The Kentucky Pachyderm 2

What might have been...

2012-01-04T13:28:00.000-05:00

In a better world, newly inaugurated Gov. Steve Pence would be giving his first State of the Commonwealth address tonight in Frankfort.

However, due to a combination of politically-motivated investigations and Pence's own wrong-headed decisions, that's not happening. Instead, Gov. Steve Beshear is kicking off a second term that promises to be as bad as, if not worse, than his first term.

There's really no need to rehash Greg Stumbo's partisan attacks against the 2003-2007 term of Gov. Ernie Fletcher, except to note Pence's disloyal and cowardly behavior as the personnel probe progressed. And it's also important to note that Pence was not Fletcher (and Sen. Mitch McConnell's) first choice as a lieutenant governor running mate, but he appeared to be a much more solid choice than McConnell's original designee, Hunter Bates.

Lt. Gov. Pence had it right when he uttered his infamous "indict a ham sandwich" remark. Or at least it would seem so; that he recognized that the charges were baseless and were sparked not by any real desire to punish wrongdoing, but to drum a Republican out of the Governor's Office because the Fletcher administration (gasp and egads!) dared to reverse a decades-long trend of hiring Democrats for merit system jobs.

A former federal prosecutor, Pence seemed to grasp exactly what was going on as the special grand jury rolled on. But appearances were deceiving. Once Fletcher took the wind out of the investigation's sails by issuing pardons, and calling for the resignations of those he felt had made non-criminal mistakes in the hiring process, Pence retreated from the administration. He refused Fletcher's request to resign, then ended up supporting Fletcher's opponents in the 2007 primary and general elections when Fletcher wisely chose someone else to be his running mate in his failed re-election campaign.

Had the former prosecutor been out front explaining why the investigation was trumped-up and the pardons were appropriate, perhaps things would have been different. His credibility on the matter would have been impeccable. He might have helped to blunt the political damage Stumbo's persecution caused, could have completed a second term as lieutenant governor, and may have successfully won a term of his own as governor. Instead, he's relegated to representing Rick Pitino in the infamous Porcini's matter.

But we all know what happened. Beshear beat Fletcher in 2007, completely mishandled the surplus the Fletcher administration left in the state government treasury, and has in general been a failure as governor the past four years. Despite the ascendancy of the Republican Party in Kentucky over the past decade or so, no truly viable candidates stepped forth to challenge Beshear's re-election bid. Senate President David Williams, soiled by years of unfair and unanswered attacks from the state's liberal media, put up a respectable challenge, but the damage done to his persona via relentless criticisms from the Herald-Leader and Courier-Journal proved to be too much to overcome. The seeming self-destruction of Richie Farmer didn't help. Farmer was generally regarded to have done an excellent job as agriculture commissioner, and his status as a legendary Kentucky Wildcat basketball player was supposed to be an asset. A series of political blunders and the unfortunate timing of his wife's filing for divorce tarnished Williams' choice for a running mate.

Williams also wasn't helped by attacks by a few self-promoting and self-proclaimed Tea Party participants. Funding was going to be a problem for Williams in the general election as it was; the Phil Moffett candidacy and its backing by the likes of loudmouths David Adams and Mica Sims forced Williams to spend money in the primary that would have been better spent in the general election.

So now, with Beshear back in office for another four years, Kentucky has little to look forward too. He came into office poor-mouthing and no doubt he'll continue to do so. He's bought into the wrongheaded notion that the only way to rejuvenate the horse racing industry in Kentucky is to allow the tracks to run casinos, so he'll finally make a concerted effort to pay back those who bankrolled his 2007 win. He fails to see the need for comprehensive tax reform. He turns a blind eye to some of the wasteful spending of Kentucky's "educracy" every time he exempts education from a budget cut. There just simply is no reason for optimism that this state will move forward, especially when you see the cast of supporting characters that has been assembled in the background, both in appointive positions and the lower-level elected positions. And don't forget that snake-in-the-grass Stumbo is still in charge of the House. We can only pray that Williams and the Senate Republicans can stand firm against the worst of the Democrats' initiatives.

As we watch "World's Dumbest" or "Dog The Bounty Hunter" or "Law & Order" reruns, or anything other than Beshear's lies and false promises tonight, we'll take a moment -- but not much more than that -- to wonder just what Steve Pence is doing and thinking. Had he merely done the right thing, there's a better-than-average chance that he could have been making that speech tonight.

Lefty blogger cat fight!!!

2011-04-14T11:24:00.003-04:00

We'd be lying if we said we held any of Kentucky's liberal bloggers in any sort of esteem at all. Most of them exhibit everything that's wrong with politics in this state and nation. The liberals don't have the answers for what ails this nation -- they are, in fact, what's wrong with this country -- and everyone knows the Democrats have mismanaged this state for years. For most of our lifetimes we've only had two Republican governors (and only one of them was conservative) and only for the past decade or so have we had one chamber of the General Assembly under GOP control.

We've railed against conservative cannibalism on countless occasions, yet we can't help but be amused when the libtard cheerleaders turn on one another.

Case in point: The ongoing catfight between Page One Kentucky and a handful of other blogs.

We've said before that we don't have any use for Jake Payne's political views, but at least he appears to be as intellectually honest as a liberal can be. He's been pretty harsh on Steve Beshear's performance as governor, Jack Conway's campaigns and a number of other Democrats who hold office in Kentucky. (On the other hand, he loves partisan hack Crit Luallen, quite possibly the most politically motivated state auditor ever elected in the Bluegrass State, but that's neither here nor there).

Payne certainly can't be considered a fan of the Republicans, but since the David Williams/Richie Farmer ticket has deemed it necessary to waste money advertising on Page One, he's come under attack for being a "sellout" because he accepts their advertising dollars while at the same time daring to be critical of Steve Beshear -- especially when Beshear actually stands up for Kentucky by blasting the Obama administration's anti-coal policies.

Blue Bluegrass, a blog run by an admittedly liberal state employee known only as "Bob," has been pounding away at Payne and Page One. A new anonymous blog, Jake Payne Watch, has sprung up within the past couple of weeks and the author there keeps hinting at some sort of bombshell that will totally destroy Payne's credibility.

We've even seen some signs of discord between Payne and the blogger who always appeared to be his BFF, the godless liberal Joe Sonka at Barefoot & Progressive -- the same blog that Bob at Blue Bluegrass likes to praise.

(A radically liberal state employee -- what a novel concept, huh? No wonder state government is totally screwed up, with liberals like "Bob" being the main cogs in the wheel. But that, too, is neither here nor there).

From a distance, we think it's fun to watch this split in liberal blogland. We still think that in total, the collective intelligence and common sense of all these liberal Kentucky blogmeisters wouldn't fit in an Ale-8 bottle. It appears that Payne is being critical of Democrats who aren't liberal enough for him (hence his frequent diatribes against Ben Chandler, who is darn lucky he still has a Congressional seat) and some of his detractors are yellow dogs who support their party even when its positions are harmful to Kentucky.

What will become of it all? Payne has filed a lawsuit seeking to know the identity of the blogger behind the Jake Payne Watch. That blog disappeared for a few hours but is back as of this writing.

There's a divide in the Republican Party between Tea Party types and some of the more establishment GOPers, on everything from the Kentucky governor's race to the recent federal continuing resolution deal. Democrats say they are enjoying that.

Well, it looks like we have our own little feud on the other side to keep us entertained. We admit to reading many of the Democrat blogs in question and truthfully, we all often feel like we need showers when we are finished and we feel like our IQs are diminished after wallowing in such liberal ignorance.

So just keep on fighting, libtards. The amusement you provide gives us a brief distraction from the ruination and misery you're inflicting on our state and nation.

Is there a lesson for Mitch McConnell in all this?

2010-03-04T11:59:00.002-05:00

Before we move forward, let us look back. We heartily disapprove of the way Kentucky's two senators, Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning, treated Gov. Ernie Fletcher when he came under attack by Democrats and during his unsuccessful 2007 re-election campaign. After having seen how McConnell treated Fletcher (and himself joining in the disgrace), Bunning should not have been surprised when McConnell did the same thing to him. That whole incident caused us to lose respect for the senators and it cost them our support, and we aren't sad to see Bunning leave the Senate.

Having said all that, given the events of the past week, now we wonder if McConnell isn't perhaps regretting his treatment of Bunning.

Bunning barely survived his 2004 re-election bid against Dan Mongiardo, then an unknown state senator from Hazard, due in large part to a series of gaffes he made on the campaign trail. Bunning started the campaign with a huge lead on Mongiardo, yet only won re-election by two percentage points. When Bunning announced his plans to seek re-election this year, McConnell publicly questioned his ability to win and began working behind the scenes to dry up his funding. Those acts effectively forced Bunning out of the race. It also left him palpably angry at McConnell.

Fast-forward to the events of the past several days. With no need to cater to the voters, Bunning singlehandedly blocked legislation in the Senate that would have extended unemployment benefits, funded transportation projects, and a host of other things. You had to be impersonating Rip Van Winkle the last few days not to have heard about it.

Despite what some of the conservative pundits are saying (and we love Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin as much as anyone), his stance was wildly unpopular among the country's voters. Suddenly the Democrats, on the defensive because of health care and cap-and-trade and a number of other issues, had an item they could pick up and run with.

Prior to Bunning's stunt, some analysts were predicting that the Republicans could recapture both the House and the Senate this fall. That would have brought Obama's socialist agenda to a screeching halt. Now, a defiant Bunning has let them back in the ballgame, the same way his erratic behavior turned Mongiardo from a politician without a chance into the candidate who nearly pulled one of the biggest political upsets in Kentucky history.

So think about it. Had McConnell not chased Bunning from the race, would he have made such a visible and unpopular stand in front of the nation and the state with an election coming up this fall? Would he have defied McConnell's pleas to get on board with the unanimous consent resolution to fund the unemployment extension and the other programs?

If the Democrats hold onto control of the Senate this fall and McConnell is relegated to his current post of minority leader instead of ascending to majority leader, it will be in no small part due to Bunning's antics. And McConnell need only look in the mirror to find a big part of the reason Bunnning was so obstinate and defiant.

We understand why Bunning took the stance he did. He wanted to force the Democrats to follow the "pay-go" rule they recently passed, and he wanted these items to be funded through unspent money already allocated for the stimulus. Had he been running for re-election, he might have gone about it in a different manner. But since he had nothing to lose due to his status as a lame duck who doesn't have to face the voters this fall, he threw his little fit for the nation to see. And he said "no" when his former friend publicly tried to get him to change his mind before he finally relented.

Make no mistake. What Bunning did was harmful for Republicans. It will probably come back to bite them in the fall, and was not what the GOP needed at a time when they were gaining momentum through what Limbaugh and others are rightfully calling a conservative ascendancy. It may very well cost McConnell the opportunity to reassume the post of Senate majority leader.

And McConnell can thank himself for this setback for his party due to his meddling in Bunning's campaign. This is the second time McConnell has sold out a fellow Republican when he was in a position to help, and may become the second time he's cost his party the election. Having help sink Fletcher's re-election campaign, McConnell now has likely contributed to a defeat for his party this year. Wonder if there's a lesson for McConnell somewhere in this mess?

Political rumors

2010-02-26T20:51:00.004-05:00

While much of the state is fascinated with the U.S. Senate race on both sides of the aisle -- frankly, we're disgusted with it already and are sickened by the lack of quality among the front-running candidates -- we are hearing some interesting political rumors on other races.

One rumor we've heard is that an incumbent state representative, who's getting a challenge from within his own party in the primary, may be in some trouble. The incumbent has written several letters on behalf of criminal defendants, including one sex offender who re-offended not long after being let out on shock probation. This isn't setting well in the community. We're also hearing that school politics may come into play in this race, since the challenger is the brother-in-law of a school board member who's in a bit of legal trouble and blames the superintendent for causing it.

Another rumor involves one of the statewide races next year. One officeholder, a former collegiate athlete, may be contemplating a run for governor. And in the opposing party, another ex-college athlete and current officeholder may be rethinking possible plans to run for governor because he doesn't want certain things about his past to become known. We also hear that he used to date the daughter of yet another officeholder from a nearby county, but the young lady broke up with him because of those past habits. This past has been alluded to over the years by posters on other blogs, but we never put much stock in those tales until now.

We're not quite sure how this all would impact the incumbent. We're not sure that the rumored challenger would be any great threat, but the one who's rethinking plans has been all but inaugurated by many political pundits who like to post comments to blogs.

We're still not sold on the notion that Greg Stumbo won't run, however. We just hope that his opponents won't be as gun-shy about using his past against him as they have been in the past.

Exclusive: Fraud and abuse by food stamp recipients

2010-02-26T20:24:00.004-05:00

With the debate over yet another federal unemployment extension taking place in the Senate, and with recent news that the number of families receiving food stamps (now formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) is on the increase, we were alarmed when we heard of a growing system of food stamp fraud that is helping fund the purchase of illegal drugs in parts of rural Kentucky, especially the eastern mountains.

The scheme goes something like this: Food stamp recipients purchase large quantities of soft drinks with their food stamp benefit cards. They then sell this pop to retail outlets for cash at a cost significantly lower than the retailer has to pay the drink distributor. The retailer sells the pop again, and the individual who sold the pop uses the cash to buy drugs. Apparently this is a very popular and common scheme (or scam) in many areas, yet we've never seen anything in the press about it or any law enforcement activity centered on the practice.

We're outraged and offended by this scam on many levels. First, it's preposterous that soft drinks are even eligible for purchase with food stamps. At a time when soda pop is coming under fire from nutritionists, and WIC recipients are limited to purchasing store brand milk and other dairy products over name brand products, it's hard to believe that soft drinks are on the eligibility list for food stamp purchases. We couldn't believe it, but we looked it up and soft drinks are not on the list of prohibited items. Indeed, one state tried six years ago to get the federal government to allow it to make soft drink purchases ineligible for the food stamp program, but that request was denied.

What would we like to see done about this debacle? First, it's time that Congress passes a law making soft drinks ineligible for purchase with food stamps. There is absolutely no logic in having the taxpayers subsidize the consumption of something that not only has no nutritional value, but is considered detrimental to good health by many.

Next, it's time for a crackdown on this fraudulent practice. Until such time that soft drinks are made ineligible for the program, limits should be imposed on the amount of soft drinks that can be purchased with SNAP benefit cards. Surely there is a way to track purchases and to deny payment for any pop purchases beyond a certain level.

Years ago, it was common to hear that a business that had made improper food stamp sales was suspended from participating in the program. This was usually a stiff punishment for the business because many rural stores depend on food stamps for a large portion of their revenue. If stores that accept food stamps are found to be buying soft drinks from SNAP recipients and paying cash for them, their food stamp sales privileges should be suspended or revoked.

Finally, the individuals who are doing this should be punished. Food stamps are meant to provide nutritious meals to needy families. Individuals who buy pop and then sell it for cash to buy drugs are taking food off the table for their families. This fraudulent practice should be dealt with severely. This also helps subsidize the illicit drug trade that plagues our state and claims so many lives.

Even though this seems to be a popular and growing scam, we have yet to read or hear anything about it in the media. If any media representatives are viewing this (and we know at one time that you did read this blog), this is fertile ground for a blockbuster story. Start asking around in the rural areas of the state and see what you uncover. And we challenge other bloggers who read this to link to it and spread the word to help end this abhorrent practice.

Why?

2010-01-22T10:19:00.002-05:00

As we close in on the filing deadline next week for local offices to be filled by election later this year, we have a question.

Why?

Why do we continue to elect so many local officials who should be selected on the basis of qualifications, not popularity?

In addition to the executive and legislative officials, counties elect a number of people who have professional duties. Folks such as the county clerk, sheriff, property valuation administrator, coroner and even a county surveyor are chosen at the ballot box instead of for their qualifications.

Give the state credit, in recent years they have instituted competency tests for the PVA and circuit clerk positions and only those candidates who have passed the test can run for those offices. But there are no such requirements for the other offices.

A sheriff should be a professional law enforcement officer, yet in one county in Kentucky a convicted felon -- convicted because of misconduct during a previous term as sheriff -- was elected to the office four years ago after being pardoned. And in another county, yet another sheriff who was removed from office and convicted in federal court for being corrupt is running for his old seat after being given a pardon thanks in large part to political connections.

We understand the need to elect the county judge-executive and the fiscal court magistrates or commissioners. These are the executive and legislative officers of the county. But the other jobs? Sheriff? County clerk? Coroner? These are professional jobs requiring certain qualifications, experience or educational attainment, yet are often filled with unqualified people who happen to be popular at the ballot box.

It's time for Kentucky to reform the local election system. These professional jobs should be civil service positions, filled by the most qualified people and not subject to the whims of the voters. People laugh at our archaic oath of office that includes a statement disavowing any past participation in a duel. What's more embarrassing is that we elect people who should be qualified professionals. If we are going to continue to elect these officials, then there should be some more stringent qualifications for candidates besides the standard age and residency requirements.

When voters go to the polls in May to select their party's nominees, and then again in November, we urge them to look past partisan politics and factors such as friendship or kinship, and instead cast their votes based on qualifications.

Solving the state's budget crunch (Part one of a series)

2009-12-22T21:00:00.003-05:00

Our state's clueless governor continued his poor-mouthing of the state's financial picture this week, saying the revenue estimates issued by the Consensus Forecasting Group are better than expected but still not good enough. (No doubt he'll continue his drumbeat for casino gambling in the state as he still frantically tries to get gambling approved in Kentucky to appease those who financed his 2007 campaign and who he will want to pony up the cash in two years.)

While we are still very skeptical of the doomsday scenario Steve Beshear continues to lay out, we do agree that there are lots of places where the state could cut budges and make financial improvements. We'll be offering ideas to our intellectually-challenged governor over the next several weeks.

One way the state could cut costs is to restrict state vehicle usage. Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration made great strides in this regard. They put severe limits on the number of people who could drive state vehicles home and back to work. By the end of the Fletcher administration, basically the only people who could drive a vehicle after hours were those who were subject to being called out for an emergency during the night, such as traffic signal technicians and county maintenance garage superintendents. Others had to drive their personal vehicles to and from work, just as most of the rest of us out in the world have to do.

Under the Beshear administration, this trend has been slowly being reversed. More and more people are being given permission to drive their state vehicles home, or even to use them for personal errands during lunch. Some of these people drive long distances; commutes of an hour or so. While it's great for them because they are not buying gas or wearing out their own vehicles, it's a burden on the taxpayers.

It's time for the use of state vehicles to be restricted to business use only. Only those with legitimate emergency needs should be able to drive to and from work in a state car or truck. No employee should be allowed to drive their personal vehicle to work and then take their state vehicle to Wendy's or Walmart during lunch.

When state employees hear tales of woe about the state's budget and wonder why they aren't getting their statutory raises, then see a select few abusing their state vehicles, morale is shot and the workers become even more unproductive. And they wonder about the colossal waste of money they see under their noses.

It's time for the Beshear administration to put curbs on the personal use of state vehicles, for appearances as well as for budgetary reasons.

More whining for slot machines at horse tracks

2009-12-22T20:46:00.002-05:00

It was interesting to learn today that Kentucky isn't the only place where the horse racing interests are whining that they can't survive without slot machines at the tracks. New York's horsey folks are making the same claim. And they're saying the Belmont Stakes, the last and longest of the three jewels in the Triple Crown that begins with the Kentucky Derby, is in danger unless something is done.

We have to wonder: Does the horse industry have a collective one-track mind? Is "slots, slots, slots" all they can think about? Are they unable to come up with innovative and original ways to promote their business? Do they have to rely on gimmicks to survive?

We find it very funny that people, mostly on the left, are trying to prop up what is obviously a dying industry -- one that is for purely frivolous and entertainment purposes -- that is said to be one of our state's signature industries, while they can't race fast enough to kill another one of our state's signature industries -- coal mining -- that is absolutely essential to our way of life; indeed, our very survival.

We fully intend to expound on that at some point in the future, but for now we just chuckle in amusement at the lack of originality shown by the horsey set when it comes to making their business viable and pertinent. Can't they be any more innovative than slot machines?

And we're still waiting for the Rand Paul supporters to weigh in on whether or not they think casino-style gambling is good public policy in Kentucky.

An interesting observation about Rand Paul's supporters

2009-12-17T20:28:00.003-05:00

We hadn't heard a peep out of the supporters of Rand Paul's Senate campaign until we posted a tongue-in-cheek note prior to Thanksgiving that we were thankful they hadn't inundated this blog the way they have others in Kentucky, both on the right side and on the wrong side.

Someone must've tipped them off to that post, because several of them replied. Oddly enough, they've been silent since then.

In fact, we can't really recall seeing them posting about Kentucky issues on any blog.

We don't have a mechanism here to check IP addresses of visitors or commenters, but other blogs do. Most of them have noted that the vast majority of pro-Paul traffic comes from outside of the Bluegrass State. The theory is that these are supporters of Ron Paul's failed presidential bid who are coalescing behind his son.

Most of the Paul supporters -- derisively called "Paultards" by some -- talk about things like closing the Gitmo prison for terrorists, repealing the Patriot Act, and ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (the latter effectively ending the hunt for Osama bin Laden), and other such issues. Thus far, none of them seem to have any knowledge of, or interest in, Kentucky issues.

So we wonder. What's the position of the Paul supporters on casino gambling in Kentucky or slot machines at horse racing tracks? What do they think about Kentucky's current budget situation? What about funding for the East End Bridge in Louisville? Fighting the battle against illegal use of prescription drugs and the boom in meth making and usage? Texting while driving? The Kentucky League of Cities and KaCO? The firing of Ron Mills?

Yes, we know these are mostly state issues that aren't particularly relevant at the federal level, but they are Kentucky issues and whomever takes Jim Bunning's place will be representing Kentucky.

We guess our question is this: Do the Rand Paul supporters and money-bombers have any interest in, or knowledge of, this state's unique issues? Or are they looking to elect a senator, any senator, who mirrors their hero's positions and have lucked into having his son run in the commonwealth?

For the record, we support neither Paul nor Grayson. None of us here at K-Pac will be voting for either of them in the Republican primary. So Rand's Randies shouldn't think we are a pro-Grayson or "GOP establishment" mouthpiece, as we were accused of being earlier. But we do wonder just how much of a grasp on Kentucky politics the Paul fanatics and donors from elsewhere really have.

A better idea

2009-12-11T13:46:00.002-05:00

News comes today that the Kentucky Department of Education will be seeking authority from the legislature next year to remove school superintendents and/or duly elected school board members in school districts where students don't perform well.

We have a better idea. How about removing the teachers whose students don't perform well?

After all, no state agency has the authority to remove a county judge-executive or magistrate or county road foreman if the local road crew doesn't perform very well. And school board members actually have very little authority over school districts anymore, thanks to KERA. Likewise, superintendents have basically had their hands tied behind their backs when it comes to dealing with persistently poor schools.

The teachers are the ones who are responsible for how well students do, not the superintendent or the elected school board members. They are the ones who should be accountable for the kids' performance in the classroom.

Beshear sacrificing state employees on altar of casino gambling

2009-12-07T21:13:00.004-05:00

Even before he took office as governor, Steve Beshear started poor-mouthing the state's budgetary outlook in order to promote the establishment of casino gambling in Kentucky. So far he's been unsuccessful, but now it appears that he plans on sacrificing some state employees in an attempt to pay off the gambling interests that bankrolled his 2007 campaign.

In his latest dire prediction in a series of dire predictions, Beshear claims that the next round of budget cuts made necessary by a poor economy will likely include furloughs or layoffs of state employees.

In other words, if we don't pass casino gambling soon, state employees will start losing their jobs.

That's a fine way to treat some of your most loyal supporters. State workers are a reliable constituency for Democrats, in large part due to decades of patronage hiring. (Democrats account for around 75 percent of all state merit system workers). Fueled in large part by lies told about the Fletcher administration's treatment of state workers -- contrary to rumor, not one non-probationary merit employee was fired for political reasons during the Fletcher years -- state workers voted in droves for Beshear.

But unfortunately for them, state employees are a forgotten constituency with Democrats. Once they are used for their bloc of votes, they are summarily discarded until the next election comes along. State law requires merit system workers to receive a 5 percent raise every year, but that law is rarely obeyed by the legislature and governor when they craft the state budget. Yet state workers will again flock to the polls to vote for a Democrat in every governor's race.

Now Beshear threatens this constituency with layoffs if he can't appease the casino moguls. He's basically bought a couple of state Senate seats with taxpayer dollars in an attempt to make that chamber more receptive to passing a gambling measure; now he's going to use the salaries of state workers as a bribe.

Any state worker who would consider voting for Beshear for re-election is insane. You've seen how little he values you; you're just a pawn in his high-stakes games with the casino bosses. And while it's true that state government is overstaffed well in excess of the 33,000-employee statutory limit, the folks currently working for the state didn't ask to be tossed away so Beshear can pay back his moneyed supporters.

