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Robbing Peter to pay Guido

Learned yesterday at the State Government Committee meeting that we are borrowing $100 million a year from the Kentucky Teachers Retirement System to pay for teachers' healthcare. And we are paying too much interest for the privilege.

Well, at least that makes their poor investment returns look a little better. How long do you think we can keep this up?

Two candid task farce moments

The Bluegrass Institute's education analyst Richard Innes was the only member of the media at Tuesday's CATS Task Force meeting in Frankfort. His report included two very interesting statements.

Jim Applegate, VP for Academic Affairs at Council on Postsecondary Education, said:

“If out of all of this we don’t end up with an assessment system that allows us at every step of the way to understand where the individual child is on the road to the next step after high school, on to college, on to the skilled workplace, whether they’re behind, they’re ahead, they’re on track – and, it’ll help us understand how to intervene with that child to do the right thing and then allows us longitudinally to reassess at a point in the future to know whether our interventions work or not – then, I don’t know why we’re even bothering to assess. You know, uh, I don’t know what the point is."

While this is a great point, Education Commissioner Jon Draud is glad you didn't hear about it in the lame stream media because then he would have a harder time ducking and covering behind his fake little study group.

And then there is this from Mr. Innes, which backs up the whole point behind Senate President David Williams' SB 1 and Rep. Jim DeCesare's HB 15:

One surprisingly candid comment came from a somewhat unexpected source, Jon Draud’s hand-picked testing expert Doris Redfield, the only testing expert in this entire group. Dr. Redfield said:
“If you are going to do an assessment of learning – an accountability assessment, an achievement assessment – what you want are the students’ very best possible products – that’s probably measured on-demand because of the reliability and validity factors.”
In other words, measuring writing on an assessment is most properly done with on-demand writing prompts such as those already given during the CATS tests. In contrast, writing portfolios do not provide the same level of reliable and valid scores.

There isn’t anything new in Redfield’s statement, but it was refreshing to hear her echo this, anyway.

More great reporting from the Bluegrass Institute.

Save pension money by paying firemen less

As Kentucky's public employee pension black hole grows toward $30 billion in size, we would do very well to consider bringing compensation levels down to private sector levels. A good place to start may be with firefighters:

"“That’s not the case for firefighters,” Frates said, recalling how a recent [single] opening in the Newport Beach Fire Department drew a crowd of 600 applicants, including some who camped overnight. “What the market is telling us is that you don’t have to offer 3% at 55 to get qualified applicants.”"

The quote above came from here.

As reality sets in, we are going to have to look at options like this. We simply can not afford to pay people with tax dollars more than they are worth in the real world.

Hit me baby one more time

I'm headed to Frankfort to hear how great we are doing on public employee pension reform. I'm sure I will hear other lies too. And I'm sure I will like it.

1:23 pm Where's Skippy? UPDATE:
What a disappointment. The first item on the agenda LRC emailed out last Thursday promised testimony today from Finance and Administration Cabinet Secretary Jonathan "Skippy" Miller.

Unfortunately, he is nowhere to be found. Nor is he on the current agenda.

Another reason to fire Ron Bishop

A multi-million dollar class action lawsuit against the City of Lexington has reached a settlement agreement, according to federal court documents, and so the city's taxpayers are about to see tangible harm for keeping Fayette County Detention Center Director Ron Bishop employed way past the time since he has proven himself to be a major liability.

Taxpayers have Mayor Jim Newberry, whose law firm represented the city in the matter and will enjoy another healthy payday, to thank for the hit they are going to take. And it will get worse.

The lawsuit resulted from a management scheme at the jail involving shorting employees on their paychecks in violation of the Federal Labor Standards Act and the Kentucky Wage and Hours Act.

This whole thing is stupid and unnecessary and, as usual with the Newberry administration, the only real winners are the lawyers.

Agreement between the city's and plaintiffs' attorneys was worked out on the phone Monday and the judge ordered a hearing for approval of the settlement for Thursday, September 4.

Ohio's Gov. Strickland hates everyone

"Ohioans for healthy families" hasn't weighed in yet on Gov. Ted Strickland's (D) opposition to their wild plan to mandate businesses provide paid family sick leave to everyone.

The economic development along Kentucky's northern border would be fabulous if these folks ran off their businesses with this stuff. Unions and left-wing groups are trying to get the mandate in the form of a ballot initiative.

Finally, a tax-me-more fund

Thanks to action by the Public Service Commission, big spenders and enviro-activists will be able to put their money where their mouths have been.

From the PSC press release:

"In an order issued today, the PSC granted Kentucky Power’s request to begin a “green pricing option” that allows customers to purchase renewable energy. A customer will be permitted to purchase up to 500 blocks of 100 kilowatt-hours per month, at $2 per block. A kilowatt-hour is the amount of electricity used by a 100-watt light bulb in 10 hours. A typical Kentucky Power residential customer uses about 1,350 kilowatt-hours per month. Kentucky Power will use the revenue produced by the optional payments to purchase renewable energy certificates (RECs) from generators of renewable energy. Sources include wind power, solar power, hydroelectric power, landfill gas, biomass and others."

