Tag Archives: #Kentucky

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Andy Beshear will try to issue another odious mask mandate any day now

I told you so!

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) hasn’t tried to make masks mandatory again, but today’s “recommendations” certainly set the table for that.

The Governor’s new “recommendations” are:

  • All unvaccinated Kentuckians should wear masks indoors when not in their homes
  • Kentuckians at higher risk due to pre-existing conditions should wear masks indoors when not in their homes
  • Vaccinated Kentuckians in jobs with significant public exposure should consider wearing a mask at work
  • All unvaccinated Kentuckians, when eligible, should be vaccinated immediately

Mr Beshear is like any other American: under our First Amendment, he has the freedom of speech, and can recommend anything he wishes. But I do not trust him, nor do I trust the state Supreme Court and how they may rule on the Governor’s legal attempts to invalidate the restrictions on his emergency powers under KRS 39A passed by the General Assembly last February, and it’s all too easy to see Mr Beshear trying to turn his recommendations into orders.

Kentucky reporting new cases of COVID-19 at levels not seen since March

By Alex Acquisto | July 22, 2021 | 1:38 PM | Updated: 2:06 PM EDT

Kentucky is poised to report its fourth consecutive week of rising COVID-19 cases, the overwhelming majority of which are driven by unvaccinated people, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday.

“We believe that on Monday we are going to be in another week of increasing cases,” the governor said from the state Capitol. Cases began rising again in late June after two months of consecutive decline.

In Kentucky, where roughly half the state is at least partially vaccinated, over 95% of the more than 61,000 new coronavirus cases from March 1 to July 21 were among unvaccinated people, the governor announced. Likewise, 92% of the 3,100 coronavirus-related hospitalizations and 89% of the 447 people who died of coronavirus were either unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated.

OK, let’s stop right there. The vaccines didn’t even become available to people under 70 until the beginning of March, so when March and April are included, those numbers are wholly skewed. I’m in my upper sixties, and I was not able to get my first dose until April Fool’s Day, and my second until Cinco de Mayo. I would not have been considered “fully vaccinated” until 14 days after my second dose, which meant May 19th.

So, when the Governor tells us that “over 95% of the more than 61,000 new coronavirus cases from March 1 to July 21 were among unvaccinated people,” he is using a time frame in which most Kentuckians had the opportunity to be vaccinated. The percentage of the Commonwealth’s population which could have been vaccinated, especially “fully vaccinated,” during March and April was pretty small.

Note what the Herald-Leader had reported just two days earlier:

About one-fifth of the new COVID-19 cases in Lexington in July occurred in vaccinated people, according to new data from the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department.

Those so-called “breakthrough” cases had accounted for less than 1 percent of Lexington’s reported infections until the last few weeks. In May, less than 10 percent of the month’s cases were breakthrough infections. In June, that number increased to almost 15 percent.

This month, about 19.5 percent of all cases have been in people fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the health department.

Note, the report is that 19.5% were among people fully vaccinated. One wonders what the infection rate was for those who were only partially vaccinated.

The vaccines are supposed to help those who do contract the virus anyway by resulting in far less serious symptoms. If someone has been vaccinated, and he doesn’t feel sick, there’s really no reason for him to be tested, so, though we can’t prove a negative, it stands to reason that a smaller percentage of vaccinated than unvaccinated people get tested for COVID-19. It could well be that the percentage of vaccinated people who are infected with COVID anyway is significantly higher than anyone knows.

And why would a fully vaccinated person get tested unless it was absolutely necessary? From CNBC:

If a vaccinated person tests positive for Covid, through routine workplace testing, for example, “we don’t just let them go about their business and forget about the fact that they tested positive,” says Dr. Peter Katona, professor of medicine and public health at UCLA and chair of the Infection Control Working Group.

“With the understanding that you’re less of a problem than an unvaccinated [person], it doesn’t mean you let up on your protocol,” he says.

The most important thing to do after testing positive would be to isolate, meaning you stay away from people who are not sick, including others who are vaccinated, and monitor for Covid-related symptoms, Gonsenhauser says.

“You are going to have to isolate just as though you were not vaccinated for 10 days from the first symptoms that you recognize or from the time of your test…keeping yourself from being around other people until that period is up,” Gonsenhauser says.

