Apple has avoided paying at least $74 billion in taxes through a complex tax avoidance scheme involving "a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen," the New York Times reported on Monday.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) apologized to the company at a Tuesday Senate subcommittee hearing about this tax avoidance, which featured Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is scheduled to speak at an event for the Lexington Chamber of Commerce on Friday “about the so-called fiscal cliff crisis that was recently averted, his role in the agreement that was reached, and what it will mean for the American people moving forward. He’ll also discuss upcoming issues to be debated in Congress, such as spending and our country’s long-term debt.”

Yesterday, Public Campaign Action Fund released a new report, "Cashing in on Obstruction," detailing how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has used his position in the Senate to obstruct legislation and nominations that directly benefit his major donors. Allies in the state, including the AFL-CIO, CWA, Common Cause, and Progress Kentucky held a press conference announcing the report.

Everyone's favorite opponent of Clean Elections just broke a Kentucky fundraising record, reporting $12.2 million in contributions for his Senate re-election bid. And from where is Sen. Mitch McConnell raising such massive sums?

Kentucky lawyer Edward Bonnie attacks the "free speech" arguments against public financing of elections in the Courier Journal op-ed. Arguing that Fair and Clean Elections programs promote, rather than limit, speech Bonnie talks up the promise of the Fair Elections Now Act introduced in the Senate while questioning whether we want to continue to have Sen. Mitch McConnell-style elections where money is the yardstick for a candidate's worth.

Interesting development: Kentucky state Sen. Damon Thayer (R) has introduced a bill to increase the frequency of campaign finance disclosure reports that candidates must submit in an effort to boost transparency of campaign finances. Incidentally, Thayer is the same Senator who worked to get rid of the public financing program for gubernatorial campaigns that Kentucky had.

His rationale for supporting one measure but not the other is interesting:

Well, we've tried asking nicely but it hasn't worked so far so today, together with the Sunlight Foundation who have led this from the very beginning, we are taking things up a notch in our effort to get Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to reveal who is holding up a bill that would require Senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically.

Today, the Sunlight Foundation unveiled WhatsMcConnellHiding.com and a billboard in Louisville. (Katie will blog more on this later.)

The Courier-Journal in Louisville penned this editorial Friday, the day of McConnell's $2.1 million fundraiser with President Bush, saying Big Money Mitch's "political career has been based on the primacy of money" and this:

He long ago became one of the legendary money grubbers in modern American politics, in order to buy TV time for commercials that demean, disgrace and ultimately defeat his opponents.

Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) got indicted for directing “the appointment, promotion, demotion, transfer or dismissal” of staff on the basis of campaign donations and political affiliation.

Read more here and here.