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Stories tagged with “Kentucky”

Health

Kentucky Will Expand Medicaid Under Obamacare, Cutting Its Uninsured Population By More Than Half

By Sy Mukherjee on May 9, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D)

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) announced on Thursday that he would accept federal money to expand his state’s Medicaid program under Obamacare. That brings the total number of states participating in the optional expansion up to either 22 or 18 (plus the District of Columbia) — depending on the actions of some state legislatures that are still debating the issue.

According to a press release from Beshear’s office, the governor called the move “the single-most important decision in our lifetime for improving the health of Kentuckians” and something that is “in the best interest of the Commonwealth and its citizens.” He also stated that an analysis of the expansion’s costs revealed that non-participation would be mean losing money for the state, echoing the fiscal argument made by West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) last week.

Beshear certainly has his numbers right. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicaid expansion will cut Kentucky’s high uninsurance rate by over 55 percent, and the price of noncompliance could be as high as $40 million by 2021. Considering upcoming cuts to safety net hospitals that serve poor residents and the reality that nearly one in three Kentuckians living below 139 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) is uninsured, that would have proven to be an unaffordable cost from both a fiscal and a public health standpoint.

What’s less clear is how much difficulty Beshear will have with gaining the support of lawmakers in a state that has elected ardent Obamacare opponents like Sens. Mitch McConnell (R) and Rand Paul (R). Democrats hold an 11-seat edge in Kentucky’s state House, while Republicans hold an 11-seat edge in the state Senate. Convincing those 11 Republican state senators could be difficult, considering that several other GOP governors in highly uninsured states are still battling their own party members to cooperate with the health law’s Medicaid expansion.

Justice

Judge Bars Man From Saying ‘Bingo’ For Six Months After False Call Causes Chaos

By Scott Keyes on Mar 20, 2013 at 3:00 pm

In the Ohio Valley, where bingo night is serious business, false “bingo” calls can get you 90 days in the pokey.

Austin Whaley, an 18-year-old from Covington, Kentucky, learned this the hard way when he and several friends entered a local bingo hall and yelled “bingo” for comic effect. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, “the crowd of mostly elderly women did not take kindly to Whaley’s bingo call.” The room filled with groans from those who’d thought they lost; upon realizing they’d been duped, “they started hooting and hollering and yelling and cussing.”

Park Hills Police Sgt. Richard Webster reported that Whaley’s antics “delayed the game by several minutes” and “caused alarm to patrons.” When Whaley refused to apologize after being caught, Webster cited him for second-degree disorderly conduct.

“Just like you can’t run into a theater and yell ‘fire’ when it’s not on fire, you can’t run into a crowded bingo hall and yell ‘bingo’ when there isn’t one,” said Park Hills Police Sgt. Richard Webster, the officer who cited Whaley. [...]

“He seemed to think he could say whatever he wanted because it was a public building. I tried to explain that that’s not the case. Just because it’s a public building doesn’t give you the right to run into a theater and yell ‘fire.’ You can’t go into a ballpark and yell ‘out,’ because people could stop the game.”

When Whaley appeared in Kenton District Court last week, the judge ordered Whaley: “Do not say the word ‘bingo’ for six months.”

As comical as it may be, sentencing someone to not utter the word “bingo” is likely a violation of the First Amendment.

The 1919 Supreme Court case Schenck v. U.S. introduced the “clear and present danger” test, which allows punishment for speech that would knowingly cause a panic, such as shouting “fire” in a crowded theater (this test has also been largely superseded by more speech-protective decisions). But yelling “bingo” in a bingo hall hardly lives up to the standard. Nobody flees for their life when they think they’ve lost the whimsical game of chance.

Bingo players may consider Whaley a jerk, but even jerks have constitutional rights.

