Politics Not Ethics

One more comment on the Bluegrass Freedom Fund. The fund had contributors other than gambling interests.

Disregarding this window dressing email from the Bluegrass Freedom Fund:

CONGRATULATIONS, KENTUCKY!

House of Representatives Unanimously Passes Ethics Reform

Bluegrass Freedom Fund Urges State Senate to Join Grassroots Effort

The Bluegrass Freedom Fund congratulates the Kentucky House of Representatives for unanimously (94-0) passing ethics reform on Wednesday, January 30, 2008. We urge the State Senate to join this grassroots effort to pass important anti-corruption legislation this session. Our advocacy on behalf of ethics reform, which began last year, is one big step closer to becoming law.

Call your State Senator today and urge them to support strong ethics reform.

The purpose of the Fund was to put Steve Beshear in the Governor’s Mansion. Ethics reform may be an unintentional by product, but the purpose was political control. The primary drivers (contributors) want Casino Gambling. Other major contributors (labor unions) wanted the Republicans out. Their objective was the same, even if their motivations were different.

This was politics, pure and simple, and had nothing to do with ethics.

Junk Mail

Now is the season for smarmy political crap in the mail. Take for example the so called voter guide from the Freedoms Heritage Forum Political Action Committee.

The thing that got me interested in these guys was their list of issues on the flip side of the voter guide.

Such as:

Steve Beshear Opposes the Ten Commandments.

Steve Beshear Supports Special Rights for those who practice homosexual acts.

Steve Beshear Supports the crime and political corruption associated with expanded gambling.

Give me a break.

So who promotes and publishes this drivel?

According the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance , the Chairman of the Freedoms Heritage Forum is David Logsdon, PO Box 8090, Louisville Kentucky 40527. His phone number is listed as (502) 895-7700. The same number is on the Freedoms Heritage Forum web site.

The Treasurer of the Freedoms Heritage Forum is Bob Ross, 800 Envoy Circle, Louisville, Kentucky, 40299-1837. You can reach Mr. Ross at his Accounting Office at (502) 499-9088. As an aside, Bob doesn’t mind feeding at the government trough.

Of course he has shared his money and covered his bases. While bashing the Democrats with the Freedoms Heritage Forum he has also donated to Crit Luallen, the Kentucky House Democratic Caucus Campaign, and Bruce Lunsford. Whether Lunsford is really a democrat is another rant.

One other player here appears to be David Marlett, 1903 S 8th St., Ft Pierce, FL 34950. You see the voter guide link is hosted on the Wilderness Cry Ministries web site. David Marlett is also the registrant of the Freedoms Heritage Forum web site.

So here is the question for the Registry of Election Finance.

What is the relationship between some right wing fundamentalist Baptists in Florida and a registered Kentucky Political Action Committee?

Why would anyone think there could be something not right about the Freedoms Heritage Forum and the way they do business?

Well, maybe because the Federal Election Commission has already taken them to court.

FEC v. FREEDOM'S HERITAGE FORUM, ET AL.

On March 28, 2002, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky at Louisville granted the Commission's motions for:

Dismissal of portions of the complaint affected by changes in FEC regulations;

Summary judgment on claims that the Freedom's Heritage Forum (the Forum) and its treasurer failed to include the required disclaimers on express-advocacy communications; and

Dismissal of the defendants' counterclaims charging, among other things, that the Commission selectively enforced the Federal Election Commission Act (the Act) against the defendants, thus, depriving them of their Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection.

The court denied the Commission's request for summary judgment that former congressional candidate Timothy Hardy knowingly received a prohibited corporate contribution because certain of the facts were contested by the parties.

On August 14, 2003, the U.S. District Court for the District of Kentucky at Louisville issued an agreed order regarding Timothy Hardy's involvement in this case.

A Joke of A Race

This year’s election has to be the best argument yet for making the Secretary of Agriculture an appointed office in Kentucky.

Your choice is simple the incumbent, who can dribble a basketball or the challenger that just dribbles.

Richie Farmer might be a nice guy to have a beer with, but he would have been a disaster if he had shown up to work enough times to do anything. He won his primary but using the same thing that makes him successful as Agriculture Commissioner. He didn’t show up.

