Check back often for news and commentary about Kentucky by David Adams.
Contact via email: kyprogress(at)yahoo.com or Lexington area telephone 537-5372.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear's appearance on national television Sunday was embarrassing, as he turned his fifteen minutes of coronavirus fame into a ridiculously unfounded sales pitch for Johnson & Johnson's new vaccine.
"Johnson & Johnson is going to be a game-changer," he said. "The fact that we can fully vaccinate everyone in just one shot; that it basically eliminates death and serious illness and that we're going to get tens of thousands of vaccines per week per state, it's just gonna get us to the finish line that much faster."
Stating that not enough study has been done, the FDA Briefing Document casts doubt on each of Beshear's claims, except for the greater supply of vaccines and the nonsense about a finish line.
Meanwhile, The New England Journal of Medicine suggests in an article titled "Beyond Politics -- Promoting Covid-19 Vaccination in the United States" policymakers might offer tax breaks to spur people to take a vaccine.
Gov. Andy Beshear's latest response to Impeachment Committee members posted today again failed to provide the requested information. If House members felt Beshear's arrogant disrespect directed at all Kentuckians but specifically addressed to them last time, they should feel it at least double now.
Kentucky's House Impeachment Committee already has the information they need to recommend the full House take up this matter.
Tick tock, Frankfort.
Really now -- at the very least -- call some witnesses to get this thing going.
At the last House Impeachment Committee meeting Thursday, February 11, Chairman Jason Nemes asked staff to post the latest evidence from Governor Andy Beshear as soon as possible. Four days later, it is still hidden from public view.
Yesterday's House Impeachment Committee meeting was inexplicably delayed hours past its 4pm scheduled start, no action was taken on the impeachment -- including failing to post Gov. Beshear's latest answer to their demand for evidence -- and then all we got was two witnesses reading the same constitutional sections about why legislators can't be impeached.
Meanwhile, Auditor Mike Harmon has reported on more than enough incompetence. Seriously, have the Auditor in for testimony if you must for purposes of the dog-and-pony-show nature of Frankfort. But this thing is over. Dragging it out so Beshear gets one more paycheck while pleasuring himself with television updates on the weather and more nanny state nincompoopery is a disservice to all hardworking Kentuckians.
Send the motion for removal to the House. Yesterday.
Gov. Andy Beshear's disturbing string of screw ups with federal and state unemployment insurance funds is starting to get more attention. The curious may want to recall his March 25, 2020 press release in which he told people who walked away from work for fear of covid to go ahead and grab their benefits.
Governor Andy Beshear's mindless government shutdowns and the Kentucky Supreme Court's rubber stamping leave citizens with only one way out: impeachment.
Well-meaning critics have asked how removing Beshear and replacing him with LG Jacqueline Coleman (click here and listen to 12:24 - 12:37) will make life better for regular people when her policy positions are at least as destructive as his. That's a good question, but the answer is simple: the precedent set by leaving Beshear in office now would be far more problematic in the long run than cutting him cleanly out of office and letting the gaping, bloody, oozing wound scab over in a matter of months instead of sending the message that destroying small businesses and the people who depend on them to score political points is acceptable.
Make no mistake: if we let his arbitrary rupturing of Kentuckians' livelihoods stand just to get to the next governor in 2023, the next four-year occupant of that office will be worse than Beshear, not better. The precedent we set here will either be that wrecking our economy is okay or it isn't. Let's take our lumps now by removing Beshear and start picking up the pieces while we still can, with a clear message to the world that we don't stand for politicians trying to micromanage an airborne virus.
State Rep. Russ Meyer's ten year old scheme to hand massive Democrat donor Clay Corman more than a million dollars for a vacant hole in the ground in Nicholasville deserves a closer look.
"Everyone knows about government waste and corruption but too many people don't do anything to stop it," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Russ Meyer has had ten years to set this right and he's still hiding in that little hole."
Embattled incumbent Democrat State Representative Russ Meyer of Nicholasville already faces a stiff challenge by Republican Rob Gullette thanks to Meyer's bad votes this year against Gov. Matt Bevin's repair of the ObamaCare disaster, but then there is a little matter of a hole in the ground on Main Street.
