Matt Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Doing, Part Ten

It's called Capital Mobility, Governor Connecticut Yankee Lying Coward.  It happens when pro-big-bidness government leaders cheer on off-shoring of good jobs in the name of the almighty free market.

This time next year, that GE factory at Appliance Park will be sitting empty and Bevin will be telling thousands of unemployed Kentuckians that they don't need gubmint giveaways like unemployment insurance and food stamps when there are $7-an-hour burger-flipping opportunities going begging.

The following is a statement from Governor Bevin on General Electric Company’s decision to sell GE Appliances to Haier.

“The Commonwealth is proud to be the home of GE Appliances headquarters and we are excited by today’s announcement! This sale to Haier offers great potential for global scalability and job growth. I applaud Haier’s decision to keep GE Appliances headquarters in Louisville in recognition of the strong leadership team and experienced workforce. GE Appliances is a first-class global company and we look forward to working closely with them in the months and years ahead.

“Haier is the number one global seller of appliances. This new partnership puts Kentucky in prime position to compete globally on appliance manufacturing. It is our goal not only to maintain and support the jobs currently at Appliance Park, but also to strengthen and grow the appliance business there. Appliance Park has been an institution in Louisville for decades and has supported tens of thousands of Kentucky families during that time. While there are still many steps that must be taken before this agreement becomes final, we intend to work with the City of Louisville, GE Appliances and Haier to ensure a bright and mutually beneficial future for all involved.”

How to Fight ISIS

Via Juanita Jean:

Hey Alison: Show Bevin How It's Done

Good government, that is.  Use your power as Secretary of State to demand vote-by-mail.

Forget voting machines, polling places, poll workers, absentee ballots and voter ID.  Save money, time and effort and double turnout with just one cheap and easy change.

Political Animal:

Vote by mail saves money, simplifies elections, and eliminates voting lines. It renders moot the debate over photo ID rules, and lets election officials avoid spending billions on software-enabled (but vulnerable to big-impact hacking) voting equipment. Best of all, it promises double-digit increases in registered voter turnout.

Yes of course it increases Democratic votes because when everybody votes, Democratic candidates win.  That's the repugs' problem.  Let the Connecticut Yankee Lying Coward explain why he doesn't want every eligible Kentucky voter to vote.

How many dead people in a "hoped to?"

From TPM, re the damn-near-successful effort by the repug governor of Michigan to permanently poison the mostly black and poor residents of Flint: 

Genesee County sheriff's Capt. Casey Tafoya has said volunteers and police hoped to get (clean water and water filters) to 500 to 600 houses a day in a city of about 99,000 residents with an estimated 30,000 households.

Let's see:  30,000 households divided by 600 houses visited per day is 50 days.  A healthy, strong person can live without water for no more than THREE days.  Somebody better tell the Flint funeral homes to ramp up for big business.

Today in What Government Is For

You know who collects the data from doctors and clinics and hospitals all over the state, figures out when cases of dangerous diseases are increasing and gets the word out to parents, caregivers, teachers, doctors, hospitals and others who need that information? 

Government employees, that’s who.  State workers.  The ones Governor Matt "Connecticut Yankee Lying Coward" Bevin is planning to get rid of.  By the thousand.

From the Kentucky Department of Public Health, housed in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services:

Kentucky experienced a rise in reported cases of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, at the end of 2015, with public health officials reporting 87 cases of the illness between August and December. Pertussis is a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by bacteria and is transmitted through respiratory droplets from sneezing, coughing or talking. This vaccine-preventable disease can be deadly to infants too young to have been fully vaccinated, so it’s especially important for parents and caregivers of young children to be up-to-date on immunizations.

You know how many private corporations are capable of handling that responsibility?  None, that's how many.  Not that that will stop Bevin from giving millions of taxpayers dollars to one to fuck up the job.

Matt Bevin Killing Kentucky Jobs and Bragging About It

Funny how when jerb-creeters like Bevin shut down government programs and cancel government services they never mention the thousands of jobs they are killing.

And if you don't consider government jobs to be "real" jobs, you might try explaining why the biggest employer in almost every county in Kentucky is the public school system.

From the AP:

Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin has notified federal authorities he plans to dismantle the state's health insurance exchange.

Bevin campaigned on a pledge to get rid of the exchange, known as kynect. It was authorized by an executive order from his predecessor, Democrat Steve Beshear.

The Courier-Journal (http://cjky.it/1N3zPNI ) reported Monday that Bevin's Dec. 30 letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said he wants to wind down the state exchange and transition Kentuckians to the federal site to shop for insurance. The letter said he wants the transition to occur "as soon as practicable."

