Lazy, agenda-driven "reporting" hastens journalism's demise

It's no secret that the journalism business is in big trouble. The big traditional print outlets are seeing their circulations decline and their credibility eroding, and the well-known broadcast outlets are losing viewers and trust at an alarming rate. High-profile lawsuits against a number of those outlets by Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann don't help, and neither will the multimillion-dollar suit Congressman Devin Nunes filed against CNN for its false report that he met with Ukrainian officials in Austria in an attempt to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.

There are lots of reasons for the decline of the media. Biased coverage, poor business decisions, and bad reporting are chief among them. 

At a time when newspapers are begging for readers and trying to make themselves relevant once again by adopting catchy slogans such as "Democracy Dies In Darkness," one would think that reporters would make an effort to write complete and unbiased stories when they cover current events.

A recent story by Jack Brammer from the Lexington Herald-Leader shows this not to be the case at all. Lazy, biased reporting still rules the day at one of Kentucky's two largest newspapers.

On his way out of office, Gov. Matt Bevin has been giving interviews to a number of radio stations across the state. He has either ignored or declined the Herald-Leader's request for an exit interview. And why should he talk to that paper? It has been hostile to him since he won the Republican gubernatorial nomination four years ago.

Unable to get his own interview with Bevin, Brammer decided instead to write a story centered on various comments Bevin made in those radio interviews. The focus of the story that came out was that Bevin had stated that incoming Gov.-elect Andy Beshear had sold a high-level appointment to a campaign contributor.

"I’ve heard of one person who has been appointed who told the person whose place he is taking that he had to pay. He had to make campaign contributions to get his appointment,” the story quotes Bevin as saying on a radio station in Cadiz. Brammer's story chastises Bevin for not naming the appointee or offering any proof that the allegation is true.

Isn't that the job of the press? Don't they investigate and verify the statements of officials and politicians every day? Isn't that why there are scads of fact-checking sites out there? Isn't that why reporters and pundits hang on every word President Trump utters, trying to prove them false?

So far, Beshear has made two announcements of appointments to high-level positions. His first announcement, last week, was mainly of people who work for him in the attorney general's office moving up with him. He made another announcement this week, in which he gave Lt. Gov-elect Jacqueline Coleman a cabinet secretary's role, and verified what many people suspected, in that Rep. Rocky Adkins -- whom Beshear defeated in the gubernatorial primary but became a prominent Beshear backer in the general election -- would get a key role in his administration.

Also in that announcement, Beshear stated that former Lexington mayor and failed congressional candidate Jim Gray would be his Transportation Cabinet secretary. That appointment came as a surprise to most, as the prevailing thought was that Adkins would get that job.

The Kentucky Registry of Election Finance has this neat little feature on its website, where anyone can search for campaign contributions. After first seeing Brammer's story Wednesday night, it took me about five minutes of work on my smartphone to determine that Jim Gray, this surprise appointee, had contributed the maximum of $4,000 to Andy Beshear's gubernatorial campaign. He gave two separate $1,000 contributions to Beshear's primary effort last winter, then a $2,000 gift to his general election campaign this summer.

If I could find that out, and take the time to research it, why couldn't Brammer? Wouldn't the prudent course of action for an unbiased, impartial journalist be to look into the contributions of everyone Beshear has appointed to date, then ask those individuals and the governor-elect for comment?

In the case of Gray, I can think of a number of pertinent questions to ask.

• "Did the two of you know each other previously? If so, how well? What was the nature of your relationship?"

• "Did the two of you ever discuss campaign contributions"?

• "When was Gray's appointment first discussed? How long had he been under consideration for a cabinet secretary's position?"

It could be that both Gray and Beshear would deny any connection between Gray's contributions and his appointment, but at least the questions and answers would be out there in the public domain for all to see. In any case, it's an obvious matter that one should expect a serious journalist to pursue.

The major media outlets in this state have a history of overlooking or blatantly ignoring information that would make Democrats look bad, or present Republicans in a better light. Look how doggedly the Courier-Journal tried to make Bevin's purchase of a home an issue. Yet during the Ernie Fletcher administration, the press overlooked pertinent facts concerning Greg Stumbo's investigation that could have made a difference in public perception had they been widely known.

Jack Brammer's been a political reporter for a long time. He knows how to research stories. Is he just phoning it in now, waiting for a buyout from McClatchy? Did laziness or bias impact the way he reported this story? Why didn't he do some simple investigation and then ask questions about what he could have found out? If someone who lives two hours from Frankfort can find this out from the comfort of his home, why can't a reporter who works in the capital city do it while on the job?

As a commenter noted on the H-L's story, there's no direct evidence of a quid pro quo (that certainly seems to be a popular phrase these days.) While that's true, there are legitimate questions that could be asked, and should be asked by responsible reporters. Ask them, get denials on the record, and then let the people make up their own minds based on the evidence. The fact that the question never got asked takes that possibility away from the populace.

Volumes could be, and have been, written about journalism's decline. The clock is ticking on the traditional media, as more and more sources of information become available to the public. When journalists don't do their due diligence on stories, they do their industry no favors.

