An independent candidate has entered the race for the 18th Kentucky Senate District. I spoke with this candidate this morning. He's an interesting guy who seems committed to making Kentucky better.

Governor Beshear has declared a special election in Kentucky Senate District 18.

If you, or someone you know, is a liberty-minded person and would like to take a chance and run in the August 4th Special Election, please contact us immediately.

Counties in Senate District 18 are: Bracken, Carter, Greenup, Lewis, Mason, and Robertson.

This process happens VERY quickly, so if you're interested, at all, we need to know right now.

The majority of the public believe roads are better left to government management. I often ponder this myself, but I find myself having less and less faith in government's ability simply to maintain roads.

I'm sure the situation is not the same everywhere, but the roads are falling apart in my part of Kentucky.

I received the following from a like-minded supporter of our NKYaction effort:

http://usgovinfo.about.com/b/2009/07/03/fda-seeks-public-input-on-tobacco-regulation.htm

FDA Seeks Public Input on Tobacco Regulation

As chairman, one of my jobs is to promote the party the best that I can. I do this in various ways, but one of them is the political blog at the Kentucky Enquirer, run by Pat Crowley.

I recently engaged in an argument about Ernie Fletcher and cigarette taxes, with someone who claims, anyway, to be a Republican. This particular person excused everything Ernie Fletcher did wrong, because he increased the cigarette taxes, and added beds to mental health facilities.

Without going into the entire back-story, I felt as though it would be good to log this mess of a topic somewhere:

Today, the debate over VLTs (Video Lottery Terminals) at racetracks was re-packaged to be a "save the children", school-funding package.

This proves, finally, that VLTs are all about the state's bottom line, not about saving the racing industry.

I disagree with the VLTs for a number of reasons: It won't create many jobs; it is limited to a very select few existing businesses, and people who have full-blown casinos near-by will still just go to those, instead.

That said, I think it makes more sense to propose a common-sense alternative.

Small business owners are my heroes. My grandparents were small business owners in Campbell County, KY. My great-grandparents on my other side were small business owners in Kenton County, KY. I know many small business owners from my work with NKY Choice, the "anti-smoking-ban" group formed in 2008.

Small business owners risk everything to be their own boss, and to fulfill the American Dream; to become independent and support themselves.

Small businesses already have a tough time out there. The majority of them fail within the first 5 years, for a myriad of reasons.

A quick reminder that the LPKY 2009 State Convention, being held together with the LPIN 2009 State Convention in Clarksville, Indiana, a suburb of Louisville, KY, is this weekend; May 15th - 17th.

We have many of the details online already, and there are more to come this week as we lead into this event. To say that this will be a large, exciting event is an understatement.

I threatened to do it. I warned them that I wouldn't be the only one. They did it anyway. And I did it. And apparently, I'm not the only one.

Most of the time, I really try to keep this blog fairly professional, and to the point. I apologize in advance; they've hit me personally, again, and therefore, this entry is going to be a bit personal.

About 3 days ago, I ran out of cigarettes. After the tax increase, I promised that I would not give any more tax revenue to the state; so I wouldn't be buying more. I 'bummed' 2 cigarettes for that night, and I haven't had one since.

LPKY supporters -

Just a quick note that we have the LPKY 2009 State Convention information and registration online.

We're very excited to be able to do a combined convention with LPIN. LPIN is the most effective LP organization in the country, as they have people in local office - in both non-partisan and partisan offices.