Blue Bluegrass

Ray Paulick nails it:

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The bigger question is how much weight Farmer can carry. And I’m not talking about the ample midsection Williams is packing in those Mom jeans he likes to wear. It’s the political baggage that Williams has built up throughout the state as Senate president—and not just his recalcitrant position against the horse industry—along with the memory of his landslide loss in 1992, when Democrat Wendell Ford drummed Williams by a 63% to 36% margin in the U.S. Senate election. It was Williams’ only statewide run for office.
Williams has admitted to gambling at out-of-state casinos (he told the Paulick Report he stopped going to them a little over a year ago) while setting up roadblocks against legislation designed to help Kentucky catch up with other racing and breeding states that have enriched purses and breeding programs with revenue from slot machines, VLTs and casino gaming. Meanwhile, the Bluegrass State’s Thoroughbred industry has been in a steep decline, with Kentucky owners shipping out their stables while seeking bigger purses elsewhere and breeders taking advantage of lucrative incentive programs in states like Pennsylvania, Indiana, Louisiana and New York. A recent report showed the horse industry has slipped behind poultry as Kentucky’s No. 1 agricultural product. That happened, incidentally, under Agriculture Commissioner Farmer’s watch.
But those chickens may be coming home to roost now that Williams has declared his run for office while riding on the tails of Farmer’s No. 32 UK jersey. Members of the horse industry have the opportunity—no, make that the responsibility—to do everything in their power to keep Williams from becoming Kentucky’s next governor. Simply put, if he wins, we lose.
It is incumbent on everyone with a stake in Kentucky’s future as the Thoroughbred capital of the world to work toward that end.

That news report about how the horse industry now takes a back seat to chickens in the agricultural economy is found here.

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Kentucky’s medicaid eligibility requirements contain a series of medical needs, which must be met in a combination of at least two in order for a recipient to be eligible. The eligibility is for either services in a nursing facility or home and community based waiver services; that is, health care services provided in the home. Such home based services are cheaper than a nursing facility, and for those with less substantial medical needs, the patient can stay in their own home for longer periods of time.

No one disputes the above facts. The puzzling part is what organic structure pushes more of the spending into nursing facilities, when home care is more desirable and less expensive. Kentucky health care advocates pointed that out earlier this week:

Advocates Tuesday urged a panel of lawmakers studying ways to better manage the state’s Medicaid program to consider more creative ways to serve the roughly 800,000 Kentuckians who depend on it for health care.
Jim Kimbrough, a volunteer with AARP of Kentucky, said most elderly and disabled people would rather stay in their homes and communities than move to an institution, such as a nursing home.
Services to help people stay at home — including personal care and housekeeping help — are much cheaper, Kimbrough told members of the Medicaid Cost Containment Task Force.
Yet in 2008 the Kentucky Medicaid program spent about $806 million to pay for the care of elderly and disabled individuals in institutions, compared to only $182 million on home and community services, he said.
“We can provide quality services to more people at the same amount,” Kimbrough said.
Sheila Schuster, executive director of the Kentucky Mental Health Coalition, asked lawmakers to consider Medicaid services as an investment. Access to mental health care and medication, for example, helps keep people out of costly psychiatric hospitals and allows many to work and pay taxes, Schuster said.
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Reporting as it should be, from a blogger who’s powerfully addressed a critical issue in his own small town. No histrionics, just a compelling case, built solidly, brick by brick.

Meet the Marion County Line. Jim Higdon methodically, factually and clearly lays out the case: Lebanon has a pain pill factory that is drawing drug dealing from hundreds of miles away. Cash only, please.

But of course, drugs are not a real pressing issue in Kentucky, right?

Rand Paul should come to Lebanon:

The Lebanon Trade Center is like any other shopping center in Kentucky—there’s a cigarette outlet, a chiropractor, a Subway shop, a hair salon, and a cash-only pain clinic, where it appears that anybody with $200 can get a prescription for Oxycontin, according to multiple sources within the Lebanon medical community. On August 1, when Lebanon Medical Solutions opened its doors, Marion County joined one of Kentucky’s fastest growing industries—the pain pill pipeline.
“It’s craziness,” said Wanda Abell Meade, a Marion County native who now manages nine nursing homes in eastern Kentucky, southern Ohio and West Virginia, “Just craziness!”
Meade was alerted to the existence of Lebanon’s new pain clinic when a nurse who works for her showed her a quarter-page ad for Lebanon Medical Solutions in the July 28th edition of The Journal-Times, the newspaper for Grayson, Kentucky, which is 162 miles east of Lebanon; no ads have appeared in Lebanon’s local newspaper. “Specializing in complete pain management,” the ad said, “Walk-ins welcome. Now accepting new patients.”
Alarmed by what she saw, Meade asked a member of her nursing staff to call the pain clinic. The nurse was told that all one had to bring was an MRI less than two years old, $200 in cash, and a fax number for your pharmacist. What normal person carries around copies of their MRI? To Meade and her medical staff, this was a red flag.
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$13 million in Kentucky Retirement Systems kickbacks paid since 2004, and the management hides those facts from the board of directors? What would possibly motivate management to do such a thing?