We've never believed Beshear's poor-mouthing, especially since he started it even before taking office when the Fletcher administration had left the state in excellent financial condition. We always believed it to be a front for his support for casino gambling, and we continue to believe it.

If the state really is in dire financial straits and in need of budget cuts, we can identify several places where expenditures can be trimmed without requiring layoffs of state merit workers, many of whom do hard work for low salaries even if they are patronage hirelings. We'll be posting some of our ideas in the next few days and weeks and we invite readers to do the same.

In the meantime, Steve Beshear should be ashamed of himself. These are real people's real lives he's considering messing with to pay off his campaign contributors. You can bet -- pun intended -- that Ernie Fletcher would never have done such a thing.

Giving thanks

2009-11-25T10:15:00.002-05:00

There are many things to be thankful for as Thanksgiving approaches, but one thing we are especially grateful for is the fact that we haven't been invaded by the avid Rand Paul supporters, unlike a lot of other blogs on both sides of the ideological spectrum.

The Paul supporters, not so affectionately dubbed "Paultards," are frequent posters on media blogs as well as both conservative and liberal sites. Any attacks on their hero and his unorthodox views or those of his father, Texas Congressman and former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, are met with a vehement and passionate response.

We make no bones that we are not fans of Rand Paul. We disagree with several of his views, particularly regarding national defense and the war on terrorism. But likewise, we are not fans of Trey Grayson, who does not demonstrate enough conservative views and traits so as to warrant consideration for an important office like senator or governor. We won't be supporting either Paul or Grayson in the Senate campaign.

We'll continue to be thankful if the "Paultards" continue to keep their rants confined to other sites.

Enjoy your turkey, everyone, and be careful out there if you venture out to the stores on Friday.

A real waste of state resources

2009-11-14T23:06:00.002-05:00

In his continuing vendetta against Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo's U.S. Senate campaign, Jacob Payne at the Page One Kentucky blog has been railing about Mongiardo's press office's habit of attaching PDF versions of the original Word document of press releases and media advisories to the e-mails. Last week Payne lamented this terrible waste of state resources, talking about the time and effort and electricity required to create the PDF file and attach it to the e-mail message.

That's laughable. The amount of time and energy that requires is miniscule.

A real waste of state resources is coming from the way Frankfort sends unemployment checks.

Earlier in the year, the federal government funded a supplemental unemployment benefit giving each recipient an extra $25 per week. Seems it would be a simple matter to just add the money to the regular check and be done with it.

But no. Nothing Frankfort does is as simple or easy as it should be. Each unemployment recipient gets two checks mailed to them every two weeks. One check contains the normal benefit. The second check contains the extra $50 for the two weeks, minus any taxes that are withheld.

This strikes us as a monumental waste of money and resources. The state prints two checks and mails them separately, incurring two separate postage charges. This doubles the amount of money it takes to put the unemployment funds in the hands of the recipients. Even if the regular and supplemental benefits come from two accounts, seems like it would be a simple matter to pool those funds and keep track of them administratively instead of having to print and mail two separate checks.

If Frankfort is hurting for money so badly that most state agencies are being told to prepare for 6 percent cuts, it seems to us that a very simple way to recover some costs is to quit mailing two checks when one combined check, at half the cost, would do.

Coming this spring to Frankfort

2009-10-29T22:52:00.001-04:00

There's big news out of Frankfort. This spring, Steve and Jane Beshear will be sponsoring a Holiday Egg hunt on the Capitol grounds.

A few questions for a few UK students

2009-10-29T13:04:00.002-04:00

We have a few questions we'd like to ask the University of Kentucky students who protested the naming of the new basketball dormitory, to be paid for fully with private donations, the Wildcat Coal Lodge.

How many of you pay your own electricity bills as opposed to having mommy and daddy foot your room and board expenses?

Are any of you actually from Kentucky's coal counties, or the coal counties in neighboring states?

Do any of you have anyone in your family who is employed by the coal industry or its related businesses?

Do any of you have family or friends who are from the communities that rely on coal money for a large percentage of their economic activity, such as retail sales?

If so, then you have skin in the game (to quote your beloved president, Barack Hussein Obama) and you have standing to criticize the decision because you have a personal stake in the future of the coal industry. You are the ones who will be paying higher prices for electricity and you are the ones who will see the hometowns of your relatives and friends suffer economically.

If not, then leave the discussion to the grownups and those who would be most impacted by the demise of coal mining, and go protest something like UK's ban on alcohol on school property. Your opinions would be much more relevant in that debate.

Naming rights for an evergreen donation?

2009-10-28T20:51:00.002-04:00

Much ado is being made over an innocuous line in a press release referring to the prospective state Christmas tree as "the Commonwealth Holiday tree."

Why the Frankfort Plant Board will be retrieving the tree is something that doesn't quite compute with us. Doesn't the state have personnel and equipment sufficient enough to travel out in the state to cut the tree and haul it back to Frankfort? Why should the FPB face the possibility of having to drive to Pikeville or Paducah to get the tree?

But putting that aside, we've watched with amusement this week the furor over the naming rights to the new University of Kentucky basketball dormitory. The donors put up money to build the facility on the condition it be called "Wildcat Coal Lodge."

So we have a suggestion for all those would-be tree donors out there who have a tree meeting the criteria.

How about you give the tree only on the condition that it be called "the Commonwealth Christmas tree" and tell Steve Beshear and Jonathan Miller that if they insist on being politically correct for fear of offending a minority of Kentuckians, they can't have your tree but you will gladly provide them a few limbs that they can shove up their holiday anuses?

Horse manure

2009-10-28T13:10:00.002-04:00

Not only is coal mining one of Kentucky's signature industries, it is responsible for employing hundreds of people in eastern and western Kentucky and contributing to the financial and business success of several counties and town in the state. Yet there are a number of people, mostly Democrats, who are trying to dismantle the coal industry without regard to the economic havoc they would create.

They claim their actions are environmentally motivated.

These same people are clamoring for allowing some form of casino gambling at Kentucky's horse racing tracks to prop up another of the state's signature industries.

Leaving the issue of why they'd demonize one of the state's signature industries while at the same time trying to artificially prop up another signature industries for another discussion, we think this "save the environment" line is worth looking into.

Wonder if anyone has ever determined just how much methane that horse flatulence puts into the atmosphere, and what kind of "carbon footprint" horses have and how much they contribute to global warming? After all, if cow flatulence is supposedly so bad for the earth, surely horse gas is equally evil.

And if coal mining is ruining drinking water in the mountains, what about runoff from horse poop in the Bluegrass?

Just a little something to think about on a cloudy Wednesday.

When dinosaurs speak

2009-10-19T11:32:00.002-04:00

What happens when dinosaurs speak?

You get this.

Someone needs to tell Wendell Ford to go back to Owensboro, continue to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, and keep his worn out, discredited opinions to himself. His time has come and gone with very little if anything to show for the benefit of Kentuckians during his time as governor or in the U.S. Senate.

General Cliched Talking Points

2009-10-19T11:27:00.003-04:00

Could retired Gen. Wesley Clark have uttered more old, tired, cliched and patently false talking points than he did in this interview with the Herald-Leader?

How anyone can say that Democrats believe in "taking care of people" when they are voting for legislation that will cause energy bills to skyrocket and will result in Medicaid cuts?

We always thought military men had honor, and part of honor meant not lying to the people. Someone forgot to tell Gen. Cliched Talking Points that.

About the only thing Clark said that wasn't a tired old false talking point was when he said President Obama should listen to the field commanders when it comes to making a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan. He strayed from the talking points on that one, for sure.

Horse manure isn't the only thing they'll have to clean up at The Red Mile after Clark's speech in Lexington. There's a lot of bull crap that needs to be shoveled away now, too.

Stepping back into the void

2009-10-14T12:33:00.002-04:00

You may or may not have noticed -- or may or may not have cared -- but we've been on an extended hiatus from blogging.

In large part that's due to our disgust with the sorry state of conservative politics in Kentucky.

While the conservative movement, and to a lesser extent the Republican Party, has been galvanized and energized by the Obama presidency on a national basis, the same can't be said for the party or the movement on a statewide basis in the commonwealth.

Gov. Beshear has chosen a new running mate to replace Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, who's engaged in a Democratic Senate campaign, and is out raising money for the 2011 gubernatorial election. Yet no Republican has even announced his or her candidacy and media pundits are predicting that although Beshear is weak and vulnerable, he's likely to be re-elected.

Our top two candidates for the U.S. Senate seat next year include a candidate widely perceived as a moderate RINO and a candidate widely perceived as a fringe candidate, much as his father's presidential bid was viewed.

No credible challenger has emerged to run against Democrat Rep. John Yarmuth of Louisville, who is in his second term and probably will be around for awhile if he's not ousted this time.

Frankly, we're still disgusted with the conservative movement and the Republican Party in Kentucky. We don't know why the national enthusiasm that has blanketed the country has evaded Kentucky except for a few tea parties. We can't understand why there's no one out there actively challenging Democrats like Yarmuth, Beshear and Greg Stumbo. The eat-your-own mentality that Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning employed against former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, and more recently McConnell used on Bunning, is something we find repulsive.

But there's a void in the blogosphere that needs to be filled, and we're opting to step back into it.

The state's blogosphere has undergone some changes in the past few months, on both sides of the aisle.

On the right, Brett Hall has let kypolitics.org go to concentrate on the gubernatorial campaign he's managing in Alabama. Hall updated his site from afar up until mid-summer, at which time he abandoned it. David Adams put Kentucky Progress on hiatus to go manage Rand Paul's U.S. Senate campaign.

And on the left, there have been changes. The Rural Democrat is no more. PageOne Kentucky seems to be concentrating on the homosexual political agenda and promoting Little Jackie Conway's Senate bid and ripping Mongiardo's campaign at every turn. Barefoot and Progressive has become a loopy conglomerate of out-of-touch liberals, abortion advocates and atheists.

And bluegrassreport.org is no more. That site, probably the biggest pox on online political commentary ever to disgrace the Bluegrass State, is gone, and the URL tells visitors that the site might be for sale. Good riddance to Mark Nickolas; may he never set foot in Kentucky again and inflict us with his vile excuse for an existence.

We freely admit that this blog was started in defense of Ernie Fletcher. We still think that what happened to him and his governorship was a disgrace never before witnessed in the long, sordid history of Kentucky politics. His attempts to weed out the harmful vestiges of decades of Democrat patronage were stymied by a hypocritical assault by some of the biggest perpetrators of political hackery this state has ever seen. Prosecuted by one of his 2003 opponent's biggest supporters. That effort led by an attorney general with no moral authority and who himself was a documented supporter of Democrat patronage. Indicted by a tainted grand jury full of Democrats and state merit employees, including one whose husband worked for the aforementioned attorney general.

We will still rise to the defense of Gov. Fletcher when necessary. But the emphasis of our return will be to promote common-sense conservatism in Kentucky and to call out Republicans who do not practice such. We will push for an alternative Senate candidate to come out to provide a viable alternative to RINO Grayson and fringe candidate Paul. And we will urge someone to come out early and declare an intent to challenge Beshear in 2011 and start raising money to be able to compete with him in the general election. Our desire will be for a real conservative who understands conservative principles and will be able to follow down the path that Fletcher started to blaze.

We'll also point out hypocrisy, stupidity, insanity and other negative traits in the campaigns of Senate candidates from both parties, the Beshear administration, the media and other blogs whose agendas don't jibe with the wants, needs, desires and values of average hard-working Kentuckians who struggle to make ends meet, have strong faith and belief in God and a system of morality, and are generally the ordinary folks among us. We may not post as frequently as we did before our hiatus, but we're back and we'll do our best to keep readers informed and offer knowledgeable analysis on political and social events in the Bluegrass.

An unnecessary expense

2009-06-09T22:29:00.003-04:00

We've been silent for awhile, quite honestly, because we've become disgusted with the Kentucky political scene. The thoughts of the Senate race make us sick. We have honestly found none of the announced or speculative candidates to be worthy of support. All have fatal flaws, ranging from disloyalty to their party's governor (Bunning and Grayson) to outright kookery (Paul). We'd almost as soon see Mongiardo or Conway win one term and then replace them in six years with a Republican who truly knows what it means to be a conservative Republican.

But what fired us back into blogging mode was the recent special session call by Gov. Beshear. He is about to put the state through an unnecessary and expensive legal battle over his plan to approve slot machines (or video lottery terminals, as they like to call them) at Kentucky's horse racing tracks without benefit of a constitutional amendment approving the expansion of gambling beyond the lottery and betting on horse races.

A lawsuit has already been promised should the legislation pass, and really there's no guarantee of its victory.

Beshear would have been better served to systematically make his case for expanded gambling to the people of Kentucky and the members of the General Assembly, then have a constitutional amendment introduced in next year's biennial session.

This special session call accomplishes nothing, and the session itself won't either. Despite what gambling proponent Greg Stumbo opined when he was attorney general, it's generally believed that expanding gambling without a constitutional amendment is unconstitutional and such a law will be overturned.

But no one ever accused Beshear of having a clue. When even a number of yellow-dog Democrats say they wish they'd never voted for him and would prefer Ernie Fletcher to the current governor, you know times are bad. Beshear may not have supported President Obama in last year's primary, but they both have something in common: They can look forward to being one-termers.

Interesting rumor out of Frankfort regarding personnel probe

2009-04-22T21:45:00.002-04:00

We're hearing an interesting rumor out of Frankfort regarding the investigation into hiring practices during Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration that eventually torpedoed his re-election bid.

We've long held that the investigation was politically motivated, and sparked by one Transportation Cabinet employee with a personal grudge against Fletcher stemming from his inability to parlay his having gone to Lafayette High School with Fletcher into a cushy political appointment.

However, this rumor takes the investigation beyond the mere scope of political motivation into one of personal revenge.

The leading prosecutor in the grand jury probe was Scott Crawford-Sutherland, an employee of the attorney general's office under Ben Chandler who gave the maximum allowable campaign contributions to Chandler's ill-fated 2003 gubernatorial campaign. When Chandler lost the governor's race to Fletcher and Greg Stumbo took over as AG, Crawford-Sutherland stayed on with the AG's office.

We're hearing that Crawford-Sutherland either had designs on being the governor's general counsel if Chandler had won, or had in fact been promised the job. Fletcher's defeat of Chandler dashed that opportunity for Crawford-Sutherland, so he pushed the indictment of Fletcher staffers and eventually the governor himself out of a personal desire for revenge. Denied a plum political appointment, Crawford-Sutherland sough to do maximum damage to the man who spoiled his plans.

Couple that with Stumbo's political posturing and ladder-climbing, and you have the recipe for a witch hunt. It was bad enough that Stumbo used the attorney general's office for political gain, but when an employee uses his prosecutorial power to push a personal agenda of political revenge, that crosses a line.

Between the malevolent motives of the AG's office and the compromised integrity of the grand jury, which we've discussed many times, only a fool would take the indictments and the charges they presented seriously, as something legitimate and honest. Unfortunately, 65 percent of Kentucky's electorate got fooled in 2007, and all of us are left paying the price.

Freudian hire?

2009-04-08T12:34:00.001-04:00

We couldn't help but notice that the Obama administration has hired an actor (Kal Penn) who played an Islamofascist terrorist on "24" a couple of seasons ago.

Dear Jim Bunning: Please quit whining!

2009-03-25T12:36:00.002-04:00

We've been watching with bemusement this developing feud between Kentucky's U.S. Senators, Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning.

McConnell won re-election in his toughest battle yet last fall; Bunning is up for re-election next year. Concerns about Bunning's vulnerability as an incumbent have apparently prompted McConnell to turn on his former friend and colleague.

Bunning hasn't been silent about what's happening at all; to the contrary he's been increasingly outspoken at what he sees as a bid from McConnell to sabotage his re-election bid.

The junior senator won't get a sympathetic ear here. Of all people, Bunning should know full well what McConnell is capable of. After all, Bunning sat and watched as McConnell recruited Anne Northup to run against incumbent Ernie Fletcher in the 2007 Republican gubernatorial primary, then endorsed Northup over Fletcher. Why should Bunning be aghast at this behavior when he was part and parcel of something similar two years ago?

Although Bunning has been a staunch fiscal conservative, standing against bailouts and stimulus packages and tax increases, we lump him and McConnell in the same category because they fail a basic test of conservatism: loyalty. They showed no loyalty to Ernie Fletcher, now McConnell is giving Bunning the "Fletcher treatment" and Bunning seems surprised.

You reap what you sow. Bunning is getting the same thing that he and McConnell visited upon Fletcher two years ago.

Instead of working to find an opponent for Bunning, perhaps McConnell should instead be working to help shore up his colleague's perceived weaknesses.

Don't get us wrong: we'd be more than happy to see Bunning shot down in flames, precisely because of what he did to Fletcher. But should Bunning be shocked that McConnell is doing this? We aren't.

Grassroots Republicans are becoming increasingly frustrated with McConnell for his failure to support his party's candidates, and Bunning has a grassroots fandom because of his fiscal conservatism. It will be interesting to see how that turns out in terms of popular support for McConnell and his position as titular leader of the state Republican Party.

Still, what goes around comes around, karma is a wonderful thing, and all that. Bunning is now on the receiving end of what he helped dish out not all that long ago. Ernie Fletcher didn't whine and cry about it when Bunning did it to him. Bunning ought not be crying about it now that Mitch has targeted him.

Election fraud indictments: Is Perry County next?

2009-03-21T23:53:00.004-04:00

Even though all the media attention is being given to this week's election fraud indictments in Clay County, that may be just the tip of the iceberg.

We're hearing of a joint federal-state investigation into vote buying in Perry County, just 45 minutes up the Hal Rogers Parkway from Clay County. This investigation involves payments made by local Democrat party officials to local residents prior to the 2008 general election. While investigators are giving the standard "neither confirm nor deny" non-answer when asked about the matter, folks in and around Hazard are coming forth to say they have been subpoenaed to testify in front of a grand jury.

Although the local party chair says nothing was done wrong, we'll just have to wait and see. The Democrat chair in Perry County is also on the county school board, which is awash in controversy over the closing of an elementary school, the looming possibility of a state takeover, and fallout from allegations that the school superintendent possessed child pornography on his district-owned computer.

Don't forget that Perry County is home of Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, who so far is the only Democrat who's announced that he wants to take on Jim Bunning in next year's U.S. Senate race.

We note two things from this investigation. First is that every time allegations of election fraud are made, Democrats are quick to say that there is no such thing and that the real problem is vote suppression by Republicans. Funny, though, that this investigation is being undertaken by officials from the federal government (President B. Hussein Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are staunch Dems) and by the state government (Gov. Steve Beshear and Attorney General Little Jackie Conway are which party, folks?) so in this instance, it's Democrats investigating Democrats. And we also find it odd that most of the election fraud investigations and subsequent convictions usually come from Democrat counties.

The second thing we note is this: The fraud allegedly occurred in the 2008 general election. Even with cheating, B. Hussein Obama couldn't carry Perry County, which has one of the largest black populations in the mountains. Doesn't speak well of the Messiah's popularity in the Bluegrass, does it?

Bluegrass Embarrassment: Helen Thomas

2009-03-10T09:33:00.002-04:00

It's been awhile since we spotlighted anyone in our "Bluegrass Embarrassment" series, but it's past time to throw the name of Helen Thomas into the mix.

For years, this Winchester native was the dean of the Capitol press corps. After she retired from news reporting and became an opinion columnist, her liberal bias really became known.

Ms. Thomas, you are an idiot. You bring shame upon the Commonwealth of Kentucky. You are washed up and quite probably going senile. You should do us all a favor and retire from the public eye, apologize for spewing your stupidity all these years, and mercifully disappear from the face of the earth.

It pains us to know that you are from the same state as we are, and it further pains us that your hometown was for years the residence of two of our collaborators.

We have no respect for you and we wish you'd just fade away. The sooner the better.

Two thumbs down, one thumb up on election reform proposals

2009-03-06T13:03:00.002-05:00

Three election reform proposals are under consideration as the Kentucky General Assembly winds down its "off-year" session.

We support one of these initiatives and heartily oppose the other two.

The bill we support would allow gubernatorial candidates to wait until after the primary election to choose a lieutenant governor running mate.

We were not necessarily fans of the legislation requiring a gubernatorial slate back when was passed in the 1990s, although we understood the reasoning behind it. Most of us here at K-Pac are old enough to remember when Republican Gov. Nickel Louie had Democrat Wendell Ford as his lieutenant governor. And we remember the strife between Gov. Wallace Wilkinson and Lt. Gov. Brereton Jones, and then between Gov. Jones and Lt. Gov. Paul Patton.

Even the slate didn't end the strife. Patton and Lt. Gov. Steve Henry had a falling-out, and of course the rift between Gov. Ernie Fletcher and Lt. Gov. Judas Iscariot Pence still resonates. And Gov. Steve Beshear and Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo have had a parting of the ways in recent months.

The proposed system would mirror the federal presidential election process, where the nominee get to pick a running mate and then have that choice ratified at the party convention. This would allow more candidates to run for governor, including some who may have hesitated because of difficulty of finding a running mate. It would also allow a winning candidate to possibly choose a vanquished primary opponent to offer the strongest and best possible ticket.

This law would also benefit Beshear. Since Mongiardo has announced a run for the Senate, conventional wisdom is that Beshear will have to find a new running mate for 2011 since candidates raise money as a slate. (Money raised for the Fletcher-Pence re-election bid had to be refunded after Pence opted off the ticket in 2007 and Fletcher had to choose a new running mate). This new law would allow Beshear to go ahead and raise money and not be hamstrung by the decision of the voters in the 2010 U.S. Senate race.

The two proposals we hate with a passion are the ones for early voting and for allowing independents to vote in party primaries.

There's a reason they call it "Election DAY." Transportation is faster and easier than ever before. If a 12-hour Election Day was good enough in the days of horseback riders and covered wagons, it's good enough when people have cars and can usually get to their polling place in a matter of minutes.

In addition, absentee voting is rife with opportunities, and is the primary source, for vote fraud in Kentucky. And early voting is just another name for absentee voting, without the requirement to prove you'll be unable to cast a ballot on Election Day.

We think the election process, with a 12-hour voting day with provisions to keep the polls open as long as voters are waiting in line to vote, is perfectly appropriate and acceptable, and is just fine as it is. There are too many opportunities for abuse and fraud with an elongated early voting system. We hope this one gets shot down.

And we also don't support allowing independents to corrupt the primary voting process. Primary elections are designed to allow political parties and their members to select their party's nominees for the general election. Independents would be interlopers in the party selection process and should not be tolerated. Besides, any number of independents can file for office for the general election, bypassing the primary system altogether, so independent voters aren't left without a choice during the election process.

We also fear that allowing independents to vote in party primaries could be the first step on the way to open primaries, which is a complete bastardization of the nomination process. Why should Democrats get to help select the Republican nominee, and vice versa? For that matter, why should those without a party affiliation be allowed to choose a party's nominee?

We saw what can go wrong with open primaries during the 2000 presidential election. Since Vice President Al Gore was already assured of the Democrat nomination despite some opposition in the primary, in states with open primaries, the Democrats flocked to the polls and voted in the Republican primary to try to get the weakest Republican candidate (Sen. John McCain) the nomination over the candidate perceived as the strongest contender (Gov. George W. Bush).

Democrats though (and rightly so, as 2008 proved) that McCain would be easier to beat than Bush, which is why they supported him in open primaries.

Primaries are nomination processes for party candidates, and should remain so. It's embarrassing that a Republican (Rep. Jimmy Higdon) is pushing this legislation.

The General Assembly should say "yes" to allowing gubernatorial nominees to pick their running mates after the primary, and say "not only no, but HELL NO to early voting and opening party primaries to independents.

Standing up to the anti-coal bullies

2009-03-06T12:54:00.003-05:00

Coal is the lifeblood of southeastern Kentucky. We hesitate to think what Pikeville, Hazard and Harlan -- already economically beleaguered as it is -- would look like without the monetary shot in the arm "Black Diamonds" provide. And we shudder to think how much we'd have to pay for electricity without coal.

Yet there is no shortage of individuals and groups who want to, in essence, shut down the coal mining industry. They use every claim from "destruction of our irreplaceable mountains" to "global warming" to criticize coal. They have no concept of the economic damage they'd inflict on coal country if their efforts were ever successful. Whole communities in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Pennsylvania would no doubt collapse or become ghost towns.

That's why we want to toss kudos in the direction of the management of Camp Blanton in Harlan County, who recently told two anti-coal groups that they are not welcome to meet at the camp.

Coal country needs more individuals and groups to stand up to the anti-coal bullies and thugs who will stop at nothing to rip the economic heart out of an already-impoverished area.

