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McCracken County High School Art Project has students walking on American Flag
School Lunches Leaving Kids Hungry By Jason Abston The Harlan County School District is facing harsh criticism over its school lunch program. During a special called meeting on Tuesday, parents voiced concerns about the quality and amount of food received by students within the district. “Kids can’t learn when they’re hungry!” shouted Harlan County residents at the meeting. According to Jack Miniard, director of school and community nutrition, new USDA regulations largely govern food choices and portion sizes. The regulations were enacted as part of the 201 0 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act,. Regulations require that meat or protein requirement is limited to one serving per meal. The only way for students to receive an additional serving is to purchase it themselves. The same issue exists with carbohydrates or starches, such as potatoes (often French fries) that are limited to one serving of threefourths of a cup, Miniard noted. Many students also reject the brown wheat bread the cafeterias are serving now. “It’s strange and different for them, so they don’t like it,” he said. “They say it tastes like vomit,” board member Myra Mosley said — and repeated — when the issue of school milk was raised. According to the Harlan Daily Enterprise, While fruits and vegetables are offered freely and students can take their fill of those, meats and carbohydrates will continue to be served in limited portions only, so students complain of not getting enough food. School board members reportedly support the parents views and seemed to direct their frustrations to the administrators who manage the program.
By Jason Abston An art project at McCracken County High School has caught national headlines and drawn criticism for desecrating the American flag. A flag was laid on the floor and students at the school were encouraged to walk on it as part of the art exhibit. They were also encouraged to write their reflections on how they felt standing on the flag According to Todd Starnes of Fox News, “The display at McCracken County High School, was a re-creation of “Dread” Scott Tyler’s 1 989 installation titled “The Proper Way to Display an American Flag.’” McCracken County Superintendent Nancy Waldrop told WSPD an investigation into the matter is ongoing and would not release the name of the art teacher involved citing it as a personnel issue. Many residents in the area took to social media to express their frustrations of the American Flag being
Lincoln County Man Charged with kidnaping infant By Jason Abston Patrick Rogers, 49, of 1 00 Hurricane Road, has been charged with kidnapping of a minor and second-degree burglary according to the Advocate Messenger. Police say he entered his ex-brother-in-law’s house and removed the infant
desecrated. “The teacher should be fired and run out of town,” wrote one outraged Paducah resident. “I have a son serving to protect Flag McCracken County High School Art Project has students walking on American Flagthis flag at this very moment.” “It is a sad day when the symbol of this great nation is relegated to occupy the floor,” a reader wrote. “It is a truly sorrowful day when the one who placed it there has the nerve to ask, ‘How does it make you feel?’” “I doubt this teacher intended the disrespect her art project exhibited,” one reader wrote. “But nonetheless, it was really a despicable assignment.” Fox News reporter Tod Starns wrote the teacher has since apologized for the controversial art display in a written letter to school administrators
from his crib. The child’s father,Lancaster police officer Ricky Shearer, intervened, taking the child from Rogers and called 911 . “He (Rogers) came in my house and took my baby out of baby’s baby bed and was walking up the road with it,” Shearer said to the dispatcher. “When he heard me yelling, he turned and brought him back into the yard, tried to tell me that he found him walking out in the yard and I know the baby can’t get out of his baby bed.” As of Tuesday afternoon, Rogers was being held on a $5,000 cash bond in the Lincoln County Regional Jail.