The challenger is David Lynn Williams. The rest of the Democratic ticket (notice who doesn’t have a picture) would just as soon Williams disappeared. A perennial candidate and sometimes Republican, Williams was charged earlier this year with menacing, disorderly conduct and harassment.

The truly funny part of this is that Farmer could quite possibly be the only Kentucky Republican holding a constitutional office after this election.

Laettner or Lee

Well, with every candidate there is something that makes you question if you can support him or her. Today I found that one thing that gives me pause in my support of Jack Conway for Attorney General.

The man went to college at Duke.

Say it isn’t so Jack.

Why Duke? Memories of Christian Laettner come flashing back. Lord, how can I support this guy?

Then the answer came, hiding behind a fuzzy growth, the Stash.

I guess that as long as we don’t talk about basketball it will be OK. And why is it a classic when Duke beats Kentucky? Maybe it’s just expected when Kentucky beats Duke or North Carolina.

Gear Up

Marketing the candidate a new way:

You can buy a shirt from Anne Northup or you can buy a book from Gatewood,

But if you want the full line of campaign wear you have to go to Jonathan Miller and Irv Maze.

The other campaigns haven't got with the program yet.

Gear Up

Marketing the candidate a new way:

You can buy a shirt from Anne Northup or you can buy a book from Gatewood,

But if you want the full line of campaign wear you have to go to Jonathan Miller and Irv Maze.

The other campaigns haven't got with the program yet.

Louisville Forum

Some notes for today’s Louisville Forum.

All the major candidates were there except Jody Richards.

Jonathan Miller came across as extremely articulate and mature in the Louisville Forum presentation in front of over 100 guests.

The Miller-Maze team was the only one with visible support with about 20 people wearing stickers. None of the other candidates had any visible support.

Miller came across the best, but the others did not make any major mistakes and were adequate in their communications.

Gatewood Galbraith started out angry but ended up hitting his one-liners and getting the most laughs.

Bruce Lunsford went business casual, without a tie, and wore an off the rack more casual suit rather than his $2,000 tailored suit look.

Lunsford, Steve Henry & Steve Beshear seemed embarrassed of their own running mates only mentioning them in passing after Miller gave accolade after accolade to Irv Maze.

As Governor all 5 except Henry said they would veto the bill denying health insurance to domestic partners. Henry seemed ready to lock up the homophobe vote.

Lunsford said after giving money to both Northup and Yarmuth, that Yarmouth was the person who inspired him to run.

Henry claimed he was a scientist not a politician. He said he had taught at Harvard and UCLA. Funny we never noticed academic credentials on his resume

Lunsford said he was not a politician and then name dropped every CEO in Louisville.

Lunsford when asked about expanding gambling "small towns are not ready for the prostitutes and other con men who would come to town"

I guess the Lunsford-Stumbo ticket doesn’t plan much of a small town Kentucky presence.

Is That Kevin Bratcher in That Gold Tie?

While I was looking to see who had endorsed Stan Lee I noticed something odd. At the bottom of the endorsement page is Kevin Bratcher, nothing unusual there, one more wing-nut.

But what is interesting, in a techie geek sort of way, is the whole Stan Lee 2007 web site is sitting on the Kevin Bratcher site.

http://www.bratcher.cc/stan_lee.htm
http://www.bratcher.cc/Stan/stan_lee_endorse.htm
http://www.bratcher.cc/Stan/stan_lee_issues.htm
http://www.bratcher.cc/Stan/stan_lee_first_step_contribute.htm

Now Stan has always been kind of web-challenged. This is the first time he’s had a web site, and this one is pretty light weight in content, it matches the candidate.

But it does make you wonder who is driving this campaign?

Is it Stan or Kevin?

Go Ask Alice

Sometimes a person can be conspicuous by there absence.

Take a look at the folks endorsing Stan Lee for Attorney General. Now the list runs the usual gamut of wing-nuts in the Legislature from Vernie MaGaha to Dick Roeding.

But here is the interesting absence:

Where is Alice Forgy Kerr?

Why has the Republican Senator, whose district takes in most of the 45th Legislative District, Stan’s district, not endorsed Stan for Attorney General?

