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“Educational Genocide” in Louisville: The parent blame game

Education, NewsBy Richard Innes February 19, 2013

Since Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday unleashed a Tsunami with his recent remarks that performance in Jefferson County’s lowest-performing schools amounted to “educational genocide,” uncomfortable facts about Louisville’s long-term, Persistently Low-Achieving Schools (PLAs) are finally getting attention.

Sadly, the Jefferson County school board quickly started their all-to-familiar denial dance, trying to downplay the fact that we’ve already put up with a trail of tears of over 22 years of failed promises in these schools since KERA’s enactment way back in 1990. Included, as usual, in that denial dance is the often-heard charge that parents of students in the low-performing schools don’t care.

Really?

Well, here’s a big surprise: data from Kentucky’s new Unbridled Learning education accountability program show that, on average, PLAs high school parents attended more parent/teacher conferences in the 2011-12 school year than did parents from the other high schools in Louisville.

That goes counter to a major drumbeat from the Jefferson County denial dance.

Don’t believe it? Click the read more link to see the details.

The economics behind the issues: Taxing the rich

Increase Free Markets, Smaller Government, UncategorizedBy Jim Waters February 19, 2013

In last week’s Bluegrass Beacon column – authored by our very own Jim Waters, President of the Bluegrass Institute – Waters argues against the sort of nanny-state policies which would keep low-skilled workers from accepting any wage they deem worthwhile for employment, and which would raise the tax burden ever higher on Kentucky’s most productive citizens.

While Kentucky legislators are contemplating such proposals in this year’s legislative session, a new report from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) offers further evidence against them which backs Waters’ sentiments.

According to the ALEC report, called “Tax Myths Debunked,” even if the feds were to raise taxes on the top ten percent of income earners by a whopping ten percent, the increase in revenue would just barely cover one year’s worth of servicing U.S. debt – assuming bondholders don’t up their required return on investment for our ever-increasing U.S. debt problem.

The report debunks the myth that raising taxes on the rich by ten percent would not harm the economy, in no uncertain terms:

Taxing the incomes of the top 1 percent of taxpayers at this rate would yield only $93.8 billion. These are all taxpayers with incomes above $380,000 or so. Taxing the incomes of the top 5 percent of taxpayers would yield about $180 billion. This would require a tax on all incomes over about $150,000 per year. Taxing those in the top 10 percent of the income distribution at the same rate would raise only $340 billion. This would require bringing the taxable income threshold to about $110,000.

We could apply the same math that ALEC used for taxpayers nationwide to Kentucky taxpayers. If we take the population of the top one percent of Kentucky income earners to be 27,640 (data gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau), and this group’s average income per capita to be $759,000 (as per the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s report: “Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States”), then raising income tax rates by ten percent on Kentucky’s most productive group would result in an increase in tax revenue of $2 billion.

To put this in perspective, this would cover just over 3% of Kentucky’s total state debt when including outstanding official debt and Kentucky’s $30 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Clearly, raising taxes on the rich isn’t the cure-all that tax-hawks claim, especially when considering the disincentives and emigration affects such tax increases encourage.

Courier-Journal running poll on whether Kentucky should have charter schools

EducationBy Richard Innes February 19, 2013

The Courier-Journal is running a poll on whether Kentucky should have public charter schools. When I checked at 2:50 pm on February 19th, the results were 64 percent in favor, 26 percent opposed and nine percent saying they didn’t know enough to say. 2,056 people had voted.

In case anyone thinks the Kentucky Department of Education isn’t getting fed up

Education, NewsBy Richard Innes February 18, 2013

We’ve been writing a lot about the Persistently Low-Achieving (Priority) Schools mess in Louisville, but this is far from the only under-performing school system in Kentucky.

Announced today, the Kentucky Board of Education will be meeting shortly to vote on whether to take over the Monticello Independent School District since the district has now waived its rights to appeal.

While a major focus of the takeover is due to financial issues, there is no getting around the fact that Monticello High School’s juniors posted one of the very worst ACT Composite Scores in 2012 of any district in the state. The high school is also a Persistently Low-Achieving School.

At least in Monticello they are facing the facts of poor performance for their students and are willing to let someone else try to help them do better.

How nice it would be if the same were to happen in Louisville.

They’re going big

NewsBy bipps February 18, 2013

Earlier this year, I told you that one of our main themes in 2013 is transparency as a means to make government accountable to you – a sovereign Kentuckian and taxpayer.

There are some serious policy issues brewing for Kentucky—the first is our ticking debt bomb, which could ruin the standard of living that most Kentuckians enjoy.
The second is an all out attack on our energy sector.