LGBT

Rand Paul’s Version Of Equality Erases Marriage For All Couples

By Zack Ford on Mar 13, 2013 at 11:50 am

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) opposes same-sex marriage, but he’s previously expressed some ambivalence about banning it at the federal level because of his interest in preserving states’ rights. At a press conference Tuesday, he offered a convoluted new solution for marriage equality that simply erases any mention of marriage from laws or provisions about benefits:

PAUL: I’m not going to change who I am or what I believe in. I am an old-fashioned traditionalist. I believe in the historical definition of marriage. That being said, I think contracts between adults — I’m not for limiting contracts between adults. In fact, if there are ways to make the tax code more neutral where it doesn’t mention the word marriage, then we don’t have to redefine what marriage is.

We just don’t have marriage in the tax code. If health benefits are a problem, why don’t we not define them by marriage? Why don’t we say, you have another adult who lives in the house, and a kid who lives in the house can be part of family coverage? Then you don’t have to redefine, and have people like myself, and people who live in the Southeastern part of the country, we don’t have to change our definition of what we think marriage is, but we allow contracts to occur so there is more ability to [make] the law neutral.

The premise of Paul’s plan conflates the government’s recognition of marriage with religion’s. Even in “the Southeastern part,” including his home state of Kentucky, various churches support marriage equality for same-sex couples. Given his disinterest in supporting same-sex couples — or even letting children learn that gay people exist — it’s unlikely he’ll attract a very large coalition to erase everybody’s marriages to allow for these random contracts. Even if he could, it would be incredibly easy to abuse such contracts, such as acquiring insurance benefits for a roommate who isn’t really considered “family.”

Moreover, Paul claimed this week that his epic filibuster was intended to defend young people, advocating for a more “tolerant” Republican Party because Millenials “simply have no desire to tell other people what to do or how to live.” Offering an untenable idea that impacts everybody to avoid taking an actually tolerant position falls far short of this principle.

Justice

Party Like It’s 1829! Kentucky Senate Passes Ban On Enforcement Of Federal Gun Safety Laws

By Ian Millhiser on Feb 26, 2013 at 4:20 pm

Nineteenth century nullificationist Senator John C. Calhoun

Yesterday, the Kentucky Senate overwhelmingly approved an unconstitutional bill forbidding the enforcement of new federal gun safety laws:

Any federal law, rule, regulation, or order created on or after January 1, 2013, including any amendment or other change made after January 1, 2013, to a preexisting federal law, rule, regulation, or order, shall be unenforceable within the borders of Kentucky if the law, rule, regulation, order, amendment, or other change attempts to:

(a) Ban or restrict ownership of a semi-automatic firearm, magazine, or other firearm accessory; or

(b) Require any firearm, magazine, or other firearm accessory to be registered in any manner.

Nullification, the Nineteenth Century idea that states can simply declare federal laws invalid, cannot be squared with the Constitution’s declaration that federal law “shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” Yet the sponsor of this unconstitutional bill, state Sen. Jared Carpenter (R-KY), claims that he can make an end-run around the Constitution because the command that duly-enacted federal law are supreme over state law “applies only if Congress is acting in pursuit of its constitutionally authorized powers, which he said wouldn’t apply to stricter gun measures.”

Even if it were true, however, that bans on assault rifles and large capacity magazines and other proposed federal reforms are unconstitutional — and it is not true — that still does not mean that Kentucky has the unilateral power to declare something unconstitutional and therefore invalid within the state’s borders. Indeed, if Kentucky did have the power Carpenter claims, there would be nothing preventing it from declaring any law unconstitutional, regardless of what the Constitution has to say about it.

Giving states such a power would, in the words of James Madison, “speedily put an end to the Union itself.”

Justice

Liberal Super PAC Sends Racist Tweet About Mitch McConnell’s Chinese Wife

By Scott Keyes on Feb 26, 2013 at 2:52 pm

A liberal super PAC in Kentucky is on the defensive after recently sending a racist tweet attacking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) wife for being Chinese.

McConnell, running for reelection in 2014, is married to former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan after her family fled mainland China during the Chinese Civil War. One super PAC dedicated to defeating McConnell, Progress Kentucky, has spent months relentlessly hammering the Republican on outsourcing.

However, on February 14, they took the matter a step further and sent the following tweet impugning McConnell’s wife’s heritage as an explanation for why Kentucky jobs have been outsourced:


Progress Kentucky spokesman Curtis Morrison issued the following statement to WFPL on the matter: “It’s not an official statement. It’s a Tweet. And we will remove it if it’s wrong.” Nearly two weeks later, though, the offending tweet has not been deleted.

