2007 Dem Update: Capitalism Doesn't Work

The floor debate in the House yesterday on the minimum wage was a little contentious and sprinkled with memorable quotes. The Lexington Herald Leader got several of them, but missed this goody from Rep. Jim Wayne (D-Louisville):

"Raw capitalism does not work for vulnerable people."

That's pretty rich coming in the middle of a state ravaged still by the War on Poverty, in which a generational cycle of dependency created by a misguided hope to ameliorate the shortcomings of capitalism has held us back for decades.

Jody Richards: Germane Means What I Say It Does

Speaker Jody Richards needs a dictionary, not the additional power he seeks.

House rules require an amendment to a bill be related to the original bill, or germane. Rep. Brad Montell's amendment to exempt part-time workers from the minimum wage increase was judged not germane to HB 305, the bill that raises the minimum wage in Kentucky.

The bill and the amendment are by any definition except Richards' completely germane.

If Richards can't follow a simple House rule like this in front of everyone, what would he do to the merit hiring laws behind closed doors?

Sending Veterinarians To Jail For Being Mean

The Kentucky Senate just unanimously passed a bill (SB 23) that would fine up to $1000 or jail up to 30 days a veterinarian who refuses to treat assistance dogs without prior payment of the dog's owner.

Very few veterinarians are going to turn away a disabled person who needs help with his dog, but do we really want to throw them in jail for exercising the freedom the rest of us take for granted to tell a non-paying client to get lost?

Improving Health Care Options

The biggest thing holding back health insurance reform in Kentucky is an unholy alliance between corporate lackeys beholden to the status quo on one hand and big-government throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water types who will only be happy when we go all the way to socialized medicine.

A commonsense bill which would open the door to greater consumer choice in the state is being shut down in the Senate. SB 135 would simply lower the mandate on insurance companies' coverage of pre-existing medical conditions. It wouldn't require any coverage to be lessened and would have no impact on anyone who already has coverage. What it would do is bring four companies back into the state and provide some much needed competition in the marketplace.

Can you think of any reason such a bill does not deserve our full-fledged support?

"Lifetime Employment Of K-12 Teachers Is Off-The-Charts Crazy"

Steve Jobs of Apple Computer risks a big chunk of his business by speaking up for education.

Read it here.

Victory!!!

HB 184 has been withdrawn by the sponsor Rep. Harry Moberly.

This Should Be The Easiest Thing To Pass In KY

Giving Kentucky parents the right to choose how the tax dollars allocated to educate their children are spent should be very easy to implement. That is school choice. Call it vouchers if you want to.

Taking the power from the teachers union and giving it to parents makes a lot of sense in terms of creating competition for our struggling schools. Competition will make our education process stronger and it can be done without any additional costs to the taxpayers.

All we need is a little leadership. Billy Harper was the only gubernatorial candidate to show up at the school choice rally today in the Capitol. His staff worked vigorously to get him a speaking role in the event and deserves a ton of credit for their efforts. Harper's words in support of school choice set him apart in the Republican primary. I know Governor Fletcher and Anne Northup had other events scheduled this morning, but where are they on school choice now?

Back in 2003 while in Congress, both Northup and Fletcher voted for parents and children in Washington D.C. to have access to a pilot charter school program. The program has been so successful, the worst thing critics can say about it is too many families want in.

Surely Fletcher and Northup don't want to deny Kentucky families the same thing they saw fit to grant families who live in Washington D.C.

HB 184 Scuttlebutt

Looks like Rep. Harry Moberly has called in sick today so his noxious HB 184 should be sidelined for this afternoon's session. May he have a speedy recovery and may his bill die a painful death.

Major Endorsement For Northup Coming

The Northup campaign is set to announce a major endorsement next Monday.

Speculative Update: Congress is not in session next week. I'm guessing it will be Rep. Geoff Davis.