Go cry your crocodile tears somewhere else, Mountain Justice and Kentucky Heartwood. The damage you do to our way of life is far worse than the damage you claim coal mining (and logging) does to the environment.

We salute Camp Blanton for this courageous stand in defense of the mountain economy.

Missed opportunities

2009-03-06T11:45:00.002-05:00

We're no big fans of the federal stimulus bill, which promises to do more for field mice in California or commuters between the Vegas casinos and Disneyland than for the federal economy, but we do subscribe to the theory that roads are one of the key things for which governments should be responsible. The Constitution even gives federal authority to building and maintaining them. Does the phrase "post offices and post roads" mean anything?

So we're not going to complain about the inclusion of transportation projects in the stimulus package, especially since declining gas consumption back when gas was ridiculously overpriced caused cuts in state road fund budgets.

But we do lament Kentucky's many missed opportunities to make use of the stimulus money, due to some short-sighted manipulation of the Six-Year Road Plan last year by the General Assembly and Joe Prather's Transportation Cabinet.

Half of the stimulus money earmarked for road projects must be spent within 120 days on projects that are, to use the popular vernacular, "shovel-ready." This means projects for which design has been completed, right-of-way purchased, and utilities moved out of the way. All those tasks must be included in, and funded through, the Six-Year Plan prior to being let for bids and real dirt-moving work commencing.

The trouble is, the Beshear administration removed many projects from the Six-Year Plan last year, saying the state had no money for them. This included design, right-of-way purchase and utility relocation on many projects that had been pushed by Gov. Ernie Fletcher and his Democrat predecessors for several years. In addition, several other projects were scaled back under what a couple of now-departed Beshear administration Transportation engineers touted as "practical design."

Without their inclusion in the road plan, preliminary work stopped on many of these long-promised projects. That left them begging when stimulus money was allocated and assigned to "shovel-ready" projects. Had those projects been included in the road plan as they had been in previous years, more of them could have been "shovel-ready" or even closer.

It's been a political reality for years that the road plan is, in large part, a "wish list." Politicians could point to a project's inclusion and advancement in the Six-Year Plan as proof that progress was being made, whether or not any work was actually being done. Just getting some of these projects included in the plan, even if actual construction was a decade or two in the future, was an accomplishment to be pointed at with pride. But a project's inclusion in the plan meant that a commitment had been made to move it forward.

Beshear and Prather point to the current incarnation of the plan, which ran into some legal challenges last year over the timeliness of its passage and whether projects could be funded outside the normal budgetary process, as being a more realistic overview of what roads can and will be built, instead of the wish list they claim the plan had become. But what's really realistic is that their gutting of the plan last year probably cost some communities projects that could have gotten done with stimulus money.

Some of the road projects are no-brainers, such as finishing a road in Floyd County where most of the grade work and bridges had been completed, but was dropped during the Fletcher administration because of a supposed lack of funding.

But we still lament what could have been, had Beshear and Prather not been so short-sighted. Perhaps those communities with projects that were cut or reduced in scope should remember that when 2011 rolls around.

The reservation called; they're looking for John David Dyche

2009-02-05T09:17:00.002-05:00

To be a so-called political analyst published in Kentucky's largest newspaper, John David Dyche surely doesn't write or think like one.

His most recent offering is so laughable as to make one wonder just what he's been smoking. He destroys all credibility he may have ever had with his assessment of the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Kentucky.

He states at the top that Trey Grayson and Crit Luallen are the two best candidates to run for the office currently held by Jim Bunning. That premise is flawed in and of itself, but the justification he uses to support that opinion is beyond explanation.

Let's look at Dyche's comments and dissect and refute them.

He says that Grayson deserves first shot at the Republican nomination should Sen. Jim Bunning change his mind and decide not to seek re-election. Why? What makes Grayson, a relative neophyte to politics and elective office, deserve a shot over longtime congressmen like Ed Whitfield, Hal Rogers or Geoff Davis? Dyche mentions Grayson's twice winning statewide office. What he doesn't mention is the first victory was on Ernie Fletcher's coattails, and his re-election bid was over an unknown and underfinanced candidate who couldn't ride Steve Behsear's wave.

We have been rightly critical of Grayson for his reprehensible failure to support his party's governor when the Democrats started attacking (his trial balloon at Fancy Farm about running for governor in 2007 has forever poisoned our outlook on Grayson) but despite that, we see nothing in his background that makes him more qualified to be a senator than any of Kentucky's congressional delegation, or even folks like Mike Duncan or Cathy Bailey, who've played on a national stage and are comfortable there.

But his assessment of the Democrats who are in, or thinking about getting in, the race is most troubling.

Dyche dismisses Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, the only announced Democrat candidate, almost out of hand. We don't understand where he's coming from.

While Mongiardo nearly beat Bunning six years ago, most of that is Bunning's fault. Mongiardo was not exactly a respect-inspiring candidate in 2004, but he did step up for his party and he almost pulled a huge political upset. Dr. Dan's strong showing in that race instantly made him a prominent force in Kentucky politics, and it made him attractive enough to be asked onto Gov. Steve Beshear's ticket. While it's true that the two of them have since had a major falling-out, Mongiardo obviously brought something to the table for Beshear to want him on the slate.

"Mongiardo has not accomplished much in politics," Dyche writes. "Nothing in Mongiardo's record reveals readiness to deal with issues of national and international magnitude." And what, exactly, in Grayson's background does? In terms of political readiness and experience, we'd most certainly rank Mongiardo ahead of Grayson, due mostly to Mongiardo's legislative experience.

Dyche gets it wrong again in his assessment of Crit Luallen, who seems to be tied with Attorney General Little Jackie Conway in the ranking for the potential candidate most favored by Kentucky's far-left Democrats. Dyche says Luallen has earned bipartisan respect as an aggressive but fair auditor.

Excuse us while we do the "Animal House" cough. You know, "bulls--t." Luallen has shown a very partisan bent in her audits, going after Republican local officials with such ferocity that she is rivaling Greg Stumbo for partisan abuse of office. We were glad to see one county judge-executive recently go on the record in his local newspaper as saying he felt a negative audit report was politically motivated, despite the fact that the expenditure in question was signed off on by both state and federal officials. Luallen has gone out of her way to target GOP local elected officials and she should be called out on it.

Dyche also calls Luallen "personable." Since when did "personable" become a synonym for "untrustworthy back-stabber and power monger?" For that is exactly what Luallen is and always has been, dating back to her political appointive service under a multitude of Democrat governors. She has knifed a number of folks and climbed over their fallen bodies to reach a position of power. We doubt she'd do well as one of 100 in a place where she couldn't wield a shank with impunity.

Bunning's near-loss in 2004 portended his vulnerability, and the shifting political winds have only enhanced that tenuous position. We can't support Bunning because of his failure, like Mitch McConnell, to support his party's governor in a time of assault from the opposite party, and we think it's time he step down with dignity. But we certainly don't think Trey Grayson is the best possible replacement, and we don't think Conway or Luallen are better choices as a nominee on the other side than Mongiardo.

At one time, Dyche was a credible conservative Republican analyst. He comes from a long line of respected GOPers from the London and Somerset area, Kentucky's Republican stronghold. But over the past couple of years, his opinions have become more scattershot. He's become more of a McConnellite than a Republican; indeed, he's working on a biography of McConnell.

This time, though, he's totally off the reservation in his assessment of potential Senate candidates. We don't like Mongiardo's politics, but we certainly don't think as little of him as Dyche does. We find Mongiardo to be a credible and qualified candidate who doesn't bring the baggage of a Luallen or the inexperience of Grayson or Conway.

We're sure the reservation misses Dyche and wishes he'd hurry back.

Cannibalism is no way to build a majority

2009-01-22T22:09:00.003-05:00

When you're the minority party in a state, outnumbered 2-1 in voter registration and with the majority holding most all the state and local offices of significance, the last thing you do if you're trying to become the majority is to eat your own.

So we have to ask Scott Jennings what in the world he's thinking if he wants to challenge a popular incumbent Republican congressman in the primary next year.

Jennings, a former campaign aide for U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell's 2002 re-election bid and former Gov. Ernie Fletcher's successful 2003 candidacy and a former low-level official in the George W. Bush administration, is apparently toying with the idea of running for elective office in his home state. Since Jennings is a native of Dawson Springs (just like Gov. Steve Beshear) he seems to have his eyes on the 1st District seat currently held by the immensely popular Ed Whitfield. Brett Hall at kypolitics.org broke this story earlier this week to lots of interested consumers of political news in the Bluegrass.

Whitfield is the first Republican ever elected to Congress from Kentucky's westernmost district, where Democrats have an even more significant voter registration majority than they do in the rest of the state. (We know of a onetime Richard Nixon campaign volunteer who worked the Purchase area in 1972 who said of one of the counties, "They have fewer than 100 Republicans and there's three factions!")

Despite the registration deficit, Whitfield continues to take on all comers and keeps his seat. He even won last year despite the poisonous environment for Republicans in the nation. The opposition has tried to throw all kinds of mud at him, including the charge that he does not actually live in Kentucky, but none of it has ever stuck. (Note to Democrats: If you really believe Whitfield lives in Florida and not Hopkinsville, file a legal challenge to his residency. Otherwise, shut your traps.)

Given Whitfield's political strength and prowess in repeatedly winning in hostile territory, why in the world would Jennings even consider challenging him? Unless Jim Bunning decides to retire from the U.S. Senate and Whitfield enters that race, he's pretty much a shoo-in to win re-election again next year. If Jennings is successful in the primary, there's no guarantee that he'd be anywhere near as successful as Whitfield in the exceedingly-Democrat district.

When you're the minority, you absolutely have to stick together and be united if you are going to succeed and work toward being the majority. Yet Republicans can't ever seem to learn that lesson. Fletcher faced an uphill battle in his re-election bid in 2007, and it wasn't helped when prominent state Republicans effectively sided with Greg Stumbo during his politically-motivated investigation into the administration's hiring practices. Instead of rallying around their embattled governor, they abandoned him, then when two of his former friends and supporters challenged him in the primary, they caused him to use up resources that would have been valuable, and put to much better use, in the general election.

And now we have an upstart Republican operative, whose only experience has been as a campaign worker and who has no elective office background, wanting to challenge a popular incumbent in the primary?

This is insane. We are generally fans of Jennings and appreciate what he's done in the past, but we can't support any effort by him to challenge Whitfield. It just doesn't make sense.

If Jennings is hell-bent on running for Congress in his first race out of the chute, there are two Democrats representing Kentucky that need to be removed from the Capitol. Jennings should move to Louisville and take on John Yarmuth, before he becomes entrenched in that office. Anne Northup failed to dislodge Yarmuth from the seat he won from her in 2006; if Yarmuth isn't beaten this next time, he's probably going to be there for awhile to Kentucky's detriment.

Or he can move to Lexington or Frankfort and challenge Ben Chandler, who won a special election for Fletcher's old 6th District seat primarily on name recognition from their just-concluded gubernatorial battle and the famous moniker he carries, handed down from Grandpappy Happy. That might be a taller challenge than unseating Yarmuth, but it can be done by the right candidate with the right platform.

As long as Republicans continue to eat their own, they'll never come close to being a majority in this state. Party registration in Kentucky is such that in a statewide race, Democrats can splinter into two equal factions and their candidate can still beat the Republican. A split in the GOP equals disaster. A challenge by Jennings to Whitfield would no doubt split the Western Kentucky Republicans and possibly give the Democrat an easy walk to election.

When Republicans become the majority, then they can act like Democrats and have all kinds of family fights and hurt feelings. Right now, we don't have that luxury. Party unity, already reeling from the 2007 governor's race, is vital. A challenge from Jennings to Whitfield is something we can't afford. We urge Jennings to exercise good judgment and refrain from running against one of our incumbents. Yarmuth and Chandler need to go, Whitfield doesn't.

More on Beshear-Mongiardo rift: Political appointees reamed in employee meeting

2009-01-14T21:32:00.004-05:00

Since our post yesterday on a rift between Gov. Steve Beshear and Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, we've heard more evidence that supports that assertion. This story involves a political appointment in the mountains that didn't go the way Mongiardo and his supporters wanted.

We are hearing that the person Beshear appointed to the non-merit job last year, shortly after he took office in December 2007, was forced out by area political movers and shakers who wanted someone else in the position.

Both times the position was vacant, Mongiardo lobbied for a close personal associate, who was very well qualified professionally, to get the job.

The Mongiardo associate didn't get it the first time, and after the political power play got rid of Beshear's first appointment, Mongiardo lobbied once again for his associate to get the job. Once again, Mongiardo's advice and recommendation was rejected. Instead, the Beshear administration appointed someone from outside the area involved to fill the position on an interim basis.

A couple of Beshear appointees from that particular agency visited the office yesterday to introduce the interim appointee. The Mongiardo associate also works at that office as a merit system employee. During the introductory meeting, the passed-over Mongiardo-ite gave the Frankfort visitors a verbal reaming. We're told that it was an uncomfortable moment for the new appointee, the other employees in the room and especially the Beshear administration appointees.

We're hearing that this particular person's rejection for a non-merit appointment is not the cause of the Beshear-Mongiardo estrangement but rather is symptomatic of the situation. Mongiardo was promised a say in personnel decisions, and so far he hasn't been given that.

Update on timesheet fraud probe in Transportation Cabinet; and more misdeeds by patronage hires

2009-01-14T21:23:00.003-05:00

Last May, we reported that Kentucky State Police were conducting interviews in connection with timesheet fraud by employees of a county garage in the Transportation Cabinet's Department of Highways.

Nine months later, the probe hasn't given birth to any indictments -- yet -- but there have been some actions taken as a result of the probe.

The employee responsible for the scheme was fired. Transportation took preliminary steps to fire another employee believed to be involved in the scandal, but scrapped those plans and welcomed him back when it was determined he had no involvement. And finally, the foreman at the garage in question was strongly encouraged to retire, and he heeded that advice.

We are hearing that criminal charge may yet be filed in this matter, but to date none have been.

In other news involving the Transportation Cabinet, an employee who is the grandson of a deceased longtime county Democrat chair and patronage boss in his native area was also given strong encouragement to resign earlier this month, and he heeded that advice. He was given that advice due to drug use, sleeping on the job and theft of state property. No charges are expected to be filed because he returned the missing property, but evidence of his other misdeeds was too great to be ignored.

This young man and the individuals referenced above in the timesheet were all products of the patronage system the Democrats have run in state government, especially in Transportation, for decades. The major qualification for all of them to be hired was the box they checked on their voter registration form.

Major rift between Beshear and Mongiardo?

2009-01-13T22:14:00.003-05:00

We're hearing credible reports of a major rift -- perhaps even an estrangement -- between Gov. Steve Beshear and Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo.

The word we're getting is that Beshear instigated the situation by refusing to include Mongiardo in discussions and policy decisions, and by not keeping promises made to the physician from Hazard when he was invited onto Beshear's ticket as his running mate.

The concept of running mates having a parting of the ways is no strange concept in Kentucky politics. Back when the governor and lieutenant governor were elected separately, it was a common occurrence. Gov. Wallace Wilkinson and Lt. Gov. Brereton Jones saw eye-to-eye on little. The same thing happened when Jones was elected governor and Paul Patton was his lieutenant. Some may even remember when Kentucky had a Republican governor (Louie Nunn) and a Democrat lieutenant governor (Wendell Ford).

Putting the state's top two executives on a slate was supposed to stop that problem and put them on the same page, but it hasn't happened. Patton was the first governor to run as part of a slate, his relationship with Lt. Gov. Steve Henry went south during their first term, to the point where folks were openly questioning whether or not Henry would run with Patton when he sought re-election in 1999.

Of course, the rift between Gov. Ernie Fletcher and Lt. Gov. Steve Pence was well-publicized, but it didn't happen until Pence disagreed with Fletcher's decision to pardon the victims of Attorney General Greg Stumbo's political witch hunt, and Pence's subsequent decision to drop off Fletcher's re-election ticket. That was an unusual situation, to say the least.

The issue at hand is the rift between Beshear and Mongiardo. It took less than a year for this separation to happen, much faster than the one between Patton and Henry.

We hear from multiple, credible sources that Beshear made several promises to Mongiardo when the two formed their ticket. Among those promises was that Mongiardo would have major influence in hiring decisions involving Eastern Kentucky (Mongiardo's from Hazard) or natives of that region. Mongiardo was also to be included in discussions about policy decisions and basically given a prominent role in the administration.

Neither has happened. Mongiardo has largely been an invisible lieutenant governor, and not by his own choice. We hear that Beshear rarely, if ever, calls or otherwise sees his lieutenant, and Mongiardo's personnel recommendations are not being heeded. We're told that on two occasions, Mongiardo tried to get a close personal associate placed into a non-merit job in the eastern part of the state, but was unsuccessful both times. We also hear that a lot of people who contributed to and supported Beshear in 2007 are so disgusted with the situation that they are ready to throw their support to any Democrat who might challenge him in the 2011 primary, or the Republican challenger should Beshear win the primary.

Mongiardo is clearly a rising star among Kentucky Democrats. His close call against Jim Bunning in the 2004 U.S. Senate election boosted his stock, and Mongiardo is frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for the seat when it comes open next year. If he's been ostracized by Beshear, that might provide even more motivation for him to make a repeat try for the Senate seat. And he'd probably be favored to win against the aging Bunning, who angered more than a few Republicans when he endorsed Anne Northup over Fletcher in the '07 primary.

It'll be interesting to watch the dynamic between Beshear and Mongiardo, especially as we head into a legislative session and next year's Senate race, and then Beshear's re-election bid. Will their relationship thaw out, or will it continue to be strained and frozen? Beshear's political future may depend on if, and how well, he mends fences with Dr. Dan and his supporters and loyalists.

Stumbo victim nominated for state Senate seat

2009-01-12T14:47:00.003-05:00

A lot of injustices were done during the two-year investigation of merit system hiring practices during Ernie Fletcher's term as governor. Greg Stumbo's inquisition ended up with a lot of innocent, public-minded people, carrying out the wishes of their constituents, being unfairly and wrongly branded as criminals. We find it unfortunate that the press never sought to make known the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, relying instead on Stumbo and his band of lackeys and sycophants to spoon-feed them distorted information designed to turn the tide of public opinion against the first GOP administration in a generation.

Lots of people were smeared during the Stumbo Inquisition --Bill Nighbert, Dick Murgatroyd, Vincent Fields, Daniel Groves, Fletcher himself and many others -- but perhaps none more so than Bowling Green attorney J. Marshall Hughes.

Hughes was one of Fletcher's local contact people. In fact, he was one of the more prominent ones in the entire state. Although he provided advice to the governor's staff on some pertinent local issues, including personnel recommendations, he was never employed by state government and thus never had the authority to hire or fire any state merit employee. Still, he was indicted by the grand jury for "political discrimination," whatever that means.

We're not sure how someone who didn't even work for state government and had no authority to hire or fire anyone could be indicted for breaking the state's merit system hiring laws, but apparently Stumbo's Dumbos thought so.

It was Hughes' indictment that pointed out just how hypocritical the whole personnel probe was. Never mind the fact that the Republicans were trying to dismantle a Democrat patronage system that had existed for years and local Democrat officials and mid-level Democrat loyalist merit system managers were still trying to operate in the Fletcher administration. Hughes was basically indicted for making employment recommendations -- the same thing Stumbo himself had done while a member of the House of Representatives, prior to being elected attorney general. If Hughes broke the law by making recommendations, then didn't Stumbo break the law in even greater fashion by writing his letters of recommendation to Paul Patton on House letterhead?

We still applaud Fletcher's pardons of all those indicted as a final resolution to an unfair and biased practice, but Hughes' indictment was a huge travesty of justice and his pardon was most definitely well-deserved.

Fast-forward to last week, when Republican officials in south-central Kentucky nominated Hughes to carry their party's banner in the special election to replace Brett Guthrie in the state Senate. Guthrie, of course, was elected to Congress to replace the now-retired Ron Lewis.

We're not sure if voters will hold Hughes' indictment against him, but we don't think they should, considering that it was flawed and the perfect example of hypocrisy. Many Kentuckians are belatedly beginning to see the Stumbo Inquisition for the partisan political exercise it was, and they're coming around to viewing many of the targets of the probe as innocent victims in Stumbo's political ploy.

Hughes has a long record of activism in the Republican Party. We know of no reason not to support him in the special election. A victory for him in the special election would be a great way for Kentuckians, including Bowling Green-area residents bitter over Stumbo's defeat of Jody Richards in the House speaker's race, to stick a figurative thumb in Stumbo's eye.

Even a blind Beliles finds an acorn every now and then

2009-01-09T10:09:00.003-05:00

In general, we are not fans of Richard Beliles and Common Cause of Kentucky. In the past, we've found Beliles and his group to be meddlesome, petty, and overly concerned with hypothetical ethical violations by Republicans.

But along the same lines of "even a blind squirrel finds an acorn occasionally" or "a stopped clock is right twice a day," we think Beliles is on to something with his shot across the bow at Greg Stumbo's ethics and conflicts of interest.

Look up "unethical" in the dictionary, and you'll probably see a photo of Stumbo. (He also gets pictured in entries for "adulterer" and "deadbeat dad" and "heavy drinker.") A story in today's Herald-Leader, written by Democrat apologist John Cheves of all people, recounts many of Stumbo's conflicts of interest; the types of so-called ethical lapses Beliles is concerned about.

For the most part, Stumbo got a pass on his behavior as the state's attorney general. There was no outrage in the press over his hypocritical behavior in prosecuting Fletcher administration officials for the same type of behavior in which he engaged as a legislator during the Patton administration. No one uttered a word when the husband of one of the grand jurors in the personnel investigation showed up on the AG's office payroll.

But with hard feelings still bubbling under the surface among Democrats concerning Stumbo's challenge to and defeat of Jody Richards as House speaker, Stumbo can expect more scrutiny.

After all, when it's Republican vs. Democrat, the press is naturally going to pimp the D's and attack the R's. But when it's an internal Democrat fight, that makes good copy.

We still aren't fans of Beliles and Common Cause, but we think they're onto something here. Keep the pressure up on the deadbeat dad from Prestonsburg. He has too many skeletons in his closet and it's time a few of them were dusted off for public viewing.

Moral of the story: Don't count on Ky. Dems to do the right thing

2009-01-07T21:21:00.002-05:00

In some ways, it's absolutely astonishing that Democrats in the Kentucky House of Representatives could elect such a reprehensible creature as Greg Stumbo to be their leader.

But for the most part, it's par for the course. We're not sure why we ever had any faith whatsoever that they would do the right thing, the decent thing, the honorable thing.

Greg Stumbo is morally unfit to be a leader in this state. He's a deadbeat dad, an adulterer, is lucky not to have a DUI conviction on his record and is, we highly suspect based on numerous reports and first-hand knowledge gleaned over the years, a drunkard. He was up to his eyeballs in the BOPTROT scandal and the related Entertainment Outings, Ltd. affair that starred Legislative Research Commission high-roller Kent Downey. After his term as attorney general ended, he finagled his way back into his old House seat in ways that still have not come to light.

And what of his term as AG? He abused the power of his office for pure partisan politics, to bring down the first Republican governor Kentucky had elected in a generation. He led the prosecution of Ernie Fletcher and members of his staff for acts that Stumbo himself had committed as a legislator. Does anyone remember those letters of recommendation, written on House letterhead and signed by Stumbo, that he prepared during the Patton administration?

Let it be clear, we have no great love for Jody Richards, the longtime speaker Stumbo dethroned. We consider Richards to have been an obstructionist and an obstacle for Fletcher during the legislative sessions held in his four years. Yet we acknowledge the hard fact that the Dems have a majority in the House and thus get to elect the leader. We just felt that Richards was a good and decent and honest and moral man, and Stumbo has none of those attributes.

Stumbo reportedly won by three votes, but we'll probably never know which legislators cast their vote on the side of decency and morality, and which ones voted for an adulterer and a deadbeat dad.

We're already hearing talk that Stumbo's rise to power in the House may galvanize Republicans and those Democrats who oppose him and result in the election of a Republican governor in 2011. Maybe so, but we look out on the field of possible (or, to put it another way, most frequently mentioned) candidates and are less than enthused. We see no rising stars in the ranks of Kentucky Republicans who have paid their dues and served their party loyally who might be ready for the job.

The only bright spot in all this will be watching Senate President David Williams clean Stumbo's clock when the two chamber leaders negotiate on legislation. Republicans owe Stumbo a beatdown for what he did to Fletcher, and Williams was, on balance, a defender of the governor although he wasn't as vociferous as we'd have liked. (But compared to Mitch McConnell, any defense of Fletcher looks like outspoken advocacy). Still, this is the chance for Republicans to get revenge on Stumbo by killing his pet legislation and projects.