There are a number of reasons why jobs in the United States have been outsourced, from inevitable globalization forces to corporate tax breaks that reward shipping jobs overseas. McConnell’s wife’s ancestry is not one of them. There are also legitimate reasons to criticize Chao’s tenure as Labor Secretary; her heritage has nothing to do with them.

Unfortunately, xenophobic anti-Chinese messages have become a staple in modern campaigns. The last two election cycles alone have featured racist ads from Republicans, Democrats, and anti-spending front groups. Perhaps the most egregious was an ad from Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) in a 2011 special election depicting a heavily-accented Chinese news anchor in the near-future reporting on how American debt led to Chinese army marching in front of the U.S. Capitol as it flies the Chinese flag.

Update

Ignoring the maxim of holes and digging, Progress Kentucky just released a second statement standing by its tweet and denying that it was racist in nature: “Senator Mitch McConnell has a conflict of interest that many are afraid to talk about, and Progress Kentucky is not,” the group said.

Update

Progress Kentucky finally apologizes. The offending tweet has also been deleted.

Economy

How Looming Budget Cuts Will Hurt The GOP Leadership’s Home States

By Travis Waldron on Feb 25, 2013 at 9:15 am

Allowing sequestration to occur on March 1 will have a devastating impact on states, the White House warned Sunday, when it released state-specific reports detailing the effects of the automatic budget cuts. States will lose funding for education, job training, health care, and a plethora of other services, jeopardizing assistance for low-income and middle class families alike and threatening the economic recovery.

ThinkProgress examined the implications of the budget cuts on the five states represented by Republican leadership in the House and Senate. Those five states would lose a collective $206 million in education funding, jeopardizing nearly 3,000 teaching jobs and allowing them to serve 428,000 fewer students. While the impacts are particularly large for California and Texas, they would be felt across all five states, according to the White House fact sheets:

OHIO: House Speaker John Boehner’s state will lose $25.1 million in education funding, putting 350 teaching jobs at risk and allowing it to serve 34,000 fewer students and 100 fewer schools. 2,500 children will lose Head Start funding, 3,320 will lose assistance to help pay for college, and as many as 800 will lose access to child care. The loss of $1.7 million in job training and assistance funds will mean 57,000 fewer Ohioans get help from those programs. Ohio will also lose $823,000 in funding to help provide meals to seniors.

KENTUCKY: Sequestration will cost Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state $11.8 million in education funding, meaning it could lose 160 teaching jobs and serve 21,000 fewer students. More than 1,700 low-income students will lose assistance to help pay for college, and 1,100 will lose access to Head Start. More than 16,000 Kentuckians will lose job training and placement assistance when the state loses $478,000 in funding for those programs, and it will also receive $677,000 less to help provide meals to seniors.

VIRGINIA: Virginia, the home of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, would lose $14 million in education funding, jeopardizing 190 teaching jobs and cutting funding for 40 schools and 14,000 students. 1,000 students would lose access to Head Start and 2,120 low-income students would lose funding to help finance college. Another 400 low-income children could lose access to child care assistance. The state will lose $348,000 in job search and placement assistance, allowing it to serve 18,390 fewer people. It will also lose $1.2 million in funding to help provide meals to seniors.

TEXAS: The home of Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn would lose $67.8 million in education funding, putting 930 teaching jobs at risk and cutting funding for 280 schools and 172,000 students. Another 4,800 students would lose access to Head Start and 2,300 would lose access to child care assistance. Texas would lose more than $2 million in funds for job search and placement assistance, meaning more than 83,000 people would lose assistance. Texas will also lose $3.5 million in funding to help provide meals to seniors.

CALIFORNIA: House GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy’s home state would lose $87.6 million in education funding, jeopardizing 1,210 teaching jobs and affecting funding for 320 schools and 187,000 students. More than 8,000 students would lose funding for Head Start, and 9,600 low-income students would lose funding to help pay for college. Another 2,000 families will lose child care assistance, while the loss of $3.3 million in funding for job search and placement assistance, affecting nearly 130,000 people. The state will also lose $5.4 million in funding to help provide meals to seniors.

