Kentucky Tax Increase Trivia

When I saw Steve Nunn's endorsement of Anne Northup today, it occurred to me that without Steve's father Louie Nunn's support of raising the state sales tax to five cents and Northup's 1990 vote to raise it to six cents, we might still have a four percent sales tax.

While Louie "Nickel" Nunn took a lot of grief for that tax increase, and Northup might get some herself for hers, I won't really join the hit parade. I would far rather see us have the highest sales tax in the nation if we could repeal all income taxes.

But this Northup quote from the January 23, 1990 Louisville CJ has been making the rounds:

Northup said, "I'm really angry that Wilkinson has spent three years stirring up anti-tax sentiment."

Jonathan Miller: Running For Governor

Jonathan Miller can't get enough attention to get arrested in the crowded Democratic primary. This won't help:

Nappy-Headed McCain Wasting Time Again

John McCain says he forgives dead-man-walking Don Imus for calling young women on the Rutgers college basketball team "nappy headed ho's."

They deserve each other.

Imus will wind up losing his show because of his ridiculous apologies as much for his ill-advised comment. A RINO U.S. Senator isn't going to help him now.

A Meaningful Education Reform For Kentucky

We really need to examine the price we pay in our schools when we elevate "access" or "participation" above all else. Not that many of us couldn't use a helping hand from time to time, but making the helping hand our top priority shouldn't be allowed to cripple our ability to serve those who are more likely to move on with a little help.

This year already, we passed a stupid bill that seeks to keep high school dropouts in the classroom. It won't work, but the time we spent on this could have gone to something productive.

Here's an idea: rather than packing high school classrooms with kids who don't want to be there and college freshman classes with students who aren't prepared for higher education, let's allow the drop-outs to drop out and keep 12th graders who need remediation in their seats for 13th grade in their same high school.

This would benefit us in several ways. Shame is a fabulous motivator for teenagers. An underachieving would-be college freshman will move heaven and earth to avoid sitting in high school for one more year. This will alleviate our college remediation problem in one way or the other. And kids who really need the help and want to graduate can have more time to get that help. If what we really want is to improve educational achievement, let's shift some of our focus from flogging drop-outs and toward better guiding students who are showing some interest.

No Knockout Punch Tonight

Governor Fletcher won on style points. I'm a little surprised he brought up the silly I-CARE thing as an achievement, but no one took anything away from him tonight.

It's disheartening that with the possibility of making expensive health mandates optional or reducing any one of several other kinds of regulations that raise premiums more than they protect consumers, we spend an hour talking about less important things. In a year when all the Dems are pushing socialized medicine, a real-world solution to rising healthcare costs should be a great Republican issue.

Anne Northup Is On The Air

Well, what do you think?

A Tale Of Two State Public Pensions

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson vetoed a bill to raise legislator pensions. Meanwhile, New Jersey's pension mess news gets worse.

Meanwhile, Kentucky's inaction on its retirement system problems and rich legislator pensions are sending us in the direction of New Jersey.

Kentucky Hurting Access To Higher Education

I was comparing notes with my brother-in-law today about colleges. When he was a student at the University of Kentucky, I was at the University of Georgia. And our tuition payments were almost identical. Fast forward to today, when I am considering sending my son to Georgia Tech. Tuition at UK is nearly double what it is at Tech, a unit of the University of Georgia System.

Part of the difference is Georgia has the HOPE scholarship, the nation's largest state-financed, merit-based aid program. What it has helped create is a market for success in the classroom. The original requirement for the scholarship was a 3.0 GPA. The promise was tuition-free education at state schools. Currently, that is a joke. A 3.0 won't get you admitted.

The merit-based scholarships have served to keep tuition costs down and that is a lesson Kentucky would do well to learn from.

The KEES scholarships may have done a little to increase access to higher education in Kentucky. A nice goal. But that nice goal is undermined by the tuition inflation that results.

Billy Harper Ad: No Tax Increases

The Associated Press says Billy Harper is using humor to win votes. I think his latest ad is a solid effort to set himself apart, but I didn't think it was funny. That's not a criticism. I think the ad will draw some attention, like it did here.

How Would A Jody Richards Meltdown Change Race For Democratic Nomination?

The Rural Democrat is reporting Jody Richards' gubernatorial campaign staff appears to have left their jobs. Don't know if it is true, but with no press releases in two and a half weeks, it appears they were running low on steam anyway.

I would guess that a lot of the people who are currently Richards supporters aren't really thinking about winning the race and are instead hoping to curry favor with the Speaker of the House. So who do they jump to next?

Bruce Lunsford.

Lunsford is the front-runner and has the cash to dominate a run-off. He will then control the party, just like Chairman Jerry Lundergan wants him to. Follow the power.

10:03 Update: The Richards campaign responded by saying the campaign staff members didn't quit, but were fired.

If You Are Still Waiting For The Economy To Collapse, The Wait Just Got A Little Longer

American business just keeps roaring along. And no one tells the story quite like Larry Kudlow.

If you really want to see a recession, though, why don't you just raise taxes:

"We Are Out Of Ideas And You Won't Let Us Surrender Fast Enough"

Haven't we seen this thing before?

