Who needs pickpockets? We have Jack Conway

Attorney General Jack Conway is supposed to be the top law enforcement officer in the state. That's not working out so well for taxpayers who don't like to get ripped off by legislators who abuse contracts with other government entities.

Back before the election, Conway was dragging his feet on investigating a money-for-nothing scandal involving Sen. Joey Pendleton.

Conway can not deny that he has known about this issue at least since April. Further, he can not deny participating in Sen. Pendleton's re-election campaign. Only now is he claiming to be investigating the matter.

This looks strangely like that good old boy system we used to hear so much about.

Republican Party of Kentucky Chairman Steve Robertson weighed in with this: "The most troubling aspect of this situation is that Jack Conway had one story before the election and another story after the election. It is a shame that this state’s chief law enforcement officer engaged in a political cover-up and hid the truth from the voters of Kentucky."

A moment in the reinvention of the GOP

Just saw native Kentuckian Diane Sawyer go blank when Bill O'Reilly asked her on Good Morning America who the head of the Republican National Committee is. The point he was making in asking her the question was that "no one knows" who heads the Republican Party, the party has no message, and that "there is no leadership."

"Catastrophic circumstance," Senator Williams?

Just as national Republicans have had their heads handed to them two elections in a row for playing footsie with big spenders, Senate President David Williams told the Louisville Courier Journal that he might be open to a tax increase:

"Asked if he has ruled out supporting a cigarette tax increase, Williams said, "I'm not going to get involved in a discussion about ruling out anything. I've never signed a no-tax pledge in my life because you could have some catastrophic circumstance that would require additional revenue.""

What does that even mean? I thought we all agreed that catastrophic circumstances were exactly the wrong time to raise taxes.

The only way Kentucky is going to get out of any fiscal holes with tax increases is if Frankfort continues its smoke-and-mirrors routine. And we have to know by now we can't keep doing that.

Williams has been one of the few voices of reason on Kentucky's public employee benefits disaster. Let's hope he doesn't mar that record with any more talk about raising taxes.

HELL NO!

Apparently Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid want to expand the banking bailout to the car industry:

"It is our hope that the actions that Congress has taken, and that the Administration may take, will restore the preeminence of our domestic manufacturing industry so that it can emerge as a global, competitive leader in fuel efficiency and in new and path-breaking energy-efficient technologies that protect our environment."

It's time for Sen. Jim "Beanball" Bunning to start his 2010 re-election campaign with a little Capitol Hill headhunting.

Obama's specifics: I liked the fluff better

Now that he has been elected president, Barack Obama can't get away with just promising to make the sky blue and to make his wife proud to be an American: he's shifting to making detailed policy prescriptions. Hold on tight:

Of course, the one missing piece from this mounting disaster is a big tax increase. Nevertheless, these are precisely the wrong things to be doing. Deep tax cuts are the way to stimulate us out of this. The same old borrow-and-spend tricks will only prolong the agony.

Obama's political future depends on his ability to either stimulate the economy or deflect blame while doing nothing that would really help. At least at first, he appears to be opting for the latter.

Don't leave town yet, Gov. Beshear

Gov. Steve Beshear is heading out for a vacation next week just as a transitioning President-elect Barack Obama goes to work on pushing through his plan to bankrupt the coal industry.

Better call your guy, Governor.

In the early stages of Obama letdown syndrome

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Did you get the late-breaking memo?

A friend just pointed out ridiculously coordinated media coverage about the dramatic drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since Barack Obama was elected two days ago.

Earlier this afternoon the headline "Stocks tumble, lose 10 percent since election day" may have given someone the impression markets were not entirely comfortable with the new president-elect.

Can't have that.

If you do a Google search of that headline, you will see every media outlet who carried the AP article made the same change. I didn't do a screen capture of the original article, but the screen capture below certainly suggests everyone got the memo.

Now there's a great plan

California is back in the news with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to raise taxes by $4.7 billion "to get our budget back on track, invigorate our economy and generate jobs for the state's unemployed."

Stopping government takeover of private sector

Lexington's Warren Rogers went to bat a few years ago to stop the government takeover of Kentucky American Water Company. Now he is back, as Chairman of Kentucky Club for Growth, battling the federal effort to usurp private sector jobs.

This morning, Rogers debated Kentucky AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan. To Londrigan's credit, the union thug did not scream or utter any profanities during the entire debate.

The discussion primarily was about the card check provision of the Employee Free Choice Act which would increase union intimidation of workers. Interesting, Rogers pointed out a provision that is even worse than that:

For more coverage, go here.

