The battle to come...

Last night, Illinois taxpayers caught a break when legislators failed to pass a massive tax increase. Now the fun part starts and Kentuckians would do well to pay attention.



It can come as no surprise that those who lobbied loudest for tax increases to avoid cutting fat in Illinois state government will have no interest now in cutting fat.

We should expect no less a tantrum by our Kentucky taxers. Frankfort can't raise taxes this summer and they don't have the votes for slot machines. A lot of fat remains in state government, but they will have kids sitting three to a desk in schools before they admit it.

Get ready. This is going to be nasty.

More people need to see this

Watch these people keep straight faces talking about how socialized medicine will save $350 billion a year by putting everyone on Medicare!

Associated Press' balanced coverage shortfall

The mainstream media is clinging hard to the spin that Kentucky has a billion dollar "shortfall." Conveniently overlooked in stories like this is that the 2010 budget is $867 million higher than the 2009 budget.

I thought Gov. Beshear said he was making government smaller.



This AP story completely glosses over the other side of the "shortfall" theme in only one very inadequate sentence:

"Senate President David Williams, a Burkesville Republican, disputes the figure and said the shortfall is a smaller percentage."

That's pathetic underreporting of a story with at least two sides.

One interesting note, though. If you read to the end of the article, you get a quote from Western Kentucky University's Dr. Brian Strow, the BB&T Chair for the Study of Capitalism:

"Lawmakers should consider "meaningful economic reform" that would create more jobs and reduce the budget, Strow said."

Amen to that.

Dr. Strow is also a member of Dr. Rand Paul's Economic Council of Advisors.

Having their fiscal irresponsibility and eating it, too

Isn't it funny that so many of those Kentuckians who believe the spent Social Security Trust Fund IOU's equal real money and nothing to worry about now insist that the only way to look at next year's state budget projection is to compare that figure to fiscal year 2008's overspending and hit the panic button?

History is on our side

Grab your wallet: Legislature convenes June 15

This afternoon, Gov. Steve Beshear called the General Assembly into special session beginning June 15.

His statement included the following:

"Our priorities will be holding the line on taxes for working families already struggling to make ends meet; maintaining investments in our school children; preserving commitments to the health care needs of our most vulnerable and the safety of our people."

Do we need to ask what Beshear's definition of "working families" is? Also, if we had a functioning mechanism for tracking school expenditures, it's likely we would conclude that "maintaining investments" isn't necessary. And if government made fewer commitments to "health care needs," health coverage would be more affordable for all of us.

I seem to remember Senate President David Williams saying something about the battle to end all battles over taxes and spending. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

"Only 3.35 million fake jobs to go!"

ABC News has broken through the ignorance barrier to openly question Pres. Barack Obama's silly job-saving/creating claims.



Who will be next? And will we remember those who helped bring this upon us?

Don't Know Jack

Attorney General Jack Conway wants to be a United States Senator, but doesn't seem to have any specific positions on the issues. How about Obama, Jack? Bailouts: for or against? Thirty billion more for General Motors? Tax increases? Medicare/Social Security? Anything?

Nope.

Courier-Journal botches American Flag story

A Texas woman's Memorial Day observation in the workplace took an odd turn in the last few days involving Louisville-based Kindred Healthcare. The Louisville Courier Journal, however, seems far more interested in parroting Kindred's press release than in covering the real story.

Last week, Debbie McLucas hung a 3' x 5' American flag in shared office space in a Kindred-owned hospital in Mansfield, Texas. She arrived at work Friday to find that a co-worker had taken the flag down. Apparently, the co-worker found the flag offensive. McLucas told CBS News in Dallas she appealed to supervisors at the hospital, but said they told her the flag would have to stay down because of complaints they had received.

Kindred issued a press release yesterday contradicting McLucas' story:

"This issue was simply a dispute between two employees who shared a small workspace, one of whom removed the flag because of its size. It’s important to note that hospital management was not involved in the decision to remove the flag."

And the CJ swallowed the press release unquestioningly:

The fact is that Kindred management may not have been involved in the flag removal, but we don't know that. One of the key players, McLucas, in fact said management told her "patients' families and visitors" had complained as well and that the flag would have to come down.

Sounds like there is much more to this story than the Courier Journal would have its readers believe. We've come to expect anti-American bias from the paper's editorial page, but have to point it out when it continues to show up on the news pages.