Kentuckians wise to doubt legislature's ability to keep Beshear in check

One of the silver linings that's frequently mentioned when discussing the black cloud that will be Andy Beshear's term as Kentucky's governor is the fact that both houses of the General Assembly are firmly in Republican control.

The GOP holds a veto-proof supermajority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and that's not likely to change next year when all 100 House seats and half of the 38 Senate seats are up for grabs on a ballot that will be headlined by the highly-popular President Trump.

The reasoning is that the Republican legislature can reject Beshear's proposals, pass its own initiatives, and then override any Beshear vetoes.

But can we really trust the General Assembly to do the right thing?

The newly-minted GOP majority started out like gangbusters when the legislature held its short session in 2017. On the strength of that new power, with a Republican governor in office, they approved right-to-work legislation, repealed the prevailing wage requirements for state- and locally-funded public works projects, tightened restrictions on elective abortions, and passed several other top-of-the-agenda initiatives that had languished for years because Democrats still controlled the House.

Unfortunately, after that, the legislature had nowhere to go but down, which it did. The Republican majority levied a sales tax on services such as veterinary fees and auto repairs, and then overrode Gov. Matt Bevin's veto. The GOP passed a drastic increase in fees for a number of transactions in county clerks' offices.

And it gets worse. Republicans continue to beat the drum for an onerous gas tax increase -- its leading proponents are GOP legislators and the ostensibly-conservative Kentucky Chamber of Commerce -- and some Republicans are even indicating they'll sign on to "red flag" gun confiscation laws that throw due process out the window.

Indeed, House Republicans invited Beshear to their caucus retreat, to begin the day after his Dec. 10 swearing-in. Beshear has not, of this writing, said whether or not he'll attend, but it's likely he won't be able to because of the immediate demands of his new office.

It's nice to fantasize that the GOP will tell the new governor to sit down and shut up and stay out of the way, but given the "new majority's" track record, they'd probably express a willingness to cave on core principles and express the "go along to get along" mentality that causes conservatives to mistrust and despise the Republican establishment.

The Senate has struck a more defiant tone. For one thing, leaders have said that any Beshear-backed proposal to legalize casino gambling is dead on arrival. But given the way that the Senate -- and the House, too, for that matter -- bucked a governor from its own party so many times, there's no reason for optimism.

Legislative leaders have said they're willing to work with the new governor on items that will improve the state. But seriously, how can supposedly conservative Republicans agree that the policies that will be proposed by a liberal Democrat would improve things? Of course, the "conservative" legislature has already shown itself to be too liberal on a number of important issues, which is disappointing to those of us who hoped for years that Kentucky voters would "flip the House" and get that body in line with the Senate on priorities.

Hope for the best, but expect the worst -- given the current legislature's track record in acting in a conservative manner, that's the safest bet for those of us who don't want to see Beshear's agenda implemented, and the line held on Kentucky regressing back to the old way of doing things until the Republicans can retake the governor's office.

Teachers' temper tantrum took down Bevin

By this time next week, Kentucky will have a new governor. With the decision by Gov. Matt Bevin not to contest the election in the General Assembly after a recanvass of the 5,000-vote decision showed no substantive changes in the vote totals, and with the certification of the results by the State Board of Elections, the way is paved for Andy Beshear to be sworn in as the commonwealth's 59th chief executive.

How did this happen? In a state that's trending Republican despite Democrats still holding an advantage in voter registration numbers, and in an election where every other Republican running for statewide office won by impressive numbers, how did an incumbent Republican who had the backing of a president who's immensely popular in the state manage to lose, especially with the state's economy bustling like never before?

There are a number of theories out there. One is that his tiff with Lt. Gov. Jeanene Hampton hurt him at the polls. Bevin alienated Hampton's supporters by not choosing her to run with him for a second time, and angered them when his administration fired members of her office staff, without consultation with or approval by her.

While that may have played a role in voting decisions by members of Hampton's inner circle -- Hampton herself admitted that she voted for Libertarian candidate John Hicks instead of Bevin -- it's doubtful that move itself cost the incumbent the race.

The night of the election, the Libertarian Party of Kentucky issued a classless statement saying it was pleased that its candidate had played spoiler and cost Bevin the election. Indeed, Hicks drew about 28,000 votes statewide, but it can't be ascertained for certain that all of those were votes that would otherwise have gone to Bevin. Libertarians tend to favor drug legalization, and Beshear had never indicated that he's for the legalization of marijuana or other drugs for recreational use. Hicks probably got his support from voters in both parties for whom being able to legally get stoned is their top-priority issue.

(It should be noted that the Libertarian Party also fielded a candidate in the auditor's race, who received more than 46,000 votes., so not even all Libertarian voters cast their ballots for Hicks.)

So again, how and why did this happen? Why did so many voters split their tickets to vote for Andy Beshear, yet picked every other Republican on the ballot?

The most correct answer is that Kentucky teachers threw a temper tantrum at the ballot box and voted against a candidate who was actually trying to ensure their pension system is solvent because they didn't like they way Bevin said some of the things he said.