Stumbo is an advocate of casino gambling, Williams is steadfastly opposed. Stumbo has advocated tax increases in the past, such as a bottle bill and a fast-food wrapper tax, and Williams maintains his resistance to tax hikes. If Democrats really chose Stumbo because they think he'll work better with Williams, they may be in for a very rude awakening.

We can't help but be disappointed that the majority of House Democrats lacked the moral clarity to vote against someone of Stumbo's character. But we really aren't surprised. Democrats have never come down on the side of righteousness. Why else would they continue to support legalized abortion, yet oppose the death penalty? We just guess we weren't ready for the harsh slap of reality to our faces.

But now we know for certain. When given the opportunity to do the right thing, Kentucky Democrats will instead do the wrong thing. The majority of House members have embraced a leader with no character and no class, and that decision will eventually reflect upon all of them.

Another example of Beshear's cluelessness: KYTC's SAFE Patrol being phased out

2008-12-08T20:18:00.003-05:00

What happens when the state institutes a new program that garners rave reviews from Kentuckians and gets national recognition?

If it's an idea hatched in a Republican administration, it gets axed when the Democrats take back over.

Take, for instance, the Safety Assistance for Freeway Emergencies (SAFE) Patrol, established in the Transportation Cabinet two years ago during the administration of Ernie Fletcher.

In October, the program garnered kudos from the Intelligent Transportation Society of America.

In December, word has it, the state is phasing out the program.

We hear that Transportation has sold several of the custom trucks driven by the SAFE Patrol operators, and that a number of the drivers have either been fired, or have not been replaced if they quit.

The SAFE Patrol trucks operate on Kentucky's interstates, parkways and major four-lane roads, and can provide assistance to stranded motorists and assist with traffic control at accidents. Motorists who've used this program rave about the SAFE Patrol and the service provided. It's been universally hailed as a great state government service.

So what does the Beshear administration do? They make plans to end or severely curtail the service.

We've been critical of Joe Prather, Transportation secretary, and his upper management staff, and this is just another reason to call them on the carpet. They've butchered the state's road construction program, eliminated long-promised projects and proposed major cutbacks to others, and now they're axing a highly successful public service.

We don't want to think that this is being done because the SAFE Patrol was created under the tutelage of Fletcher and Bill Nighbert, but it's a logical conclusion. Prather and his deputy hacks have tried to reverse much of the progress made during the previous four years, from things as simple as scrapping a new cabinet logo in favor of an old one to vindictive acts such as cutting projects in the home counties of Republican leaders.

The SAFE Patrol is an example of a program that works. If the state cuts or messes with it, that'll be even more proof that this administration is run by idiots. And the saddest part is, we have three more years of these clueless boobs running the state.

Beshear's empty gesture

2008-12-08T20:05:00.003-05:00

What more could we do but laugh at the press release, issued late this afternoon, that Gov. Beshear and Lt. Gov. Mongiardo, along with a handful of staff members, are taking a 10 percent pay cut for next year?

When you can count the number of people making such a "sacrifice" on both hands and still have fingers left, you can certainly use one of those fingers to point to a completely hollow and meaningless gesture, and another finger to salute the degree of fiscal mismanagement Beshear has shown during his first term in office.

There's nothing great, grand and glorious in this gesture. This is nothing more than a PR stunt and will do nothing to help alleviate the budget shortfall that Beshear keeps predicting.

If he really wanted to do something, he would order an immediate, across-the-board 20 percent pay cut for all non-merit employees above a certain rank or a designated pay scale. He should exempt some of the youngsters in the Governor's Office and some of the non-merit secretaries, who barely scrape by on their state salaries as it is, but he should immediately apply the pay cut to cabinet secretaries, department commissioners, division directors, executive directors, their assistants -- in short, anyone who's in a high-ranking management or advisory position upon appointment by and serving at the pleasure of the governor.

From here it appears that most of Beshear's appointments are overpaid based on their job performances this far into his term. We can't think of a single cabinet secretary, for instance, who's worth more than about $75,000, based on the work product they've produced. And if Jonathan Miller and Joe Prather had to pay the state to work, they'd still be bad hires.

People with discerning noses for news will be able to figure out what's stinking in this meaningless gesture pretty quickly. It'll be recognized for the cheap publicity grab that it is. But if Beshear wants to really be serious about making a statement, he'll move quickly to cut salaries for his appointees and by more than a measly 10 percent. Otherwise it's just more governing by press release, which is about all Beshear and his incompetent bunch can do.

"Valeria from Lexington, Ky."

2008-11-26T00:58:00.003-05:00

Shortly before the 5 p.m. EST hour on Tuesday, Sean Hannity took a call on his radio show from a woman who identified herself as "Valeria from Lexington, Ky." She was very hostile and argumentative toward Hannity, and basically was angry at him for doing something on one-tenth the scale of what liberals have been doing to President Bush and conservatives for the past eight years.

Valeria from Lexington sounded suspiciously like Valeria Cummings, former WKYT-TV reporter and anchor and now one of the liars and spinners employed by the public relations department of the Beshear administration, specifically Finance Secretary Jonathan Miller.

If so, let's hope that Valeria Cummings doesn't talk to Kentucky reporters the same way that Valeria from Lexington talked to Hannity.

It's funny to watch the leftists squirm when Hannity and other conservative commentators point out truisms about B. Hussein Obama, yet they continue to exhibit symptoms of Bush Derangement Syndrome right up until Bush's term comes to an end in a couple of months. Haranguing Hannity for telling the truth about Obama and his relationship with terrorists and radicals and anti-American racists, while at the same time being part of the "Bush lied and people died" crowd, just won't cut it.

If anyone can confirm that Hannity's caller was indeed Valeria Cummings, please let us know. We'll immediately call on Miller to fire her for being ignorant and a liar.

Riding the Santa Train: Something our lead blogger wants to do before he dies

2008-11-21T22:30:00.003-05:00

Although we are anonymous bloggers, we've never made a secret of that fact that we are, indeed, a "we." Yes, we use the "editorial we" here but this blog is a collaborative effort and represents private sector employees, state employees, teachers, news reporters, stay-at-home housewives, religious folks, retirees, veterans, and others who fit into too many categories to catalog.

However, we do have one chief writer who gathers the consensus of the collaborators and does most of the posting here. He's a male and there are a few things he wants to do before he dies.

High on his list is to ride the Santa Train, which makes its annual run tomorrow from Pikeville to Kingsport, Tenn.

Started years ago by the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce to promote the city as a Christmas shopping destination, the Santa Train makes several stops in Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee along its route. Presents will be handed out to hundreds of children, many of whom may not get much more for the holiday given the area's economic situation.

With the advent of modern highway systems, Kingsport is only about a 90-minute drive from Pikeville (much closer than Lexington, Ashland-Huntington and Charleston). Our chief writer has made the drive along US Route 23 in southwestern Virginia dozens of times during all four seasons and he never ceases to be amazed at how scenic the area is. He can only imagine what the ride would be like along the rail line, especially with all the stops in the small towns along the route.

This year, country singer Kathy Mattea is riding the train. She's a native of West Virginia, not too far from Pikeville as the crow flies. One of us is quite envious of what she'll be doing tomorrow and wishes he could join her. Perhaps someday he'll attempt to get a press pass as a freelance writer (he is otherwise employed) and ride along.

Those who want to be critical of the business community need to step back and take a look. Yes, the Santa Train promotes Kingsport retailers, but it also spreads Christmas cheer and holiday goodwill to many. Kudos to them for making so many people happy for so many years.

(And if anyone associated with the Santa Train happens to read this and wants to offer a press pass for future years, our e-mail address is ky_pac2@yahoo.com and we will gladly accept an invitation to ride along next or any other year).

Rumored KDP changes: Good for Dems or blessing in disguise for RPK?

2008-11-21T21:49:00.004-05:00

We admit to not being fans of Jacob Payne at Page One Kentucky. We don't like the way he deletes comments, bans commenters and tries to out anonymous posters when they challenge his opinions or assertions or voice disagreement with him. And we also don't agree with his sexual politics, which way too often rise to front and center on his blog.

But we will begrudgingly give him credit for breaking some stories that the old-fashioned media didn't get around to until later. (Hey, we've done the same thing yet no one seems to care. Perhaps that's because the stories we present as exclusives tend to be those embarrassing tales about Democrats that their protectors in the old-fashioned press don't want to cover. Where else, for instance, have you read the names of any of the members of the special grand jury in the personnel investigation besides here? But that's a lament for another day).

One of the things Payne's been reporting for several weeks now is that during tomorrow's state Democrat committee meeting, Jennifer Moore will be ousted as state party chair and other leaders will be shown the door as well. (However, statements by Beshear administration insiders and party officials in the last few days contradict that prediction).

Payne has also reported that the KDP will hire a professional executive director and the successful candidate will be found in a nationwide search and probably not be a Kentuckian.

Democrats are upset that B. Hussein Obama did not carry Kentucky, they failed to oust Sen. Mitch McConnell, and they made no headway in picking up congressional and state legislature seats. They blame the party leadership and think a change at the top is necessary.

While Payne and others of like mind may think an outsider as executive director might be just what the KDP needs, the reality is that such a move is likely to backfire and play into the hands of Kentucky Republicans, who are pleased to have held their own in this fall's elections and are looking forward to 2010 and beyond.

The last thing Kentucky's Democrat apparatus needs to do is shift further to the left. Should this happen, Kentucky Republicans stand to make great gains.

The reason John McCain beat Obama in Kentucky is not because Kentuckians are racists, as Payne proclaims at every opportunity while banning posters to his blog who claim otherwise. The reason is that Kentucky Democrats are much more conservative than Democrats in places such as New York, California and Massachusetts, both socially and fiscally, and Obama was too liberal for them.

People like Payne, Joe Sonka at Barefoot and Progressive, and BluegrassRoots posters like "Yellow Dog" and "RDemocrat" and "SarahG" are not representative of Kentuckians at large. (Not to mention the whole bunch at Ditch Mitch.) If an outside administrator is imported to run the KDP, no doubt people like those just mentioned will press him or her to move the party leftward.

That would be a disaster for the KDP and a blessing for the RPK, who would most certainly make welcome those offended and disgusted by the liberal shift. Hopefully, in the coming year when there are no elections on the calendar, the RPK will be making a major push to convince conservative Democrats to leave the party that doesn't espouse their beliefs and join the Republicans.

A campaign to move the KDP in that direction would be a blessing for Republican recruitment effort.

Maybe Jennifer Moore is incompetent. We don't know. We tend to think that being a Democrat is both a sign of ignorance or stupidity (or both) and a character flaw on top of that. But if Democrats want to alienate their own, they're better off angering people like Payne and Sonka and the pseudonymic out-of-touch libs at BGR than the vast majority of registered Democrats. Kentucky isn't California, and Louisville isn't San Francisco. That should be Lesson One for the KDP hierarchy going forward.

A KDP leader brought in from out of state? Please, don't throw us Republicans in that briar patch!

Dear Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy

2008-11-20T12:52:00.001-05:00

Dear DPA,

Marco Chapman has decided he wants to die for his crimes. He has rejected your help and your legal assistance. He doesn't want it; he wants you to stop interfering with his decision. He has been judged to be competent to make his own decisions.

So please quit wasting state taxpayer dollars filling appeals on his behalf that he doesn't want. Respect his wishes in this time of state budget shortfalls and just let him die.

Sincerely,

Kentucky Taxpayers

House Dems may get visit from the ghost of Dana Stephenson

2008-11-19T22:27:00.002-05:00

If you follow either the old-fashioned media or blogs from both sides, you are probably familiar with the situation concerning a Kentucky House of Representatives race in Hardin County. The controversy stems from a voting machine malfunction and how it was dealt with by precinct officials (two from each party) and by the Democratic county clerk.

In the 26th District, incumbent Republican Tim Moore defeated challenger Mike Weaver, who was trying to win back a seat in the House after unsuccessfully running for Congress two years ago. The election was close, but Moore prevailed. However, due to the voting machine problem, there's a very real threat that an attempt will be made to throw out all of the votes cast in the precinct in question. That would tip the election in Weaver's favor.

Contested elections for General Assembly seats are decided by the chamber involved. It's being anticipated that if the results of the 26th District race are certified as they stand, the election of the Republican Moore will be challenged in the House, where the Democrat majority would most likely rule in Weaver's favor. In other words, the fix is in and the Democrats prove once again that they find irresistible the temptation to steal an election.

But not so fast. Remember the last time the possibility of a contested election being decided in a chamber of the legislature was being discussed?

In a state Senate race a few years ago, Republican Dana Stephenson (daughter of Republican State Sen. Dan Seum) had her eligibility challenged due to residency issues. Senate President David Williams stated at the time that the Senate could make whatever decision it wished in the matter, regardless of what a court said about her eligibility.

That didn't last long. A court ruled Stephenson did not meet residency requirements and rather than challenge that decision all the way to the state Supreme Court, contest it in the Senate, or give a full vetting to the concept of "dual residency," she dropped her challenged, bowed out gracefully, and a special election was held.

(It should be noted that the lawyer for challenger Virginia Woodward, a young woman named Jennifer Moore, parlayed that court victory into winning the chairmanship of the Kentucky Democratic Party).

So in the end it was a court, not the Senate, that ended up deciding how that election turned out.

Could the same scenario play out in the 26th District House race? Don't be surprised if it does. And also don't be surprised if the Democrats' attempt to steal a win after the final horn has sounded gets shut down by the courts, no matter what House Speaker Jody Richards and the House Democrats attempt.

The court's decision held sway in the Stephenson Senate matter, no reason to think it wouldn't do the same in the Moore/Weaver matchup.

Democrats: The party of censors, nationally and in Kentucky

2008-11-10T13:09:00.003-05:00

Republicans and conservatives get a bad rap for being censors.

It's true that many conservatives would like to limit the availability of pornography that degrades women and animalizes sex, but doing something to benefit society at large by crusading against something that has no valid artistic or editorial content and is designed to appeal only to prurient interests, and does nothing to advance the discussion of ideas, is not necessarily a bad thing.

During the presidential campaign, Democrats tried to make an issue of censorship by falsely accusing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of trying to ban books in her local library when she was mayor of Wasilla. When the news came out that some of the books she was accused of allegedly trying to ban hadn't even been published when she was mayor, that tactic died.

But for all their allegations against conservatives and Republicans, the truth is that Democrats and liberals are the true censors when it comes to political speech and the free and open exchange of ideas.

On the national level, Democrats are talking about trying to censor some of their harshest critics by re-instituting the Fairness Doctrine, which governs broadcast content. Most of the print media in this country are in the tank for liberals and have little bad to say against the current congressional leadership or the incoming president, but radio leans much more to the right. The Democrats would love to effectively censor folks like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity by requiring stations to air an equal amount of liberal programming. Trouble is, liberal radio draws few listeners and even fewer sponsors. It's a money-losing proposition. Rather than run unprofitable programming under a government mandate, radio stations would instead opt to drop the highly profitable conservative talk shows in favor of another profitable format.

We're seeing this same kind of censorship, if you want to call it that, in Kentucky. A couple of this state's high-profile liberal blogs are restricting posts.

We first noticed it on "Barefoot and Progressive," run by "Media Czech" (who in reality is Joe Sonka, someone we consider to be an absolute idiot and foul-mouthed buffoon). A number of comments have been deleted in the past few days for no ascertainable reason.

And then, a reader and frequent source e-mailed us to tell us that he'd been put on "moderated" status and his posts were being rejected by Jacob Payne of Page One Kentucky, simply because the reader dared to disagree with Payne's notion that the only reason Kentucky went for John McCain over B. Hussein Obama was because Kentuckians are racists. The reader, who posts anonymously as "Republican gadfly" on Page One but whose identity is known to us, was threatened with outing for challenging Payne.

So much for the idea that liberals and Democrats are champions of free speech and the open and unfettered discussion of principles and ideas, and that conservatives are censors. (Yes, we know that the term "censorship" refers to government suppression of speech, and that moderation on a blog and censorship are not the same things, but in this case the intent is the same in both instances). Most of the conservative blogs in Kentucky do allow a free and open discussion (the only thing we delete is profanity or patently untrue statements) and we find it funny that the liberals, who falsely accused the GOP vice presidential candidate of trying to ban books in her local library, are actively silencing opposing voices.

So, Joe Sonka and Jacob Payne, we're calling you out. Are you going to allow a discussion of the issues of the day on your blogs, or are they only going to be one-sided propaganda pages? If the latter, then we never want to hear another peep out of either of you next time conservatives complain about too much sex and violence on TV.

Another positive thing from the '08 election

2008-11-05T13:46:00.001-05:00

As much as we're down on Mitch McConnell, his re-election yesterday should shut up the foul-mouthed idiots at Ditch Mitch.

And that would be a very good thing, indeed.

REPRISE: EXCLUSIVE: Obama can thank a Kentuckian for his viability as a presidential candidate

2008-11-05T09:55:00.000-05:00

If Barack Obama is elected president, Kentucky will have played a direct role in that historic election.

Even if Hillary Clinton wins this month's Democrat primary; even if John McCain wins Kentucky this fall and gets our state's electoral votes, Kentucky will have had a direct role in Obama's rise to the presidency.

For if not for the allegations made by a Kentuckian in an Illinois divorce case, Obama might never have been elected to the U.S. Senate and thus be in a position to run for the presidency.

Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004 and is just past the midway point of his first term. Prior to that he had been a state legislator in Illinois.

During the 2004 election, Obama was originally pitted against Republican opponent Jack Ryan. However, Ryan dropped out of the race after allegations made against him by his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, in their divorce case were made public against the wishes of both parties and despite a previous court order sealing them.

Jeri Ryan was an Army brat, born in Germany, whose family eventually settled in McCracken County. She graduated from Lone Oak High School near Paducah and went to Northwestern University in Illinois. Her marriage to Jack Ryan lasted only a few years, and when they divorced she made some salacious allegations against him. Those divorce records were sealed at the request of both Ryans and at the order of a judge.

Those divorce records became a point of contention in the Ryan-Obama Senate race, and a judge eventually ordered them released over the objections of Jeri and Jack Ryan and contrary to the initial judge's order sealing them. The divorce records proved embarrassing to Jack Ryan, who dropped out of the Senate race amidst pressure from the Illinois GOP apparatus. The Illinois party eventually recruited Alan Keyes to move there and take Ryan's place on the ballot, and Keyes was later trounced by Obama in the general election.

If not for Jeri Ryan's explosive (and some say possibly untrue) allegations against her ex-husband in their divorce case, and if those records had remain sealed as the Ryans had wished, then Barack Obama may never have been elected to the United States Senate. He would have remained, in the words of talk show host and Landmark Legal Foundation guru Mark Levin, "a back-bencher in the Illinois state legislature" and would not have the stature of a U.S. senator to be a viable presidential candidate.

So, no matter how Kentucky votes in the primary or general elections, if Obama is elected president, then the state -- or at least someone from here -- will have played a major role in that landmark event.

If Obama wins, he owes Lone Oak High graduate Jeri Ryan big-time.

Election 2008 post-mortem

2008-11-05T09:37:00.003-05:00

Some thoughts, in no random order, about yesterday's election.

1.) There isn't enough space here to detail all the ways the Jefferson County Republicans screwed up the 3rd District congressional race. If the GOP wanted to oust John Yarmuth after one term, that effort should have began the day after the 2006 election. Instead, the Republicans ended up with a tainted candidate who wasted valuable time and money in her unsuccessful primary challenge against her party's incumbent governor last year, which alienated a number of Republicans. If Anne Northup wanted to run for her old seat this year, she should have put all her efforts into it from the start, instead of running for governor last year. Now Yarmuth is back for a second term and will become even more entrenched in the seat. Republican in Louisville need to start NOW on a strategy to oust him. Yarmuth can be beaten in 2010, especially since we predict a Republican backlash to the Obama presidency, but if he gets a third term, the seat will likely be his as long as he wants it. That's not a good thing for Louisville or Kentucky.

2.) Will Mitch McConnell be more humble now that he eked out his re-election victory over Bruce Lunsford? McConnell's race was closer than it should have been in large part because of his abandonment of Gov. Ernie Fletcher and the subsequent alienation of Fletcher's loyalists. Jim Bunning, who actually endorsed one of Fletcher's opponents in the 2007 primary, will have the same problem if he decides to run for re-election, and so far he gives all indications that he will.

3.) Hopefully Kentucky will have seen the last of that Purchase area nutcase, Heather Ryan. She needs to crawl back into whatever hole she came out of and just shut up.

4.) Is Bruce Lunsford's political career over? Is Anne Northup's?

5.) The strength of John McCain's victory over B. Hussein Obama in Kentucky proves that this state still values patriotism, service and experience, and isn't susceptible to a smooth-talking liberal snake oil salesman. But we shouldn't forget about a Kentuckian's role in putting Obama in the position to run for president in the first place. (We'll reprise that in a separate post). Kentuckians resisted the fad to vote for Obama and instead voted with their minds instead of with their emotions.

6.) Kathy Stein is going to be in for a rude awakening when she gets to the state Senate. It'll be joyous to watch David Williams put her in her place.

7.) Have we finally, and mercifully, put an end to the "Mitch is Gay" campaign tactic of the left? The Democrats finally went public with what had been a whisper campaign since 1984, and the tactic didn't work.

8.) On a national scale, have the Republicans found their new champion in Sarah Palin? The Alaska governor is a reformer, she's charismatic, and she appeals to the party base because she's one of us. The conservative elite intelligentsia doesn't quite know what to do with her, but the rank and file love her. We'll eagerly support a Palin candidacy in 2012 and we would be absolutely giddy over a Sarah Palin/Bobby Jindal ticket in four years. We think that team could make Obama a one-termer.

What are your random thoughts on the election?

Anti-McConnell Democrats finally cross the line

2008-11-01T00:46:00.002-04:00

PageOne Kentucky is reporting that an anonymous person or group has prepared flyers making an allegation that U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell was discharged from the Army for being gay.

Ever since 1984, when McConnell first won his Senate seat by ousting incumbent Democrat Dee Huddleston, his opposition has spread the rumor that McConnell is a homosexual. The whisper campaign has taken flight every time McConnell has been up for re-election, no doubt because no one would ever mistake Kentucky's senior senator for John Wayne or Clint Eastwood or whatever other symbol of masculinity you want to offer up.

This is the first time, however, that the rumor has been put in print and plans made to publicly distribute it.

It's probably a good thing that the producer(s) of this flyer is/are anonymous, because the allegations here open him/her/them up to a libel suit. Should the identity of the flyer's publisher(s) become known, McConnell would have no trouble meeting the standard for a public figure to bring a libel suit. There's definitely malice here, and information made public to date indicates McConnell was honorably discharged for an eyesight problem, making the accusation in the flyer false.

We don't pretend to be fans of McConnell anymore. We think policy-wise he's been a good senator for Kentucky, and his leadership status is good for Kentucky, but he's forevermore on our "crap list" because of his shameful abandonment of Ernie Fletcher when the Democrats were in full attack mode during Fletcher's term as governor. However, we are fans of the truth and we don't think it's right for hurtful personal lies to be so blatantly injected into the campaign.

Not that we believe McConnell is gay, but we find the tactic of involuntarily "outing" folks who want to keep their sexual preference a secret to be very distasteful. And we especially don't like blatant lies to be anonymously passed along to social conservatives who make up much of McConnell's base.

We hope McConnell discovers the identity of the lowlife(s) responsible for this, and he/she/they lose everything they own in a libel judgment. It would serve them right for this particular excursion into gutter politics.

This is the thanks he gets? Stumbo turns on McConnell after Mitch's big favor to him

2008-10-26T21:17:00.002-04:00

When former Attorney General Greg Stumbo sought to take down Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher, no one aided Stumbo more in his quest than Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was once Fletcher's political mentor.

By staying silent and not speaking out about Stumbo's politically-motivated prosecution of his protege, McConnell gave Stumbo confidence and strength. In fact, McConnell may have saved Stumbo's political career by not using his influence with the U.S. Attorney's office to have Stumbo's role in the Johnny Ray Turner-Ross Harris scandal (and he had a key role, we hear) further investigated. We hear that Stumbo was under close scrutiny for his role in vote buying and other fraudulent activity in southeastern Kentucky. We're sure that all it would have taken to have him thoroughly investigated and possibly indicted would have been a phone call from the GOP leader of the U.S. Senate to the federal prosecutor, and Stumbo may have been in deep, deep trouble.

But for whatever reasons -- reasons that obviously are coming back to haunt McConnell as he fights for his political life this year -- the senior senator from the Bluegrass State chose not to get involved. He never made any statements in support of his party's first Republican governor in three decades -- a man he had tirelessly worked to get elected in 2003 -- and he never targeted Stumbo for any criticism or retribution.

