A couple of bright spots in Kentucky's future

Watching actor Ben McKenzie bumble through his campaign appearance today on behalf of Senator Barack Obama was a pretty painful hour. On the bright side, I got to meet some outstanding young people at Transylvania University.

Amanda Moore is a Montgomery High School student attending her first political event. She was diplomatic in describing Mr. McKenzie, calling him "informative but not thorough." Her grasp of the issues shows a wisdom I'm sure she doesn't even realize she has.

Fine young lady.

Daniel Rison is a Transy student from Mount Sterling and the host of a campus radio program. He came to the event to see if he might be persuaded to support Obama rather than his preferred candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton.

He said the presentation didn't change his mind. He said "the further along we get in the process, the more I think I made the right decision. Unfortunately, it seems that may be a lost cause."

Daniel hopes Kentucky policymakers don't lose sight of the opportunities presented by the upcoming World Equestrian Games in 2010.

Looks like a major scandal in Congress

A New York television station has a report on about half of its Congressional delegation taking part in a car leasing program that pays all auto expenses (including gas) with taxpayer money.

This could be just like the House banking scandal a few years back. It will be interesting to see which Kentucky members are playing this game.

And its not a partisan thing with me at all. Anyone in the Kentucky delegation driving around in a car we are paying for deserves all the hell he gets.

It's a pandering thing, you wouldn't understand

In the following video, Congressman Ben Chandler invokes the names of Happy Chandler, Jackie Robinson, God, and even baseball itself to spin the political calculation behind his endorsement of presidential candidate Barack Obama.

No excuse to mess with the doctrine of my castle

The gun control crowd is trying to make poster boys out of Tadarvis Gardner and Andreas Lobsiger in Lexington.

It won't stick.

The lesson of this sad tale is to not go banging on someone's door early in the morning. Someone in his own home shouldn't have to open the door to determine he is in danger. Senate Bill 38 from 2006 was created to ensure safety of people in their own homes. In this case, it did what it was supposed to do.

How long before Beshear taxes Big Macs?

Since Governor Steve Beshear got his last big idea from Atlantic City, it is reasonable to guess that his next one may come from there as well.

That's right, New Jersey wants to tax fast food to save hospitals. Rather than cut spending or change policies that keep costs artificially high, Kentucky may be headed in the same direction soon.

Chandler/Obama on gas prices

Or is it Obama/Chandler?

Kentucky Right to Life endorsements

The Kentucky Right to Life endorsements are out.

And here is an interesting video:

Who will bite Leach first?

The Fayette County Detention Center's mail-order Doctor Don Leach is the subject of a new City of Lexington investigation into his "consulting" activities. At issue is Leach's alleged use of city property in his personal business and whether the city or the feds will press charges against him simultaneously or if one or the other will wait.

What happens when a Dem stays in D.C. too long

WKYT's Bill Bryant is suggesting Congressman Ben Chandler is going to endorse Barack Obama for President today in Louisville.

PageOne has details. Stay tuned here for the YouTube video.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

According to the Kentucky Constitution, the General Assembly had to adjourn by midnight on April 15. They did not do so.

According to the Kentucky Constitution, Governor Steve Beshear has ten days from adjournment to veto bills. In the case of HB 79 today he either did or did not do this on time.

Can't help thinking that if lawmakers didn't sit on their hands the first month of the session, this probably wouldn't be an issue.

Jack Conway gripes and swipes; Goettl responds

Attorney General Jack Conway never complains when he gets his customary kid-glove treatment from the mainstream media. But as soon as a less-than-glowing description emerges, the claws come out:

But while I appreciate the attention to the issue, I am disappointed that neither I nor my office was contacted to respond to false allegations contained in the article.

It quotes Jessamine County Attorney Brian Goettl, the owner and operator of a conservative blog, who implies that the reduction in prosecutors' budgets was due, in part, to my lack of attention to this matter with legislators.

You may read Conway's entire whinefest here.

What appears below is Goettl's response to Conway, which the Herald-Leader now refuses to print:

In response to AG Conway’s recent guest opinion in the April 28th, 2008 Lexington Herald-Leader, let me provide your readers with some facts regarding the budget process, and why I vocalized my criticism of General Conway. On March 11th, Assistant Attorney General Janet Graham sent out the following e-mail:

Hi folks, we have representatives from the County Attorneys Association and the Commonwealth's Attorneys Association up here in Frankfort today advocating on your behalf for your budget. We have been meeting with members of the Senate to stress our budget concerns. The uniform message that is coming back to us is that we need to get a meeting with Senator Williams and Senator Stivers. If any of you believe that you can assist us in getting these meetings, please give me a call at (502) 696-5641.

The e-mail was entitled “Help with the budget please”. After receiving the e-mail, I arranged for a meeting with Senator Stivers and Senator Borders through my association with Becky Harrelson, chief of staff to Senate President David Williams. Ms. Graham acknowledged as much with the following e-mail:

Thank everyone for all of your help on this - we now have a meeting with Senator Stivers regarding the budget, so all of your calls and emails certainly helped. Much praise should be directed to Jessamine County Attorney Brian Goettl for his efforts to get us this meeting. If you see him, give him a big pat on the back.