The state exchange remains open. The changes won't affect anyone shopping for insurance for the current enrollment period, which ends Jan. 31. Anyone who signed up for Medicaid coverage through the kynect site also won't be affected.

kynect directly employs hundreds of taxpaying Kentuckians throughout the Commonwealth - more than most private employers, including the Lying Coward himself.

From the Lane Report:

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 21, 2014) — Xerox is hiring more than 75 new full-time customer care employees to support kynect, the state’s Health Benefit Exchange.

The kynect contact center, a major component of the Affordable Care Act, received approximately 195,000 calls in December 2013, up from 85,610 in November. The dramatic call volume increase prompted the addition of 77 customer care agents by Xerox.

Xerox customer care agents will offer assistance via phone, chat and email to Kentuckians navigating the online application process for obtaining health insurance through kynect. Agents will also assist citizens without Internet access in completing and filing applications.

Hiring has already begun and continues through Jan. 29. Xerox is seeking candidates with six months of customer center experience or equivalent customer service experience.

From Community Action agencies:

Community Action Kentucky and 12 Community Action Affiliates are proud to have been selected by the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange to serve as "kynectors" to assist consumers with enrollment for healthcare benefits through kynect, Kentucky's Healthcare Connection. The role of these kynectors is to provide education services and enrollment assistance to individuals for Qualified Health Plans, Medicaid or the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP). Qualifying small businesses with 2-50 employees will be eligible to participate in SHOP.

Community Action Kentucky through their Community Action affiliates will conduct public education, and outreach activities to raise awareness of insurance affordability programs and coverage options; distribute fair and impartial information about available health plans; facilitate enrollment in health plans; provide referrals to any applicable office in the event of complaints and/or appeals, and provide guidance in modifying coverage, if appropriate.

Kentuckians will be able to compare and select insurance plans and find out if they qualify for programs like Medicaid and KCHIP. Individuals will find out if they qualify for payment assistance and special discounts on deductibles, copays and co-insurance. kynect will also be able to assist small businesses with enrolling their employees in health plans, and businesses with fewer than 25 employees may qualify for tax credits.

Eliminating kynect is going to throw thousands of Kentuckians, including children, onto the tender mercies of the social safety net that the Lying Coward thinks only moochers need. 

But faux-libertarians don't care about people who aren't already rich and Connecticut Yankee Bevin doesn't care about Kentucky.

Except for how much he can steal from it to give to his rich friends.

Shooting First Is Always a Crime

UPDATE:  Every day.  Every fucking day.

If you're holding a gun on someone, there's always reason and time to say something first. Dick Cheney and the NRA have embedded into our culture the lie that shooting first is not just OK, but the best and safest thing to do.

That is a motherfucking lie.

David Atkins at Political Animal:

It happened yet again: a trigger-happy homeowner hears something go bump in the night, pulls the trigger of a gun, and an innocent victim dies. This time it was a mother gunning down and killing her own daughter:

A woman in St. Cloud, Florida, woke up just before midnight Tuesday and fired a shot at a person she thought had broken into her home.

But the person wasn’t an intruder; it was her 27-year-old daughter. The woman fired one round, but police didn’t say where the bullet hit the daughter. She died at a hospital. The shooting appears to be accidental, police said. An investigation is ongoing.

The only problem with that story is the use of the word “accident.” Such shootings—and they occur all too frequently in America—are never accidents. They are not tragedies. They are negligent homicides at best, and 2nd-degree murders at worst.

The number of home invasion robberies that lead to physical harm for the victim is low—particularly in the sorts of neighborhoods in which “defensive gun use” tends to take place. There is very small chance that whatever is going bump in the night actually means you and your loved ones harm.

SNIP

Even when there really is a criminal situation, the vast majority of the time it’s a petty thief looking to boost some electronics or jewelry to make a quick sale. They just want their next fix or meal ticket, and they’re not looking to up the ante on possible jail time by hurting you. Hurting you generally gains them nothing. Which means that common thieves can usually be scared off simply by shouting and alerting them to your presence.

There is almost never an excuse to fire a gun at an intruder without trying to talk to them and assess the situation first and at least try to scare them off. The notion that an intruder might have a gun which they might use on you first unless you have the element of surprise is essentially Hollywood fantasy.

SNIP

If you shoot first and ask questions later, you should go to jail. It’s not an accident. It’s a crime.

What Science Reveals

Divine Irony:

(Source: creationistfucktard)

Matt Bevin's "Responsible"(sic) Budget Will Kill Us All

Because running government like a business always fails.  It fails for the same reason that trying to grow vegetables in a vat of herbicide fails: mutually exclusive goals.