A strange way to observe Memorial Day

Last November, Fayette County Detention Center Officer Luke Valdez, a fifteen-month veteran of the jail, wrote two internal emails with specific criticisms of jail policies and suggestions for improvement.

Yesterday, fresh off six months of National Guard training, Valdez, 23, was suspended from the jail without pay for three weeks as retaliation for sending the emails.

Disciplinary forms given to Valdez cited him for insubordination, misconduct, inefficiency, and malicious behavior. The only action described on the forms was sending the emails.

Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry should explain why he keeps FCDC Director Ron Bishop around despite his repeated personnel screw-ups.

This isn't the first time the city of Lexington has failed to show even minimal respect for someone who served our country.

Don't show this to Obama

Turns out the surest way to cut electricity usage is to shrink the economy.

Almost time for a real fiscal discussion

The House Budget Committee will hold a hearing on Rep. Bill Farmer's tax reform bill on June 4 at 1:00 pm in room 129 of the Capitol Annex.

The bill would repeal state income taxes, expand the sales tax to include services, and lower the sales tax rate to 5.5%.

Expect House Dems to try to expand the sales tax but back up on the idea of repealing the income tax.

When Massachusetts says it's too much money...

Kentucky's corporate welfare cabal entered the state in a contest with several states and dozens of private entities for a piece of a $2.4 billion federal lithium battery research "investment."

As usual, we are giving away the farm.

Just ask big-spending (and, by most measures, wealthy) Massachusetts:

"Kentucky is promising $110 million in aid and a 1,550-acre site, in Glendale, that it assembled in an unsuccessful effort to land a Hyundai plant several years ago."

""We're not in that financial league," said Ian Bowles, the Massachusetts secretary of energy and environmental affairs. But Mr. Bowles said Massachusetts has a chance of landing federal funding because it has several in-state battery makers such as Boston Power Co."

This passage came from The Wall Street Journal.

Waking up sleepy Frankfort

The most important state government meeting in months has been scheduled for two weeks from today.

On June 9, the Education Assessment and Accountability Review Subcommittee will meet at 1:00 pm in room 129 of the Capitol Annex in Frankfort.

Kentucky's mainstream media has a poor record of showing up for these meetings. But since the purpose of this meeting is to discuss implementation of the best education reform in this state in a long time, they will be there for this one.

Twittering Lexington's corruption

Word about Teresa Isaac and Jim Newberry's bad behavior has made it all the way to Louisville.

Can we do this and draw welfare, too?

Has there ever been a U.S. President whose name has been invoked more often than the current one in internet scams and get-rich-quick schemes?



Surely President Obama is trying now to figure out how to count people who respond to this work at home opportunity in the Lexington Herald Leader as part of his "3.5 million jobs saved or created."

Memorial Day out with the family

Working on some big changes for Kentucky Progress, but not today. I'm going to do some serious playing with my sons.

Anything in particular on your mind? Feel free...

The real Voodoo economics

This passage appeared on Sunday's New York Times editorial page:

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, raising taxes may be better than spending cuts because tax increases, especially if they are focused on wealthy taxpayers, have less of a negative impact on consumption. Spending cuts hit consumption hard, depriving the economy of money that would otherwise be spent quickly. They also have the disadvantage — so evident in the cuts proposed by Mr. Schwarzenegger — of falling heavily on the needy."

This still doesn't get us past the fact that if greater government spending stopped or averted economic downturns, then we wouldn't be very likely at all to find ourselves in one now.

Public spending cuts may "hit consumption hard," but when we are talking about borrowed money, it's better to hit it now rather than wait for it to come back and hit us later. Just ask the people who count the beans for Medicare and Social Security.

Putting the money back into private hands, even if they are "wealthy," has a long tradition of working more effectively at promoting general welfare than running it through layer after layer of bureaucratic middlemen. Continuing to pretend otherwise is an increasingly unaffordable luxury.

From the same people who like Obamanomics

It's quite a leap from an old monkey fossil to "proof" of a 47 million year old evolutionary link to humans. Very similar to the logic that has us taking more and more money from the productive economy and giving to the Washington D.C. "fixers" to make everything all better.



In other words, it's a bunch of hooey.

Beshear cares more about unions than poor kids

Kentucky could save hundreds of millions of dollars repealing prevailing wage and we are monkeying around with $4.5 million cuts on programs for underprivileged children?



This is disgraceful.