Let's Destroy All Farming Like We Did Tobacco

A funny thing happened to the tobacco industry that was supposed to die with deregulation and the tobacco buyout.

It is booming and there's no reason to expect other domestic agriculture products would respond differently to getting government out of the way.

Carpet Bombing The Fayette County Jail

The FBI hit the jail in Lexington again today to drop off subpoenas in the ongoing inmate abuse scandal.

The grand jury meets tomorrow.

With $10 Million In The Bank, He Should Be Able To Do Better Than This

Mitch McConnell has a blog.

While We're Talking About Gambling

The Democratic party's candidate for Treasurer Todd Hollenbach actually wants to expand the money-losing KAPT program, which our legislature has mercifully closed to new losses. This drain on taxpayer funds hasn't been explored as Steve Beshear's plan to soak Kentuckians with casino gambling losses has gotten all the attention.

GOP candidate Melinda Wheeler has a much more sensible plan: she promises to shut down the Treasurer's office, which serves currently as an expensive resting place for politicians.

Supporting Republicans Who Act Like Republicans

Kentucky's entire GOP delegation in the U.S. House voted yesterday against expanding government health insurance to more middle-class families.

Good. Much of what ails America can't be fixed without entitlement reform. And that means fewer entitlements for people who are better off without them.

Immigration wouldn't be a problem if everyone were coming here to be productive. Public and private pensions wouldn't be melting down absent the short-sighted greed of union negotiators. Medicare and Social Security are on a collision course with reality. Hillary and her storm troopers march determinedly toward making it worse as soon as possible.

Predictably, Democrats think Hal Rogers, Ed Whitfield, Geoff Davis, and Ron Lewis made a political mistake on this vote. They deserve our thanks and our support for this vote. The only thing that would make it better would be to let the program die off completely. But I suspect we will have to be happy for now with slowing its rapid expansion.

When the left's prediction of death of middle-class kids in the streets fails to materialize, we will have more hard evidence for avoiding socialized medicine once and for all.

That's what liberal critics are afraid of.

1:02 Update: Nicholasville Conservative recommends an article from John Stossel on this subject. It's a good one.

Acting More Like Democrats

DNC Chair Howard Dean is pushing the Democratic party to the left through the organization that survived his run for president. He is raising money for more consistently "progressive" candidates like Donna Edwards who is running against Maryland Congressman Al Wynn, who Dean refers to as a "Bush Democrat."

And yes, I know Democracy for America is officially run by Mad Howard's brother Jim. If Jim were really going too far left for Howard, though, DFA would be shut down immediately.

Is Beshear Playing Dumb Or Is It You?

As Ryan Alessi's latest revelation about Steve Beshear's role in the destruction of Kentucky Central comes to light ...

The court-appointed liquidator of Kentucky Central at one point barred Steve Beshear from doing further work on the case and informed Beshear that his law firm would have to pay for an ethics investigation, documents show.

This comes after Beshear, the Democratic nominee for governor, has repeatedly claimed he didn't recall anything about a secret ethics report by a Cincinnati firm, Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur. And he recently said he wasn't aware his former firm, Stites & Harbison, paid more than $100,000 for it.

... Beshear's previous memory-related comments make a little more sense:

"When I say 'I don't recall,' if later you come up with something that says I was there, that's OK because I'm being up front in saying I don't recall because this is, what, 14 years ago?" he said.

Just don't say you weren't warned.

And, of course, when it comes to policy we always have this:

Beshear Campaign Staff Gains As UAW Strikes

General Motors union employees across the nation walked off the job today in a massive strike larger than any seen in the automobile industry in thirty years. Now they will have more free time to campaign for the Democratic campaigns.

Good thing Beshear and friends haven't succeeded in unionizing Toyota yet.

Jody Richards Agrees To Return Unearned Money

The unearned checks distributed to legislators after the House Democrats surrendered the July special session will be returned today, House Speaker Jody Richards' spokeswoman reported this morning.

2:27 pm UPDATE: Frankfort sources report Speaker Richards will refuse again today to send back the taxpayers' money.

We need to have a little fun with this while we wait for Jody Richards to pay up. Whoever can get closest to the time and date which confirmation goes out that the unearned paychecks are turned back in wins.

Where Are Steve Beshear's Barking Dogs?

Kind of funny to see the Beshear campaign still proudly touting their unsurprising support from former state Rep. Steve Nunn, who was run out of office last year in part because of a hilarious barking dog radio ad that hounded him for supporting a variety of tax increases.

