Good Job By WaPo On Medicare Drug Story

The Washington Post sheds welcome light on the Medicare prescription drug story. The Bush administration deserves all the blame for not selling the "success" of the plan. Democrats' will fix it by making it worse, as the story suggests. As much as I wish the new benefit had coincided with some benefit cuts in the rest of Medicare, now is the time to support the current plan rather than the Al Gore plan they want to stick us with now.

Bluegrass Institute Takes Swipe At Fletcher

All the states surrounding Kentucky have better business tax climates than we do, according to The Tax Foundation. West Virginia is next-to-last.

The Bluegrass Institute points out West Virginia is at least moving in the right direction.

Seniors Shacking Up For The Money

The looming crisis in Social Security should not necessitate the current policy that reduces payments to recipients who get married.

Selling Socialized Medicine As Corporate Welfare

It looks like what is left of America's Big Three automakers wants to build support in Washington D.C. for a scheme that would shift a chunk of their health insurance costs to taxpayers.

Brilliant. A Detroit bail-out is just what we need right now.

In fact, what we really need is for newly empowered Congressional Democrats to be cramming this stuff down our throats as some kind of compromise between market-based reforms and Canadian-style government health insurance.

Shifting health insurance costs to taxpayers as a way to somehow magically save money just doesn't make sense at all.

Hybrid Scholarships A Bad Idea

Merit scholarships go to students with certain accomplishments. Need-based scholarships go to students with limited means. Some people in Minnesota want to set up a taxpayer-funded merit scholarship that will direct $50 million a year to pay low income students to get good grades in college prep high school courses.

It's a recipe for college tuition inflation. They might just save the $50 million and print up a graph depicting how much more money college graduates make than those who fail to earn degrees. Show the graph repeatedly to middle school kids.

Save the money. Inspire some kids. Call it a day.

Three Years Of Spinning Iraq Into Vietnam

If you care about the truth in Iraq, here it is.

Taxpayer-Backed Borrowing To Buy Cable TV

Here is one thing government really shouldn't be involved in.

Let's Be Clear About One Thing

The Washington Post picks up the story today that Social Security is "on the table" for discussion again. The Democrats scored their points this time by yammering about how horrible and risky our nation's financial markets are, while propping up an out-dated entitlement program whose collapse will make Black Monday look like a Sunday walk in the park.

The article states as fact about Democrats and personal Social Security accounts "many of them oppose such accounts on the grounds that they would weaken Social Security overall."

As more and more Americans invest in the markets and see good results for doing so, we should continue to ask them how better investment returns would weaken Social Security.

That case will only get harder and harder to make. Watching them continue to try will be fun and, ultimately, rewarding for those who stick to the facts about this key issue.

Improving Health Care In Kentucky

Expensive mandated coverages contribute to high health insurance premiums in Kentucky. There is insufficient sentiment in Frankfort to change this for us.

The answer is to allow Kentuckians to choose policies from different states that offer less expensive policies. A bill that has been in Congress for a while would do that.

The key to successful health care reform is to allow the private sector to help as many people as possible. State regulation may be necessary to provide consumer protections, but the legislature has expanded that regulation dangerously -- and expensively. If state regulators policed the market to protect against fraud but federal law were changed to enhance consumer choice with regard to policy benefit structure, family budgets would be less strained by coverages that don't fit their needs and uninsured people would find the market less expensive to participate in.

Kentuckians would benefit from Arizona Congressman John Shadegg's Health Care Choice Act.

Dyche Gambles With Libertarianism

The libertarian case for casino gambling in Kentucky demands the kind of opaqueness John David Dyche utilizes in promoting it in his Louisville Courier-Journal column:

The debate about expanded gambling divides each party and produces some unusual bi-partisan constituencies. Among Republicans, libertarians focused on freedom generally favor it, but social conservatives concerned primarily with virtue generally oppose it.

That's generally true, but the conventional wisdom on this doesn't square with the facts and shouldn't survive greater scrutiny. Casino gambling is a boon primarily to out-of-state casino owners and secondarily to big-government politicians. Those who come up short are both the gamblers who choose to impoverish themselves and the taxpayers who wind up picking up the public tab for those bad choices. Where this becomes problematic is that the public costs greatly exceed the promised revenue that comes into the state coffers to be spent quickly on politician-enhancing projects.