Will work for massive pension boost

Expect to see Sen. David Boswell retire now that his bid to either get hired in the Beshear administration or go to Congress have failed. Had he been able to get a state executive branch job, he would have been able to artificially increase the state pension you will pay him. Since he couldn't, his pension payments are set to go down on January 1 if he is still in the Senate.

Thinkin' about goin' to Washington anyway

She's not talking, but it's looking like we could soon have a Sen. Sarah Palin from Alaska.

Sen. Ted Stevens appears to have been narrowly re-elected despite his felony convictions. His ouster would create a very interesting opportunity for Gov. Palin.

She could help keep Sen. Mitch McConnell in line while she gains that critical Washington experience.

Well, okay, there is this

The chairman of the economics department at George Mason University in Virginia has one pretty good reason free-marketeers shouldn't commit suicide just yet:

5 November 2008

Editor, Washington Times

Dear Editor:

Re "Obama wins presidency" (November 5): to all persons who understand that freer markets bring greater prosperity, I offer a reason to applaud Obama's defeat of McCain.

A President McCain would have followed Bush's script: singing paeans to free markets while simultaneously meddling and spending in harmful ways. Nevertheless - with popular attention on the song rather than on the substance - the problems caused by these intrusions would have been blamed on "free market fundamentalism" or even laissez-faire capitalism. At least Pres. Obama's destructive policies will not unjustly give capitalism a bad name.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics

Score one for laissez-faire capitalism maybe not getting blamed for the next failure caused by government manipulation. By that reasoning, we can wonder what kind of financial market fix President John Kerry would have been able to get away with if he couldn't blame the problem on free markets.

And in other news...

The most important Kentucky race of 2008 just really gets started today.

The most important man in Washington

President-elect Barack Obama will have one person standing in the way off his agenda next year. That person, of course, is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

That's because Senate Democrats fell short of a filibuster-proof 60 votes. Sen. McConnell knows better than anyone how to tie up bad bills in the Senate. That means a rough road ahead for tax increases and some of the new spending programs Obama has in mind. Unfortunately, Obama won't need Congress to take over the mainstream media with a new Fairness Doctrine.

Starting in January, Sen. McConnell is America's firewall.

Anyone want a ten-bagger?

If you still think Sen. John McCain can win and want to put your money where your mouth is, you might be able to turn $100 into a quick $1000.

Just go to Intrade.com.

Election coverage tonight online

I'll be on the radio with Clearchannel's Leland Conway tonight from 6 pm to 10 pm eastern. That's 630 WLAP or wlap.com.

Call in on 859-280-2287 or email or message me on Facebook. It will be a very interesting evening.

Trying times

Considering the alternatives to be worse, this morning I voted for two men who loudly supported the banking bailout that Washington D.C. is now trying to expand into other industries.

Endangering lives at Fayette jail

Last week, Officer Luke Valdez blew the whistle on dangerous policies at the Fayette County Detention Center. This week, he is back again with more:

"It will only be a matter of time when the inmates housed at Fayette County Detention Center figure out the times when the minimal amount of people will be able to respond to emergencies. This will happen at least nine times in a twenty-four hour period. Inmates will use this against the officers and take advantage of these windows of opportunity in an effort to maximize the amount of disruption they can cause. I understand that the way we handle breaks and work shifts had to be changed due to the lawsuit, but the officers of FCDC feel that we are being retaliated against because of this. I have been told several times that FCDC officers receive some of the best training in the nation, yet we are not treated in this manner. Currently Operational Order 3.1-2C states that if an officer responds to an emergency tone, without a commander’s permission and is on break, he or she will write a report and the major will take progressive disciplinary action on that officer. That officer is only doing what he has sworn to do. Before the changing of the Op-order, if an emergency tone went off you were required to respond and once you were relieved by a commander you continued your break, and this worked smoothly."

Don't hold your breath waiting for Mayor Jim Newberry to do something about this. As Officer Valdez suggests, this looks a lot like retaliation for the wage and hour lawsuit.

A strong indicator of newspapers' state of decay

If you are looking for proof that agendized newspapers are counting on Sen. Barack Obama to give them the fairness doctrine so they don't have to compete so hard in the marketplace of ideas, look at the Bowling Green Daily News. That paper's whiny general manager is picking fights with high school yearbooks:

"This isn’t even close. High school yearbooks should not be on the agenda or getting awards where budding high school journalists are in attendance."

And if you are still looking for a reason to keep Sen. Mitch McConnell in the U.S. Senate, let this be it. It could well be that in January, Sen. McConnell is all that stands between us and a radical shift to the left none of us want or can afford.