After Beshear's casino gambling plan bites the dust in the legislature again, he and his dogs would have little choice but to try biting us with tax increases as well.

Socialized Medicine Plans Shrink In Sunlight

Maybe we should call California's ArnoldCare and Sen. Clinton's HillaryCare "the Shrinky Dinks."

Hillary couldn't take the heat in the '90's. This time won't be any different.

The claim that no new bureaucracies are created will be challenged. Like Gov. Schwarzenegger, Mrs. Clinton envisions requiring everyone to prove they have health insurance. But she's vague on the details: "At this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed." You can bet she will have some ideas.

Even so, making certain people have insurance is easier said than done. California has had a law mandating that drivers have car insurance since 1970 and has required physical proof of insurance to register a car for a decade. Even so, the Insurance Research Council says 25% of the state's drivers remain uninsured.

• Illegal aliens and their access to health insurance will be controversial. Mrs. Clinton promises health care for all, but is punting on the issue of whether the illegal aliens, who often use emergency room services, will be covered. Ms. Rubiner admits it's a "huge issue," but says "that's one we're going to have to think through a little bit."

"Let The Liberal Editorial Boards Decide!"

Just heard Hillary Clinton describe public financing of political campaigns as her solution to her own campaign finance scandals.

If Steve Beshear wins the governor's race -- and after his casino plan falls flat -- it will be fun next year running against this and other really bad ideas he and Hillary share.

Destroying Business As Fast As They Can

Sen. Barack Obama's idea to save Social Security without paying a political price among the middle class would make HillaryCare look like a bounced check fee.

What he hopes you fail to realize is that employers pay half of Social Security taxes. And taxes on businesses have a funny way of hitting everyone with price increases and job cuts.

Meanwhile, it's a terrible shame Republicans squandered the opportunity to stop spending the annual Social Security surplus while we still have one.

Frankfort's Own Frito Bandito

Jody Richards still has the taxpayers' money he promised to return after the House Democrats surrendered the special session in July. Maybe we should check under his hat.

Reading Past First Paragraph For The Real Story

Which do you think is more newsworthy, that Steve Beshear's law firm paid $100,000 for research into its role in the destruction of Kentucky Central Life Insurance Company, or that the head of the firm's Louisville office now says the report "will be 100% discredited" even though he hasn't seen it and no one in the firm can seem to remember seeing it.

To the Herald-Leader's credit, they did include that interesting quote (albeit near the end of the story) as well as this classic from Beshear:

"When I say 'I don't recall,' if later you come up with something that says I was there, that's OK because I'm being up front in saying I don't recall because this is, what, 14 years ago?" he said.

Left Can't Stop Lying About SCHIP

U.S. Census data clearly shows (page 19) that the rate of uninsured in America has been unchanged for almost fifteen years.

But that doesn't stop some group called Mathematica Policy Research from making this up:

SCHIP was enacted at a time when the number and rate of uninsured children were growing rapidly, especially among those just above the poverty threshold— too poor to purchase private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

And, of course, Daily Kos bit hard.

President Bush is promising to veto expansion of SCHIP, though his own original proposal was to expand it as well. He just wanted to expand it less than Congress wants to.

SCHIP has served mainly to increase government spending and increase the cost of health insurance. I'm not holding my breath, but the data strongly suggests scrapping the whole thing would be great fiscally. And I suspect that when the sky didn't fall, it would be a great thing politically as well.

Laptops And Library Cards

Steve Beshear's education plan (spend more money and give kids library cards) would be pretty easy to ignore if he weren't 20 points up in the polls.

Musical Chairs In Lexington's City Hall

Some observers thought Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry might be serious about cleaning up the mess in Lexington's public safety bureaucracy when he fired Rebecca Langston from her post as Public Safety Commissioner.

Alas, it was not so.

Langston has re-upped as Council Administrator, Grade 121E, and is being paid more than $85,000 a year for her trouble.

Union Attorney Champions Government Healthcare

Polwatchers just needs a different headline on this post.

Battling It Out In A Casino Town

Since Ernie Fletcher reported from Aurora,Illinois, the town has been in an uproar. The hubbub isn't because of the controversy over its casino, but because Planned Parenthood is trying to sneak a huge abortion clinic into the town.

There has already been a big pro-life rally. Next Tuesday, the pro-abortion folks will take to the streets.