A Frankfort banker walks into a bar...

At first, I was puzzled to see this news story in the Frankfort State-Journal about the bank bailout:


Tony Busseni, the bank president, seems to have his Frankfortspeak down cold. Not a bail out; just a "temporary infusion of cash." Right. But a balance sheet is a listing of assets and liabilities. A $30 million loan would show up on both sides ot the ledger, cancelling each other out. How is the bank going to "strengthen" its balance sheet by adding a zero? Sounds like a bail out to me.

I then checked Mr. Busseni's campaign contribution page at Kentucky Registry of Elecion Finance and found $1250 in contributions to Finance and Administration Cabinet Secretary Jonathan "Skippy" Miller. That explains a lot.

When is David Hawpe's week?

Louisville Courier Journal employees will be forced to take a one week unpaid vacation before the end of March, in an attempt to stem the blood flow from its parent company Gannett.

Hate to see people suffer now, but it would be even worse to see this lead to a newspaper bailout.

Of course, Kentucky already has one set up. Did you know?

Technically it's a flip-flop, but I'll take it

Sen. Mitch McConnell joined 41 other U.S. Senators Thursday in voting against sending out the second half of the bank bailout.

Unfortunately, that left 52 Senators to do the heavy bailing. No one seriously expects this to do much of anything for taxpayers.

What a disgusting mess.

Sen. Jim Bunning did not vote, but he was one of the co-sponsors on the resolution to kill the $350 billion TARP foolishness.

What's Newberry trying to pull now?

Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry's actions relating to the city's internal audit of the Fayette County Detention Center took another twist today. The Mayor has some explaining to do.

After Newberry sat on the report the last couple of weeks and then claimed Tuesday that it wouldn't be available for as long as several more weeks, someone in the city leaked a version of the report to the Lexington Herald Leader today.

As of 8:07 pm, the audit is still not available on the city's web site. When it is posted, it will be here. City employees say it is very unusual for an audit report to be made available to a reporter but not posted online.

Sources say federal investigators are looking at findings of an earlier draft of the audit report and that the Herald Leader received a later, less complete version.

Kentucky can't go bankrupt

States are legally prohibited from declaring bankruptcy. That means if we don't get serious about borrowing less money and running entitlement programs more prudently and stopping the raiding of public employee fringe benefits accounts, some people may just be out of luck.

Some future politicians may have little choice but to stop making payments on state obligations. The way we are headed, that is not such a far-fetched idea. Ask California.

After decades of wild state spending, nothing is going to change until someone steps up and forces change. That's why I gladly support the Kentucky Club for Growth.

The Club today is raising awareness of the state employee pension disaster that could literally destroy our state by making it impossible to run any kind of government at all. (And some of their sources are excellent!) As pension and healthcare obligations increase, the money we have raided from those systems will have to be paid back out of other pools of money.

The Club is set up specifically to support candidates for office who will pursue responsible government spending practices. The big spenders opposed by The Club like to criticize small-government types as "hating" government, but keeping spending reasonable will never destroy government. Only the enduring insanity of the status quo will do that.

Around and around Beshear goes...

Gov. Steve Beshear threw a party in November and pledged to expand government health insurance programs Medicaid and KCHIP.

And now we find out that Kentucky's Medicaid budget is going underwater. Looks like "mission accomplished" for Beshear.

Giving Beshear the tax increases he campaigned against -- but now demands -- never looked like a worse idea.

Why would we take anything he says seriously at all?

GOP blasts Beshear, says fire Edelen

Republican Party of Kentucky Chairman Steve Robertson weighed in on apparent corruption in Gov. Steve Beshear's office:

"Emails on state government servers now prove that the Governor's Chief of Staff Adam Edelen was behind the illegal hiring of Ralph Coldiron at an inflated salary. Edelen conducted personal business using state government resources and then unilaterally hired his business partner at an illegal and unjustified salary."

"In order to protect Edelen, a spokesman for the Governor now claims the Governor was 'unaware of the law' but is silent as to whether the Governor was aware of Edelen's activities. Ignorance of the law is not a defense to breaking it."

"I now call on Adam Edelen to resign his position and the Attorney General's office to launch an immediate investigation into Edelen's illegal activity."

The ball is in your court, Governor.

Key issue brings Kentucky worldwide attention

While much of official Kentucky is pondering our tip-of-the-iceberg current state budget problems, insufficient attention has been paid to the nearly $30 billion in unfunded public employee fringe benefits that really threatens our fiscal future.

Slowly, that is starting to change. PensionWatch, a daily aggregator of data about the worldwide pension meltdown, noticed some top-quality coverage of the mess today:

The PensionWatch site is available here. The Kentucky pension story is available here. And yes, I wrote the Kentucky story. Someone had to, right?

Newberry's "hide the audit" game must end

At least ten days have passed since Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry's administration started hiding an internal audit report about financial crimes committed by Fayette County Detention Center employees.