Economy

Kentucky’s Pension ‘Reform’ Cuts Benefits, But Makes Funding Problems Worse

By ThinkProgress on Feb 12, 2013 at 2:10 pm

Kentucky is currently considering overhauling its pension system. Sadly, the bill that recently passed the state senate — and will soon be discussed by the state assembly — cuts benefits for workers, but doesn’t shore up the system’s funding.

The bill would abolish traditional pensions for new public sector workers while cutting cost of living adjustments for retirees, yet would cost even more than the current system. The switch would cost an extra $55 million over the next 20 years, according to analysis by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

The bill would also require that the state pay the full amount of its required contribution to the pension plan. Supporters claim that these changes are necessary because pension plans in Kentucky are underfunded by a considerable amount.

However, the plan does not specify where the revenue for these new contributions will come from and instructs the legislature to create a funding source in 2014 when it writes a new budget. We should be skeptical about Kentucky’s promise to fund these new contributions given its history of not paying the required contribution, a key reason its pension plan is so underfunded.

Kentucky has only paid on average 68 percent of its actuarial required contribution to the state pension plan over the past 10 years, according to CAPAF analysis of the Center for Retirement Research’s Public Plans Database. In 2011, the most recent year for which data are available, the state only contributed 52.9 percent of the ARC. This underfunding is a key reason why Kentucky’s state employee pension system is severely underfunded.

Paying the full amount of the actuarially required contribution every year is critical to making sure a pension plan is well-funded. Organizations like the Pew Center on the States, the National Institute on Retirement Security, and Standard & Poor’s have all highlighted the importance of paying the ARC every year.

To be sure, paying the ARC every year doesn’t ensure that a pension plan will be fully funded. Recessions and stock market crashes will reduce the pension’s returns. The Great Recession is a large reason — perhaps the largest reason — why many pension plans are underfunded. If public pensions had earned the very modest returns of Treasury bonds in recent years, which is far below the average return for pensions, almost the entire shortfall as of 2011 would have been eliminated.

Our guest blogger is Nick Bunker, an economic research assistant at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Health

How Republicans Quietly Mandate Transvaginal Probes When They Think No One’s Paying Attention

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Feb 7, 2013 at 1:50 pm

Example of a transvaginal ultrasound procedure

During the height of last year’s outcry over the GOP’s “War on Women,” transvaginal probes became one of the most recognizable symbols of the Republican Party’s overreaching anti-abortion policies. Particularly when Virginia pushed forward with a controversial measure to require all women seeking abortions to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound, women’s health advocates decried the practice as “state-sponsored rape.”

Virginia legislators ultimately changed the language of their ultrasound bill to remove the mention of transvaginal probes. But stringent abortion restrictions don’t necessarily need specific “transvaginal” language to force women to undergo invasive, unnecessary medical procedures against their will. These are just a few examples of carefully-worded abortion bills that would ultimately require transvaginal probes — even though it’s not explicitly stated in the legislation:

– MICHIGAN: Talking Points Memo first reported that Michigan’s proposed ultrasound bill, HB-4187, is a bit more nefarious than it appears to be on the surface. The legislation doesn’t mention trasvaginal probes, but it does stipulate that the mandatory ultrasounds need to use the most modern equipment available, and provide “the most visibly clear image of the gross anatomical development of the fetus and the most audible fetal heartbeat.” Donna Crane, the policy director of NARAL Pro-Choice America, explained that language will require doctors to use transvaginal probes — which provide clearer images than the non-invasive ultrasound procedure.

– KENTUCKY: Women seeking abortions in Kentucky already have to undergo a state-mandated waiting period and a mandatory counseling session intended to talk them out of their decision. But SB-5, which just cleared a Senate committee on Thursday, would also require women to have an ultrasound before terminating a pregnancy. During Thursday’s committee hearing, state Sen. Paul Hornback (R) admitted something that the proponents of similar ultrasound bills in other states haven’t been as forthright about: the legislation would also require a transvaginal ultrasound for early pregnancies, since abdominal ultrasounds don’t work well before 12 weeks of pregnancy. Because the vast majority of abortions are performed during the first trimester, the vast majority of women will be subjected to a transvaginal probe.

