Bevin Turning KY Into Deadbeat

Crushing working Kentuckians with 30 percent sales taxes on food is not going to solve this problem.  Only forcing a crowbar into the bulging wallets of rich people and corporations is going to prevent the Commonwealth from declaring bankruptcy.

John Cheves at the Herald:

Moody’s has downgraded the debt issued by Kentucky’s state government by one level, to a Aa3 rating, warning bond investors that the state does not collect enough revenue to resolve its $37 billion public pension shortfall.

“The commonwealth has one of the heaviest unfunded pension burden of all states,” Moody’s wrote in a report that it published for bond investors last week. “The commonwealth's ability to stop the decline in pension funding levels will be crucial to its credit profile.”

Gov. Matt Bevin is expected to call a special session of the General Assembly later this year to address the state’s pension debt and its tax code. The new Moody’s report is only the latest alarm to draw attention to both of those subjects.

The state expects to face tens of billions in unfunded liabilities in coming years at Kentucky Retirement Systems, which provides pension benefits for state and local government retirees, and Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System, which covers educators. Officials blame several factors for the shortfall, including inadequate contributions by the state and poor investment returns.

It's not just the fact that for 30 years Kentucky governors and legislators have stolen billions from the pension system to balance budgets and avoid raising taxes on the rich.  It's also that Kentucky still has a resource-extraction economy that rivals Mississippi for third-world stupidity.

Bevin's special session will aggravate that feudal economy by stripping money from the middle class and poor to further enrich the already obscenely rich.

But it will earn him raves from the GOP donor class who will fund his national political ambitions.  Because Gov. Connecticut Carpetbagger has always seen Kentucky as nothing more than a piggy bank to rob.