Attend Beshear's public ObamaCare meeting

Kentucky has already budgeted more money for implementing ObamaCare than any other state but New York. Governor Beshear has been working behind the scenes to set up an ObamaCare health insurance exchange in Kentucky while most people are distracted by the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the ObamaCare mandate.

If he is not reversed quickly, Beshear will be able to run ObamaCare in Kentucky even if the federal law is overturned by the Supreme Court.

The legislature has failed to stop him. We must do it and the time is now.

On Monday, May 7 in Frankfort, the Beshear administration is holding a public meeting about the future of ObamaCare in Kentucky. As many of us as possible must attend. The Beshear Administration tried to keep this meeting quiet; the idea was to bus their people in and make it look like everyone loves ObamaCare. If you can make it at 1pm on Monday to 200 Mero Street in Frankfort (Transportation Cabinet Building Auditorium C105), please come. Even if you can't attend, please spread this invitation as widely as you can.

Printing (or cutting) what doesn't "fit"

From the Associated Press (Printed in the Bowling Green Daily News):

Beshear's announcement raised concerns in Kentucky among opponents of the federal care reforms.

Tea party activist David Adams said Kentucky shouldn't have accepted the federal grants, and that Kentuckians should be outraged that Beshear has been working behind the scenes to plan the health insurance exchange.
"This is the most important thing state government will do to us this year," he said.
It's noteworthy that the Lexington Herald Leader chopped this off the online version of this story.

And here is my original statement:

"If the legislature had any guts they would have prohibited Governor Beshear from spending even a penny setting up the enforcement bureaucracy for ObamaCare. They don't need to have meetings to discuss how great socialized medicine is going to be in Kentucky; they should have already sent the $60 million in federal funds back to Obama. The way the federal law is written, we can ignore ObamaCare mandates if we just refuse to set up an exchange. The purpose of the exchange is to blame the insurance companies and go straight to single-payer when the whole thing proves disastrous. They have to schedule this thing during the day so we can't get a crowd there, but this is the most important thing state government will do to us this year. If you thought the failed General Assemby session was bad, this is Armageddon." David Adams

Steve Beshear comes out of closet on May 7

Kentucky will be Ground Zero of the national battle against ObamaCare on Monday, May 7 in Frankfort when  Beshear administration officials forcing us into government-controlled healthcare will hold an open meeting in Frankfort to discuss their progress.

Though some reports have been online and the state budget gives Beshear free rein to ram ObamaCare down our throats, this is his first time publicly admitting his involvement in this disaster.

The meeting will be held at 1pm ET in the auditorium (C105) at the Transportation Cabinet in Frankfort, 200 Mero Street. Beshear has continued to insist, despite the evidence, that he is not setting up an ObamaCare health insurance exchange -- the state enforcement bureaucracy for socialized medicine.

Kentucky has already budgeted more ObamaCare spending than any other state in the nation besides New York.

If you care about stopping ObamaCare and can make it on Monday, you won't want to miss this.

Who are Kentucky's Tea Party candidates?

In an email this morning, Louisville Courier Journal political writer Joe Gerth asked me who the Tea Party candidates are running in the state House and Senate this year. Below is my response. What's yours?

"Good question. I think it's a 'many are called, few are chosen' kind of thing. I hope they all wind up supporting tea party principles, but for now they are mostly running their own races. I hope voters ask the candidates where they all stand on tea party issues and why. Our state officials have underfunded state employee benefits for so long we have about three years left before we won't be able to pay benefits out of KRS funds. That's a tea party issue because taxpayers will be on the hook, but the establishment figures won't even talk about it. Our elected officials have left the door wide open for Obama and Beshear to destroy healthcare in Kentucky with a federally-controlled but state "run" health insurance exchange. Only a handful of candidates have pledged never to raise taxes. I think the candidates who will talk directly to these issues and keep talking about them will be the tea party candidates."

Bob Damron has a Campaign for Liberty problem

Kentucky state Representative Bob Damron (D-Nicholasville) is one of only two Democrats in the General Assembly who completed a Campaign for Liberty survey with 100% affirmative answers.

He might have a problem or two with that.

Interested voters who haven't already written off Damron for bad votes might want to ask him which federal official he wants to arrest first.

Question 4 on the survey asks if the candidate would support nullifying ObamaCare and "authorize state and local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement the unconstitutional health care scheme."

Damron answered that he would do these things. I would like to see him say that on camera.

While he could certainly claim that he would take this approach to stopping ObamaCare since the opportunity has never come up, question 7 is a different story.

Question 7 asks "Do you oppose taking federal money to create a state health insurance exchange?" Kentucky has taken more federal money for this purpose than any other state except for New York. Damron has been there through the entire ordeal and has never objected once.

Steve Beshear hiding latest ObamaCare plans

Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services officials are sitting on at least two periodic reports detailing state implementation of ObamaCare.

The most recent Health Benefit Exchange Planning Grant quarter report made public on the state's Division of Certificate of Need is dated July 15, 2011.

Kentucky has budgeted more money for setting up the state bureaucracy for ObamaCare implementation than any state other than New York.

Kentucky paints itself into ObamaCare corner

A little-noticed provision in Kentucky's 2012 budget bill exposes a problem to be faced by states dumb enough to enact any part of ObamaCare.

