Minimum Wage Tax Gets A Boost

Looks like the Kentucky Senate wants to go along with the minimum wage bill.

What a waste.

How Cool Is That?

Billy Harper shreds the prevailing wage law, in a sharp suit, ON THE BUS.

Smile Billy! You are stylin'!

The Political Star No One Knows

A great political story that needs to be told is that of celebrity candidate turned accomplished Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer.

More on this next week...

Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye Truth

Watched a little KET coverage of the General Assembly and was shocked and dismayed to see Rep. Mary Lou Marzian claim that the University of Louisville said that its domestic partner scheme wouldn't cost taxpayers any money.

Well, that kind of depends on who you are talking to at U of L. The people who run the agenda say there will be no cost. The people who run the numbers say $600,000 a year and up.

Did They Run Out Of Bridges To Rename?

Why in the world are we wasting time fixing wages for anyone, much less waiters?

HB 206 comes up for a vote tomorrow.

Another Myth-Busting Study Of The Political Middle

The Washington Post has a column about how divided we are on the issues and debunks the idea that what we all want to is just get along now that Democrats are back in control of Congress.

The CCES survey asked about 14 national issues: the war in Iraq (the invasion and the troops), abortion (and partial birth abortion), stem cell research, global warming, health insurance, immigration, the minimum wage, liberalism and conservatism, same-sex marriage, privatizing Social Security, affirmative action, and capital gains taxes. Not surprisingly, some of the largest differences between Democrats and Republicans were over the Iraq war. Fully 85 percent of those who voted for Democratic House candidates felt that it had been a mistake to invade Iraq, compared with only 18 percent of voters who cast ballots for Republicans.

But the divisions between the parties weren't limited to Iraq. They extended to every issue in the survey. For example, 69 percent of Democratic voters chose the most strongly pro-choice position on the issue of abortion, compared with 20 percent of Republican voters; only 16 percent of Democratic voters supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while 80 percent of Republican voters did; and 91 percent of Democratic voters favored governmental action to reduce global warming, compared with 27 percent of Republican voters.

The study found a similar split on single-payer health care. So if Bruce Lunsford and Greg Stumbo -- who have already alienated most of the primary-voting Democrats in the state -- really want to push socialized medicine, I hope they really have a good time doing it.

Also noticed they are advocating universal pre-kindergarten. After watching two of the top education bureaucrats in the state go on Kentucky Tonight and state clearly their belief that teachers know what's best for children better than parents do, I can't see this idea getting them very far either.

Taxpayer Group Gives Northup a "C"

The National Taxpayers Union has issued its 2006 Congressional Scorecard. Here's how Kentucky's delegation did:

Chandler, F, 16%
Davis, B-, 59%
Lewis, B, 62%
Northup, C+, 54%
Rogers, C+, 54%
Whitfield, C, 50%

Brian Goettl Strikes Back On Pardons

Here.

Another Phony Issue Drags On In Frankfort

Frankfort Dems have been talking smack about "pay equity" but their own guys in the House won't put their bill up for a vote.

Hey, somebody get Nancy Pelosi and Hillary! in here to shake these boys up!

Pence Hits Fletcher Really Hard

Here.

Legislature Shirking Duties On Public Pensions

Emperor Nero has earned enduring scorn for not putting out the fire that burned Rome when it was small enough to handle. Kentucky governors and legislators have done similarly in recent years with the public employee pension plans and the growing threat could burn up our state's bank account.

House Bill 418, passed by the House of Representatives unanimously on Monday, addresses the pension shortfall but does so ineffectively. Kentucky's elected officials aren't exactly fiddling like Nero while the crisis bears down on us, but HB 418 will be a short-lived band-aid approach. The end result may well be about the same.

HB 418 would extend for one year the practice of calculating public employee pensions based on the three highest years of an employee's salary. The good this bill does is to hold off, in theory, the expected tidal wave of government retirees whose pensions we will have great difficulty paying. With the "high three" extended, the hope is that those employees of retirement age will keep working and drawing only one paycheck rather than retiring and coming back to work to draw two checks.

We would like to hope that HB 418 will help as it is intended to do, but far more needs to be done. Here is why: Kentucky's pension problem is not just about investments falling short of future liabilities, it involves how our entire public employee system works. We must end the often-abused system of double-dipping if we are to have any hope of averting disaster with our public pensions. When government employes retire, they should be thanked for the years of service and paid promised pension checks. But we must stop bringing them back at anywhere near their last salary. That practice is breaking the bank.

Rather than nibbling at the edges of the pension situation, Kentucky needs to either encourage would-be retirees to go ahead and leave en masse or to stay around a few more years and -- most importantly -- to train their replacements. In either case, the lack of systematic succession training in government offices is hurting our state financially and will get worse as our population of public retirees swells to unprecedented levels. Instead of hiring back recent retirees at or near their last salary in addition to their pension, we should make training of new employees part of their job before they go.