The Left has already revealed their solutions to these issues. They want to raise your taxes and if they’re going to take a hit on raising taxes, then they’re going to go for BIG TAXES.
They’re also bringing in BIG HOLLYWOOD. And for Kentuckians that means an actress who once referred to coal mining—our signature energy industry–as “the rape of Appalachia.”

That’s why we need you now. We don’t even exist without the generosity of members like you to support our work. By investing just 50% more TODAY you’ll enable us to fund our small and dedicated staff, to round out our strategy in fighting this big Leftist onslaught and to expand our output.
We need to be ready. Doing nothing is not an option.

Will you invest in us today by making a generous gift of $50, $100, or $200 or as much as you can afford to help fund our 2013 transparency missions?

Already this year, your partnership with the institute has made two important transparency ideas gain traction in Frankfort – public pension transparency and shining the light on the 1,200 special taxing districts that now can collect, and in many cases even raise, taxes across the commonwealth.

We’ve already taken some heat on this issue from members of both parties, but the lack of accountability in Kentucky’s 1,200 taxing districts isn’t a nickels-and-dimes type of problem. And if these local “ghost” governments comprised of unelected bureaucrats can operate outside citizen oversight, then wh

at is to stop big federal government from doing the same?

The 1,268 special districts found in every county in Kentucky spend more than $2.7 billionper year – more than one-fourth of the annual state budget’s General Fund. That’s money coming out of your pocket.

The highlight of the Kentucky Citizen Auditor Initiative on special districts is an interactive online database that we helped the Auditor’s office design! This database will finally shine some light on the state officials who run the districtsand have the power to assess fees and levy taxes on Kentuckians – without having to be elected by you and other Bluegrass citizens.

I know we did the right thing in bringing transparency to these big-spending districts and there is so much more we can do to shine a disinfecting light into the murky corners of big government.

Our impact is only limited by our funding, so please invest in your Bluegrass Institute membership today! Your gift of $200 or as much as you can afford right now will ensure our crucial transparency reports continue to be released to stop run-away big government.

Together, I know we can force government accountability and stop the Left’s advances into Kentucky. And together we’ll keep on growing. Thank you in advance.

In Liberty,

Kelly L. Smith, Vice President of Strategic Partners

P.S. We’re gearing up for some key policy battles for the heart of Kentucky and we’re looking to take the Bluegrass Institute’s impact to the next level. But we need your help to grow in impact.

Will you invest $50, $100, $200, or as much as you can afford, in us today?

If those of you who faithfully follow our content and work could help us expand our budget by just 50% in 2013, we can literally DOUBLE our impact just in time. Thank you for sticking with us through 10 years of advancing liberty.

Set of bills takes aim at Kentucky’s energy sector once again

EnergyBy Jim Waters February 18, 2013

Our federal masters are at it again in their efforts to stifle one of Kentucky’s most historic and important industries: our energy sector.

Last week, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-New York and one of Kentucky’s own, Rep. John Yarmuth, introduced H.R. 526, the Appalachian Health Emergency Act. If passed, this shoot-first, ask-questions-later-bill would completely ban any new mountaintop removal mining permits until a study outlining the health implications of such practices is completed by the feds. So much for innocent until proven guilty, eh?

The bill would also force current mining operations to submit a monthly report on pollution of waterways, air, soil – even noise pollution – to the feds. Of course, these reports and also the feds’ impartial study will be funded by fining coal miners – who currently provide Kentucky with 93% of its electricity needs.

At least such proposals will have to go through an elected body before they become the one-size-fits-all law of the land, unlike the unilateral dictates of the Environmental Protection Agency currently costing Kentuckians billions per year.

Still, perhaps a bill similar to H.R. 526 should be passed outlawing any new pieces of federal legislation until the states complete a study showing the efficacy of Congress. One can dream…

An even more disconcerting bill introduced recently hits much closer to home, because this one comes from our state legislators.

Legislators from Louisville and Lexington – areas of the commonwealth notoriously ignorant to the importance of coal country in western Kentucky and Appalachia – recently introduced House Bill 170. This would establish renewable energy portfolio standards (RPS) in the commonwealth and force utility companies to generate power using a higher percentage of costly and unproven energy sources, like wind and solar, in place of coal and natural gas.

Protecting the environment in the Bluegrass State should be a priority to all Kentuckians, but not if doing so means ignoring the substantial costs involved with RPS. For example, according to a report released last year from the Manhattan Institute, states that have mandated RPS have experienced significantly greater rises in the price of energy over the past decade. The study also finds that the states with the highest energy prices tend to be states requiring RPS.

As shown by the study, citizens should educate themselves of the costs of such green agendas before supporting. HB 170 is currently being reviewed by the Tourism Development & Energy subcommittee.

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