Watching California, thinking Kentucky

The budget fireworks in California took a positive turn Tuesday as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has started the major downsizing of government he should have done months ago.

One single Republican vote in the state Senate is all that stands between the nation's biggest state and the nation's biggest tax increase. Should that resistance hold, spending cuts and Obama bailout funds will have to make up huge deficits.

Federal bailout funds prevent much of the forced spending discipline that would do California a world of good. To a much lesser extent, that ship has already sailed for us in Kentucky.

Of course, we will be back having this same argument again very soon in Frankfort. Will it be deja vu all over again, perhaps? Hope not.

Let them eat stock certificates

General Motors is expected to announce Tuesday that their survival plan includes taking more taxpayer money, making fewer cars, and paying off their bonds with soon-to-be worthless stock.
From Automotive News:

Real progress won't begin until after the deal involves paying off union officials with blank pieces of paper.

I have a question, Mr. President!

Just got my invitation in the mail for the Jessamine County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner at 6 pm February 28 at Equestrian Woods in Nicholasville.

Senate President David Williams is the featured speaker.

After last week's votes to raise taxes and raid the state employee health fund of $50 million, this could be a very interesting event indeed.

Admission is $30 per person.

Up with hemp, down with Mountain Dew?

The most popular post on Bluegrass Policy Blog is about a bill to make hemp production legal in Kentucky.

Check out the action in the post's comments section.

At the same time, the most popular post on Kentucky Progress is about making Mountain Dew illegal in Kentucky.

Lexington's own "Trial of the Century"

This summer, Lexington will endure an unusually long federal criminal trial city officials don't want you to know anything about.

The Lexington jail inmate abuse trial starts June 8 and is scheduled to last three weeks.

This suggests former Mayor Teresa Isaac and current jail Director Ron Bishop may have been mistaken when they said on television that there was nothing to this story.

Presidential irony

I wish it were funnier that America has a president whose name and image inspires spam email scam artists.

This isn't even the first time. Won't be the last, either.

Beshear gives Kentucky an Obama

Gov. Steve Beshear borrowed the rhetoric of Pres. Barack Obama yesterday in congratulating himself for his smoke-and-mirrors fix of Kentucky's government spending problem:

Just last Saturday, Obama was saying the same thing about his bailout of the cities and states:

This is what Republican leaders in the Kentucky House and Senate have signed up with? Unbelievable.

If you liked Tax Jam 2009, just wait

The Kentucky Senate voted this morning to raise taxes and to raid the public employees' health fund of $50 million.

Can't imagine where the raid idea came from, since a mere seven months ago the Senate majority seemed to have a pretty good handle on the dire situation in public employee benefits. But the tax increase train never had to leave the station.

If the people behind the tobacco and alcohol industries had only realized that this wasn't about being unfair to the people who make, distribute, and consume their products, their opposition may have been more effective.

These tax increases and the health fund raid won't provide "enough" money to hold back future tax increases and smoke-and-mirrors transfers. Too bad the tobacco and alcohol folks never seemed to realize that the issue wasn't about just them, but was about the size of government all along.

Text messaging is best

Tax raisers in the state Senate are currently one vote short on HB 144. Will your Senator fall into the big government trap?

9:37 AM Update: They just came back in. Wonder who folded?

Senate, don't be as cynical as the House

The theme for this week in Frankfort has been politicians saying one thing and meaning another. A bipartisan Gang of 11 House members betrayed a pledge to their constituents to never support a tax increase. That same Gang also joined 54 fellow House members in tossing aside their seven month old promise to stop making the public employee benefits debacle worse.

Then it was House Budget Chairman Rick Rand's turn.

"We felt it was important that we let the citizens of Kentucky know," he told his Budget Committee, "that everything would be on the table: all cuts, any potential revenue measures, and anything we could do to bring this budget into balance."

Then, presented a commonsense amendment by Rep. Joe Fischer to stop forcing Kentucky taxpayers to pay excessive union wages for public construction projects, Rand spit the bit. Fischer's measure didn't even get a vote. Others tried the same thing on the tax increase bill with the same result.