In all honesty, Bevin wasn't wrong in his criticisms of public educators. Their actions in protesting at a business not even owned by the primary legislative author of the pension reform bill were misguided. They did put children at risk when they illegally called in sick so they could miss work and go to Frankfort to rally.

But perhaps the governor could have phrased some of his points a little better. Instead of saying that he was certain a child was molested or ingested poison or tried drugs because school was unexpectedly called off, he could have said something like this: "Parents can anticipate snow days and make plans for child care in advance. But when teachers decide the night before to call in sick en masse so they can attend a protest, and it forces school districts to cancel classes at the last minute, it forces parents to scramble to make plans for child care, and sometimes children can be left in less-than-ideal conditions because school was closed on short notice."

It's the same 100-percent true sentiment, but expressed in milder terms. (And Bevin's words did prove to be prophetic when a child was shot in Louisville on one of the sickout protest days when school was called off and kids were left at home.)

Teachers also didn't like being called out for their improper use of sick days to attend protests. Most public agencies differentiate between annual/personal/vacation days, which can be used for any purpose; and sick days, which are reserved for times when the employee or a child is sick or has a doctor's appointment, or for bereavement. Jefferson County even allows a certain number of teachers to miss a certain number of days a year for political or lobbying purposes.

What would happen if a state employee used sick leave instead of annual leave to go to Frankfort to protest lack of raises, insurance cost increases, or funding levels for their agency? Why should teachers not be held to the same standards?

Much of the discontent with Bevin came from the aforementioned Jefferson County. Louisvillians are quick to remind the rest of us that they are Kentucky's economic engine, and the rural areas of the commonwealth would be in sad shape if they weren't propping us up. The Jefferson County Teachers Association was one of the loudest pro-Beshear groups out there.

Yet, when rankings for all public schools were announced a couple of months ago, the bottom 20 in all three levels (elementary, middle, and high) was dominated by Jefferson County schools. How can that be? How can the richest county in the state, with all these great teachers, have such bad schools? And why does the JCTA so loudly oppose any reforms that might actually improve the state of education in the hub of Kentucky's economy?

The state's educational bureaucracy cast its lot with the son and ideological twin of the governor who neglected their pensions, instead of with the governor who tried to preserve pensions for current teachers and retirees and ensure a viable retirement system for future educators. They chose to support someone who will keep the educational status quo, instead of moving forward with reforms to improve schools and produce smarter, more prepared students.

They'll quickly find their support was misplaced. Beshear promised a $2,000 annual raise for teachers. Where is that money going to come from? There's no sentiment among the electorate for a tax increase, and gimmicks like casino gambling, sports betting, and drug legalization won't provide the necessary funding. Besides, teachers already get two raises a year -- an annual across-the-board percentage increase , and a "step increase" whereby their pay goes up for each year of seniority they accrue; a second-year teacher makes more than a first-year teacher, a seventh-year teacher makes more than a sixth-year teacher, and so on -- while state employees have had a net loss of pay over the last 12 years due to the Steve Beshear furloughs.

Under a friendly Republican administration, Kentucky's economy has grown the past four years. Beshear's Kentucky won't be nearly as attractive to job creators as was Bevin's Bluegrass State. If the state's growth slows or reverses, how will Beshear keep all his promises?

But the teachers had their tantrum last month, and they got their way. Kentucky's made a lot of progress the past four years, but they pressed the "pause" button on that to indulge their own hurt feelings. Too bad they had to harm the rest of the state in the process.

The "Deep State," defined

Since President Trump took office, the term "deep state" has become popularized in American political discourse. We've all seen it the phrase, and some of us have used it.

But what, exactly, is it?

I had a general idea of what the term is supposed to describe, but had never really given it a lot of detailed thought until I saw someone use it in a discussion, then someone else asked them what they regarded the "deep state" to be.

That caused me to ponder the definition of the phrase, and I think I have come up with something that's pretty accurate.

"Deep state" means government civil service employees who oppose the elected leadership on policy or political grounds, and work from within to impede, sabotage, or resist the implementation of those policies. It also refers to political appointees who take their positions with their own agenda in mind and with the intent of instituting their own policies, instead of supporting and implementing the policies of the elected executive official for whom they work.

This is about the best simple definition I can think of to describe what can be a very complex situation. Boiled down, it means that there are forces within the government who are trying to thwart the implementation of official policy and working against the policy makers.

Elected executive officers, such as the American president or a state's governor, are entitled to put their own policies and initiatives into place. They are chosen by the entire electorate of the governed territory, and not by districts as are legislators. Legislative bodies have oversight and bill passage responsibilities, and in most cases are responsible for adopting or approving budgets, but the executive is in charge of developing policies and setting the tone of government. The executive has a number of high-level appointees that serve at his or her pleasure who are also responsible for implementing and administering policy. They are expected to be loyal to the executive and work to do the executive's wishes, subjugating their own ideas and desires in the process.

