By: Keith Kappes
Columnist
Carter County Times
My logic in this commentary may be an example of splitting hairs, but I’m already sick and tired of the folks in the Trump Administration running amok while claiming they have “an overwhelming mandate” to downsize the federal government.
According to the official count, the Trump-Vance ticket received exactly 49.8 percent of the popular vote in last fall’s presidential election. Since that figure is less than 50 percent, it simply doesn’t meet the definition of a “mandate”.
Yes, the Republicans won a solid victory in the Electoral College but that complicated, weighted formula is tough to explain in this limited space. The actual definition of majority rule in our form of government depends on whether you use popular vote or the Electoral College tally.
To keep this commentary simple enough so that even I can fully understand it, let’s look back at Kentucky’s gubernatorial election of 2023 when Gov. Andy Beshear won a second term with 53 percent of the popular vote.
As a confessed Democrat, I prefer to say that victory was a clear expression of the “will of the people” in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. However, the supermajority of Republicans in the House and Senate of the Kentucky General Assembly lined up again like toy store puppets and overrode all of Beshear’s vetoes.
Perhaps the strangest outcome of that legislative session was another round of approving new programs without an accompanying appropriation to pay new costs.
If the state was short of cash, I might understand the idea of a “wish list” of new stuff that may or may not ever be funded. But the truth is that the state has hundreds of millions of dollars in its “rainy day fund” and other fiscal foxholes in Frankfort.
A final thought in this rambling discourse…the chaos in Washington surrounding the dismantling of the Department of Education should be very disturbing to the millions of us who have benefitted immensely from access to public higher education.
If the federal student aid programs get mismanaged to death, does that mean we will go back to the bad old days when only the wealthy could afford to go to college?
Contact Keith at keithkappes@gmail.com.
