Back in August 2006, Lexington Herald-Leader Boy Columnist (aka Larry Keeling) allowed as how he had been having health problems accruing to inhaling the fumes of his lawn mower, perfectly understandable, but no one else seems to ever have that problem out in the wide-open spaces of lawns so maybe the fumes were coming from something else…h-m-m. His mower could have caused a bit of dementia, however, that might have carried over to the present day.
Back in the Fletcher administration along about the year 2006, Boy Columnist almost suffered typographical trauma (same as “shocked and appalled” for politicians) when he discovered to his sanctimonious horror that Fletcher had cost the state (gasp) $5,000 for the installation of an extra door in his office. In light of that magnitude of perfidy, what could a Boy Columnist (especially of the “sacred journalist” genre) do but point out that the governor was a rogue, a spendthrift, a ne-er-do-well out to raid the state till for all he could? BC got into high gear and let the guv have it with both barrels of deadly Word Processor.
But…about that dementia! During the special session of the Legislature just now ended, House Speaker Stumbo okayed some new rugs and wires for legislative offices that cost some $230,000, or 46 times as much as Fletcher spent on the door. That’s 4,500% more than the door. Question: Did Boy Columnist ever mention this? I don’t think so, but it would have been so natural…so fair…to have done so, especially for a “sacred journalist,” so one has to conclude that Boy Columnist would have had to be crazy not to have done so, fairness being so important and all to the Fourth Estate. If I’m wrong, my apologies to BC!
Now, about the slots thing. Boy Columnist has plugged so hard for the slots to be placed at the racetracks that one could almost believe he had a stake in the whole thing. Slots Bill was his character (or horse) and he rode it for all it was worth, even though his own editorial board wrote a “thumbs down” on the whole and perfectly transparent effort by the “horsey set” to pad their paddocks with green not made of grass.
Without the slots, the public was led to believe by the “set” and such folks as the guv and speaker, that the state was irretrievably doomed to bankruptcy. As an aside, these rich folks also stated that the slots would just happen to save their businesses. Problem: The Senate deep-sixed the slots gimmick and the Legislature took care of the budgetary problems, thus proving that the slots were never necessary to save the state.
So…after shilling long and hard for the money-people and coming out on the short end, Boy Columnist is now busily pointing out the lawmakers who both opposed the slots and are standing for reelection next year. Actually, Slots Bill never got out of the Senate Committee, so the perpetrators of this profound Slots Bill pooh-poohing were not hard for even someone with leftover-lawnmower Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder to finger. Chalk one up for BC, now hard on the campaign trail. Who knows…maybe Boy Columnist will desert the editorial board and become a consultant for KEEP next year in seeing that these dastardly destroyers of Slots Bill get their due.
The most profound of the many smells of this affair is the notion by so many legislators and newsies that the public is not only stupid but is certainly to be damned with torpedoes full ahead vis-à-vis raiding the state till and buying off the state government in behalf of greed. The slots thing was never about enhancing the state treasury. It was always about appeasing a special-interest group – the horsey set, whose mantra is that slots must be ONLY at racetracks and nowhere else, notwithstanding that the LOTTERY is everywhere anyone wants to install it. That’s called fairness, but the smoothies are not interested in that.
The bottom of the barrel was scraped when Stumbo made as if to convince the public that slots (probably unconstitutional anyway) would pave the way for erecting all kinds of buildings all over the state. What rubbish! The lottery was supposed to save education (while KERA damned it) back in the 1990s, but the lottery money went right into the general fund, with the school-folks left to eat cake. The Legislature made sure to put it there, where it could be “porked-out” and used to enhance what? Why…incumbency, of course!
So…Boy Columnist is left to ride Slots Bill…right out to pasture. He opined on 25 June that the democrats must get credible candidates lined up to change the Senate next year, assuming some can be found, and that Slots Bill should then be back in the starting-gate at the first opportunity.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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