You should avoid visiting any private or public areas or traveling during that 10-day period, according to the CDC.

In other words, if you are fully vaccinated and are not sick, getting tested can mean only one thing: more restrictions on your life!

And here comes what I said was coming:

The more contagious Delta variant is driving an increase in cases and the statewide positivity rate, which rose above 6% on Wednesday for the first time since late February. On Tuesday, the state reported 1,054 new cases of the virus — the highest single-day increase since March 11, Beshear said. On Wednesday, the state reported 963 new cases.

For the first time since he lifted the statewide mask mandate and repealed capacity restrictions in early June, Beshear said on Thursday that he will not shy away from reinstituting those rules if the spread of the virus continues to gain momentum.

“We’re not going to be afraid to make the tough decision if it’s merited,” he said, again noting that the solution to stemming spread is for more people to get vaccinated.

It is, I believe, the wiser choice for people to go ahead and get vaccinated; not only have I said that before, but my freely disclosed choice on the matter months ago ought to stand as testimony to that. And if someone believes that he ought to wear a face mask, I absolutely support his right to choose to do that.

But I am absolutely opposed to the government trying to mandate vaccination, or facemasks, or any of the restrictions on our individual rights that so many states imposed previously. COVID-19 may be deadly in a small percentage of cases, but it has already dealt a near-mortal blow to our rights as free people and as Americans.

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It’s being set up again!

As we have previously noted, the nation is being set up, through the spreading of fear, for another imposition of the illegal and unconstitutional COVID-19 restrictions.

And now comes Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY), one of the worst of the COVID tyrants:

    As Delta variant spreads, Beshear recommends return to indoor masking for some

    By Alex Acquisto | July 19, 2021 | 5:07 PM | Updated: July 19, 2021 | 6:01 PM EDT

    Fully-vaccinated Kentuckians who work in jobs with “significant public exposure” should consider wearing a mask again in indoor public spaces, Gov. Andy Beshear recommended on Monday, citing rising case numbers and escalating spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19.

    The governor is also recommending a return to masking in indoor public settings for fully-vaccinated Kentuckians at high-risk of severe coronavirus infection because of pre-existing health conditions. High-exposure jobs include retail and hospitality businesses, as well as any job that requires contact with many different people.

    “The more people you come in contact with, the more exposure you are likely to have, so we believe at this point it is a smart idea,” Beshear said.

    The new recommendations, which apply to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, are necessary because “we are seeing more cases among vaccinated Kentuckians because of the Delta variant,” Beshear said.

There’s more at the original, but the most important word in that article is “necessary.” The Governor argued, after his attorney’s presentation to the state Supreme Court:

    After the court hearing, Beshear told reporters that a governor’s emergency powers certainly “have to be large enough with a one-in-every-hundred year pandemic that creates the deadliest year in our history, it has to be significant and strong enough to do what’s necessary there.”

    “You look back at different things that this legislature has tried to do in the midst of this pandemic and they would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary,” he said. “We would have looked like the Dakotas and not what we looked like here in Kentucky.”

Mr Beshear believes that he just has to have these powers, because they are necessary, regardless of the General Assembly putting restrictions on them.

Oral arguments were made to the Court on June 10th, which was 5½ weeks ago, and the Court has not yet issued its ruling. The last time this issue came before the state Supreme Court, prior to the last legislative session, which changed the laws, the Court took from September 17th until November 12th, to issue its decision, 56 days, an even 8 weeks, so, if the Court uses the same timetable, it wouldn’t issue its decision until Thursday, August 5th.

Of course, the Governor has only issued recommendations, and not tried to impose another executive order. I would like to think that this is because he has already been notified by the justices that they aren’t going to come down on his side, and he knows that the General Assembly would never approve an extension of a mask order, but the state Supreme Court has a decidedly liberal leaning:

    The last three years in Kentucky should provide an equal awakening concerning the Kentucky Supreme Court. Over and over in the past three years, the state’s highest court has upended legislation after legislation passed by the General Assembly, often appearing to seek legal justification after it had decided what it wanted to do.