Career civil servants -- Kentucky refers to them as merit employees, because their employment is governed by the merit system established in Kentucky Revised Statutes Chapter 18A -- are expected to implement and administer the policies dictated by the elected and appointed executives. These bureaucrats can, and often do, provide input into decisions. Many times, they're asked by the elected and appointed officials to weigh in on policies that are being considered. But in the end, whether they are in agreement with those decisions or not, it's their duty to do what they're told.

Yet so many of them won't carry out their duties. They stonewall, slow-walk, resist, and sometimes refuse to do their duty. They continue to operate as they see fit, or as they did under previous executives whose ideologies are more in tune with their own.

On the federal level, the "deep state" seems to be entrenched in the State Department and in the intelligence community. For whatever reason, diplomats seem to embrace a liberal philosophy. The career employees there seem to think they're still working for Barack Obama and implementing his foreign policy. The Trump administration has reversed course and has made it known that it's operating from a position that American interests come first. That doesn't seem to sit well with a lot of the diplomatic bureaucracy.

There's a "deep state" alive and well in Kentucky state government as well. Given the state's history of hiring Democrats, the majority of the workforce resisted the changes that recent Republican governors Ernie Fletcher and Matt Bevin tried to make in the way things have always been done. They didn't like their Republican governor or appointed agency leaders, so they weren't going to help them institute reforms.

In the private sector, any employee who doesn't carry out policy is usually disciplined or fired. Unfortunately, the same governmental policies that protect career employees from political retaliation also allow them to be insubordinate without much fear of reprise. The result is a seriously handicapped policy implementation, especially when conservatives are in power and liberals continue to populate the bowels of the bureaucracy.

At least when a political appointee, who serves at the pleasure of the president or governor, can be fired when they go rogue and start pushing their own agenda instead of what their boss wants. And no, it's not obstruction of justice when they do.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the "deep state." If anyone ever asks what you mean when you use that term, refer them to this definition. It may not be exact, but it's pretty close.

Decision time for Rocky Adkins

(Personal disclosure: I know Rocky Adkins. He's not what I would call a friend, but instead a college acquaintance. I went to school with him at Morehead State, but did not really know him and had no classes with him. My most lengthy interaction with him came the Saturday morning when we took the GRE test together. I've seen him in person once since then. So this is written from the perspective of an observer with no personal partiality except for my ideology, which runs counter to Adkins'.)

Rocky Adkins faces some big decisions, and they must come soon.

Does the longtime state representative from northeastern Kentucky step out and try to seek his party's nomination for the U.S. Senate seat next year that Mitch McConnell will be defending? Will he stay in the Kentucky House of Representatives and try to lead his party back from the crushing defeat it suffered in 2016? Or will he take a position in the administration of incoming Gov. Andy Beshear?

Whatever he does, he'll have to do it in the next few weeks. Beshear takes office Dec. 10, and he'll have to have most of his key staffers named before then and ready to take their jobs.

Adkins and Matt Jones were the Democrats most often mentioned as likely to try to knock off perceived front-runner Amy McGrath in the Senate primary. Jones' decision a few days ago not to run makes it easier for Adkins to compete with McGrath in a one-on-one campaign. There are a few other Democrats who have announced their plans to runs, but they're non-factors.

Right now, McGrath seems to be the favored candidate among the national liberal backers and funders, but many Kentucky Democrats who so desperately want McConnell beaten don't think she's the right candidate to do it. They believe she's too liberal for the rural voters who will make the decision in the election, and who have voted for candidates like McConnell, President Trump, and Gov. Matt Bevin in the past. They point to her inability to unseat Congressman Andy Barr last year in Kentucky's second-most-liberal district in what was a "blue wave" election across the country. She's plagued by a recording in which she states she's farther left than anyone else in the Bluegrass State.

Many think Adkins' rural roots will appeal to conservative Democrats out in the state who have been rejecting the party's candidates in recent elections. He's from Elliott County and still lives there, having returned home after a basketball career at Morehead State University. He has a down-home demeanor and charmed voters during his gubernatorial campaign, then on the stump for Beshear in the general election. You'll find a whole lot of people who think he stands a better chance of ousting McConnell than McGrath will.

But while rural voters may decide the general election, the urban electorate will decide the primary. And McGrath's liberalism will appeal to those in Lexington and especially Louisville, where the Democrats dominate. It would take those voters looking past the most ideologically pure candidate in favor of the one who would be most attractive in a general election contest against McConnell.

Adkins inherited his party's leadership role in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2017 after the stunning defeat of House Speaker Greg Stumbo. Republicans were hoping that Stumbo would lose his speaker's post if their party took control of the chamber, but got a pleasant surprise when Stumbo lost his re-election bid and had to watch from the sidelines as a Republican got handed the speaker's gavel. Adkins has done an admirable job of holding his dwindling caucus together in the face of GOP control.

Ordinarily, Adkins would have until Jan. 30 to decide whether to run for the Senate or seek re-election to the House. But Beshear's impending inauguration moves that timeline up considerably.

