Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway recently stated that he does not support the American Bar Association’s call for a moratorium on the death penalty in Kentucky, despite the many egregious flaws in our state’s system.
Neither does former attorney general and current Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t for reforming the system. As you can see, instead of lethal injections, he says that we should use Old Sparky:
House Speaker Greg Stumbo said he would oppose shelving the death penalty in Kentucky, even temporarily, and instead would rather see Kentucky ditch lethal injections in favor of the electric chair if it meant fewer chances for death row inmates to appeal.
“When I was attorney general, we tried to push these cases forward and kept running into judicial roadblocks,” said Stumbo, who served as attorney general between 2003 and 2007. “I actually said at one time, why don’t we go back to doing it the old fashioned way and do away with lethal injections.”
Now that’s some common sense thinking right there. This way, we can 1) kill more people and 2) also do it in a barbaric and tortuous fashion, with the additional chance of setting someone’s head on fire as they scream in agony while they die.
This week, public charter school advocates rallied in Frankfort. And former Louisville mayoral candidate Hal Heiner and his charter-loving group, Kentuckians Advocating Reform in Education, released their second charters-will-save-us television spot. In it, kids go from glum and surly looking to gleefully exploding from school house doors with minds full of college preparatory academics. Click here to view.
Will charter school legislation pass this year? Eh, doubtful, despite House Speaker Greg Stumbo signaling some openness to the idea.
Charters are publicly funded schools that operate independently. Rhetoric around the movement would either have you believing they’re:
a) Top notch, dynamic, intimate alternatives to overcrowded public schools that have the ability to pull struggling kids up to grade level and beyond.
b) Mismanaged, unregulated, ineffective profit-driven succubi that drain public dollars away from traditional public schools and cherry pick students.
This month, as talk of charters resurfaced and ads started airing, JCPS’s Department of Accountability, Research and Planning released a “white paper” or policy review entitled, “Charter Schools: Impact on Student Achievement.”
The conclusion? Charter schools are not effective in enhancing student performance or advance reform.
The report culls a couple dozen previous studies to reach that synopsis. The executive summary reads (in part):
” * Findings from the first national evaluation of charter schools (examining approximately 70% of the nation’s charter schools) showed that charter schools performed no better, and often worse, than traditional public schools. A second national evaulation conducted in 2011 yielded a similar finding …
* A recent comprehensive analysis conducted by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA examined data from 40 states … and found that ‘charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation.’
* A Massachusetts study of charter schools showed that charter schools did not serve the neediest students … “
One by one, the report shoots down talking points made by supporters like, “myth” # 2: “A ‘free market’ will increase efficiency and leverage increased quality in public education.”
This official stance by JCPS isn’t a surprise. Jefferson County’s teachers union and district officials have vocally spoken out against them.
In Lexington on Saturday, a rally of around 125 people protested the redistricting plan that will disenfranchise about 90,000 people in their downtown area for two years, as well as effectively kick their senator Kathy Stein out of office at the end of this year without any chance of running for re-election. Here’s video of Stein speaking at the rally shot by Jim Pence.
On Tuesday, shortly after a penguin shit on David Williams’ desk, Kathy Stein stood up and called out Williams and the Republican redistricting plan, to cheers from about 25 people from Lexington in the gallery.
After Sen. Robert Stivers tried to say that this is justifiable retribution for what Democrats have done to Republicans in the past, Louisville Sen. Tim Shaughnessy reminded Stivers of what the actual facts are, adding: “You did it, you own it. The actions that you took in this chamber are unprecidented, and we all should be ashamed of them.”
Following the recess, the crowd in the gallery exited down the stairs, which pass directly by Williams’ office. One person confronted Williams as he walked into his office, saying, “You might have thought you did this to Kathy Stein, but you did this to the people of Lexington.” This person, Stephen Trask — who lives next to Stein and wrote the rather awesome music for “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” — was grabbed by the throat by a still unidentified man who then went into Williams’ office.
State troopers then manhandled and arrested Trask, before going on to shove several people behind Trask — unprovoked — who were simply filing out of the gallery. (The lesson being: If you say something to David Williams that he doesn’t like, or are merely standing near someone who does, expect to get roughed up.)
Sen. Stivers then accused Stein of inciting a riot and said that she should be censured by the Senate, though he later backed off this ridiculous request after Democratic Sen. RJ Palmer told him to calm down.