Governor Beshear called for state Auditor Crit Luallen to review the Retirement Systems last week. Yesterday, despite the coverup previously attempted by its management, the Board of Trustees of the Kentucky Retirement Systems voted to second that request for an audit by Luallen:

The Kentucky Retirement Systems will ask state Auditor Crit Luallen to review its use of placement agents, the well-connected middlemen who have collected nearly $15 million in fees since 2004.
The KRS Board of Trustees audit committee on Wednesday voted to ask Luallen to conduct an independent audit, a move that was requested last week by Gov. Steve Beshear. Later, KRS board chairman Randy Overstreet said the full board would take up the audit committee’s recommendation and that he would personally meet with Luallen in the near future to request her audit.
Board members said the credibility of KRS — which provides benefits to state and county retirees — suffered because of public disclosure of the large payments to placement agents, especially while the $12.5 billion fund is struggling to keep up with its pension and health care commitments.
“The numbers we’re talking about don’t wash with someone getting a $900 monthly pension check,” said KRS board member Robert Wilcher.
KRS released an internal audit of placement agents on Aug. 12 that disclosed agents’ names and fees but identified no serious problems, such as financial or political connections to Kentucky officials, which has led to controversies with placement agents at other state pension systems.
The internal audit found nearly $13 million in fees paid as of February; since then, $2 million in additional fees have been uncovered by KRS auditors.
Placement agents are paid by private investment funds to help them sell their products to KRS, not by KRS directly, although KRS then pays fees to the investment funds to cover their expenses.
The KRS board two weeks ago voted to reopen the internal audit for further review after several trustees complained that they were unaware of the large fees until it was reported in the news media. KRS employees held the payment information for six months as they finished their audit.
“When we later learned the amount of the fees, they were big numbers that I think would have caused us to ask more questions,” said KRS board member Jennifer Elliott.
KRS should prohibit placement agents from participating in its investment deals, said KRS board member Christopher Tobe, a Louisville-based investment adviser to other pension funds and a former investment specialist at the state auditor’s office.
KRS pays its own staff members and its private investment managers to find good investment opportunities, Tobe said. There don’t need to be middlemen collecting million-dollar paychecks simply for introducing people at a meeting, which is one reason the Securities and Exchange Commission has considered banning them, he said.
“They’re parasites,” Tobe said. “Placement agents all around the country have been seen as political figures and not adding value to the investment side.”
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From the Lexington Herald-Leader’s editorial, noting that the defense of lunch-counter racial discrimination by Rand Paul is being teamed up with David Williams’ legislation to resegregate Kentucky’s schools:

State Senate President David Williams and his fellow Republican, Sen. Dan Seum, went into full pander mode last week, thereby removing any doubts election season has arrived in Kentucky.
Williams and Seum pre-filed legislation that would guarantee K-12 students the right to attend the public school nearest to their home.
Because the bill would open the way to resegregating the state’s schools, this was a rather blatant playing of the race card by two men who hope it will improve their chances in upcoming elections.
Seum faces a challenge in November in his Jefferson County district, where public unrest with the local busing plan flared anew after schools reopened last month. Williams has all but declared his entry in the 2011 gubernatorial field, and no doubt hopes to reap statewide benefit from his variation on former Republican President Richard Nixon’s infamous “Southern strategy.”
This is a cynical political ploy for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the hypocrisy of Republicans who preach against “Big Brother” government while auditioning for the role of Big Brother themselves.
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All Seum cares about is successfully putting November behind him. And Williams would be happy if the issue remains available for him to exploit in the governor’s race in an appeal to voters who would like to return Kentucky schools to the days of Jim Crow.

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Forget about the right to marry—cynics today would assert that the really critical right is the right to divorce.

This, along with the Equal Protection Clause, is the point at which the legal ability to oppose same-sex marriage crumbles. A Texas court has ruled that a same-sex couple married in Massachusetts does not have the right to a Texas divorce:

Gay couples legally married in other states cannot get a divorce in Texas, where same-sex marriage is banned, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The 5th Texas Court of Appeals ruled that a Dallas district court judge didn’t have the authority to hear a divorce case involving two Dallas men who married in Massachusetts in 2006. Republican state Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office had appealed after Judge Tena Callahan, a Democrat, said she did have jurisdiction and dismissed the state’s attempt to intervene.
“Today’s court of appeals decision overruled the district court’s improper ruling, confirmed the constitutionality of Texas’ traditional definition of marriage and correctly found that Texas courts lack the legal authority to grant divorces to same-sex couples,” said Abbott spokesman Jerry Strickland.
Callahan also had ruled Texas couldn’t limit marriage to a man and a woman, but the appeals court said the state’s same-sex marriage ban was constitutional.
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WKYT broke the news first on Monday. Yesterday, Scott Jennings issued a media advisory confirming the David Williams/Richie Farmer 2011 gubernatorial ticket announcement set for this morning.

Well, reports that have been published refer to Richie Farmer having been promised a job if he runs with David Williams on the Republican gubernatorial ticket and loses. Hope that promise is kept, or else Richie’s gonna be picking splinters out of his hind end in Clay County.

WKYT is breaking the news that Williams and Farmer will announce Wednesday.

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Drugs aren’t a pressing issue in Kentucky to Aqua Buddha. But others, including neighboring sheriff’s, disagree. To see the video report, click here.

A local sheriff says that he wants more federal funding to fight drugs here in Kentucky.
Barren County Sheriff, Chris Eaton, says that his department cant survive without federal money to fight drugs especially to stop meth use.
Drug control and enforcement has been a particularly big issue in the upcoming election.
Rand Paul says he wants to use local funding to help stop drug use not as much federal funding.
Eaton has come out as saying he supports Jack Conway.

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