Is Mitch Really Helping Kentucky?

Now that McConnell will be serving 36 years in the Senate, and the coming 6 as majority leader, I think it's reasonable to expect that he delivers the goods for Kentucky. I mean, a Senators #1 job is to serve his state, right? Can we at least agree on that?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's any chance Mitch will actually do that. He will serve himself first, the GOP 2nd (gotta stack the deck for your party in the next election, right?), and the Commonwealth will be a distant 3rd if it's on his list at all. I was wrong once though, and it could feasibly happen again. How will we know?

I propose defining a list of metrics to measure McConnell's next 6 years. Since his party controls Congress for at least the next two years, we can expect great things right? My GOP loyalist friends are already making excuses of course for why Boehner and McConnell will fail to accomplish anything; that Reid will be obstructionist and Obama will veto everything. To this I say, tough shit? Turnabout is fair play? They want it both ways - they claim that the Democratic losses in the midterms mean that the American people strongly support the Republican agenda and are revolting against these socialist Democrats. If that's true, then getting a 2/3 majority to override a Presidential veto is no problem, right? After 30 years in the Senate, even I will give McConnell credit for being a master of parliamentary tactics - you want to tell me he can't out maneuver dopey old Harry Reid?

So what can a Senator do for his home state? Send pork of course, and I'm sure there will be plenty of that. It's easy to track though - he's sent $1.5 Billion home since 2008. Good think Republicans are the fiscally conservative party. Here are the metrics I propose:

1. Kentucky unemployment relative to other states and trend over time - I think we can all agree that Kentucky needs economic growth, and these first 3 are a pretty standard measures of that.
2. Kentucky poverty rate relative to other states and trend over time - same as above
3. Kentucky per capita income relative to other states and trend over time - same as above
4. Kentucky health relative to other states - McConnell promised to rip out Obamacare root and branch, stating (incorrectly) that Kynect is just a website. If he's going to mess around with our health care, then isn't the health of our citizens a fair metric by which to judge him? 
5. Number of coal miners in Kentucky - Like #3, this is one Mitch brought on himself as it was a key campaign point of his that he would fight Obama's war on coal and save coal jobs. 

McConnell took office in 1985 when there were 29,000 coal miners in Eastern Kentucky. That number had dropped to 12,000 BEFORE Obama was elected, but yeah, Mitch is totally a champion for coal. It's those obstructionist Democrats who have kept him from taking action on coal for his first 30 years in office. Now that he and Boehner are in charge, look out! We're due for a coal revival any day now! Maybe he'll bring back whale oil too - those fishermen have been out of work since President Polk launched his infamous "war on whale oil" back in 1846!

I'll post a first draft in the coming days.