And this morning, Rep. Jeff Hoover backed up his promise to fight HB 1 in court — as the bill also stuck it to Republicans in the House — as he filed an injunction against it in Franklin County Circuit Court. Stein is expected to follow suit soon, though there’s not much time to waste at this point, with current filing deadlines for state legislature races coming up on Jan. 31.
And in another twist this morning, Dr. Dan Mongiardo (formerly Lt. Dan) blasted the redistricting bill in a press release. He particularly focused on David Williams and Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr, who voted to disenfranchise people in her own city. Is Mongiardo keeping his name in the news to set himself up for a run for governor in 2015, or is he setting himself up for a challenge against Kerr in 2014, as he spends a good amount of his time in Lexington? Or, for those less cynical, just doing the right thing? Regardless, here are the highlights from his press release:
HAZARD – Former Lt. Governor Daniel Mongiardo publicly criticized the newly adopted House and Senate redistricting maps today saying, “While many will say redistricting is just politics as usual, it is much more than that. The redistricting plans recently passed by the General Assembly and signed by the Governor was an exercise in hyper-partisanship that disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of citizens and should be overturned. It is this type of unnecessarily divisive partisan politics that further weakens our political system’s ability to solve the difficult problems confronting our state and nation.”
Mongiardo announced his support for legislation creating an independent commission. Mongiardo said, “After such a raw display of rank partisanship, it is time the people of Kentucky assign the responsibility for redistricting to an independent commission that puts the interest of the citizens of this Commonwealth before the self-serving interests of the politicians or either political party.”
Mongiardo said he believes the House plan splits too many counties and precincts, while violating the notion that districts should be relatively compact to reflect shared community interests to the extent possible. He said the Senate plan was equally egregious, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of citizens and potentially weakening minority representation in Jefferson County.
Mongiardo called the elimination of Fayette County’s 13th Senate District an ‘injustice,’ reserving his harshest criticism for Senate President David Williams and State Senator Alice Forgy-Kerr.
Mongiardo said, “I sympathize with what Senator Stein and the citizens of Fayette County are going through. In 2002, Senate Republicans led by David Williams tried to punish me by moving my senate district from Perry County in southeastern Kentucky to northern Kentucky simply because I, like Senator Stein, was outspoken and vigorous in my opposition to certain policies advocated by the Senate President and the Republican majority. Clearly, President Williams remains the same petty and vindictive politician today that he was then. What happened to Senator Stein and her constituents is an injustice, just as it is for Senator Ridley and his constituents.”
“For Senator Alice Forgy Kerr to place her loyalty to David Williams above her loyalty to the people of Fayette County and vote to eliminate the only other state senator from Fayette County is shameful. The fact that she didn’t have the courage to publicly and openly cast her ‘yea’ vote at the time is even more shameful. Senator Kerr’s decision to eliminate the only state senator representing Lexington’s downtown core and the UK campus area is mystifying. Her constituents, those citizens living in Lexington’s suburbs, are inextricably linked to the success of Lexington’s downtown and the University of Kentucky. It is my hope that the citizens of Fayette will demand from Senator Kerr a public explanation as to why she voted to eliminate her fellow hometown senator and disenfranchise more than 100,000 citizens in our Commonwealth’s second largest city. An even bigger mystery is why she did not have the political courage to publicly and openly cast her vote at the time the vote was taken, instead waiting until the next day to quietly record her vote with the Senate Clerk’s office,” Mongiardo concluded.
Beshear, Stumbo, Williams and Thayer all hoped that this issue would go away once the bill was signed, but it doesn’t appear to be, especially if a judge grants Hoover’s request for an injunction.
Senate State and Local Government Chairman Damon Thayer of Georgetown said Wednesday he is “strongly leaning” toward sponsoring Gov. Steve Beshear’s constitutional amendment to expand gambling.
*****
“Sen. Thayer and I have agreed on language for the bill, which will be introduced in the Senate very soon,” Beshear said in a statement.
“We will spend the next few days laying the groundwork for its introduction. We are hopeful that our senators will give this bill the full consideration it deserves, since repeated polls show that Kentuckians are demanding an opportunity to vote on this issue.”
Well isn’t that interesting. Beshear signs Thayer’s redistricting plan that ousts Kathy Stein — saying we need to move on to the gambling bill — and then Thayer is all of a sudden saying he’s likely to sponsor Beshear’s gambling plan, which is his No. 1 priority.
