrank our state in scholastic achievement.

So it was in this spirit that the Bluegrass Institute challenged Pritchard's leader Robert Sexton do debate the merits of school choice.

Mr. Sexton took his opportunity to step up, and he punted it.

Republicans in the General Assembly absolutely must take on education improvement issues in the 2006 session. They can start with getting rid of the discredited CATS testing and then move on to school choice. The Democrats have no bullets left in this gunfight. Now is the time.

Grassroots Tax Reform

Take a look here at the latest discussion of the Fair Tax. The people are picking up where the politicians dropped the ball.

And don't look now, but FairTax supporting candidates are 8-0!

Clinton Secretary of State Reads Liberal Blogs

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright can't get it right as Democrats continue to ignore Sen. Harry Reid's good advice to stop talking about the war.

Speaking on the Meet the Press program, Albright repeated the war protestor/liberal blogger/mainstream Democrat talking point that President Bush claimed Iraq was an imminent threat.

For the one millionth time, President Bush told us that if we waited until Iraq was an "imminent threat" it would then be too late.

Republicans have had their problems for the last year or so. But the craziness coming from the loyal opposition on the economy, war, and social/spending/entitlement issues makes it easier for the few bad actors in the GOP to skate by.

Just keep calling Bush a liar, guys. The opportunity that you are throwing away is not only damaging to your party, but also to your country.

You should think about that.

Ken Lucas Opens Mouth, Shoots Self In Foot

Ken Lucas isn't going to run for Congress.

Democrat activists have been, well, active is trying to crank up momentum for a Lucas return to Kentucky's 4th Congressional district. This is coming on the heels of their effort to draft him to run for governor.

The former Congressman's comments about current events seem to be a trial balloon for the Democratic party line. That is unlikely to fly in northern Kentucky, and the next poll will probably convince Mr. Lucas to spend more time with his family.

Some highlights for the "conservative Democrat" file at NRCC headquarters:

"I voted with my commander-in-chief for the war because he said you don't want to see a mushroom cloud over New York or Washington," Lucas said. "It became apparent after the fact that the administration had pretty much made up their mind that they were going; it was just a question of coming up with the rationale."

It's funny that a lot of Democrat poll readers haven't yet figured out the nuances of voter discontent with the war effort. Until they do, they would be well served to take Harry Reid's advice and say nothing at all.

This following quote has special meaning for northern Kentuckians, who deeply understand the value of keeping government close to the people to keep elected officials accountable locally. It seems Lucas is still hot on the idea of consolidating local governments in the name of "efficiency."
"There's a lot of inefficiency in duplication all over Northern Kentucky," he said. "But you have smaller governments who are very protective of their turf. Really, for Northern Kentucky to make some more strides, there needs to be certainly more cooperation and consolidation."

League of Women Voters Dips Into Lexington Water

Central Kentucky observers who keep hoping for the water condemnation story to die are about to find themselves knee deep in the wet stuff all over again.

The League of Women Voters of Lexington have announced, via a small article in today's Herald Leader, that they have "studied" the condemnation issue and determined they are all for it.

This issue is not going away and truly conservative candidates at all levels in central Kentucky would do very well to embrace the issue and run on it.

Liberal Professor Calls God An Idiot

Here is an article about a Massachusetts professor who takes all his complaints about the human body and concludes that God must be an incompetent.

Kind of puts what they say about George Bush and Republicans into perspective, doesn't it?

Democrats Try To "Social Security" The War

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is urging Democrats to stop talking about the war so they can avoid uncomfortable circumstances like those presented recently by Howard Dean and the increasingly sane and sober Joe Lieberman.

"Just Say No" may be good politics for the Democrats. But the rest of us will spend this Christmas season praying they don't succeed in shutting down national defense the same way they succeeded in killing Social Security reform. After all, their "victory" on entitlements only costs us money.

America Wins, Democrats Lose

Today, 193 House Democrats voted against extension of the 2003 tax cuts. And yes, Ben Chandler went right along, voting to increase your taxes. Too bad for them, 225 Republicans voted the right way.

