If I understand you correctly, you want the menu choices to always be highlighted as if you were pointing at them?  There isn't really an exact way to do this that I know of, depending of course on what the highlight is. The reason is that normally the menu item isn't highlighted by anything. It lays on top of the start menu graphic. When you point at the menu, it applies the graphic in the mouseover ON TOP of that. You could use fonts to add effects though to make the items stand out more (e.g. font color, outline, bold, what have you.)

I hope that is of some help.

There are 3 states on the start menu mouseover image, Normal, Pressed and Mouseover.  Just put an image in for the Normal image state and it will show up on the menu all the time.  Also, which OS are you skinning?

Oops, read it again and realized you were talking about the start panel itself and not the all programs menu like in XP.  Evidently there is no way to do what you are asking.