Which Senator will you support now?

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) said Tuesday he is going to officially leave the GOP. Now Sen. Mitch McConnell can stop giving him money and start helping, uh, members of his own caucus.

By the way, Sen. Jim Bunning weighed in:

"I am disappointed, but not surprised, by Senator Specter’s self-serving decision to switch parties at a time when his vote is so important to maintaining some balance of power here in Washington. The Senate Republican leadership’s coddling of Senator Specter shows just how far the Republican party has lost its way. Now is the time to stand for the core conservative values of less government and more freedom. Senator Specter has never been a reliable voice for the conservative values that Republicans like myself have spent our lives fighting for and I look forward to seeing him defeated in 2010 ."

Jack, be more nimble!

Just spotted: Attorney General Jack Conway sneaking around with indicted former Gov. Paul Patton chief of staff Andrew "Skipper" Martin at Heine Brothers Coffee on Chenoweth Lane in Louisville.

Martin escaped prosecution for helping Patton break campaign finance laws when Patton pardoned him in June of 2003.

Can't imagine what he was helping U.S. Senate candidate Conway cook up, can you?

Hopey changey update for Kentucky

President Barack Obama just sent out an email with a map showing the number of jobs "created or saved" by federal overspending on his watch.

Congrats Kentucky! Dear Leader says you have 48,000 extra jobs because of him.

Government "job creation" has been dubious for a long time, but we are really taking it to a whole new level.

Bunning: you'll be surprised

Sen. Jim Bunning said Tuesday morning his fundraising is going much better now than it did earlier in the year, but he didn't give specifics.

"I’ll quantify that on July 15 and you’ll be pleasantly surprised," Bunning said.

He also said he doesn't expect a primary challenge from Kentucky Senate President David Williams. Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Bowling Green physician Rand Paul have both expressed an interest in the race but have said they will not run against Bunning.

Round and round and round she goes...

As Frankfort's schemers work behind the scenes on some kind of tax reform, they can look at neighboring Tennessee like Missouri and Ohio have and consider eliminating income taxes. Or they can look at Illinois.

Gov. Pat Quinn wants to raise income taxes 50 percent.

Kentucky has to do something right after the disastrous 2009 legislative session of tax hikes and raids and spending sprees. Seriously. Eliminate the income tax now.

The old game of borrow and spend, replaced by the new game of tax, raid, and spend can't be allowed to continue. Tell your legislators to get their heads on straight and do what is best for Kentucky for a change.

Taking the low road to Montana?

Over the weekend Bluegrass Institute education analyst Richard Innes noticed two other education bloggers, Pritchard Blog and Kentucky School News and Commentary, weren't printing critical comments he left on their sites and he sought an explanation. Richard Day of KSN&C quickly explained he was having technical difficulties.

Susan Weston of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, however, just seems tired of getting difficult questions leading to conclusions other than that education bureaucrats need more money and fewer questions.

Seems like this dodging of tough questions and comments was the option blogger Mark Nickolas of Bluegrass Report took right before he escaped to Montana.

Winchester project cost inflated by politics

The Winchester Sun wants to know if readers support building a new $50 million high school in Clark County. Kentucky's Davis Bacon requirements complicate such a decision by requiring the payment of union wages for education-related projects.

Taxpayers needing better school facilities for their children shouldn't be handcuffed to political payoffs some elected officials arranged for their labor union friends. Sen. Damon Thayer's SB 145 would have saved taxpayer money by allowing parents to make the decision without the unions getting their cut.

Not what they call it, but what it does to us

Activists on both sides of the socialized medicine debate understand that when they talk about universal health care, what they mean is universal health insurance.

Columnist Thomas Sowell weighs in:

"That is where the difference between health care and medical care comes in. Medical care is what doctors can do for you. Health care includes what you do for yourself -- such as diet, exercise and lifestyle."

"If a doctor arrives on the scene to find you wiped out by a drug overdose or shot through the heart by some of your rougher companions, there may not be much that he can do except sign the death certificate."

"Even for things that take longer to do you in -- obesity, alcohol, cholesterol, tobacco -- doctors can tell you what to do or not do, but whether you follow their advice or not is what determines the outcome."

"Americans tend to be more obese, consume more drugs and have more homicides. None of that is going to change with "universal health care" because it isn't health care. It is medical care."

"When it comes to things where medical care itself makes the biggest difference -- cancer survival rates, for example -- Americans do much better than people in most other countries."

"No one who compares medical care in this country with medical care in other countries is likely to want to switch. But those who cannot be bothered with the facts may help destroy the best medical care in the world by falling for political rhetoric."

Read the rest here.

Getting government out of the health insurance business is the way to manage costs, just as Pres. Barack Obama and Gov. Steve Beshear are pushing hard in the other direction.

Potential Senate candidate coming to UK

University of Kentucky's Students for Liberty will host Dr. Rand Paul of Bowling Green Thursday April 30, 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm at Memorial Hall to discuss "Liberty and the True Meaning of being a Republican."

