Rand Paul in Lexington

Dr. Rand Paul says he will run for the U.S. Senate only if Sen. Jim Bunning does not. Nevertheless, he is campaigning enough to fuel speculation that he is up to something.

Paul will speak in Lexington Thursday night at The Inn on Broadway at 6:30 pm. He will also be a guest on the Leland Conway Show at 9:05 am on 630 WLAP AM or on the internet at wlap.com.

Media bias, laziness generate confusion

Lexington Herald Leader education reporter Jim Warren is at it again, taking dictation from Big Ed bureaucrats in a "news" story.


Today, it's Fayette Superintendent Stu Silberman and Kentucky Department of Education spokeswoman Lisa Gross trying to take control of the transition away from CATS and to a legitimate student testing program.

It's amazing Warren could write such a long story about "confusion" in the aftermath of CATS without talking to anyone who could shed some light.

I guess if he had, they would need to write a different headline.

The newspaper bailouts are coming

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should soon start hearings about "saving" the nation's newspapers. If a very thin study about democracy in northern Kentucky is any indication, the coming newspaper bailouts should be a very effective focal point for grassroots opponents of tax/bailout/stimulus policies.

Two Princeton University economists looked at a tiny amount of election data and news coverage of the tiny Kentucky Post and quickly -- and repeatedly -- concluded that the existence of newspapers reduces incumbent advantages, motivates citizens to run for office, and enhances voter turnout:

"News coverage potentially inuences election outcomes in many ways. By revealing incumbents' misdeeds or making it easier for challengers to get their message out, a newspaper may reduce incumbent advantage. Newspaper stories could also raise interest in politics, inspiring more people to vote or run for office."

"The Cincinnati Post was a relatively small newspaper, with circulation of only 27,000 when it closed. Nonetheless, its absence appears to have made local elections less competitive along several dimensions: incumbent advantage, voter turnout and the number of candidates for office."

Expect this study to get a lot more attention than it deserves in the march toward making you pay more for propaganda you already rejected.

As an alternative, we might consider spending less on welfare for newspapers.

Education researcher not breathing easy yet

Conscientious teachers and education officials across Kentucky were relieved to see the long-awaited demise of discredited and wasteful CATS testing last week. Bluegrass Institute education analyst Richard Innes, however, urged caution Tuesday as we seek a new testing program.

"We need to insure the new assessments are more resistant to the sort of inflation-to-make-educators-look-good problems that ultimately undermined CATS' credibility," Innes said.

Innes remains skeptical of the Department of Education's desires to cover its own tracks and bend the rules.

"We found out in the past that the department is capable of going off on its own despite the provisions in law. The department dramatically proved that when it illegally dropped norm reference testing in elementary schools and when it consistently ignored a provision to create a longitudinal assessment to track student performance over time. That provision was in the 1998 legislation that created CATS, by the way. It’s a decade later, and it never happened," Innes said.

The rest of his comments are available here.

What will you add to Kentucky Tea Party?

The Kentucky Tea Party, presented by News Radio 630 WLAP, The Kentucky Club for Growth, The Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions and ConservativeEdge.com, will be this Saturday, March 21 at noon, at the Fayette County Courthouse.

Leland Conway, host of the Pulse of Lexington, 9am-Noon, M-F on News Radio 630 WLAP said:

“Washington, Frankfort, Lexington government…they are all completely out of touch with the common citizen. Americans know intuitively that government expansion and increased spending is not the answer to our economic problems. The only money that government has is money it has taken from productive citizens. Well, we citizens are not in the mood to have any more of our money taken from us and we’re going to send that message on Saturday.”

David Adams of the Bluegrass Institute said:

"You can't just wait around for Kentucky taxpayers to realize too late that years of overspending and over borrowing practices have destroyed the state. We need a smaller, more efficient government that gets out of the business of deciding winners and losers and sticks to the Constitution. And we need that now."

Andy Hightower, Executive Director of the Kentucky Club for Growth spoke about the event:

“The Pursuit of Happiness is no longer regarded by our leadership as an inalienable right; instead they think it’s provided by government subsidy. It’s time to remind folks in Washington and Frankfort that national success follows from individual success, not government direction.”

A special feature of the Kentucky Tea Party will an open mic opportunity to make your opinion heard. Selected speakers will be featured on WLAP radio.

"Teresa Isaac? Never heard of her"

The Lexington Herald Leader continues its efforts this morning to keep Lexington politicians' feet out of the fire in the ongoing inmate beating scandal at the Lexington jail.

In a story about the 2005 death of inmate Gerald Cornett, reporter Michelle Ku talked to the wrong Lexington mayor.

Mayor Jim Newberry's spokeswoman's silence is interesting given her boss' official efforts to silence jail whistleblower Cpl. John Vest, but he wasn't even in office when these events took place.

His opponent in the upcoming 2010 election was.

When the federal investigation of inmate abuse at the Fayette County Detention Center became publicly known, Mayor Isaac famously quipped:

"I've reviewed the same records they've reviewed, there's absolutely nothing in there that would amount to a civil rights violation and I've been a civil rights attorney for 25 years so I think I would know."

If we want to get closer to the truth, we should make the 2010 election between these two about who has handled the jail mess worse. That would be an interesting discussion.

Fighting back in Lexington

The Kentucky Progress blog is a proud sponsor of this Saturday's Kentucky Tea Party in Lexington. In the spirit of our brave forefathers who stood up to an unreasonable government to protect their freedoms, we will join together for one of what will be many such events until we generate change we can afford.

Please join us.

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.