"It's for the rich," they will say over and over again. All the multi-millionaires who saw their 15% tax bracket drop to 10% under President Bush know better. The middle class families who will escape the punitive alternative minimum tax do too.

History will show the solid economic gains of the first decade of the 21st century happened despite a world-wide war effort like none before and with the assistance of tax cuts that were delivered by Republicans and fought by Democrats every step of the way.

They tried to "Murtha" the economy and they failed.

Good day.

KY Schools Can't Live With Or Shoot Private Schools

The Kentucky Board of Education is treating the state's private schools like Maureen Dowd wants to treats men: keeping them around for convenience but kicking them to the curb when they get too uppity.

Yesterday, the KBE refused to put an end to the KHSAA's bid to remove private school athletic teams from state playoffs. This comes in the same week we find the KY Department of Education can't show increasing ACT scores without taking credit for private and home schooled students' scores.

Bad week for public education in Kentucky.

No, Virginia, There is No Guaranteed Benefit

In ruling today that a Social Security recipient's benefits could be seized to pay delinquent student loans, the United States Supreme Court confirmed once again that there is no "guaranteed benefit" in Social Security.

Earlier this year, Congressional Democrats used their megaphone in the mainstream media to beat home the idea that Social Security benefits are guaranteed. This has definitively been untrue since the 1960 Flemming v. Nestor case stated that no such guarantee exists.

The existence of a "guaranteed benefit" was the cornerstone of Democrats' arguments against Social Security reform. Social Security will be insolvent in eleven years.

Sunlight V. Fake Blindness

Interesting article by Ryan Alessi this morning about fundraising in the Supreme Court race beween Justice John Roach and Judge Mary Noble.

It seems that Justice Roach is going to publicize campaign contributions more quickly than required by law. In response, Judge Noble told a group of fifty contributors, apparently to their faces, that she is going to pretend not to see any of them.

Is this what she thinks "justice is blind" means?

KY Ed. Officials Take Credit For Private ACT Scores

Each year, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) touts the ACT scores achieved by Kentucky high school students. What they don't say is that those scores are skewed upward by the inclusion of scores made by private school students in the state.

The KDE, a state government agency, plays no role in the education of nonpublic-school students.

Accountability for our public schools has been a key federal government issue since 2001. The Bluegrass Institute has published a report that points out this reporting discrepancy and asks why Kentucky's public school officials "would rather hide behind the stellar performance of Kentucky’s nonpublic-school students than acknowledge more than a decade of stagnation in the commonwealth’s public schools. "

KDE spokeswoman Lisa Gross addressed the question by questioning the motives of BIPPS researcher Richard Innes.

"We have concerns about Mr. Innes," Gross said. "I can't refute his numbers but his conclusion is that we are intentionally trying to mislead people. If we had time to do that, we would do a better job of it."

Gross said that scores of thousands of nonpublic students are included in the KDE press releases because the ACT reports them to the state that way. ACT confirms this.

But is the incorrect picture of state school achievement simply the cause of laziness or lack of curiosity on the part of school officials? Gross said it isn't.

"We don't have any way of breaking (public versus nonpublic results) out," she said.

Innes scoffed at this claim. He said that the state's Office of Education Accountability, part of the state's Legislative Research Commission and located less than three miles from KDE, has public school ACT results for individual students going back to 1990. Figuring out the difference between public and private results is then just a matter of subtracting the number of public school students and their scores out.

"It's a simple algebra equation," Innes said.

KY Budget Chairman Finance Scheme Uncovered

Rep. Harry Moberly (D-Richmond), Kentucky's House Budget Chairman, spent money he didn't have last year to keep his office in Frankfort. One full year after the election, he still owes more than $20,000 to a company owned by a Kentucky Democratic Party executive.

One interesting thing about this is that you can pull up "Harry Moberly" on the Ky. Registry of Election Finance website and find an erroneous positive balance $2437.29. This doesn't take into account, though, his carrover debt from last year. To find the truth you have to dig down to the PDF file which shows Moberly's one year old campaign debt of $21,698.45 still owed to Emmons & Company Inc.