Section 10 on page 296 of Kentucky's HB 265 would enable Kentucky to set up a state health insurance purchasing compact with contiguous states to allow for cross-border buys of health coverage.

Kentucky is actively setting up ObamaCare and is in the process of spending more than any other state in the nation other than New York on ObamaCare.

Kentucky has seven contiguous neighbors. Six of them have expressed an interest in a similar purchasing compact with their neighboring states. Of those six, five have taken specific legislative steps to protect themselves from at least one element of ObamaCare. They would have nothing to gain by combining with Kentucky on health insurance starting in 2014, when ObamaCare kicks in.

That leaves Kentucky and West Virginia, two ObamaCare states, to set up a multi-state health insurance purchasing compact. The way to avoid becoming an ObamaCare state is to avoid setting up a state-run health insurance exchange. Kentucky is too far into that process, with the legislature enabling and Governor Beshear expected to issue an executive order after the elections in November. Even a favorable U.S. Supreme Court ruling later this year may not prevent that from happening if the individual mandate is invalidated but the rest of the law survives.

Our fearless leaders should have at least tried to avoid the insurance exchange trap when they had the chance.




 

Beshear slams shut bogus "Open Door"

After the Tea Party shifted Frankfort's discussion in 2012 toward the massive accumulation of debt in state government, two weeks ago we noticed Beshear had scrubbed state sites of significant data related to that debt.

It never occurred to me to check out the silly, but award-winning state transparency site but when I did, I found the state's vaunted Open Door has been closed.

If you click here and look at "Kentucky's Transparency Portal," the link labeled "State Debt Report" takes you to an error message.

Might be an interesting news story for some intrepid Frankfort reporter. No doubt if Governor Ernie Fletcher had tried this he would already have been drawn and quartered. 

Would Missouri jail Kentucky lawmakers?

Missouri's state Senate is considering a bill -- already passed by the state House -- to make it a crime to  help set up ObamaCare in that state. Kentucky's General Assembly just voted to spend $50 million to help set up ObamaCare in Kentucky.

And the really good news is the politicians prosecuted under this law wouldn't be subject to the Steve Nunn Exception and could lose their government pensions.

In all seriousness, Kentucky should return every dime of federal ObamaCare money and follow Missouri's lead in fighting against it. Granted, we would need more Republicans to go that far, but we should have had plenty to avoid getting in deeper than any state other than New York.

Legislative pension issue enters KY primary

One issue gaining traction this year in Kentucky legislative races is whether or not a candidate will accept a pension for serving in the legislature. It has finally become a point of contention in a Republican primary in Lexington's 76th state House district.

Richard Marrs is a conservative Republican who ran in this district in 2010 against Democratic Rep. Ruth Ann Palumbo. Marrs holds the distinction in Kentucky of being the only House candidate for whom then-candidate Rand Paul campaigned by knocking on doors in his neighborhood. Marrs has pledged to reject a legislative pension if he is elected.

Marrs' opponent, Lavinia Theodoli Spirito, is taking the opposite approach by saying she will not refuse a pension.

In what might be a competitive race between conservative Richard Marrs and his opponent Lavinia Theodoli Spirito, this could be a defining issue.

Obama hopes you still don't read very well

I wonder how many people will send $3 (or more!) to President Barack Obama after reading this email, thinking that he is then going to fly them to Los Angeles to hang out with George Clooney. 

Probably a lot of the same people who still believe ObamaCare will lower their medical costs.

You may laugh, but your state representatives are just about ready to come home and tell you how conservative they are despite just setting up a ticking time bomb on Kentucky's health care system.

Kentuckians can ignore Supreme Court ruling

A lot of people will be watching the U.S. Supreme Court this summer to see if the justices rule ObamaCare to be unconstitutional or not. Thanks to Governor Steve Beshear and the state legislature, Kentuckians need not bother paying attention at all.

The General Assembly have authorized expenditures of over $50 million dollars to set up ObamaCare in Kentucky. That's more than any other state but New York. It would have been better for our health and finances to refuse that money and let the whole sordid scheme wither from neglect.

Unfortunately for us, our representatives in Frankfort took the money and bureaucrats are working to set up ObamaCare for Kentuckians. Worse, they granted the state's Insurance Commissioner open-ended powers to take control of healthcare in the state.

So even if ObamaCare is overturned and other states are spared, Kentucky won't be off the hook. The legislature did their dirty work in House Bill 265.

Tim Kline, a rock star in the making

Tim Kline is a 34 year old Owensboro, Kentucky attorney running for state House of Representatives in the 7th district.

A former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, Tim is a solid conservative and exactly the kind of person we need more of in Frankfort. Expect to hear a lot more about Tim in the weeks and months ahead.

Tim has the courage to campaign against the abuse and fraud in Kentucky Retirement Systems and pledges that  he will not accept a legislative pension.

Expect Tim to be an energetic leader among the new Republican wave coming in to augment Frankfort's decrepit legislature. The 7th district seat is currently held by a Democrat.

Ready for Kentucky's bankruptcy?

While Kentucky's political leaders mostly clown for the cameras in Frankfort, the smart money is watching the show but they aren't laughing. They are apparently, however, exploring ways to capitalize on our state's insane recklessness. The graphic below comes from www.statcounter.com, a site which tracks IP addresses of site visitors to Kentucky Progress.