    To name a handful, regardless of the policy merits of the 2018 pension reform bill, the Court invalidated the law based on a procedure that has been used by the General Assembly for decades. The Court threw out Medical Review Panels, blocked Marsy’s Law[1]Hyperlink added by editor; not included in cited article., and perhaps the most head-scratching of all, had three justices dissent in the case that ultimately upheld Kentucky’s right-to-work law.

    Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who studies methods of selecting judges, looked at the ideological makeup of state Supreme Courts compared to the electorate they serve in a 2017 study. Kentucky, he found, is entirely out of whack. The commonwealth had the eighth highest liberal skew in the country, versus the federal electorate in the state, during his studied period.

Well, the Kentucky Supreme Court was certainly out of tune with the electorate in Kentucky. On November 3, 2020, the voters in the Commonwealth rewarded Republican state legislative candidates, who had campaigned against the Governor’s restrictions, with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, giving the GOP a 75-25 seat advantage,[2]Don’t scream, “Gerrymandering!” because when the House districts were redistricted following the 2010 census, Democrats controlled the state House. and 2 additional seats, out of 17 up for election, in the state Senate, for a 38-10 GOP margin.

The state Supreme Court has long been a friend of Mr Beshear’s, particularly when it came to the then-Attorney General filing lawsuit after lawsuit to frustrate Governor Matt Bevin (R-KY). And while I would like to think that the Governor has already been clued in to his legal position failing, it’s just as possible — and perhaps even more possible — that the state Supremes have come down in his favor, and he’s just setting the table to change recommendations into requirements.

References

References
↑1 Hyperlink added by editor; not included in cited article.
↑2 Don’t scream, “Gerrymandering!” because when the House districts were redistricted following the 2010 census, Democrats controlled the state House.
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It’s being set up again!

Long-term readers of The First Street Journal — both of them — know that my trust of Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) is so great that if he told me that 2 + 2 = 4, I’d check his math. I noted his attempts to have the state Supreme Court invalidate Senate Bill 1, House Bill 1, and other legislation which would restrict his ’emergency powers’ under KRS 39A, saying that it was necessary that he have those powers as defined before the General Assembly passed, over his veto, restrictions on how they could be used. The Kentucky Supreme Court has yet to issue its ruling, but I must admit: given how the justices have bent over backward for Mr Beshear, both when he was state Attorney General and now, as Governor, I am not confident that the Court will uphold the laws. Continue reading →

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This may not be a good change Replacing elected officials with unelected bureaucrats leads to poorer service

I moved away from Hampton, Virginia in 2000, and while I liked the place, I wasn’t sad to no longer have to deal with the Hampton branch of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. Who knows, maybe it has been improved since the 1990s, but at least in the 1990s it was nothing more than Affirmative Action for special education students. The individual clerks at the stations in the long, long waiting room were ugly, bored, rude and stupid.

Moving to Delaware wasn’t too bad. Small state, and the DMV for New Castle County wasn’t great, but it wasn’t too terribly bad, either. It outclassed Hampton in every way.

Two years later, and Pennsylvania was a dream: license plate issues and renewals were handled by private notaries public, taking half the burden away from the local DMVs. Private businesses have to have polite people, or they go out of business. The Carbon County DMV office was small, and a bit of a pain as it was not open every day, but at least it wasn’t any worse than Delaware’s. Continue reading →

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Charles Booker is running for the Senate

In news which is no surprise, former state Representative Charles Booker has declared for the Democratic nomination to face incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in the 2022 election.

Mr Booker said last March that he was “strongly considering” running for the Senate in 2022, and, as we have previously noted, in April formed an exploratory committee on the subject. Continue reading →

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Lexington wants to ban no-knock warrants As the crime rate in Lexington is rising rapidly, the Urban-County Council wants to further hamstring the police

The black communities around the country have been really eager in their attempts to ban no-knock warrants. Louisville’s Breonna Taylor was killed when plainclothes police officers returned fire — not opened fire but returned fire — after Miss Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, claiming that he thought the police were armed intruders, and fired, hitting Officer Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. The officers then fired 32 shots, entirely missing Mr Walker, but hitting Miss Taylor six times. From Wikipedia:

The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department investigation’s primary targets were Jamarcus Glover and Adrian Walker (not related to Kenneth Walker), who were suspected of selling controlled substances from a drug house approximately 10 miles away. Glover had cohabited with Taylor and said the police had pressured him to move out of Taylor’s residence for unspecified reasons.[37] Glover and Taylor had been in an on-off relationship that started in 2016 and lasted until February 2020, when Taylor committed to Kenneth Walker.