Teaching Tuesday

Rep. Stan Lee's HB 30 Special Needs Scholarship bill will be the focus of a 10 AM press conference this morning in the Capitol Rotunda.

The Bluegrass Institute has an interesting article about why education bureaucrats are all twisted up because some people want to improve choices for families with kids who need extra help in school.

Republican candidates for Governor would do well to weigh in on this subject.

Jonathan Miller On Board Against HB 184

I have to admit I thought it was great in 2005 when the budget negotiators in Frankfort secretly returned $13.7 million to the General Fund that had been taken to fill the actuarial hole in the money-losing KAPT program. And seeing that Treasurer Jonathan Miller is still chapped about it did cause me to giggle just a little bit:

We saw how harmful this practice could be when this procedure was used to try to raid $14 million from the KAPT (Kentucky's Affordable Prepaid Tuition) program, a trust fund we established to help Kentucky families save for their children's higher education. Even though 95% of the legislature supported KAPT and would have opposed this attempt to rob the KAPT families of their hard-earned savings, they were misled by a few of their leaders and were forced to vote on this huge budget bill that they had not had a chance to digest completely.

Despite the fact he is nearly $300k off in his telling of the story -- only a rounding error for our not-so-precise state Treasurer -- Jonathan Miller deserves credit for expressing opposition to HB 184 the day before it comes up for a vote in the House.

This should serve as a lesson to those complacent souls who plan to sit quietly by while our General Assembly shuts us out of the legislative process. The sneakiness they seek to legitimize tomorrow won't always go your way.

The Junk In Steve Beshear's Trunk

John Stamper has the story of Steve Beshear's economic development press conference from earlier today. While I can agree that making corporate tax credit information public is a good idea, if that is the centerpiece of Beshear's campaign, he has trouble. And then he pops this one out:

"We need a governor who understands that Kentucky's economic growth will come from Kentucky-based businesses," Beshear said.

This would have to come as an unpleasant surprise to employees, suppliers, and customers of Toyota, UPS, Walmart, Ford, Amazon, ACS, IBM, Kroger, and all the other companies without which Kentucky's economy might make xenophobics happy but would be pretty rough on the rest of us.

And since Beshear's foundation seems to be casino gambling, I can't imagine he did himself any favors by showing up today.

"AMT" Repeal Languishing In A&R

Three bills to repeal the limited liability entity tax (HB 87, HB 88, and HB 119) are dying a slow and painful death in the House Appropriations & Revenue Committee.

Another bill designed to lessen the impact of the LLET (more commonly known as AMC or AMT, it's the income tax for businesses who are losing money) is HB 480. Just filed last week, it may have a chance.

If you want to see this bad tax repealed, you should probably call your legislator. Before he or she gets completely shut out of the process, that is.

HB 184 Media Appearance

I will be on Lexington's Kruser program today (590 AM at 12:30) talking about why we should all oppose HB 184.

By the way, thanks to Rural Democrat for taking a good look at the bill and making up his own mind to oppose it.

Another Really Stupid Idea To Emulate

A lot of the "Eureka!" moments legislators have are actually ideas that they picked up from other states. We can only hope that New Mexico's talking urinal cakes don't join that parade.

The state recently paid $21 each for about 500 talking urinal-deodorizer cakes and has put them in men's rooms in bars and restaurants across the state.

When a man steps up, the motion-sensitive plastic device says, in a woman's voice that is flirty, then stern: "Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home."

The recorded message ends: "Remember, your future is in your hand."

It is amazing to me that we are still telling people it is a bad idea to get drunk and hit the road. It would be really easy to establish a national database of drivers licenses and permanently revoke driving privileges in any state for anyone driving with a Blood Alcohol Content of .20 or higher. And if the BAC is just .08 to .19, then revoke it for that state only.

Consumers Pay "Corporate Taxes"

The Associated Press has a story about states taxing corporate gross receipts.