Boyfriend Benefit Bombshell: Attorney General Greg Stumbo Caught Between Rock, Hard Place

Attorney General candidate Stan Lee has asked AG Greg Stumbo for an official Opinion on the constitutionality of the state's public universities offering taxpayer-subsidized domestic partner benefits to their employees.

GOP Battle Goes On The Air Monday Night

The Republican gubernatorial candidates appear on KET Monday night at 8 pm to debate each other in what will be the biggest event of the race so far.

Governor Fletcher doesn't need to score a knockout punch, but he will have to talk with authority about tax modernization, the projected surplus, Medicaid, roads and private sector jobs to avoid taking any body blows himself.

Anne Northup needs very much to land a knockout punch, but she better appear not to be fighting at all and, instead, must go heavy on a positive, detailed message.

Billy Harper stands to gain the most ground in the horse race if Northup and Fletcher get tied up. I think, realistically, Harper comes out of this stronger if he demonstrates conclusively that he belongs on the same stage as his competitors. Still has a way to go to get into the mix, but could easily pick up a few points. Harper's role is to appear at-ease and on-message but not comical or dogmatic. If he pulls that off, the race for second place could get interesting.

Get Ready For Nuclear Energy

Call it New-clee-uhr or New-cyoo-luhr or whatever you want to, but now is the time to get used to the idea of getting more of our energy from nuclear power plants.

Herald Leader Points Finger At Teachers Union

The Lexington Herald Leader this morning rolls out the laundry list of problems with Kentucky schools, calls for differential pay for teachers, and smacks the KEA for playing politics with a sincere Senate effort to help.

Predictably, the Herald Leader stopped there. Saying only that something has to be done -- and throwing in a jab at the Senate initiative for mandatory ACT exams as not being the answer -- the editorial stopped short right in front of the answers.

One of them is raising standards for middle school students. If we are succeeding in primary grades and failing in high schools, the obvious place to start looking is in middle schools. Indeed, local efforts to expect more from middle school students have been effective.

Another is to implement some elements of school choice. An honest discussion about what has worked in other states would be extremely enlightening and productive.

And a third thing to do is to stop listening to the Kentucky Education Association. Their only function is to whine about salaries. Look at their own legislative action web page. They only care about protecting the jobs, salaries, and pensions of teachers and stopping any effort to pay more for better teachers. That's how you protect mediocrity. And I don't blame the KEA for this. They aren't being hypocrites. They are a labor union. They are doing what they are supposed to do and are obviously effective at it. I blame those in the media who expect them to be experts on education and look to them for leadership on education policy. When you want a photo-op with hundreds of teachers screaming about their doctor co-pays, call the KEA. But stop expecting them to fix what ails our schools. Parents need to band together to make that happen. And we don't need state help to do much of that. If we go school to school and start retaining middle schoolers who flunk more than one class each year, most of the borderline students will figure out how to stay on track.

Only then will they be sufficiently prepared for high school. And if we can accomplish that, newspapers like the Herald Leader will be less likely to look to the teachers union for education policy advice.

Time To Push Back Against Bad Health Reform

Emboldened by his $25 million of free speech -- er, corrupting cash, er ... wait a minute, I'm so confused!), Barack Obama is pushing universal healthcare hard. So are all the Democratic candidates for governor of Kentucky.

An enterprising Republican candidate would do well to propose a Health Care Common Market in which Kentucky could combine with all seven of our surrounding states -- or whoever would go with the idea -- and allow any citizen or company of any of those states to purchase an individual or group plan from an insurer in any of the other states.

How Would That Work, Mr. Speaker?

Speaker of the House Jody Richards on the Jack Pattie Show this morning is railing against school choice.

"I'm not for school choice. I think that would destroy the system, personally," Richards said.

Really? There is no evidence of school choice destroying an educational system anywhere. It might make things a little tougher for teachers union officials, though. Is that who we really want to be protecting when giving parents greater ability to move students has been successful at improving education where it has been tried?

Charge That Kentucky Misspent Fed Money Is Bunk

With all the talk from the Fletcher administration about how great the "Unbridled Spirit" is for Kentucky on one hand and charges that federal money was spent on the state's marketing campaign on the other, the truth was actually very easy to find out.

State agencies used to handle their own marketing campaigns individually. Early on, the Fletcher administration's Commerce Cabinet consolidated all marketing activities in order to create savings with economies of scale. Implementation involved projecting what costs were going to be and then ironing out overpayments and underpayments at the end of a two year marketing contract. The contract is now publicly available through the Finance and Administration Cabinet. All the money was marketing money and it has all gone where it was supposed to. It's more fun to make charges of abuse or incompetence -- and I'd love to jump in if the facts were on that side -- but the truth is the state has saved a lot of money by buying its advertising in bulk rather than farming it out piecemeal.

The Fletcher administration is in need of a story to tell and should tell this one.

Another Nightmarish Pension Story Somehow Not Repaired By Casino Proliferation

Today there is more disastrous pension news from New Jersey that should be viewed as a cautionary tale for Kentuckians, but probably won't.