Gonna get another scalp soon

With Fayette County Detention Center schemer Don Leach forced out this week, we turn our attention to which domino falls next.

Some say Jim Kammer. Others guess Ron Bishop.

Getting both of them off the public payroll -- and a few more, too -- can't happen fast enough.

Getting McCain right on education reform

Sen. John McCain was in Cincinnati this morning talking up school choice. That's a good thing, says the Cato Institute, as long as he doesn't try to do it on a national level.

"...the Constitution mentions neither the word “education” nor the word “school.” Congress and the president simply do not have a mandate to create such a program. More than that, a national private school choice program risks extending pervasive government regulation over private schools from the Potomac to the Pacific, homogenizing the options available to families and thus defeating the entire point of school choice. It is far better and safer for presidential candidates to tout the merits of school choice and encourage their state-level counterparts to put these programs into place."

Kentucky should start with special needs scholarships because official abuse is so bad against students with special needs in Kentucky public schools.

Four minutes of smaller government whoopass

Just as Massachusetts is asking for another $100 million for their socialized medicine program, the people who are pushing to repeal their state income tax are now asking for government spending transparency.

Awesome:

Hillary Clinton STILL not dead?

They are switching superdelegates away from Barack Obama.


And my favorite quote from a Fox News interview (linked here) with a Hillary supporter is "we all know that politicians say things to leave them room to maneuver." Sounds like a great Clinton campaign motto for the fall campaign.

Second favorite quote: "the Democratic party is right now in a crisis. They have tried to create a sense of faux unity and it isn't working. And it doesn't take a genius to see that it isn't working."

Replacing Ernesto

Lots of behind-the scenes action on the Republican side in the effort to keep Rep. Kathy Stein out of the state Senate.

From the Lexington City Council, At-Large member Linda Gorton is having her name tossed around as a possibility.

Will there be another study group?

Talk radio host Leland Conway made Gov. Steve Beshear say this morning he would consider a plan to eliminate Kentucky's income tax. Rep. Stan Lee then came on the show and said he would get started on a bill.

Leland has been out front on this effort for a while now.

Beshear sets up a website without a study group

Gov. Steve Beshear announced today an interactive website to allow state employees to arrange carpool rides to work. Apparently he did this without the aid of a task force or study group.

That's probably a good thing because his government transparency task force he started with much fanfare a month ago (and under pressure from Secretary of State Trey Grayson) appears to have ground to a halt.

Perhaps he thinks we have forgotten all about that "people's right to know" stuff.

2:39 pm UPDATE: Finance and Administration Cabinet spokeswoman Jill Midkiff just confirmed that no meeting of Beshear's task force is currently scheduled.

One down

Under intense pressure for his role in multiple scandals at the Fayette County Detention Center, Don Leach is resigning August 1.

He leaves a Lexington jail that, under his de facto leadership, has become embroiled in a massive federal investigation, lawsuits Fayette county taxpayers will be paying off for decades to come, and a gathering storm of the type of political scandal Lexington has in the past been able to sweep under the rug.

Mayor Jim Newberry probably has no comment.

Cutting off Medicaid's nose to spite KY's face

The Lexington Herald Leader takes a swipe at the drug problem this morning by suggesting we burden our drowning Medicaid entitlement with paying for drug treatment.

"County jails are particularly ill-equipped to provide treatment or deal with addiction. And Kentucky Medicaid does not pay for drug treatment.
The legislature and Gov. Steve Beshear are taking smart steps by diverting more non-violent criminals from prison and increasing treatment, though modestly.
But Kentucky, which has the fastest-growing prison population in the nation, will need the cooperation and ideas of everyone, from Main Street and the courthouse to the statehouse, to beat this beast."

I can't imagine a quicker way to bankrupt the state, can you?

Since they asked, there is a much better way. Welfare reform.

Compared to what?

I would love for anyone to explain to me why Lexington taxpayers wouldn't be better off selling their public golf courses. The fact that the Lexington Herald Leader editorial page insists that they are a "bargain" should cinch it.

Forcing private golf courses to compete with (and subsidize) public courses on land that could more efficiently be used for neighborhoods or businesses would be impossible to justify if the big-government types were forced to do so.

Four days from the truth

Last Thursday, Gov. Steve Beshear's budget office admitted that state revenue was up for the fiscal year ending in June.

I still haven't seen anything in the MSM about that. Have you?

Lex jail head circles wagons, shoots "wounded"

As a criminal trial with an August 18 start date threatens to shine unwanted light on his own checkered past, Fayette County Detention Center Director Ron Bishop is trying to intimidate potential witnesses by threatening to fire employees who aren't "on the team" and charging them with abuse of the facility's vague employee leave policy, jail employees say.

That's interesting because when Bishop himself was testifying in his own civil suit in Louisville in July of 2006, jail records show he was on the clock back in Lexington.

This isn't the first time Ron Bishop thought the rules for everyone else didn't apply to him.

All the key players in Lexington had no comment.

Is Hillary still not dead yet?

Sure would like to hear what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have to say about this.

FDIC: a stupid idea that should die now

Some people are trying to blame yesterday's failure for IndyMac bank on Sen. Chuck Schumer and some are jumping on Sen. John McCain, but President Franklin Roosevelt is a more likely culprit.