– ARKANSAS: Last week, State Sen. Jason Rapert (R) introduced a “fetal heartbeat bill” to outlaw all abortion procedures after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can occur as early as six weeks of pregnancy. Women’s health advocates pointed out that, since a transvaginal ultrasound is the only way to detect the fetal heartbeat that early into a pregnancy, Rapert’s bill would also mandate invasive probes for all women seeking abortions. The growing controversy over the unintended consequences of the stringent abortion ban led Rapert to amend his bill earlier this week — updating the legislation’s language to specify it would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected by using an abdominal ultrasound, at around 10 weeks of pregnancy.

– NORTH DAKOTA: If Rapert’s heartbeat ban initially had the unintended consequence of mandating transvaginal ultrasounds, then the same holds true for the extreme fetal heartbeat bills that have been proposed in other states. For example, North Dakota’s HB-1456 states that “an individual may not perform an abortion on a pregnant woman before determining, in accordance with standard medical practice, if the unborn child the pregnant woman is carrying has a detectable heartbeat” — and transvaginal ultrasounds are the standard medical practice for determining a fetal heartbeat in early pregnancies.

Even though ultrasounds are not considered medically necessary procedures for first-trimester abortions, 12 states currently require women to undergo one anyway. And according to NARAL Pro-Choice America, 13 new forced ultrasound bills have been introduced in 8 states since the beginning of 2013, a number the group says is all too common for the beginning of a new legislative session.

Donna Crane, NARAL’s policy director, explained to ThinkProgress that Republicans are playing “games of hide and seek” with this type of legislation. But the issue of invasive probes — as well as the fundamental issue at stake, the fact that women are forced to have an unwanted, unnecessary medical procedure simply because a legislator decided they should — has never gone away. “These bills are horrific, but they’re commonplace,” Crane said. “All they’re doing is changing the language. Virginia made a PR error in actually using a searchable word, ‘transvaginal,’ and they’re not likely to do that again. But the bills are still as severe as they ever were.”

LGBT

Kentucky Minister Arrested After Trying To Marry His Same-Sex Partner

By Rebecca Leber on Jan 24, 2013 at 1:36 pm

Rev. Blanchard and Dominique James

A Kentucky Baptist minister protested on behalf of same-sex marriage by refusing to leave the county clerk’s office until he and his partner received a marriage license. Rev. Maurice “Bojangles” Blanchard and Dominique James walked in — already knowing they would be refused — and were later arrested when the office closed. Blanchard said the sit-in showed they would not be “silent accomplices to our own discrimination.”

In an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, Blanchard pointed out that religious leaders stand behind his right to marriage:

We’re here today to give nonviolence witness and let folks know that even people of faith, most definitely people of faith are going to stand up to and say this is wrong [...] We anticipate being denied and upon that denial we are going to sit down and not be moved and not leave as a sign of a method of nonviolent resistance. Because we feel if we do not resist we’re silent accomplices to our own discrimination.

Watch the interview and their arrest:


 

Same-sex couples have sought to expose discrimination in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia by applying for marriage licenses, only to be denied because of state law. Polls show that most Americans endorse marriage equality, while the movement has strong backing from the religious community.

LGBT

Tiny Kentucky Town Passes LGBT Nondiscrimination Protections

By Zack Ford on Jan 14, 2013 at 5:25 pm

The tiny town of Vicco, Kentucky has made a bit of history by passing a sweeping anti-discrimination ordinance. With a 3-1 vote from the city commission and the support of Mayor Johnny Cummings, it is now illegal in Vicco to discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Vicco is situated in the Appalachian Mountains and has a population of just 334 residents, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Still, it is now only the fourth municipality in Kentucky with LGBT nondiscrimination protections, joining Lexington, Louisville, and Covington. Statewide protections have been proposed in the state’s General Assembly numerous times, but never been brought to debate, despite broad public support.

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