It's a fascinating coincidence that we learn the University of Kentucky(TM) owns the name of our state a couple weeks before we select a new governor. My attorneys, Cooked and Goose, advised me not to use the state name when not referring to the University since I owe them this and last year's retainer.
So for the remainder of this column we'll call our state something that sounds nothing like the real name. How about Cantucky?
The news that our tax funded public institution of higher learning had trademarked our state's name came as quite a shock. The little Letcher county moonshine distillery we'll call "Cantucky Mist" isn't the only outfit sitting in manure.
Imagine all the folks who should expect the cease and desist letter from UK's law firm, Soo, Emsum, and Moore. Let's start with the other colleges around the commonwealth. Eastern, Western, Wesleyan, Northern, and State should soon be getting the Cantucky treatment. Doesn't matter that most of them are state funded universities because the state doesn't have the trademark.
A state agency does. Our agencies run the state, not the other way around like in less enlightened states.
Any business, organization or individual who puts the state name on a t-shirt is going to be getting tax funded royalty duns. It doesn't matter if you're the Farm Bureau, Derby or Headhunters. You've been Cantuckied.
Cantucky is open for business and the business of producing professional athletes is good. How else could a public land grant university have a law firm and a state name?
Well, it didn't come fast. The state's deathstar university has been building wealth for decades. The trademark on the state was acquired in 1997, which basketball fans will remember as a time when the athletic business was particularly good.
Those same basketball fans will remember the recession of the 2000s. While the output of professional athletes was down, the university diversified its income streams. It grew the medical center and went after research. There's huge money in research, especially if you've got the trademark on a living laboratory.
With it's Promise Zones and SOARfields, the eastern part of the state is the most lucrative research laboratory in the country. The University has set up a goldmine in poking, choking, surveying and blow smoking the residents of select communities here. East Cantuckians are perfect lab rats because we're (choose as many as you like) desperate, broke, gullible, opportunistic and/or love a good con so much we'll happily take part.
To a point.
Not many Cantuckians like being told they can't, especially the eastern ones. Being told you can't name your legitimate business with employees and taxes to pay after your home state is not just insulting, it's bizarre. It's mad-scientist with a highly lucrative living laboratory kind of bizarre.
Oh, and the coincidental part with the news coming right before the governor's election? Turns out Matt Bevin, vying to become the first person elected governor of a state without paying taxes in it, is withdrawing. "I was planning on selling the state out, looks like UK already owns it. You just can't trust education."
Asked for comment, Jack Conway reminded everyone he sued Obama.
So in the governor's race between not too bad and not too good, the mansion should go to not too bad.