Interesting how Frankfort horse trading works, isn’t it?
Today on the House floor, Rep. John Yarmuth echoed Barack Obama’s call for economic equality and fairness in taxation from his SOTU address last night, without the visual aid of Warren Buffet’s secretary:
Ok, so we haven’t read ALL 550 pages of the JCPS Curriculum Management Audit. (Click here for the full thing.) We’re not fluent in wonk, so these things take time. But a couple hundred pages (two very dry eyes and one unintended snooze while reading) later, here’s a taste of what we know (in somewhat plain English):
1. The curriculum being taught to JCPS students varies, even if they’re in the same grade, and it’s too frequently based in rote, memory question/answer type work rather than critical thinking.
2. Sometimes, grade-level standards are repeated from grade to grade rather than showing progression.
3. Professional development for teachers is scattered and doesn’t always do much to give them dynamic, engaging ways to teach students what they should know for their grade level.
4. JCPS has 800 various programs intended to help kids improve reading, math, and other skills, but no one’s keeping tabs on which ones work and which ones don’t.
5. There are countless written district policies on the books, but they’re not followed.
6. Achievement gaps persist.
7. Data from tests and schoolwork isn’t being used uniformly to catch and help kids who are struggling.
Those are just a handful of findings.
The audit performed by Phi Delta Kappa is based on
a) 450 interviews with board members, administrators, parents and teachers
b) visits to150 schools
c) What had to have been the tedious task of combing through reams of individual school and school board policies.
A sample of concerns from interviewees printed in the full report released Monday:
“One of our problems is managing the information flow. We have not been focused around a unified vision. Frankly, I could not tell you what our local goals are. We have not said what we want our schools to do.” (Board Member)
“This is the first time in 27 years that I have been asked what I think. Most school level people don’t or won’t speak up (to the central office) because they fear retaliation.”
“There are lots of wheels spinning but no gears connecting.”
“The former superintendent said, ‘Test scores don’t matter, kids matter.’ Now it’s back to test scores.” (Teacher)
“We have programs up the wazoo and no one really knows which ones do any good. It is all perception.” (District Administrator)
“Certain magnet schools select their students while (non-magnet) schools work hard with any students that walk in the door. It’s not fair to be ranked in the same way.” (School Administrator)
“If a student is failing, I meet with their parents and tell them that their child can continue to fail here, which would not be in his best interest.” (Traditional School Administrator)
“The have-nots don’t get their choice (of schools) and they have to travel the most. They don’t get to bring their lawyer to the meeting.” (Teacher)
So, let’s stop there for a moment. Auditors found that (no big surprise here) the least experienced teachers are in schools with the neediest kids. Suspension rates are noticeably higher among African American and poor students. Graduation rates are far lower at schools with high free and reduced lunch populations.
When it comes to AP classes offered:
“The number of Advanced Placement courses offered per high school ranges from zero at Iroquois and The Academy at Shawnee to 27 courses at DuPont Manual High School.
The four high schools offering the largest number of AP courses have the lowest percentages of economically disadvantaged students.“
So, what’s the audit’s recommendation for these long-standing inequities?
We believe it’s embedded in recommendation 5 (out of 10):
“…the district and schools will be required to use data that is focused on closing achievement gaps among subgroups, raising achievement for all students, and providing feedback for decisions about curriculum management, program adoption, implementation, continuation, expansion, modification and termination.”
(Raise your hand if this is broad.)
The purpose of this $300,000 audit was to: “acknowledge deficiencies and work together to ameliorate them,” said Dr. John Murdoch, lead auditor. He says it could take years to fix some issues. In November, auditors recommended a significant overhaul of a top-heavy central office.
Murdoch did say his audit found a perception problem — the public thinks JCPS is far worse than what it actually is.
How much substantive change will 550 pages bring? Who knows … That’s now up to the school board.
Sen. Rand Paul, who was targeted/profiled yesterday by government stormtroopers and thrown into a FEMA detainment camp before being liberated, sent out a message today on his website. He posted the speech that he was going to give at an anti-abortion rally that he missed due to his brave stance in defense of our Liberty and privacy in the face of an overbearing and intrusive federal government.
Remember, your privacy and freedom only count if you are an important uterus-less American.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Monday, Sen. Rand Paul was scheduled to speak at the 2012 March for Life on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., but was improperly detained by the TSA and forced to miss the event. However, after the rally, Sen. Paul hosted a reception welcoming marchers from Kentucky and those across the country. Below are the remarks Sen. Paul would have delivered at the 2012 March for Life.