The biggest knock on the tax is its potential for taxing a single product multiple times. The tax can cascade across sales of gasoline, for example, when the fuel is sold and resold from suppliers to distributors to customers at the pump, who then could face higher prices to cover the extra costs.

Situations like that make some economists cringe at the idea of states adopting such taxes.

"No sensible case can be made for imposing gross receipts taxes in the modern economic environment," said John Mikesell, an Indiana University public finance professor.

A national business group that opposes such taxes says that while the corporate income tax may be declining as a portion of state revenue, total taxes paid by businesses continue to grow. Companies paid a combined $550 billion last year in corporate, sales, property and other taxes, up 11 percent from the year before, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Council on State Taxation.

"Corporate income tax is not the main business tax and never has been," said Joseph Crosby, the group's legislative director.

When are we going to quit screwing around with getting income taxes "right" and just tax consumption? Income taxes "cascade across" the economy versus retail consumption taxes that get paid once. What we need to do is just repeal all income taxes.

Hoover's Real Leadership On HB 184

House Minority Leader Jeff Hoover will seek a united vote against the egregious HB 184 in a caucus meeting Tuesday. Just received the following email:

David,
Good post on HB 184. Wanted to send message to you directly rather than post on blog, but you can use if you want. I am hoping ALL House Republicans vote against HB 184. We are having a caucus meeting Tuesday afternoon prior to session and I intend to seek a united vote against the bill. In the past five years,we have taken some united votes and united positions, which is extremely difficult to do due to the unique diversity of our members. But, i am hopeful, this is one bill we can do that on and it will be interesting to see what Ds do. Thanks,
Jeffrey H. Hoover, Esq.

Finally, The Courier-Journal Checks In

The CJ looked at HB 184 and came to the same conclusion the Lexington Herald Leader and everyone else who isn't running Frankfort from the shadows did -- this thing is no good. Still, it could very well pass. That's because leadership is for it. Legislators who cross leadership can wind up getting shut out in the closed door sessions.

We really need to work up a good head of steam and kill this off; then we need to reform how the whole budget process works in Frankfort. More local projects need to be handled with local money. That means less money going into Frankfort in the first place. There should never be a closed door budget conference ever again. The illegal provisions hidden in the last three budgets should be repudiated by the Governor and the General Assembly so the resulting lawsuits can all be settled and future ones avoided. And Harry Moberly's constituents should replace him in the May 2008 primary.

What do you think?

A Call For Debate On HB 184

I will be on the Kruser program in Lexington on 590 AM Monday at 12:30 talking about what a nightmare HB 184 would be for Kentucky. So far, supporters of the bill have been strangely silent about it. As far as I know, only Rep. Harry Moberly and Speaker Jody Richards have publicly defended this fascist scheme.

Where are the rest of you guys?

Allowing a handful of legislators to go behind closed doors in budget years to change any law, raise any tax, or spend any amount of money and then force the rest of us to swallow it all makes no sense. Putting the budget together in closed-door conference at the last minute like they do will allow them to get away with it. That is the entire purpose of HB 184.

After so much ranting and raving about congressional earmarks, are we going to let this far more dangerous practice go through without a fight? Do you really trust these folks that much?

And no, they don't face much risk in the next election for their actions. That's how they wind up in leadership. There is little reason to expect the people pushing this through to pay any political price. Sure, you can vote against your legislator if he or she votes for it, but the next one will face the same pressure to go along and you still can't get to the leaders.

HB 184 very simply repeals open government in Kentucky. Prove me wrong.

Rank-and-file legislators will have to decide to buck leadership and stand up for what is right or to go along so that when the budget conference locks everyone out they will have a chance to get anything for their districts. As a political calculation it could be a difficult choice. House members vote on HB 184 Tuesday afternoon.

Gambling Our Way To Prosperity

I hope that an economic development press conference by the Beshear campaign would mean more than casinos in the mountains, near big cities, and between farms, but color me skeptical.