WHAT STEPS WILL KENTUCKY TAKE???

To prevent the tragedy at Lafayette’s Grand Theater from happening here?

The governors of 2 states pointed out the suspected shooter should not have been able to buy the gun he used legally…after his involuntary mental health incarceration.

BUT, Kentucky is one of about six states, according to a CBS report, that also does  NOT require the reporting of mental health patients to any type of gun data base. He could have bought the deadly gun here.

This needs to change. Ask your legislative representatives where they stand on making a change, and let’s have the 3—yes 3, so far-- candidates for governor tell us their views here.

Also, Kentucky does NOT require gun show sales to be subject to background checks..mental health, felonies and otherwise. This is not only a huge loophole, but..because gun shows are almost always run by out of town people…a definite slap in the face to gun stores owned by local people…and that should change, too.

That the shooter was using his Second Amendment rights is cold comfort to the families of the two young ladies who died.

America---Kentucky, something MUST change here.

I'm just sayin'...

Poverty-Do Kids Really Count? Really?

‘I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill nourished”

                                      FDR, 2^nd inaugural, 1937

Might as well be today.

The latest report on “Kids Count” from the Annie E. Casey Foundation finds more children living in low-income neighborhoods than during the Great Depression.

Some progress for a nation that prides itself on being “Number One.”

Even here in Fayette County, one of the more affluent counties in Kentucky, more than half of county school students are eligible for  free or reduced priced lunches---more than half!

Our state ranks 32^nd in economic well being of our kids, 30^th in education, 24th in health, and 38^th in family and community according to the “Kids Count Report”…and despite our best efforts we don’t seem to me moving in the right direction in any of these categories, though health has improved slightly.

Basically one in four of Kentucky’s kids live in poverty..and the numbers nationally have increased from 2008 to 2013.

What’s to be done?

I have no grand solutions, but it does seem we should bite off each of the problems that contribute to poverty and go after them that way.

For example, our teen birth rate is too high and with one third of our kids living in single parent homes, we need to get it down. Better sex education in the schools would help—and well as programs that bring parents and kids together to discuss and work on this and other issues.

Programs that keep potential dropouts in school, such as the recently increased school leaving age should help.

And programs that help the economy (count me as a supporter of raising the minimum wage here) will do good also.

But, as we can see from FDR’s assessment  more than 75 years ago, it will take time. Even longer if we don’t work on poverty prevention.

Think about that, and ask the candidates for governor and congress how they would tackle poverty as we go thru our fall elections. They should not, can not ignore poverty any longer.

I'm just sayin'...

A TALE OF TWO STATES

Many of us saw the Confederate battle flag solemnly lowered from its place of honor on the South Carolina Capital grounds this week.

How many of you noticed the make-up of the honor guard of the S.C. Highway Patrol that handled the ceremony so well? Black members and white members did the job. Don’t you suppose many of them had conflicting emotions, conflicting beliefs (religious and otherwise) about what they were doing? Especially in a state such as South Carolina, first to secede from the Union, with its history of racial injustice---long before the murders in Charleston.

Yet they went ahead, in part because it was their job, and in part because the lawful authority in that state, the legislature and governor had told them to. (I must point out that Republican Governor Nikki Haley had strongly opposed taking the flag down, just a few days before the massacre, only to quickly jump on the newly popular take-it-down bandwagon. Apparently her beliefs can change quickly.)

Contrast that with protests in Kentucky, where a handful of clerks have so far, refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, citing their opposing religious beliefs. That is the same basis cited in Deep South states for not granting black couples various things...from marriage licenses  to tickets to concerts to votes (yes, votes!) to anything the local official wanted to dream up.

(The Courier Journal quotes a lawyer for the Kentucky plaintiffs  as saying "these clerks have issued plenty of licenses to couples who engage in a whole host of behaviors they might find unbiblical, immoral…” Indeed in many of these counties couples live together for years before kids, family, society get them to finally ask for a marriage license. Should these objecting clerks now decide it’s their business to check on that unbiblical behavior before issuing a license? The lady clerk in one county has been married four times. Need I tell her a lot of her fellow Christians consider that “lifestyle” to be unchristian?)

While I have major objections to the way our Supreme Court operates, it is the way our system of justice now works...and all of these clerks knew, or should have known, when they ran for office, it was possible the court would approve same-sex marriages, and so require them to issue those couples licenses. They were not elected the Baptist clerk of Rowan county, but the county clerk (for all the people of that county.)

Gov. Beshear, who lost, remember,  before the Supreme Court here, is totally right when he told the Casey County clerk to issue them or resign. As for a special session, at $63,000 a day for 5 or more days, ridiculous!

We are a nation under God.  Not a Christian God. Not a Protestant God, and certainly not a Southern Baptist God---but God. There is a difference.

See Mark 12:17 (KJV) for an importance difference.

I'm just sayin'...

Thoughts On a Truly Historic Week Of Events

I have criticized local broadcast stations for not running editorials or commentaries, which I think is part of their obligation to operate in “the public interest.”  These ceased to exist on the death of Ralph Gabbard, President of WKYT-TV some years ago. I have also criticized the network newscasts for letting anchors give their personal opinions without so labeling them. A big difference from the erudite days of Eric Sevareid on CBS. 

