Conway opens his gubernatorial campaign by barking up the wrong tree on gas prices

Even before he knew who his Republican gubernatorial opponent will be this fall – and indeed, even before his own all-but-certain nomination by the Democrats was official – Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway fired his first shot in his bid to win the Bluegrass State’s top spot.

Unfortunately for him, his shot was a dud, missing the mark entirely.

Conway has long railed against gasoline pricing in Kentucky, blaming high costs at the pump on what he asserts is a monopoly on the wholesale market in the state by Marathon Petroleum. His latest salvo was a lawsuit filed in federal court last month. During his remarks following the filing of the suit, Conway lashed out at the Federal Trade Commission for what he calls inaction on his complaints about Marathon and its business practices since buying the Ashland Oil refinery in Boyd County several years ago.

Given the fact that the FTC is part of the Obama administration, and knowing how Democrats hate “Big Oil” and are constantly criticizing oil companies for ripping off consumers, if Obama’s FTC isn’t acting on Conway’s complaints, there must not be anything to them.

But at any rate, Conway’s ire is misguided. Instead of complaining about Marathon’s alleged refinery monopoly costing consumers money, he should really be looking at the collusion on pricing by retailers within individual markets.

If you travel much, it doesn’t take long to notice a pattern. Gas prices are pretty much the same at every station in a small town or community, or at every retailer in a certain area of a larger city. Within the city limits of Beattyville, there are four gas stations owned by three separate companies. Yet the price is the same at each one. Ditto for Jackson. Drive down the town’s main drag, and the price is the same at each of the five stations you’ll pass. When the price goes up at one, it’s not long before it goes up at all the others.

A few weeks ago, I had to go to Whitesburg for work. You can’t go any farther southeast in Kentucky than the Letcher County seat. Keep going in that direction, and you’ll be in Virginia in a few miles. Whitesburg is 80 miles from the Mountain Parkway, so it’s not exactly the most accessible place in the Bluegrass State. Yet gas prices there were consistently below $2.50 a gallon, easily the cheapest in the region. Still, all the stations there were selling gas for the same price.

Gas buyers will go out of their way for a bargain. It’s not uncommon for them to drive across town to save a few cents a gallon, spending more than they end up saving. Yet there’s no logical explanation for all stations in a certain market keeping their prices the same. Why won’t one station set its price a nickel a gallon less than everyone else to undercut the competition? There has to be collusion going on between the stations to keep gas at the same price. That’s the only logical explanation.

If one station lowers its prices, it makes good business sense for competitors to lower theirs. But where’s the logic in raising your prices when everyone else does?

Conway’s statement that the state is monopolized by the Ashland refinery is false on its face. When the city of Somerset opened its own gas station in an attempt to lower prices in the area, it made a big deal of pointing out that the city’s station would be buying its fuel from the recently-reopened Somerset Oil refinery. So there are other options available, but Conway wants to pretend otherwise. It’s easier for him to gripe about the big bad oil companies rather than looking for true solutions.

If Conway is really serious about lowering gas prices, here’s what he needs to do. Instead of complaining in front of the media and filing lawsuits that won’t go anywhere, he needs to send his investigators out into the state. Pick a town, any town, where prices are all the same. Let his team start asking how the retailers set their prices, and why they always raise their prices when certain competitors do. There have been press quotes from some gas station employees saying they’ve been told to raise their prices whenever the station across the street does so. Wonder if they’ll say the same thing if an “unsworn falsification to authorities” charge hangs over their heads?

But for some reason, Conway doesn’t want to risk alienating the gas station owners. He’d rather point fingers at a huge conglomerate and blame them instead of going after the root of the problem. He gets headlines and makes it look like he cares about consumers, but the reality is something totally different. If Conway wants to protect consumers, he’ll take a serious look at collusion among retailers. He can either eliminate it if it exists, or force them to provide a logical and believable explanation as to why everyone in town sells gas for the same price, and the collusion that seems so evident is really just a mirage.