IndyMac, a Pasadena, California thrift, specialized in jumbo mortgages for so-called "liar loan" applicants. The only way they could get away with that is because they could bring in large deposits from investors who felt secure because of the Depression-era federal deposit insurance program, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Without the FDIC, depositors would have to ask the tough questions about what their money would be invested in. We have the technology to regulate that very well now, thanks. We could have figured out how to do that back in the 1930's, but there is absolutely no excuse for overpaying for the illusion of safety now.

Until we kill off the FDIC, taxpayers will be on the hook for more banks' bad investment practices.

Fayette jail defendant should have talked to dad

Lieutenant Kristine Lafoe, the only female defendant so far in USA v McQueen et al, the Fayette jail inmate abuse scandal, had good reason to steer clear from the official misdeeds of which she is accused.

At the very least, she should have known better than to ignore the warnings of whistleblower Cpl. John Vest, who said in sworn testimony he reported cases of excessive force against inmates up his chain of command. Lafoe was in charge of the intake area of the jail when Vest worked there.

Kristine Albaugh Lafoe is the daughter of former Fayette County Chief Deputy Sheriff Joe Albaugh. Mr. Albaugh assisted in the indictment and conviction of former Sheriff Lonas Taulbee, who did hard time for theft and malfeasance after getting caught stuffing cash in the ceiling of his office.

When Albaugh ran for sheriff himself in 1998, he told Ace Magazine "I came forward with great danger to myself and my family."

Lafoe's trial starts August 18 and Vest is suing the city of Lexington for millions of dollars for trying to shut him up when he put himself and his family in danger.

An interesting side note is that Lonas Taulbee's daughter is Fayette County Property Valuation Administrator Renee True, who ran on a gubernatorial slate last year with the ethically challenged Steve Henry.

GOP Online Platform Committee open for you

I just found this. Check it out and report back, please.

Gutsy move in Massachusetts

I've watched with mild curiosity a movement to get state income tax repeal on the ballot this November in Massachusetts.

But now I'm a believer.

The Massachusetts Secretary of State certified yesterday that income tax repeal had gotten a sufficient number of signatures to force a November election, eliciting this response:

"In a statement to the News Media, Carla Howell said:

"Governor Deval Patrick, the state legislature, and the Massachusetts Teachers Union no longer control the decision of whether to END the Income Tax. The voters will decide this November 4th."

"Our END the Income Tax Ballot Initiative is the first major tax cut for working class and middle class Massachusetts taxpayers in 28 years. Since Proposition 2 1/2."

If that doesn't get you, this will. They are proposing to not replace the income tax with anything and to simply require government to spend less.

"Ending the Massachusetts Income Tax would roll back the state government spending 39% -- to the 1995 budget.

Between 1990 and 2007, the population of Massachusetts rose from 6 million residents to 6.5 million. In 17 years, the population increased 8.3%.

During the same period, Massachusetts state government spending more than DOUBLED.

During the same period, most city and town government spending also more than DOUBLED.

Reducing state government spending by only 39% leaves the state government more than it needs."

The big government types will go to war on this, but Kentucky should take a lesson. The only way we are going to get our government finances under any kind of control is to cut way back on the spending.

Thanks to Grover Norquist for the heads-up on this.

"You can't handle the evidence!"

A motion in US District Court in Lexington over the Fayette jail inmate abuse scandal defendants' request to view sealed evidence has been set aside by Judge James Todd. A hearing scheduled for this morning has been cancelled.

11:45 update: The federal court online document program which has been down all morning has come back up. It looks like the defendants asked for two kinds of evidence and were granted access to one of them. The other, called Brady material, is evidence that might be beneficial to the defense and includes names of witnesses who have received immunity for their testimony. The prosecution said there was no such evidence but agreed to provide any if it becomes available.

A third type of evidence, called Jencks Act evidence was requested by the defense and denied for now by the prosecution on the grounds that no such evidence exists until the trial starts. When witness testimony begins at trial, Jencks Act evidence would include any statements, written or oral, by a witness including grand jury testimony. There is a pre-trial conference set for July 23 and the jury trial begins August 18 before Judge Karen Caldwell.

MSM wakes up to Kentucky pension issue

A good article in Business Lexington this morning addresses important issues about the state's public employee fringe benefits disaster.

"In a floor speech Monday, House Speaker Jody Richards tried to sound hopeful.

He said "the structural changes we are making will prevent the system from going bankrupt provided that future legislators have the will to fund the system at an actuarially acceptable level as statutorily required by this legislation." Then he added that "investment performance will need to be improved."

All that means if increasingly higher amounts of money are poured into public retirement funds each year, health-care costs don't get too far out of control and investment returns improve, the benefits system may not become insolvent. Insolvency would necessitate putting in even more taxpayer dollars.

Rogers is skeptical about the legislators' plan.

"That's crazy," he said. "That's no reform at all. Uncertainty like that would run my company out of business. Frankly, a well-funded defined contribution plan properly invested can provide much more retirement benefit to an employee than a company pension. There is a reason that virtually the entire private sector has converted to defined contribution plans and the public sector remains mired in the past."

Speaker Richards (or whoever winds up running the House next year) had better get serious about public employee compensation and bringing it more in line with what is available in the private sector.

Whiners and crybabies and economic growth

If the people who are ready to kill Phil Gramm would stop hyperventilating long enough to hear what he actually said, a lot of them would agree with him.