Keno Approved in Kentucky by Ky. Lottery Corp. Board

 

The board of the Kentucky Lottery Corp. voted to include keno as part of its offerings in order to boost the revenue of the state to pay for the unsustainable pensions of government workers in the commonwealth.

According to state Treasurer Todd Hollenbach IV, after about a decade the revenues for the state would increase by over $80 million annually.

Along with keno, online ticketing will be part of the revenue increase.

Lottery president and CEO Arch Gleason said keno across the state should be played as of January 2014. Internet ticket sales for scratch-off tickets, keno, and games played on the computer will launch in the early part of 2015.

If the changes are put into effect, there will be a new network put in place, which would involve the usual convenient store outlets, as well as new places such as bars, restaurants and bowling alleys. Retail outlets in Kentucky for the lottery now stand at about 450.

Martin Cothran of the Family Foundation of Kentucky said the online ticket sales and keno “is going beyond what the people were told was going to be included in the lottery” when it was passed in 1988 via a statewide referendum.

Cothran added that games of chance like Internet keno tickets, gaming tickets and online lottery sales, hurt the poor who are not able to afford to play the games. He added that it is the state legislature that should make decisions concerning games, not “some government agency.”

In other words, unelected officials are being used as government proxies for politicians to hide behind.

The real problem is nobody is talking about the real problem, which is pensions of government employees are far above that of the private sector, and there is no explanation as to why they shouldn't pay more into it, rather than attempts made to employ socially-costly gimmicks to raise money to fund the above-market pensions the private sector has been paying for.

If it goes forward, Cothran says the Family Foundation hasn't ruled out filing a lawsuit to stop it.

Two Kentucky Pension Bills Pass in House

A press release from the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission said the two bills aimed at solving the pension problem in Kentucky - Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 416 - were both passed by the House.

The next step is for the Kentucky Senate to take them up.

Unfunded liabilities for the pensions of over-compensated state workers has soared to approximately $30 billion, and that may be an underestimate of the underfunded pension.

Per the two bills, the state or local government workers would be required to pay the actuarial required contribution to the public pension systems administered by the Kentucky Retirement Systems, starting in fiscal 2014.

The annual cost to the state of Kentucky will be $100 million a year.

Funding for the pension would come from instant racing games offered at racetracks and newly instituted Keno lottery games.
 
Lawmakers expect it to take anywhere from about 5 to 10 years for the funding to mature, and from there it'll take care of itself.

This is just another kicking of the can down the road, as the number of state employees entering retirement will continue to rise, and it's likely to face a bigger crisis several years from now.

Politicians refuse to do the right thing, which would be to make state workers pay more into their own pensions.

Kentucky State Workers: Pay More of Your Own Benefits

The lack of will by lawmakers to deal with the out-of-control benefits and pensions for Kentucky state workers shows a lack of leadership and ultimate in denial concerning the obvious thing that must be done to solve the problem.

How hard is it to follow what has wonderfully worked in Wisconsin when the bold Scott Walker made the government workers pay more for their own benefits. That's the only answer to the problem, and looking to gambling as the way to generate money to pay for the bloated government worker benefits is ridiculous.

The next scheme is to attempt to create new lottery games in order to generate approximately $25 million a year to pay for the pensions of workers the state can't afford.

Proposed legislation would also target Instant Racing machines for taxation, which would be for the sole purpose of paying the already too-high pensions of Kentucky state workers.

Some lawmakers think this would eventually raise about $100 million annually for government pensions.

What about paying their own way don't lawmakers in Kentucky understand? The pensions are unsustainably high, and so let the rest of the state workers and the retirees raise the amount they pay into it. Period.

Just because there would be some whining is irrelevant. Kentucky state pensions are promises that were made that can't be kept. Now if the state workers want those types of benefits, they are the ones that need to start paying for them; not the people of Kentucky in the private sector.

Kentucky State Workers Should Pay More into Their Own Pensions

We keep on hearing how difficult it is to find funding from the pensions of state workers, but as Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin knows, all you have to do is have the workers themselves increase contributions and the problems is largely solved.

Kentucky lawmakers and Governor Steve Beshear don't have the courage to take the right steps, so they continue to flounder about to add some spare change to a situation that needs a full-blown adjustment.

For example, today we hear that a sales tax on lottery tickets will be used to pay down yearly retirement contributions.

As usual, Democrats like House Speaker Greg Stumbo, can only think of taxes as the way to solve things, rather than, as mentioned, state workers themselves being made to pay their fair share of their own benefits and pensions. There's your funding source, not the taxpayers of Kentucky.

Thankfully, Kentucky Republicans in the Senate are fighting against higher taxes.

Kentucky House Democrats Looking to Sin Tax to Fund Government Pensions

Kentucky lawmakers continue to ignore the real issue surrounding the unsustainable pensions being paid out to government workers, which is taxpayers can't afford the "generosity" given to them at our expense, and which the private sector doesn't come close to receiving.

So instead of making government workers pay more for their own pensions, House Democrats are going the "sin" tax route, starting with taxing cigarettes to raise retirement contributions.

While most of us don't like cigarettes, why should smokers be forced to pay for government workers? They're already paying more for them than they should have to already.