Journalistic malpractice committed in Kentucky Republican governor’s race

Even before I left the journalism profession, I’d become critical of the way the news is covered. From the stories that are chosen vs. those that are ignored, to the way certain stories are presented, I saw journalism, especially the kind practiced by daily newspapers, swirling around the drain a long time ago.

But now that I’m on the other side of things, and have had the misfortune to be misquoted or have a quote taken out of context as a source for a news story (thankfully, very rarely,) I see it even more clearly.

As someone who remains a staunch defender of the First Amendment and appreciates the role the press is supposed to play, this pains me. But day after day, I see journalistic malpractice being committed to the extent that it’s becoming obvious that most of the traditional mainstream media’s wounds are self-inflicted. 

Nowhere was this more evident than in the just-concluded Kentucky Republican gubernatorial primary. It’s hard to picture a bigger failure of journalists to do their jobs than in the way the governor’s race was covered.

A key factor in this year’s four-way primary, won by Louisville resident Matt Bevin by a razor-thin margin, was the role that blogger Michael Adams played in the race. Adams, you’ll recall, is the person who began making allegations that Jamie Comer assaulted a college girlfriend. His charges circulated around the Internet for months, but finally floated to the surface when the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Adams had contacted the campaigns of two of Comer’s Republican rivals, Hal Heiner and Will T. Scott, to peddle his allegations. (Some nontraditional media outltes reported that Adams also made contact with the campaign of Attorney General Jack Conway, who was the presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee).

When Adams’ assertions hit the mainstream, the race blew wide open. Adams had been trying to convince Comer’s ex-girlfriend to give him information, but she refused. When the Herald-Leader story hit print, she felt compelled to contact The Courier-Journal to confirm the allegations. The rest is well-known. Comer blamed Heiner for spreading the story, accused his ex-girlfriend of making the story up for money, and the fallout is widely believed to have damaged both of them and allowed Bevin to emerge victorious by a scant 83 votes.

The big player in the race was clearly Adams, but why didn’t the media investigate him? Why did they never dig into his motivation for opposing Comer so ardently? How could they allow him to affect the race the way he did without questioning why? The closest anyone came was a story by CNHI’s political reporter Ronnie Ellis, but his story consisted mainly of Auditor Adam Edelen complaining about Adams’ prior involvement in a legislative race in Clark County. Giving Edelen, a Democrat, space to go on a partisan rant against how Adams was involved in opposition research against another Democrat a few years ago is hardly the same as shining some light on his motivation for getting involved in the governor’s race this year.

By not investigating Adams’ reasons for attacking Comer so viciously, but letting Adams’ revelations dominate the news as the campaign entered its final stretch, the media failed. And the press failed again by latching on to Adams’ more salacious allegations, yet not exploring his more substantive charges.

Comer ran primarily on his record the past four years as commissioner of agriculture. Adams made several claims that Comer has mismanaged the state’s pilot industrial hemp project, yet no one ever looked into those charges. One would think that from a policy standpoint, that would be more important than a “he said, she said” matter from two decades ago. But I can’t recall having seen any media outlet doing a story about the hemp issue. 

There were other media mistakes made as well. One of Comer’s top assistants in the Department of Agriculture left her official job and went to work for his campaign, then abruptly quit. Several prominent Comer supporters and donors, including family members of this former staffer, switched their support from Comer to Heiner. Some perfunctory reporting was done on their change of favored candidate, but no one looked into the bigger picture, including why a trusted aide left Comer’s side. Speculation ran rampant in cyberspace, but nothing was ever put on the record.

The domestic abuse allegations were low-hanging fruit. I’d been aware of them for months, long before they hit the mainstream, but didn’t consider them credible until the ex-girlfriend confirmed them. It would have taken a little more investigating to check out the charges of mismanagement of the hemp program, but that wasn’t as eye-catching or glamorous as allegations of physical abuse. And it would have required even more digging to get the scoop on the source of the charges himself.

We may never know what prompted Adams to turn into an anti-Comer zealot.  Had the press done its job, we would have found out. What if Adams decides to get involved in another race this fall? Will the press then try to learn what makes him tick, but only after he had an unscrutinized impact on the GOP gubernatorial primary?