That's a whole lot of green for being green. It will be very interesting to see how many people voluntarily get on board.

And if Gov. Beshear decides to provide some of that elusive "leadership" by volunteering to put the Governor's Mansion on this silly scheme, I vote no.

Just get them out of the way

The Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) gets it exactly right in their criticism of what passes for government involvement in private business:

""Kentucky as a whole has not made adequate economic progress over the last 30 years," Jason Bailey, research and policy director for the association, said
in an interview. "We are largely stuck in an old approach to economic development that's really based on recruiting industry with the use of tax incentives.""

Unfortunately, this clear-headed analysis leads into more of the same interventionism MACED tends to fall into:

The study’s recommendations include:

• An increase in the share of state economic development resources that go into entrepreneurship and small business development;

• The creation of a state commission to raise the profile of entrepreneurship, conduct research and convene an annual summit;

• A new system of expanded performance-based investments in existing and new
entrepreneurship and small business programs across Kentucky;

• A new state role in helping coordinate and connect the various public, non-profit and private programs across the state.

There is something perverse about setting up a government bureaucracy to incentivize and guide entrepreneurism. We would do much better to shut down the economic development cabinet, cut taxes, and reduce regulation that hurts private productivity.

Sure, teach entrepreneurism in the schools. In fact, make it a part of the required curriculum at every high school and state college and university. But then get government out of the way.

It's called shoring up the base

The "African Americans and Women in Politics" class at Berea College is wasting no time indoctrinating students. Hillary Clinton's "Living History" is off the required reading list and Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" is on it.

School is in, time for vouchers

An extraordinary event at the Democratic convention that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Ben Chandler, John Yarmuth, and friends don't want you to know anything about:

Hit this link.

Dems in Denver greeted by 50 of these

And there is more where this came from.

Left-wing money flows into Kentucky

Rep. Ed Whitfield's opponent, Heather Ryan, just got $5000 for her campaign for being a "Progressive Patriot."

This says a lot about Kentucky education

What does it say about Kentucky education when this message lies at the top of the Education Cabinet Secretary's web page:

"Unemployment benefits extended in Kentucky"?

Making Ford, GM, Toyota buy us silly golf carts

Mark Hebert reports Gov. Steve Beshear may be making a big deal Monday about taking tax dollars from existing employers and giving them to ZAP, Inc.

It would be much cheaper and effective if we just made our policies more conducive to business growth across the board.

Really, we are subsidizing photo-ops for politicians with this garbage and doing it with money from existing businesses. What a waste.

Bruce Lunsford wearing thin

Larry Dale Keeling gets to the heart of Bruce Lunsford's just-folks schtick with this:

"When he’s winging it, Lunsford also can go overboard trying to establish his ”folksy“ street cred with anecdotes about his childhood on a farm..."

Oh, and did Lunsford mention he went to the bathroom outside when he was a small child and that the American Dream is dead?

Some of us only need one

Here are twenty reasons to repeal corporate income taxes.

I have several favorites on this list, but this one is really worth a look:

"11) The OECD has found that corporate taxes are most onerous for dynamic, high-growth companies that are challenging more established firms."

All the more reason for people in central Kentucky to be aware of this upcoming rally in Lexington. Waiting around for politicians to get serious about pro-growth reforms on their own just won't cut it.

Biden his time, denying Iranian threat

I guess Sen. Barack Obama is trying to balance out his ticket with a little gravitas -- or at least gray hair -- by adding Sen. Joe Biden on as Veep.

The Republican Jewish Coalition is not impressed:

"In 1998, Sen. Biden was one of only four senators to vote against the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act, a bill that punished foreign companies or other entities that sent Iran sensitive missile technology or expertise. Biden was one of the few senators to oppose the bipartisan 2007 Kyl-Lieberman Ammendment labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. In a December 2007 debate, Biden said "Iran is not a nuclear threat to the United States of America." On MSNBC's "Hardball," Biden said he "never believed" Iran had a weapon system under production. "The Jewish community was already gravely concerned with Senator Obama's naïve understanding of the Iranian threat. An Obama-Biden ticket has proven that it is ill-equipped to deal with this threat. By selecting Senator Biden to join his ticket, voting for Senator Obama has now become an even greater risk," said (RJC Exec. Director Matt) Brooks."

Now here is an appropriate government function

Governor Steve Beshear says "don't try suicide."

Looking out for their own

Jessamine County Sheriff Kevin Corman has somehow managed to weather investigations for misappropriation of funds by Attorney General Jack Conway and Auditor of Public Accounts Crit Luallen.

Sources inside both offices report Corman is being given time to repay the funds while the public is kept in the dark.