STILL SEETHNG, STILL SCREWED

Last month, I think that the Kentucky Legislature set on a path to create two states – Northern Kentucky and Southern Kentucky. I don’t think that any of these civic individuals realized this, yet they have seriously begun creating a fiscal schism within the state by raising tax on alcohol and cigarettes. The reason I sound, maybe a bit melodramatic over this is the gross imbalance and injustice caused by applying this system of sin tax because of the fact the majority of the revenue from this tax increase will come from Northern Kentucky (and yes the metropolitan areas of Louisville and Lexington) while the counties in the Southern and Eastern portions of the state (roughly the 90 out of 120 counties) that are dry, will be reaping the benefit without having to do a thing.

There isn’t really much anyone can do about this tax issue at this point. The guilty ones: Senator Elizabeth Tori, Governor Beshear, House Speaker Greg Stumbo, Representatives Rick Rand, Eddie Ballard and Tommy Thompson – these will more than likely be the folks remembered as the ones who drove a wedge between the North and the South, and ultimately divided the state into the more progressive and expanding North and rural impoverished South. Though Lexington and Louisville will continue to bare the burden of supporting the more rural counties who refuse to modernize and will forever be mired in cronyism and shady backroom “good ol’-boy politics,” failing their constituents for not recognizing the need to actually make the entire state wet.

I was reading a statistic the other day saying that only 40% of the country actually drinks (maybe that percentage is even lower) yet alcohol consumption is suppose to support a dying education system that is in desperate need of an overhaul, a clumsy, quagmire Health Insurance system that only enables 4 of the umpteen insurance companies in the country to do business here in KY, and a pork-filled agenda that dominates legislation on both sides of the aisle.

You could almost hear preachers evoking the word “conflagration” in symbiosis with the Kentucky government, as in, “the Kentucky Legislature sure could use a fiery cleaning out.” But talk like that leads people to believe that you’re a crazy whacked-out nutjob in need of incarceration in a rubber room. Yet didn’t we elect a President on the premise of real change, change we can believe in. I am not sure, but I think the Kentucky bureaucrats missed that memo. Here in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky, legislators take the easy way out, because all that money spent on their Law degrees never afforded them the luxury of a clue on how to do things in the real world. Not many blue-collar workers involved in running the state these days, that’s for sure, if ever.

Maybe we could find somebody to help finance a real secession from the state, creating something akin to the District of Columbia – call it the District of Covington, or just Northern Kentucky. Or maybe we could just get Ohio to take us over? Pipe dreams to be sure. The simplest answer would be just to pack up and move to a more hospitable state, one where, as a wine drinker, you wouldn’t be associated with drunken sociopaths and crack whores. Maybe we could expect a bit more from our representatives other than always looking to the fewest to pay for the most – you’d think that was ass-backwards, but what do I know?