We shouldn't have to beg

We can't improve a government that we can't see. That is what the transparency movement is all about. In Kentucky, Rep. Jim DeCesare, Sen. Damon Thayer, and Secretary of State Trey Grayson have been leaders in the fight against a stonewalling Frankfort which is strangely reluctant to allow taxpayers to see what is going on with our money.

The federal effort remains small as well (click here for more):



Every city and county government in Kentucky should post their checkbook registers to the internet for everyone to see. Every school district, too. We have the technology and the resources and we shouldn't have to beg for government that has nothing to hide.

Trouble in casino paradise?

Kentuckians seeking to make our state budget problems go away -- or even get just a little better -- might want to look at a Friday New York Times article about a new billion dollar tax increase in casino-rich New Jersey.

My favorite part to start the weekend with a laugh was the new tax on lottery winners.



Maybe they should just stand at the door of their casinos and bum rush any patrons who try to leave with any cash or with room left on their credit cards.

Big government is the problem here. It's a shame that Kentucky's horse industry has cast its lot with people who buy votes with billions of dollars of borrowed public money. If they really want to "level the playing field" with tracks in casino states, they should seek to do so without digging Kentucky into a deeper government hole. They have energy, passion, and numbers on their side, but if it is mainly going to go for driving our state deeper into the fiscal ditch, I wish them slow and painful failure.

President says Kentucky needs ObamaCare

The Obama Administration will release reports for every state in the nation Friday describing how things will be better for everyone in each state if we let him implement socialized medicine.

Another "press release journalism" hit job

How would you respond if one of your enemies put out a press release about you and the newspaper called you for a response, but you couldn't see details of what was said?

When it happened to Kentucky Coal Association's Bill Caylor Wednesday, he said he hadn't seen the "study" put out by MACED, a left-wing advocacy group based in Berea.

But the Lexington Herald Leader went ahead and ran a front page story:



Fortunately, Kentucky now has independent blogs. To see CyberHillbilly's response to the silliness, click here.

Do you support Obama's Energy Tax?

Word is bond

Potential U.S. Senate primary opponents Dr. Rand Paul and Secretary of State Trey Grayson, while also racing to a June 30 fundraising deadline for midyear reporting purposes, have been quick to make a very timely promise.

It's called the Taxpayer Protection Pledge and it's a promise to voters to never vote for a tax increase. Dr. Paul, who as the chairman of Kentucky Taxpayers United has collected dozens of such written promises from candidates over the years, has already signed his. Weeks ago, Secretary Grayson scheduled a meeting with Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist for this coming Monday in Louisville to sign his no-new-taxes pledge.

The Taxpayer Protection Pledge has drawn attention recently because of the way U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler used it to sneak into office under false pretenses and is now poised to vote for the largest tax increase in history.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, will be in Lexington on Monday night, 6 pm to 8 pm at the Fifth Third Bank building for a private reception. If you'd like to attend, contact Dawn Cloyd at dcloyd@thielaudio.com.

Don't need a new car? Pay up anyway

Before running out of Frankfort slapping each other on the back for such a "successful" special session, legislators slipped into a corporate welfare bill $25 million to give to Kentuckians who buy new cars after September 1.

And we're doing this while we are hopelessly broke.

Watch your back, Steve!

House Speaker Greg Stumbo kicked off his run for Governor in 2011 with the following announcement Wednesday afternoon:



I guess that's more fun than Stumbo saying "We punted the serious issues again in 2009, called an extra session and wasted more taxpayer money, but we managed to make government bigger, more powerful, and more expensive. Thanks!"

Healthcare reform for the rest of us

In case you aren't excited about ABC television's Socialized Medicine Obamathon tonight, here's a better way:



Briefly, what we need is the ability to buy health insurance across state lines, separation of health insurance from employment, to get the federal bureaucracy out of healthcare, and to get real about the idea that more government is going to make healthcare cheaper unless what they really mean is rationing of services.

Blowing the whistle on the wrong scam

After decades of rampant abuse of our public employee pension system by politicians and bureaucrats resulting in a more than $30 billion underfunding, its funny to see KRS getting worked up about a few phone calls.



If you like this year's wasteful special session, you would have loved last year's, in which the politicians claimed to fix the state's pension problems. And then they came back earlier this year and raided the system again.

The only way to get out of the pension mess Frankfort has put us in is to pour money into the system at a much faster rate. And that means less spending on other pet big-government projects.

Now.

A flat tax never killed anyone

Did a tax avoidance strategy in Washington D.C. cause the deaths of nine people in a DC Metro accident Monday? (Click the image below to expand and read.)

Independence Day Tea Parties in Kentucky

Friday July 3 ---

Jenkins City Park in downtown Jenkins, Kentucky. 6pm to 8pm.

