Now THIS Is A Nappy Headed Ho

Too bad Don Imus didn't hold his fire against accomplished student-athletes from Rutgers and unleash it instead on Crystal Gail Mangum, the Duke false accuser.

Kudos to Matt Drudge for putting Mangum's mug on his website. If we really want to improve race relations, we should run skanks like Mangum and race-whores like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton off the stage, out the door, and onto a small-island leper colony where they would be forced to live with white racists with whom they have so much in common.

We Need To Join Barack Obama On This One

Sen. Tom Coburn and Sen. Barack Obama co-sponsored a federal bill last year to open up government spending to public scrutiny. An effort earlier this year to do the same thing on the state level in Kentucky was stuffed by Rep. Harry Moberly.

This is another Moberly screw-up we need to fix. A national effort called "Show me the spending" has been set up to draw attention to the open government initiative on the state level. It will help. A lot.

Fighting Back Against Harry Moberly

In the wake of Rep. Harry Moberly's attempt to hijack the legislative process, freedom-loving Kentuckians really need a legislative initiative to counter his secrecy scheme.

A bill to require the General Assembly and governor to pass and sign a budget bill by January 25 of each budget session would help a lot. That way, legislative leaders could negotiate the budget in secret -- behind closed doors, covered windows, and with armed guards -- to their hearts' content. The public and rank-and-file legislators could still have time to examine their work and respond appropriately. The sixty day session would continue past the budget deadline, but the budget bill would be off-limits beyond January 25. And for this to work we couldn't allow special sessions to address the budget either.

I think this would help reinforce the idea of who is actually in charge of our government.

Fun Story About Steve Henry

Democratic gubernatorial front-runner Steve Henry doesn't really need Republicans to rip on him. He has fast-growing liberal bloggers Kentucky Women and Rural Democrat breaking the bad news about him at light speed.

Henry's fundraising problems draw attention to the state of political blogging. Reading the political blogs, you might expect the gubernatorial races in both parties to be almost exactly opposite of where they are now. I don't know if that is more symptomatic of a broken political system or an immature medium, but well-written blogs will continue to have an opportunity to grow in influence.

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.