Meyer was the Mayor of Nicholasville from 2007 to 2014. In early 2007, Meyer conspired with some friends for the city to purchase lots 717 and 719 North Main Street at a quick $177,000 profit for one of the conspirators, supposedly to construct a new city hall. Meyer then broke state law KRS 424.260 by contracting for construction services in the amount of $37,025.66 and circumventing the competitive bidding process by splitting the work up into two invoices sent on the same day from the same address.
Nine years later, the lots still sit empty.
"ObamaCare fans like Russ Meyer have generally demonstrated little to no respect for taxpayers' hard-earned money," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "The Meyer's Mugging on Main Street episode here should at the very least result in him being run out of office."
At first glance, Kentucky ObamaCare insurer CareSource's approved rate increase looks odd. Better known as a Medicaid managed care coverage provider but also selling on the exchange, CareSource requested a large 20.55% rate increase request for individual ObamaCare customers but their rate is going up a staggering 29.3%.
Bevin spokesman Doug Hogan explained that an administration actuarial review showed CareSource's rate request "would be insufficient" to pay claims and "would ultimately lead to a harmful scenario for consumers."
Former Governor Steve Beshear could have saved customers, medical providers and taxpayers money and a lot of trouble if he had taken such care at any point before Kentucky Health Cooperative's managers took the money from their bloated salaries and bonuses and ran, leaving the rest of us holding the bag when their shell game failed.
"I guess there aren't any decent Obamacrat actuaries out there or maybe Gov. Beshear was more interested in seeing his friends at the cooperative load up on market share they couldn't maintain so they all got paid bonuses before the music stopped," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Gov. Bevin deserves credit for stopping CareSource from playing the same game.
ObamaCare cheerleaders in the media keep talking about Gov. Matt Bevin's attempt to renegotiate Kentucky's abysmal Medicaid expansion deal into a somewhat less abysmal deal, but they continue to leave out the most important point. Gov. Bevin's claim that he might unilaterally withdraw from Medicaid expansion is not supported by federal or state law or relevant case law, but federal officials don't want to make that clear because they are still trying to suck other states in by letting them believe there is an escape hatch.
There isn't.
Medicaid is a federal/state partnership for government-run healthcare in which the federal government pays most of the bills and retains total control of how the program is run. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ObamaCare was simply a tax instead of an unconstitutional usurpation of individual and state rights by the federal government according to the plain language of the Tenth Amendment, it slightly trimmed back the usurpation by deeming the Medicaid expansion to be each state's choice rather than a requirement as previously stated in the "Affordable Care Act."
Some states blindly jumped in to the Medicaid expansion without asking any questions. Gov. Steve Beshear abused state law to add Kentucky to that number. Others negotiated slightly less horrible deals and accepted expansion, claiming falsely to have an ability to withdraw from the expansion later if it proved too expensive.
Obama and Hillary Clinton want to keep pushing holdout states to take the Medicaid expansion by keeping alive the falsehood that states have an ability to escape it later on if they choose. Kentucky would be the first to test this if Gov. Bevin's reform proposal is rejected and he then follows through on his threat to then reverse Kentucky's entrance into expansion. The feds' interest in suckering the holdout states may well inspire them to accept at least most of Bevin's requested reforms.
If, instead, they decide to fight, Bevin could drop excess Medicaid recipients and wait for the feds to sue. Presumably, a President Trump would not fight us and President Clinton would. (Good question to ask both of them.) President Clinton would win the lawsuit, but if Trump is POTUS and there is no lawsuit, Kentucky will win big by joining the states opting out of ObamaCare.
State Representative Kevin Bratcher has filed a bill which would tell the federal government where to stick unconstitutional mandates against state governments which exceed federal authority. The bill, filed as a joint resolution, could be an effective election issue for Republicans seeking a majority in the state House of Representatives.
"Bratcher's resolution states clearly the General Assembly's demand to the federal government to take its proper place as a limited agent of the states with specific, limited powers spelled out in the Constitution," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Hillary Clinton Democrats in Frankfort will hate this and they should be asked that on the record as often as possible between now and November."
Watching a craven Andy Beshear recklessly and repeatedly attack Gov. Matt Bevin with state tax dollars from the Attorney General's office for no better reasons than that his father shook down the Democrat donor class to buy him the office and because he can is getting pretty old. He needs to be impeached.