Given his role in Beshear's successful campaign, Adkins' name has been mentioned for a high-level appointed position in the incoming administration. He's most frequently been linked to the secretary's position in my agency, the Transportation Cabinet. (That certainly wouldn't do me any good personally, since Adkins and I are politically opposite.) But he's also been suggested as a candidate to be named Beshear's chief of staff, which seems to be the new title for the position formerly known as Secretary of the Executive Cabinet, which was the role in which Crit Luallen served under Gov. Paul Patton.

He'll have to make that decision soon. His name is conspicuously absent from the list of transition team members Beshear announced last week, which would indicate that he's in the running for an appointment since he won't be advising the governor on whom to appoint. And he certainly wouldn't take a top-level appointed job in December, just to leave it in January to go out on the campaign trail.

I don't know how much of a risk-taker Adkins is, but a Senate campaign would be the riskiest move he could make. He'd have to forego much of the upcoming General Assembly session, in which the legislature will adopt a biennial budget and a state highway plan, to start stumping. Even as Democrats continue to lose traction across the state, he's in one of the safest legislative seats in the commonwealth. Re-election to the House is a shoo-in. And if he opts for a six-figure appointed job, he'll pad his state pension and be eligible to run again for elective office once Beshear's term is up (hopefully in four years.)

The upside to staying in the House or going to work for Beshear 2.0 is much higher than giving up both those options to take a chance on running for Senate, and facing the onslaught of out-of-state money that will come pouring in to support McGrath.

Adkins has been mum about his plans, and I have yet to see him comment on Jones' decision not to run.

Thanksgiving comes late this year. It's less than two weeks from the gubernatorial inauguration. The guess here is that his decision will be made well before then, so any indecision won't give him indigestion as he and his family enjoy their turkey dinner. That means the clock is ticking, and we'll hear something by the end of this week.

More signs pointing to Beshear 2.0

After last week's gubernatorial election, I posited that Andy Beshear's administration has the potential to be much like that of his father, Steve Beshear. I noted that father and son are pretty much ideological twins, and championed the same issues. I even coined a nickname for the son's term -- Beshear 2.0. I've actually seen some others use that phrase since I came up with it, so at least I know this message is getting out. (More than 8,300 views of that particular column as of this writing.)

Now there's even more signs that point to Beshear 2.0 being a new (but not necessarily improved) version of Beshear 1.0.

Earlier this week, the state announced that General Fund and Road Fund receipts were up in October, and both funds are running a surplus for the current fiscal year. This will give the incoming administration a financial windfall from which to work as it and the General Assembly craft a biennial budget in the upcoming legislative session. Beshear is hoping to generate even more revenue for the state through the approval of casino gambling, which will take both a constitutional amendment passing the General Assembly and approval by the voters at the ballot box. It was one of the issues on which he campaigned, although he's been cautioned by the Senate leadership that a gambling amendment won't be passed in that chamber.

Sound familiar?

When Ernie Fletcher left office in 2007 and Beshear 1.0 took over, Fletcher left the incoming governor a budget surplus. Steve Beshear had campaigned on bringing casino gambling to the commonwealth. Casino interests had funded his campaign, and he was seeking to pay back that investment. Almost immediately upon taking office, the new governor started poor-mouthing and saying the state didn't have enough money to meet its obligations. That's one of the reasons that he used to justify the state employee furloughs.

Looks like a pattern developing. A Beshear beats an Republican governor in his re-election bid after campaigning in support of casinos. The outgoing governor leaves a budget surplus. Wonder what comes next?

And for even more evidence that Beshear 2.0 is on the way, look at the transition team he announced this week. It contains a whole lot of retreads from the 1.0 administration, including at least one transition chair who's in charge of the cabinet where he was forced out as secretary because of more than a few fishy conflict-of-interest situations.

There are a few other transition team selections that could be very interesting fodder if the state's press corps was interested in doing its job and subjecting Democrats to the same scrutiny they give Republicans. But Kentucky's media wouldn't be interested in examining the presence of someone who had a politically appointed job during the Beshear 1.0 term, yet had been fired from their state job years prior because of some pretty questionable behavior, now would they? (Yes, I know who it is, and have some background on what they did. I heard the story in my college years and got some details just a few months ago that helped fill in a lot of blanks.)

More signs are pointing to Andy Beshear's term truly being Beshear 2.0. And he hasn't even taken office yet. That's not a good thing.

Common sense and a fragile ego, or greed and an oversized ego: Which won out in Matt Jones' decision?

Outside of the fallout from Kentucky's gubernatorial election, the biggest political news in the state broke Friday, when Matt Jones announced that he would not run in next year's Democrat primary for the chance to unseat U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell.

Jones had been publicly toying with running for Senate for months, and his indecision was beginning to hit him in the bank account. He'd already been ousted as host of the "Hey Kentucky" television show on WLEX-TV in Lexington. Last week, he had to step away from his role on the Kentucky Sports Radio statewide program that discusses University of Kentucky sports when Jones isn't bleating about politics, after the Republican Party of Kentucky filed a complaint alleging that Jones' work on KSR amounts to an illegal corporate campaign contribution.

