Hurry up those Kentucky tax cuts

Rumors continue to swirl about Gov. Steve Beshear calling a special session after the November election to raise Kentucky taxes. This will be another Beshear screw-up. Not only will the Senate not let him do it, but it would have a horrible impact on our fiscal health.

What we really need to do is cut taxes.

A Forbes magazine list of the fastest-dying cities in America should serve as a jolt back to reality for those who want to keep making government bigger:

"Where's it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities--Detroit and Flint--making the ranking."

This should have a sobering effect on Kentuckians, given that another new study shows Michigan and Ohio both more business-friendly for manufacturers.

Just a question

On Saturday, October 25, nearly 60,000 southerners will congregate in Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington, Kentucky to watch the Arkansas Razorbacks take on the Kentucky Wildcats in a game of football.

If Barack Obama shows up to wave at the crowd and perhaps mutter a few generalities, will the media ignore the game and report on the tens of thousands of screaming fans who turned out to express repentance for their formerly racist ways?

Who do you think you're fooling, Skippy?

Governor Steve Beshear's effort to keep hiding the state's checkbook from taxpayers took an odd twist tonight involving Finance and Administration Cabinet Secretary Jonathan "Skippy" Miller.

Miller was apparently so exhausted from his first e-transparency task force meeting on June 19th that he couldn't manage to have another one until September 2nd. That, of course, is when Secretary of State Trey Grayson, the leading state official on government transparency, will be in Minneapolis for the Republican National Convention.

Miller told WHAS reporter Mark Hebert that he didn't know when the GOP convention was. Skippy has lived and breathed politics his entire life. There is no way he didn't know when the convention was.

Beshear could have enacted this months ago. It's way past time to quit screwing around.

David Boswell wants to be Moveon.org's boy

Sen. David Boswell is desperate to get out of the state Senate this year so he can maximize his state pension. He even tried to run for governor, but never got that off the ground.

Now he is trying to get outside groups to fund his flagging congressional campaign against Sen. Brett Guthrie. From the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer today:

"Boswell is still attempting to tap into Democratic donors from national organizations and from outside the district and planning a fundraiser featuring former U.S. Senator and governor Wendell Ford and U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader in the U.S. House."

You can find Rep. Steny Hoyer's name on an online petition put out by Rep. Eric Cantor to urge Hoyer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to get serious about addressing gas prices. Boswell isn't about to cross Pelosi and Hoyer while he is trying to get money out of them.

"Boswell doubted whether action on the issue was needed before the U.S. House is set to reconvene on Sept. 8."

""I think it can probably wait until the recess is over," Boswell said."

Draud still spinning, media still buying it

Education Commissioner Jon Draud told The Louisville Courier Journal's Toni Konz that he isn't going to ask for a raise six months into his job.

How magnanimous of him, especially considering that the General Assembly slipped him an extra $40,000 this spring.

Tax reform for working Kentuckians

Rep. Bill Farmer is working on a bill to repeal all Kentucky income taxes.

It isn't what they are trying to do in Massachusetts, but would involve expanding and raising sales taxes in an effort to keep revenues where they are now.

It would be a serious step in the right direction.

Hurricane Grayson: Beshear ducks and covers

Gov. Steve Beshear already embarrassed himself trying to get out in front of Secretary of State Trey Grayson's spending transparency initiative back in June, despite his dithering for six months. And he obviously heard the chants at Fancy Farm for Grayson to run against him in 2011.

So it comes as no surprise to learn Beshear has scheduled the next meeting of the E-Transparency Task Force for September 2nd, when Grayson is away at the Republican National Convention.

It would be a lot easier to take Gov. Beshear seriously about his desire to show the public what state government has been hiding all these years if the meeting he is slipping in while Grayson is unavailable were not the first one since June 19th.

Pitiful display, Gov. Beshear.

Education watchdog hopeful for real reform

Could a Frankfort task force actually do something positive for someone other than the politicians? Richard Innes, the Bluegrass Institute's education analyst, sees a glimmer of hope in the one set up to study CATS testing:

"It seems the people appointed to this group are less malleable and a bit more interested in giving this a good “college try” than the department of education anticipated. And, when I found myself in agreement with some of the comments from the Kentucky Education Association president about problems with writing instruction interference from CATS, there may indeed be some hope that what the department wanted to be a low key sort of white-wash might just turn out to be something much better."

Hard not to be skeptical, but we'll see.

This time they have really gone too far

A check of internal personnel records at the Fayette County Detention Center shows that jail employee Rashel Coatney, who was roughed up by a jail administrator and told that she was fired two weeks ago, has essentially been placed on unpaid leave.

This is outrageous because the single mom (and her son who has cancer) can't get any public assistance because she is, technically, not unemployed. So jail administration is jamming this young lady into a box she can't get out of as some kind of sick vendetta against her.

This sorry episode lays bare a sick leave policy at the jail that is being used as a weapon against employees who don't play the kind of games Director Ron Bishop has been playing for years. Fayette county taxpayers will ultimately pay many millions of dollars to clean up the messes Bishop has created in sexual harassment lawsuits, racial discrimination, a class action lawsuit for improper compensation practices, and a federal investigation into inmate abuse and misuse of public property. Mayor Jim Newberry has slept through the whole thing.

As a Jessamine County resident, I can watch and wait with a somewhat detached indifference for the massive lawsuits to keep coming down. They won't cost me a dime.

