NEWS NOTES ON SEVERAL IMPORTANT TOPICS

An important  bill in the House this past week would make major cuts in the Food Stamps program…putting many thousands of Kentuckians, who depend on that program, at serious risk.  How would our new Republican Congressman Andy Barr vote? 

 

A Yes vote would favor the billions in cuts; a No vote would keep the program essentially the same as now.

Here’s the statement Barr’s office released after his vote: 

“Today I voted to restore accountability and much needed fiscal responsibility to an important federal program that has grown to unsustainable levels. These common sense reforms to our food stamp  program will achieve nearly $40 billion in savings while increasing funding to food banks.

“The bill will provide a full $725 billion to food assistance to families and children in need over the next ten years. This legislation is the most compassionate policy because it encourages people who are capable of work to move from dependency to self-sufficiency.”

Is that a “Yes” vote or a “No” vote?  Answer below.

I was surprised, but very pleased, that the US and Russia worked out a diplomatic agreement that halted, at least for now, the spiral towards war the US was pursuing towards Syria…and that, so far, Syria has lived up to the agreement..sending a list of its chemical weapons to an international agency.

War should be our last resort..not, as the U-S has done in recent years, often near our first resort.

War has consequences usually not foreseen. That was brought home by some other news stories…a Fort Campbell soldier’s family finally learning his fate..from the Vietnam war, when his remains were identified…49 years later. Who knew, when they sent him away proudly, such anguish would follow for a half century?

Or the story that told us an atomic bomb almost exploded in North Carolina in 1961 when an accident occurred to one of our bombers, forcing it to jettison two bombs. The four safety devices on one worked; three of the four on the second bomb failed and only one switch prevented a nuclear explosion that would have spread radioactive fallout as far  north as Washington and New York. We here in Kentucky would have felt the effects, too. A very “lucky” if UN-intended consequence  when you embark on war…whether “cold” or “hot.”

Despite the political speak, Mr. Barr voted to cut food stamps to his fellow Kentuckians.

I'm just sayin'...