Welcome Lexington Herald Leader Readers!

Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, conservatism isn't dead in Kentucky. It just needs a little cold water splashed in its face. Welcome to Kentucky Progress.

Kentucky is a conservative state, but our politics lag behind our people. And I am talking about fiscal conservatism. Though there is more work to be done, social conservatives rule the roost in the Bluegrass. Sadly, they have veered hard to the left on fiscal issues. If you are ready to push ahead, we have to demand repeal of the Alternative Minimum Calculation. Also, we need to go after the soft liberal underbelly of our state -- the education bureaucracy. This is the largest portion of our state budget and the mismanagement is undeniable. Step one there is for parents to demand school choice.

This would make a great start. Call your state legislators and demand total repeal of AMC during the special session that begins today. They won't do it, but they should know we are out here. Education reform has been a liberal bugaboo for decades and our progress has been stunted as a result. It is time for conservatives to stand up and lead our children. There are some great things afoot for the conservative cause in Kentucky. Please come back often to the Kentucky Progress for updates.

YOU Pay Corporate Income Taxes

Revenue-raising politicians love to pile on "big business."

That's how we got the Alternative Minimum Calculation tax with Tax Modernization. The AMC forces businesses with no profit to pay taxes on their gross receipts. When possible, those costs to the business are passed on to consumers. When that isn't possible, employees take the hit. Either way, new businesses get the brunt of this and it accomplishes nothing so much as to restrain economic growth.

The special session starts tomorrow and the Bluegrass Institute is encouraging business owners to tell legislators to scrap the AMC. Amen to that. If you patronize small businesses or work for one, you would do well to raise your voice also.

Welcome Liberal Time Wasters!

If you have been directed to this site because you read on the net about Kentucky state government blocking liberal Bluegrass Report, you might have a little too much time on your hands.

Kentucky Progress is a conservative site and, as such, I have no problem with being blocked from state employee computers -- especially during work hours. I'm glad to have liberal readers who disagree with everything I write -- and I do get a kick out of angry liberal legislators who accost me in Frankfort because of what I write about them on this site -- but I value my tax dollars as well. If you are reading this site and would like to comment via email or post a comment here, go right ahead. But if you are stealing from your employer in order to be here, I hope your conscience bothers you.

KY Pension Collapse: Will Money Meet Mouth?

The Delta Airlines Pilot Pension collapse isn't going to get as much run in the media as anything potentially embarrassing to Republicans. The reason is defined-benefit pensions are designed much like Social Security.

Remember the "there is no crisis" rants from the left last year? By now, all honest economists agree that was an expensive distortion then and it is only getting worse.

Well I have an idea how to get past the smokescreen on this. Kentucky's public employee pensions are headed for a Delta-like disaster. If we gave all employees in the system the opportunity to opt out in favor of a defined contribution plan, we could wait and see just how many were willing to gamble their retirement security on what is left of the old economic ideology.

Now that would be a sight to behold...

New York Times As Contrary Indicator

When the New York Times puts its political prognostications on the front page, it is usually best to expect things to go the other way. Such is the case with today's bit about the impending doom of the Republican Party of Kentucky.

Almost as bad as Daily Kos' conspiracy theory yesterday about Dubai "still controlling" U.S. Ports.

Murtha Initiates 'Culture of Compunction'

Memo to Democrats: you wanted John Murtha to be your spokesman on national defense and you got him.

Enjoy!

Quick, somebody ask Julian Carroll for a comment...

What's Holding Back Kentucky Health Care

Democrats in Frankfort have to be worried about Gross Lindsay's primary loss because the doctor who beat him is in favor of common sense medical malpractice reform.

Senator Ed Worley (D-Richmond) faces a stiff challenge this fall in large part because of his own support of ambulance chasers on the same issue.

Reforming tort policy will help quite a bit. Even more helpful would be to drum up support in favor of repealing Kentucky's Certificate of Need laws.

Read up.

