Great, another problem for Frankfort to solve

The Associated Press reported Wednesday on a silly survey purporting to rank the fifty states according to citizen happiness. Big-government types will be delighted to find out Kentucky ranked 49th, just ahead of West Virginia.

The nanny state solution to the state's misery problem might be to tax people who are sad, if you follow the logic of Frankfort's tobacco tax hikers, thus forcing them to be happy. On the other hand, the alcohol tax raisers would counter that taxing sadness wouldn't stop one single person from being sad, but that we should do it anyway for the children. And then those who advocate selling more bonds and raiding public pensions each year to "balance" the budget will coo softly that they can't be bothered to explain their reasoning because it is so complicated and would just upset us even more.