These things always happen in threes

Over the weekend I got a kick out of the Courier Journal referring to Bluegrass Institute as merely "right-wing think-tank" again. Then the Herald Leader struck with their "conservate enemies" bit.

This morning, though, I'm on the floor laughing at CJ columnist Joe Gerth pulling a complete quote off this site and hoping no one notices as he sources only "a conservative blog."

Stick with your "dare not speak their names" approach, guys. It's obviously working.

Herald Leader's sour grape whine

The Lexington Herald Leader's editorial board is even more upset than the Courier Journal was about the end of a disastrous episode in education "reform."

"As it stands, cynics can justifiably conclude that Beshear and House Democrats, under new Speaker Greg Stumbo, caved to the worst impulses of both the teachers union and conservative enemies of public schools."

Thanks for the big laugh and free mention for the Bluegrass Institute, guys!

I take it the Herald Leader would prefer corrupted, unusable testing data, relentless happy-talk from the Prichard Committee, and spin that the phony CATS testing was somehow better than any alternative. In fact, they said as much:

Getting off the CATS gravy train is hardly a three-year pass. Discontinuing a test that has become totally meaningless has no downside. Finding something worse would be a real chore. Choosing from among many options that allow specific, usable results to pinpoint how any teacher is performing and any student is learning provides an easy win for taxpayers, parents, and students.

Bad day for the bureaucracy, though. And the editorial writers who have sided with them for so long are just chapped that everyone who pays attention to this stuff knows they got their heads handed to them.

The Kentucky Department of Education bears close scrutiny in this transition phase, of course. Stay tuned. We'll be watching them.

Fourth District Lincoln Dinner

Rumors that Sen. Jim Bunning would use this hometown event to drop out of his bid for re-election proved untrue.

Sen. Mitch McConnell and Senate President David Williams didn't come to Hebron tonight. There were really no fireworks.

Heard lots of applause for several mentions from the podium about the end of CATS testing and lots of grumbling in the crowd about Republicans caving in on tax increases.

Where is the Kentucky GOP going?

Six weeks ago, the Kentucky Republican Party was still about not raising taxes. Now that is over. So, what's next?

A discussion about the Georgia Republican Party may present a good starting point for Kentucky Republicans to try to do more than hang on to power for one politician:

"You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the dynamics in play throughout Georgia. The Republican Party, having only fully taken over the state four years ago, is already in a rut. Having failed to keep innovating and advancing a conservative agenda, they have become establishmentarians determined to hold on to the status quo, much as Georgia Democrats did before losing power."

About time for Beshear to change his tune

Good to see the legislature come around today and kill off the wasteful and counterproductive CATS testing program in Kentucky's public schools.

Even better to have Gov. Steve Beshear see the light:

"This legislation will create a new system for statewide accountability and assessment that will, for the first time, measure individual student progress over an extended period of time. That is critically important."

No kidding. We've been trying to tell him that for years.

Beshear should have stopped listening to the Kentucky Department of Education a long time ago.

I thought Obama was from Kenya

Looks like our daring Attorney General is on the case of an international, too good to be true money scam.


Now he tells us.

My only question: who even gets off the couch to collect a measly $2.5 million when President Barack Obama and friends are offering so much more?

More evidence of Kentucky spending problems

The Rockefeller Institute of Government compiled a list of state economic and and budget data showing Kentucky was one of only twelve states in the nation with increasing tax revenues in the last quarter of 2008.

We were also one of sixteen states with the worst job loss rates during the same period.

Big-government states Michigan and North Carolina were the only others at the top of these two lists. Perhaps if we worked on growing our state with policies that attract businesses interested in more than corporate welfare and worried less about growing government, we wouldn't be in quite the mess we are in.

The reason for all the tax protests

The Kentucky Tea Party will be Saturday March 21, at noon, at the Fayette County Courthouse.

If you want to know why this is necessary, you need only look to Thursday's words from President Barack Obama:

“I’m not choosing to address these additional challenges just because I feel like it, or because I’m a glutton for punishment,” Obama said. “I’m doing so because they are fundamental to our economic growth and to ensuring that we don’t have more crises like this in the future.”

If he really thinks going deeper into debt propping up discredited government policies and destructive business practices is the key to preventing "more crises," then it is critically important that Obama be stopped as soon as possible. Mass protests like The Kentucky Tea Party will help organize opposition and embolden citizens to step forward as solid candidates to get us back on a path to fiscal sanity.

Buzzing the Capitol with E-Health gimmick

I'm starting to think Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo's answer to any question is to force medical providers to post their records electronically. Unfortunately for us, President Barack Obama likes that plan. Or, at least, he wants to prop it up as an $80 billion a year downpayment on his universal healthcare system. (More about that here.)

Gov. Ernie Fletcher was skewered in the media when the plane he was flying in malfunctioned and scared the U.S. Capitol crowd gathered for Ronald Reagan's funeral. Mongiardo deserves at least as much grief for this:


Obama's plan to spend this promised $80 billion a year in illusory gains amounts to yet another tax increase we can't afford. Mongiardo may not be flying the plane, but he should have to give more substance than the current rhetoric before wasting more of our time and resources on his political ambitions.

Education Department still doesn't get it

Bluegrass Institute education analyst Richard Innes has been exposing the Kentucky Department of Education's data manipulation for years. His efforts have provided much of the muscle behind the effort to straighten out student testing.

Last night, he got them again. Good job, Mr. Innes!

Anyone really interested in making public education better in Kentucky would do very well to pay attention to Richard Innes.

UPDATE: Here's more on the bad education data.

Who's the "mouthy drunk" now?