Onward...

There will be several meetings in central Kentucky next week to discuss where we go next with the Tea Party movement.

Call me for details.

Making it easy for Jim Gray

Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry seems almost to be purposely hastening the end of his political career with silly public statements like this:

Contracting out services in one clinic MIGHT make it run less slow, less inefficiently, and less over budget, but it is hardly "proof" of anything yet and certainly isn't any more so because the mayor ends his sentence with an exclamation point.

A Mitch slap coming from the other direction

Sen. Mitch McConnell's favored candidate in the 2010 Pennsylvania Senate race, Sen. Arlen Specter, is getting creamed in the polls amid calls for him to step down in favor of a new candidate.

Stop taxing income in Kentucky

Kentucky legislators will probably be back in Frankfort in late May to discuss tax reform. Meanwhile, Tennessee, a state with no income tax, continues to eat our lunch economically. And Missouri advanced a bill this week to get rid of their income tax.

Ohio is looking at exempting college graduates from state income taxation for five years. This is the kind of game-playing and manipulation Kentucky has traditionally used to pick winners and losers rather than incentivize income generation across the board.

As more of our neighbors figure out that taxing incomes hurts productivity, Kentucky is going to have to come around. Sooner would be better than later.

Pres. Obama, don't ignore these kids

President Barack Obama seems determined to cancel the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

Disgraceful.

Party labels and bad politicians

Congressman Geoff Davis, in an interview with WLAP's Leland Conway, expressed frustration with citizen groups who don't support bad Republicans. He is going to have to get used to it.

Davis said:
"A lot of conservative groups like Club for Growth and others unfortunately spend all their time going after Republicans. As I've shared, it would be nice if they tried to defeat a liberal now and then."

The Club for Growth shouldn't have to spend any of their resources going after bad Republicans. Rep. Davis isn't one of those bad Republicans, but blind support for the party label won't advance conservatism.

Here's a little help from the archives:

This goofy rhetoric sounds familiar

Newspaper columnist Dana Milbank sounds like the auto industry executives bemoaning the end of the world as we know it without bailouts to return them to the lifestyles to which they had grown accustomed.

The idea that scrutiny of government would die without newspapers is a figment of some newspaper guy's imagination.

And besides, Kentucky already has a long (and silly) history of bailing out newspapers.

Think before you kiss your sister

Saving money by consolidating Kentucky's 120 counties into some smaller -- and less accountable -- number of governmental units is the public policy equivalent of kissing your sister.

Martin Cothran weighs in:

"The only thing that the consolidation of counties will do is to take the government of localities out of the localities themselves and place it in the hands of bureaucrats outside of the community being governed."

"Cothran's Rule of Government Efficiency plainly states, "There is No Such Thing." And one of corollaries of this Rule is: "The Bigger the Government Body, the More Inefficient It Is.""

Here's more.

Rooting out ways to save money on local government is a very worthwhile pursuit, but not at the expense of creating bigger government.

Choosing sides in 2010 Senate races

The Kentucky Club for Growth has made a name for itself calling out Republicans who go squishy on keeping government from growing out of control.

"According to CQ Moneyline, the following Senators have donated money to Arlen Specter's campaign:

Mitch McConnell
John Cornyn
Lamar Alexander
Orrin Hatch

It may be expected that the GOP Senate Leader would donate to incumbent GOP colleagues up for reelection. But McConnell was not listed as a donor in Jim Bunning's recent report, suggesting a different explanation may be needed."

More here.

Bunning says Dem primary helps him

Senator Jim Bunning just said the intense primary battle between Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo and Attorney General Jack Conway will make the 2010 race easier for him.

He said he has dropped his fundraising goal from $10 million to $7 million because he believes his opponents will spend much of their money going against each other.

Very interesting email

Just got the following message on Facebook:

Subject: Upcoming McConnell Protest - Read Disclosure though!

This group is made up of a diverse members that agree that Senator Bunning "was right" when he opposed the financial industry bailout. He really was and history will prove it!

It follows logically that Senator McConnell "was wrong" when he bowed to the financial industry and strong-armed the bailout.
I'm writing to let the Anti-McConnell crowd know about an upcoming protest of the Senator outside his speaking engagement at the upcoming U of L Brandeis School of Law Graduation on May 9th in Louisville.

However, I don't want to trick anyone...This protest is specifically targeted at Sen. McConnell's stance on the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) which I'm pretty sure Sen. Bunning shares as he voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. and voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. So if you are responsible and progressive like me, despite Sen. Bunning's act of courage, I hope you'll be joining me in supporting Jack Conway for that Senate seat, as well as helping us protest McConnell at the event linked below.

If you are conservative when it comes to social justice, please forgive this heads up, and keep up the fight against stupid government bailouts! And if you're a Republican, please don't make it a partisan issue, you have many allies across the aisle that oppose corporate bailouts.

I'm not going to the protest, but I appreciate the approach. What do you think?