In December 2016, Fernandez Bowman was found dead in a car rented by Taylor and used by Glover. He had been shot eight times. Glover had used Taylor’s address and phone number for various purposes, including bank statements.

In a variety of statements, Glover said that Taylor had no involvement in the drug operations, that as a favor she held money from the proceeds for him, and that she handled money for him for other purposes. In different recorded jailhouse conversations Glover said that Taylor had been handling his money and that she was holding $8,000 of it, that he had given Taylor money to pay phone bills, and that he had told his sister that another woman had been keeping the group’s money.

In the recorded conversations and in an interview with The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Glover repeatedly said that Taylor was not involved in any drug operations and that police had “no business” looking for him at her residence, and denied that he had said in the recorded conversations that he kept money at her residence. Taylor was never a co-defendant in Glover’s case.

A no-knock warrant was reasonable, in that the LMPD believed that Miss Taylor was holding drugs and money for Mr Glover. While the evidence sought through the warrant never appeared, Miss Taylor was, at the very least, closely involved with Mr Glover, a notorious drug dealer. That part never penetrated the consciousness of the black community.

And so we come to Lexington, where the Urban-County Council has advanced, on a 9-6 vote, a proposed ordinance to ban no-knock warrants.

Vice Mayor Steve Kay said of the four no-knock warrants Lexington police have served in the past five years, all were executed to preserve evidence in drug cases, despite Lexington police previously saying that they have been not used to preserve evidence.

Translation: we’ve got to give the drug dealers time to flush their stashes down the toilet!

In a city of 308,000 people, four no-knock warrants used over five years does not exactly seem like overuse or some sort of blanket policy.

“I believe strongly that we have a great police force and it’s lead by a great chief,” Kay said. Yet, the Black community has repeatedly said it does not want the police to use no-knock warrants.

“My sense is that the no-knock represents a threat … a continuation of the way that they have been at the wrong end of police enforcement. I want them to have faith in the department,” Kay said. “What I don’t want to read is that there has been a shooting and no one will come forward and provide evidence to the police.”

If the black community in Lexington “have been at the wrong end of police enforcement,” might that not indicate that too many members of their community have been on the wrong end of the law?

Lexington police union blasts nine council members who voted for no-knock warrant ban

By Beth Musgrave | June 10, 2021 | 1:04 PM EDT | Updated: June 10, 2021 | 3:34 PM EDT

The union that represents Lexington police officers blasted nine members of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council who voted Tuesday to ban no-knock warrants, saying they were pandering to “radically anti-police protesters.”

In Facebook posts, the Fraternal Order of Police Bluegrass Lodge #4 tied a rise in the number of shootings and murders this year to the vote to ban no-knock warrants. “City leaders are less concerned with your safety than they are with pandering to a small group of radically anti-police protestors,” one post read. . . .

In another Facebook post, the FOP tied two Wednesday murders to the vote on the no-knock ban.

“These shooting deaths came just hours after the Lexington City Council irresponsibly voted to ban no-knock warrants in Lexington. When it comes time for officers to arrest these murderers, do we really want to restrict the tools they have to apprehend the suspects safely?”

The Lexington Police Department is like major police departments everywhere: the officers have a hard, dangerous job to do, and they are doing it during a time of increased lawlessness. Lexington has seen 19 homicides in 160 days, which puts the city on pace for 43 murders this year, which would blow 2020’s record of 34 out of the water. At a time in which the city is less safe than it has ever been, the black community want to hobble law enforcement even more.

“There is a concerted effort underway by the Fraternal Order of Police, as we speak, to paint council members who voted for this police reform, our group and others as supporting both criminals and the endangerment of our fellow citizens and police officers,” said Rev. Clark Williams, a member of the group (of black religious leaders).