On October 20, 2000, Senate President David Williams called Governor Paul Patton a "mouthy drunk" after Patton quoted Williams saying "I want to build big roads. I want to build roads you can see from the moon." Further, the Associated Press said at the time Williams was telling voters in several Senate elections "to keep the Senate under Republican control to block Patton from reviving a gas-tax increase."

My, how times have changed.

Fresh off securing tax hikes last month on cigarettes and alcohol and performing a raid on the state employee health fund, Williams now apparently has a different view of the value of keeping the Senate in Republican hands. No word on what that is, though.

The Senate is expected to pass an increase in the gasoline tax tomorrow, just like Gov. Steve Beshear wants.

Here is another interesting Patton quote from the October 2000 story:

""David Williams' credibility is nonexistent," the governor said."
""He has deceived his own members. He has deceived me. He has deceived the people in his own district.... It is not honorable and our government cannot function
progressively as long as the Senate is led by an individual who won't do what he
says he'll do.""

At recent public appearances, Williams has been fueling speculation that he could be a candidate for U.S. Senate next year.

Because Kentucky isn't finished messing up

House Speaker Greg Stumbo wants to sneak in a budget committee meeting tomorrow about saving the state from its overspending ways with video lottery terminals.

“Given the rapidly declining state of our budget, and the fact that our signature horse industry is facing tough challenges from gaming in other states," Stumbo said," "I believe this option will only become more attractive in the months ahead. Tomorrow’s meeting will provide important information to the public.”

The committee meets Thursday at 10 am. It is clear that no one is going to shrink government down to an affordable level. We will, instead, bank on these half-baked ideas that never work.

Last chance to do something this session

The House Education Committee meets today at noon in Frankfort to take up improvements to the way Kentucky assesses its public schools' efforts.

After the many disappointments of this current General Assembly (here, here, here, here, and here are a few examples), doing something good on SB 1 would be a very pleasant surprise.

Violence over government waste in Jersey?

As Kentuckians breath a sigh of relief from the quick death of a proposed secretive bureaucracy designed to "protect" us from government waste, New Jersey legislators are hyperventilating because they don't have one.


There is an ominous tone to this that is new:

The most panicked part of the story comes later with a Republican Assembly member predicting blood in the streets:

"The amount of pressure that's going to be put on you in leading this process is probably more than you've ever had in your life," Assemblyman Joseph R. Malone (R-Burlington) told Boxer. "The accountability and obligation -- that you have to ensure that these funds are properly being spent -- is going to be something that will be looked at every minute, every day for probably the rest of your career. I am very concerned that if we fail the people this time, there's going to be riots."

As the national Tea Party movement comes to Kentucky, small-government activists will have to be very sure not to give the big-government types an excuse to crack down on us.

A $646 billion (expletive deleted)

Sen. Jim Bunning got a lot of attention Tuesday morning for his choice of words, so some of his other comments escaped media notice.

Bunning also said President Barack Obama's massive $646 billion (Obama's estimate) cap-and-tax system doesn't have enough Democratic votes to pass Congress. He explained that most people realize imposing huge new taxes on everyone's energy use over the next decade would be bad for the economy.

That's (expletive deleted) good news!

Building a better Wiki

In case you haven't had enough revisionist history, you could try posting something critical about Pres. Barack Obama on Wikipedia and count the seconds until it is mysteriously removed.

Or if you are a Kentuckian who cares about preserving freedom, you will be a lot more satisfied reading and contributing information to the Freedom Kentucky wiki.

Bailing out bad Kentucky diets

One indication of what is wrong with Kentucky government comes from a Department for Public Health press release out today. Excerpted below, the release says the state employs "numerous nutrition and dietary professionals" who all, apparently, do pretty much the same thing:


So, if you are keeping score at home, we have a small army of nutrition and dietary professionals combined with increasing taxes to change dietary habits versus the moral hazard of a Medicaid program that is wide open for anyone who is poor enough.

Once again, the moral hazard wins.

Squeezing the wrong people

Gov. Steve Beshear and his friends at The Lexington Herald Leader have made a lot of noise the last few months about everything being "on the table" on the way the balancing our state's bloated, out-of-balance budget.

It has never been true.

They are still squawking about building the state's future one bogus diploma at a time, but can't see far enough to save commonsense dollars on prevailing wage repeal or by straightening out the MUNIS accounting system.

Sounds more like anything except raising taxes and clinging to the status quo is very much "off the table."

Here is the latest from the Herald Leader. What a waste...

David Williams gets fliered up

The 5th district GOP Lincoln dinner was fairly uneventful until after the program ended. One attendee came to the press table with a flier which had been placed on the windshield of every car in the parking lot.

The article contained copies of two Lexington Herald Leader stories about tax increases in which Senate President David Williams expressed his desire to raise taxes and his confidence that the Senate would play along, regardless of the state of economy.

The headline on the flier read "David Williams Not Only Voted to Raise Your Taxes, He Led the Effort."

That's when the fun started.

Williams stood at the front door showing the flier to people leaving the event and was heard explaining to several of them that this was evidence of Jim Bunning's "desperation."

It has been a month since Williams and the Senate went along with the tax increases and the $50 million raid on the public employee health fund. He can't possibly be surprised that this is being used against him.

If you are upset now, Senator Williams, this is going to be a very difficult year for you.

Sen. Mitch McConnell speaks

Sen. Mitch McConnell spread the praise around lavishly tonight at the 5th District Lincoln Day Dinner. He lauded Rep. Hal Rogers as the longest-serving member of Congress in Kentucky's history.

"I think our Senate President David Williams has done a fabulous job," McConnell said.

Of Secretary of State Trey Grayson, he said "we're going to hear a lot from him in the future."

The closest he got to mentioning Sen. Jim Bunning came at the end of his speech when he said "both of our Senators are Republicans and we intend to keep it that way."