Just One Goal

The Lexington Herald Leader jumps on the Fletcher administration's handling of the Medicaid program this morning.

You'd think someone would be keeping track of whether reforms affecting all that money (for fiscal year 2006, about $1 billion from Kentucky's General Fund and $3.3 billion in federal funds) was being spent effectively.

You'd think wrong. Neither the cabinet administering the program nor the governor's office to which it answered nor the legislature that passed the budgets funding the program seemed to know what was going on.

The politics of this is very much beside the point.

The only way to gain anything from this is to recognize the need for greater transparency in our government agencies. There is already a bill, pre-filed by a House Republican, that starts to address this issue. Rather than just kill it for partisan reasons, House Dems should expand it.

Medicaid's accounting issues are miniscule compared to the public employee benefits programs that have been allowed to go underfunded for decades. Now everyone is starting to pay attention because the black hole we have there threatens to swallow up the entire state.

Both of these problems -- and many others -- will benefit from a full-court press toward putting all the state's checkbooks online.

I Thought The Other Guy Was The Flip-Flopper

Double Dipper Dan v. AG Steve Beshear ('81)

The citizens of the 30th Senate district in Bell, Harlan, Leslie, and Perry counties would have a new state senator today if Governor Steve Beshear had called the special election on November 9 when Senate President David Williams made the request.

As it is, a special election for the seat can not now be held before the end of January. Double-Dipper Dan should do the right thing and insist Governor Beshear do his part to ensure the people in his district have the representation they deserve.

Governor Beshear really does understand the need to protect citizens on issues like this. Well, sometimes. He understood it when he wrote the following Attorney General's opinion in 1981, in which he ordered legislative staff not to mail but to hand deliver the Writ of Election for a special election.

As the Court pointed out in the case of Furste v. Grey, 240 Ky. 604, the framers of the Constitution had in mind that vacancies in the General Assembly shall not continue but should be filled immediately in the manner provided by the legislature.

Thus, because of the urgency for filling the vacancy in question so that the residents of the 75th Legislative District will be properly represented at the earliest possible time following the beginning of the Session starting on January 5, it is suggested that the Writ of Election be issued on January 1st and hand delivered rather than mailed, to the sheriff.

Governor Beshear also recognized this necessity when he elevated Rep. J.R. Gray to Labor Cabinet Secretary last week and immediately called the special election. He understood the need to call a special election right away. Why doesn't he get it now?

The $14 Million Jonathan Miller Subsidy

Wouldn't it be great if you could spend state tax dollars promoting your latest great idea? Wouldn't it be even better if you could go back every year and get a huge government check when your great idea blew up in your face again and again?

Governor Steve Beshear's hand-picked Finance and Administration Cabinet Secretary-designate Jonathan Miller has a $14 million check coming from the state's General Fund to fill the current year's hole in the KAPT program.

Heckuva job, Johnny.

Fiscal Time Bomb Still Ticking

There is really only one thing that matters in Kentucky right now and that is what we need to do now to survive a full-blown crisis in our state employee benefit plans.

It is nearly impossible to exaggerate this disaster. The best analogy I can think of is that we are on the Titanic and can only avoid getting sunk by the iceberg if we start turning now.

We are nearly $30,000,000,000 short in the funds we use to write pension checks and pay health benefits for state government workers. If we don't raise taxes, -- and we can't afford to raise taxes -- we are going to have to cut spending. A lot. There is no other way around this and if the people don't start screaming about it now we will see, within ten years, employers fleeing the state and leaving a real mess behind them.

And we can't fund our state government on Social Security checks.

What this will take is radically changing the way we look at state government. We are going to have to get out of providing a lot of services we have gotten used to. We will have to cut out a lot of programs.

Our bloated and inefficient school system might be a good place to start with a surgeon's knife. Did you know that no other state has a higher percentage of non-teacher school employees than Kentucky? If we start there and then eliminate most of the Kentucky Department of Education we will be heading in the right direction.

Then we need fewer state employees and we need them to stop retiring from one government job only to take another. Did you know only fourteen states have more state and local government employees per 10,000 people than Kentucky does? Kentucky has a law limiting the number of state employees to 33,000 but every two years the legislature votes itself an exemption from this law. In January they are going to do it again unless we make them stop it. Ask your Senator or Representative why he or she thinks government can't get by with less when the rest of us have to sometimes.