“We are not the enemies of the Lexington police, and for the record, nobody wants Lexington to be safe for everybody more than we do,” Williams said. “But this form of misinformation and divisive rhetoric has no place in the legislative process, and it further demonstrates why we need a permanent ban on no-knock warrants.”

Really? If “nobody wants Lexington to be safe for everybody more than (they) do,” why are they trying to aid the criminal element in town?

No-knock warrants have hardly been abused in Lexington; there’s no need for an absolute ban. It would be an easy check to keep the current policy, of having the Mayor, someone who isn’t part of the Police Department, review and approve or disapprove of the applications before they are presented to a judge.

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Andy Beshear: Lying through his scummy teeth!

As we have previously noted, the state Supreme Court has consolidated the cases against the General Assembly’s new laws restricting Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) ’emergency’ powers under KRS 39A, and a lawsuit against the Governor exercising those powers. The state Court then set June 10th, then eight weeks away, to hear oral arguments in the cases. That means, in effect, that the Governor will continue to exercise authority the General Assembly denied him, for at least 3½ months after the state legislature took its action, and, in all likelihood, a couple of months after that.

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

Several lawsuits were filed in state courts last year to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the  Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.

The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders.

If the Kentucky Supreme Court, officially non-partisan but in practice controlled by the Democrats, follows the same pattern, a second eight week delay will mean a decision around the first week of August! Even if that decision supports the duly passed laws of the General Assembly, the state courts will have given the Governor half a year to exercise power that the General Assembly restricted.

On May 6th, Governor Beshear announced that he would loosen the restrictions, but not eliminate them entirely, effective just before the Memorial Day weekend. Then, on May 14th, the Governor announced that almost all restrictions would be lifted on Kentuckians, including the hated mask mandate, even for those who are not vaccinated against COVID-19. He had, the previous day, followed the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendations, and stated that “fully vaccinated” Kentuckians could dispense with face masks.

‘A huge relief.’ Businesses, politicians celebrate end of KY COVID-19 restrictions.

By Alex Acquisto and Daniel Desrochers | June 11, 2021 | 6:00 AM | EDT | Updated: 7:45 AM EDT

A year of mask-wearing and social distancing ends Friday, as Kentuckians were given clearance to stop taking routine precautions against spread of COVID-19 for the first time since the virus initially invaded the state.

Gov. Andy Beshear first required masks be worn in public places and around others outside one’s household in July of 2020 as a way to blunt the spread of the disease and has renewed that order each month since.

On Friday, that order was lifted, along with restrictions on crowd capacity in restaurants and most other businesses, ripping off the state’s COVID-19 protective band-aid.

So, despite the best efforts of Republicans, Governor Beshear has pretty much gotten away with his dictatorial and unconstitutional actions. At this point, the battle is to keep him from being able to do it again.

KY Supreme Court hears arguments on limiting the governor’s power during emergencies

By Jack Brammer | June 10, 2021 | 1:37 PM EDT | Updated June 11, 2021 | 7:57 AM EDT

A day before Gov. Andy Beshear is to remove most COVID-19 restrictions in Kentucky, the state Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments on Beshear’s challenge of Republican-backed laws that limit his authority to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and other emergencies.

Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. said after nearly two hours of oral arguments on two related cases that the state’s highest court will rule “as quickly as we can.” A decision is not expected for several weeks.

The state Supreme Court last year unanimously ruled that Beshear’s orders were legal but that was before the legislature passed laws earlier this year restricting the governor’s powers.

There’s a lot more at the original, but basically the Governor’s attorney was arguing that the Governor had to have the powers he exercised.

After the court hearing, Beshear told reporters that a governor’s emergency powers certainly “have to be large enough with a one-in-every-hundred year pandemic that creates the deadliest year in our history, it has to be significant and strong enough to do what’s necessary there.”

“You look back at different things that this legislature has tried to do in the midst of this pandemic and they would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary,” he said. “We would have looked like the Dakotas and not what we looked like here in Kentucky.”

The Governor was lying through his scummy teeth. The laws did not prevent him from issuing declaring a state of emergency or issuing executive orders under it; what hey did was to limit those orders to thirty days unless the General Assembly specifically authorized an extension. The legislature passed House Joint Resolution 77, which granted extensions to some, but not all, of the Governor’s executive orders, but did not include the hated mask mandate, and then highly partisan Judge Phillip Shepherd issued an injunction against that, saying that the Governor’s existing executive orders and emergency regulations constituted “proper responses to a public health crisis.” That’s a political judgement, not a legal one.