Interesting…..

A Call From Teresa Isaac

Yesterday afternoon I came home to a flashing message on my home phone answering machine. The message was from Teresa Isaac asking me give her a call.

I dialed the number expecting to get a robo-call pitch for the Lunsford-Stumbo ticket. Instead, I got a quick personal pitch from Isaac about signing on with Lunsford.

Now I knew Teresa had signed on with the McConnell wing of the Democratic Party, but I didn’t realize her level of commitment. The only reason I can think for Isaac to join these jokers must be to get a job in there administration.

While philosophically I agree with Teresa Isaac, and I admire her ability to do the hard one on one work of retail politics, the last thing the Commonwealth of Kentucky needs is Teresa Isaac in any kind of administrative position.

Her term as mayor of Lexington, amply demonstrated a remarkable lack of management aptitude.

Her skills are such that if you put her in a paper bag she would try to manage her way out the closed end.

So here is one more reason, like I needed another one, not to vote for Lunsford and Stumbo.

State of Denial

Sometimes I think we should change the name of the State of Kentucky to the State of Denial. This thought usually comes when I hear someone talking about Top 20 Universities, better public education, stopping the spread of meth labs, increasing the minimum wage or any number of other topics state government deals with on a regular basis.

The problem is simple.

Everyone hates to pay taxes, EVERYONE….

That’s why idiots like Billy Harper, appeal to other idiots with a no new tax pledge. It appeals to the anti-government bias many people share. It’s a simple, easy to understand wrong answer to complicated question.

However, it’s not the only simple, easy to understand wrong answer out there. We currently live with one called the Lottery. Wallace “Wally the Weasel” Wilkerson rode that one into the Governor’s mansion. Ask people if they would deal with a local thug to play the numbers game and they would cringe, but let them buy a state lottery ticket at the grocery store, that’s a different thing.

Well not really, it’s still a tax on people that can’t do math. The only difference is whether you pay some management firm in Atlanta or crime boss in Cleveland. The lottery was a bad idea then and a bad idea now.

The same is true of casino gambling. Steve Beshear has adopted the idea whole heartedly. I guess he remembers when Wally beat him the last time he ran for governor. You have give Steve credit for remembering that far back, however it would have been nice if he had spent then years coming up with a good idea.

Until we have comprehensive tax reform none of the problems this state faces will have a snow balls chance in hell of being addressed. A very wise man once suggested the way to solve the states money problems was to erect a fence around the entire state, then sell admission to the 19th century.

Now given the gutless nature of the legislature, true tax reform is a real problem in this state.

The one candidate that actually appears to be thinking about taxes and how to fund the needs of government is Jonathan Miller.

From the Henderson Kentucky Gleaner:

"I think that cities and counties should have as many different options as they want," he (Miller) said in an interview at The Gleaner office. "That would be up to Henderson and Henderson County if they want to put that on the ballot and allow people to vote on it, but I think they need to have as much flexibility as possible.

"There might need to be some constitutional changes, but in this climate, where we're putting so much pressure on local and county governments to pay for services, we need to let them have the flexibility."

Think about this:

Cincinnati, Nashville, Charlotte, Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Jacksonville all have city or county sales taxes in addition to state sales taxes. In Northern KY people pay the Cincinnati city tax when they shop there, but are not allowed to charge it to Ohioans at the Florence Mall.

South Central Kentuckians have to pay the Nashville city tax when they shop there, but are not allowed to charge it when people visit the Corvette Museum.

I’m glad at least one candidate is thinking about how to actually solve the problems rather than revisiting old elections.

Not Weird - Just Cold

Larry Keeling asks this question on his blog:

“Why any Democrat would want to get in the middle of the Fletcher-Pence break-up is strange enough. Why any Democrat would want to get into it on Fletcher's side is, as I said, weird - with a capital W.”

Here’s the answer:

If you are a Democrat you want Fletcher hurt, but not killed. It’s is better for all Democrats to watch Fletcher and Northup beat up on each other than have a clear Republican winner.

It’s really a military answer, it’s easier to trap an enemy slowed down with casualties than one that has freedom of movement.