Even before Jones made his political ideology known, I wasn't a fan. I haven't worked as sportswriter for years, but I still have some friends in the business. They tell me Jones is one of the most disliked presences on the UK sports beat. He's not popular on press row; everyone who's ever discussed him with me talks about how arrogant and egotistical he is.

(Don't believe me? Read these Herald-Leader and Courier-Journal profiles of Jones and KSR for some unflattering views.)

Jones hails from southeastern Kentucky, the same general area as a couple of true legends of Wildcat journalism, those being Oscar Combs and Cawood Ledford. Although Jones has built a popular statewide radio show, he'll never enjoy the stature that Combs and Ledford have in the annals of UK broadcasting. And that knowledge has to eat at him daily. (I'm told by some who've covered the Cats in the past that Ledford wasn't exactly beloved among those who dealt with him on press row either, but he had a reputation that Jones will never have.)

Somewhere along the line, his sports show detoured into politics. Jones has been hugely critical of conservative Republicans despite the fact that his mother was a Republican elected official in Bell County for years. How did his apple roll so far from the family tree? Was it from the years he spent practicing law in Louisville? Or maybe during his years as a student at -- wait for it -- Duke? (Yes, Matt Jones, rabid Kentucky Wildcats fan, is a Dukie.)

One of Jones' favorite political targets has been McConnell, and he's in the process of writing a book critical of the Senate majority leader. He's been flirting with entering a political for a while now.

Seems that he'll be waiting a bit longer.

Right now, the front-runner for the nomination is Amy McGrath, the failed congressional candidate who couldn't beat a Republican incumbent in Kentucky's second-most-liberal district in a "blue wave" election year. Jones has been saying for awhile now that although he thinks McConnell can be beaten and needs to be beaten, McGrath isn't the candidate to do it. Apparently, Jones realized that he's not the candidate to do it either.

Why? Two guesses here. First is that Jones didn't want to take the financial hit that being away from his KSR show would involve. "Hey Kentucky" has already moved on with a new host, so  he'll have to find a new television outlet if he desires. After his short involuntary break from KSR, Jones will be back on the radio briefly, then plans to take an extended vacation. Once he comes back, he can once again be in the spotlight. His adoring fandom can continue to stroke his ego and welcome him back.

A-ha. There's that question of that ego. It's obvious that Jones craves the adulation that UK fans give him. But someone must have advised him that his personal popularity and name recognition wouldn't necessarily translate into success at the ballot box. Heather French Henry, Kentucky's former Miss America, found that out last week. Presuming McConnell's the nominee, any campaign involving him will be expensive and nasty. A loss would be humiliating. And he wasn't guaranteed the nomination. Most of the big out-of-state money and support are already committed to McGrath, and at least one other formidable possible Democrat candidate (Rocky Adkins) is still on the fence. Had Jones won the primary, he'd be on the ballot next year as a Democrat in a state that has huge Donald Trump coattails. Did he wise up and decide not to subject his ego to being popped by the electorate of a state that's increasingly rejecting his ideology?

As stated before, I'm not a KSR fan. I don't quite understand the show's popularity. It's as if UK fans are lapping up anything relating to the Big Blue without regard to its source. I find Jones to be irritating, over the top, and obnoxious. I don't listen to him, and I try not to even click on a link to the KSR website. If I do, it's usually an accident and I didn't look to see where the link led. So I wasn't out there tweeting #FreeMattJones after he went off the air following the Federal Election Commission complaint.

But at least, there will be no more "will he or won't he" speculation from Kentucky's political pundits. That decision has been made. McGrath's path to the nomination may have gotten easier, but Jones will still have his microphone to criticize both her and McConnell nonstop on his sports show, with the occasional lament about how John Calipari's teams can't shoot free throws, or if last year was the best level of success that the football team can hope for.

Success should be praised, not punished

Walmart and Dollar General are the epitome of American success stories.

Both started out as lone businesses in small towns, and ended up as huge corporations.

Walmart, as everyone knows, is the retail king in the United States. Dollar General has been a staple of county seats in this region for decades, is rapidly expanding, and you can find multiple stores in some rural counties where Walmart will never locate. My home county recently got its second DG location. In adjacent Estill County, only a half-hour from the larger retail centers of Richmond and Winchester, there are four of what some old-timers call "General Dollar."

There are some similarities. Walmart got its start in Bentonville, Ark., in the shadows of the Ozarks. Dollar General was founded in Scottsville, Ky., in the Appalachian foothills of south-central Kentucky, after the Turner family began the concept by converting their general merchanside store in Springfield, Ky., into a Dollar General. Both of these are smaller, mostly rural states in flyover country, far from the corporate capitals of the country.

Walmart has remained headquartered in Bentonville, causing that town to grow at a decent clip. Dollar General relocated from Scottsville to the suburbs of nearby Nashville a few years ago, probably because of Tennessee's more-business-friendly tax structure, but still maintains a decent presence in its hometown.