Make Timelines Not War!!

Apparently U.S. Senate Democrats are pushing again (still?) to quit fighting the war and hope the terrorists back off the IED's and stick to their prayer rugs.

Kos has the story.

Lib Judges Can Run, Can't Hide

Marcus Carey's effort to bring ideological accountability to judicial races is causing his opponent to say dumb things.

This is going to get good. Thanks to Trey Walker for passing this along from San Diego.

Iraq, Iraq, Iraq

Here is President Bush's radio address he gave today.

As I read it, what occurred to me is the President's political opponents here at home can take no pleasure in any good things that happen in Iraq -- ever. No doubt they will face a white-hot panic if continued progress mounts as fall draws closer.

What I see happening is both national parties running on Iraq this November.

UPDATE: Kentucky's Democrat opponents for Congress don't have Ben Chandler's advantage of being able to vote this way and that way on this issue. But such flip-floppery won't help him run for Governor.

I Just Joined Unity '08, You Should Too!

Unity '08 is a political organization whose purpose is to bring people together to move America forward. Let me hasten to add I have not left the Republican party and you don't have to leave your party either in order to get involved with Unity '08. The point is to work with people from all political perspectives who are tired of the status quo.

You might think that Unity '08 is a little late to the two-party party to actually have an impact in 2008. And you would be wrong.

Actually, Republicans and Democrats will be behind in the spring of 2008 when they hold their precinct elections and start the process of rewriting their state and national platforms. Their advantage is they already have people, but the same people show up and propose the same platforms so little changes. What Unity '08 lacks in sheer numbers, in another two years it could make up for in energy and by working the same process in a fresh way. They are bringing the people together first and then working out the ideas.

We all know the environment is ripe for a new movement. It is even okay that partisans like me will be looking for a way to manipulate Unity '08. If it becomes anything like a forum where we can hash out philosophical differences honestly, it will have significantly more power per capita than the Dems and Republicans telling themselves the same things.

I suspect things will get pretty dicey with Unity '08 when the time comes to pick a slate for President. But the most interesting point of a political discussion is where the strength of ideas change open minds. Based on that, Unity '08 is worth a hard look.

Chandler Joins Bill To Raise College Costs

Ben Chandler's latest move in Washington D.C. deserves a lot of scrutiny.

He has added his name to a bill called "Reverse the Raid on Student Aid" HR 5150, which would cut by half interest rates on student loans for higher education.

In his two short years inside the beltway, Chandler has learned the value of sound-good, feel-good legislation. What the sponsors of this bill want you to believe is that cutting student loan interest rates lowers college costs and helps the poor, struggling college student and his/her family afford higher education.

It isn't that simple.

It would be that simple, I guess, if the Education Fairy paid lending institutions the difference in the costs of the loan and the government-set rate. After centuries of data have demonstrated to everyone else that price-fixing combined with taxpayer subsidies cause artificially high demand and actually increase costs -- a side benefit is creating waste! --, the sponsors of this bill want to clap their hands and believe it won't work that way this time.

The Republican leadership in the House has done a lot worthy scorn lately, but the coming showdown on this -- and the unceremonious death of this bad bill -- will underscore once again that as bad as the GOP might have been, the Democrats are worse. It's hardly a campaign slogan, but cutting off our noses to spite our faces is a luxury we can not afford now.

Anti-War Party Exposes Rear Flank

The U.S. House of Representatives voted today to support the War On Terror through to victory. This means, of course, that the majority of Americans will not join the Culture of Quitters who want to cut and run -- head-in-sand-like -- in hopes the terrorists won't kill us if we just stop doing things that might hurt their feelings or conflict with their deeply held non-Christian religious beliefs.

It should go without saying, but the Democrats voted against this.

Terrorists Know Something Democrats Don't

Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, John Edwards and all their corndog friends have been yammering nonstop about how poorly our effort in Iraq has been going.

