Pork Barrel Polka

First off, a bit of advice to Pikeville College President Paul Patton: Resist the temptation to rename the school either Pikeville University or the University of Pikeville. That leaves you with PU or UP. Feel free to make up your own jokes.



Now on to more germane matters. Mark Twain once said he’d want to be in Kentucky should the world come to an end; our state is always 20 years behind the times. I don’t know what this was based on, but our last election may be evidence that this is no longer a truism. We did elect Rand Paul to the United States Senate.



Sen. Paul-and we can only assume this is general knowledge-is a member of the Grand Old Tea Party (GOTP), and he and his GOTP cronies are intent on changing the way thing are done In our nation’s capital, by drastically reducing federal spending. To prove this, he has introduced a bill that would cut $500 billion from the federal budget in one year, the details of which can be found at http://newsroomamerica.com/story/96124.html.



Of course, Paul will have to move more that mountains to get this done; his colleagues from Kentucky in Congress are known for their abilities to bring home the bacon. The Senior Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, regularly touts his ability to enrich Kentucky at the federal government’s expense when seeking re-election. And when our own Member of Congress, Hal Rogers, was named as Chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, a loud chorus of “the King of Pork” was heard all across the nation.



But getting Kentucky’s delegation to the United States Congress in line with the GOTP’s way of thinking is the easy part of the quest Sen. Paul has taken on himself; he must also change the mindset of the Commonwealth. Kentucky, like a lot of the so-called red states, is literally addicted to federal spending, so much so that the abrupt change envisioned by Sen. Paul could wreak havoc in the Bluegrass state.



Kentucky gets back a good deal more by way of federal money than it pays in in federal taxes. For every dollar Kentuckians pay into the federal coffers, the state gets back $1.51. Federally-funded projects everywhere bear witness to this largess. The cut-through project that literally changed the face of Pikeville and the new four-lane highways that have already been completed, such as U S 23 and 119, or which are still under construction, such as U S 460, are but two examples of how federal spending has bettered the lives of Kentuckians.



Local fire departments have also been the beneficiaries of federal spending. For example, Letcher County recently got a $100,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture to purchase a new pumper. So guess which federal department would see its budget cut by nearly one third under Sen. Paul’s proposed bill? You got it, the USDA.



Federal spending at this level is on the endangered list now. No, it isn’t likely that Sen. Paul’s draconian cuts will ever be enacted, but cuts are coming. To what extent, who can say? But there is one thing for sure, if Kentucky has to give up its extra 51 cents, we’re all gonna have to learn to live with a lot less.

I say objective, you say subjective? Let’s call the whole thing off.

Here we are, some two weeks after Punxsutawney Phil gave out with his prediction of an early spring, and from the preliminary data, it would appear that Phil is on the ball with this one. Monday morning, and the History Channel is reliving a bad day in Chicago from 1929, but the Weather Channel is reveling in the warm weather forecast for the most of the current forecast period.

If we do get an early spring, we could get a power bill that we can pay without going hungry. Kentucky Electric Power (KEP) officials in charge of offering up explanations for power bills from Dec. and Jan. have suggested that it was the extraordinarily cold weather from these two months that is responsible. So if the weather for the remainder of February stays extraordinarily warm, will we see huge reductions in the power bills? After all, our poorly insulated homes (another reason given by KEP for the high bills) won’t have to strain themselves to retain that expensive electric heat, will they?

Okay, that this has been an unusually cold winter is a subjective opinion, isn’t it? In my objective opinion, it hasn’t been all that cold. I do my nightly exercises outside on the porch deck, and there have been only a few evenings that this 45-50 minute routine has been remotely uncomfortable. The coldest temps my thermometer showed (and I don’t vouch for its accuracy) was the high teens. Put this in perspective, I can recall years where the temps got a lot colder a lot sooner and stayed that way through early April.

Of course, that won’t drop the power bills. Truth is, like cheap oil and cheap food, cheap heat may also be a thing of the past. I have a virtual dinosaur of a furnace that sits under the house that is on a very expensive diet, indeed. It consumes fuel oil. Oh, this was a cheap enough comestible when the furnace was new, but that was some time ago. Judging by the price of fuel oil at the time, it was probably just a little after the first dinosaurs, whose bodies formed the petroleum that is so scarce today, were still roaming the earth.

Well, too, there may have been more distributors in Pike Co. at the time. But alas, like the dinosaurs, fuel oil distributors are almost extinct now. There is only one left in Pike Co., and the fuel oil they distribute costs as much as white kerosene. Ouch!

So the question we must ask ourselves is, do we keep warm and die of starvation or buy food and die of hypothermia? Neither scenario presented is very attractive, but fortunately there is one ray of hope for those who would like to find a middle ground. Remember those commercials for the infrared heaters? These new-fangled contraptions will, if used correctly, provide heat for considerably less than either conventional electric heat or fuel oil.

For most homes, if you employ them for so-called zone heating, you can significantly reduce those by-now enormous monthly heating bills. They aren’t cheap, but then again, they aren’t inordinately expensive, either. And until global warming kicks in full time, they may be the best answer when winter’s winds come a‘howling.

Super Sunday Plus

Championship games like the Super Bowl, are best when they contain drama; hard-fought contests with enough plot twists to keep you guessing how the thing will turn out. Not that the score has to be close throughout the game. In fact, one team might grab a big lead initially, only to see the other team mount a determined come-back.

Local sports fans savvy enough to have tuned in to the Wazoo Sports Network on Super Sunday to watch the 15th Region champs Betsy Layne Bobcats play for the All A Classic title got to see that scenario not once but twice in the same day.

In this contest, the Bobcats took it to their opponents, Louisville DeSales in the first half, holding the Colts to one field goal in the second quarter, and had an astounding 25-11 half-time lead. We can only imagine the feelings of the players on either team at the break, but you can bet both coaches had their work cut out for them in trying to convince their respective teams the game wasn’t over yet.

The Super Bowl that featured the Pittsburg Steelers and the Green Bay Packers saw the Packers break out and claim a 21-10 halftime advantage. Now who could blame anyone who maybe felt like this was going to be another Super Bore? You know, one team skunks the opposition in what has been, too many times, the outcome in this most celebrated of football games. If anyone felt this way, we can only hope they didn’t tune out early, because the best was yet to come. And I don't mean the half-time show.

In Richmond, the 3rd period was a replay of the second, except that Betsy Layne and DeSales switched roles. I don’t know what Colts head coach John Mingus said in his half-time speech, but if he could bottle it, he’d make a fortune. Betsy Layne was simply overwhelmed, and a 14 point lead soon went by the wayside and all too quickly turned into a deficit.

In Dallas, the Steelers also found a way to make it interesting. They were down in the second quarter by the intimidating score of 21-3, but a TD before the half ended trimmed the deficit and made it manageable. Add a TD to start the second half, and voila, they were down by only 4 points, and anyone who’s ever played against Big Ben knows that’s easy for him to overcome.

But something fantastic happened, to both the Bobcats in their contest, and to the Green Bay Packers. Whether it was some magic wrought by their head coaches that soothed the players’ jangled nerves or something in the players that caused them to perform their own gut check, the result was the same; each team settled down nicely and got down to business.

In Richmond, Coach Newsome checked the reins and soon had his Bobcats back on course. The fourth went more evenly, and thankfully, in the end, the Bobcats had enough in them to prevail against the spirited, but luckless, Colts.

In Dallas, a combination of offensive persistence and defense secured the Packers win, and took the aptly named Lombardi Trophy back to the home of its namesake.

And that was drama enough for anybody for one day.