The goal of every business is to make a profit at the expense of customers.  The goal of government is to provide public services that enrich the community, even at the expense of business.

Because a government that seeks to turn a profit - for itself or for its corporate cronies - can not perform its responsibilities as the public's protector.

Private profit is anathema to the public good. Corporatization and privatization are as lethal to good government as altruism and sacrifice are to private enterprise.  The two can survive and exist in proximity to each other, but never as part of the other.

Markets are out to make money, regardless of the consequences.  Governments exist to rein in those markets when they threaten to harm the public.

And Matt Bevin is out to bankrupt the Commonwealth with his "market" schemes.

From the Courier:

Gov. Matt Bevin told a crowd of hundreds of Kentucky business leaders Thursday that he will bring pro-business principles to the state and propose an “honest and responsible” budget this month.

Bevin, who spoke at the annual Kentucky Chamber Day dinner, said he already has received requests that would add between $1.4 billion and $2.1 billion in spending to the upcoming budget, which state lawmakers will adopt in 2016.

“News flash, that’s not coming. It’s not – we don’t have it,” Bevin said. “Truth be told, I wish we did. We don’t have it. So there will be changes. We will be more austere because we must get our financial house in order.”

Ah, austerity.  The economic fantasy that the cure for hunger is starvation.  Austerity is what has left Greece prostate and unable to support itself.  Austerity is what nearly killed the U.S. economy until President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus and auto industry rescue injected money back into the starving economy and put it back on its feet.

You want to kill an economy, austerity will do it every time.

Why Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Doing

Because he doesn't get this:

Down with Tyranny:

No, it's not the public's job to catch criminals; it's our job to check the cops

Seriously, motherfucker: just do your damn job right and we won't HAVE TO record you fucking up.

San Francisco police want onlookers to turn their smartphone camera on suspected criminal activity — instead of police behavior.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) is reportedly developing a crime-reporting app, Fight Crime SF, that will allow citizens to submit photos and video of suspected criminal activity. The app doesn’t have a release date but is expected to be released to the public early this year, according to SFD spokeswoman Officer Susan Merritt’s statements in a recent issue of the police union’s journal.

“In early 2016, we will be introducing a new app for the public,” Merritt wrote. “It will be called Fight Crime SF. Members of the community will be able to send police video and pictures of crimes in progress or suspicious activity using this app.”

Police misconduct, especially when caught on video, has become a focal point of public criticism across the country. That also has been the case in San Francisco which is in the midst of an ongoing police brutality investigation.

Matt Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Doing, Part Nine

Government boards and commissions are not corporate boards of directors and can't operate as if they were, but the latest "run gubmint lak a bidness" asshole to take over the governor's mansion doesn't care about that.

Governor Matt Bevin announced today the appointment of Brett Gaspard as Executive Director of Boards and Commissions. Gaspard brings more than 20 years of private sector experience with a strong emphasis on contract management, government relations and community engagement.

Translation: the only thing he knows about government is how to grab millions of tax dollars for himself through sweetheart contracts and prevent actual community members from finding out what he's doing.

Mr. Gaspard began his career as a newspaper reporter while attending Northern Kentucky University, but later transitioned into the waste management business where he has spent the past 15 years overseeing municipal contracts in Ohio and Kentucky. He has also served as a volunteer advisor to many state and local political candidates including U.S. Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Thomas Massie.

Additionally, Gaspard is the outgoing chairman of the Boone County Republican Party and has held key volunteer roles with the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Kentucky Taxpayers United and League of Kentucky Property Owners.

"Waste management" is the most corrupt and polluting industry on the planet, paying out billions in bribes to politicians to get away with dumping toxic waste in parks and playgrounds and schoolyards.

Rand Paul and Thomas Massie are outstanding examples of "bidnessmen" who got elected despite not knowing jackshit about governing or how government actually works.

And you will have a hard time finding four organizations more dedicated to fucking over the working people of Kentucky in order to further enrich the already obscenely wealthy than the Boone County Republican Party, the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Kentucky Taxpayers United and League of Kentucky Property Owners.

Yeah, I bet he's got some real community-minded altruists lined up for all those boards and commissions.

The Lege Is Back in Town and We're All Gonna Die

Or just want to. If Matt "Lying Coward" Bevin and some of our elected idiots get their way, we're gonna be:

• paying tax money to rich corporations to run charter "schools" that teach only obedience to authority, especially employers;
• getting public services like nursing home care and prison operations from corporations that make Verizon and Microsoft seem like models of efficiency and compassion;
• paying hundred-dollar tolls to the corporations who bought the highways to fund tax breaks for Matt Bevin's rich friends but never bother to maintain said highways and bridges;
• burying thousands of women who in desperation got illegal, lethal abortions because there are no more legal safe ones;
• attending Kim Davis' freakazoid cult meetings "voluntarily," because only fundie evangelicals will have civil and human rights;
• working for pennies an hour because minimum wages hurt corporate fee-fees, and
• wishing we had the money to move to Haiti, because that economy will be better than Kentucky's.