Unless the Senate's intention is to simply join their friends in the House in raising taxes, they should restore Fischer's amendment and remove the Health Fund raid in HB 143. It also hardly makes sense to allow Beshear to restore funds to prior spending cuts as the bill does with borrowed money. You remember how overextending got us into this mess, right?

Come on, guys. This is ridiculous.

Barack Obama wants us to trust him

Kentuckian in exile Caleb Brown of the Cato Institute wonders why Pres. Barack Obama is playing "hide the details" with his big bailout bill:

"If this legislation is such a good idea, why don’t we get to look at it?"

Seems Obama is disappointing some who thought he was serious when he promised to, you know, not be so secretive about important stuff.

Will Kentucky rob Peter and Paul both?

Federal governments all over the world are printing "stimulus" money faster than grass runs through a Kentucky Derby champion. In Frankfort, politicians are breaking promises just as fast.

It's about to get worse.

Part of the deal to "raise revenues" for the state is, apparently, agreement to allow Gov. Steve Beshear to raid the public employee fringe benefits accounts of $50 million.

Just to get us through this temporary problem. Until the next one, of course.

Whatever happened to this guy?

House fails to hold the line on taxes

House Minority Leader Jeff Hoover delighted Frankfort's big spenders this afternoon by not only voting for higher taxes, but also making a floor speech in favor of higher taxes.

The bill passed 66-34. It now goes on to the Senate. President Pro Tem Katie Stine has pledged to oppose the tax scheme.

Bellying up to the wrong table

House Budget Chairman Rick Rand, speaking in favor of a tax increase bill, just repeated the fiction about everything being "on the table" in the effort to balance the state budget.

If that were true, we would have repealed prevailing wage, ended corporate welfare and sales tax exclusions, dropped out of the Master Settlement Agreement, fired some political appointees, and called it a day.

Smart if true

Gov. Steve Beshear's reputation for meaning what he says isn't the best. Nevertheless, this sounds good:

"I am looking forward to starting work with my colleagues in the legislature on a longer term solution to the challenges confronting us. We will need to discuss how we create a tax system that is not only equitable, fair, and responsive to the changing nature of the global economy, but also keeps Kentucky competitive with surrounding states."

Ending taxes on corporate income and exclusions from the sales and use tax would be a nice start. Getting out of the corporate welfare game completely and repealing prevailing wages show a seriousness for the kind of reform Kentucky really needs.

Time for a Kentucky stimulus task force?

Now that Virginia is a blue state, they must feel obligated to set up web sites asking for citizen input on spending their Barack Obama bailout money.

So they did just that.

Can Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear be very far behind?

Get ready to wave bye-bye to Senate majority

Tonight's blow out loss in the state Senate special election combined with the compromise (read: cave in) on tax increases tells me Kentucky Republicans have gotten tired of having a seat at the table.

What else should anyone expect from a sell-out of principles?

Some good friends won't like this, but get ready to lose a lot more elections if the Senate decides not to hold the line on taxes.

Jim Bunning speaks

Sen. Jim Bunning said today the eligibility for full Social Security benefits should quickly be pushed from age 67 to 70. He said just doing this would put Social Security on "a sound financial basis until 2075."

He also advocated lowering cost-of-living raises for Social Security recipients.

Asked about the bailout bill currently before Congress, Bunning repeated that it was a step toward socialism and that most people understand that and oppose the bill.

"About 95% of my calls are against the bill and the other 5% are from mayors and government employees in Kentucky," Bunning said.

Bunning also mentioned a recent poll showing him ahead of all potential Democratic rivals. He said the results were closer than they should have been because the polling was completed during the ice storm, when much of western Kentucky was without power.

He said that he plans to run his own poll the first week of March.

Assume a woodshed...

... and watch the Cato Institute take President Barack Obama there!

Another $1.5 million down the drain

A Lexington Herald Leader news reporter went to a political press conference and came back a believer in very questionable, big government spin.

Continuing the recent trend of turning the Lexington paper into a one-sided blog, no opposing viewpoints to this cheerleading were provided.

Click here to read one.