PEP8/PEP20: use kwargs.get instead of one line if/else

I was poking around in the transport code thinking about an idea and
noticed this simplification.
Misc cleanup
Remove old comment of code-- we have version control :)
No reason for a regex, the intent is to stop publish events calling publish. The regex we had (publish.*) actually checks if publish is in the string, we care if it starts with publish.
Cleanup, the return is already a boolean
Merge branch 'develop' of github.com:saltstack/salt into develop
Merge pull request #12324 from jacksontj/develop

Misc cleanup