Want to keep track of who is fucking you over today?m The Legislative Research Commission (the agency that staffs the lege) is on it:

When the Kentucky Senate and House of Representatives are gaveled into order at noon (Tuesday), Kentuckians will have many ways to stay connected to action throughout the 2016 legislative session.

 

The Kentucky Legislature Home Page (www.lrc.ky.gov) is updated daily to provide the latest legislative information. Web surfers can view the issues before lawmakers by browsing through bill summaries, amendments and resolutions. The website is regularly updated to indicate each bill’s status in the legislative process, as well as the next day’s committee-meeting schedule and agendas.

 

In addition to general information about the legislative process, the website provides information on each of Kentucky’s senators and representatives, including their phone numbers, addresses and legislative committee assignments.

 

A mobile-friendly version of the website can be viewed by going online to www.lrc.ky.gov/isite/index.html and adding the site to a smartphone’s home screen. The LRC seal that will appear on the home screen allows users to connect to some of the more popular features of the website including the legislative calendar and a directory of the state legislators with their photographs.

 

Citizens are also welcome to see proceedings in person in the State Capitol’s legislative chambers and committee rooms, which are open to the public.

 

Those who can’t make the trip to Frankfort can tune in to chamber proceedings and committee meetings on The Kentucky Channel, KET KY. Kentucky Educational Television also provides online streaming of its legislative coverage at KET.org/legislature.

 

Citizens can also use toll-free phone lines to follow legislative action and offer their input to lawmakers. Those who want to give lawmakers feedback on issues under consideration can call the Legislative Message Line at 800-372-7181. Those who prefer to offer their feedback in Spanish can call the General Assembly's Spanish Line at 866-840-6574. Citizens with hearing impairments can use the TTY Message Line at 800-896-0305.

 

A taped message containing information on the daily schedule for legislative committee meetings is available by calling the Legislative Calendar Line at 800-633-9650.

 

Citizens can write to any legislator by sending a letter with a lawmaker's name on it to: Legislative Offices, 702 Capitol Ave., Frankfort, KY 40601.

 

The 2016 session is expected to last 60 working days, the limit allowed by the Kentucky Constitution, and is scheduled to adjourn on April 12.

 

The Difference Between That Oregon Militia and ISIS

There isn't one.  Stop acting like there is.  Trump should be bombing the shit out of those bundyist motherfuckers.

David Atkins:

The big story of the day is the armed seizure of an empty federal building in rural Oregon by a group of domestic terrorists, some of whom are the sons of federal tax cheat and freeloader Cliven Bundy.

They’re apparently upset at the conviction and upcoming jail sentences of a couple of fellow domestic terrorists for arson. They believe that the federal government has no constitutional authority to own land, that national parks are essentially illegal, and that men like them have a God-given right to mine, log and otherwise destroy whatever forest land they want. (It remains unclear whether they would condone Native Americans for “standing their ground” and responding with force to their trespass on the same lands that God clearly gave to them first.)

I don’t want to dwell too much on the rationales and motivations for these domestic terrorists any more than I would for the people who fight for ISIS or Al Qaeda. It’s always the same thing: a group of armed, angry men believe that the Big Bad Western Government is infringing on their right to do whatever it is they very well please—whether it’s to the environment, or to minorities, women, people of different religious groups, etc. Undereducated, armed angry men are often upset at Western governments for upsetting their private power apple carts because in their small, solipsistic worlds they’re very used to being lords of their manors and local enforcers of bigoted frontier justice. That’s as true of Afghan militants in the Taliban as it is of rural Montana militiamen. The only difference is in the trappings, the external presence of the rule of law and the degree of violence involved.

SNIP

As much as restraint is the better part of valor when dealing with entitled conservative crazies, principles of basic justice and fair play also need to apply. What’s good for one type of terrorist must also be good for another.

Actually, there is a difference.  Domestic terrorists - conservatard white guys with guns who think they own the world - are a genuine existential threat to the United States of America, its residents and its Constitution.

 

ISIS is a bunch of thugs in the desert five thousand miles away.

How They Work

Divine Irony:

(Source: creationistfucktard)

Vampires

Divine Irony:

confrontingbabble-on:

Just like for god, there is no evidence that vampires exist…and just like “the sinner’s prayer”, there is no evidence that garlic will ward them off

Let's Put Taxes Back to Where They Were in the '50s.