If you want your children to be able to live in Kentucky ten or fifteen years from now, you will take this threat very seriously.

I Guess We Know Results Of Stumbo Poll

Now we know what a political hit job looks like. Rep. Brandon Spencer just last week was filing a bill to line his own pockets with Medicaid money and now he is resigning quietly so Greg Stumbo can have a job.

Could Jody Richards be the one quaking in his boots this morning?

This Is Part Of The Picture

Try the new Fair Tax Calculator.

Good Bills

HB 114
HB 52
HB 47
SB 11
HB 105
SB 16
HB 33

Bad Bills

HB 165
HB 54
HB 158
HJR 6
HB 83
HB 107
HB 102
HB 87
HB 126
HB 153
HB 162
HB 148

Good Bills

HB 113
HB 18
HB 19
HB 58
HB 138
HB 45
SB 14
HB 85
SB 16
HB 118

Bad Bills

HB 38
HB 56
HB 46
HB 94
SB 36
HB 86
SB 7
HB 64

Good Bills

HCR 4
SB 5
HB 26
HB 15

Bad Bills

HB 111
SB 19
HB 11
HB 12
SB 20
HB 81
HB 72
HB 14
HB 156

Yarmuth: I Wanna Go Home NOW!

An hour ago, House Democrats in Washington D.C. tried to shut down their session for the year. Yarmuth voted to surrender.

Has he been talking to Jody Richards?

Smart Republicans Won't Touch Medicaid Fight

I just got off the phone with a spokeswoman from the Cabinet for Medicaid Services who told me they didn't have a comment on the Auditor's Performance Audit of their activities. She told me they are reviewing the audit and might have a comment by the end of the week.

The only problem with that is the audit included -- on page 108 -- a letter from the department dated December 5 responding to the audit.

This doesn't look good for what is left of the Fletcher administration.

Sniffing Out (Some) Conflicts Of Interest

The state just lost an appeal to eliminate what it said was a conflict of interest for a lowly technician at the airport in Frankfort who took on a second job to improve his skills.

But there has still been no official action taken against Rep. Harry Moberly in his conflict of interest as Budget Chairman and Vice President of Eastern Kentucky University.

I thought Governor Beshear said he was going to be different.

Tax Reform Idea Catching On

I will be on Leland Conway's radio show at 9:00 Monday morning talking about the Fair Tax. You can catch it in the Lexington area on 630 AM or on the net at www.wlap.com.

Boycott of Golden Compass A Success

The anti-Christian film Golden Compass has been a flop.

Merry Christmas!

Baseball Analogy For Fayette Jail Employees

Some of the criminals working inside the Fayette County Detention Center continue to delude themselves. They seem to think lack of mainstream media interest in their crimes and the fact no one with dark sunglasses and arrest warrants has shown up yet means no one is coming for them.

But several internal conversations at the jail have turned to the the inconvenient fact investigators took four years to indict slugger Barry Bonds.

The jail abuse evidence isn't nearly as hard to sort through as the steroid evidence, though.

Happy Hanukkah: MIller "Mistakes" Like Noodling?

Told you three weeks ago about the Lexington Herald Leader sitting on a Jonathan Miller scandal. Why they put it out now, in the middle of December and on one of the slowest circulation days of the year, makes about as much sense as this:

Overall, Parker saw her salary rise from $21,000 a year when Miller hired her out of college as a secretary in 2000 to $78,981 a year this year as deputy state treasurer. That's an increase of nearly 380 percent in seven years.

Miller denied any suggestion that he gave Parker undue favorable treatment but said he has relied on her input regarding "personal business" matters such as future job opportunities.

For instance, Parker accompanied Miller on a trip to Las Vegas between May 14 and 17, just after Miller dropped out of the Democratic primary for governor.

Miller said in an interview in September that he flew to Las Vegas in May for a trip that was "personal or personal business" in nature.

"No state government work," he said. "I'm kind of looking at my own job opportunities after I'm treasurer and also it's a nice place to relax."

It may well sound like sour grapes at this point, but this sordid episode displays perfectly how the mainstream media in Kentucky covers for Democrats. Can there be any doubt if Miller were a Republican that the last three weeks would have featured wall-to-wall news stories speculating about wild sex and gambling parties in Las Vegas and systematic abuse of the merit system?

This story is far from over.