This recipe for disaster is by no means worthy of dreamy libertarian ballads.

Lexington's Urge To Purge

Lexington voters did a lot when they turned back the ill-considered condemnation effort against Kentucky American Water Company on election day. But does the wide margin of the vote tally suggest a desire to move forward in turning back the ever-increasing growth of government?

Maybe not, but it makes sense for voters to reject tax increases from a government that holds assets whose sale would not only generate revenue for now, but would also decrease government size and improve individual freedom. Follow me on this: why should any city or town raise taxes when they could sell off a utility or contract out a service like garbage collection?

How Is Your Financial Security Looking?

Fluctuation happens. And that works out to being a very good thing when it comes to your money.

Just today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined for the first time in seven trading sessions. The Dow closed at 12,316.54. That's up nearly 15% for the year and nearly double where it was four years ago.

How is your Social Security doing?

GOP 2007: Is There Any "There" There?

Take a look at Billy Harper's campaign website. Under "Polls" is a survey asking what Mr. Harper's top priority should be if he is elected Governor.

The top choice so far is "end corruption in Frankfort."

Seventy nine people had voted when I looked at the site.

MSM Shoots But Can't Hit Barn On Draft

Given nearly 24 hours to provide some kind of coverage of Rep. Charlie Rangel's (D-NY) military draft proposal, the best the MSM can come up with is a response from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).

Where's Nancy Pelosi on this? She is going to have to be against this stupid idea, but reporters can't manage to ask the one question that matters.

AP London Reporter Manufactures A Wedge

Henry Kissinger did not say the war in Iraq is hopeless, but that -- of course -- didn't stop the Associated Press from reporting "Kissinger: Iraq Military Win Impossible."

In an interview, Kissinger stated that surrendering Iraq would cause "disastrous consequences" and cautioned against "total withdrawal."

The money quote was: "If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible."

This means that Kissinger doesn't think just about the narrowest possible definition of victory in Iraq is going to happen. I agree with him. But the the presence of al Qaeda campers in Iraq who keep killing and getting killed there suggests that narrow definitions of victory aren't the standard anyone on our side needs to be waiting for.

I know the liberal meme is that the war is just some Republican political scam, and I appreciate that they won the election, but these propaganda tactics are beyond the pale.

Do Liberals Hate Homosexuals?

Hypocrisy, thy name is income redistributor.

Scott Alexander Pulls A John Kerry

Sen. John Kerry made headlines recently when he questioned the intelligence of our troops in Iraq. Now Democrat Scott Alexander of Hazard, who lost his election to Rep. Brandon Smith by 40 votes, thinks he would have won if his name had been listed first on the ballot.

"I definitely think it (ballot position) made 21 votes of difference," he told the Courier-Journal.

Some political science professor in California thinks he has a lawsuit, but I'm not buying it. Mid-term election voters don't just stumble into the voting booth and hit the first name. Shame on what's left of the Courier-Journal for playing along on their "news" pages.

Running McCain

Sen. John McCain makes his case for 2008.

I'm still quite skeptical, but I am watching him on This Week now. Not too bad.

What do you think?

No More Fake Solutions, Please

Most minimum wage workers are not poor by any standard. Stating this fact makes me a hateful s.o.b., I know, but even such clever rebuttals as that don't make mandated wage increases for the lowest paying jobs any kind of tool for fighting poverty.

If the minimum wage peddlers really wanted to help low-income workers, they would push for for expanding the state earned income tax credit. That way high school students wouldn't be the primary beneficiary of the poverty-busting crusade. The EITC can be targeted to families. Since there are so few of them who actually depend on the minimum wage, the public costs would be much smaller and the desired effect would be achieved.

It's a win-win unless your real goal is just politics.

Irregularities In Madison County

Madison county Magistrate Roger Barger won a close one this year against challenger Wayne Long. Barger prevailed by twenty votes.

Well, they keep "finding" votes in the courthouse and now have the margin down to six votes.

It's time for Trey Grayson to take a look at this one.