Since the Herald Leader has shown a disturbing tendency to erase my comments lately, I thought I would snag this one while it is still online.
Erasing comments like this is, of course, considered very bad form for a blog.
"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."
“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.”
"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."
“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.”
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.
"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."
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.
"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."
"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."
Now he tells us.
“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.”
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.