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'...