At this time the proposed tax would be a 40-cent increase over the already high tax imposed on cigarettes. That would raise about $110 million in the first year, although over time, the weakness of the proposal is it would be a short-term fix because expectations are there will be less cigarette sales going forward, which would lower the revenue stream in the years ahead.

Over the next 20 years or so, the tax would generate about $100 million annually before dropping in revenue.

None of this will matter or will work until the over-compensated government workers are made to pay more into their own plan. The refusal to do this is cowardly and irresponsible, but has been shown to work by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Kentucky taxpayers shouldn't and won't put up with this outrage, where the government extracts from their wages in order to pay extravagant benefits to its own.

U.S. Postal Service to Stop Saturday Deliveries

The U.S. Postal Service announced it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays, although it will still deliver packages on that day.

Financially struggling, the mail service will announce today that the changes will be implemented in August, and should save the service about $2 billion a year.

The decision actually makes sense because people have increasingly abandoned the use of physical letters and gone with a variety of Internet services as their main means of communication. On the other hand, package delivery has increased about 14 percent for the agency.

It appears this will drag the politicians into the fray, as they have quietly done nothing to alleviate the problem, as the Post Service has asked to change delivery to a five-day week for several years without Congress doing anything. This announcement will force them to respond in one way or another, which is what should have been done a long time ago.

Patrick R. Donahoe, postmaster general and CEO of the entity, said this in a prepared statement, "The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America's changing mailing habits. We developed this approach by working with our customers to understand their delivery needs and by identifying creative ways to generate significant cost savings."

Some aren't sure the U.S. Postal Service has the authority to implement the changes without the approval of Congress, but it is probably being done more to force the issue and face the needed changes.

In reality, it's best that the U.S. Postal Service be gradually shut down, as there are more than enough private companies to take care of all the delivery needs of people.

When we live in an age where government spending is out of control and a mounting debt that will never be able to be paid off, it's imperative that government shrinks in size, and the U.S. Post Office is a good place to start.

As for Post Offices being opened on Saturday, the Postal Service says those that are already doing business will remain open; the implication being you can do business there even though there will be no Saturday deliveries.

The agency lost an incredible $15.9 billion in its last fiscal year, which was reported in November, and looks for more of the same in 2013. In order to deal with the situation it had to default on billions in prepayments for the health benefits of retirees in order to keep from declaring bankruptcy.

The $15.9 billion in losses was three times what it was the year before. It has also reached its borrowing limit, which is in reality good, as there is no reason for it to continue to mount debt in a shrinking market.

Now that the mail delivery pace has somewhat leveled out, the biggest challenge, as it will be for all government workers who are entering retirement, are the pensions they are promised by the government, which are simply unsustainable to pay for.

Of the $15.9 billion in losses, $11.1 billion of that is directly related to paying out the mandatory costs of pensions and health benefits for government workers, benefits that are far beyond what the private sector enjoys.

The answer is to make these over-compensated government workers pay more of the financial burden themselves. It worked fantastic in Wisconsin, and it'll work in other government agencies as well.
A unique factor for the Post Office is Congress requires it to place $55 billion in an account to cover health benefits for the future, with the Post Office having a goal of placing $5.5 billion a year into it until it reaches that level. It has no money to do so, and so is looking at ways to cut other costs.

Other steps that are expected to be taken are to close small rural post offices and to restructure the pension and health care costs of retirees. Even that may not be enough to save it.

Again, why try to save something that has no way of surviving, and really no longer has a practical purpose to serve? There are plenty of other services out there, which do a far better job, and can do it profitably.

The bottom line for government workers, just as here in Kentucky, it they're over-compensated, and the productive private sector can't afford to prop up and pay for the outrageous benefits and pay packages offered to them.

This is going to happen again and again across government agencies, which have repeated this disaster over and over again, and are now facing the consequences of making promises they can't fulfill.

It's not known at this time whether this will have an impact on the Larue County Post Office.

Kentucky Pension Issue Easy to Solve

Opinion

Most of the politicians in Kentucky are acting as if the pension system in Kentucky is difficult to solve. It's not. All that needs to be done is have the government pensioners pay more into their own fund. Problem solved.

Some will say this is naive, but it isn't. Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin has already shown the way. All that happened there, contrary to media and union lies, was he made them pay their fair share into their own pensions. What's so controversial about that? Nothing. It should have been happening all along.

Government workers are paid notorious benefits, far beyond what the free and private sector offers, which is why the pension is in the condition it's in.

Many Kentucky Democrats, as usual, only can think of terms of raising taxes to pay for these outrageous pension liabilities, rather than do the right thing, which is to make the beneficiaries of the pensions pay more into them.

Calling it tax reform, all that will be presented is a tax raise. We don't need anymore taxes, we need more responsibility for overpaid government workers and retirees to pay more into their retirement accounts.

This is why Europe has come under enormous economic pressure, as the many countries there have offered government workers unsustainable benefit packages the the private sector can't afford to pay for. And why should they?

We that work for a living outside of government have no mandate from God or anyone else to pay this types of benefits to very unproductive government workers who drain our finances to the detriment of our own children and families. It's time for government workers to pay more of their own way, not the rest of us.