The one sticking point is Republicans must take a majority in this November's elections and then have the courage to follow through on the impeachment process.
The Kentucky Constitution Sections 66 to 68 governs how the process would work and it is not much different than the federal process, which you may remember being applied to Hillary Clinton's husband when he violated Paula Jones' civil rights.
One likely question in the process is the Constitution specifies that impeachment can result from "any misdemeanors in office." While Beshear may well be guilty of any number of crimes, what's interesting is that case law is overwhelming in affirming the Senate's ability to define terms and make its own rules for an impeachment process. In any event, neither prior nor subsequent court conviction for any crime is necessary for a constitutional officer to be impeached by the House and convicted and removed from office by the Senate. If the legislature wants him removed, they can do it.
Clearing this bad actor out of the Attorney General's office to be replaced with a more serious public servant is a very worthwhile pursuit worth campaigning for this fall.
Governor Matt Bevin's formal request to federal authorities to rein in Kentucky's failed Medicaid expansion contains a one line critique of the lawless Beshear Administration that will make Frankfort ObamaCare cheerleaders in the media mad when they read it.
"The reality is that Medicaid expansion does not pay for itself as envisioned by the prior administration," Bevin's Section 1115 Demonstration Waiver Application says, "and the Commonwealth of Kentucky cannot afford the cost of the Medicaid expansion program without this demonstration waiver."
Bevin Administration officials will present their requested changes Wednesday in Frankfort to the Interim Joint Committee on Health and Welfare at 10am in room 129 of the Capitol Annex.
"Beshear abused Kentucky law KRS 205.520(3) to justify jumping into ObamaCare Medicaid, but the statute's admonition to take advantage of all available federal health funds would better have been followed by avoiding the expansion altogether because it was such an obvious trap to sink the state deeper into debt," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "We're trapped now and Gov. Bevin's attempt here is our best option, ObamaCare cheerleaders be damned."
Fayette County Schools has received a $600,000 charitable grant to start a doomed program which deserves immediate awareness so its inevitable failure may not be a total waste.
With overheated fanfare, Fayette Superintendent Manny Caulk announced the start of another attempt to reduce racial education achievement gaps, telling the Lexington Herald Leader "today we stand before our community to say we will no longer allow a child's demography to determine his destiny."
Caulk emphasized starting a volunteer reading program for elementary students, tutoring and leadership training in middle schools and drop-out prevention and college/career readiness in high schools. No one should be surprised to see the $600,000 won't last long funding these not-so-revolutionary ideas.
Twenty four years ago, when I was starting my career in Atlanta, I was also volunteering with ninth grade students in two area high schools. One day, I asked each group separately how many of them expected to one day play professional sports. In the poor, black, inner city group, about half the boys raised their hands. In the middle class, suburban, all-white-except-one-kid group, every hand pointed at one black kid sitting quietly in his desk. His hand was not raised, but a few years later he played some minor league baseball before starting a ten year career in the NFL. He was not a star and you wouldn't likely recognize his name, but he made it. None of the others did.
I appreciate any emphasis on lifting up young people, particularly any from disadvantaged circumstances, but participants in this "Boys of Color" scheme will become pawns in a political game to roll a $600,000 one time grant into a permanent spending spree for services of which most should have already been provided.
Mr. Caulk calls the $600,000 grant a "game changer," but he needs to demonstrate quickly that he isn't just playing the same old game. That won't happen. Education is a real pathway to success, but waiting around for government to give it to you is a sucker's game. If you want to help a young black child to succeed, teach him this:
Humana has withdrawn its request to raise ObamaCare premiums 33.7% next year and Gov. Matt Bevin should use the move as a reason to start pushing for repeal of Kentucky's certificate of need laws.
The withdrawal is related to Humana's pending merger with Aetna, whose 5.6% individual market rate hike for 2017 has already been approved. That's bad news for Aetna's ObamaCare members because those former Humana members whose health costs necessitated a $33.7% increase now want to join up with them or one of the other companies with a relatively healthier insured base.
And that means higher costs for everyone.
Underlying dramatically increasing health insurance premiums, of course, are similarly rising healthcare costs and they have been made worse by Kentucky's burdensome regulatory impact on the industry, specifically its certificate of need statutes, or CON. CON keeps prices artificially high by limiting competition between healthcare providers. Gov. Bevin should take to his bully pulpit to encourage legislators to get government out of the way on this key issue. Resistant legislative incumbents deserve to be replaced.
