Still cross-posting from www.whatsrequiredky.com
Crit Luallen, proud Centre College alum/my favorite candidate for offices she seems disinclined to run for (see: Governor 2007, Senate 2008), has finished an audit of the Macgoffin County Sherrif’s Office…and found it $84,000 short. The report did not report where the money may have gone, but shockingly the sheriff has offered to cover the difference with personal accounts.
Hmm.
This is cross-posted from www.whatsrequiredky.com. Posting here will cease Wednesday, and only continue on that site.
Or at least creative solutions. From the Frankfort State Journal, why not legalize marijuana? There are the sorts of arguments that come up every time this issue is discussed– the colossal waste of the war on drugs, the lack of negative impact relative to alcohol– but the State Journal has another take completely: Kentucky is broke.
Obviously we’ve all heard that one friend drop the previous two lines, say something to the effect of “and think about all the tax income” and then launch into a discussion of how tobacco needs replacing in our economy, some 15 years after this all started to get really ugly. Personally I’ve always been happy to ignore them and move on, because, point or no point, Gatewood Galbraith has made the issue so toxic inside the commonwealth that it’s on par with social security.
But the reality is, when it comes time to write checks for all the nice things we want to buy in FY2009, we’re going to be 900 million dollars short. The plans to cover that–casinos, 70 cent cigarette hikes, magic–aren’t passing, despite the Governor’s newfound commitment to being effective. So bear with me, and with the FSJ editorial board here for a minute, and imagine the money that would be freed up if all of the inmates currently being held on posession charges were released. Then add the money saved by not having to have the National Guard chase after the growers in Appalachia. THEN add the money from whatever the state would tax such a controversial product.
There are plenty of arguments, based on civil liberties, economics, any principle you can imagine, to take such a controversial plunge. But necessity may be the most compelling.
This is cross-posted from http://whatsrequiredky.com. Please update your bookmarks, because I’m going to make the switch completely and stop posting here on Wednesday.
From Page One: Say No To Casinos is breaking the law. As a 501 (c)3 organization, there are strict limits on the sort of lobbying that they may engage in (well, if you consider “excessive” strict language).
Add this to the missing sign in sheets, the complaint against the Bluegrass Freedom Fund…then the absolute failure of the bill to gain traction in the house…
As if we needed another reason to ignore this option and move on, it’s obvious that the issue has inspired a level of dirty tactics on both sides (poorly executed dirty tactics, since they were caught) that Kentucky voters should have no tolerance for.
Step 1: Tear down a bill floated by high school kids.
So Lloyd Memorial High School in Erlanger has two bills in the house this year; one mandates that schools offer information on voting, finding a polling place, etc to seniors (BRILLIANT, and OVERDUE come to mind). The other is a bill to change how Kentucky allocates electoral votes, from a winner-take-all system to a system that gives electoral votes in the same fashion they’re calculated: one for each congressional district, and two for the state.
The students, like me, are frustrated at the fact that candidates habitually ignore Kentucky in Presedential campaigns. That said, I think they’ve picked a horrible way to rectify the situation. Kentucky is a state that gets passed over because the primaries fall late (no reason to build up infrastructure, like in Iowa) and because it has a reputation as being overwhelmingly socially conservative. That said, it’s important to note that it’s been a long, long time since Kentucky hasn’t voted for the winner of the Presedential election– despite not mirroring the demographics or result of the national vote, Kentucky has managed to serve as a reliable bellwether since 1960, when we picked Nixon over JFK. We may not appear to be in play, but we are. Winning states like Kentucky might be easier for the current crop of Republican candidates (pushing the war, religion, self-determination), but it’s ESSENITAL for the Democrats.
So why is this bill, designed to draw candidates into the state, bad? Because it chooses to solve the problem by essentially creating six separate states. Some of which will NEVER be in play (looking at you, 4th district). This isn’t a solution, it’s change for the sake of change, and instead of an actual increase in the amount of campaign time and money spent here, we would have Wolf Blitzer mention Kentucky one more time than he normally does on election night–just like he does with Nebraska and Maine.
To beat a dead horse, imagine you’re the campaign manager for Democratic candidate X. You’re looking at a map of Kentucky, trying to decide if it’s worth going to under this new system. Because we’re in the era of polarizing national campaigns, districts 1, 2, 4, and 5 are going to go Republican, no matter what. The most you can hope for is to win the 3rd (Louisville) and 6th (Lexington), and win those by such a margin that the remaining electors–from the popular vote–go to you anyway. But that’s no mulligan, thanks to the population and demographic of the 4th district in Northern Kentucky, and even if you wanted to deal with it, you would have to GO TO Louisville and GO TO Lexington to make it happen. Campaigning in Kentucky, as hard as you can, for an electoral split.
Would you invest the resources there? Or would you turn Kentucky into a drive-by state, even more than it already is? Would you spend the money elsewhere and let the grassroots take over? The Gore and Kerry campaigns chose that approach, and that was under the old approach, where hitting the population centers would have been an acceptable tactic. Under this plan, that’s out the window. Obviously Kentucky does have an exposure problem, but the way to fix it isn’t to minimize our value as a bellwether–it’s to capitalize on it. Move the primaries.
Note: This is cross-posted from www.whatsrequiredky.com. This web address will cease operation on Wednesday.
Apologies for being MIA yesterday evening and early this morning; as I continue my prolonged relocation from Atlanta, I keep finding myself spending just a little too much time on I-75.
