Porkmeister Ernie Fletcher keeps handing out the checks

Gov. Ernie Fletcher seems good at one thing: Handing out checks. Fletcher gave a $100,000 check to Lexington mayor Jim Newberry for funding of the 2007 Bluegrass Games, an annual athletic competition. Fletcher and his staff definitely do not seem to be "idea people." Fletcher's main function as governor seems to be head porkmeister. Too bad Fletcher doesn't pay attention to what Indiana Governor Mitch "The Blade" Daniels how cut wasteful spending in the Hoosier State:

The chief architect of the boom is the state’s decisive Governor Mitch Daniels, President Bush’s former budget director. In Washington, Daniels drew scorn from congressional big spenders, acquiring the nickname “the blade” for his cost-cutting and privatizing ways. (The moniker could just as easily apply to his sharp wit and intellect.) The spenders in Washington, however, won those battles — big time — swallowing the blade and earning today’s enmity from the Republican base. But now Daniels is back home and in charge, and he is engineering a turnaround of an entire state with sophistication.

In the state’s [2006] short legislative session, just completed, Daniels achieved two sweeping victories. The first is the nation’s most aggressive telecommunications deregulation, which will spur hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in invisible infrastructure — the “fibers and frequencies” of the digital age, as Daniels describes it. The second is a $4 billion privatization lease of the Indiana Toll Road and the new I-69 interstate. This will fund the largest-ever upgrade of Indiana’s visible infrastructure: its antique roads and bridges.

Kentucky never has accomplished anything like this during a short legislative session, much less a long session. Let's hope whoever becomes the next Governor of Kentucky can be follow our neighbor's lead.