Mr Beshear was pissed off that the legislature did not agree with all of his executive order, only some of them. Saying that the legislature “would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary” is a political argument, not a legal one.

Republicans, frustrated by the courts’ refusal to rein in the Governor’s mandates, ran against the Governor and his actions in the 2020 elections, and the voters rewarded Republicans with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, for a 75-25 majority, and two additional seats in the state Senate, out of 17 being contested, for a 30-8 majority in that body. The state legislature, in passing the bills at the beginning of this year’s session, was doing whet the voters of Kentucky wanted them to do. The Governor does not like that the voters did not agree with his dictates.

Mr Beshear, who was very, very, very concerned about the law when he was state Attorney General and doing his best to frustrate Governor Matt Bevin (R-KY), doesn’t seem to care much about the law anymore, not when the law is a problem for him. He has argued necessity, as though the Governor’s personal judgement of what is necessary somehow trumps or supersedes the law.

Well, not just no, but Hell no! The law is the law, and the constitution is the constitution, and no Governor, not Mr Beshear or anybody else, should have the authority to just suspend or ignore parts of it.

Alas! I am not confident that the state Supreme Court will follow the law; they’ve been far too compliant with the Governor’s wishes. But, with the restrictions over, there is no reason at for the justices to ignore the laws passed by the General Assembly other than the argument of what might happen sometime in the future.

The real solution for Kentuckians will come on November 7, 2023, when they will have the chance to vote this wannabe dictator out of office.

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Charles Booker’s misplaced priorities

Charles Booker, from his Twitter profile.

As I previously noted, the hearts of the editors of the what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal must have been all aflutter when former, one-term state Representative Charles Booker (D-43rd District) of Louisville announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to see if he should run for the 2022 Democratic nomination against incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). In 2020, the editors endorsed the hard-left Mr Booker against faux moderate Amy McGrath Henderson for the nomination to run against Senator Mitch McConnell. After Mrs Henderson won the primary by an unexpectedly-close margin, the editors endorsed her against Mr McConnell, where she lost in a landslide.

Well, being the news junkie that I am, I went ahead and followed Mr Booker on Twitter, and he had this one up on Tuesday:

Really? Well, a whole lot of Kentuckians would disagree with Mr Booker. In 2010, Dr Paul defeated Democratic nominee Jack Conway, who had already won a statewide election to become the state’s Attorney General, 755,411 (55.69%) to 599,617 (44.26%) to win his seat in the United States Senate. Anything over 10% is considered a landslide win. Then, in 2016, Senator Paul defeated then-Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington 1,090,177 (57.27%) to 813,246 (42.73%) for re-election.

Mitch McConnell? In 2014, Senator McConnell defeated Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes 806,787 (56.2%) to 584,698 (40.7%), and in 2020 he stomped Mrs Henderson 1,233,315 (57.8%) to 816,257 (38.2%), despite her spending $90.8 million to ‘just’ $60 million by the incumbent senator.

If you visit Mr Booker’s (exploratory) campaign website, you’ll see a letter from him on the front page. In it, he said, “We all want a society where every single person can be safe in their homes without the fear of being killed by the government agencies we pay to protect us.”

Yeah, I get it: he’s channeling the killing of Breonna Taylor, the ex-girlfriend of a notorious Louisville drug dealer, who died when police returned fire from her then current boyfriend when they broke in, serving a legitimate no-knock warrant.

But, really, Mr Booker is worried about people being killed in their homes by police, an extremely rare event, when, as of May 30th, there had been 76 murders in his home town?

That’s 30 more murders than at the same time in 2020, a 65.22% increase. It was more than double the 33 homicides at the same time in 2019.

Louisville saw 92 criminal homicides in 2019, and almost doubled it to 173 in 2020. Louisville is currently on pace for a new record of 185 murders for 2021, and the long, hot summer hasn’t begun yet, but Mr Booker is worried about Breonna Taylor? One of us believes that Mr Booker’s priorities are misplaced.

