duty and dereliction

Tags

governance, kentucky politics, politics and racing

In his consistently insightful blog on horse racing economics, Horse Racing Business, Bill Shanklin scores another direct hit on the cretins of Kentucky politics who have let everyone down for decades.

Not only does Shanklin rightly throw scorn on the weak-minded who have heaped injury onto insult for the Kentucky breeding and racing community. He also grills politicians for uniformly damaging the economics of the Commonwealth.

Shanklin writes that there is “little solace to people in the Kentucky horse racing and breeding industry to know that they are not alone in the way state government has treated them—the state’s elected officials, as a group, are hostile to business per se.”

Then he goes on to describe how greatly derelict Kentucky pols have injured everyone by ignoring their duty to work for the benefit of the communities that elected them to serve. Words such as “duty,” “work,” “serve,” “honor,” and others might roll lightly off the forked tongues, but the pitiful evidence of their actions shows that most dishonor these noble concepts.

We can do better than this, and we must.

Advertisement

johnny jones for jailer?

Tags

humor, johnny jones, kentucky politics

On the way to the breeding shed with a mare early this morning, the van driver took us on a swift detour through downtown Versailles, Ky. Fortunately, I wasn’t driving when I saw the following political placard prominently posted on the side of the road:

Johnny Jones for Jailer

Vote * Vote * Vote

Maybe it was the early morning coffee lag or something else, but I nearly wrenched my neck checking out the sign.

Surely it’s not “our” Johnny Jones? No, he has better things to do.

But, on the other hand, wouldn’t it be handy if the local jailer were a member of the racing hierarchy? He could certainly make things mighty interesting for Frankfort politicos swerving through Woodford Countyafter a late night at the riverboats.

none dare call it criminal

Tags

bill shanklin, horse racing business, kentucky politics

Bill Shanklin has an important post at Horse Racing Business that questions the logic and fair-mindedness of some powerful legislators in Kentucky.

His thoughtful examination ponders how these men can mediate such harm to the Commonwealth they are sworn to serve. His inquiry is well-conceived and logically developed. Shanklin’s post should be read by every taxpayer in Kentucky because, with the program our legislature is happy to embrace, citizens of Kentucky are sure to pay more in taxes or receive less in services. Take your choice.

The reasons that a handful of powerful politicians have blocked slots legislation from being voted on by the Kentucky Senate are hidden, spoken of in vague terms as they praise themselves.

The aura of winks and nods is enough to make anyone wonder whether some politicians have been bribed. Surely not, though, because that is illegal!

While it is clearly illegal for politicians to accept bribes, perhaps other favors and benefits are less easily described as such and make prosecution less likely, even impossible.

But prosecuting any senators for accepting bribes would seem even less likely than allowing the entire legislature to vote on a bill allowing slots at racetracks.

Be that as it may, someone needs to get an opinion from the Kentucky Attorney General about whether it is legal for elected representatives to willfully bring harm to the Commonwealth out of spite or utter hypocrisy. That’s a crime more than a few are guilty of.

more spite from kentucky politicians

Tags

david williams, kentucky politics, political worms, slots at racetracks

Any of you unlucky enough to be following the twisted history of attempts to pass legislation for slot machines at racetracks in Kentucky are well aware of the years of lies, deceit, and spite that the horse business has endured from a small but well-financed cadre of snakes in politicians’ clothing.

Their leader in the Kentucky senate, Republican David Williams, has exposed his goals and hypocrisy with his latest attack against expanded gaming.

Previously, Williams (presumably a paid toady of the riverboat casinos on the Kentucky borders) had prevented a vote on the 2009 bill that would have allowed slots at racetracks. He had claimed that slots required a constitutional amendment, although successive Kentucky attorneys general said that only legislation was required.

Now changing his tactics, Williams is set to introduce a constitutional amendment that would require a constitutional amendment to have slots at racetracks. Yes, he is admitting that his previous position was a fraud and that a constitutional amendment IS NOT NECESSARY to place slots at racetracks.

With this proposed constitutional amendment and that of Williams’s boy Damon Thayer, “Williams and Damon Thayer have declared unconditional war on the horse industry, removing any possibility of compromise and actively attempting to speed up the process of forcing the horse industry out of Kentucky,” according to a post from the political blog Blue Bluegrass.

Well, at least we know, without any fiddling doubts, exactly who our enemies are.

Now, what do you want to do to them?

how important are horses to kentucky?