“The question remains, can a nation long endure or can a civilization long endure that does not respect Life? Our Liberty comes from our Creator and our freedoms depend upon a respect for Life.
In order to protect the unborn from the very moment life begins, I introduced the Life at Conception Act during my first year in the Senate. I have also cosponsored several other pro-life bills including the Life at Conception Act, the Protect Life Act, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, and the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.
I also strongly support a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would confirm in law that an unborn child is a person entitled to the right to life and support legislation that would restrict federal courts from hearing cases involving abortion. State governments must be allowed to implement laws that protect life.
It is the government’s duty to protect life, liberty, and property, but primarily and most importantly, a government must protect life. Today, tragically our nation wavers; our moral compass is adrift. Today, I worry about our nation’s future. Together a brighter tomorrow is possible if we join hands to restore our nation’s virtue.
To respect life and to listen to the voice of God that lives and breathes and beckons and yearns for our attention. When America remembers and restores her respect for life, when America refinds her moral bearings then we will thrive again, then we will find our way.
I will never give up fighting for the lives of our unborn children. May God bless America.”
Remember, a federal employee touching you in order to make sure that planes aren’t hijacked is tyranny, but a federal employee in your doctor’s office mandating your health care decisions and locking people up if they don’t do what Big Brother prescribes is what the voice of God calls for.
We really do miss the pre-Maddow-debacle Rand Paul.
He had the perfect mix of extreme paranoia and unfiltered stream-of-consciousness speech that made him pure entertainment to watch, just like his dad and their one-time media guru, Alex Jones.
But then the infamous “Rachel Maddow” appearance happened, followed directly by his bizarre defense of BP on ABC. After that, Mitch McConnell forced him to cancel his “Meet the Press” appearance and had a sit-down heart-to-heart about The Way it Was Going to Be from now on. Rand Paul reined himself in from that point on in the campaign, not straying too far into paranoid conspiracy theories and strange, out-of-touch libertarian philosophy. This rest is history, as he won easily and has followed as Mitch’s faithful grasshopper ever since.
Sure, he’s had his moments when he reverts back to his old self (blaming a bureaucrat for his plugged toilet, comparing universal health care to armed SWAT teams breaking into doctors’ houses and conscripting them into slavery), but considering how much he’s in he media, they’ve been few and far between.
The difference between those two scans — one triggering an alarm and one not — will lead to a formal Senate inquiry, Paul (who has been a strong critic of the TSA’s pat down policy) told me in the airport.
Paul questioned why the machine would go off once and then not a second time. He said he suspects the equipment is rigged to set off false positives that then allow the TSA to conduct random pat downs without having to pull a passenger aside.
“I think mine was probably random, I doubt I was picked on,” he said. “But I would like to know: Does the screener have the ability to push the button and randomly get someone to set off a screener?”
*****
I asked him if he thought the machine had been geared by TSA not to go off when he went through the second time.
“I don’t know that,” he said.
You know he can’t come right out and say it, that would be pure insanity. But he’ll be damned if he’s going to rule it out.
It’s either:
A) A devious plot by the TSA to pick on Rand and his father for being vocal critics of their security techniques.
or,
B) Lady/Sir got a look at Randy and wanted to feel her/him some of that. Because they’re all just sick and perverted like that.
The truth is out there. First they came for Ron, then they came for Rand. Because Liberty is what they feared the most. And they nasty like that.
Alex Jones will break this conspiracy wide open in a matter of hours, don’t worry.
UPDATE: Here’s Rand Paul, SHOCKINGLY, going on national TV as soon as he got off the plane in DC today. As you can see, Rand Paul has secret information that only he and two other people know about how scanners really work, but this information is too important to reveal to commoners like us, so an important person like Rand Paul must keep it to himself. Anyway, he’s on to them.
We were really starting to miss his charming, down-home style of homophobia. The recently-slayed-by-Awesomeness candidate is making a grand return to the political scene in Louisville, as cn|2 reports that Todd Lally is running for the brand new Republican-leaning 10th District in the state House that Stumbo hand-delivered to him.
It doesn’t appear that Lally has a campaign site up yet, but you can go to his old congressional site if you’re looking for deals on dog snuggies, rubber horse mats and marriage saving programs.