Neither Sam Walton nor J.L. and Cal Turner could foresee what their retail ventures would turn into. They were probably amazed at the success of their concept. There are hundreds of other instances of family-owned businesses growing from a single store or a handful of locations into a regional or national chain.

And it's this kind of success that conservatives should be championing and promoting, not criticizing. There's no reason the next Walmart isn't opening up on some street corner or some strip mall in some small town in some rural county somewhere between the coasts.

That's why it was disturbing to see Republican U.S. Senate candidate Wesley Morgan criticize both Walmart and Dollar General in a recent social media post. Morgan is a former state representative from Madison County who lost his seat when he ran afoul of Kentucky's former House leadership and drew an establishment-backed primary challenger. He owns a handful of liquor stores, including one of the two that opened in Irvine when that city went wet a few years ago. Unless something happens between now and next May, I fully intend to support and vote for him in the Republican primary. But his criticism of two American success stories bothers me.

Morgan is touting himself as the conservative alternative to Mitch McConnell, who's definitely the personification of "establishment Republican." In his social media posting that was critical of Walmart and Dollar General, he said he would be supportive of small businesses. Isn't it possible to support small businesses without being critical of bigger ones?

Oftimes, small businesses can't compete with bigger chains on price, so they have to rely on something else. Dollar General can't sell merchandise as cheaply as Walmart, so it counters by having more convenient locations. If you can pick up something at Dollar General on your way home, it can be worth it to pay a little more instead of driving to the nearest Walmart. And that's often the lure of independent businesses. Pay a little more in your hometown instead of traveling to a bigger city to shop at a big box. Customer service is another drawing card for small outlets, as is stocking unusual or hard-to-find items. Sometimes you can't find some exotic food item in a Walmart Supercenter, but your local grocer either has it on the shelf, or can order it for you.

The point here is that conservatives are champions of the free market. We don't take sides. We let the market sort things out. We support equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. If Sam Walton or the Turner family can find success, there's no reason the hometown entrepreneur down the street from you can't do the same if they see fit.

Some small business owners are happy to run one or two locations and have no designs on expansion. Others would love to take their stores regional or national. We should be supporting them all and criticizing none of them -- and in the case of Dollar General, proud that a Kentucky-founded company is enjoying such success. DG is adding to the employment rolls and tax base in counties all over Kentucky. We should appreciate that.

Conservatives continue to face obstacles in their quest to make their points

If you want to get a reaction from a liberal, just say that the news is slanted in their favor. They'll deny the leftward tilt, even as newspaper after newspaper, and broadcast outlet after broadcast outlet, continues to skew its coverage in favor of the left and offers opinion pieces and editorials that bash President Trump and Republicans in government on a daily basis.

In Kentucky, the two leading daily newspapers have relentlessly gone after Gov. Matt Bevin since he's been in office. They also failed to adequately cover Greg Stumbo's abuse of power during his term as attorney general. Both papers endorsed both Andy Beshear for governor and Stumbo for attorney general, and after the election, one of the Courier-Journal's news reporters wrote an opinion column gloating over Bevin's loss.

Conservatives have Fox News (actually, that's on a decreasing basis these days outside the prime-time pundit lineup), Sinclair Broadcasting, and powerful radio talk shows by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and others. There are a few websites out there, notably Breitbart and RedState, but not as many as what's on the other side. And that's pretty much it. Liberals dominate the rest of the media. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, the news wings of the major broadcast networks, a whole lot of online outlets (Politico, Slate, Salon, Mediaite, the Huffington Post, and the list goes on) and just about everywhere else. Even The Wall Street Journal is no longer reliably conservative, leaning more toward an establishment position on many issues. And many of what were formerly staunchly conservative/Republican venues have gone in the tank for the "never Trumpers" to the point they're more left than right these days.

The uphill climb extends to social media. Many users of Facebook and Twitter have complained of posts being removed, "shadow banning," the reach of conservative pages being throttled, increasingly tightening definitions of "hate speech" to include such things as espousing deeply-held religious views, and what have you. Management at those two companies deny they are censoring rightist views, but there's just too much evidence out there that proves otherwise.

And last week, Facebook pretty much confirmed all the suspicions when it announced that it would no longer allow mentions of the widely-known name of the whistleblower whose hatred for Trump initiated the impeachment inquiry.

The whistleblower's name has been frequently reported in some media outlets. Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a news story that identified him. But Facebook is not allowing the sharing of those stories, even from legitimate sources such as The Washington Examiner.

Even a mention of his name without any context whatsoever will be removed, which is something I found out when I posted his name only without any other information. No news story, no noting of him as the whistleblower. Just the name.

Anyone with a critical eye knows the impeachment is fraudulent. The whistleblower is a known Joe Biden fan who didn't like something he heard during Trump's infamous phone call, and decided that he needed to complain about it. He's just another of those who overstepped his authority in an attempt to overturn an action with which he disagrees by a superior whom he doesn't like. He's the latest example to prove that the Deep State really does exist and is seeking to undermine the president's policies. He should be called to account and explain to the public why he felt Trump's comment was wrong and needed to be reported, when there were several others who were on the call who had no issues with it.