McConnell's dishonorable acts during the hiring investigation emboldened Stumbo and helped the deadbeat dad attorney general kill Fletcher's re-election chances. Stumbo owes McConnell a debt of gratitude for his help in his effort to bring down Fletcher.

So, how does Stumbo pay McConnell back? He lashes out at McConnell because the senator had a short-lived military career.

Stumbo's comments last week while stumping for Democrat challenger Bruce Lunsford, on whose ticket Stumbo ran for lieutenant governor last year, were yet another thinly veiled attack on McConnell's sexuality. Democrats have long whispered vile rumors about McConnell's discharge from the Army, and the "Mitch is Gay" claim has been around since McConnell unseated Dee Huddleston for the Senate seat in 1984.

While there's nothing new about the "Mitch is Gay" attacks, we find it very odd that such claims would be coming from Stumbo. After all, Stumbo made himself a hero among Kentucky Democrats by bringing down a Republican governor, and he couldn't have done it without McConnell's help.

"Yellow Dog" has dog dung for brains

2008-10-21T22:37:00.002-04:00

The contributors to Bluegrass Roots continue to show that they are among the most ignorant people in the Commonwealth when it comes to contributing to political discourse.

A few weeks ago we ripped "RDemocrat" a new one for claiming that Ernie Fletcher would not have declared an emergency to deal with gas price gouging when Hurricane Ike hit Texas, when in fact Fletcher did exactly that when Katrina struck Louisiana three years earlier.

Now the contributor there who shows his ignorance is "Yellow Dog," who conclusively proves he has dog poop for brains by claiming there's no such thing as voter fraud.

To quote one of our favorite philosophers, Bugs Bunny, what a maroon.

Uhh, Yellow Dog, haven't you ever heard of vote buying? Voter fraud is a time-honored tradition in Kentucky, especially east of I-75. One of your party's sitting state senators stands guilty of voter-fraud related offenses. And not too long ago, about half of Bath County was nailed for voter fraud.

You Democrats really need to do your homework before you go shooting off your mouths, lest you prove to everyone just how dumb you are.

On second thought, never mind us. Every time you say something stupid or just plain wrong (or in this case, both), it just helps our cause that much more.

McConnell sinks to Ben Chandler's level

2008-10-14T23:16:00.003-04:00

The dirtiest trick we've ever seen in Kentucky political advertising came in the 2003 Democrat gubernatorial primary, when with less than a week to go in the election, Ben Chandler launched this attack ad against Bruce Lunsford:

You know the rest of the story. Lunsford, having no time to produce an ad to refute the ridiculous charges that he personally was responsible for the woman's abuse, dropped out of the race and endorsed Jody Richards. Richards came within a whisker of beating Chandler. Lunsford, still angry over Chandler's dirty trick, endorsed Republican Ernie Fletcher in the general election, which was won by Fletcher.

We always felt that instead of dropping out and endorsing RIchards, Lunsford should have stayed in the race and instead punched Chandler's lights out the next time the two of them came face to face. Had Chandler done that to any of us, we'd probably have an assault charge on our record now because we wouldn't have let Chandler skate with anything less than a bloody nose, a black eye and possibly a couple of knocked-out teeth.

Given that we consider the 2003 Chandler ad personally blaming Lunsford for what happened in one of his Vencor nursing homes to have been seriously below the belt, we are disappointed to see that Mitch McConnell is doing basically the same thing, trying to tie Lunsford personally to deficiencies in the Valor health care clinic for veterans.

While we've always admired McConnell's tenacity and instincts in campaigning, we think his latest ads concerning Valor and Lunsford are along the same lines of the 2003 Chandler ad we detested for its nastiness.

Shame on you, Mitch McConnell. We expect you to fight tough, but we also expect you to fight fair. Pulling one of Ben Chandler's dirty tricks from 2003 doesn't win you any respect. These ads are dishonorable, but then again we've come to expect that from you. You lost all sense of honor when you abandoned your political protege to Greg Stumbo's wolves three years ago.

Bruce Lunsford, you'll get a pass from us if you decide to slug McConnell in the snout for this. We won't mind if you do to him what you should have done to Ben Chandler.

A poll we'd like to see

2008-10-09T13:42:00.002-04:00

We would like to see voters who are likely to or leaning toward voting for the Republican presidential ticket polled on the following question:

Why are you voting for the McCain/Pain presidential ticket?

1. Voting for John McCain

2. Voting for Sarah Palin

3. Voting against B. Hussein Obama

We suspect it would be a close race for first between numbers 2 and 3 above, with number 1 finishing a distant third.

Geology gives Gore cover for outrageous coal comments

2008-09-29T14:32:00.002-04:00

It's hard to tell when you cross into Tennessee from Virginia or Kentucky. The terrain looks the same; in fact you might not know you were crossing a state line without signage indicating so.

But where geography is similar, geology is vastly different. Kentucky and Virginia (and West Virginia and Pennsylvania, too) have been blessed with an abundance of a natural resource called coal. God has given this area of the country a tool by which people can earn decent livings, communities can prosper, and millions of his children can have creature comforts made possible by the burning of coal and the production of electricity.

Tennessee doesn't have the coal reserves of its neighbors to the north and sister states to the northeast. Families and communities in the Volunteer State don't depend on coal mining like they do elsewhere.

Because coal is such an insignificant part of Tennessee's economy, that gives former Vice President and Tennessee Sen. Al Gore plenty of cover with which to attack coal and coal mining in the name of cutting atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Gore's outrageous comments about how America must immediately cease burning coal for heating and electricity production may play well in the liberal enclaves where he utters them, but we think it's funny that Gore - and his ideological brother in arms Joe Biden -- won't come to the coalfields to pontificate on the evils of coal.

If Gore feels so strongly about this, he needs to come to places like Pikeville or Norton or Beckley and make those statements. Biden should campaign on that issue for his ticket with B. Hussein Obama in Hazard or Grundy or Logan and see how many votes he wins.

Coal feeds, clothes and educates people in the mountains. It provides them homes and cars and material goods. It pays for individual medical care and public works projects. In short, it fuels much of the economic activity in an impoverished part of the world. We shudder to think what the Central Appalachians would be like, from an economic standpoint, without the jobs and the income and the economic stimulus provided by coal mining.

Coal also allows all Kentuckians, not just those in the mountains, to enjoy some of the lowest electricity rates in the country. That's no small matter in this day and age of rising energy prices.

If Gore hailed from a coal-rich state, we seriously doubt if he'd be making his asinine comments.

And we can't let this commentary on Gore pass without chiding those liberal Kentucky flatlanders who continually rail against the coal mining industry. We wonder what they have against mountain folks that they want their economic well-being to suffer so. Perhaps these flatlanders don't realize just how important eastern Kentucky is to the economy of the Bluegrass region, and how Lexington's economy would dry up without coal money being spent in Fayette County.

In the name of saving us, liberals are actually trying to destroy us and our way of life. Take the coal industry out of Appalachia, and how many more anti-poverty programs would the left have to institute to combat the resulting economic collapse? We shudder to think of it. But if they have their way, it's coming, and sooner rather than later.

Proof that the Beshear administration is a bunch of liars and vengeful Democrat hacks

2008-09-22T08:44:00.003-04:00

For months now, as Gov. Steve Beshear and longtime Democrat hack turned Transportation Secretary Joe Prather have whined and cried about the budget, they have stated over and over again that no projects have been cut.

Even though we knew that was a total and complete lie, we heard the current administration repeat that line over and over again, and even watched an initiative called "Practical Solutions" be adopted that virtually guarantees reductions in what longtime planned projects haven't been axed from the six-year road plan.

But now comes word that the Beshear administration actually has cut a project. This project is for the reconstruction of KY 61 in Adair County, and would actually link two segments of the highway that have already been rebuilt or relocated.

We don't think it's a coincidence that this project is in a Republican county.

We also don't think it's a coincidence that KY 61 in Adair County leads from Columbia to Burkesville, home of Republican State Sen. President David Williams. In fact, we see this particular project cancellation as a direct slap in the face to Williams, who's had the audacity to stand up to Beshear and his band of hacks and liars.

This is twice now that Beshear and Prather have acted in a petty manner toward Williams, The first time, they cut back a project intended to widen and straighten a very deadly segment of highway in Cumberland County. (We had some thoughts on that decision as well.) Now, they're leaving unfinished a vital part of the highway system that links Cumberland County to the rest of the state.

Beshear and Prather are playing politics with the economic well-being and driving safety of Kentuckians. At least now they and their spin doctors won't be able to claim that no projects have been cut. And we can't wait to see how Sen. Williams will strike back.

Calling BS on bluegrassroots.org and "RDemocrat"

2008-09-12T23:49:00.003-04:00

Apparently Democrats can't help but to tell lies. It must be in their nature.

Take, for instance, a post earlier today on BluegrassRoots by a contributor who calls himself "RDemocrat." We've seen enough of this guy's posts over the years on BGR and other forums to know that he'd eat a mile of any Democrat's feces just to get a chance to kiss where it came from.

This particular line in his post heaping hosannas all over Gov. Beshear for his emergency declaration that triggered the gas price gouging law's enforcement jumped out at us as one of the most blatant lies ever told by a Democrat (and that's saying something):

"Our former Republican Governor would not have dreamed of such a measure."

The fact is that Ernie Fletcher issued a similar declaration as soon as he possibly could after Hurricane Katrina caused a jump in gas prices to then-record levels in 2005. That declaration was in effect for quite some time after Katrina, was based on the 2004 law, and resulted in a lawsuit against Marathon filed by Deadbeat Dad and former Attorney General Greg Stumbo. (Go research Kentucky Progress for details).

So, "RDemocrat," you are a liar. Go stand in line with the rest of your like-minded fools to await your prize.

Steve Beshear: A day late and a dollar a gallon short

2008-09-12T13:44:00.002-04:00

Earlier today, Gov. Beshear issued an emergency declaration invoking Kentucky's price-gouging laws against excessive gasoline prices -- AFTER the price per gallon had risen to near-record levels as Hurricane Ike approaches the Gulf Coast.

Good timing there, Steve, especially since we've heard reports of gas nearing $5 per gallon in some Kentucky locales.

Rumors were rampant across the state Thursday night that a huge jump in gas prices was imminent the next day. Yet Beshear waited until midday on Friday, when prices had already spiked, before he took action.

Had Beshear had any foresight, he would have issued the declaration on Thursday evening, which might have helped prevent today's huge increase.

As it is, we don't expect state officials to do anything even if gas continues to rise. We are, in general, free-market devotees but we've never believed gas prices follow free-market principles. For once we'd like to see our state leaders grow a set of testicles and issue an executive order freezing prices, or better yet, repealing them to yesterday's levels.

With his emergency declaration, Beshear can act concerned but in reality he hasn't done anything that will matter to the average Kentucky gasoline consumer.

Some friendly advice for Bill Nighbert

2008-09-12T10:25:00.003-04:00

We have no doubts that Bill Nighbert, the beleaguered former Kentucky Transportation Cabinet secretary, is well-served by his legal counsel, Howard Mann of Corbin.

However, we'd like to offer Mr. Nighbert, whom we are fond of personally and professionally, some advice to maximize his possibility for vindication.

1.) Mr. Mann should move for a severance of the cases. Nighbert should not be tried with Leonard Lawson, Brian Billings, or anyone else who may be indicted in the future in connection with this case.

2.) Mann should move to exercise his client's right to a speedy trial. The indictment of Nighbert broke no new ground and offered no proof of the assertions made weeks earlier in a leaked affidavit that Nighbert's post-LRC employment was actually a front for bribe money from Leonard Lawson. Since the government offered no proof of their allegation, it's pretty obvious their evidence is shaky. Nighbert should take full advantage of this and demand a speedy trial.

3.) Most importantly, Mann ought to move for a change of venue outside the Commonwealth of Kentucky, if possible. The state's largest papers, most notably the Lexington Herald-Leader, has blatantly tried to influence the jury pool by blasting Nighbert at every opportunity and running unflattering stories about him. Public opinion has definitely been tainted against Nighbert, as evidenced by the dozens of uninformed blog posts that are made about him on PolWatchers and other blogs across the state. This trial ought to be moved outside the state to a place where no one ever heard of Bill Nighbert and few know of Ernie Fletcher or Greg Stumbo.

As of this moment, we're confident the facts will exonerate Nighbert, but with passions as inflamed as they are due to the Fletcher-hating media stoking the fire, why take chances? If Nighbert's fate rests with a dozen people too dumb to get out of jury duty, anything can happen, especially if those jurors are dumb enough to believe everything they read in the Herald-Leader.

Stumbo for speaker? Not in our state!

2008-09-12T09:33:00.004-04:00

We greet the news that Greg Stumbo will challenge Jody Richards for the title of speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives with no great surprise. After all, it's right in character with the power-hungry and arrogant Democrat from Prestonsburg. Look at the hostile takeover bid he engineered after losing last year's bid for lieutenant governor to get his House seat back.

What we find more surprising is that anyone would seriously consider putting such a man in a position of leadership in this state.

Greg Stumbo is morally unfit to hold any position of power or leadership in this state. Most of his travails are well-known. Two decades ago, he cheated on his first wife with a woman named Travis Fritsch, who became pregnant by Stumbo and gave birth to his son. Several years later,when Fritsch sued Stumbo for back child support, he refused to pay and instead countersued her for defamation.

We're not as troubled by Stumbo's adultery as we are the fact that he is a deadbeat dad who retaliated against a legitimate claim for past-due child support with a defamation suit, instead of simply challenging Fritsch's claim for more money in a response to her suit. His conduct here demonstrates his contempt for the law as well as a distain for his own familial responsibilities.

Then there is Stumbo's partisan abuse of power while he served as attorney general. During his term in the General Assembly, Stumbo frequently wrote letters on House stationery, recommending fellow Democrats for state merit system jobs. The intent was obvious: Stumbo was trading on his political power to secure jobs for fellow travelers. Yet when he became attorney general, Stumbo brought down an incumbent Republican governor by trumping up a patronage "scandal." If Stumbo had been serious bout prosecuting patronage, he would have prosecuted himself for trying to use his political influence to meddle in merit system hiring decisions.

And don't forget the infamous "disappearing DUI" charge, where a judge bought Stumbo's lame excuse that he wasn't driving a car that was involved in a fender-bender. This incident gives light to a little-discussed topic, that being Stumbo's well-known but rarely-mentioned fondness for alcoholic libations. The enjoyment of adult beverages is legal for persons above a certain age in Kentucky, which Stumbo certainly is, but the question is just how often and with what frequency does Stumbo enjoy this privilege of adulthood.

Finally, was his relationship with Kent Downey and his involvement in "Strippergate" ever fully vetted?

Quite frankly, Stumbo is not leadership material. He is not someone that Kentucky parents can point to with pride and want their children to emulate. For all our differences with Gov. Steve Beshear, he's a decent role model. So is Jody Richards. Stumbo certainly isn't.

We find it even more hard to swallow that Stumbo may have support from Republicans for the speaker's post. Don't these folks remember what Stumbo did to the state's first Republican governor in three decades? If not for Stumbo, Ernie Fletcher would be a quarter of the way into his second term today, and possibly even on John McCain's ticket as the vice president nominee, instead of being out of politics and back in the private sector.

No right-thinking Republican should even consider backing Stumbo. Any Republicans who do should be taken out of circulation at the next possible primary.

People who value good character in their leaders should oppose any move to allow Greg Stumbo to become speaker of the house. It's time for Kentuckians to come together to demand more from their leaders. If you are represented by a Democrat, contact your representative and express your disgust at the thoughts of Stumbo being a leader. Point out his moral failings and note that you expect more from your leaders. If you are represented by a Republican, remind him or her of what Stumbo did to your party's governor and ask if that is the type of person a Republican can trust to act in a bipartisan manner.

Stumbo as speaker? Not in our state! It's time for people of good character to mobilize against this possible travesty.

Herald-Leader: Anti-rural Kentucky, anti-Lambert, or both?

2008-09-09T18:51:00.002-04:00

We read two things into the Herald-Leader's recent story series on the building of new courthouses in many Kentucky counties.

The first is the paper's continuing bias against rural Kentucky. As evidenced by its stances on Interstate 66 and other projects designed to benefit Kentucky's rural counties and the people who live there, it stands to reason that the Herald-Leader has no real love for anyone outside the state's 20 biggest counties. The paper has consistently opposed projects that would be of great benefit for the general population (proposing instead policies that would benefit individuals at the cost of the greater good) and has also consistently opposed the candidates for office that would do the most for this wide geographical swath of the state.

But the second is a preemptive strike against former Supreme Court Chief Justice Joe Lambert, in an effort to derail a possible gubernatorial bid before it ever gets off the ground.

Lambert is a very attractive gubernatorial possibility. He brings much more to the table than most of the potential Republican candidates being mentioned, notably Trey Grayson and Richie Farmer. He'd be a formidable challenger to Steve Beshear or any other Democrat who might dethrone the embattled Beshear in the primary. We'd have no qualms wholeheartedly supporting and endorsing Lambert's candidacy in the primary, especially over Grayson or Farmer.

Beshear is not quite a year into his term, and his performance has been so dismal that challengers will soon begin jockeying for position. Lambert, now retired from the judiciary save for his status as a part-time "senior judge," could launch a campaign at any time and have no distractions to keep him off the trail of votes.

The H-L knows this, and they also know there have been some whisperings about getting Lambert into the race. So the time for them to attempt to discredit him is now, before his backers can even get a campaign off the ground.

Stumbo puts his dishonesty, lack of integrity on display again

2008-09-04T22:03:00.003-04:00

In a Herald-Leader online story about political contributions made by indicted highway construction contractor Leonard Lawson, there's an especially disgusting comment from one Gregory "Deadbeat Drunken Dad" Stumbo that's particularly galling.

“Leonard Lawson has been a friend of mine for well over 30 years,” Stumbo said. “I think he’s entitled to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”

The hypocrisy in Stumbo's comment is not to be believed. After all, he is the one who made the comment that "As far as I'm concerned, Darrell Brock is a common criminal" after Stumbo's office indicted Brock in the state hiring investigation. Attorney General Stumbo certainly did not have the same opinion about the presumption of innocence as State Rep. Stumbo does.

But then again, it's Greg Stumbo we're talking about, a being that has no morals or ethics, so nothing is surprising with him. When you cheat on your wife, father a child with the mistress, refuse to pay child support for the illegitimate son, then sue the mistress for harassment when she tries to collect the back child support, then you aren't much of a man. When you cut shady deals with incumbent representatives to get your old House seat back after your term as AG is over, your thirst for power and your lack of integrity comes front and center.

The only difference between Greg Stumbo and a bag of manure is the bag. That the people of Floyd County keep electing him is a head-scratcher (guess it's further proof of how inadequate and corrupt Floyd County public schools have historically been) and that the Democrats in the General Assembly would even consider giving him a leadership role is beyond belief.

If Greg Stumbo had any honor or shame, he'd go to the top of Maggie Mountain and never come back, sending Mary Karen out for bologna, potato chips, cheese and bread when he gets hungry, and a case of beer every 12 hours.

On the Nighbert indictment

2008-09-04T13:26:00.002-04:00

We were saddened to learn yesterday afternoon of the indictment of former Transportation Secretary Bill Nighbert in conjunction with the investigation into possible bid-rigging.

The Bill Nighbert we know is not a criminal. The Nighbert we know is a man of honesty and integrity. He has lived an exemplary life of public service and is well-regarded across the state for his service as mayor of Williamsburg and his activity with the Kentucky League of Cities. His reputation had never been tarnished or besmirched until Greg Stumbo decided to make a crime out of trying to end the Democrat patronage system that's plagued KYTC for years and of casual conversation.

The indictment offered no proof of the allegations that Nighbert's post-KYTC employment was actually a front for highway contractor Leonard Lawson to funnel him money in exchange for the confidential estimates on construction projects. Only the same supposition, conjecture and speculation previously leaked by sources close to the grand jury was included. There was no new evidence and, more importantly, no proof. The prosecution has offered up nothing to indicate that Nighbert's employment was a front for Lawson.

The usual suspects will weigh in on "Republican corruption," but it's worth noting that the other person indicted besides Lawson and Nighbert, Brian Billings, isn't a Republican. Billings comes from a influential and prominent Democrat family in Powell and surrounding counties that includes the late B.E. "Nig" Billings, former state representative and senator. Billings is a former KYTC employee, no doubt hired because of his family's political connections, who now works for a Lawson company.

It's interesting that remaining unindicted was Jim Rummage, the KYTC employee who actually did obtain the confidential project estimates and by his own admission took $20,000 in bribes from Lawson to do so. The only criminal activity within KYTC that the evidence points to was that of Rummage, also a Democrat, who repeatedly lied to authorities and changed his story.

We don't care what happens to Lawson, and have only marginal interest in the fate of Rummage or Billings, although we will say they are examples of what you get when Democrat patronage runs unchecked.

But we do hope that Nighbert is exonerated. Right now there is definitely not enough evidence to even support the indictment, much less convict him under a standard of "reasonable doubt," and we hope that Nighbert comes through this unscathed. He's a good and decent man and does not deserve the trouble he's endured simply because he tried to change the culture of the Transportation Cabinet.

In Mongiardo's remarks, an opportunity and a challenge for Kentucky GOP

2008-08-27T09:52:00.002-04:00

During some of Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo's remarks in Denver concerning the candidacy of Bruce Lunsford for U.S. Senate, he pointed out that there are 1.7 Democrats to every one Republican in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He used that statistic as a call for Democrat unity, saying that sheer numbers are on the Democrats' side.

This is a challenge for Kentucky Republicans trying to win statewide office. While Kentucky generally votes along conservative lines in federal elections, when it comes to state races, most voters can't seem to get past the party identification.

And it doesn't help when the minority party is splintered, as it was last year when far too many Republicans took the side of Democrat Attorney General Greg Stumbo over their own incumbent governor, Ernie Fletcher.

We've long believed that Kentucky Democrats bear little resemblance to their party mates in Boston or San Francisco. Ideologically, we believe most Kentuckians are truly Republicans at heart. They oppose abortion, support the Second Amendment, want lower taxes, think a strong America is good for the country and the world, and think that our government and schools should operate on a sound moral footing. They express beliefs that are more in keeping with the GOP's ideals, yet they dutifully trudge to the polls every four years and elect Democrats like Steve Beshear and Brereton Jones and Paul Patton, who turn around and echo their national party's viewpoints when they endorse someone like Barack Obama over John McCain.

Mongiardo's remark about the Democrats' strength in numbers should serve as a strong motivational point for the Republican Party of Kentucky to change that figure. The question is, will they?

There's plenty of fruit for the picking. We've heard lots of people say they'd like to register as Republicans, but their county is controlled by one party, all the local offices are decided in the primary, and they want a say in who will be their county judge, sheriff, etc., so they remain Democrats.

There are also lots of conservative Democrats out there who are more in tune philosophically with the GOP, but they remain loyal to the party of their fathers and grandfathers. They can be convinced that it's OK to think independently and be educated as to why the Democrats of today are nothing like the Democrats of their forefathers' generations.

It's time for the RPK to make a statewide appeal to these conservative Democrats and encourage them to switch, and to quit voting for the statewide candidates offered by a party that has left them behind.

A couple of years ago, just such an effort was made in the Purchase area of Western Kentucky. Mark Nickolas went apoplectic over this conversion drive. Unfortunately, his link to the actual newspaper ad image is gone (guess that's what happens when you move off and turn over maintenance of your site to some clueless partisan hack) but we remember the ad as being an accurate description of Republicans vs. Democrats.

This needs to be done all across Kentucky, even in some of those seemingly hopeless counties in the Old 7th like Breathitt, Knott and Floyd. There's a reason Barack Obama lost big to Hillary Clinton in the mountains. It's not because he's too black, as some Kentucky leftists would have you believe. It's because he's too liberal, even for the region that gave us Congressman Carl D. Perkins (Socialist-Hindman).

Next year is an election-free year. Unless there are a few special or local option elections, there will be no elections next year. We'll elect local officials in 2010, then a governor again in 2011. Since there are no election battles to fight next year, it's time for the RPK to undertake a massive voter registration drive, with an emphasis on convincing Democrats to switch. The RPK needs to appeal to their morality as well as common-sense economic issues such as tax cuts and gas prices. No expense should be spared.

Maybe in a couple of years, when Mongiardo is talking about party unity, he can say that there are only 1.3 Democrats for every Republican. Or even better, he'll have to say that the Republicans now outnumber Democrats in the Bluegrass and his party will have to undertake a voter conversion drive.

Beshear throws the baby out with the leftover concrete

2008-08-22T17:49:00.002-04:00

We're scratching our heads over the decision late this afternoon by Gov. Beshear and Transportation Secretary Joe Prather to throw Gilbert Newman, state highway engineer, and assistant Bill Gulick overboard.

