Wednesday LOL: Jack Conway

These are truly triumphant times for people who don't understand economics at all. While most of the politicians in Washington D.C. are content to let Americans think the raging free market caused bankers to lend money to people who were very unlikely to make good on their mortgages, most of the politicians in Frankfort are thrilled to watch Kentuckians rant and rave about evil oil companies raping consumers with high gas prices.

Enter Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway. Courtesy of PageOne, Conway claims to be studiously poring over pricing data as he readies a fresh round of gas price lawsuits after the major price disruptions in the wake of Hurricane Ike. And then he is still on some wild kick about "reviewing" the 1997 merger between Ashland Oil and Marathon Oil.

If Conway knows anything about the Ashland/Marathon merger, he would know that the FTC already fully vetted it in 1998 and again in 2004. He can't seriously think he knows something that everyone else doesn't know.

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"

It's ironic that just as Finance and Administration Cabinet Secretary Jonathan "Skippy" Miller is trying to take credit for posting government expenditures to the internet, the agency that runs the money-losing KAPT program he championed is sitting on that program's actuarial report.

What's wrong, guys? Something you don't want us to see?

Skippy?

Below is a screen shot taken at 10:48 pm Tuesday night on the KAPT web site showing no 2008 actuarial report. It will be interesting to see how fast this gets updated and how bad the news is.

Let there be spending transparency

The Beshear administration will post a website next Monday morning related to the E-Transparency effort. Glad they have finally gotten this far and they deserve credit for making this happen.

The more transparent government activities are, the better the public is served. Nice job, guys. Now do it right.

This isn't helping

You'd think the campaign staff, or the Senate staff, or the party staff, or some random dude running down the street with his hair on fire could come up with something better than this:

"Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said it was time for all lawmakers to "act like grown-ups, if you will, and get this done for all of the people." He predicted a bill would pass this week, although the House, not the Senate, is the focus of the dispute."

Got this from the AP.

Wonder how that little crack will poll...

Picking up steam: no bailouts for junkies

An interesting comment on a Bluegrass Policy Blog post about drug abusers in Kentucky drawing welfare benefits:

"I have worked in law enforcement and you would be AMAZED at the number of drug users who are in line to get their money every month, whose numerous trips to the ER looking for drugs or trips to jail are paid for by you, whose children are supported by the state (who often have numerous special needs because the mother was on drugs while she was pregnant). While they spend time getting high, in jail,or in government funded rehabs the taxpayers are supporting them, their family members/friends are using the food stamps and SSI checks to do what they like. They sell the benefit cards to others to get money to get the drugs. Cut them off, make them accountable and responsible for themselves...stop enabling the abuse of taxpayer funds and government programs."

You can read the whole post here.

Kentucky candidates vote no on bailout

It says something that everyone with an opponent in the Kentucky House delegation voted against the bank bail out.

Chandler, Davis, Whitfield, and Yarmuth voted against. Rogers and Lewis voted for it.

Sen. Brett Guthrie might need to talk about Lewis' yes vote.

George W. Bush, stabilizer-in-chief

No, Mr. President, it isn't for every American.

President Bush is pushing the bank bailout bill this morning. He said "Every member of Congress and every American should keep in mind that a vote for this bill is a vote to prevent economic damage to you and your community."

That isn't exactly true. If you bought a house in the last few years ignoring all the talk about a real estate bubble and now want to sell, this bailout's for you. If you got an adjustable rate mortgage when rates where at a historic low, this bailout's for you. If you underwrote or sold mortgages to people who shouldn't legitimately have gotten a mortgage, this bailout's for you. If you are a politician who wants to take credit for "doing something," especially if you stood in the way of preventing this nonsense back when we tried to fix it, this bailout's for you.

This bailout isn't for the rest of us, Mr. President. If it were, you guys would just do away with the mark-to-market rules and let us get on with our business. A crisis of confidence in a free economy has a great way of working itself out. Kind of like how a big sale at the mall clears the shelves.

No, Mr. President. The vote, the stability, and the bailout aren't for the rest of us. We just get to pay for them.

Stop nursing care for newspapers

Very soon, Kentuckians across the Commonwealth will become keenly aware of the need to reduce government spending. When that happens, we need to work up support for prohibiting the use of taxpayer funds to print government announcements in newspapers.

Notices of hearings, meetings, auctions, etc. can all be placed on the internet for much less money than we are now spending. And the ferocity with which newspaper publishers defend this largesse is quite telling. It's time for the long, slow, expensive bailout of newspapers in the state to end.

Then we need to stop bailing out junkies, labor unions, and corporate welfare recipients.

Do you know what a muni is?

At least for a while, the federal government may get away with bailing out holders of bad mortgages because it can print money.

The state of Kentucky has no such luck. And the difference may start to matter here pretty soon.

While the municipal bond market meltdown hasn't gotten much attention yet, it will. And then we will have some serious decisions to make.