(More about that here, here, and here.)

Mayor Newberry's staff held off reporters who have called about the report by claiming that the report is not ready. The time for Newberry to blame former Mayor Teresa Isaac for the problems at the jail is past. It's your baby, now, Mayor. Release the report tomorrow.

Keynes debunked in less than four minutes

"I don't call it a tax increase"

Speaking on KET's Kentucky Tonight, House Speaker Greg Stumbo's statement of support for the cigarette tax increase began tonight with a denial that it is a tax increase.

Now even KET's Bill Goodman is calling it a user fee.

Stumbo and Gov. Steve Beshear aren't going to get very far if they are too scared to even say "tax increase."

A question for J.R. Gray

We need to ask an important question tomorrow of Kentucky Labor Cabinet Secretary J.R. Gray: How much money are Kentucky taxpayers saving by hiring illegal aliens to work on the Secretariat Center at the Kentucky Horse Park?

What, exactly, is he selling here?

Bill Clinton wants us to buy some more change.

Thank your lucky stars Beshear is broke

When gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear talked about expanding government healthcare in Kentucky, it was hard not to figure he was doing a Massachusetts on the installment plan. From his campaign web site:

So how is "universal" healthcare working out for Massachusetts? From DCExaminer.com:

"Small businesses with more than 10 employees were required to provide health insurance or pay an extra fee to subsidize uninsured low-income residents, yet the overall costs of the program increased more than $400 million — 85 percent higher than original projections. To make up the difference, payments to health care providers were slashed, so many doctors and dentists in Massachusetts began refusing to take on new patients. In the state with the highest physician/patient ratio in the nation, some people now have to wait more than a year for a simple physical exam."

"The irony is that Massachusetts officials reluctantly admitted that, despite increased enrollment, the state is still far from universal coverage — the original goal of the landmark law. To make matters worse, Massachusetts is grappling with a multibillion-dollar deficit while Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick desperately tries to slow down those still-spiraling health care costs, which he said last week were "not sustainable.""
"If this sounds just like Canadian-style socialized medicine, that’s because it is. Massachusetts residents now pay more for less access to health care, yet their state still has an uninsured problem!"

Kentucky has already broken its bank on big government. Had it not, we surely would have gone for the sounds-good, feels-good quicksand that is drowning our northern friends.

Silliest bill in Frankfort, so far

You may be scratching your head over why Rep. Jim Glenn thought we had time to entertain his burgoo bill again this year. But that dumb bill doesn't hold a candle to new House Education Committee Chairman Carl Rollins' bill to pay state employees to volunteer in schools.

And, in case you were wondering, Rollins confirmed to the Frankfort State-Journal that the status quo will be well-protected during his reign:

Why I support the Club for Growth

Club for Growth President Pat Toomey:

"We can't spend our way out of a recession. If that was all it took we wouldn't be in one now. I mean federal spending, government spending is at an all-time record high."

By the way, did you know there is a Kentucky Club for Growth?

Giving Frankfort drunks another drink

Friends don't let friends drive drunk, right? Given the way our elected representatives in Frankfort are spending our money -- and given mounting evidence that the keg isn't running dry -- shouldn't we really consider cutting them off?

Sending them more money seems to only make the problem worse.

It's Friday night party time and here they come looking for a good time. Are you ready to be a real friend and just say no?

Pucker factor increase at Lexington jail

Very reliable sources in Frankfort report Insurance Fraud Investigation Division Director Tony Dehner will be picked to replace scandal-plagued Fayette County Detention Center Director Ron Bishop soon.

How soon that happens is anyone's guess. Now that Mayor Jim Newberry has decided to sit on the incriminating internal audit report on the Lexington jail for a few more weeks, Bishop may have a few more paychecks coming.

No story here, move along

Former Fayette County Detention Center Major Tommy White has resigned abruptly this morning from his position as Interim Bourbon County Jailer.

White previously resigned abruptly from the Lexington jail as the federal investigation into inmate abuse there escalated.

Bourbon County County Judge assistant Carrie McCall at first declined to comment on the resignation other than citing "personal reasons." Upon further questioning, she denied the resignation had anything to do with a rape at the Bourbon County jail.

That denial, one assumes, would also cover the rape of an inmate at the jail on Tuesday in which a deputy jailer observed the crime and told the inmate to "quit squirming."

In an interview today, White said his resignation was dated 12-29-08 and had nothing to do with anything that happened this week. He said he will cooperate with state police and that he is considering rescinding his resignation.

A bipartisan push against CATS testing

Members of Kentucky's House of Representatives from both parties have filed bills over the years to get rid of writing portfolios in Kentucky schools for years.

Interesting this year that there is one bill filed by a Republican to eliminate 4th grade portfolios and another bill filed by a Democrat to eliminate all portfolios from the CATS assessment.

Great to see a little cooperation on such an important issue.