Tags

economic impact of horses in kentucky, fasig-tipton, gluck equine research center, keeneland, kentucky economics, kentucky politics, slots legislation, university of kentucky

According to information from the University of Kentucky’s Gluck Equine Research Center, horses and mules were the number one agricultural commodity in the Commonwealth in 2008, with sales of horses and mules making up nearly 25 percent of Kentucky’s entire agricultural commerce.

That is not exactly surprising, except perhaps to a few fatcats in Frankfort who are deep in the pockets of casinos interests from other states.

One fact among the mass of information from the UK study that struck me as monumental, however, was that Kentucky’s sales receipts for equines make up 92.7 percent of the gross value for all horses and mules sold in the nation. That’s amazing.

The Thoroughbred auctions at Keeneland and Fasig-Tipton (four each) provide the lion’s share of the equine gross, but a third contributor is the stud fees sold for Kentucky stallions, which are also taxed by the Commonwealth, unlike any other farm animal. In 2008, only 12 percent of Thoroughbred stallions stood in Kentucky, but they bred 40.7 percent of the mares in the country. And only four stallions with a stud fee of $15,000 or more stood elsewhere.

All this economic vitality is an essential component of the welfare of Kentucky, and yet a certain portion of the legislators in the Commonwealth seem bent on doing as much as possible to correct this imbalance between Kentucky’s horse business and that of other states. They want the Kentucky horses to go away to greener pastures, where their owners make money and race for larger purses.

Kentucky legislators prefer inaction on slots legislation that might offer parity between Kentucky racing purses and those from slots-enriched states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Delaware, Ohio, and Louisiana.

And while Dim Witt and his band of recalcitrant thugs hold the Commonwealth hostage to their personal agenda, stallions leave the Bluegrass. Mares, in van loads of 10 and up, are shipped out of Kentucky for permanent residence elsewhere.

This issue is important to everyone, not just farm owners. Yet the obstructionists in Frankfort want to dismiss the importance of the horse business because some owners are wealthy.

Only a handful of Thoroughbred farms are owned by millionaires, many of whom have worked 20 or 30 years to earn that distinction. Some of the rest are making a good living, and some are not.

Even so, every farm is paying taxes right and left, as well as enriching the local economy by providing work for farriers, vets, feed men and others who then plow that income back in to automobiles, homes, clothing, equipment, building supplies, restaurants, and everything else in the community.

So, whether the horse industry employs 50,000 people or 250,000, the number affected and benefitted by all the jobs and businesses, tourism and taxes is a simple number. It’s EVERYONE.

Let’s stand up and say it out loud: THE HORSE BUSINESS IS A GOOD BUSINESS, AND EVERYONE IN KENTUCKY OUGHT TO REALIZE THAT IT IS GOOD FOR THEM ALSO.

thayer skint

Tags

damon thayer, kentucky politics, louisiana breeding program, millennium farms, paulick report, ro parra

Kentucky state senator Damon Thayer, a Republican who has opposed legislation that would permit slots at racetracks in the Commonwealth, feels the lash in a terse news story from the Paulick Report that exposes the politician and lays him bare for public examination. Read it here.

Thayer is the same member of the Kentucky legislature who proposed a Constitutional amendment as a way to allow slots at Kentucky racetracks after he had supported the Kentucky Republican leadership’s refusal to allow such a bill to be voted on in the state senate. The constitutional amendment would take several years to work at a time when action is needed.

For such behavior as a “friend” to Kentucky racing, Thayer has no defense. Now he has none for failing to understand the predicament of breeders and their pressures to leave the Bluegrass for more hospitable climes.

Paulick has caught out Thayer for being the public relations and media adviser to Ro Parra’s Millennium Farms, which is a sizable Kentucky breeding and stallion operation that is moving stallions and mares to Louisiana to participate in that state’s excellent breeding program that is funded by slots.

Parra is free to do what he likes with his critters, and Thayer is free to advise whomever, but it is disingenuous and distasteful to see a Kentucky politician who supported blockage of access to slots in the Commonwealth then working in tandem with a breeder – businessman who is fleeing the place. In addition to the 30 mares Parra is moving now, “We will likely move more mares over time,” Parra said in the press release from Thayer Communications and Consulting because Parra believes the “Kentucky program is not as competitive as other regional programs like the one in Louisiana.”

That is what breeders, owners, and track operators have been trying to make plain to Thayer and his ilk.

Do the Republican opponents of slots not understand? Do they simply not care? Or are there more sinister reasons for their behavior?