Lexington has to do better next time

Multiple sources confirmed tonight Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry plans to announce soon he will not run for re-election.

Newberry has been buried by controversy surrounding the CenterPointe development, scandals at the Lexington Airport and at the Lexington jail, his mishandling of the World Equestrian Games, public pensions, etc.

What a mess. So, who's next?

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Wednesday morning Update:

Did I mention that I really get a kick out of politicians who insist they never read blogs?

Obama honeymoon already over for KY Dems

An out-of-state political consultant says a group of very high profile Kentucky Democrats is setting up a plan to primary Congressman Ben Chandler in 2010, hoping they can score points against him for endorsing Barack Obama in 2008.

Look Mom, four year old bogus school data!

The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence is the foremost apologist for propping up Kentucky's public school bureaucracy and now they have a blog.

It is very telling that the first graph printed on Prichard's blog provides one example of several data points debunked by Bluegrass Institute Education Analyst Richard Innes fifteen months ago, yet held up as gospel by Prichard even today.

Expect breathless rehashing of Prichard's posts very soon in The Lexington Herald Leader and The Louisville Courier Journal.

Something stinks in Lexington

The Lexington Herald Leader's story about a city audit of the Fayette County Detention Center keeps raising more questions than it answers.

The following passage has been added to the newspaper story:

If the audit was dated Wednesday, then why was Susan Straub telling reporters on Tuesday afternoon that it wouldn't be ready for weeks?

And why hasn't the report been posted to the city's web site now, if it has been available for six days?

Sources report federal investigators looking into how the city has handled multiple issues at the jail are not amused by these discrepancies.

Jumping off Bunning's frying pan into the fire?

Off-season talk about knocking Sen. Jim Bunning into retirement from public office is coming from both sides of the aisle. One thought to consider before Attorney General Jack Conway starts looking for a Virginia realtor: five of the seven new Democratic U.S. Senators in their election campaigns were against the bank bailout. Days after getting cozy in their new, warm offices, the magically became in favor of it.

If Bruce Lunsford had replaced Sen. Mitch McConnell earlier this month, can there be any question that the figure would have been six of eight?

Expanded think tank role for KP publisher

The Bluegrass Institute will announce soon expanding the role of Kentucky Votes Director and Bluegrass Policy Blog lead blogger David Adams to include the duties of Grassroots Coordinator.

"I'll be meeting with individuals across the state to organize and expand efforts to promote greater freedom and prosperity for all Kentuckians. It's part of the Institute's effort to build on its past successes by turning up the heat on public officials who misuse their power to hold Kentucky back economically," Adams said.

The Bluegrass Institute's main initiatives include lowering taxes, improving government transparency, eliminating policies that hurt Kentucky's competitiveness, and getting a better return on Kentucky's public investments in education.

The Bluegrass Institute's web sites include Kentucky Votes, Bluegrass Policy Blog, and Freedom Kentucky.

Bad news travels fast in internet age

Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry has told people in his administration not to talk to me. With more and more people getting their news from the internet, it is probably not a bad strategy to try to keep me in the dark. There is evidence to suggest, however, that it isn't working:

So this is what a community organizer does

Four steps (starting at 0:53): Bail. Fail. Trail. And sit in the dark.

Will Jim Newberry get anything right?

Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry took decisive action today in the airport scandal by blaming an accounting firm that had nothing whatsoever to do with the problem.

Shrewd. Very shrewd.

This gives a little perspective to Newberry's utter failure to manage the many, many problems at the Fayette County Detention Center.

(If you want another lawsuit to think about, think about this one.)

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."