Opinion

We understand that expansion of the Medicaid plan as part of the Affordable Care Act is seen as a political football, a topic to be kicked back and forth across a field of ideology with not a whole lot of regard for the players involved.

We also admit that we don’t have the sufficient grasp of either the process or economics to reinforce the decision last week by Gov. Steve Beshear to expand the rolls and open up the possibility that perhaps 300,000 more Kentuckians can have access to health insurance.

I was heartened to hear members of the Shelbyville City Council may make adult-provided or adult-present minors' use of illegal substances a city as well as a county and state penalty (“Adult hosts of teen parties may be fined,” May 20). This I hope you will pass.

However, I encourage you to change the minimum fine to $1000 for the first offense, with multiples of that for later offenses. Here is why.

Tell the truth: If you are a parent, you thought twice about sending your child to school on Tuesday morning.

You looked at the satellite images of the approaching weather system that had laid waste to miles and miles of homes in Oklahoma. You looked at the darkening skies in the west. You thought about families whose children were huddled in a school not built to withstand the right cross from nature’s most fearsome force.

We were dismayed last week when there was a meeting of Shelby County Fiscal Court that did not include mention of the decision by the group’s Legislative Committee to step away from the prospect of creating curbside garbage and recycling pickup for residents.

Surely the magistrates realize that, based on new legislation passed this spring in the General Assembly, they will become responsible for signing off on the budget of the county’s 109 Board, the entity that is responsible for garbage and recycling in the county.

NOTE: Chris Hauck, a former resident of Shelby County, was one of the participants in the memorial jam concert on Saturday to honor late former music teachers Ernie Threlkeld, Susie Saunders and Mel Owen. He wrote this on the Facebook after Threlkeld’s passing last fall. Hauck shared it for publication.

NBA player Jason Collins made headlines and history last week when he became the first active male player from one of the big four team sports to openly announce he was gay. Of all the adjectives used to describe the announcement,  “courageous’ seems to be the most oft-repeated. I disagree for two reasons.

Both stories appeared in the same position on the front page of the daily newspaper. The headline sizes were about the same, the impact of the stories nearly identical.

So it takes no degree in journalism to determine that editors believed each story to be almost equal in “weight” with the other. After all, any story at the top of a front page of an American newspaper is deemed to be important simply by geography.

Yet these two stories were hardly identical, hardly equal and hardly of the same importance.

Some remarkably talented and inspirational people will get a wonderful compliment this weekend, when former students of Ernie Threlkeld, Susie Saunders and Mel Owen will play a jazz concert in tribute to these fabulous music teachers, who passed away in recent years.

We are so pleased that Shelby County again will have a face in the Kentucky Derby.

Jockey Jon Court is back for his second ride in three years – after decades of having been left off the backs of the 20 3-year-olds entered each year – and we think that’s a sure bet for everyone.

It’s not so much like in football or basketball or even golf, when the athlete’s hometown gets a mention on national TV, but it’s just such a magnet for additional community pride.