Madison County Courthouse in Richmond. 6pm to 7:30pm.


Saturday July 4 ---

Jefferson Square in Louisville. 11am to 2pm.

Laurel County Courthouse in London. Noon to 1pm.

Corbin City Hall in Corbin. Noon to 2 pm.

Grant County Courthourse in Williamstown. Noon.

State Capitol steps in Frankfort. Noon to 2pm.

Fayette County Courthouse in Lexington. Starts at 3:30pm right after the parade.

I will be speaking in Madison County and Laurel County. Hope to see you there!

$60,000 for your Tuesday hot air

The Kentucky legislature is expected to spend much of the day Tuesday in conference committees seeking agreement on everything but slots.

Just go home, guys.

There's my Herald Leader!

Agreeing with the Lexington Herald Leader editorial page's slots bill opposition recently was pretty strange. Tuesday morning brought a return to normal:



If "incentivizing" our economy with corporate welfare worked, then Kentucky, with one of the most active state economic development cabinets in the nation in this decade, would already be an economic nirvana.



Since the government's definition of "economic competitiveness" translates into English as Kentucky being one of the poorest states, shouldn't we be considering a new strategy instead of tweaking and expanding the old one?

One thing that should be perfectly clear by now is we don't need state government trying to serve as a mini-Obama, picking which companies get welfare and which ones pay it. What we need to do is repeal corporate taxes, which are all passed along to consumers anyway. Pay for the cuts by making government smaller. Until we start thinking like this, we will continue getting the same bad results from Frankfort.

Keep killing the zombie casino effort

Interesting to hear red-faced slots supporters in the Capitol Annex Monday evening snarling about raising $100,000 against every Republican Senator in next year's elections.

I thought they were all immediately moving to Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Kentucky is never going to start moving toward general prosperity until we get past these money games. To think that we are using $742 million from Washington D.C. (improperly, of course) to fill in a hole caused by rampant overspending and then borrowing more than $1 billion more to buy votes to set up another money-losing scheme should have us all grabbing our torches and pitchforks.

My friends who threw in with the casino mob used the "levelling the playing field" argument to say "all the other kids are doing it." The point, though, is that all the other kids are broke because they have fallen for yet another fool's gold scheme. Kentucky is going to have to stop falling for them and stop following the failed examples of neighboring states if we are ever to right our ship.

Cooking up different ways to bankrupt our state is never going to improve our fiscal situation. Never.

We should stop trying pretty soon, don't you think?

Ben Chandler goes squishy, again

U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler has already decided to take a firm stand on both sides of the socialized medicine issue. Now, he appears determined to say nice things about monetary system transparency without actually doing anything about it.



This is Chandler's form letter that he sends to everyone who asks him to cosponsor the Audit the Fed bill.

Slots for Tots, or not?

The Kentucky House of Representatives is still sitting on the slots bill passed Friday. The Senate has already passed the budget and appears ready to go home if the House doesn't produce their bill by 4:30 this afternoon.

I suspect the House will send over Slots for Tots and it will die in the Senate.

4:30 pm Update: The House met the 4:30 deadline and the Senate is going into budget committee to consider the slots bill.

6:00 pm Update: The Senate budget committee is now hearing testimony in opposition to casinos, which the House refused to do.

7:10 pm Update: Senate budget committee has killed the slots bill.

Attaching a label to Mitch McConnell

Winchester Sun editor Randy Patrick recently interviewed Sen. Mitch McConnell biographer John David Dyche. Here's an interesting excerpt:



You can read the rest of the interview here.

Moving the electorate on a similar shift from its current big-government mindset to support of liberty and support for smaller government will be tough with no apparent Ronald Reagan type on the horizon. As dependency continues to grow, some catalyst is needed to move us back in the other direction. Sen. McConnell could play an important role in that.

Slow news day in Lexington?

If our intrepid mainstream reporters in Lexington are looking for something to do today, they should read this and then ask mayoral candidate Teresa Isaac her opinion about how her successor Mayor Jim Newberry has handled the ongoing federal investigation of the Fayette jail inmate abuse scandal.

Why I do what I do

At the state Lincoln dinner last month, Senate President David Williams said "For those bloggers who want to see a battle over taxation and spending, you're about to see Armageddon."

That is, indeed, what I want to see. And what Kentucky needs to see.

In his Louisville Courier Journal column this morning, Joe Gerth printed that Williams quote, but left out the word "blogger."

Countering mainstream media spin was my original intention in starting up this site over four years ago. Having them sometimes try to edit me out of the picture is just part of the payoff.

Living to see a real Frankfort battle over taxes and spending (or, in this case, borrowing and spending) would just be awesome. And this could be the week it happens.

You don't have bring on the end of the world, Senator Williams. Just say no and go home.