Lazard Freres is a top financial restructuring advisory firm. In fact, Lazard Freres worked on the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy at the start of the banking crisis. It appears someone at the firm's New York office has been reading on this site multiple times. If you want to know what they know, you should read two of the pages they read most recently here and here.

 States can't legally declare bankruptcy, but that may be of cold comfort to bondholders and/or pensioners when our fiscal situation gets so bad there isn't enough money to go around.

Long memories, short pencils and Bob Damron

Kentucky state Representative Bob Damron (D-Nicholasville) is the only incumbent legislator this year who voted in 1994 to destroy Kentucky's individual health insurance market, subsequently apologized for it and then turned around and voted to spend $50 million we don't have to speed up ObamaCare implementation in Kentucky.

Damron called his vote for HB 250 in 1994 a "rookie mistake" and has claimed, correctly, that public backlash against Kentucky's attempt at creating "HillaryCare" here resulted in reforms that eventually enhanced what was left of our health insurance market.

Surviving his "rookie mistake" and then falling again under the spell of Barack Obama suggests strongly that it's time for Damron to call it quits. Damron's Republican opponent this fall is Nicholasville's Matt Lockett.

Barney Frank lives on in Frankfort, Kentucky

Massachusetts liberal Congressman Barney Frank is retiring in Washington D.C. but his thinking on ObamaCare seems to have taken hold in Frankfort.

Frank blamed the Democrats' loss of the House of Representatives in 2010 on President Obama's push for ObamaCare. It's not that he disagreed with the concept, he says they should have just waited until after the election because of the divisiveness of the issue.

Kentucky's politicians Steve Beshear, David Williams and Greg Stumbo appear to have taken to heart Frank's advice that Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi ignored.

Our Kentucky bunch waited until after the 2011 election to screw Kentuckians with a health insurance scheme that will haunt Kentuckians for years whether the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare or not.

Almost immediately after Beshear and Williams completed their uninspiring general election campaign -- in which Williams focused on calling Beshear a closet Hindu and Beshear focused on reminding people he was running against David Williams --  they set about passing a state budget that spends more money than every state but New York on ramming ObamaCare -- and worse -- down our throats.

If you liked how Frankfort destroyed Kentucky's individual health insurance market in 1994, you will love how they destroy it for everyone in the 2012 general fund budget. Oh, and you can thank Barney Frank for the political advice that helped make it happen.

Ron Paul money bomb stokes hopes, fears

Ron Paul has raised nearly $800,000 in the last 25 hours and is shooting for another $1.5 million or so by Tuesday.

Congressman Paul has essentially gotten his wish of a head-to-head race against Mitt Romney and with this fundraising support has to be close to putting Romney in a box of hoping Paul goes away but not daring to blow him out of the water for fear he will bolt the party and launch a third-party campaign in the fall.

Recent polls show Ron Paul offering a stiffer challenge to President Barack Obama than Romney would.

Why doesn't Kentucky have a Republican like this?

A New York state senator showed more guts with his opposition to ObamaCare this week than any Frankfort Republican has managed in a long time.

From LifeHealthPro:

Sen. Greg Ball, R-Patterson, Putnam County, does not see cost savings but more spending the state can ill afford. He issued a statement that said “any rush towards enacting ObamaCare is more political than reality. The promise of federal funding is not without strings and the program itself will ultimately, if enacted, cost New York taxpayers billions of additional dollars that we do not have. …. We can and should make landmark reforms, including reigning in big insurance in New York, but moving forward now to enact ObamaCare is simply not prudent.”

This was in response to a gubernatorial executive order setting up an ObamaCare health insurance exchange in New York. After telling Frankfort reporters for months that he had no plans to issue a similar executive order, Governor Steve Beshear stuck ObamaCare in his budget proposal and Kentucky's legislature pushed it on through without a peep.

And there hasn't been a single news article about it, either. The Democrats and big government Republicans are kicking our butts so hard they don't even bother to send out celebratory press releases any more.

Go directly to jail. Yes, you!

After the messy, expensive, wasteful General Assembly session ended Thursday and before the requisite "special" session starts on Monday, Kentucky taxpayers may want to check KRS 529.020 which prohibits paying someone who subsequently screws you.

Who is to blame for budget failure

It's not a question. Both sides are to blame for the 2012 General Assembly blowing up last night.

The rush to pass a general fund budget with too much debt and no solutions to our short, intermediate or long term problems in order for legislators to go back to their districts congratulating themselves on all the bipartisanship and compromise now means nothing to anyone.

Well, there is someone who comes out ahead in this ordeal: the tea party.

We have been telling anyone who would listen that the problem lies with both Democrats and Republicans and here it is again for everyone to see.

Do they not realize what will happen in three years when the state pension funds start to need $600 million a year just to pay their bills? We aren't the only state to destroy our finances by using public employee pension money as a slush fund for vote buying. We are just among the worst.

In any event, those expecting a federal bailout for Kentucky Retirement Systems are certain to be sorely disappointed. When that time comes, remember that the ensuing chaos was created by a lot of polticians on both sides. The great shame is that none of them in a position to do so put a stop to this before it was too late.