The gist of the story is that the state plans to widen a section of road in Franklin County that runs by a piece of property of which Newman is a co-owner. Newman disclosed his ownership of the property when he was hired by the fledgling administration late last year.

Gulick, an on-again, off-again Transportation employee who actually has an engineering award named for him, previously worked for the consultants involved in designing the project before he came back to state government under Beshear.

Despite the total compliance of Newman and Gulick with all applicable ethics laws, a Transportation auditor still found fault with them. They subsequently resigned, although this has all the markings of a forced resignation. In fact, that's exactly what the PolWatchers headline calls this.

The press release announcing the "resignations" was sent out by Transportation shortly before 4:30, followed immediately by a statement from Beshear's press office. Both Prather and Beshear expressed platitudes about "higher standards" in their statements.

We've been highly critical of the Beshear/Prather Transportation Cabinet on many things, especially the district reorganization and the major cutbacks in highway projects. Newman and Gulick, Gulick in particular, were the daddies of the so-called "Practical Solutions" initiative that will set back highway construction in this state 50 years. Still, they committed no crime, were open and honest about their involvement in a project that began before they came back to work for state government, and they didn't deserve to be canned. This is certainly an overreaction on Beshear's part, and an unnecessary one at that, since Newman and Gulick didn't gain any personal or financial benefits from the highway project.

Make no mistake, we're glad to see Gulick and Newman gone, but it shouldn't have happened in this manner.

If Beshear is so concerned about a new day and a new atmosphere in state government, why does his old law firm (Stites & Harbison) continue to get state contracts? Isn't that more of a conflict than this deal with Newman and Gulick?

(And speaking of highway projects being cancelled, we heard this week that a long-planned project to connect a certain Republican county in east-central Kentucky to the Bluegrass region was cancelled. This project would have replaced an old, narrow bridge and a very dangerous stretch of highway that's been the site of several accidents, some fatal, over the years. It would have been a safety improvement as well as an economic development enhancement. A consultant was already working on plans and alternatives for routes and the contract was cancelled. Thank you, Beshear/Prather Transportation Cabinet, for another example of glowing incompetence).

Paper soaked with irony, unfit to read

2008-08-20T22:32:00.003-04:00

As part of "Pile on Bill Nighbert Month," earlier this week, the Herald-Leader printed a story about how the Washington County Fiscal Court repaired a rural road leading to property owned by Nighbert's brother and property later purchased by Nighbert and his brother through their "Double Buck LLC" hand holding company.

The county's Democrat judge-executive, who'd have absolutely no reason to lie for Nighbert considering his party registration, his county's overwhelmingly "D" voter registration, and his county seat's place as the home of one of Frankfort's most conniving political insiders (Mike Haydon), said that the repairs were needed and were not requested by or done as favors for Nighbert.

Yet the H-L made a huge deal out of this non-story. The irony of this report was dripping off the pages of the paper, especially considering what's been done in the past for governors with state money that got nowhere near the attention of this item.

Where were these intrepid reporters when Paul Patton was building a white-elephant arena in Pikeville?

Where were they when Brereton Jones was pushing for all sorts of financial incentives for horse breeders?

And where were they when Wallace Wilkinson was building a new US 127 all the way from Danville to Russell Springs that, what a surprise, passed right through his hometown of Liberty and Casey County?

We don't remember too many howls of protest over those projects, the merits of which can be sincerely questioned (well, the first two anyway, US 127 needed to be rebuilt), but yet there's an uproar over a few thousand dollars in County Road Aid Funds?

Well, those three governors mentioned previously are or were Democrats, so it is to be expected that they wouldn't get the scrutiny that a Republican official in a Republican administration would.

Then again, it is "Pile on Bill Nighbert Month."

And an aside on Haydon, the aforementioned Washington County resident, former Springfield mayor, former cabinet secretary and property tax commissioner, and former top legislative adviser to Rocky Adkins. He got his start in state government under the Wilkinson administration after serving as Washington County tax assessor. When Wilkinson, long since out of office, began to have financial troubles, Haydon ordered his agency to remove his biography from its website's list of prominent officials. He didn't want the association with Wilkinson to become anymore widespread public knowledge than it already was, so as not to hurt his political aspirations. But when you've made your career knifing your superiors in the back and then taking over, why worry about having come up under the "You Can't Do That, Governor!" governor?

Beshear's state highway engineer under investigation for links to Lawson

2008-08-15T21:49:00.002-04:00

An investigation is underway into current state highway engineer O. Gilbert Newman's ties to controversial Kentucky road contractor Leonard Lawson.

Sounds ominous, doesn't it?

Well, it's the truth, even if there's only a slight exaggeration.

Earlier this week, Herald-Leader reporter Ryan Alessi was asking about Newman's former employment with one of Lawson's companies. Turns out that Newman briefly worked for a Lawson venture a few years ago.

The moral of the story? Journalists and headline writers can take any set of facts and twist them to achieve a desired message.

Keep that in mind as you read the past, present and upcoming stories about the FBI probe into alleged bid-rigging at the Transportation Cabinet, especially as those stories relate to Bill Nighbert. Remember that the press has an agenda and is manipulating the facts at hand into a pronouncement of Nighbert's guilt before there are even any indictments issued.

A challenge to western Kentucky Democrats

2008-08-13T09:25:00.003-04:00

Ever since Ed Whitfield was elected to Congress, you have claimed that not only does he not live in Kentucky's 1st District, he does not live in Kentucky at all.

(In Kentucky, members of Congress are only required to be residents of the state and not necessarily the district they represent. That's how Chris Perkins, son of longtime Congressman Carl D. Perkins, was able to live in Mt. Sterling, in the 6th District, while he represented the old 7th District of southeastern Kentucky).

If you do not believe that Whitfield meets the residency requirement to represent Kentucky' 1st District in the House of Representatives, then file a challenge to his eligibility. Present some proof of your assertions.

If you won't, or can't, then as they say on the Internet, please kindly STFU.

Transportation investigation: Leaps of logic

2008-08-12T13:02:00.002-04:00

Kentucky's media can't stop reporting, and Democrat bloggers can't stop commenting on, the FBI investigation into alleged bid-rigging in the Transportation Cabinet.

The big problem is that in what's being said, there's very little fact and a whole lot of speculation, conjecture, supposition, character assassination and other leaps of logic that have all but declared ex-Transportation Secretary Bill NIghbert guilty of all sorts of crimes against humanity.

It might be a good time to review the facts of this case and remind those who are rushing to judgment that they really should be careful to distinguish fact from fantasy.

As of now, the only fact of the case known to the public is that a career Transportation Cabinet employee has admitted taking money in exchange for providing confidential project estimates to a contractor who owns several paving companies that usually have no competition when they bid on blacktopping projects in various counties.

That's it. That's the sum total of the truth as it is so far known.

The engineer, Jim Rummage, says he was directed to obtain the confidential estimates both by contractor Leonard Lawson and by Nighbert. Nighbert's attorney has said that Nighbert wanted that information because he suspected -- rightly so, it tuns out -- that someone (Rummage) was leaking it to contractors.

Because of Rummage's statement that Nighbert asked him for some of the same type of information that he claims he was selling to Lawson, the FBI wants to look into the financial records of Nighbert's new employer to see if it's a front for Lawson.

So far there is no evidence that this is the case, save a statement Nighbert supposedly made in introducing of the principals in his new employer's company to Senate President David Williams that could be interpreted a million different ways; and Nighbert's comment as he left office that the Transportation Cabinet is best served if the secretary has a good relationship with Leonard Lawson.

Because of that, and because Nighbert worked for Williams' office with the Legislative Research Commission for a few months, Kentucky's biggest Democrat cheerleader blogger -- the new guy at bluegrassreport.org, whose name we can't recall and never heard of until he started writing there -- is trying his best to link Williams to any corruption at the Transportation Cabinet. And remember that right now, there's only one person there who's admitted to any wrongdoing.

If jumping to conclusions was an Olympic sport, two-thirds of Kentucky's media members, Democrat bloggers and frequent posters to those blogs would be in China now.

Our circle includes several people who know Bill NIghbert, both from his time as Transportation secretary and from his tenure as mayor of Williamsburg and his time as president of the Kentucky League of Cities. All agree that he is a fine, upstanding man of integrity and it's highly unlikely he had anything to do with any illegalities such as are being investigated. It's highly likely that the FBI investigation will show no criminal behavior in Nighbert's actions and the scope of the illegality will be limited to a longtime Democrat employee who got his job with Transportation under the time-honored patronage system that Nighbert was trying to clean up.

Affidavits of the type that stirred this feeding frenzy are normally kept sealed. There is all sorts of speculation as to who leaked this one, and why.

Of course where Republicans in general and the Ernie Fletcher administration in particular is involved, one shouldn't expect logic or restraint when it comes to the press or the Fletcher-hating Democrat bloggers and commenters. Speculation and innuendo are the order of the day;this bunch could take the statement, "the sky is blue," and turn it into a rant about how God hates red and all things even remotely crimson.

As for us, we're going to take the facts at face value. Jim Rummage is dirty, by his own admission, and that's all. We'll wait for more facts to emerge, and they'll have to be pretty convincing, before we pass judgment on anyone else.

Bumper sticker update

2008-08-11T21:38:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, we were lamenting the fact that no one is selling "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Fletcher" stickers for Kentuckians who want to distance themselves from the disaster that is the Beshear administration.

Well, we got an e-mail from a reader who decided to take matters into his own hands:

After reading your blog about there being a real market out there for a "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Fletcher" sticker, and after seeing similar posts on kypolitics.org bemoaning the lack of such stickers, I went searching for someone who could make them for me.

I poked around on the Internet and found a site called makesticker.com, which makes custom-printed bumper stickers at reasonable rates. I ordered some stickers saying "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Gov. Fletcher" and got them in the same colors as the Fletcher campaign's stickers, black and gold. I had no idea what the quality would be like but figured the price was so inexpensive that it wouldn't break my bank.

I ordered the stickers on Friday, and on Monday they were in my mailbox. And they look darn nice, too!

If anyone wants to order stickers to show support for Fletcher and disdain for Beshear, I'd recommend that they take a look at makestickers.com and order some from them. They have all kinds of templates but I just chose a plain black sticker with gold all-caps text.

Feel free to pass this along to your readers. Maybe we can get a whole fleet of "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Gov. Fletcher" stickers on Kentucky's roads to let people know how we feel about this joke of a governor we have now.

The reader sent along a photo of the sticker, and we agree that it looks darn nice.

We may try to investigate some sort of deal with this outfit to offer the stickers on this site as a click-through, but even if we don't do that, we recommend makestickers.com for your own personal anti-Beshear message.

Legislators moving forward with reining in KHSAA

2008-08-06T10:24:00.002-04:00

It appears that both the state Board of Education and the General Assembly are looking at ways to get control of the rogue Kentucky High School Athletic Association, which insists on punishing schools that obey court orders regarding the eligibility of student-athletes.

The Herald-Leader reports today that the state board and a legislative subcommittee will be looking into the practices of the KHSAA during hearings this month.

Of course this story wouldn't be complete without some whining from KHSAA chair Brigid DeVries, who claims that it's not fair to a school playing against another school for which an athlete competes under a court order requiring the school to do so.

Well, Brigid, why can't the opposing school seek a countering court order?

It's good to see some attention called to the arbitrary and unfair nature of the KHSAA rules, which put school officials in between the sports sanctioning body and Kentucky's courts.

Say goodbye to good roads in Kentucky

2008-08-04T17:40:00.002-04:00

Kentucky may trail the rest of the 49 states in a lot of categories, but good roads hasn't been one of them.

Until now, that is.

An initiative announced today by Gov. Beshear and his political hack of a Transportation secretary, Joe Prather, means that in the future, Kentuckians won't be seeing roads built at the quality they've come to expect.

Beshear and his hacks call it "Practical Solutions," but there's nothing practical about scaling back projects to the point where they won't meet future traffic expectations and are not much more safe or efficient than the old roads they replace.

Transportation officials deny it, but they've already been cutting projects that have been in the works for years. For instance, a stretch of KY 80 in the western part of the state has been built as a four-lane road, but the idiots running the Transportation Cabinet have decided to only pave two of the four lanes before the road opens later this year.

So much for the longstanding promise by governors of both parties to build a four-lane US 68/KY 80 corridor across the southern tier of the Commonwealth.

Another project, to build a connector route between the Mountain Parkway and I-75, disappeared from the state's Six-Year Plan this year. This highway is vital for the economic development of a depressed area, not to mention being a huge safety improvement, but now it's gone. The state is building one last section of the road on the western end, and is spending money already committed on a planning study for two other sections, but that's it. Residents of the area have pushed for this road for years, Gov. Fletcher accelerated its development, but now the Beshear Bunch is axing it.

Other safety improvements, long planned, may be going by the wayside as well.

What highways do get built won't be as good as what's been built previously. Roads planned for four lanes may instead be two-lane routes. Two-lane roads with truck passing lanes may see those passing lanes eliminated. Wide, paved shoulders will give way to gravel or dirt shoulders. Roads with gentle grades and curves that can be easily traversed at 55 or 60 miles per hour may instead be built to a standard of 45 or 35 mph -- which isn't really much of an improvement at all.

The last four years -- indeed, longer than that -- have been very good for highway improvements in Kentucky. Two years ago, the state let a record $1 billion in road construction contracts, and then that amount was topped last year. Now suddenly the state is broke and has to cancel or scale back projects? We don't buy it for a minute. Kentucky's gas tax revenues haven't declined that much due to the high prices at the pump.

Give us a break. Just how incompetent is Joe Prather and his merry band of 'tards, anyway? We understand this "Practical Solutions" nonsense is the brainchild of a recycled engineer who was in part of the "in crowd" in past administrations but had fallen out of favor in recent years, but (like many of this administration's appointees) was brought back to prove anew just how poorly they had run the state in administrations past.

We get the feeling that the state would be better off investing its highway construction project dollars and waiting for an administration that really understands this state's transportation needs, rather than wasting these valuable funds on inadequate projects that barely address current needs and don't address future needs. We're all for wise use of tax dollars, but this new initiative is penny-wise and pound-foolish, to say the least.

Every day, the Beshear administration proves its incompetence and lunacy all over again. Today's production in Frankfort is yet another example of how this entire state is suffering at the hands of this brainless bunch.

2011 can't come quickly enough.

KHSAA update

2008-07-31T12:52:00.002-04:00

It was reported earlier in the week that a hearing officer for the Kentucky High School Athletics Association has ruled that University of Kentucky basketball recruit Dakotah Euton is eligible to play for Scott County High School this year, subject to approval from the Board of Control. This is a reversal of a ruling by KHSAA Commissioner Brigid DeVries and is a good and logical decision.

Euton's father lost his job with an architectural firm in the Ashland area and the family moved to Georgetown after Mr. Euton landed a job with a firm in Lexington. The KHSAA allows eligibility for athletes that have a bona fide change of address, and we cannot think of a more legitimate reason for moving than taking a new job in a distant city after you lose your old job.

This is a good individual decision but it still does nothing to rein in the KHSAA's arrogance and heavy-handedness in dealing with schools that come under court order to play certain athletes when the eligibility is in dispute. Even if a school is ordered by a court to allow an athlete to compete, the KHSAA still urges the school not to let the player play and threatens the school with forfeitures of on-field wins and post-season revenue if the ruling is overturned on appeal.

The state Department of Education needs to pass a regulation, sooner rather than later, that strips the KHSAA's ability to punish schools that abide by court rulings in good faith. It is not fair for the KHSAA to put schools in the position of either forfeiting wins, or subjecting school personnel to contempt of court citations or other legal liabilities, when a court orders a school to do something.

If the DOE won't do it, then the legislature should. The KHSAA is no longer an independent body; it's part of the state government educational system even though private schools participate in KHSAA post-season tournaments.

The "Beshear About Wasting Money in Kentucky" tour

2008-07-25T21:34:00.003-04:00

When a member of Kentucky's federal delegation -- a senator or a representative -- holds a town meeting, there usually isn't a big entourage accompanying him (and that isn't a sexist term since both of Kentucky's senators and all six representatives are male) to the remote location.

The official will have a handful of staff members accompanying him -- a driver, perhaps two or three others -- and that's pretty much it, except for the little table in the corner.

There, two or three of the Congress member's field staff will sit to take questions and respond to complaints or requests from constituents.

The whole group can be accommodated in two, maybe three vehicles.

Certainly three planes aren't needed to, say, fly Ben Chandler from Lexington to Irvine or Danville for town meetings, or Hal Rogers from Somerset to Pikeville.

Much has been made of all the cabinet secretaries and high-level agency staffers accompanying Gov. Steve Beshear to his town hall in Pikeville, but that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.

At these meetings, personnel from each individual cabinet are required to attend and set up a table to take comments and complaints from attendees. The mainstream press, which has rightly criticized the governor for the excess in his current "Beshear About Kentucky" tour, hasn't even touched on this.

When the statewide "Trying to Get My Approval Ratings Out of the Cellar 2008 Bluegrass Tour" is over, some prescient reporter -- and Ryan Alessi and Joe Gerth, we know you read us -- ought to file an open records request for all overtime accrued by all state employees required to attend this after-hours statewide extravaganza.

If a senator or congressman can handle constituent issues with two or three people at a town meeting, why does the Beshear administration need dozens of state employees to do the same thing? Is one reason that it allows them to pad their attendance estimates?

Steve Beshear -- exceeding expectations for incompetence on a daily basis.

Government by gimmick

2008-07-25T11:18:00.002-04:00

We thought the proposed "gas tax holiday" was a stupid idea from the moment we first heard about it.

Eliminating the federal gas tax during the busiest driving months? Cutting off the supply of money to fix our roads and build new ones at a time when our transportation system needs major overhauls and upgrades?

That's lunacy. It does nothing to solve the long-term problem of gasoline being more expensive than it really should. Instead of temporarily knocking 20 cents off the price of a gallon of gas, government should be encouraging solutions to bring about a significant and permanent decrease down to at least $2 per gallon, if not cheaper.

Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton bought into this asinine idea during their presidential campaigns. We'll give Sen. B. Hussein Obama credit for recognizing this as a goofy gimmick and dismissing it, although we don't see B. Hussein Obama coming up with any real solutions to lower the price of gas for the long haul.

The current artificially high prices for gas and diesel ought to be a winning campaign item for nearly every Republican Senate and House candidate this year. Democrats have traditionally been opposed to increasing domestic oil production and refining capacity and have rebuffed GOP efforts to do so.

So what does Bruce Lunsford do? He jumps onto the goofy, gimmicky gas tax holiday idea. Guess he thinks Kentuckians are too stupid to recognize a nutty idea when they see or hear it.

The suggestion to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is equally goofy. We are not in a true emergency or shortage situation that would justify such a release. The high gas prices are troublesome but there's still plenty of gas available for everyone. The SPR should be reserved for true emergencies.

Government by gimmick doesn't work. The American people want real relief for prices at the pump that is significant and long-lasting. A gas tax holiday is not the ticket and would actually do more harm than good. So, too, would releasing oil from the SPR.

We all agree with the concept of developing alternative energy sources, but for right now, gasoline-powered individual transportation is what we have and what we must live with. Until an alternatively-fueled vehicle can be developed that will run 400 miles at current highway speeds and can be refueled in a 5 to 10 minute stop at a price comparable to a tank of gas, we have to use petroleum-powered cars and trucks. That's the reality we face now and must plan for in the immediate future as we hammer out an energy policy.

Lunsford has no answers. He's part of the problem.

Bluegrass Report 2.0 off to unimpressive start

2008-07-25T10:56:00.002-04:00

After months of inactivity, Bluegrass Report came back on the scene earlier this month. While founder Mark Nickolas is still no longer a Kentucky resident, he promised a commonwealth blogger would take the reins and continue that blog's tradition.

(A tradition of libel and slander, hyping falsehoods and twisting the truth? That's a tradition we'd rather not have, but to each their own).

So far, we've been unimpressed with this newest incarnation of the Democrat blog that purports (untruthfully, of course) to be An Unfiltered and Candid Look at Politics, Politicians and the Media in Kentucky but in reality spins like an out-of-control carousel.

The name of the new blogger is unimportant. He's someone we'd never heard of, anyway, so he can't be too terribly influential. But what he's posting is uninspiring.

To date, his contributions include whining about the lack of progress on Interstate 69 in western Kentucky (he must be living on a rock because Kentucky is one of the leaders in pushing this highway forward), an absolutely ludicrous rant about how the media hates Steve Beshear and is treating him unfairly (tell that to Ernie Fletcher, who really was given a raw deal by the press), and two "so-what" posts claiming that Senate President David Williams (gasp) has taken contributions from highway contractors and may actually know or be related to some of them.

Horror of horrors! The world is ending! The glaciers are melting and we're all going to drown in a global-warming-induced flood!

The Williams "expose" is hardly news. It really isn't even worth mentioning. It isn't scandal, or even noteworthy. Yet some Democrats are ranting and raving that the mainstream press is doing the state a disservice by ignoring this blockbuster story.

We've got news for you folks -- the mainstream press has missed stories a lot bigger than this. So far, we haven't seen one peep about the conflicts of interest inherent in the special grand jury that indicted Fletcher and members of his administration, and this is a story that strips away any validity or integrity of those indictments.

One post in reply to this earth-shattering "scoop" hinted that Williams had demanded that Bluegrass Report take the original story down. We can only hope this is true. One of our collective wet dreams has been for Bluegrass Report to be slapped with a libel suit that would shut down the site and financially ruin its owners. We blame that Web site for coarsening the level of political discourse in Kentucky and dragging it into the gutter. BGR made it trendy to substitute partisan rants and profanity for honest analysis of current events and political happenings; a relay torch that a bunch of other liberal Kentucky blogs have picked up and run with.

Not that BGR was ever anything to live up to or aspire -- we value the truth and integrity too much to ever regard that "slander blog" (as some have called it) as anything to emulate -- but the new incarnation has a long way to go before it will be relevant.

We know what sort of disgusting being Mark Nickolas is. The new blogger at BGR might want to consider disassociating himself with Nickolas and his blog lest the stench permeate him as well.

State must rein in out-of-control KHSAA

2008-07-24T10:19:00.003-04:00

In times past, the Kentucky High School Athletics Association was an independent body governing scholastic sports and administering the state basketball tournaments, football playoffs, etc.

This is no longer the case. Several years ago, the state Department of Education took control of high school sports. The KHSAA basically became an adjunct of the state education agency. KHSAA Board of Control decisions are now subject to review by the state, and bylaws must be approved by legislative subcommittees, much like administrative regulations.

Recent reports in the Lexington Herald-Leader show the KHSAA to be an out-of-control rogue agency that defies court orders and generally does not act in the best interest of student athletes.

One particular case shows the KHSAA's inadequacy in a nutshell, but what's more troublesome are revelations of the KHSAA's attitudes toward the judicial system.

Let's look at the individual case first. Anyone who follows University of Kentucky basketball knows that Dakotah Euton is a young recruit who has already committed to play for the Wildcats. Euton's family is from the northeastern part of Kentucky (Ashland/Greenup area) and Euton had been playing for Rose Hill Academy.

Several months ago, Euton's father lost his job and he was forced to seek employment elsewhere. Unable to land a job in his field in the Ashland area, the elder Euton finally found a position in the Lexington area. So Euton packed up his family, stud basketball player included, and moved to Georgetown, and Dakotah subsequently enrolled at Scott County High School.

It's not unusual for people who work in Lexington to live in one of the surrounding counties. In fact, that's the key reason for growth in such towns as Winchester and Richmond. A large segment of the population in those and other towns surrounding Lexington actually works in Fayette County. And the school system often plays a role not only in what town someone decides to move to, but also in what school district they settle in within the county.

The problem here seems to be that Scott County is a traditional high school basketball power, and Euton is an up-and-coming youngster who needs to test his mettle against premium competition before trading in his high school uniform for the Blue and White. At any rate, the KHSAA ruled Dakotah ineligible to play basketball at Scott County this coming year.

We're hard pressed to come up with any more asinine and ridiculous administrative decision ever. This was no transfer for athletic purposes. Mr. Euton lost his job. In order to find a job in his profession, he was forced to move his family two hours away. It's not something they did voluntarily. Did the KHSAA expect him to get a job working the drive-through at McDonald's, suffering a drastic pay cut in the process, and keep Dakotah enrolled at Rose Hill instead of finding a job in his field at a comparable rate of pay?

The Eutons will appeal this ruling, but that's where the arrogance of the KHSAA becomes even more troubling.

It's not uncommon for students' families to file challenges in court to KHSAA eligibility decisions, and often in these cases, courts will issue injunctions ordering the KHSAA to allow the student to participate in sports. But instead of abiding by the court orders, the KHSAA usually still urges the school not to allow the player to participate. The KHSAA says that if the ruling is overturned on appeal and the ineligibility finding is upheld, the school will be made to forfeit games and possibly face sanctions for using an ineligible player.