The reason this will help is that we would be replacing our highest-salaried employees with younger new employees at significantly lower cost. The savings could then be applied to the pension plans.

Continued failure to end double-dipping and to institute effective employee succession planning will result in the public pension plans being unable to meet their obligations. The only solution at that point will be massive tax increases.

McCain Drain 2008

Can't ignore this.

Or this.

Is Ford Motor Pretending To Be Retarded?

As we rush to incentivize Ford Motor Company, Navistar International is rushing the other way.

Kind of reminds me of some good folks in Tacoma, Washington.

It's far from a perfect analogy, but that's the best you are going to get on the fly this morning. I just had to find a way to work that Tacoma story into something. Others will do better, I'm sure.

SB 143: A Good Fiscally Conservative Bill

There sure has been a lot to complain about in this General Assembly session. But SB 143 is the proverbial horse of a different color.

The bill would require accountability in the spending of state tax dollars on local projects. It mandates regular reports during the course of a project and a final report when the work is completed. With every dollar accounted for, it then requires any left over funds to be returned to the state.

It's amazing to think this hasn't been done long before now, but why quibble? I'll take it.

Another Poor Attempt To Keep Kids In School

The House is expected to take up HB 32 today. Let's just call it the "Make School More Like Jail Act of 2007."

The bill would pull the drivers license of anyone under eighteen who drops out of school. I can understand an argument that we don't want teenage dropouts driving around all day, but I really don't want my kids to have to go to school with any additional kids who don't want to be there and might be looking for creative ways to "express" themselves.

Besides, we have been here before and what the law really does is teach drop-outs how to go through the legal system to apply for a hardship exemption.

Drive a truck through this loophole in the statute:

In order for the student to have his license reinstated, the court shall be satisfied that the license is needed to meet family obligations or family economic considerations which if unsatisfied would create an undue hardship or that the student is the only licensed driver in the household or the student is not considered a dropout or academically deficient pursuant to this section. If the student satisfies the court, the court shall notify the cabinet to reinstate the student's license at no cost. The student, if aggrieved by a decision of the court issued pursuant to this section, may appeal the decision within thirty (30) days to the Circuit Court of appropriate venue. A student who is being schooled at home shall be considered to be enrolled in school.

Fox News In Kentucky For Race Coverage

Fox News' Brit Hume is in Frankfort covering what has been billed as a major announcement by the Anne Northup campaign. A press conference at the Holiday Inn on Wilkinson Blvd at 12:30 will start off a day in which the campaign will travel to Bowling Green and Owensboro to continue discussion on this same announcement.

Fox News was already going to be in the state just working on a story of the race and the Northup campaign suggested it would be worth their while to stick around for today's lunchtime announcement.

Harper Versus Pork

Just as I am hearing from more serious GOP primary voters who say they will vote for Billy Harper for governor, Mr. Harper seems to be improving his message.

The MSM didn't cover it, but Harper was the only GOP candidate to stand up with Rep. Stan Lee last week and support the HB 30 special needs student school choice bill.

The soft underbelly of the education bureaucracy is its poor return on investment and continued clamoring for more money. Mr. Harper did himself no favors in his early commercials when he linked himself to KERA, but seems to be hitting his stride with this:

The notion that we need increased taxes and more government spending to transform our schools is not only misguided, but reads right from the outdated playbook of the politicians in Frankfort.

An unfortunate example of this approach is the Covington Independent School District, which spent $13,166 on each student during the 2005-06 school year Ð the second highest rate in Kentucky Ð yet ranked last among the state's 175 school districts for its performance on the annual CATS assessment.

Spending per-pupil in that district has risen 121 percent since 1989, but student achievement has failed to keep pace. The funding is there, but the approach clearly is not working.

In fact, average per pupil spending in Kentucky has risen every year since the KERA reforms, but student performance as measured by a variety of standards is not on the same track.

Now that he is properly indentifying the problem, it is time to hammer home some of the solutions. One of them is empowering parents with school choice. With Mr. Harper deciding to take a stand like this on real education reform, he may want to take a good look at this bill too.

U.S. Senate 2008 Kentucky Race

Louisville Democrats are putting pressure on Rep. John Yarmuth to take on Sen. Mitch McConnell next year.

That could open up several interesting scenarios, don't you think?

Health Care And Education, Governor

This morning David Hawpe suggests Governor Fletcher should be "bold" and work up a universal healthcare plan for Kentucky.

Yesterday in Richmond, Governor Fletcher made comments that sounded to me like he may be planning to do something like that in both healthcare and higher education.

I'm still waiting for a call back from the Governor's office to clarify what I thought I heard. Didn't see any mention of it in the MSM. More on this later.

Who Will Be The Kumbaya Party Of 2007?

After two hotly contested primaries in May, the fall election will largely come down to which party can pull combatant camps back together better. There are other variables, of course, but this is the big one.