Frankfort's foolproof plan to eliminate debt

Kentucky's Office of Financial Management web site has been a rich source of state debt information that I tried for many months to get people to pay attention to with limited success.

It appears that ship has sailed. The only report left on the site with any debt data is apparently the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, which pretty much requires the patience of Job to find useful information.

Long-time readers may recall last summer I was trying to draw attention to a clear, concise debt report on a web page the Beshear Administration had failed to update for three years as state debt soared. That site now no longer exists. (See for yourself.)

So the brilliant plan to get rid of the state's impossible level of debt is to simply take down the web sites.

Historians will point to this despicable behavior and the complete lack of mainstream media coverage of it some day. For now, you need to know we basically have three years till the state's finances implode due to exactly this kind of deceit and mismanagement.

Kentucky House tea party tidal wave forming?

The Kentucky Right to Life (KYRTL) organization endorsed Democrat Kentucky House Majority Caucus Leader Bob Damron against his Republican opponents for years until 2010. That year, Damron escaped with a narrow win when Peter Kerr got a C- from the NRA.

This year will apparently be much different. The KYRTL has already endorsed Damron's 2012 opponent Matt Lockett. Damron has already shredded his fiscal conservative facade voting for a series of tax increases and horribly irresponsible budget bills. He has angered the most conservative part of his Jessamine County constituency by trying to jettison them away in the House's unconstitutional redistricting scheme.

The Barack Obama effect combined with Damron's self-inflicted difficulties set Lockett up for what would be the highest profile Republican pickup.

Kentucky in way over our heads on ObamaCare

Not only has the Kentucky legislature given the state Insurance Commissioner unchecked powers to regulate your health care, the state has received and written into our budget more ObamaCare funding from the federal government than all states except for one.

An analysis performed by LifeHealthPro found that only New York's federal health insurance exchange grant total of $88 million exceeds Kentucky's $66.6 million take.

What an obscene mess. And Senate Republicans could have stopped this, but did nothing. Disgraceful.

Because of the way HB 265 was written, even if the Supreme Court overturns ObamaCare Kentucky already has what it needs to push us all the way into socialized medicine.

Ron Paul rocks Kentucky Republican RINOs

State House and Senate candidates in Kentucky are getting loaded down with surveys from various organizations asking their positions on a wide variety of issues. There's one in particular that is not to be missed.

Ron Paul-founded Campaign For Liberty sent out a 7-question survey. Six of the questions should be pretty easy for any candidate to handle, dealing with personal liberties and fiscal responsibility. But the seventh question zaps everyone who voted for the state budget late last month.

The question reads as follows: Do you oppose taking federal money to create a state health insurance exchange? Standard operating procedure for Kentucky politicians might dictate that they try answering yes even though they voted for the 2012 budget bill, which accepted more than $50 million and spent it as well as obligating taxpayers to spend much more.

The smart thing for those politicians to do instead will be to just throw the survey in the trash and go hide under their desks. In a low turnout primary election, it will be somewhat better to be nailed by Campaign for Liberty for being too chicken to answer the questions than it will be to get nailed for trying to lie their way out of the mess they got themselves (and us) into.

Go ahead. Make our day.

If you know and support any good conservative candidates running against big-spending incumbents in Kentucky, please share this post as widely as you can.

I guess that's a "no"

An Ohio-based tea party group suggested to Kentucky 4th district congressional candidate Alecia Webb-Edgington today she should return her legislative pay for the days she spent last month raising money in Washington D.C.

Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST) said she should reimburse "the Kentucky taxpayer" for whatever pay she received on her trip. COAST was an early supporter of Rand Paul in his run for the United States Senate.

The funny part about this is Rep. Webb-Edgington responded to this request by attacking primary opponent Boone County Judge Executive Gary Moore.

What would you rather talk about?

A Frankfort reporter asked me yesterday if there was anything going on except for the state's debt problem or the legislature slipping ObamaCare into the state budget or the KRS going bust in three years.

Yes, I told him. The GOP establishment is still distracting itself with trying to kill off the Tea Party.

There is time to stop this from being the big news story on Monday, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for a handful of too-powerful Republican leaders to get with the program before then.

Don Butler takes on GOP tax hiker

Edmonton Kentucky Republican Don Butler tells voters in the state's 9th Senate district he will never follow the crowd in Frankfort in voting to raise taxes. On Thursday, he put that promise in writing.

Butler signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), committing to "oppose and vote against any and all tax increases." So far, only four other state Senate Republicans have signed the ATR pledge. Butler's opponent in the May 22 Republican primary is not one of them.

"Most people don't realize what Frankfort has done to us in the last four years in terms of overspending and debt," Butler said. "The new legislators going up there next year will be under great pressure to raise taxes on Kentuckians and they just have to know that I won't be supporting that."

According to Kentucky's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, state government in the last year has increased General Fund debt by $1 billion. Earlier this week, a federal whistleblower on the Board of Trustees of the Kentucky Retirement Systems said the state pension system will run out of money within three years, costing $600 million a year. Butler said the state's fiscal problems will only be fixed by cutting spending.

"In the last four years we have had enough overspending and tax increases to last us several lifetimes," Butler said. "We can't afford anymore to elect or keep politicians who buy our votes with our own money and pretend that everything will just work out fine." 

Butler faces incumbent Senator David Givens in the GOP primary.