But I refuse to sit by idly while these "leaders" toy sadistically with innocent children. If you live in Lexington, please call Mayor Jim Newberry at 576-2564 and tell him to stand up for an innocent, hard-working citizen for once instead of for his political cronies at the jail. If he wants to save money, he can get rid of the administrators' taxpayer-provided cars.

Enjoy your gas price increase holiday, Ben

While Rep. Ben Chandler rests up from his hard charge to the left in Washington D.C., House Republicans are making a loud statement for energy independence on Capitol Hill.

Get off the pot, Governor Beshear

Did I mention that Gov. Steve Beshear is "studying" the idea of improving Kentucky's disastrous scholastic assessment program called CATS?

Education Analyst Richard Innes at the Bluegrass Institute has more devastating evidence that the "writing portfolios" we do in our public schools are a waste of time and money.

Here is another dead bill that would have addressed this problem. Oh, and don't forget this one. It's the reason Beshear is "studying."

Time's a wasting, Governor.

What kind of conservative are you?

The Madison County Republican party is hosting an interesting event Thursday, August 7th at 7:00 pm. They are calling it a "Community Forum on Conservatism" and seeking to answer the questions "What does it mean to be a conservative?" and "Has the meaning of conservatism changed over time?"

The panelists are the Bluegrass Institute's Chris Derry, Rep. Lonnie Napier, and WLAP's Leland Conway.

Everyone is invited to the event in Central Bank's Community Room at 350 W. Main Street in Richmond.

What are you trying to say, Governor?

Somehow I missed the press release on this one, but someone might want to ask Gov. Steve Beshear about the single largest corporate giveaway in Kentucky last week.

He gave $1.625 million to a company that makes adult diapers.

Playing by "big government rules"

We're looking at a big battle in 2009 over health insurance reform. The "Harry and Louise" ads from 2004 helped save us from HillaryCare won't cut it this time. Here is a very effective video being used to push government healthcare:

And here is the fifteen year-old stuff that needs to be updated:

It's a shame that we're arguing about whether mindless bureaucrats or mindless corporate hacks should carry the day. Getting the government out of the way and introducing real competition into the marketplace would easily deliver lower prices and better service.

Political imaginations running wild

Some people try to counter the fact that outspoken people like Dan Rather and Katie Couric dominate a mainstream media with a bias toward a statist ideology by claiming implausibly that they actually veer to the right.

Here is another nail in that coffin. Lexington Herald Leader columnist Tom Eblen said this morning, in his description of the Fancy Farm picnic:

"Young Republicans dressed as Arab sheikhs, “thanking” Lunsford for higher oil prices, through some stretch of the political imagination. Young Democrats dressed as characters with the names “Texas Oilman Mitch” and “Bush's Lapdog Mitch.”"

Lunsford hopes to join a party in the Senate that has quashed every effort to expand domestic oil exploration for many years. Joined by a handful of "Republicans" who agreed with them the last few years, they have been able to shut off the domestic spigot unimpeded for decades. Seeking to add one more vote to that sentiment, as Lunsford does, is indeed worthy of appreciation from Arab oil producers.

And that brings us to the next sentence in Eblen's column. How can Lunsford's support for rising oil prices be imaginary when the "Texas Oilman Mitch" character isn't worthy of any kind of derogatory mention?

Another Kentucky education bombshell

Kentucky's faked high school drop-out rates missed another one.

When the Kentucky Department of Education figured out that the American Diploma Project they joined in 2002 was actually a serious effort and not marketing gimmicks and spin, they sat on the back row, put on their dark sunglasses, and went to sleep.

Road trip!

Headed off for my first Fancy Farm. I have the technology to report from there and expect to do so. Please check back.

Here's one rumor for you.

UPDATE: I think I can sum up the meaningful political discourse from the whole day in one sentence. This fall's Congressional races are about gas prices.

Today was fun. Gov. Beshear did better than I thought he would. Neither Mitch McConnell nor Bruce Lunsford drew any blood. Heather Ryan and Todd Hollenbach did pretty well also. Secretary of State Trey Grayson had the best line of the day when he talked about Gov. Beshear studying another potential policy move and the Frankfort press going down to Grayson's office to see how it was working out in practice.

Problems reading blogs this morning?

For some reason, Site Meter is causing a bunch of blogs to not be readable in Internet Explorer. The fix appears to be simply to remove Site Meter from the site. You won't see the problem if you use Fire Fox, but anyone still on Internet Explorer will.

If you have a blog or know someone who does -- and you can't open it in IE, that's the way to repair the problem. Spread the word.

Or ask your Congressman to sponsor the 2008 Blogger Hit Counter Bailout, Subsidy, And Nationalization Act. That could help, too.

Do you give a hoot about the McCain campaign?

I just got a call from Paul Farhi, a Washington Post reporter, who is writing a story about Sen. John McCain's online outreach program. He was curious about what he said was a rewards system for readers of the McCain site who post McCain talking points onto various sites on the internet.

I know the McCain site has me featured on there as one of the "other" blogs, but I didn't know anything about this.

Is that interesting? Well, no. But the fact that there is very little interesting about the McCain campaign and the guy is running even in the polls with Emperor Barack Obama is, in fact, noteworthy.

Just keep not being Barack Obama, there, Senator McCain.

Changing the world one YouTube at a time

I got off the airplane in Washington D.C. Wednesday morning and rushed over to the Americans for Tax Reform office for a couple of meetings. There I got dragged into a room and was told to talk for 45 seconds about something that should be on the Republican party's national platform. (The very nice young lady who took the video might have mentioned that my tie wasn't straight.)

If you haven't done this yet, you can go on here with your two cents.