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Andy Beshear tries to finesse his #COVID19 orders to escape a state Supreme Court decision

As we have previously noted, the state Supreme Court has consolidated the cases against the General Assembly’s new laws restricting Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) ’emergency’ powers under KRS 39A, and a lawsuit against the Governor exercising those powers. The state Court then set June 10th, then eight weeks away and still more than a month away, to hear oral arguments in the cases. That means, in effect, that the Governor will continue to exercise authority the General Assembly denied him, for at least 3½ months after the state legislature took its action, and, in all likelihood, a couple of months after that.

Several lawsuits were filed in state courts last year to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the  Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.

The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders.

If the Kentucky Supreme Court, officially non-partisan but in practice controlled by liberals, follows the same pattern, a second eight week delay will mean a decision around the first week of August! Even if that decision supports the duly passed laws of the General Assembly, the state courts will have given the Governor half a year to exercise power that the General Assembly restricted.

And now? The Governor is trying to make most of the cases moot:

COVID-19 capacity restrictions lifting to 75% at most Kentucky businesses on May 28

By Alex Aquisto | May 6, 2021 4:57 PM EDT | Updated May 6, 2021 | 5:34 PM

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

Indoor and outdoor businesses in Kentucky serving fewer than 1,000 people can increase capacity to 75% at the end of the month, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday, as he announced 655 new cases of COVID-19 and six virus-related deaths.Capacity restrictions right now for these businesses are at 60%. Beshear also said people gathering indoors “for private gatherings and for business” no longer have to wear a mask, as long as “100% are fully vaccinated.” That change goes into effect immediately.

Additionally, for businesses and events serving more than 1,000 people outdoors, Beshear increased their operating capacity from 50% to 60%. Both capacity increases go into effect May 28. Beshear said he expects the state will have no coronavirus capacity restrictions by July.

Translation: by the time the state Supreme Court will probably rule, there will be far fewer restrictions in place, and the Governor will argue that makes the cases moot. The Court would like nothing better than to simply dismiss the cases as moot, and you can bet your last euro that the Court would notify the Governor before any decision is announced what it would be and when it would be issued.

Governor Beshear said that Texas decision to drop mask mandates “will increase casualties,” but COVID cases there have dramatically declined.

We noted on Thursday that Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) was lifting his restrictions on Memorial Day, May 31st, and asked why he was going to ruin 2/3 of the holiday weekend and then suddenly declare, on the final day, that no restrictions were needed. At least Governor Beshear recognized the silliness of that!

The Governor’s latest thirty-day renewal of the illegal and repugnant mask mandate expires on Thursday, May 27th, at 5:00 PM EDT, just before his other COVID-19 restrictions are scheduled to be weakened, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him issue that one again.

Reiterating that Kentucky will not be repealing its mask mandate anytime soon, Gov. Andy Beshear announced 1,068 new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky on Thursday, as well as 28 virus-related deaths.

Earlier this week, Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi lifted coronavirus restrictions, repealing their states’ mask mandates and reopening businesses to full capacity. Kentucky will not do that, Beshear said.

“We’re going to continue to lose people until we’re fully out of the woods and everybody is vaccinated,” he said in a live update. “That’s the reason we’re not going to do what Texas or Mississippi has done. Those decisions will increase casualties when we just have maybe even a matter of months to go.”

Except, of course, those decisions did not increase casualties, the seven day moving average of new cases in the Lone Star state being down to 2,651 as of May 6th, the lowest figure since June 17, 2020, while Mississippi is seeing a seven-day moving average of 182 new cases per day, a number not seen since April 14, 2020. Regardless of what the so-called ‘experts’ have told us, the empirical evidence has been that ending the mask mandates has not led to more cases, but, hey, dictators gotta dictate!

If Governor Beshear does not extend the mask mandate past July, virtually all of the cases on the laws would turn moot, so the Governor would not have a decision recorded against him; the state Supreme Court would simply dismiss everything. But that leaves open the possibility that, in a future ’emergency,’ or if COVID-19 cases suddenly increase again, that our authoritarian Governor would once again try to restrict the rights of Kentuckians.

This Governor needs to be slapped down, and slapped down hard, but the only way that will really happen is at the ballot box, in November of 2023.