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Medical Insurance Fraud By Jason Abston
According to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, the U.S. spends more than $2 trillion on healthcare annually. This figure includes government spending and spending by private individuals and companies. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that $1 out of every $7 spent on Medicare is lost to fraud and abuse. In 2009, Reuters reported that fraud accounted for 1 9 percent of the $600 billion to $800 billion in waste in the U.S. healthcare system annually. Fraud amounts to between $1 25 billion and $1 75 billion annually, including everything from bogus Medicare claims to kickbacks for worthless treatments and other services. According to Rhonda Sloan from the Kentucky Department of Insurance, in 2009, the department received referrals for 95 alleged instances of medical insurance fraud within the state. The number of reported cases has increased this year alone. “Through November 201 0, we have received referrals for 220 alleged instances of medical insurance fraud,” Sloan said, Within Kentucky, the amount of money lost during the first 11 months of 201 0 is estimated by the department to be $1 ,871 ,1 73. The most common way organizations commit medical insurance fraud is billing patients and insurance companies for services that were not performed. Most patients do not receive an itemized bill from the health care provider outlining all of the charges. They simply pay the policy co
Life's Lessons Condition of the Lost Soul By Jason Abston Lamentations 3: 1 5-20, “He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. Within the verses above, we see a picture of a soul that has no peace. It is troubled to its very core and cannot get relief from the misery it is in. This is the picture of the lost souls that this world is filled with. It is a picture of the spiritual condition of our neighbors, friends, family and possibly the condition of someone reading this article. There is no peace to the lost. There are many who try to dismiss this inner war they feel through various ways, but deep within they know there is no real calm. They try all manner of living. They surround themselves with others like them to justify how they feel. But all is in vain. A Christian who is backslidden is also in this condition, but there is a difference in the Christian and the lost. Like the prodigal son, we may get into the pig pen for a time, but we will not remain there. As Dr. McGee once said, “Pigs live in a pig pen; sons live in the house with the father.” The child of God cannot stay in the pig pen any more than the pig could stay within the house of the father. A true Christian may sin, but will not continue
pay and their insurance provider pays for the rest. Another way these organizations commit fraud is to misrepresent the type of service or treatment given, such as billing a patient or insurance company for an office visit when the patient only made a phone call. Charges associated with unnecessary testing drive up costs as well. According to Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch.com, “Some physicians charge insured patients more than uninsured ones but represent to the insurance companies that the higher fee is the usual one,” Barrett said. “This practice is illegal.” Mr. Barrett says that other illegal procedures include unbundling of claims or billing separately for procedures that are normally covered by a single fee. An example would be a podiatrist who operates on three toes submitting claims for three separate operations. Charging more than once for one service is another common way of fraud. If a health care provider is renting office space from another, that provider may refer the patient to the property owner for treatment, which may not even be needed. This type of kickback became so common that in 2000, the Office of the Inspector General issued a fraud alert warning against kickbacks disguised as rental payments Criminal healthcare providers use whatever tactics are available to them. The result is added costs for patients who must pay higher premiums to health insurance companies and taxpayers through higher taxes to cover added costs of government health programs. For more on this issue visit www.kentuckynewsjournal.com
to live in that sin. The soul of the Christian knows the peace the Lord can bring to his soul. Lamentations 3: 21 -26, “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.” Look within yourself. Is there real peace, or do you feel that inward struggle deep in your own soul? The Lord is the only one who can bring peace within the soul of man. He asks nothing but for you to turn from sin and trust in Him. Are you a Christian who has gotten away from the Lord? We all do from time to time. If so, you know the peace the Lord can bring to you. While the Lord Jesus Christ can and does bring us spiritual peace, we will still have troubles in our lives. When He told the apostles to go to the over side of the river, He didn’t say they wouldn’t encounter a storm. In fact, they encountered a very bad one, but the Lord was with them and brought them safely to the other side.
Should police have arrest and citation quotas? By Jason Abston
Law enforcement agencies are charged with protecting the lives of citizens within the community by arresting criminals and enforcing the law. They also have a responsibility to interfere as little as possible with peoples’ lives. For a majority of people in this country the perception of an encounter with the police is that if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear. Suppose a police officer is ordered to make a certain number of arrests during his shift. Now imagine you are the last person he encounters just before the end of that shift and he hasn’t made that quota yet. Does that sound too crazy to actually happen?
According to several news reports, that is exactly what is happening across the nation. The New York Times ran a story on how the policy of stop and frisk has become a new form of the quota system within New York City. WSBTV in Atlanta reported that attorneys representing a woman, who is suing the Atlanta Police Department over a mistaken-identity arrest, have uncovered evidence of a dangerous quota system within that department. Attorney Ashleigh Merchant says she is convinced APD is using a quota system, and she thinks it could tempt an officer to arrest or charge a citizen when it wouldn’t happen otherwise. A news article from Miami Fla. highlighted rumors of a quota, which allegedly called for 2,000 people to be arrested over Memorial Day weekend. The story came to light because of an email complaint from the officers' union. According to the article, in that email, the union called the quota "aggressive, patently unfair, and unjust." Reason.com featured an article about an officer who was fired for complaining to the city of Auburn about the quota system within their department.
Audio recordings of commanding officers instructing officers to arrest a certain number of people and issue set numbers of citations raise some alarming questions. “When I first heard about the quotas I was appalled,” says former Auburn police officer Justin Hanners, who claims he and other cops were given directives to hassle, ticket, or arrest specific numbers of residents per shift. “I got into law enforcement to serve and protect, not be a bully.” Each of the articles I’ve read on this issue says that officers who didn’t make their quotas were punished. Officers who did make their quotas were rewarded with special dinners or in some other way. Even if the courts throw out a case, the citizen affected still may have an arrest record and also must unnecessarily go through the legal process and the stress associated with it. They face the cost of legal fees, missed work or other interferences with their life. There is no greater definition of tyranny than using the brute force of government to bully citizens within a community. Citizens taking an active role in exposing this type of behavior within police departments and pressuring elected officials to end this kind of police brutality is the only way it can be stopped.
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