Scott Pelley gave his personal opinion last Friday at the end of a momentous week of news. It wasn’t labeled as an opinion, as it should have been, but I can forgive him because of the events he reported..and he captured their spirit well.

Here is what he said:

The first American idea, that "all men are created equal," has never been honored. It was aspiration, more than declaration. And so the struggle for progress has been the inheritance of every American since.

Pressure for equality builds. And once in a great while, like a tectonic fault, there's a sudden lurch forward. That's the quake we felt this week.

Monday, South Carolina moved to strike the Confederate battle flag. Overnight, there was a national rush to obliterate relics of oppression. Shopkeepers and state houses couldn't remove them fast enough -- as if they had been noticed for the first time.

   

Friday, the tremor moved the stone at the court -- shifting the words carved there - nearer to the truth. Millions of Americans, for the first time in our history, achieved their "equal justice under law."

The African-American poet, Langston Hughes, wrote: "Let America be America again...It never was America to me."

The truths, "self-evident" at our founding, are not self-fulfilling. We the people, are founding today the America that was promised.

Well said..and worth remembering as America continues to face the pervasive problems race---and our views of race---create for our democracy.

I'm just sayin'... 

WHY DIDN’T RAND PAUL KNOW???

Four GOP presidential candidates, including our own Rand Paul, accepted thousands of dollars in donations from a white supremacist group—the Council of Conservative Citizens. This group’s beliefs and reports supposedly triggered he “Manifesto” and possibly the later shootings in Charleston by the alleged shooter Dylann Roof.) Since this information came out all the candidates, including Sen. Paul, have pledged to give those contributions to charity instead.

BUT, why didn’t Paul know the source of his contributions before the tragic events in Charleston??

There’s Google, and Ask Me, and a dozen websites on the internet allowing people to find out just what the bland sounding “Council” really was and its policies. Why weren’t those easy to use reference sources used BEFORE accepting the contributions.

Is it the money?  Is it we don’t care what they believe so long as they listen to us?

These GOP candidates often say they will have a greater concern for taxpayers’ money than the Democrats so “elect us.” Well, such concerns for other peoples’ money starts with concerns over how they handle their own funds---and in this case the results don’t support their claims.

Yes, others are involved here, but Paul is one of us. Kentuckians, and Kentucky reporters, need to ask him why his staff didn’t check on this group before accepting their money. As we know AFTER the fact, such checking wasn’t difficult.

What other less-than-honorable contributions, if any, has he accepted. And will he now do the research he didn’t do before?

Kentuckians need to know.

I'm just sayin'...

I didn’t want to read Monday morning’s Herald-Leader.

I had this childish idea if I didn’t read the paper I wouldn’t find a story I knew was in it, and then the matter it reported on wouldn’t have happened.

And John Carroll would still be alive.

Childish, but that’s just how much I wished John were still here.

One of the finest journalists I’ve known..able, honest, ethical, and a great friend..even when, as a competitor he was beating your brains out..as John’s Herald-Leader did several times to me, when I was running the Channel 27 news department.

In’85 when the paper was reporting on the UK sports scandal (which many die hard fans refused to believe was true,) 27 took its lumps.  We may have been the “official” UK station, but my sports reporters couldn’t seem to get ahead of the paper on this major story (which won them their first ever Pulitzer)..or even stay even.  I finally resorted to having a staffer at the paper about 10:45pm, and when the first edition rolled off the press, buy one, scan it for UK developments, and if any, radio them to our newsroom where we would write them up and air them at 11..with credit to the Herald-Leader.  Best we could do, but it still put us ahead of our tv competitors, thanks to John’s crew.

He won major prizes for the next 2 papers he edited, the Baltimore Sun and the L.A. Times..where, though he won many Pulitzer’s for the Times, his owners told him he had to cut back, especially on the reporting staff that had  won those awards.

John refused. Stood up in the newsroom and told his staff why, and then resigned.  That was John Carroll, a consummate newsman.

He came home to Lexington, spoke about our profession’s problems and became an “elder statesman" we all admired.

Now, with his sad death at an early age, people everywhere in general, and journalists in particular have lost an advocate…and we here in Kentucky have lost a dear friend.

DEBATES: LET’S DO THIS!!!

Two prominent Republicans have suggested Kentucky needs a debate commission, similar to the national one on Presidential Debates...to propose and supervise similar debates on the governor’s level.

Definitely.

Centre held two national veep debates and they went well, helping all of us sort out the candidates there.  A similar series of debates, one for each congressional district is the proposal, would help a lot. (Maybe local tv would even cover them, though the record of the Lexington media during the debates leading up to the primary is a sorry one.)

I like debates...especially those framed about issues, which is the proposal. KET’s debates have done well to illustrate the issues and the candidates stands.  More should help.

Though this idea comes from the Grand Old Party I hope state Dems will not reject it out of hand. A good idea from anywhere is a good idea and worth adopting.

And state Dems should have little to fear from Matt Bevin in a debate. If ever a candidate spoke “gibberish” it was Bevin in accusing the Dems of doing the same. I urge you to go back and re-read his comments a few days after the election.

Let the debates begin...and if we can’t get them up by this November, surely we can for four years hence.

I'm just sayin...

Let’s do this!