So instead of ME having the first post of the morning in the Kentucky outposts of the internet, I found a gem from Ben Carter at BGR:
Is there any doubt that Steve Beshear wants to increase environmental enforcement, access to health care, funding for higher education, the Legal Aid budget, drug rehabilitation programs, and other similarly effective and beneficial steps toward a future every Kentuckian can embrace? No. But, before we can move down that road, we have to pull the car out of the ditch. This effort will likely take at least the first full term of the Beshear administration. So, CONGRATULATIONS, Ernie Fletcher, on your successful election to a second term!
While I agree with Ben’s (Other Ben’s? Ben II?) laying this at the feet of Ernie Fletcher, and if you read the rest of the post, also think he’s correct that the Democratic majority has done a horrible job of winning “the blame game.” It’s a little hokey to call this “Fletcher’s Folly.” That might work on some people, but at least speaking for the don’t-you-dare-market-to-me-I-don’t-like-things-unless-they’re-”indy” generation, it’s going to come across as cheap, backwards, and turn away people who (aren’t always, but like to think that they) are intelligent.
And you know what, I DO have some questions about Beshear’s dedication to higher ed, legal aid, and drug rehab, among other fine ideals, because frankly as a liberally minded Kentuckian, I think that I’m not just entitled to, but that I have to. For how long have we seen candidates in our state offices with a “D-Not Really” after their names? I don’t remember the first time Steve Beshear had a political career; his last two years in the pubic eye were my first two on this planet. So he gets no quarter from me. The question is, what have you done for me lately, and the answer is, cut higher ed, cut legal aid, and wait until the 40th day of the session to figure out you needed to implement “plan b” because casinos weren’t going to happen. Is this Ernie Fletcher’s fault? Absolutely. Does Steve Beshear have control over his reaction to this situation, and the leadership he can provide, but has refused to?
Should we expect better? Don’t we deserve it?
Cross your fingers, Kentucky. Things don’t look good. He’s making mistakes on issues he should own. But I will say this: the Governor did something worth praise last week, and sometimes, the first impression you have about a man and his ability is totally, totally wrong.
This is cross-posted at www.whatsrequiredky.com. This page will cease operation on Wednesday of this week in favor of the shiny new hotness at that address.
I’m sure by now everybody that has any interest in the national political scene has discovered that Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman are both advising John McCain.
You’re probably also aware that with rare exception I don’t discuss national races on this site. Without getting into the national implications, I firmly believe that this personnel move reflects a philosophical shift by the McCain team, and one that’s bad–BAD–for the Commonwealth.
In short, this is why. Or maybe not that particular electoral map, but the variation in how red Kentucky is, to be certain. Rove, architect of the 51% majority (49% majority?) that ran rampant in the previous two presidential elections, is the last man that should be in the ear of a man widely seen as a moderate because it destroys chances for Kentuckians to have independent thought up and down the ticket. The more Rove and his strategy of destroying the opposing party on every issue, wherever they stand, however possible (Swift Boats, anyone?) are allowed to gain credence in American politics, the more we’ll have to worry about party labels, and not capability or issues determining who wins elections.
To be frank, I don’t trust religion to stay in the back seat in Kentucky if Karl Rove is running the Presidential election, and I think that will have residual impact down the ticket, on races the average citizen isn’t informed about, and issues they’re not familiarized with in the age of the conglomerated media. If Rove is, well, Rove, the job of the Democratic Party–the job of anybody other than the most partisan GOP operative–will be to educate the public on the issues in the down ticket races, because otherwise, I fear greatly for how carefully considered the decisions we make in the fall will actually be.
This is definitely the last week for this address/RSS feed.
The new site, which I’m cross-posting at right now, and will be exclusive after Wednesday: www.whatsrequiredky.com
The new RSS feed: http://whatsrequiredky.com/?feed=atom
Further bulletins as events warrant.
The Editorial Board at the Herald, being way nicer to Gov. Beshear than I think he deserves. He didn’t “give legislators a chance to bail out” this session, which will be a dud no matter what–he chose to face reality on the Casino bill and finally grew some leadership and courage in the 40th day of the General Assembly. That aside, the rest of the piece is spot-on. We need the money, it’s not going to come from anywhere else, and a youth smoking deterrent would be amazing, even though that’s taboo talk ’round these parts.
In other news, the Clemson football player who cares for his 11-year-old brother is not playing this season–because he’s graduating in August. If you’re not familiar with this story, you should be. And now Ray Ray McElrathbey has not only taken on the responsibility of caring for his brother, he’s graduated college in 3 years. What a way to not just overcome adversity, but excel in it.
…So I don’t get snow blindness. Boo.
Anyway, today’s photo safari went well–cross your fingers on getting picked up somewhere–but I noticed something while I was out: Jefferson County was a wreck, even in comparison to the counties that got it just as bad. I saw a release from the Courier in my RSS reader that said the crews had resumed salting roads at 1pm; what’s that about? The rest of the state was in great shape long before Metro Louisville, and I-64 wasn’t just clear, it was DRY. Shame.
Other things people should see, but I don’t have the energy to opine on after a day driving a Jeep Wrangler in the snow and sprinting around in the cold so I could find good angles before my bare hands (have to be able to work the **** camera) froze:
Ok, I’m going to take some advil now. Talk amongst yourselves.
What’s Required Radio, Wed. 12-1
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