More bipartisan Frankfort "hanky panky"

When the Securities and Exchange investigation of Kentucky's pension plan pay-to-play scandal finally blows up in a few short years, state Rep. Mike Cherry's comment about the legislative coverup will look particularly silly.


Rather than ban the practice of "placement agent" middlemen wasting millions of public dollars in the moribund Kentucky Retirement Systems, the legislature just made them permanent fixtures in Frankfort's political swamp. 


Cherry, the House State Government Committee Chairman, spoke to the Frankfort State Journal about his bill, HB 300, which didn't ban the wasteful practice. Instead the bill requires them to register with the toothless Executive Branch Ethics Commission.


“Having them register as lobbyists precludes any hanky panky regarding contributions and the like,” Cherry said.


This is a completely absurd thing to say because registering them in this way doesn't even require them to report their placement agent income, much less preclude in any way the vast amounts of contribution hanky panky that now gets to continue with state sanction.


Former KRS Board of Trustees member Chris Tobe says the state pension system will require $600 million annual payments starting in about three years. Enabling this waste and corruption will loom much larger when that happens.


The problem is that our representatives in Frankfort should be taking steps to correct this mess. Covering it up will just make it harder to fix later.

Governing by Google Alert

The federal whistleblower in Kentucky's ongoing pension investment placement agent scandal learned earlier today from an email Google Alert that Governor Steve Beshear prefers covering up the issue rather than dealing with it.

Chris Tobe, the whistleblower, had to read on the internet today that he has been replaced on the Board of Trustees of the Kentucky Retirement Systems.

Several other members of the Board have been subpoenaed recently to testify to the Securities and Exchange Commission in their ongoing investigation of the placement agent scandal.

Tobe says the state pension system will run out of money in about three years, necessitating annual payments of $600 million dollars to be made from other revenue sources.

The legislature failed to draw any attention to this situation by allowing scandal-enabling legislation (HB 300) to fly past them last week. The deafening media silence on this issue would not be happening if a Republican were Governor. This fact makes it all the more troubling that no Frankfort Republican could be bothered to speak out on this at all.

Kentucky goes whole hog for ObamaCare

Whether the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down some or all of the federal health insurance law known as ObamaCare may not make much difference in Kentucky thanks to language slipped into the budget bill by Governor Steve Beshear and approved by majorities of the House and Senate.

The last fifteen pages of the just-passed Kentucky budget bill (HB 265) creates a small business health insurance subsidy program, adds new ObamaCare style regulations and empowers Kentucky bureaucrats to seek and accept federal money and implement new regulations without limit. With all that, who needs ObamaCare?

The worst part of the new language goes far beyond Kentucky's 1994 flirtation with HillaryCare which destroyed our individual health insurance market and fit perfectly with Governor Steve Beshear's desire to implement ObamaCare in Kentucky without legislative approval. The two most horrible aspects of this health care power grab is that it, first, actually got legislative approval and, second, that it could create havoc in both individual and group health insurance markets in Kentucky even if ObamaCare is repealed.

Section 7(2) in the ICARE enabling language reads as follows:

(2)           The provisions of this section shall not give rise to, nor be construed as giving rise to, enforceable legal rights for any party or an enforceable entitlement to benefits other than to the extent that such rights or entitlements exist pursuant to the administrative regulations of the executive director of insurance.

 That means the executive director of Kentucky's Department of Insurance just became your health care czar. If your legislator voted for this mess, you should ask him or her to explain why. Some of us tried to warn you (here and here and here).

Shut up and eat your talking points

The Lexington Herald Leader's news article called it a "compromise budget" but couldn't find anyone to quote who recognized that Kentucky's final budget agreement still spends more than we have.

The Louisville Courier Journal's news article quoted Rep. Stan Lee saying the budget spent too much money, which was good, but also called the budget "lean," which is at best inaccurate.

The Associated Press news article called the budget "lean," "bare-bones," and said it includes "sharp cuts," which it does not and also couldn't find anyone who noticed that spending exceeds revenue way too much for any unbiased observer to use any of these terms.

Meanwhile, we are two days past final agreement on the budget and one day past final passage by both chambers of the legislature and the bill is still not available online.

Some "transparency." And what a disgraceful display of media bias at the conclusion of a three-month long disgraceful display of legislative arrogance and ineptitude. It would have been better to just skip the whole charade and have Governor Steve Beshear, Senate President David Williams and House Speaker Greg Stumbo issue a joint statement urging Kentuckians to shut up and eat their talking points.

Hold your wallet and your Constitution

As the clock runs out on Kentucky's legislative session, a brief encounter among budget negotiators Monday evening sheds light on the need for constant vigilance in protecting citizens from out of control politicians.

At 44:50 of this video, repeated Americans for Tax Reform pledge violator Rep. Bob Damron claimed that an unconstitutional spending provision he wanted in the budget wouldn't be a problem if no one actually fought it in court.

"It only is a problem if somebody challenges it," Damron claimed.

This is not only false, but dangerous and clearly emblematic of the mess our nation is in. The language Damron tried to get in the budget would let legislators create additional spending without going through the legal appropriations process.

In an era of huge public debt, structurally imbalanced budgets and enormous unfunded mandates allowing politicians like Damron to so casually dismiss the Constitution is something we can no longer afford to do.

