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In his recent letter published by LEO Weekly, Louisville’s alternative publication, St. Matthews’ resident Paul L. Whiteley Sr. makes a weak, but deceptively empty, case against a free-market economic system.

Whiteley suggests “combin(ing) the best ideas” from socialism and capitalism to “forge a system in which compassion is abundant and greed is rare.” He adds: “Capitalism is not all good, and socialism is not all bad.”

Mr. Whiteley doesn’t bother to honor us free-market underlings with specifics of what is “good” about capitalism or “bad” about socialism, other than offering the worn-out mantra: “Greed is bad.”

Those who think that sounds reasonable should consider Whiteley’s concluding statement: “‘Enough is a feast’ is a good economic philosophy to live by.”

Whoops! Not only does Whiteley misquote 16th century English writer John Heywood, he also fails to tell us who determines what is “enough.”

Apparently, he thinks government determining what’s “enough” is one of the “good” things about socialism. He’s as wrong as his quote.

The protectors of Kentucky’s education status quo aren’t finished gnashing their teeth over one victory for school accountability in the current General Assembly with the passage of Senate Bill 1.

But they can take solace in the fact that your children probably won’t get a chance to go to anything like The Gatton Academy of Math and Science at Western Kentucky University, because another legislative session is going to end with charter schools remaining illegal for almost everyone else.

But as the good folks at The Gatton Academy know, these things take time.

Kentucky endured an excess of editorial hand-wringing recently over the demise of the state’s CATS school assessments. Those one-sided rants fuss about newly enacted plans for a three-year pause from CATS school accountability. Instead of even considering that there might be a bright side to temporarily halting high stakes accountability, these editors just whine that education reform is dead (it isn’t).

Since you apparently aren’t going hear it from the press, we look here at the other side of the coin – how dropping the high stakes accountability for CATS for a few years could allow our teachers to start making needed curriculum improvements right away while we go through the three year process of creating a much better and up-to-date assessment program.

If you are interested in seeing what Paul Harvey liked to call, “the rest of the story,” read on.

Having absorbed billions of dollars in losses in cozy bailout deals between big business and the federal government, taxpayers can’t be surprised they now face getting squeezed in a handshake between the insurance industry and socialized medicine advocates in the Obama Administration.

Here it comes:

First, charging higher premiums for more expensive customers is about as controversial as a doctor charging more for removing a brain tumor than he does for removing a mole. Second, charging all policyholders the same premium means healthy insureds will subsidize the unhealthy. Offering that in exchange for a requirement that everyone purchase health insurance (and that taxpayers must subsidize many of them) ensures that the only losers in the transaction are those who were left out of the negotiations.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo said this evening “I am proud of the important work accomplished by the legislature, as shown by the following partial list of new laws.”

His list of “accomplishments” includes:

HB 143, the pension raid bill
HB 144, the tax increase bill
HB 117, the pension payment deferral bill
HB 153, the milk regulation bill

The best thing about the milk regulation bill is that price-fixing was removed from the final version of the bill. For now.

On the other hand, SB 1, which killed the discredited CATS testing program, was an accomplishment.

Kathy Gornik, the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions board chair, testified today before a Senate Republican Conference on the potential adverse impacts of the proposed “Card Check” legislation.

You can find the full testimony from Kathy and the other speakers by going to this link and then clicking on the item “Senate Hearings on Unions” which I highlight with an arrow in the picture below.

Check this out to learn how Card Check is one of the most undemocratic pieces of legislation to come down the pike in a very long time.