If you remember his campaign two years ago, Lally was way ahead of Mitt Romney when it came to speaking out for the personhood of corporations…
Sen. Rand Paul may despise how the 1964 Civil Rights Act stole the Liberty of lunch counter owners in the South, but he is now the Martin Luther King of protecting your Liberty Junk from possibly being touched by a TSA worker.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was detained Monday by the Transportation Security Administration in Nashville, Tenn., after refusing a full-body pat-down, POLITICO has confirmed.
“I spoke with him five minutes ago, and he was being detained indefinitely,” says Paul spokeswoman Moira Bagley. “The image scan went off; he refused patdown.”
Now there is a man who’s not going to let some big government busybody put his damned dirty hands on him and infect him with tyranny.
We can only hope that he had paper and pen in his detention cell, so we’ll get to read our generation’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
You might be tempted to jump to Rand Paul’s defense, but early reports leaking from the TSA reveal that Rand was smuggling several laser pointers and gold bars in his pants.
Expect Rand Paul to be on every Fox News and conservative radio show on earth nonstop over the next week. That man knew exactly what he was doing. While we poke fun at Rand Paul constantly, we also give credit where credit is due. The man is a first class attention whore, and we salute you, sir.
UPDATE: In totally predictable news, the fascist stormtroopers at the TSA are denying that Rand Paul was even detained.
As if Sen. Rand Paul would ever exaggerate the facts in order to get attention and play himself up as a martyr! That’ll be the day!
“The passenger was not detained at any point. The passenger triggered an alarm during routine airport screening and refused to complete the screening process in order to resolve the issue. Passengers, as in this case, who refuse to comply with security procedures are denied access to the secure gate area. He was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement.
The passenger was screened by millimeter wave imaging technology using automated target recognition. This technology uses the same generic image for all passengers to further protect passengers privacy. When an alarm occurs a yellow box indicates where an anomaly is. A targeted pat down is used to resolve the alarm.”
Baloney! Liberty Christ went to jail for our sins and to protect the Liberty Junk of every white non-muslim-looking American from sea to shining sea!
Alex Jones is currently on the case, and will expose these viscous lies that the liberal mainstream media is sure to sweep under the rug.
Also, someone just told me that the fact that he was flying to an anti-abortion conference in DC (good people who know that the federal government forcing its way into your doctor’s office to tell you what procedures you can and can’t get, and also forcing women who want an abortion to get a mandatory sonogram against their will) is “ironic”.
Passing an opportunity to send a message to both political parties in Frankfort that silly partisan games will no longer be tolerated, today Gov. Steve Beshear signed the recently passed HB1 that maps out new (and ridiculous) redistricting lines for the state House and Senate.
While the new state Senate lines mean that Republicans could have more representation in Jefferson County than Democrats, the most egregious act of the bill is that it will leave 90,000 people in downtown Lexington with zero representation over the next two years, and also evict their senator (the only 100 percent unapologetic liberal in the senate) Kathy Stein at the end of the year. That would be the same city that gave Beshear a blowout victory last fall (and handed David Williams a third place finish in the district), and the same senator that was an advocate for him despite Beshear being King Coal’s Employee of the Month for 48 straight months.
Here’s Beshear’s statement, where he talks about what an awful bill he’s signing, that he doesn’t have the guts to veto:
FRANKFORT, Ky. (Jan. 20, 2012) – “Redistricting is always a partisan process, and the current situation is no exception. However, the action directed by the Senate President to move Senator Kathy Stein’s district in Lexington to northeast Kentucky in order to keep her from being able to run for re-election, and moving western Kentucky Senator Dorsey Ridley’s district to Lexington, goes beyond partisanship. It reflects a personal vindictiveness that should have no place in this process.
However, the deadline for Kentuckians to file for these House and Senate seats is January 31, only 11 days away. Therefore, I am signing House Bill 1 today so that all citizens interested in filing for any of these seats will know what House or Senate district they are in and have time to get their filing papers in order to file for office.
This situation also reinforces my belief that before redistricting occurs again in Kentucky, some type of non-partisan, citizen-based group should be created to participate in the process.”
The “deadline” excuse is, of course, nonsense, as it can easily be pushed back, and the legislature is about to do just that with the congressional filing deadline. But this way, Beshear gets to avoid locking horns with Stumbo, and he’ll quickly move on to other matters. That little friendly pocket in Lexington that he’s used to might forever be gone, though.
Expect Stein, and many in Lexington, to sue over this.