Webb-Edgington strains at gnat, swallows camel

Kentucky 4th congressional candidate Alecia Webb-Edgington went on CN2 last week claiming that she had to vote against the House version of the state budget because of "fluff" in the bill. Asked to define the fluff, she explained that she couldn't vote for a budget that included a $14,500 appropriation for a curtain divider at a state park.

The amount of waste in both the House and Senate bills goes so far beyond $14k that it is incredible this example was all she could come up with.

I couldn't find the curtain divider in the Senate budget, but the last fifteen pages of both versions of HB 265, the executive branch budget, contain a framework for implementing ObamaCare in Kentucky through the Department of Insurance. That's a whole lot more than fourteen thousand dollars and much less useful than a curtain divider.

Also, both bills spend hundreds of millions of dollars we don't have and both do next to nothing to address the oncoming public employee pension system bankruptcy. Rep. Webb-Edgington should have to explain in greater detail how her incomplete lurch to the right on budget bills qualifies her to run for Congress.

Whether she votes for the final budget bill or not, Webb-Edgington missed a great chance to be a voice for fiscal reason before it is too late.

Kentucky Rep. John Tilley on drugs

CN2's Ryan Alessi asked Rep. John Tilley if this year's legislative session would be a success if the General Assembly passed several bills "cracking down" on drug abuse in Kentucky. Tilley said yes.

"I think so because considering the drug abuse problem, this scourge in Kentucky is the biggest problem we have period," Tilley said.

As someone who doesn't even like to take aspirin, much less anything hallucinogenic, I'm almost tempted to ask   for a hit of whatever Tilley is smoking. If the legislature does manage to pass a budget, it is certain they will do so without addressing the state's growing health care, debt and pension problems.

In fact, they seem poised to make them all worse.

The legislature has no apparent concern that Kentucky Retirement Systems should run out of money in three to five years or that bad health care regulation policy on both the state and federal levels or mismanagement in our public education system combine to cause problems that totally dwarf the public effect of a few people's substance abuse issues.

And again, if you want to start really addressing irresponsible drug use in Kentucky, then drug test welfare recipients.

Banner day for corruption in Frankfort

House and Senate leaders have worked out an agreement to keep surgical costs artificially high in Kentucky and to hinder recovery efforts of at least tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in the KRS placement agent scandal.

And you are very unlikely to read a word of it in the mainstream media.

Both HB 300 and HB 458 sailed through the Senate today. Both bills must go back to the House, but they will get quick approval there. The biggest problem with these bills is House and Senate leaders knew exactly what was in the bills and apparently none of the rank and file members bothered to understand or, perhaps, even read them.

HB 300 makes "placement agent" middlemen permanent fixtures in our already scandal-plagued pension system. The middlemen siphon off millons of dollars at a time from investment funds our elected officials should be protecting. Specifically, we should ban placement agents from our financial transactions, but instead we are writing them into the law as lobbyists who don't even have to report how much they are looting from us.

HB 458 keeps alive the seriously outdated and failed central planning of medical services scheme called "Certificate of Need." Governor Beshear is using the state's Certificate of Need program to implement ObamaCare. Senate President David Williams and House Speaker Greg Stumbo, by passing this bill, just made it easier for him to do that.

By keeping competition out of the health care industry, Williams and Stumbo are directly increasing your healthcare costs. But you don't have to thank them; the Kentucky Hospital Association already has.

How powerful is the industrial hemp issue?

There is no question that cultivation of industrial hemp has pockets of strong support in Kentucky, but the Republican primary for Kentucky's 17th state Senate district could show just how potent it has become.

Rick Hostetler, challenging Republican Senator Damon Thayer launched a new page on his web site chastising Thayer for a 2011 KET broadcast in which Thayer seemed to suggest that allowing farmers to grow hemp might lead to people taking hard drugs. See the page by clicking here.

Industrial hemp entered Kentucky Republican politics in the fall of 2010 when then-gubernatorial candidate Phil Moffett announced his support for hemp cultivation. He came in second in a three-way race in which both his opponents made anti-hemp statements similar to Thayer's.

Agriculture Commissioner Jamie Comer followed Moffett's pro-hemp statements in his successful 2011 campaign. Before long, nearly all of his opponents followed suit, including his Democratic general election opponent who publicly flip-flopped to a pro-hemp position.

By all indications, Senator Thayer has a very significant fundraising advantage over Hostetler. Industrial hemp advocates may or may not want to latch onto this race to gauge support for this free market issue, but it would be great to see it become a part of the discussion in 2012 and this looks like our only chance.  

Kentucky budget negotiators need Jed Clampett

On the old Beverly Hillbillies television program, when Jed Clampett's nephew Jethro would say or do something particularly stupid, an exasperated Jed would say "One of these days I gotta have a long talk with that boy." Too bad Jed isn't around to talk sense into Kentucky House Budget Chairman Rick Rand.

Kentucky's original budget document written by Gov. Beshear included nearly a billion dollars in new debt spelled out in the bill. The House reduced that debt by about a half and the Senate cut the amount of new debt by half again.

As Rep. Rand was explaining that he didn't want to agree to the Senate's changes, Rep. Stan Lee (R-Lexington) rose to ask a question on the bill.