The real issue remains Biden's admitted personal intervention to get the Ukrainian prosector fired in order to secure the release of American funding. If anyone needs to be impeached, Biden should be retroactively.

During Trump's rally in Lexington last week, Sen. Rand Paul stole the show with his demand that the press do its job and name the whistleblower and hold him to the same scrutiny as it does Trump's supporters and defenders. You can still hear the crickets chirping, though, as the mainstream press hasn't seen fit to do any investigating into what's now commonly-known information. And even if the NYT or WaPo decided to name him, Facebook wouldn't allow those stories to be shared.

Had this been an insider blowing the whistle on something President Obama did, you can be sure they would be rushing to identify him and impugn his motives. But with the roles reverse, they feel obligated to protect his identity.

So the uphill battle continues. Conservatives continue facing obstacles in getting their information and opinions out. It just serves to build the mistrust we have in the mainstream press. When we can't count on the media to present all sides of the issues, we look elsewhere.

Thank a veteran (a tribute to my father)

Today is Veterans Day. Lots of people get the meaning of today confused with two other holidays.

Memorial Day is the day we remember and honor those who gave their life in the service of our country.

Armed Forces Day is when we extend our thanks to those currently serving.

And today, Veterans Day, we respect those who served and returned home from that service, and are either still living or died as veterans and not active-duty personnel.

Like most everyone my age, I had a number of veterans in my family. But the one I most respected was my dad.

He graduated from Lee County High School in 1950 and entered the workforce. But the United States was in the midst of a military conflict with Korea, and we had a draft back then, so the Army called and my dad answered the call.

He paid a dear price for his service. As a result of injuries suffered in Korea, he lost his left leg above the knee and had nerve damage in his left arm and hand.

For many people, that would have brought a devastating end to their future and their hope. But for my dad, it was a new beginning.

Dad enrolled in Berea College and earned his degree in education. He became a teacher in the Lee County school system. He married my mom, and they had two sons. Dad worked hard to make a life for his family. His handicap didn't slow him down. Even with one leg and without the full use of one hand, he could outwork me in the yard or garden until he was well into his 60s. He raised a huge garden and took care not only of his own homestead, but that of his widowed mother, who lived a mile away. All of my dad's siblings had migrated to Bullitt County, and he had been working in Louisville before going to the Army, so he felt an obligation to care for his mother as well as the rest of us.

In the early 1980s, he had some health problems that required a couple of lengthy hospitalizations. So, after 24 years as a teacher, he retired on disability. The timing ended up being right. My mom developed a terminal illness the year he retired, and he spent the last year of her life taking her back and forth to Lexington for treatments. At 56 years old, my dad became a widower.

Both of us boys were still home at the time of mom's death, but we ended up following careers elsewhere. Dad remained independent, caring for himself and staying busy with outside activities, although it became obvious the older he got that he was slowing down. I ended up moving back to Lee County in 2002, and was able to help him some.

Eventually, his body wore out. The artificial leg wasn't easy to use, and his good knee had seen the Itis family take up residence. His mobility was greatly reduced, he started using a crutch and eventually his wheelchair, and quit driving, and made the decision to go to the Thomson-Hood Veterans Center in Wilmore. The timing of that decision was good, as well. Not too long after he went there, he suffered a stroke or some sort of health issue that basically rendered him bedfast. He died in 2010, eight months shy of his 80th birthday, after being in the vets' nursing home for a little more than two years.

Dad never talked much about his service, or his injuries, and I never really asked. He never complained about what had happened in his life. He more than made the best of it. I could never hope to match his physical strength or his work ethic. Life seems overwhelming to me, but I never was gravely injured on foreign soil or had to adjust to a completely new way of life, relearn how to walk, or go through life without the full use of my body.

I've had so many of his former students recall him fondly and tell me that he was the best teacher they ever had. He just touched those lives for one year out of the 12 they spent in school, but he was a permanent fixture in mine. At home, Dad was quiet, but he was stubborn and he was opinionated. He didn't express his views often to acquaintances or non-relatives, but when he did, you could be certain he felt strongly about it. We agreed on a lot, but not everything. And even now, I find out that most of the time, he was right and I was wrong about someone or something.

I looked up to my dad in every way. He was an imposing physical presence, and even when I got to be as big as he was, I still saw a bigger-than-life man. He could be firm sometimes -- you didn't want to get a spanking from him -- but he had a heart of gold and was so generous to his family. This big, stoic, non-emotional man cried when Mom died and he cried again when her dog died a few years later.

I'll never be the man my dad was. I'm not tough enough to go through military training or endure the rigors that service would entail. Service affects different people in different ways, and sometimes it's hard to understand why a veteran might have the opinions they do on certain topics, but they've lived something I could never survive.

That's why I honor and respect the service of everyone who put on the uniform. Whether they served in peacetime or in battle, they've made a sacrifice that many of us could not do. I probably won't be able to thank every veteran I know personally, but I do appreciate them. You should too.