This is absurd. A state agency blatantly and willfully defies a court order and threatens punishment to member schools who abide by that order.

What if a court ordered the Cabinet for Families and Children to take some action -- say, removing a child from a home and placing it in foster care? And what if the cabinet secretary ordered the agency's staff not to abide by the ruling, and further decreed that any employee who did as ordered by the court would be suspended, fired, or otherwise punished? How long do you think that would be tolerated?

That scenario is no different than the way the KHSAA conducts business in eligibility cases. Perhaps the judges should broaden their injunctions and orders to state that the KHSAA is forbidden from taking any disciplinary actions against schools that comply with court orders. Or maybe it'll take a few members of the KHSAA Board of Control sitting in jail for a few days on contempt of court charges to finally make that body wake up and smell the roses in the common sense flower garden.

The KHSAA is out of control. It's very obviously a rogue agency, and it's time for the Department of Education to get a handle on it. Commissioner Jon Draud has found himself on the receiving end of a lot of bad publicity early in his term, about provisions of his contract and his choice of a state vehicle. Draud could earn some points for himself by getting a handle on the KHSAA mess and getting them back under the same rules as all other state agencies must follow.

Dept. of Advocacy for Public Whining

2008-07-22T16:06:00.003-04:00

No, no, no ... we know the real name for the state agency is Department of Public Advocacy. Yet we've never seen a state agency whose leadership whines more about its financial situation than the DPA.

The department has even gone to the lengths of filing a lawsuit against the state, seeking more money. This is reminiscent of biting the hand that funds you.

Already the DPA has been slapped down by state courts, as it was recently ordered to resume representing indigent clients in civil commitment cases.

But this concept of a state agency suing the state for more money is a bit intriguing. Maybe more agencies should do it.

For instance, Transportation has been cutting its budget like crazy, and scaling back or cancelling long-planned projects. (Transportation leadership denies this, but it's true. Compare this biennium's Six-Year Plan -- which itself is the subject of a lawsuit -- with last biennium's and see how many projects have been eliminated, and then feel free to truthfully call Joe Prather a liar to his face). Instead of cutting back transportation projects that the people of this state have been promised and have been expecting for years and in some cases decades, maybe Prather just ought to sue for more money. After all, roads have even more of a constitutional mandate than legal representation for the poor and indigent. If you don't believe that, see where the requirement for "post offices and post roads" is referenced in the U.S. Constitution and then try to find the Constitutional requirement for public defenders.

The good news in all this is that Chief Whiner ... er, we mean DPA Commissioner Ernie Lewis ... has announced his plans to retire soon. Maybe his successor will just make do with what the department gets in the state budget and won't whine incessantly about it.

Kentucky loses a great native son -- RIP Tony Snow

2008-07-12T11:45:00.002-04:00

We were saddened at the unexpected news this morning of Tony Snow's passing. Snow, the former White House press secretary and well-known political commentator before that, died after losing his long-running battle with cancer at the age of 53.

Unknown to many, Snow was a Kentuckian. He was born in Berea and spent a good portion of his childhood in the Northern Kentucky area before his family settled across the river in Cincinnati.

Snow's decline in health had not been reported in the media. During his most recent conversations with friends and fellow conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, Snow said that he was doing well and fighting the good fight against his cancer. The disease is a wicked competitor, though, and in the end medical science and Snow's own cheerful personality and spunky spirit wasn't enough to overcome the killer illness.

We missed Snow when he left Fox News to work in the White House, but we always enjoyed hearing his press briefings -- where he constantly challenged the cadre of liberal reporters assembled before him -- and his interviews with hosts like Limbaugh and Hannity.

Today Kentucky mourns an accomplished and respected native son, and we join with Tony Snow's family and friends in mourning and express our individual and collective sympathy to them.

McConnell and Patton: Did they have a secret deal in 1990s?

2008-07-11T13:36:00.002-04:00

Did Sen. Mitch McConnell and former Gov. Paul Patton have a secret deal concerning the 1999 gubernatorial race and the 2002 U.S. Senate race?

Given McConnell's tougher-than-expected re-election campaign, and Patton's re-entry into the public spotlight through his recent appointment to the Council on Postsecondary Education, it might be time to revisit this subject, which was a matter of much discussion a decade ago.

Flash back to the late 1990s. Elected in 1995 in a tight race over Republican challenger Larry Forgy, Patton found himself the first governor in Kentucky's modern history able to succeed himself in office. Yet Patton was rumored to be after bigger and better things, namely a seat in the United States Senate.

Despite the power of the Kentucky Democrat machine being behind him in his re-election campaign, Patton was vulnerable on a couple of fronts. His push to remove the community colleges from the University of Kentucky system was highly unpopular across the state, and his proposal to gut the workers' compensation system had made him many enemies. Despite these vulnerabilities, and a deep-seated belief that he had lost the election in '95 only due to voter fraud, Forgy opted against another matchup with Patton. That left the GOP without an obvious legitimate challenger.

Patton, on the other hand, had two options for a Senate run. He could choose to run against McConnell in 2002, or against first-termer Jim Bunning two years later. The major problem with a race against Bunning was that if Patton won re-election to a second term in 1999, that term would expire in 2003 and he'd be out of office for a year before facing Bunning. If he chose to challenge McConnell, it would be during his second term as governor and he'd be able to use that office to his advantage.

Kentucky Republicans are used to having Senate seats; the political prize they covet in the state is the governorship. They had come oh-so-close with Forgy in 1995 and were thirsting to knock off Patton, whom they saw as beatable based on the two aforementioned policy matters. What they needed was enthusiastic support from the party's leaders, including McConnell, to find and field a formidable foe, especially since Forgy had ruled out another run.

But did McConnell have other ideas? Namely, preserving his own senate seat? No credible Republican gubernatorial challenger ever emerged in 1999, and the nomination went to a woefully outclassed Peppy Martin, who got absolutely no support from the state party or from high-ranking officials such as McConnell. Rank-and-file Republicans were left scratching their heads at why the party would basically give a free pass to the incumbent, whom they perceived as having some potentially fatal flaws.

At the time, a theory surfaced. It was widely speculated that McConnell and Patton had reached a deal. McConnell agreed not to recruit or back a legitimate GOP opponent for Patton, and in return Patton agreed not to run against McConnell for the Senate in 2002 and would delay his candidacy for two years until '04, when he would challenge Bunning.

Other Republicans pooh-poohed the idea. The implication was that if Patton didn't challenge McConnell, that left him free to run against Bunning in 2004. Those Republicans couldn't believe that McConnell would hang a fellow Republican like Bunning out to dry in such a manner.

Oh really now? McConnell's actions over the past three years prove he's more than capable of abandoning fellow Republicans, including some of his closest allies. A large number of Republicans still haven't forgotten how McConnell did nothing to help Gov. Ernie Fletcher, whom he'd enthusiastically supported in 2003, when Fletcher came under attack by Democrats bent on regaining power in state government.

And now some folks who aligned themselves with former U.S. Rep. Anne Northup's failed primary challenge to Fletcher last year are also expressing dissatisfaction with McConnell. They believe McConnell talked Northup into running against Fletcher in the 2007 Republican gubernatorial primary, then left her on her own and didn't provide support.

If McConnell did cut such a deal, turns out that it didn't do Bunning any harm. Patton's political career was subsequently derailed by a sex scandal, and Bunning stumbled to a victory in his 2004 re-election bid that turned Dan Mongiardo from a political lightweight into a credible politician with a future.

But McConnell's obviously alienated two factions within his own party. If Bruce Lunsford presents a serious challenge, McConnell will need committed Republican voters to support him. But if they are ambivalent to him, or outright hostile, based on his treatment of fellow Republicans, he may have more difficulty winning re-election than he expects. The Fletcherites are already mad at him, some to the point of threatening to sit out the Senate election. If he has Northupians angry, too, then he has problems in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-2.

Should McConnell lose to Lunsford, he can tie it directly to his own party's dissatisfaction with him for not expressing the proper amount of loyalty and support to other Republicans when they come under Democrat siege. And it would serve McConnell right.

Transportation Cabinet reorganization update

2008-07-11T12:50:00.004-04:00

It's been nearly a month now since an ill-advised reorganization plan went into effect in each of the Transportation Cabinet's 12 Department of Highways district offices. To date, the reorganization has garnered little publicity, but that doesn't mean that the furor over the plan has subsided. Instead, as each day goes by, more and more employees are expressing disgust, both publicly and privately. Even some of Steve Beshear's most ardent supporters among the merit employees in Transportation are being roundly critical of the governor and those he's chosen to lead Transportation.

Responding to rampant rumors statewide, the cabinet sent out a press release that stressed that no one would lose his or her job and no one would have his or her pay decreased as a result of the plan, which is causing dozens of involuntary demotions and transfers all across the state. That's little solace, though, to branch managers who are having to reapply for managerial positions and especially those who will not be chosen for the new positions and may be forced into a job they don't want to do, working for a manager they don't want to work for.

Some of the Transportation employee groups have raised questions, but the only concession they've received is that the managerial jobs are now open only to existing employees. Previously, the competition was open to everyone who met qualifications, even those who are currently not working in state government.

Transportation officials also sent a list of "questions and answers" via e-mail to employees, but bigwigs such as Joe Prather, Mike Hancock, Chuck Knowles, Gilbert Newman and Charles Wolfe continue to avoid answering some of the most basic questions being asked internally and externally; questions such as "Who made these decisions?" and "Why weren't any managers or employees at the district level consulted before instituting wholesale closures of offices and transfers of employees?"

We heard that one employees association was trying to recruit an existing branch manager to file a suit and seek an injunction against implementation of the reorganization plan, but it seems that effort was unsuccessful because to date, nothing's been filed. The number of individual personnel actions filed after the branch manager positions are filled is expected to be sky-high, however.

What's bothering many of the employees out in the field is their involuntary transfer to distant locations. Some employees will now have to drive an hour one-way to work when they previously were working in or near their home counties. Taking two hours from their days, and causing them to spend more of their own money for gas when prices are outrageously high, is certainly no way to win friends and keep employees happy. This is a major slap in the face considering that one of Beshear's campaign items was how badly Ernie Fletcher had treated state employees, especially in Transportation. Getting up an hour earlier, getting home an hour later, and spending $20 or more per day for gas isn't exactly treating state employees well, is it?

Two extreme examples have occurred in eastern Kentucky. Harlan Countians are unhappy that their construction office is being closed and relocated to Bell County. Local officials, who have been steadfast supporters of Beshear, have indicated that they believe their county will suffer because of this.

And in Knott County, the construction office is staffed entirely by residents of that county. That office has been closed and moved to Letcher County. This means that all these people will have to drive to Whitesburg to work every day instead of working in their hometown, costing them time and gas money.

Transportation officials are unable to satisfactorily answer questions about these decisions, saying only that people are being moved to where the work is. That doesn't fly. The regional construction offices in each district are spread out enough to allow all counties to be covered; no sense in moving people wholesale and inconveniencing them.

Since local district personnel were given no input into how the counties are grouped into branches and sections, some questionable decisions were made from geographical standpoints, as well. Counties that could have been grouped with other counties that are closer and easier to get to by highway were instead grouped with other counties to which it's a torturous hour-long drive in many cases. For instance, instead of putting Elliott County with Carter County, which is an easy half-hour drive, it instead went into a section with Rowan County. Morehead and Sandy Hook are only about 30 miles apart but it takes nearly an hour to drive the curvy, mountainous road. This blazing display of illogic boggles the mind.

Officials also are talking up their decision to merge construction and maintenance operations, saying it will allow employees to be shifted to where the need is greatest and it will allow for more cross-training and greater opportunities. In whose dream world will this happen? The construction inspectors check on contractors' jobs to ensure they are being built according to plans and to federal and state specifications and requirements. The flaggers and dump truck drivers on the maintenance crews are, for a large part, barely literate and have trouble signing their own names, much less being able to understand complex plans or federal regulations. Maybe a few inspectors have their CDEs and can help drive snowplows in the winter, but are the flaggers capable of inspecting a major construction project such as the US 41 bridge painting project in Henderson or the Somerset northern bypass? We have serious doubts.

Media coverage of the reorganization has been minimal. And no reporters have yet pinned down any Transportation officials to ask the tough questions. We expect this to change as the new branch managers are selected and unsuccessful applicants file their complaints with the Personnel Board and surreptitiously offer tips to the press. (Some of our sources have offered us lots of information, for which we are grateful; keep the tips coming).

We're told that many Transportation officials are of the opinion that "this is a done deal, we need to look forward, not backward." When your car is careening toward a cliff, you don't look forward, you try your best to stop it before there is a horrendous crash. And that's what many in Transportation are trying to do, heretofore without success.

Some things you just can't get rid of

2008-07-10T11:16:00.003-04:00

There are some things in life that just won't go away. A drug-resistant case of gonorrhea. Delinquency notices from the IRS. And Mark Nickolas.

The former Ben Chandler campaign manager who later gained infamy as the blogger behind bluegrassreport.org has announced his site's comeback. While Nickolas is still in Montana, he says he plans to comment on Kentucky's role in federal races and has promised a big announcement on Monday of a Kentucky-based contributor who he describes as wired in to the Bluegrass State's political scene.

One of the best descriptions we've seen of Nickolas and his site -- and indeed, one we've used ourselves -- is that the blogger and his blog are a cancer on Kentucky's political landscape. Indeed, we blame Nickolas for poisoning and cheapening the political discourse in this state. His affinity for foul language and his penchant for playing fast and loose with the truth earned nicknames like "slander blog" for his site while inspiring several other Kentucky sites that have carried on his tradition for vulgarity and untruthfulness, including Barefoot & Progressive, Bluegrass Roots (which actually predated Bluegrass Report) and Ditch Mitch. Bloggers there and at several other liberal Democrat Kentucky sites think frequent use of the F-word and screeching hatred for all things conservative and/or Christian is a suitable substitute for intelligent analysis and discussion of issues facing Kentuckians.

Then again, honest discussion was never welcomed on Bluegrass Report. What few conservatives that actually did post there, including some insiders in the Fletcher administration who tried to educate Nickolas and his sycophants as to what was really going on behind the scenes, were basically chased off the site by the hateful Democrats who already had their minds made up and were unwilling to confront or consider the truth.

Nickolas himself has a spotty history in Kentucky. Originally brought to the state by Jody Richards to run his 2003 gubernatorial primary campaign, Nickolas' stock shot up when Richards came oh-so-close to defeating Chandler. Never mind that the reason Richards came so close was because Bruce Lunsford pulled out of the race in the days before the primary, and the anti-Chandler vote went to Richards. Nickolas moved over to manager Chandler's failed gubernatorial campaign that fall and eventually channeled his bitterness at losing to Fletcher into his anti-Fletcher blog. He also found himself on the wrong end of more than one lawsuit (including one for defamation over a Bluegrass Report post) and a tax evasion investigation. He also led a "Draft Ken Lucas" movement that got Lucas into the race for his old House of Representatives seat against incumbent Geoff Davis in 2006; a race Lucas lost badly. Nickolas eventually fled to Montana, where he tried his hand with a Rocky Mountain regional blog and later a national blog. After his departure, he tried to run Bluegrass Report with guest posters including John Y. Brown III, but the site languished. The perception that Nickolas had cut a deal with Jonathan Miller to promote Miller's failed gubernatorial bid in 2007 also cut into Nickolas' credibility. We've also heard that his relationship with Miller put a serious crimp in his attempts to sell the blog and the domain name.

Yet Nickolas is trying a comeback in Kentucky. Much like a penicillin-resistant strain of VD, or a bad check, he returns, unwanted and unbidden, to spread his poison in a state where he no longer lives. A few of his loyal toadies are already welcoming him back. As for us, we'll be waiting to see who his "Kentucky political expert" is. No doubt it'll be some worn-out Democrat hack who wouldn't recognize the truth if it smacked him in the face like a wet trout jumping out of a creel.

In the meantime, we will monitor the "slander blog" for anything blatantly obnoxious or untrue, while at the same time realizing that its proprietor has exactly zero credibility among intelligent Kentuckians.

And we'll encourage the drug companies to come up with a stronger dose of VD medicine to cure Kentucky's case of the clap.

Another episode of "Where's The Outrage?"

2008-07-06T15:43:00.002-04:00

Jumping out of the headlines over the holiday weekend was a blurb that Gov. Beshear appointed 10 Democrats and one solitary Republican to various boards of regents and trustees of Kentucky's public universities.

We are reminded that when former Attorney General Greg Stumbo thought former Gov. Ernie Fletcher had appointed too many Republicans to state university boards, in alleged violation of a law requiring the political affiliations of board appointees to reflect the voter registration makeup in the state, Stumbo launched one of his patented political witch hunts against the Fletcher administration.

Now, 10-1 does not come anywhere close to approximating the 65-35 breakdown of registered Democrats to Republicans in Kentucky. So we're left to wonder, where is current Attorney General Little Jackie Conway's outrage at Beshear's appointments? Why isn't Conway trying to force Beshear to comply with the law? Where's the outrage?

Dear Congressmen Chandler and Yarmuth

2008-07-03T18:05:00.002-04:00

Dear Congressmen Chandler and Yarmuth:

For the first time ever, gas is consistently more than four dollars a gallon all across Kentucky. Isolated incidences became widespread earlier this week when the price went up a dime a gallon in many places.

Gas prices have risen astronomically since your party took control of Congress two years ago. Your leadership promised to get gas prices under control when they assumed power, at a time when prices were still far too high but not anywhere near what they are now. Instead, gas prices have nearly doubled in fewer than two years.

Your party offers no solution. Instead, you blame Republicans for the situation solely because the president and vice president are "oil men."

Gentlemen, how do you propose to deal with this very serious matter? What real solutions do you offer?

To date, you have put forth nothing of any value to help us get a handle on high gas prices, which are wrecking the stock market and individual and family budgets. You have instead proposed increasing taxes on oil companies, which will only result in even higher prices as oil companies raise prices to compensate for the tax increase. And you have tried to make oil companies drill on federal lands they already have under lease, but where they haven't drilled because there is no oil there.

What's worse, you have obstructed real solutions to the problems, such as drilling on oil-rich areas and increasing refining capacity. You mouth platitudes such as "we can't drill our way out of this" despite the fact that the problem is immediate and pressing, and there is no other option besides petroleum-powered vehicle for individual transportation.

Until we can develop a vehicle that travel 400 miles at current highway speeds and be completely refueled in 10 minutes or less, the internal combustion gasoline engine will not be replaced because it is impractical.

Congressmen, it is time for you to step forward and show leadership on this matter. Instead of getting your marching orders from San Francisco, it's time for you to listen to your constituents. They want the price of gas to come down and you are doing nothing to allow that to happen. As Kentuckians struggle with increasing prices for gasoline and everything else, it's time for you to act in the best interest of your state and your fellow residents of the commonwealth.

Where's the outrage? Beshear administration changes qualifying process for state merit jobs

2008-06-25T10:42:00.003-04:00

UPDATE: We thought we had a scoop here, but shortly after posting this, one of us opened a dead-tree copy of the Lexington Herald-Leader and saw a story on this very subject. Oh well....

During the Ernie Fletcher administration, the Personnel Cabinet consolidated a number of state merit system job classifications and changed the selection method for these jobs -- mostly clerical and administrative -- so that a trip to Frankfort to take a multiple-choice written test to get on a merit register was no longer necessary.

The Democrats cried foul, claiming that this was done solely to allow the Fletcherites to hire their unqualified political backers and cronies who could never qualify for a state job if they had to demonstrate knowledge via a written examination.

Never mind that a trip to Frankfort to apply and test for a secretarial job in Ballard or Boyd counties was and remains a major inconvenience in terms of time and expense, and never mind that most of the written tests were hopelessly outdated and many of the questions were ambiguous, where applicants often faced two correct answers out of four possibilities and had to choose the one that was deemed "most correct" in a subjective setting. Also never mind that if an applicant chose to test in one of the Saturday sessions sometimes offered in distant areas of the state, most times the application period for the vacancy had expired by the time a test was offered in the applicant's area of the commonwealth. This was just another way for the Fletcher administration to violate personnel laws, the Democrats screamed.

Fast forward a few years. The Beshear administration has eliminated testing for ALL state merit system jobs. Now applicants fill out their applications online, list their relevant education, training and experience, and are scored based on that. No written tests required.

So where's the outrage?

A golden business opportunity, ripe for the picking

2008-06-20T22:57:00.003-04:00

In recent months, dating back to before the November gubernatorial election, we began seeing a lot of little oval stickers on vehicles. Emblazoned with the kicking jackass KDP logo of the Kentucky Democratic Party, the stickers also have the text, "Democrats Do It Better."

"Do what better," we're prone to ask. "Chronically mismanage the state to which voters have entrusted them for 36 out of the last 40 years?" But that's beside the point.

A more recent phenomenon is the amount of voter's remorse many Steve Beshear backers are expressing. We've heard lots of tales, and the number grows every week, of die-hard Democrats renouncing their vote, vowing to support an intra-party challenger in the spring of 2011 and the Republican challenger if Beshear wins re-nomination, and even wishing they had Ernie Fletcher back as governor.

These two unrelated phenomena, put together, strike us as a gold mine ready to be plundered.

Some enterprising bumper sticker printer needs to put out some kind of GOP logo identity stickers. They can use the red and blue elephant that adorns the state and national party sites. There can be a variety of slogans to reflect the attitude of even the most discerning Republican.

There could be the typical "Republican and Proud of It!" If you want to show some state pride, you could try "Proud Kentucky Republican" with the logo inside a state outline. If you, like us, are a bit disgusted with a lot of the leading Republicans in the state, try "Proud Conservative Republican" instead to tick your RINO friends off. Stick a needle in the eye of the people who are trying to chase the social conservatives out of the party with "Proud Christian Republican." Or be intellectually honest and try one that says, "I'm a Republican Because I'm Smart" or "Show Your Intelligence, Vote Republican" or any number of other possibilities that reflect the mental superiority of conservatives and the status of conservatism as the wise choice of philosophy.

The possibilities are endless.

This same entrepreneur could cash in on the anti-Beshear sentiment sweeping the state with stickers reading "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Fletcher." Those who are suffering voter's remorse could opt for, "I Wish I Had Voted For Fletcher." Or if you want to capture the sentiment from a long-ago U.S. Senate race, those who voted for Beshear but now regret it could put a "I got Besheared" sticker on their bumper; those who lament the choice the state's electorate made could opt for a "Kentucky Got Besheared" message.

C'mon. There has to be some Republican entrepeneur out there who would print and sell these stickers. If someone takes the plunge, we'll even give you free advertising on this blog and will promote your product among other Kentucky conservative bloggers.

How about it? We here at KPac are dying to put some of these stickers on our cars and trucks. One of our collaborators went out and found an unused Fletcher-Rudolph sticker and put it back on his SUV during the legislative session. He really wants a "Don't Blame Me..." sticker. Another of us wants a "Proud Conservative Republican" logo sticker for her car. There's a ready-made market for the right business owner, and we'll give free promotion in addition to being one of your biggest customers.

Prosecutor considered patronage charges against Democrats during Fletcher administration

2008-06-17T09:36:00.002-04:00

We are hearing that during the Fletcher administration, a local prosecutor considered bringing charges of criminal political patronage against employees of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and local Democrat leaders in a certain county.

In the end, the prosecutor decided the headaches involved in such a prosecution weren't worth the trouble, but we hear that a certain county attorney was very disgusted at the way Democrats continued to play patronage politics even after a Republican was elected governor.

This situation, we understand, was one of the key arguments administration officials made when they instituted the much-discussed Governor's Personnel Initiative.

The story goes like this: A position came open within CHFS for an administrative assistant in a rural county. A very qualified individual applied for the job, scored very high on the merit system test required for the job, and earned the support of high-placed Republicans and Fletcher backers in two counties, the county where the vacancy existed and the applicant's home county, which was adjacent. This applicant also had the blessing of the governor's constituent services office.

The only problem was, local Democrats and the longstanding Democrat power structure within the mid-level management of CHFS preferred their own candidate. The administration-backed candidate was given an interview, but the job went to the Democrats' preferred applicant. The CHFS employees in charge of the process owed their jobs to the Democrat patronage system that had been in place for years, and that's where their allegiances remained. When local Democrat elected officials and party officials intervened to support their chosen applicant, that's where the CHFS decision-makers sided, realizing who'd buttered their bread for these many years.

The Republicans were upset. One high-ranking Fletcher administration official said, "Well, this didn't turn out the way we wanted it to, but we're going to take steps to make sure stuff like this doesn't keep on happening." Indeed, complaints were flying from all parts of the state that mid-level bureaucrats in many cabinets, in charge of hiring decisions, were continuing to hire Democrats supported by local party big-wigs because they themselves were products of the Democrat patronage system. This is what led to the decision to centralize hiring in what became known as the Personnel Initiative: To end the longstanding system of patronage hiring.