"According to the newspaper, the Senate cut spending and cut the debt in its bill," Rep. Lee said. "If it's in the paper you know you can believe it. Is what the newspaper reported today correct about the Senate cutting spending and cutting the debt?"

Rand didn't take the bait, but he didn't answer the question accurately, either.

"We cut the debt by half when that bill passed the House," Rep. Rand said.

The answer he was looking for was "No."

We need to reduce spending and reduce Kentucky's debt, but overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate still count on most people not understanding the difference between a real cut and a cut in projected or requested growth. Besides that, the Senate did nothing to address the pension mess or the Governor's wish to implement ObamaCare administratively which the budget bill would allow him to do.

Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell need to see this

Kentucky Employees Retirement Systems is currently funded at 28%, less than any state fund in the country, KRS Trustee Chris Tobe said.

"Underfunding each year is like a hurricane devastating the pension," Tobe said. He predicts that within three to five years the pension system will require $600 million a year from the legislature just to make annual payments.

The lack of understanding in the legislature on this issue is made clear by the way House Bill 300 is flying through on its way to becoming law.

The problem is that both parties in both chambers of the legislature and much of the executive branch are caught up in a desire to keep this quiet. And the media blackout is at least somewhat understandable; if this were a Republican-only scandal there would already be a thousand news stories and editorials calling for blood.

As it is, there is zero chance of an Attorney General investigation. We need federal intervention quickly. The Securities and Exchange Commission is already looking into the placement agent problem just as the legislature is covering tracks with House Bill 300.

Tobe said requiring placement agents to register as executive branch lobbyists will actually make the problems worse.

He calls placement agents "looters" and says HB 300 "encourages looting with unlimited and undisclosed looting allowed as long as you sign in as a looter."


Senators Paul and McConnell have the biggest megaphones in the state. They should do us all a favor and use them to put a stop to this. 

Showdown coming on Certificate of Need?

House Bill 458 represents an attempt by the legislature to overturn a Kentucky court ruling in favor of freedom and competition in health care.

The bill sailed through the House in a form that would have shut down the same medical practices who fought successfully in court for their continued existence and to ensure the prohibition of any future such providers of surgical services outside of (much more expensive) hospitals.

The Senate has now amended the bill to grandfather in those existing practices but to prohibit any new providers from lowering consumer prices and improving quality of service through competitive forces.

So now the question becomes: which chamber of the General Assembly believes in the ridiculous certificate of need process more, the House or the Senate?

In other words, if innovation in health care delivery is so dangerous we have to force doctors to do outpatient surgeries in hospitals rather than provide a less expensive alternative then why are exempting anyone from certificate of need? And if those exemptions don't actually put consumers at risk, then why don't we drop this overly burdensome regulation for all Kentuckians?

Keystone Kops ride in Kentucky

For the third year in a row, Kentucky is about to make a law banning synthetic marijuana.

I'll wait right here for a minute while that sinks in. Read the first sentence again if you have to.

Lead sponsor Rep. John Tilley, the House Judiciary chair, seems pretty sure that he finally has a bill that will work. But he is wrong again.

Look up synthetic marijuana on Amazon.com. It is readily available (as is allergy medicine) and inexpensive. The most Tilley's grand scheme will accomplish is to move retailers of synthetic marijuana onto the internet or out of the state. (Hint to lawmakers: that means less sales tax.)

And lest you think anyone will be made safer by this, consider that retailers usually live in or near the communities they serve and can be made to answer for bad or even dangerous products. It's much harder to hold an internet retailer accountable.

So if you want to cost Kentucky jobs and tax revenue and probably even put more people in harm's way, then go ahead. Knock yourself out and support HB 481 and tell your constituents you fought to make them safer.

It's just not true.

Cover-up is always worse (pension version)

The Senate budget committee today unanimously passed HB 300, the pension scandal cover-up bill. The bill now heads to the Senate floor.

Insufficient work by former state Auditor Crit Luallen paved the way for official Frankfort to continue hiding a kickback scheme run through investment middlemen call "placement agents," which has already cost state taxpayers potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.

HB 300 would further embed placement agents in the Kentucky Retirement Systems by making them register as lobbyists with the executive branch of state government, which requirement does not involve reporting their actual dollar amounts of compensation.

This would be a big step away from what needs to happen, which is a lawsuit to recover all the placement agent fees paid out by the state. Few people in official Frankfort want such scrutiny because then the placement agents will talk about how some of that money was funneled to politicians.

This issue will become much more of a front-burner concern in three to five years when the pension plans run out of money and the taxpayers are on the hook for massive new payments we can't afford.

Your representatives need to hear from you to realize that covering this garbage up will be a much greater crime than starting now the process of coming clean. It will be much more expensive, too.

Voting no on this one is hugely important. Passage of HB 300 will come back to haunt us all.

Kentucky lawmakers suffer from 'meth math'

The Kentucky state Senate is expected to pass a version of the budget bill this week only to go behind closed doors with House negotiators to work out another debt-stuffed fiscal "compromise."

Meanwhile, out in the open, they are attacking allergy sufferers in a clumsy attempt to do something about methamphetamine abuse.

