The Golden Rule Is Vague ...In Kentucky

Those of us who cover politics, on any level, know the importance of  the golden rule: he who has the Gold, writes the Rules.  That's why we favor laws that tell the voter who has to spend how much trying to get Joe SixPak elected. You need to know that before voting. While there are rules REQUIRING such campaign contributions to be reported, many of these laws are weak. That's where "dark money" comes in. It doesn't have to be reported under some strange federal rules (and lack of appropriate laws and proper enforcement.) Such money spent each election cycle is in the Zillions, we just don't know how many Zillions.
 
Then there's the Citizens United decision, proclaiming that corporations, BEING CITIZENS, don't have to make such reports; totally devastating what weak laws do exist. There's a national movement on, properly, to get this Supreme Court decision overturned.
BTW, forget Russian (or Chinese, or Iranian, or...) hacking into our elections, bad as that is. With weak election finance and reporting laws, they could spend their way into electing the favored candidates and no American would be the wiser.

So this week, when we learned that a Kentucky law on election spending was so weak as to be 110% useless, one has to wonder why?  Now, all of this reporting is based on a story in the Courier-Journal. (More later) Which is what the media is for. They noticed a group called Kentucky Tomorrow was placing Facebook ads, but hadn't reported its spending to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance, as the law requires. To the group's credit, a day after the CJ asked why, the group made the required report, saying they had been "inadvertently overlooked." Then the paper asked the Registry for its response, since the law REQUIRES a fine of$100 a day for such late reports.
 
The Registry's head guy said no fine would be imposed, because our law is so vague. It does NOT say how much time a group has to file after spending! It could be weeks, or months, or years--the law does not say. Yes, a group a lawyers in our legislature wrote a law requiring such reports, and fines if they weren't made, without indicating how long they would have before violating the law.

Do you smell  a dead rodent here? Such an obvious part of the law is missing. Was it planned that way, deliberately? (It aids all parties.) Lacking this, the Registry gives all groups "a reasonable time" to file..a "reasonable time" may be anybody's guess, especially if a group contests a fine in court. With elections an almost yearly event in Kentucky, this law needs changing, but this time, please let's not let the lawyers write it.

BTW, Kentucky Tomorrow is a Delaware corporation, so the CJ found out, under US (not Kentucky) reporting laws, one contributor to it also is an investor in the proposed Braidy Industries aluminum plant in Eastern Kentucky, the same one that has a proposed heavy investment by a Russian aluminum firm.

Not that you and I would have known any of this without a vigilant, free press to tell us.
And that brings me to a sad note: The reporter who broke all this, and who has diligently covered the state's budget for years, and political shenanigans such as this weak Registry law, is retiring. Tom Loftus told me "it's time," after so many years of able reporting on the statehouse beat. I will miss him, greatly--and so will you.  Fortunately, the CJ seems to have a new crop of young capable reporters on the politics beat. It may take them some time to be as good as Tom has consistently been over the years, but all of us need to wish them well.  "Nothing less," as Jason Robards AKA Ben Bradley of the Watergate -breaking Washington Post said in All The President's Men, "than the future of the Republic depends upon it."

I'm just sayin'...

May I Point Out

In every community where mass shootings have taken place, certain things are common. One is the belief "that such a thing would never happen here. We're just not that type of place."  Reporters hear it over and over, even as the lists mount up of all those places "where such a thing could never happen."

Perhaps the final proof came recently at that Garlic festival in Gilroy, California. Here the mass shooter drove 600 miles from his home to that little festival town to work his evil. No strong bonds or reason why he drove there have surfaced, so we are left with the inescapable conclusion these evil doers don't care what place they pick, so long as they think they will be able to kill, kill, kill.

Let that sink in. No place is immune. Not even Lexington.  So, before the next place where the mayor or police chief will tell a reporter, "we never thought it could happen here," let's get the President and the NRA on board, and get some practical gun controls enacted. The NRA says its doesn't want guns in the hands of people with mental problems, but it also opposes expanded background checks, and some "red flag" laws. This does not compute. To keep guns from people with mental problems, some type of background checks are needed. Let's hope the President, and those polls showing 80% of all Americans supported expanded gun controls, may finally convince Congress to do its duty. And soon.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is under pressure to call the Senate back sooner than the planned schedule for home town electioneering, but has said he won't. If the guns of Gilroy, and Dayton, and El Paso aren't enough, how about: US-Iran relations, with the potential  for war, or those new N. Korean missiles, or serious troubles in Hong Kong which could bring in Chinese troops, or worse, the deteriorating relations over Kashmir by India and Pakistan, BOTH nations with nuclear weapons, far more serious than either Iran and North Korea. Or, more directly here at home, Wall Street laying an egg.

But members want to seek votes, and that seems more important than say, war. Shows you where their priorities are. Perhaps, as I have long supported, if House members had 4 years terms, half elected every two years, we might be able to keep Congress in session longer, instead of taking SEVEN weeks off when all those serious problems listed above are festering.

Perhaps, if members of Congress had up close and personal experience  with a mass shooter in their home, they would be more understanding of why the rest of us want something done.   But, of course, they have---they've just forgotten.  65 years ago this year, four "nationalists" entered the House visitors gallery and after a few minutes, brought hidden semi-automatic weapons from under their clothes and fired all their bullets into the House chamber below. 5 Congressmen were injured, only one seriously. All recovered. All the nationalists were grabbed since they were out of bullets, tried, convicted, and given long prison terms. What saved Congress was those semi-automatic weapons were pistols with limited magazines. Can you imagine what would have happened had they used high capacity magazines, as was done in ElPaso, Dayton, Las Vegas etcetcetc? (BTW, those "nationalists" were Puerto Rican "nationalists" seeking total independence of that island from the US. Their movement still exists but has few followers there.)
 
Congress reacted, by essentially tightening security in its chambers, hiring more cops, but doing little about the gun problems.  It's time for a change, before history tragically is relived even in a "place where nothing like this could happen."

I'm just sayin'...

Emerson Was Right

"An institution is but the lengthened shadow of one man."

The American essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote that almost 200 years ago, and he was right then, and now, when we apply it to O. Leonard Press or as most people knew him - Len Press, founder of KET, who died last week at 97.

It was his vision, his energy, and his wife Lil, that together created, championed, and stamped the role that KET plays in the lives of many Kentuckians. This state would be so much poorer without KET, not just for its basic work providing educational classes for schools at all levels, but for its rebroadcast of PBS programming, as well as its own news and public affairs efforts headed by its legislative coverage, programs such as Comment on Kentucky, Kentucky Tonight, and special events such as the past weekend's live coverage of Fancy Farm.

Len wrote a book about how KET came to be, and as usual, paid tribute to many others who helped him in major ways along that journey; all true, (none more so than his wife, Lil, whose own vision sparked the Governors' Scholarship program,) but it was Len whose ideas and dogged determination made it all come together and work.

He told about this in his book "The KET Story." Read it if you want to know more, and know that the KET story is an unfinished one. As education evolves, as TV programming changes, as American society goes through many changes, KET is the institution that lets the rest of us keep up with change, and make decisions on what's best for our futures.

Len Press gave us that institution--and that chance to make wise decisions. He didn't agree with all the changes that KET has made since he left as the head man; to him the "E" in KET was the important dimension, but his legacy is we have great help in our own education, and our own ---and Kentucky's future.

What a "shadow" he has left behind.  Hopefully we will be smart enough to support it and keep it going for many tomorrows.

I'm just sayin'...