Here is a short clip of comments from Kentucky State Representative Ben Waide concerning the EPA’s impact on the coal industry in Kentucky.
Sorry about the background noise, but there were LOTS of people getting ready for the pro-coal rally.
During its scheduled meeting today, the Kentucky Board of Education acted on a proposal that only surfaced a few days ago, adding a four-year extension to Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday’s contract as the state’s chief state school officer.
Holliday, who came to Kentucky while the board was still populated by a number of Fletcher-era appointees, has proved to be by far the most data-savvy, data-guided commissioner since KERA was enacted in 1990. He is shepherding the implementation of a completely new state assessment program that promises to hold students to higher, college and career oriented education standards. His contract extension by what now are all Beshear appointees on the state board of education offers testimony to Holliday’s ability to work well with people who have a wide variety of viewpoints.
Certainly, as is true for virtually any chief state school officer, some have expressed concern about Holliday over time, but his overall performance so far has been a breath of fresh air compared to any of his post-KERA predecessors.
The Bluegrass Institute looks forward to continued communication with Dr. Holliday and watching him finish the implementation of what everyone hopes will be a much improved education program for our students.
(LEXINGTON, Ky.) – A new policy brief released today by the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank, recommends that the commonwealth not move ahead with its costly – and controversial – health insurance exchange.
Even though the federal “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” does not force states to create their own exchanges, Gov. Steve Beshear insists on spending the $67 million in federal grant funding – more than any state except New York – from the federal government to set up an exchange.
In his policy release entitled “Insurance Exchanges in Kentucky and the Health Care Reform Bill,” University of Kentucky economist John Garen, Ph.D., describes the exchange as “essentially a website where consumers can find individual health insurance plans and prices that are available to them.”
But such exchanges are costly and unnecessary considering “a Google search quickly reveals many websites where comparison shopping for individual health insurance policies can be done,” he said.
Noting that “states really do not have much flexibility in setting up their exchanges” and “are merely carrying out the dictates of the federal government,” Garen warns that Kentucky would be responsible for “the expenses of operating the exchange” after federal funding runs for the project runs out and for enforcing the “counterproductive incentives embedded” in the exchange’s rules.
“The state will take the blame for difficulties high-risk consumers will have in getting coverage, for people dropped from employer coverage onto the exchange and for the healthy who are forced to buy overpriced insurance,” Garen writes. “Better to leave the federal government with the expense and headache of its own creation.”
Read the policy brief here.
For more information, please contact Jim Waters at 270-782-2140 or jwaters@freedomkentucky.com
Making strides towards greater transparency is something that all Kentuckians should be excited about. For instance…
Kenucky’s Auditor of Public Accounts, Adam Edelen, said in a press release this morning that he plans to shed light on the state’s special taxing districts. These districts account for anywhere between $500 million and $1.5 billion in taxpayer money and very little is known about them. Examples of these districts include sanitation districts, libraries and airports.
“I support the important work that special districts such as libraries, fire departments and water and sewer boards do, but if you have ability to take from taxpayers you have to be accountable to them,” Edelen said. “This is a huge layer of government that is operating not just in the shadows, but in the pitch black dark.”
Government operating in the dark is never a good thing.
The Bluegrass Institute, a long time advocate of transparency in Kentucky, was also quoted in the press release:
“How can taxpayers hold these districts accountable when the basic facts about how they function and how many exist are unknown?” said Logan Morford, vice president of Transparency for the conservative, free-market think tank Bluegrass Institute. “I sincerely hope that this fact-finding mission can help bring these districts into the light.”
The press release mentions a plan to put information about the 1,800 special taxing districts in an online database that will allow citizens to track the financial going-ons of these districts. Making this information available to the public is absolutely the right thing to do – 3 million auditors is better than one.
Transparency is truly a non-partisan issue. It is admirable that so many groups from so many backgrounds and ideological learnings are lending their support in an effort to better understand how taxpayer money is being spent.
Read the press release here.
Any remaining doubt that the Environmental Protection Agency is knowingly waging a war on coal – a war that could devastate the very way of life for so many in Kentucky – was laid to rest this week after a video emerged showing yet another EPA regional administrator describing the draconian orders handed down from on high by Administrator Lisa Jackson.
In the video, EPA Region 1 Administrator Curt Spalding describes to a Yale University audience that the results of the EPA’s unilateral edicts would be “painful every step of the way” for so many communities that depend on coal.
Indeed, according to Spalding, that’s the very intention of Administrator Jackson’s sweeping new regulations: “Lisa Jackson has put forth a very powerful message to the country … if you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem.”
It’s becoming painfully obvious that the current administration really does want coal communities in Kentucky and Appalachia to “just go away.”
And this is not the first such video to emerge depicting the not-so-secret intentions of EPA officials – it’s at least the third.
The first emerged from President Obama’s presidential campaign trail all the way back in 2008, a video that saw Obama explicitly call for regulations that would bankrupt coal industries from Appalachia all the way to Wyoming.
The second piece of evidence came from the mouth of former Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz who compared the EPA’s strategy for taking down Kentucky energy to the ancient Romans’ habit of sacking Turkish dissenters via random crucifixion:
“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them. And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”
Armendariz went on to say that “you make examples out of people who are, in this case, not complying with the law … and you hit them as hard as you can” — to act as a “deterrent” to others.
How many more outrageous testimonies from these heartless social-engineers do we need before Gov. Beshear and his office take a bold stand against the EPA?
At least the ordinary citizens of Kentucky have had enough, and they’re going to go out and shout it when the EPA comes to town for their days of reckoning on June 5th and 7th in Frankfort and Pikeville. It’s about time.
A new article in Education Week, “Scientists Find Learning Is Not ‘Hard-Wired’,” (subscription?) is going to create some interesting discussions around the country about how much we know – or rather don’t know – about how students learn.
The EdWeek article is full of interesting terms like “neuro-myths,” “snake-oil pitches” and “half-truth.”
Comments of note include Dr. Kenneth S. Kosik’s statement:
“We still have a paucity of real, concrete findings in neuroscience that we can say will change what goes on in the classroom.”
The article also says that the development of neuroscience in education was slowed by “turf wars.” As a result:
“In the absence of cohesive collaboration among the disciplines, Dr. Zadina said, teachers, policymakers, and education companies were often left to draw their own conclusions from the research, and they often came to overly simplistic or outright wrong conclusions.”
One interesting research study showed that student teachers were likely to fall for a bogus education article simply because it had pictures of brain scans. The scans were not related to the text of the article.
I could go on, but I think my point is made.
We’ve heard a lot over the past 22 years about how KERA was research-driven.
The truth is that there is a tremendous amount of information about how kids really learn that real research is only just now beginning to tap. Almost all of those who pushed education fads for the past two decades – confidently assuring us that “research shows” their ideas worked – were mostly wrong. Those educators were citing unscientific, often totally nonsense, papers that could not prove anything.
We need to keep that carefully in mind as our new state/national standards package evolves and our teachers begin to try to figure out how best to teach those new standards. Developing both the standards and the curriculum to teach those standards will be much less scientific, and a lot more of a shot in the dark, than many in education realize, or want to admit.