In 2008, dentists testified about similarities between conditions they call "Mountain Dew mouth" and "meth mouth." A Kentucky lawmaker joked that the popular soft drink should be made illegal. It was a stupid joke, to be sure, but at least back then Kentucky's nanny staters were adding two and two and coming up with something remotely resembling four.

Presumably if they were looking at "Mountain Dew mouth" today, our big government friends in the House and Senate would attempt to ban toothbrushes.

Please call your representatives today and tell them to kill Senate Bill 3.

Frankfort will tax your allergies and colds

Kentucky's House Judiciary Committee just voted in favor of the Snot Tax. The bill now needs the approval of the full House and Governor Steve Beshear and then some users of allergy medicines will be forced to get a doctor's prescription for a little nasal relief. For now.

Supporters of the measure claim that it will stop the manufacture of methamphetamine in Kentucky, which it absolutely will not do. Then they will come back next year and tighten the bill's restrictions.

If you didn't get hit by this year's version of the bill, breathe easy while you can. But remember that this is how big government always expands -- by lulling most of the people to sleep in the belief their restrictions only hurt someone else. They know there is plenty of time to come back and zap you next year.

These are the people we trust to write our state budget in secret. Then after they pass it, we get to find out what is in it. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Time for another Kentucky tea party rally

Some Kentuckians may think the Obama administration alone is making healthcare unreasonably expensive. They would be wrong. House Bill 458 effectively prohibits doctors from saving their patients money by performing more outpatient surgeries outside of expensive hospitals. We can stop HB 458, but we need to move fast. Please make plans to attend a tea party rally and press conference focused on keeping healthcare costs down by introducing more competition to the system. It's Wednesday March 21 at 10:00 am ET at the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort. The big government anti-capitalism types in both parties are ready for a fight on this one as their power is at stake. Your voice is desperately needed now. Please spread the word.

Is your representative talking about this?

Frankfort politicians in both political parties have turned a blind eye to rampant corruption in the Kentucky Retirement Systems for too long, costing Kentuckians many millions of dollars. Cleaning up the mess should be a key issue in the 2012 elections, state Senate candidate Don Butler said.

"House Bill 300 would further enrich the very people who are bleeding our state pension system dry by keeping 'placement agents' in every dark corner of our state capital when we don't need them and can't afford them," Butler said.

"We are giving huge sums of money to these crooks who should all be run out on a rail rather than be left alone to buy up politicians with our money." "It should be common sense for those who understand the issue that we don't need to spend millions on placement agents," Butler said. "At any rate, we shouldn't legitimize them as HB 300 does. It may be better politics to wait and see if my opponent votes for this and then blast him, but if we miss this chance to fix this problem, we may not be able to do it next year. Please call your senator and demand a 'no' vote on House Bill 300."

Butler faces incumbent Republican Senator David Givens in the May 22 GOP primary.

Independent counsel blisters Crit Luallen

A national leader in the field of forensic investigations in the money management industry is criticizing former Kentucky state Auditor Crit Luallen for botching a pre-election audit of the state pension system last summer in an ongoing scandal that appears to involve tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in losses on her watch.

Edward Siedle of Benchmark Financial Services in West Palm Beach, Florida expressed shock that Luallen could miss obvious "red flag" signs of corruption at Kentucky Retirement Systems (KRS).

"The entire investment management contracting process at KRS appears suspect at this time," Siedle said.

He said her audit was "remarkable in its failure to adequately address the most obviously troubling issues surrounding use of placement agents at KRS."

Placement agents are salespeople who connect investment firms with big money clients like the KRS in return for unjustifiably large fees paid by the firms. Large institutional investors like KRS should have no problem at all in negotiating away entirely these placement agent fees which, Siedle said, are so improperly accounted for that we still don't know how much we have paid or are paying in excessive fees.

Siedle cited some of the circumstances behind the placement agent "pay-for-play" activities, which read like a modern day, high tech Bluegrass Conspiracy tale with the penny loafers and cocaine traded in for wingtips and the cold-sweat desperation of a big government apparatchik realizing the gravy train is about to hit the wall. The common denominator, of course, is the politicians too dumb and too crooked to speak up before it all comes crashing down.

The good news, as Siedle sees it, is that at least some of the improperly spent funds may be recoverable. First step, though, is to end the cover-up and to start getting everyone talking about where the money is.

In what amounts to an interesting side note but should be instructive nonetheless given any future political aspirations Luallen may have was her published assessment of who ultimately pays placement fees. Luallen said in her audit "it was also determined that the payment of placement agent fees by investment managers did not correlate to an increase in the management fees paid by KRS or reduce the funds available to pay benefits to retirees."

Simply put, if Luallen had the last word on this, the millions in squandered funds wouldn't be recoverable in court because the most powerful woman in Frankfort for the last two decades doesn't think we were overcharged at all as she apparently doesn't understand how service providers pass increased costs along to consumers.

That's the same kind of reasoning that has allowed the Obama Administration to say they are going to give away free health insurance by just making the insurance companies pay for it.

Kentucky's official GOP stumbles over Bob Leeper

Tea Party Republicans in Kentucky attempting to make their voices heard within the GOP have experienced a different kind of March Madness this year. Republican officials across the state trying to slam the door shut on tea partiers seem to expect that a movement built on ideas neglected by the party and fueled energy and creativity absent in too many of its campaigns and officials is now populated by people who can't read.