Looking at this brings up a few questions: why is Harry Moberly in a position of responsibility over the state budget when he can't even balance his own campaign fund? If corporate campaign contributions are illegal, why is Moberly allowed to carry indefinitely a debt owed to a corporation? At some point doesn't that amount to the same thing? And why does the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance continue to show Moberly's balance nearly $25,000 higher than it actually is?

This budgeting scheme allowed Harry Moberly to spend much more money than he had to get elected. (Good enough for government work, I suppose.) As the Kentucky vote buying scandal works its way slowly to the courtroom, we see some Democrats have moved past bag men, vote haulers, booze and McDonald's coupons. The new trick is to get a corporate sponsor to spend huge chunks of money on a candidate, who can then show it as a carryover debt in perpetuity.

More Good News: Howard Dean Speaks

At the DNC meeting in Phoenix, Howard Dean pledged that Democrats will campaign in 2006 on taxpayer-provided health insurance for all, giving all illegal aliens legal status, and defense policy ranging from full surrender in Iraq in six months or going ahead and telling the terrorists to hide out for two more years (and pulling out then.)

The highlight, though, was when Dean suggested that Democrats have to talk even more about their core principles: "We have to stand up for what we believe."

Translation: "elect us to raise your taxes and spend it on HillaryCare for citizens and any Mexican who can swim. Then we will bring our soldiers home so they can fight terrorists from the comfort of our American cities."

Can't wait to see what they will stand up for next.

The Hillary Clinton Problem

Two serious conditions exist that keep me from feeling too smug about Hillary Clinton's visit to Louisville last night. Fortunately, a third even more serious one will ensure that Hurricane Hillary does most of her damage on the Democrat side of the street.

First the bad news: too many Americans have joined in this hatred of oil companies to take immediate advantage of the fact that Hillary covets the "amazing profits" of American oil companies. She would mandate taking an extra cut of those private funds to establish a government research and development bureaucracy to magically do with speed and without pain what the best scientific minds in the world have not managed to do in decades: replace fossil fuels with something cleaner and just as efficient. This would be a great jumping off point for showing that HillaryCare has been expanded to include Hillary Oil, but too many of the same people who used to understand free markets, supply and demand, and capitalism now concede the premises of the Left. Until so many forgetful Republicans stop taking their economic analysis from the politicians who have actually spun the current string of solid economic growth (not seen since the roaring 1980's, mind you) into the image of a soup kitchen catastrophe, do we have a chance to expose the folly of putting the government in charge of such an important function of our still-free economy.

Also, Democrats persist in railing against the cost of health care when their best answer continues to be to put that cost on the backs of the American taxpayer. A Republican bill currently before Congress would allow people to go across state lines to purchase private coverage. States that haven't fattened health policies with lard-like mandated coverages found in Kentucky, would be a safe haven for many Kentucky health insurance consumers. A private solution to a government-created problem. Again, until GOP "leaders" can put government-run health care for all into a proper perspective, the allure of the single-payer system will persist.

The good news, finally (and, I think, decisively) is about the war. Too many Americans understand (as the flower children don't) that we are in a battle for our survival. No amount of nuanced verbiage will get the Democrats out of the hole they dug for themselves by seeking naked political advantage over the struggle against terrorists. Hillary can be for the war but against torturing terrorists all day long. She won't be trusted when push comes to shove that she can make the tough war-time calls that President Bush has made. Yes, the polls show unhappiness with the war. But I think these negative numbers are lumping in peacenicks with those who would prefer large-scale bombing until everyone we want to capture is turned over by their host countries. The anti-war folks will keep the heat on Democrats and their own tortured positions will just continue to vacillate day by day. This politicking, along with economic Chicken Little-ism (we have ample soundbites of Dems giving the GOP policies all the credit for their imaginary horrible economic conditions) will betray them in 2006.

On a local note, it was interesting that Jonathan Miller showed at the HillaryFest. Could this mean that he is taking himself off the stage in 2007? Or could it mean that he hopes to run as LG to non-attending Crit Luallen in an attempt to broaden a base for that ticket (we are both for and against Hillary!!!)?

Campus Pro-Life Group Making An Impact

On a night that the Democratic Party of Kentucky is meeting with none other than Hillary Clinton to figure out what they stand for, it is wonderful to see the good work that some young people at the University of Kentucky are doing.