The county attorney, after getting wind of this, seriously considered charging the CHFS managers with violations of KRS 18A, the state's merit system law. The prosecutor knew the vacancy was filled through patronage and not on merit. In the end, though, since the applicant was not a resident of the vacancy where the county occurred, the decision was made not to ruffle local feathers and push a prosecution for patronage. Little did anyone know that a year later, the attorney general himself would be prosecuting patronage allegations for his own political gain and that of his party. In retrospect, we hear, the prosecutor has engaged in a lot of second-guessing for not going forward with the case after all. The reasoning is that this would have exposed the patronage game the entrenched Democrats within state government and local party officials were still playing, and would have justified the Personnel Initiative in the public's mind and blunted the effects of the special grand jury.

This is an interesting cautionary tale, a story of "what-ifs." Perhaps in the future, some local county attorney won't be shy about prosecuting patronage violations when qualified Republicans are passed over for well-connected Democrats in coveted state merit jobs.

Hebert on the case?

2008-06-17T09:32:00.002-04:00

We're hearing reports that Kentucky's premier broadcast investigative reporter, Louisville's Mark Hebert, is looking into the connection between a member of the special grand jury that indicted ex-Gov. Ernie Fletcher and an employee of Greg Stumbo's Kentucky Bureau of Investigation.

If so, this is big. For the first time, a member of the mainstream media is looking into the improprieties that surrounded and tainted that grand jury and its members.

Not so fast, Joey!

2008-06-16T23:27:00.002-04:00

The Transportation Cabinet's reorganization at the highway district level went into effect today, but how long will the new status quo remain? Secretary Joe Prather better not count on smooth sailing for his unproven reorganization plan.

The new branch manager jobs in each of the dozen district offices will be opened up for competition soon, but there's a good chance that those newly-created vacancies will remain in limbo for several months.

We're hearing that some KYTC employees are considering suing to stop the reorganization from taking effect. We're not sure on what grounds they'll sue, but we do know that a KYTC employees association is having an emergency meeting in Frankfort this week to discuss the matter.

If a suit is filed, the next thing will no doubt be a temporary injunction halting implementation of the new organizational structure and filling the new positions created by it. We anticipate any such lawsuit taking years to litigate to completion. And that doesn't count any Personnel Board actions that may come about when positions are filled and the unsuccessful applicants protest.

In a somewhat related matter, KYTC released its executive highway plan late this afternoon, which is supposed to serve as a substitute for the legislatively-passed Six Year Plan that Gov. Steve Beshear vetoed. We haven't examined the contents of the plan, but it's a moot point. Senate President David Williams has a slam-dunk legal case against the Beshear administration on this matter.

We're also hearing troubling news out of Frankfort that Prather and his merry band of political hacks in KYTC are cancelling projects right and left, many of them which have been planned and promised to Kentuckians for years. Other projects are being scaled back to the point that it doesn't even make any sense to continue with the skeleton of what's left.

One year ago, Kentucky's highway department and budget was in excellent shape. Projects were being planned and let for bid, contracts were being awarded, and new construction was being completed. Two years in a row, the state set records for the amount of construction being done. Do Beshear and Prather want their legacy to be the dismantling of Kentucky's highway construction program and the destruction of the Transportation Cabinet's internal structure? Sure looks that way.

Ernie Fletcher's KYTC, while it did have some problems (and not what the mainstream press regurgitated after being fed by Greg Stumbo), was nothing compared to this cluster-foxtrot.

So, Joey Prather, you might want to slow down before you run what little is left of your reputation.

Transportation Cabinet employees unhappy about impending highway district reorganizations, but local officials will be really ticked off

2008-06-13T13:43:00.005-04:00

Employees in the Transportation Cabinet's 12 highway district offices are unhappy about a reorganization plan that takes effect next week. But their anger is nothing compared to what will no doubt be coming down the pike once legislators and local officials get wind of the changes that are going into effect.

Currently, there are five engineering branches -- planning, pre-construction (design, right of way purchase and utility relocation), maintenance, traffic management (signing, striping/pavement marking, issuance of permits for right of way encroachment) and construction (contract management and inspection of projects done by contractors) -- within each of the 12 highway districts.

The reorganization plan, which goes into effect on June 15, consolidates construction and maintenance functions and cuts the number of engineering branches in each district from five to four. All current branch managers must reapply for their positions and those jobs are also open to anyone who meets the criteria. This means that co-workers are going to be in competition with each other for their jobs, and also subordinates who are qualified. With five branch managers and four branches under the new plan, there will be one odd man (or woman) out in each district. This is a recipe for hurt feelings, wounded morale, and a raft of new Personnel Board complaints filed by the unsuccessful applicants.

Besides merging construction and maintenance functions, the new plan basically does away with planning as a separate branch and folds it into pre-construction. Some of the other functions are taken from maintenance and construction and thrown into a "catch-all" branch.

These are internal changes, of concern mainly to the affected employees, and many of them are already unhappy over what's in store. Making the existing branch managers sing for their supper hasn't gone over too well in many of the 12 district offices, our sources in Transportation tell us. Some employees have threatened to contact a lawyer and file a complaint at the least provocation. Some of these were ardent Steve Beshear supporters in last year's gubernatorial election but have now sworn off any future support for him.

However, there are external changes that will be noticeable to the general public, and these are sure to spark outrage from local officials when the full details of what's coming are made known.

In each district there will be two branches for "project delivery and preservation," which is a fancy way of saying "construction and maintenance." The counties in each district will be split roughly in two, with half going to each project delivery and preservation branch. Within each branch, the counties will be further split into two sections. And that's where the fun begins.

While there will continue to be one or more garages in each county, called a unit within the new organizational structure, the sections will in essence be one huge multi-county crew. What this means is that basically, there will be no county crew anymore. If officials want, they can take half the members of one crew ("unit") and assign them to another county for a few days.

Kentuckians are territorial about their counties. And if they begin to perceive that the state highway maintenance needs in their county are being ignored because their workers are having to do things in other counties, they won't stand for it.

There's been no media coverage on this impending change, and to our knowledge local officials (county judges and mayors) have not been informed of what's new, and neither have the legislators.

Those with long memories may recall when Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. closed a few state highway garages in certain counties. It was a very unpopular move and it didn't take Brown's successor, Martha Layne Collins, to reopen the closed garages. This move to consolidate county crews is reminiscent of that, and many longtime Highway Department employees are predicting similar results with this upcoming reorganization.

It should also be noted that under the planned reorganization, the post of administrative branch manager is being eliminated. This person is in charge of purchasing, payroll, personnel and bill payment functions and the administrative managers (all merit employees) have traditionally been yellow-dog Democrats who played and perfected patronage hiring games for years. (We know of one former administrative manager who spoke in code, saying applicants had to be "the right religion" to be considered for a job in his district). Several of the districts have vacancies in this position, since the Fletcher administration chose not to fill those administrative manager positions that came open during Fletcher's four-year term. Some of these duties will fall under the supervision of a new non-merit "administrative coordinator" while others will be the responsibility of employees under the direct supervision of the chief district engineer.

We don't know how well these administrative changes will go over, especially the changes in the engineering areas. But we don't think that local constituencies and officials will be happy about the changes to the county crews, especially when they can't get pothole-ridden roads in their own counties fixed because half the workers are in an adjacent county helping pull ditchlines.

Another lieutenant governor gets hitched, will another party switch of convenience by the bride follow?

2008-06-13T13:34:00.002-04:00

Before Kentucky's only Miss America, Heather French, got married, she was a staunch Republican.

But when she became engaged to then-Lt. Gov. Steve Henry, she changed her registration to Democrat.

Fast-forward a few years, when another 40-something bachelor lieutenant governor plans to wed another 20-something female.

Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo plans to marry Frankfort native Allison Patrick sometime, someplace. The details of those nuptials are being kept secret.

Mongiardo is a Democrat. He met Patrick on the floor of the Kentucky Senate when he was serving in that body, and was introduced to Patrick by State Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr.

Kerr is a Republican and Patrick was volunteering with Kerr's campaign. It's not hard to draw the conclusion that Patrick is a Republican from the fact that she was working for Kerr's campaign.

So we're left to wonder -- will Patrick change her registration out of convenience, as Heather French Henry did? Or will she remain true to her core beliefs?

The Fletcher Inquisition: Has the smoking gun been discovered?

2008-06-11T22:46:00.005-04:00

For months we have been asserting that the grand jury which issued indictments against former Gov. Ernie Fletcher and members of his administration (and even private citizens who supported Fletcher) was fatally flawed and compromised, if not outright corrupt. We pointed out the personal motivations of the chief whistleblower, Doug Doerting, in making the original complaint; the obvious political motives of Attorney General Greg Stumbo; the political loyalties of the chief prosecutor (Scott Crawford-Sutherland) to Fletcher's vanquished opponent in the 2003 governor's race; the political hostility inherent in a majority of the grand jurors; the financial conflict of interest posed by having state merit employees (including the grand jury's forewoman) on the panel because they were negatively financially impacted by the administration's increment policy; and testimony given by several parties (including Doerting) in various legal proceedings that the administration's intent was to follow and bolster the law, not break it, in the interests of providing better services to the taxpayers of Kentucky.

Each time we brought these things up, we were accused of impugning the integrity of the judicial process and that of 12 courageous Franklin County residents who were forced to take time out of their lives to pull grand jury duty. In fact, anyone who made these arguments in public forums, such as other blogs, became the subject of attacks.

Well, have we finally found proof positive that the grand jury was tainted and flawed?

An anonymous poster with access to Lexis-Nexis or some other source of information has provided a definite physical link between attorney general's office employee (and member of Stumbo's former Kentucky Bureau of Investigation) John Dudinskie and grand juror Tuyen Dudinskie. The two live at the same address, 105 Kensington Lane, in Frankfort.

How was a member of the household of a KBI employee ever allowed to serve on a special grand jury hearing evidence gathered by the KBI? Those who claimed we were questioning the very fabric of our judicial system ought to be outraged -- not at us (don't shoot the messenger) but at the very blatant ethical and legal conflicts posed here.

The Frankfort establishment and its willing accomplices in the press got what they wanted: Ernie Fletcher out of power, and a Democrat back at the helm of the state. But at what cost?

We'd like to know what other ties may have existed between grand jurors and interested parties in this case, but the judge sealed the juror information sheets filled out by the prospective jurors when they were called for jury duty. So the only way to discover this is to take the list of grand jurors, which is a matter of public record and is available from the Franklin Circuit Clerk's office, and do some investigation the way we and an observant reader did.

The fix was in -- and we may have stumbled upon a smoking gun to prove it.

Yes, Ernie Fletcher is out of politics, probably for good, but we will never forget the injustice done to him, nor will we forgive those who perpetrated it upon him. The process that ended his career and gave Frankfort back to the incompetent and inept Democrats to do things the way they've always done them, with the same old people running things, was a travesty of justice.

If any of our readers knows anything about any of the grand jurors, and can offer some proof, e-mail us at ky_pac2@yahoo.com or post it here. We're mainly looking for information relating to conflicts of interest between the grand juror's job, family connections, friendships, etc., and their grand jury service, although juicy personal stuff might be useful sometime in the future if it becomes necessary for more pressure to be brought to bear to get a full investigation of what went on. It's time for an accounting to be made.

EXCLUSIVE: More evidence that the Fletcher grand jury was tainted and corrupt?

2008-06-07T22:19:00.003-04:00

In the comments section of a post on PolWatchers discussing recent changes made by Little Jackie Conway in the Office of Attorney General, including the elimination of the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation, the integrity and professionalism of KBI investigator John Dudinskie is called into question. Seems that Dudinskie is a defendant in a lawsuit filed in Russell County relating to his conduct in an investigation into public corruption in Jamestown. A cursory review of information available about this situation reveals that he even had a restraining order filed against him prohibiting him from contacting certain witnesses in the corruption case.

Seems to us that when a judge prohibits a law enforcement officer or official investigator from talking to witnesses, that's a pretty severe step and a good indication that something is rotten in Denmark -- or in this case, the Lake Cumberland area.

When we saw this discussion, red flags went up. "Dudinskie" isn't exactly a common name in Kentucky, and we knew we'd seen that name recently.

Turns out that someone with the same unusual last name was a member of the special grand jury that spent months indicting Gov. Ernie Fletcher and members of his administration for doing what had been official office policy in the preceding 32 years of Democrat rule in Frankfort, and when what the Fletcherites were trying to do was actually END the practice of political patronage hiring that had plagued this state for decades.

Tuyen Minh Thi Dudinskie, a female born on Nov. 1, 1968, is a registered Democrat. She lives at 105 Kensington Lane in Frankfort, an address so new the street doesn't even appear on Google Maps, Mapquest or Yahoo Maps. This residence must be on Frankfort's west side, since she votes at the National Guard Armory on Louisville Road.

We have no way of knowing if Tuyen Dudinskie has any connection to John Dudinskie, but we'd be willing to put a significant sum of money on it. There was a John Dudinskie who retired from the Frankfort Police Department a couple of years ago (thanks to that PolWatchers thread for giving us a link to that tidbit of info) and we suspect that they are, if not the same person, connected to one another. Again, Dudinskie's not a common name in Franklin County. We'd expect to run into a few Dudgeons and Shryocks in Frankfort, but not a lot of Dudinskies.

We don't have immediate access to property ownership or tax records in Franklin County to know anything about 105 Kensington Lane, such as who owns it. Switchboard.com shows no phone listings for anyone named Dudinskie in Frankfort. But we'd certainly wager a significant sum that there is a definite close connection between John Dudinskie, accused rogue KBI agent, and Tuyen Dudinskie, grand juror.

If true, it's yet another powerful argument that the special grand jury was tainted and the indictments were illegitimate. It's also another very good reason why the court made a serious error when it sealed the juror information sheets, which would have revealed if there was any close connection between Tuyen and John Dudinskie.

We welcome any input on this matter, such as copies of deeds or tax information from Franklin County. We'd love to see joint ownership of property by John and Tuyen Minh Thi Dudinskie. It would be more proof that Ernie Fletcher and members of his administration were wrongly prosecuted for political purposes.

What's wrong with Kentucky politics in a nutshell

2008-06-01T17:03:00.004-04:00

If you really want to know what's wrong with Kentucky politics, look no further than the recently-contested race for state senate in the 29th District.

This district, which covers the most heavily Democrat part of the state (Breathitt, Floyd, Knott and Letcher counties) featured two candidates that, quite frankly, were not worthy of the public trust. The phrase "let the best man win" certainly didn't apply to this contest. Neither candidate could have been considered "best."

The incumbent, Johnny Ray Turner, was recently slapped on the wrist by the feds for a rampant vote-buying operation that was busted in Pike Floyd and Knott counties a few years back. Turner somehow managed to avoid any real responsibility for his role in the scheme.

He won re-election last month (there is no Republican candidate in the fall) over Eric Shane Hamilton, who is joined at the hip to the Hindman Mafia which dominates politics in Knott County and is a regional force.

The titular leader of the Hindman Mafia is former State Sen. Benny Ray Bailey, whom Turner defeated several years ago to be elected to that state Senate seat. Other members of the group include Grady Stumbo, former gubernatorial candidate; Bill Weinberg, son-in-law of ex-Gov. Bert T. Combs; Ron Daley, former Hindman newspaper publisher; and various current and former administrators at Alice Lloyd College in Knott County. Hamilton is a relative of Bailey, was seen as his surrogate by many, and thus must be considered a junior member of the Hindman Mafia.

(It should be noted that in the de-facto election for state representative in nearby Perry County, Bailey's son (also named Benny Ray Bailey) ran and lost, in large part because it was revealed that the younger Bailey has allegations of domestic violence in his past.

The Democrats have controlled this corner of Kentucky for years, and billions of dollars worth of public projects have been directed to the area, but still the region remains one of the country's poorest. The Democrats treat political power as their birthright and the counties and cities as their own little fiefdoms. They produce lackluster candidates with questionable intelligence, poor communication skills, limited educations in many cases, and more often than, not, lacking ethical and moral standards.

A crooked politician vs. the puppet of the Hindman Mafia. The voters of that Senate district didn't have a choice. And as long as they keep electing the officials they send to Frankfort, to the county courthouse and to city hall, they don't have a prayer.

It's not just in eastern Kentucky, either. Out in the Purchase, Democrats nominated pardoned federal felon Carroll Hubbard, who embarrassed the state with his misconduct while he served in Congress, for a state Senate seat. Julian Carroll, whose term as governor was tainted by a number of ethical lapses, resurrects his political career as a state senator and constantly panders to his constituency (state employees) to get elected, then turns around and betrays them via his votes.

It's just not Democrats, either, although they are the dominant political party in the state and they enjoy a distinct monopoly in many areas. We can point to counties where voters elect known alcoholics and bootleggers, who are Republicans, to local office.

But if we want to point out just why Kentucky and Kentucky's political scene is so screwed up, we will look unto the hills, from whence cometh not our help, but our answer. Johnny Ray Turner needs to be drawing his teacher's retirement check, and Shane Hamilton needs to be teaching karate, but one of them was going to end up representing a chunk of the mountains in the state Senate. And the people of Breathitt, Knott, Floyd and Letcher counties are poorer as a result.

Something's missing

2008-05-29T22:47:00.003-04:00

We looked and looked at Gov. Beshear's executive order's alterations to the Executive Branch Ethics Commission. Something seemed to be missing, and it took us a couple of days before we could finally figure it out.

There's no prohibition against a gubernatorial candidate accepting the benefits from ads run by a bogus 527 outfit, ripping the incumbent governor over ethics while all the while it's a front for a pro-gambling coalition.

Boogity Boogity Boogity -- Let's go racing at taxpayers' expense

2008-05-22T15:36:00.004-04:00

Owensboro native and three-time NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip begins each Fox telecast of a stock car race with the phrase "Boogity Boogity Boogity, let's go racing boys!"

Gov. Steve Beshear is taking Ol' DW's advice and is going to boogity on down to North Carolina this weekend at taxpayers' expense to lobby for a Sprint Cup race at Kentucky Speedway.

Beshear didn't waste any time making political hay out of today's announcement that Kentucky Speedway has been sold to Speedway Motorsports Inc. SMI owns several racetracks where NASCAR holds Sprint Cup races, most notably Atlanta, Bristol and Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C.

Kentucky NASCAR fans have long wanted one of the races in the top touring series to be held at Kentucky Speedway. The speedway even sued NASCAR in an unsuccessful attempt to have the sanctioning body hold a race there.

Now, with the purchase of Kentucky Speedway by SMI, rumors are rampant that SMI chair Bruton Smith will be moving a race from his New Hampshire track to Kentucky.

The deal was announced informally this morning by Jerry Carroll and the formal announcement is to come in Charlotte, the site of this weekend's Coca-Cola 600.

This afternoon, Beshear's press office issued a statement in which Beshear essentially tries to take some credit for the sale.

But here's the kicker: "To make sure we don't lose any momentum, I will be traveling to North Carolina for the Coca-Cola 600 this weekend to visit with Bruton and get specific about how we will work together to bring a Sprint Cup race to Kentucky Speedway."

Beshear may be trying to take some credit for the sale, and no doubt he will do the same if a Cup race comes to Kentucky, but he'll be doing so at the expense of the truth (which is common for this inept governor).

Waltrip has long been involved with the speedway, and a statue representing him after he won the 1989 Daytona 500 stands in front of the gift shop. Waltrip is also a conservative Republican who supported Ernie Fletcher, recorded commercials for him and other Republican politicians, and has been rumored to be giving thought to moving back to Kentucky and running for governor someday.

Waltrip's efforts have done more to promote the speedway than anything Beshear's done, yet he'll be right out in front if there ever is a big announcement that a Cup race is coming to Sparta.

And in the name of economic development, we (meaning the taxpayers of Kentucky, not just the proprietors of this blog) will be paying for Beshear to attend one of the biggest NASCAR races of the year.

Boogity Boogity Boogity, indeed.

Dear Steve Beshear: The election's over (part 83)

2008-05-08T13:05:00.002-04:00

Continuing to show a lack of class, Gov. Beshear again rubbed salt in the wounds of Ernie Fletcher and state Republicans today by giving Billy Harper a seat on the state Board of Education.

Harper, you'll remember, was one of the two opponents Fletcher faced in last year's GOP gubernatorial candidate. Harper and ex-Congresswoman Anne Northup combined to cause Fletcher to spend a good portion of his campaign war chest that would have otherwise gone toward an incumbent combatting the attacks from the Democrats in the fall, and they certainly helped soften him up for Beshear in the fall.

Yes, Harper's been involved in education initiatives in the past, and yes, he's probably qualified to sit on that board, but his appointment can't be viewed as anything other than adding insult to injury to Ernie Fletcher, if not an outright payback for Harper's help in Beshear's victory over Fletcher last fall.

Through his words and deeds, Beshear continues to make himself look small and undignified in his constant digs at the previous governor. Ernie Fletcher doesn't care; he's probably enjoying life more as a private citizen than he did the last 10 years as a prominent political figure in Kentucky. But Republicans should care, and Fletcher supporters like us have long memories and we won't forget.

You won, Beshear. You're not running against Ernie Fletcher anymore. Be a gracious winner and act like one while you're at it.

The bugs are coming, the bugs are coming!

2008-05-07T12:57:00.002-04:00

We've seen no mention of this anywhere in the state's media, but it should be noted that this moth will mark the emergence of the brood of 17-year cicadas last seen around these parts in 1991.

Seventeen years ago, they began emerging about this time in May and were pretty much gone by the first of June. While they were here, the hills and valleys resonated with their song that quickly became omnipresent and annoying -- much like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama and their surrogates will be during the next two weeks.

Let us know when the cicadas start emerging in your area.

Democrats' disgusting comments linking Derby, Dem presidential race

2008-05-05T11:36:00.003-04:00

Not long after the tragic ending of Saturday's Kentucky Derby, some Democrat/liberal bloggers began making comparisons between the Derby and the Democrat presidential race.

The brown one won. The filly came in second and had to be euthanized.

We find these comments to be truly disgusting and abhorrent. Those who made them should be truly ashamed of themselves.

EXCLUSIVE: Obama can thank a Kentuckian for his viability as a presidential candidate

2008-05-04T13:03:00.005-04:00

EXCLUSIVE: Fraud investigation in the Transportation Cabinet

2008-05-02T12:54:00.002-04:00

Late last month, an investigator from the Transportation Cabinet's Office of Inspector General and a detective from the Kentucky State Police spent a couple of days interviewing Department of Highways employees at one of the cabinet's district offices. The purpose of the interviews was to investigate claims of timesheet fraud by employees at one of the county highway garages in that district.

(We aren't going to divulge the location of the interviews or the county in question, but there's a whopper of a clue in the next sentence if you know how to figure it out).

The details of the scheme go like this: After regular working hours, an employee in that county was calling the central dispatch office to report hazards in the roadway, such as rockslides or fallen trees. The dispatcher would relate the information to highway department officials, who in turn would notify the employees who were "on call" to go deal with the problem and remove the fallen tree, clear the rockslide, or whatever was reported.

The problem is, the hazards were non-existent. There were no problems with the roads. The calls were designed to get the state employees out to earn some overtime pay without having to do any real work, other than answer the call, find no obstructions in the road, and return home.

The scheme was uncovered accidentally, when an employee not involved in the fraud tried to enter some timesheet records into the state's computer payroll system. The system picked up on some discrepancies and threw up a red flag, which was noticed by officials who referred the matter to higher-ups once it became apparent what was going on.

No charges have yet been filed, no indictments have yet been returned, and to our knowledge no employees have yet been disciplined or fired. But there are some nervous people in the county involved, as some serious jail time could result.

This situation has been mentioned in passing on some of the other blogs in Kentucky, and at least one big-city newspaper reporter knows of it, but to date nothing has been reported. We think there's a reason for this.

You see, in the county in question, the ratio of Democrat state employees to Republican state workers is 3:1. That means that 75 percent of the state employees are registered Democrats, which logically means that the vast majority of workers involved in the fraud are also Democrats. State highway garages have been one of the most popular places for Democrat patronage hiring practices the past three decades.

This scandal isn't going to strike at the heart of management, the Fletcher administration, or Republicans. It's going to affect the products of the Democrat patronage system, who got their jobs mainly through political considerations and not because of their qualifications. Since it doesn't involve Republicans to a large degree, it's not of interest to the state's media.

This should be of interest to all Kentucky taxpayers, who have long suffered from the abuses of the entrenched Democrat interests in state government. Perhaps some conscientious media outlet will see this and shine a light on a deep, dark secret of state government where the cobwebs have accumulated for years.