General Conway did not attend that meeting. I, along with Mke Foster, Janet Graham, Chirs Cohron and members of the PAC budget staff did attend. In a subsequent PAC meeting, General Conway implied that he did not have much sway with Senate Republicans.

I suggested that a public relations campaign be conducted in much the same manner as the Department of Public Advocacy had done concering their budget. The prosecutors present at that meeting were in unanimous agreement with my suggestion.

As a result, General Conway did say that he would assign his deputy press secretary to that task, but asked Commonwealth Attorney Chris Cohron to work with the deputy press secretary, instead of himself. My opinion is that there would have been a better press response if General Conway had held a press conference and spoken directly to the press about the budget situation.

Considering that prosecutors did not receive any media coverage about the budget short fall following that PAC meeting, until after the budget had been set, I feel that I was right.

There is no doubt that General Conway did a great job with the budget when dealing with House Democrats. As well, his PAC budget people and Assistant Attorney General Janet Graham did an outstanding job throughout the entire process.

And, the reality is, General Conway may not have had much sway with Senate Republicans. But, he failed to take advantage of the few opportunities he did have with the Senate. I criticized him for that failure. His implications otherwise are false.

Sincerely,

Brian T. Goettl

Jessamine County Attorney

Fayette Jail story just got harder to ignore

Fayette County Detention Center Sgt. John McQueen has been placed on administrative leave for his role in the prisoner beatings scandal at the facility.

McQueen came under increased scrutiny after questioning last week by FBI agents.

Blast from the past

Remember blogger Mark Nickolas? Congressman Ben Chandler's campaign manager is now busily making enemies of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Congressman Chandler, what say you?

Cry me a revenue stream

A new report on state budgets coming up short has elicited at least a couple of skeptical responses (here and here) to the suggestion that what we really need is a tax increase or some other new way to feed the monster.

Check the mainstream media over the weekend for the standard point-of-view.

Why we need blogs

I don't think Mitch McConnell needs my help beating whichever opponent he winds up getting in the fall. For the same reason, I didn't pay much attention to the political opposition to or media coverage of his latest television commercial.

Fortunately, Elephants in the Blue Grass is on the case. I appreciate the effort and will be paying closer attention to this blog now.

Start limiting pension abuse in Kentucky

In a sane world, the retirement of Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph Lambert would start a debate about cutting back on the outlandish pension benefits some public employees get.

For their part, New Jersey is looking a plan to cut back on giving state pensions for everyone who walks by a government office. Kentucky should, at the very least, look at getting rid of pensions for part-time workers.

Thanks unions: Volkswagen not considering KY

Here's one for the good folks who are trying to unionize Toyota:

"It really comes down to how much the states want it and how much they're willing to pay," Peterson said, referring to potential tax incentives. "The risk of unionization is very low in Tennessee and Alabama, and Volkswagen doesn't want to work with unions if it can avoid it."

This is what they were talking about when the right-to-work people said Kentucky had to get off the no-call list.

Instead of moving in the right direction, our government is in a big hurry to elevate the big unions in Kentucky.

Use transparency to end welfare abuse

The government transparency movement caught fire when Republican U.S. Senator Tom Coburn and Democratic U.S. Senator Barack Obama worked together to put some federal expenditures online.

As with most very good ideas, this one hasn't yet awakened Kentucky's legislative leaders, despite their promises.

Let's require recipients of all forms of welfare including Section 8, food stamps, EITC, and Medicaid to be posted on the internet. Those figures have to be written down and reported anyway. Just make the reporting electronic and let the public see the data. People would think twice about welfare fraud if they knew the neighbors were watching.

Pick your poison Ben Chandler

Congressman Ben Chandler is getting some pressure to pick a side in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary. And now that former Congressman Ken Lucas has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, it's easy to see why Rep. Chandler has gone into hiding.

Here is a screen capture of Chandler's press release page, showing he has done nothing to crow about in seven weeks:

Republican party's stupid tax ploy

If the latest fiscal policy idea from the McCain campaign is an indication of what lies ahead, the GOP nominee would do better to go back to watching from the sidelines as Hillary and Obama bleed each other dry. McCain's big plan is to go back into the old playbook and talk about suspending federal gas taxes for the summer.

If he thought about it, he would reject this idea for the same reason he opposed some of the Bush tax cuts: if this move doesn't correspond with spending cuts of an equal amount, then all we are doing is wasting our time on another expensive political stunt.

Not having much else to work with, the Republican National Committee doesn't see it that way. At least not according to this email:

I can't believe they are touting agreement by Hillary Clinton on a fiscal idea as a good thing. In fact, Clinton's response indicates only that she gets the political gamesmanship:

“I would also consider a gas tax holiday, if we could make up the lost revenues from the Highway Trust Fund,” she said, without specifying how to make up those lost revenues.

Republicans won't be rebuilding much public trust with this one.