Via Down with Tyranny:



We thrive only when we tax the living fuck out of the rich.

Matt Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Doing, Part Eight

So Matt Bevin's first act as our only governor - after declaring the Commonwealth a christianist theocracy run by idiot freakazoids like Kim Davis - was to strip state employees of their tiny increase in minimum wage from deep poverty to almost-able-to-see-a-living-wage-from-here-if-you-squint-really-hard.

So instead of state government wages leading the way for increases in the private sector, Bevin's un-government has dropped Kentucky back down to $7.25 - below even worthless states like Arkansas and West Virginia.

From Political Animal:

Next week workers in these 14 states will get a higher minimum wage:
Alaska, from $8.75 to $9.75 Arkansas, $7.50 to $8.00
California, $9.00 to $10.00
Colorado, $8.23 to $8.31
Connecticut, $9.15 to $9.60
Hawaii, $7.75 to $8.50
Massachusetts, $9.00 to $10.00
Michigan, $8.15 to $8.50
Nebraska, $8.00 to $9.00
New York, $8.75 to $9.00 (as of 12/31/15, fast food excepted)
Rhode Island, $9.00 to $9.60
South Dakota, $8.50 to $8.55
Vermont, $9.15 to $9.60 West Virginia, $8.00 to $8.75 (as of 12/31/15)

No, for the zillionth time, raising the minimum does not, never has and never will kill jobs.  It does, however, put money in the hands of the working poor, who spend it immediately to pay rent and buy food, clothes and other necessities, thus putting money in the pockets of the local people who sell that stuff and then use the money to buy other stuff and hire more employees, and so on.  Google "virtuous cycle."

Then google "Faux Libertarian Greedhead."  At the top of the page is Matt Bevin's picture.

The Real Obstacle

Quoted at TPM, in re repug obstruction on global warming: 

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."

Daniel J. Boorstin

Get People to Work by GettingThem to the Jobs

LexTran wants to know what its purpose is. How about making it possible for people to get to their jobs.
 

Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

Lauren Scott, a single mother and homeless, goes for a job interview:

Sixty-nine stops on a bus; a nine-minute train ride; an additional 49 stops on a bus; a quarter-mile walk.

Scott carries a spiral notebook with her “Plan of Action for the Week.” The Washington Post chronicles her struggle to find work in Atlanta. It would have taken 27 minutes in a car. It is a four-hour round trip on the bus. Getting to the interview is just one of the obstacles to climbing out of poverty. Rising prices in the city are driving low-income residents further from where the jobs are.

But even as their ranks have grown, the deeply impoverished in the Deep South have also increasingly found that they are on their own: They are less likely to receive the help of a spouse — or the government. Five of the six states with the highest proportion of single parents are in the Deep South. Meanwhile, policymakers have dismantled the cash assistance programs that used to provide critical support for the jobless with children. Those like Scott not only have less access to jobs, but also less of a safety net when they are unemployed.

It's a good thing she doesn't have to take a drug test before getting a bus pass. Scott had been self-sufficient, even if only hanging on. Her life was a Jenga game with too many pieces gone. Having a child brought it crashing down. There was no cushion left.

Other factors add to the difficulty of the poor finding work. Those who can’t afford to live in city centers often must depend on walking, hitching rides or laborious public transportation commutes. A 2011 Brookings Institution report ranking public transit in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas found that 15 of the weakest 20 systems — judged by coverage and job access — were in the South. They included systems in Birmingham, Ala.; Greenville, S.C.; Baton Rouge; and Atlanta — where, in earlier decades, majority-white suburbs voted against the expansion of a transit system they viewed as being primarily for black residents.
Let's see. So suburbanites insist poor people get jobs they can't get because they can't commute to where the jobs are because they don't have cars because they don't have jobs. 

And the poor can't use public transportation to commute to jobs they can't get because suburbanites don't want to pay taxes to expand public transportation they see as primarily benefiting poor people who can't afford to move closer to jobs and the suburbanites don't want them living in their neighborhoods anyway. This Catch 22 situation is a product of a moral failing on somebody's part. The comfortable are pretty sure it's the shiftless and slovenly Poors' failing. Good luck finding support for a "basic income" upon which to build better futures.

Ask Janis Adkins about that. She wound up homeless in Santa Barbara after losing her nursery business. No wonder Trump's faithful are so worried about immigrants and their own futures. Deep down, they know they could be next at the bottom of the ladder. Until then, no grace for those already there.

Maybe America needs a moratorium on saving souls until it finds its own.