A document retrieved from al-Zarqawi's hideout suggests an amazingly different picture. Check it out here. Kind of makes you wonder what else they have been lying to us about.

One line line of reasoning and its conclusion that jumped out at me from Zarqawi's suggestions was that he thought the "resistance" would benefit from sparking a war between America and Iran. He cited "The possibility of acquiring new weapons from the Iranian side, either after the fall of Iran or during the battles." He also suggested pitting a wide variety of other groups against each other (all Arab) in order to benefit the terrorist insurrection.

So the terrorists in Iraq knew that if we took on Iran we would defeat them, they just wanted a chance to steal their weapons. That should go over well on the Arab Street. It isn't rubbing it in -- or spin or whatever -- to say this is bad news for Democrats. They have chosen to become the anti-war party. Hope they enjoy it while they last.

"Improving Education" Liberal Style

I can't believe some people are getting so plugged up over how Kentucky schools read a calendar.

This wasn't about improving education. This was about moving our state one inch closer to the ACLU. We can do without that. You want to make kids aware of the new terms? Here: "Hey kids! Some liberals say B.C.E. when they mean B.C. and C.E. when they mean A.D. Got it? Good!" Now, if you want to talk about improving the schools, let's talk about school choice. If a parent could take the tax dollars we spend on each child and direct those dollars to another school of his choosing, don't you think our schools would get more serious about results and spend less time on left-wing propaganda like all this B.C/A.D B.C.E/C.E. BS?

Fletcher Speaks To National Health Group

Governor Fletcher will serve as keynote speaker to the Government Health IT Conference and Exhibition in Washington D.C. He has been asked to discuss Kentucky's success with electronic medical recordkeeping to give other governments insight into duplicating what we have done here.

Hold your applause. He is just getting warmed up.

Liberal Lexington Judge Writes New Law

Fayette Circuit Judge Gary Payne must believe in fairies.

That is about as reasonable an explanation as I can come up with for why Payne would unilaterally change a local election law today pertaining to the collection of candidate petition signatures. The law in question, when applied to any city council candidate other than Mayor Isaac's pal Julian Beard, requires 100 petition signatures for a candidate's name to be on the ballot. Signatures appearing also on opposing candidates' petitions are not counted and no one has had a problem with this for the last three decades.

That all changed because Beard's petition for this year's race, minus duplicate signatures, left him with less than 100 names and, therefore, not legally eligible to run.

His own personal shortcomings should be sufficient to keep him from winning election anyway, but Beard is now "legally" on the ballot to face businessman Bill Roberts in the 4th district council race.

Governor Fletcher Flies To Washington

When Kentuckians think about the shameful behavior of Paul Patton, what comes to mind is, of course, Tina Conner. But don't you remember Governor Patton crying about Medicaid and tossing people out of nursing homes? A huge part of the "mess in Frankfort" was the deplorable state of the Medicaid program. Its exploding deficits put much of the rest of the state at risk.

Governor Fletcher has righted that ship with very little fanfare. Today, he will be in Washington D.C. to talk about some of his success.

UPDATE: Liberal Blogger Mark Nickolas picks up the story and goes ballistic because Governor Fletcher is talking to conservative people in D.C. Horrors!

You know how they talk about momentum shifts in politics? When we see the Left getting all bunched up about something like this, it suggests that we are seeing just such a shift in Kentucky. If hatred of Republicans and conservatives is the closest thing to a party platform the Democrats can pull together, things are definitely looking up for the GOP.

Education Liberals Target Calendar, Still

Good grief. While Frankfort education bureaucrats continue to try to remove any reference to Jesus Christ from everything, we still wonder why our schools fail to make the grade.

Right after the left goes down today on their B.C.E/C.E nonsense, we need to turn the conversation around to school choice.

Why National Democrats Won't Be Celebrating Christmas In November

While Americans want to win the war, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry still hope to turn Iraq into Vietnam. Keep talking guys!

What will they do next, complain about how terrible the economy is?