The Bluegrass Institute weighs in.

Smaller government, transparency, pension reform

Speaking Saturday in Stamping Ground, Sen. Damon Thayer discussed key issues not getting enough attention elsewhere including the "fiscal trainwreck heading down the tracks here in the Commonwealth" in unfunded public employee benefits:

Ten minutes to understanding the meltdown

All is well in Community Organizer Nation

One little-noted detail about the current "financial meltdown" is that the rabble-rousing continues unabated without any community organizers actually having to worry about missing a meal.

Regardless of any of his other sins, Phil Gramm was still right when he said we have become a nation of whiners. How else would you describe a people who have been bellyaching about a recession through eight years of economic growth and now are lobbying for sidewalk expansions to fit the coming soup lines in the Great Depression of 2008?

Joe Klein's debate postmortem for Time includes this: "McCain seemed more prudent and thoughtful than he has since he uttered the most important line of the campaign so far, "the fundamentals of the economy are good.""

The fact is that the fundamentals of the economy are good. Refutations of this hard fact always quickly devolve into bogus statistics about those without health insurance, utter nonsense about the poor getting poorer while the rich get richer, or the latest craze, blaming everyone's problems on laissez-faire capitalism.

We will know the economic fundamentals of the United States are no longer good when community organizers can't find work as community organizers. They certainly have to have an appreciation of these good economic fundamentals on the weekends, when they enjoy the comfort of the homes and the company of their families, as they rest up from a busy week of complaining about how horrible America is.

The mortgage mess is the exact opposite of a failure of the market. Making bad loans and putting them on the books as good loans is a distortion that had to be worked out eventually. This bill (notice the co-sponsors) would have helped a lot, but too few people were listening way back then.

A snag in the Jim Newberry set-up

Judge Jennifer Coffman issued an eight page order yesterday in the Fayette jail employees' class action lawsuit against the city of Lexington. It appears she has some questions about the questionable deal attorneys for both sides worked out.

"The critical question of concern to the Court is not whether the
defendant should settle; rather, in its role of protecting the
interests of the plaintiff-employees, the Court is concerned with
whether it is legitimately in the best interests of the plaintiffs to
settle."

And this:

"The likelihood of fraud or collusion behind the settlement."

In other words, hold on to your hats, Lexington taxpayers. You are going to need them after Mayor Jim Newberry and his lawyer friends get finished cleaning out your wallets.

A preliminary settlement hearing is scheduled for 1pm on September 30 at the Federal Courthouse in Lexington.

"That's not political, it's nooze, baby!"

Since when is it newsworthy that Rep. Ben Chandler is endorsing a fellow Democrat running for Congress?

And don't tell me it is because Chandler is a "conservative" Dem and that the Blue Dog label means something.

Remember this? How about this?

Grover Norquist to the rescue

Americans for Tax Reform is making plans to come to Frankfort to publicly express opposition to Gov. Steve Beshear's internet meddling.

Beshear gets national attention

In a week of disasters in Washington D.C., Gov. Steve Beshear brought some unwanted attention home to Kentucky.

Beshear's plan to seize internet gambling websites has raised the ire of Americans for Tax Reform.

"A ruling issued last week in Kentucky by the Franklin County Circuit Court orders the seizure of over 140 internet gaming websites. The lawsuit, supported by Gov. Beshear, was filed by Justice and Public Safety Cabinet J. Michael Brown. A forfeiture hearing on the matter is scheduled for Sept. 26."
"“This ruling, aside from being unconstitutional, represents an egregious example of government intrusion on free enterprise. The court’s decision unjustifiably hampers the freedom of Kentuckians,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “This Orwellian attempt by Gov. Beshear to censor the internet sets a dangerous precedent that should deeply concern all Kentuckians, not just the thousands of law abiding adults in Kentucky that enjoy poker.”"

Nice job, Governor.

Why re-electing Mitch McConnell matters

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn't need any more power.

Jody Richards' golden butt-kicking

House Speaker Jody Richards is trying to get Education Commissioner Jon Draud's job so he can bow out "gracefully" rather than face a challenge from Rep. Greg Stumbo for the Speaker's chair.

This would complete a circle, with both men taking full advantage of Kentucky's rigged public employee pension system for politicians.

Al Gore: "take down" those coal plants

Al Gore has gone off the deep end again, calling for "civil disobedience" and urging young people to "take down" coal plants.

This comes right on the heels of VP candidate Joe Biden saying basically the same thing.

Obama is the real Herbert Hoover

Thanks to the Club for Growth for passing along this video of an interview that lines up both sides of the bailout debate pretty well. About halfway through, the hapless Sen. Chuck Schumer says Sen. Jim Demint sounds like "Herbert Hoover in 1929." If the interviewer knew her history she would have stopped him on that. Hoover was a big-government Republican who rammed through tariffs that choked off trade and massive tax increases that killed growth.

Sounds a lot like our guy Barry.