You see Republicans really aren’t as cold hearted as some Democrats believe.

If they were, they would have slit Fletcher’s political throat a long time ago and left him bleeding in the dust and moved on.

Pot of Gold for Dr. Dan

I find it interesting how politics make strange bedfellows.

Two people have come to me in the last week with an invitation they received for a fund raiser for Steve Beshear and Dan Mongiardo.

The invitation, signed by a well known Lexington fairness activist, contains the following:

“Steve has assured me that that (the typo was in the invitation) he will promptly re-execute Governor Patton’s Executive Order banning discrimination against state government employees who are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgendered. As to this issue, I will also not that Sen. Mongiardo recently voted in opposition to the Senate Bill which seeks to forbid our state universities and colleges from offering health care domestic partner benefits to its unmarried employees.”

Now I don’t have a problem with re-executing Patton’s order, nor do I disagree with Mongiardo’s vote on an incredibly short sighted Senate bill.

What I have a problem understanding is how the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered community can embrace a slate where one member was the sponsor of the Constitutional Amendment to ban same sex marriage.

How can you “help us fill a ‘pot of gold’” for a guy whose record clearly shows he is clearly challenged in the consistency department?

The Ford Dinner

Here are a few observations from the Jefferson County Democratic Party’s Ford Dinner. This is the local party’s main fundraiser.

Using the time honored method of who has the largest number of people wearing a campaign sticker the Miller-Maze team dominated the event.

Most people were not wearing stickers for any candidates or for only Jack Conway.

Six candidates attended but visible support for Miller-Maze (those wearing the stickers) were 5 to 1.

The count was over 40 Miller-Maze stickers on a crowd of over 300 no one else had over 5

Only a handful of cronies & staff had Bashear-Mongiardo stickers. The same was true for Lunsford-Stumbo and Henry-True.

Interesting enough no one was wearing Richards’s sticker or a Gatewood sticker.

I guess Jody and Gatewood share the same problem; they don’t have enough money to buy stickers.

By the way how much money do these guys have? Jonathan Miller and Irv Maze have been the only ones to be open with the voters on fund raising.

With the other guys it seems to be just politics as usual.

Old School Politics

Jody Richards’ motto must be “Which way are they going, so I can get in front of them and lead.”

Until there was a surge, not in the Bush sense, of opposition to HB 184 Richards was all in favor of letting Harry Moberly have his way with the legislative process.

When Jonathan Miller came out against it, and even Stan Lee and Kathy Stein agreed it was a bad bill Jody suddenly now has “grave reservations”.

Usually Lee and Stein can’t agree on where the sun comes up in the morning, "If Kathy and I agree on something, it must really be a bad piece of legislation," Lee said.

This is pretty much the level of leadership Richards has demonstrated in the legislature and what you could expect from a Richards administration if he is elected governor.

From the Courier-Journal:

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- House Speaker Jody Richards has "grave reservations" about a bill that would make clear that the General Assembly has the power to pass and repeal state laws within the budget bill, his office spokeswoman said yesterday.

Bi-partisan Self-Serving Opportunism

From the Courier-Journal:

FRANKFORT, Ky. — For the first time in perhaps two years, Gov. Ernie Fletcher and Attorney General Greg Stumbo appeared together at a press conference, pledging yesterday to work together to push legislation to fight the problem of drug abuse.

Let me understand this, indicted Doctor Governor Ernie Fletcher and deal maker Attorney General Greg Stumbo suddenly discover, after three years in their respective offices, there is a drug problem in Kentucky.

But wait they have been busy slamming each other over the merit system abuse until they woke up and smelled the election and made a deal so both could run for office.

Maybe they should have talked to Tara Conner, Miss USA.

From the Herald-Leader editorial page:

Like thousands of other young Kentuckians, Conner had access to alcohol and drugs very close to home. Operation Unite, the anti-drug effort in southeastern Kentucky, says almost 60,000 Kentucky adolescents need substance-abuse treatment.

Let’s not forget that Stumbo is from eastern Kentucky and spent 18 years in the legislature, but I guess the drug problem is not real visible to the county club set in Floyd county.

What an example of self-serving political opportunism from a Republican and a Democrat.