Just the other day I was foaming at the mouth about the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center.

And whattya know?

Check this out from John Cheves:

Last week, the General Assembly stuck two sentences into the 2010-12 legislative budget, ordering the center to close June 30 and eliminating the roughly $560,000 a year that it received.

The center’s six soon-to-be jobless employees are trying to figure out what happened.

-SNIP-

In 1996, for example, the center warned that Kentucky’s outdated tax code was creating a structural deficit in the state budget. That did not generate much response. This year, lawmakers again postponed tax reform and faced a $1.5 billion budget shortfall.

-SNIP-

“I don’t know if they were targeted for some reason or not,” Rollins said. “But I think it’s very shortsighted to not have people studying the larger issues facing the state.”

Like I said on Friday:

That little office? It’s the closest thing Kentucky’s got to a non-partisan and unbiased think tank. Maybe the only organization producing reliable information about the state’s problems. Why cut it? Primarily because David Williams & Crew don’t enjoy having bad news delivered to legislators who would prefer to ignore reality.

That joint is getting flushed down the legislative toilet because people like David Williams and Greg Stumbo can’t have little things like facts and reality getting in the way of whatever it is they’re trying to accomplish for themselves.