When The C-J published the story in which Comer’s college girlfriend confirmed the abuse allegations, Comer’s attorney threatened a lawsuit. To date, none has been filed. A better case could be made against the entire Kentucky journalistic community for malpractice during the GOP primary. It’s too bad such an action isn’t possible.

Did Comer’s public relations blunder cost him the governor’s race and his political career?

Every January, a professional organization of which I’m a member hosts a meeting at which the biggest public relations blunders of the previous year are discussed. One of the sources of those blunder lists tends to include as many goofs by conservative political figures as possible. Most of the events referenced are from elsewhere other than Kentucky, but there’s a very good chance that will change when the lists for 2015 are compiled.

Had Agriculture Secretary and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Jamie Comer better handled the brouhaha over allegations that he was in an abusive relationship with a college girlfriend, he might be planning how to push his winning primary campaign forward into this fall’s general election. Instead, he’s licking his wounds after his narrow primary defeat three weeks ago and is most likely staring at the end of his political career.

The story is well-known by now. A Lexington resident named Michael Adams heard rumors of the incident and started a concerted anti-Comer movement, establishing a blog and a Facebook page to spread the story. Once the mainstream press picked up on the subject, months after the blogger began his efforts, the woman in question felt compelled to speak out. A number of reporters had been trying to contact her about the matter, but she chose to send a letter to The Courier-Journal’s Joe Gerth in which she confirmed she’d been in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship with Comer.

That led Comer to issue a blanket denial, which in turn led others to come forward to confirm the ex-girlfriend’s account. Comer also lashed out at election rival Hal Heiner, accusing his campaign of being behind the blogger’s actions and claiming Heiner had paid the ex-girlfriend to fabricate her story. Comer’s wife penned a column in his defense for the C-J which was riddled with factual inaccuracies. Comer’s supporters began mirroring his statements and accusations on social media and on comment sections of news stories about the matter. The ex-girlfriend even began getting messages from strangers, accusing her of selling her soul for politics.

Heiner had led in most polling prior to the election, but Comer had been considered the frontrunner since he was sworn in as agriculture commissioner four years ago. Political observers didn’t give Matt Bevin much of a chance of winning until the battle between Comer and Heiner got ugly. The acrimony between Comer and Heiner allowed Bevin, previously known for his failed attempt to “primary” Mitch McConnell last year, to claim an 83-vote victory over Comer. The outcome didn’t change after a recanvass, Comer opted not to proceed with a formal recount, and Bevin became the nominee.

If Comer hadn’t acted so angrily, it’s entirely possible that he could have persuaded a few dozen more people to vote for him, and he could have won the gubernatorial primary.

What if Comer had stated that he had sometimes acted in an immature and ungentlemanly fashion in his youth? (Didn’t we all, at one time or another?) What if he had said that he regretted the way he may have treated her at times? What if he had apologized to her for any pain he may have caused her, and said he was sorry that she had been pulled into the middle of the election by a blogger operating on his own agenda? What if he had directed more of his ire toward blogger Adams, who started the whole thing, and less of it toward Heiner or Gerth? It’s quite likely that enough of the electorate would have accepted his statement to give him the victory, even if he didn’t directly answer questions about whether or not he’d been physically abusive to her.

Comer’s position toward his ex-girlfriend changed during the process, which didn’t endear him to a lot of people. He originally said he thought she was a good person and wouldn’t have been involved in Adams’ campaign against him. But when she finally spoke out under duress, he claimed that she had been paid to make up the stories. His lawyer also was hostile to her in comments he made to the media. The lawyer also threatened to sue the C-J over the story, but no libel suit has yet been filed as of this writing.

The public values sincerity and honors honesty. We’re a forgiving bunch. A little admission and contrition from Comer would have gone a long way. Instead, he remained defiant, choosing instead to blame others for the situation instead of taking some responsibility for his own role in it. And that, more than anything he may have done two decades ago as a college student, is what led to his downfall.

“It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.” How many times have we heard that statement since Watergate? Something similar applies here. “It’s not what you did, it’s how you respond to it.” Comer responded improperly, and paid a price for it. His blunder should be a cautionary tale for politicians on how not to handle such a situation.