They are the UK Students for Life. This week, when the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, UK Feminist Alliance, and other abortion groups staged a forum on campus to discuss abortion, more than two dozen members of UK Students for Life came, listened, and peacefully made their points.

Congratulations to the UK Students for Life and best wishes for continued success!

UP NEXT: TED KENNEDY!!!

On the eve of the Hillary Clinton visit to Kentucky (or, according to Sen. Julian Carroll, just Louisville), Kentucky's Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Lundergan announced this morning that none other than Ted Kennedy may be next.

I was a guest on the Sue Wylie Show talking about why Republicans are as excited about tomorrow's fundraiser as "conservative" Democrats are demoralized about it. Maybe we should start calling them non-liberals.

Anyway, Chairman Lundergan called in. He admitted that the Hillary visit was his idea and then dropped the bomb: Ted Kennedy may be next.

A caller suggested that anything that helped Democrats get their message out was good. I couldn't agree more.

At Least He Isn't Our Governor

I've been looking for a reason not to post something about a comment by Rep. Ben Chandler this morning. The conventional wisdom holds that he can do little real harm for now from his minority position in the Congress. While that is true (hey, he could be governor!), it is immensely distressing to see such political strength vested in someone with so few actual accomplishments. Nevertheless, there seems to be little hope to gain traction against him and his policy positions even though Congressman Ben Chandler says things like this:

"The upper echelon of people in this country are not being asked to sacrifice anything and they are being given huge tax cuts."

What planet is this guy from, really? Anyone? In a nation whose government is financed by this "upper echelon" he has such a problem with and in a state where most ambitious people strive to climb to the upper reaches of the income scale, one would think that blind, stupid, hateful, and wrong statements like this would carry a price. No such luck when the rhetoric comes from the top Democrat in Kentucky.

Comrade Chandler made his comments this morning on the Jack Pattie Show in Lexington.

Kids Want More, Education Officials Want Less

Saw a very interesting gap between Kentucky high school students and the state's education bureaucrats in two stories in state newspapers. First, the Kentucky Post reports that students want tougher academic standards in public schools. Then, as if on cue, the Louisville Courier Journal reports on a proposal from education bureaucrats asking the federal government to lower the expectations the schools are held to.

I say we go with the kids on this one.

The Kentucky Department of Education wants the 2001 federal standards lowered for them by shifting the focus of testing from reading and math to include social studies, "practical living" (good grief!), and arts and humanities. I'm not sure what they mean by practical living, but suspect they want a pass if our high school students can show mastery of shoe tying skills. Further, they want to lower even the appearance of accountability by dropping annual test requirements and going to every other year. And then, of course, they want a reprieve from the requirement to allow students to transfer from failing schools after two years, making it three instead. That is what this is all about -- resisting calls to increase standards and accountability for doing what schools are paid tax dollars to do.

What we have here are divergent interests. Our children know that their very survival in the knowledge-based economy depends on how much they know. Too many education officials are bureaucratic drones who are too focused on preserving their own cushy jobs without too much work.

Again, I suggest we go with the kids on this one and let the managers of the public school system sweat a little bit.

From a political perspective, I think education could be the perfect wedge issue. Democrats in Kentucky have presided over mediocre results for decades. Republicans should show the courage to make them answer for their failure. Let's make Democrat lawmakers choose between children and their teachers' union supporters.

Hurricane Hillary Hits Friday

Sen. Julian Carroll (D-Mess in Frankfort) commenting today on the Sue Wylie Show about Hillary Clinton's visit to Kentucky:

"She's coming to Louisville. She's not coming to represent the values of Kentucky. She's coming to represent the values of Louisville."

Carroll admitted that he will be at the Louisville event and claimed that Sen. Clinton is trying to change her liberal image, just as he is. He suggested that Republicans are bad, but that he is just as conservative as they are.

There was another funny exchange with a caller in which Sen. Carroll confessed that he voted for John Kerry even though he says he had "disagreements" with "his morals."

This will be lots of fun watching the Democratic Party try to figure out who they are without completely self-destructing before the 2006 elections.