Former Gov. Steve Beshear and Frankfort House Democrats made a huge mess of the rule of law attempting repeatedly the last few years to cram ObamaCare down our throats. Gov. Matt Bevin just quietly took a big step to clear up what could have been real chaos on that front as part of keeping his campaign promise to shut down Kentucky's state-run ObamaCare exchange.
Beshear's cartoonish repeated attempts to create "Kynect" with illegal and illegally reissued executive orders which were never ratified by the legislature and House Democrats' repeated attempts to ratify them anyway left Gov. Bevin entering July unable to shut down the illegal exchange immediately while negotiating with Obama officials to shut it down soon and no legal construct for keeping it going another day. So Bevin issued a carefully worded executive order creating "Kynect" long enough to shut it down with as little disruption as possible.
"Gov. Bevin deserves a ton of credit for walking behind Frankfort Democrats with a big pooper scooper to clean up this ObamaCare stuff," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "It's telling that after hyperventilating over every lie, bogus statistic and illegal Beshear ObamaCare move for years now, Kentucky's media is almost completely ignoring this responsible move by Bevin."
As Kentucky moves closer to legalizing marijuana for medical use, tax policy deserves special consideration in treatment of the plant and Kentucky can lead the way nationally by leaving all elements of production and distribution untaxed. At issue is the fact that federal designation of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug allows the Internal Revenue Service to prohibit the use of any deductions of business expenses for products deemed illegal by federal law.
This policy has the effect of heavily increasing federal taxation on marijuana even in medical marijuana states, which costs are then passed along to patients.
"Kentuckians increasingly see past anti-marijuana scare tactics and Gov. Bevin's campaign pledge to support medical use of the plant provides solid proof of that," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Excessive federal taxation, at least while it lasts, should be met with a completely tax-free status of marijuana in the Commonwealth to help both our providers and consumers."
Former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear continues fumbling around the state in support of the ObamaCare debacle, but soon to be released statistics will show even constituents drawing federal subsidies to purchase jacked-up health policies in the last year dropped them here about as quickly as in any other state.
"Premiums are skyrocketing, doctors are quitting and people are suffering while politicians and their media-based pets who crammed this garbage down our throats illegally pretend everything will be fine if we throw a few more billion dollars at the problem," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Gov. Bevin should stop collecting the illegally transferred Kentucky Access tax and shut down Kynect right away."
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has threatened to reverse expanded Medicaid here if federal officials reject his proposed reforms, but federal law does not allow him to follow through on his threat. The interesting wrinkle is the feds don't want to call his bluff now because they are still trying to trap more Republican governors like those in Arizona, Florida and Ohio in the Medicaid expansion roach motel.
That is, "you can check in, but you can't check out."
Senator Rand Paul should file a bill to explicitly give states the right to reverse acceptance of Medicaid expansion and start campaigning for this right away. Such a bill would pass the House and Senate and force Obama and Hillary Clinton to either confirm the trap ObamaCare puts states in or to reverse it.
Either way, freedom is advanced.
"The more people learn about ObamaCare, the more they understand the disaster it is," Kentucky Progress publisher David Adams said. "Obama and Hillary need to decide if they want to go down fighting for power most Americans won't want them to keep."
Today is a big fundraising deadline for the presidential race, so the generic email request for money I got is not a surprise. But I would like to state publicly why I won't respond positively to this one.
"With your help today," the email reads, "we can turn our great country around and Make American Great Again. We can secure our borders, create jobs and keep our families safe."
Making America Great Again is an effective campaign slogan for lots of people, as is leading with policy proposals to attack illegal immigration, spur economic activity and pursue a strong national defense, especially since Hillary Clinton's campaign appears focused on raising taxes, matching small dollar campaign contributions with tax dollars, abortion and "strengthening regulation of 'puppy mills.'"
Nevertheless, the campaign I want to support would seek to restore greatness by getting government out of commerce and out of education and out of the wealth redistribution business. Donald Trump will get plenty of votes and lots of campaign contributions being slightly better than Hillary Clinton. But I'm not investing a dime in slightly better than Hillary Clinton.