SNAP, crackle and pop: Food stamp fraud means taxpayers subsidize drug abuse

The Jackson Walmart opened in 1985. At the time, my job required me to spend two or three days a week in the Breathitt County seat, so I was a frequent shopper at the new store. I typically went in to browse the newly-released records (yes, vinyl was still the way most people purchased music back then) and check out the fishing tackle.

After taking another job a couple of years later, I didn’t have many opportunities to shop there. That changed 11 years ago, when I returned to Jackson for work and began making regular trips to the store for household supplies, toiletries, pet food and other of life’s necessities.

It wasn’t long before I began noticing some peculiar purchasing habits. People would load up their shopping carts with cases and 12-packs of soft drinks. They were buying more pop than even the thirstiest family could consume in a month, so I thought maybe they were stocking up the concession stand for a youth sports league, community organization fundraising effort or public event.

Then, I observed a few other interesting things about this phenomenon. It always seemed to occur shortly after the first of the month, and the purchasers were buying all this pop with their SNAP cards, commonly known as food stamps. (I’m old enough to remember when they were officially called food coupons). Also, I started noticing that most of the purchasers had the tell-tale signs of being drug users, particularly of prescription painkillers.

Eventually, I learned what was going on. These people were using their government SNAP benefits to buy large amounts of pop, and then reselling it for cash which they use to buy drugs.

These fraudsters originally sold their ill-gotten soda to small “mom-and-pop” stores, because the proprietors of those businesses could buy it from the SNAPpers cheaper than they could the beverage distributors. Lately, though, they’ve bypassed the middleman and have started selling directly to consumers.  I witnessed just such a transaction in the Jackson Walmart parking lot a couple of years ago. Two women were loading up the trunk of their car with 12-packs of pop when a man approached them. Money changed hands, and the man walked away with two 12-packs.

This practice causes feelings to run high in the areas where it’s rampant. A Lexington television station has dubbed this “the pop train” and did an investigative story last year. Reactions were varied. Some complained that people should do whatever they want with their SNAP benefits, and others have no right to complain. Many are outraged that their tax dollars are going to support illegal drug abuse.

What can be done? It will literally take an Act of Congress to make any changes to the SNAP program. It’s a federally funded program, administered by the states for the federal Department of Agriculture. States cannot exclude certain items from being purchased. Minnesota tried years ago but that effort was shot down by the feds.

Should the feds try to remove pop from the list of eligible items, we can expect a cry of outrage from the left. “Poor people don’t get to enjoy many things in life. How dare we further oppress them by not letting them buy soft drinks?”

Some claim that people are doing this not to fund their drug habits, but to raise funds for other household expenses. It’s plausible, but not very likely, as there are assistance programs for everything from landline and wireless telephone service to electricity. Besides, when the perpetrators have the unmistakable signs of drug abusers, that explanation becomes less likely.

The best solution is to institute some kind of quota system. Since the SNAP cards are part of an EBT system, it should be easy to track the amount of pop that’s bought with one card and to disallow purchases beyond a reasonable amount for personal household consumption. Once upon a time, at the first of each month, the Jackson Walmart used to post a store limit on the amount of pop that could be purchased, but they’ve abandoned that practice.

The resale of items bought with food stamps is considered to be fraud, and at least one law enforcement agency is doing something about it. The Hazard Police Department is using a grant to fund an investigation. They’ve secured several indictments and it will be interesting to watch those cases go through the court system. Meanwhile, according to a Courier-Journal story last week, the federal government has notified the state that rampant food stamp fraud in Kentucky threatens the state’s funding to administer the program.

I’ve always been infuriated at this fraudulent practice. My budget is already stretched thin, and given the amount of my paycheck that the government gets in taxes, I want those dollars to be spent as prudently and wisely as possible. Plus, I’ve always been an outspoken opponent of drug abuse. So I’m doubly outraged to see my tax dollars stolen and then used to buy drugs. I hope something can be done to stop this wasteful, abusive and criminal practice.