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Thirteen current Kentucky state Senators promised never to support tax increases. If they keep their word, their votes will be sufficient to force the governor to face up to wasteful spending policies.

They are twelve Republicans and one Democrat.

The Americans for Tax Reform tax pledge signers are Sen. Walter Blevins, Sen. Charlie Borders, Sen. Tom Buford, Sen. Julie Denton, Sen. Carroll Gibson, Sen. Ernie Harris, Sen. Dan Kelly, Sen. Vernie McGaha, Sen. Katie Stine, Sen. Robert Stivers, Sen. Gary Tapp, Sen. Elizabeth Tori, and Sen. Jack Westwood.

Yesterday’s vote in the House doesn’t inspire much confidence. Pledge signers who broke their promise included Democrats Rep. Keith Hall, Rep. Royce Adams, Rep. Bob Damron, Rep. Melvin Henley, Rep. Jim Gooch and Republicans Rep. Jeff Hoover, Rep. Lonnie Napier, Rep. Danny Ford, Rep. Bob Deweese, Rep. Jim Stewart, and Rep. Charlie Siler. Their 11 votes would have been more than enough to kill the tax hikes.

Global warming got a huge boost from all the tax increase hot air on the House floor in Frankfort today. Rep. Stan Lee, however, went straight to the heart of the whole charade.

This is just the beginning of the tax increase effort from the House.
http://www.motionbox.com/external/hd_player/type=sd,video_uid=309dd8b5191ae5c1be

The Family Foundation of Kentucky announced today its opposition to HB 28 with an interesting take on the bill:

“The bill, House Bill 28, would allow the father of child born from an adulterous relationship with a married woman to claim parental rights to the child even after the woman had reconciled with her husband. The bill would effectively overturn the Rhoades v. Rickett’s decision in which the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled last year that the marriage prevailed over the biological father’s claim.”

“Proponents of the bill argue that the mere fact that a man is the biological father of a child is sufficient to warrant parental rights, but Cothran argued that this has never been the case. “If you take this argument to its logical conclusion, then the biological father of a child born through in vitro fertilization to a mother married to another man could gain parental rights. In fact, if biology trumps everything else, what stops a rapist from claiming parental rights?””

A new US Census news release says,

“A larger percentage of foreign-born than native-born residents had a master’s degree or higher in 2007, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Nationally, 11 percent of foreign-born — people from another country now living in the United States — and 10 percent of U.S.-born residents had an advanced degree.”

Could this trend impact some claims about increased degree holders in Kentucky and around the rest of the country? You bet it does.

The document referenced by the news release, “Educational Attainment in the United States: 2007” shows in Table 2 that in Kentucky only 19.6 percent of native-born residents age 25 or more in 2007 held a Bachelor’s Degree or more while a whopping 34.5 percent of foreign-born residents did.

Only three states, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia had lower percentages of native-born residents with degrees in 2007. Here’s how Kentucky ranks based on our analysis of the data in the Census’ Table 2.

Percent Native Born Residents in Each State Age 25 and over
with Bachelor’s Degree or More

Keep in mind that a 25-year old in 2007 probably graduated from high school in 2000, two years after our CATS testing started. Also, educated people are probably among the most mobile populations in the country, so some impact on the results could be due to people educated here moving elsewhere. However, even though the Census is primarily reporting on an older age group, with a decade of KERA era high school graduates now included, some impact from the KERA period should be starting to show in these Census results. Certainly, the numbers here cannot support any claims of success from KERA.

Data from the Tax Foundation out today suggests sending more money to Frankfort won’t solve the state’s spending problem.

From Fiscal Year 2007’s actual state operating revenue of $21.5 billion to Fiscal Year 2008’s estimated state operating revenue of $25 billion, Kentucky’s revenue growth was higher than every other state in the nation except Louisiana.

Can’t help wondering where all that money went and why that isn’t the burning question of the day rather than how to cram more tax increases down taxpayers’ throats.

If we start fining parents for no-showing teacher meetings, it’s easy to see how we will need to expand the school bureaucracy.

A school official would have to be brought in to hear appeals and a low-income fund would have to be set up to pay fines for poor parents. Then we would surely need a gubernatorial task force on parental involvement.

We keep setting up government programs to remove responsibility from people and then wonder why they can’t handle responsibility. I get the idea of wanting to start a discussion about parental involvement, but wouldn’t that effort be much easier if we didn’t go to such great lengths to subsidize irresponsibility?

Reversing course on some of our disastrous healthcare policies would give us a great start away from the ever-increasing need for government solutions to government-created problems. That’s what we really need to be talking about.