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Opinion

  • EDITORIAL: It's OK to look...

    We now have 1.2 million reasons to be optimistic about the possibility of new jobs and industry finally making their mutual way to Anderson County.

    That's the number of dollar bills soon to be neatly stacked in the Economic Development Authority's bank account, courtesy of the privately held Industrial Foundation's decision to disband and hand over its dough.

  • Bugs and football, what a weekend

    I haven't had an interesting weekend to write about in a while, but this past one was chock full of entertainment. OK, so maybe not "chock full," but for an old married person like me, it was entertaining.

    At the very least it taught me a few lessons:

    Two Shannons aren't necessarily braver than one

    My friend Shannon and I took Friday evening to enjoy a little "Shannon time." While the hubby was studying back home in Lexington, she and I had dinner and ice cream in Frankfort.

  • Even a beauty queen needs a diploma

    Test scores have been on the minds of a lot of folks as of late, especially those with children in public schools.

    Most media attention tends to focus on the local schools' progress in meeting academic goals so that the schools can be compared with ones in neighboring communities, or so one state's progress can be matched against another state's.

    Not nearly as much ink is spent on student dropout rates. Perhaps it should be. While Kentucky has made progress, it continues to have one of the nation's highest dropout rates.

  • Go get 'em, mayor

    The right to private property is a great thing ... heck, an American thing.

    But no matter how much property a person owns, it's still stitched to someone else's and we are all accountable to each other to take care of what we own.

    A story in this week's paper serves as a microcosm of how one person's reluctance to maintain his property affects those around him. His back yard is replete with junked vehicles, piles of scrap lumber and other items that are an eyesore.

    His front yard isn't much better.

  • U of L president needs sensitivity...

    If recent newspaper articles about the scandal involving former University of Louisville's College of Education Dean Robert Felner are accurate, school president James Ramsey has some serious fence mending to do with his faculty.

    Felner is no longer with the university and is currently being investigated by the feds for alleged misappropriation of grant money. By most published accounts, he is not a pleasant person.

  • Will Anderson be painted red?

    Column as I see 'em ...

    For all the grumbling and griping about local government, it's amazing that so few people are running for the available city council and school board seats this fall. There is zero competition for three school board seats, and only eight candidates (four of which are incumbents) gunning for six seats on the city council. At a time of year when yards are generally stuffed with signs begging for votes, I've spotted nary a one for school board or city council.

  • Forty years and counting

    Last week my wife and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.

    Other than exchanging cards and perhaps going out to dinner, we usually don't do anything special or exchange gifts on our anniversaries.

    But realizing that I needed do something extra for this anniversary, since staying together for so long has become increasingly rare, I purchased her a set of nice ruby earrings. (I looked on the Internet and discovered that the 40th is the "ruby" anniversary and it's also her birthstone.)

  • Jay's Dickensonian dilemma

    What to do when both people running for a seat in the United States Senate are simply unacceptable?

    That's my dilemma when it comes to choosing between "please elect me to something" challenger Bruce Lunsford (D) and four-term incumbent mealy mouth Mitch McConnell (R).

    What a choice.

  • Keeping it 'Real'

    I admit being none too happy when I saw the little car with Indiana tags and trailer behind it clogging up the area in front of the gas pumps.

    It was Sunday, I was late getting stuff home for dinner and nearly out of gas, but the cheap thrill of pumping marginally cheaper gas suckered me in, and into the chaos I drove.

  • COLUMN: If Ann comes back, judge,...

    If Steve Cornish is feeling haunted lately, I know a likely suspect.

    The way things have been going between the county judge-executive and the Anderson Humane Society, I'm surprised Ann Garrison hasn't exploded from her place in Lawrenceburg Cemetery and planted herself permanently in Cornish's office.

    Decades ago, my mother-in-law founded the local Humane Society on sheer determination. Ann understood our duty as a compassionate society to look out for those among us who are unable to care for themselves.

  • COLUMN: A working stiff at heart

    After a two-month hiatus, I returned to The Anderson News on Monday.

    As is frequently the case when one takes an extended break from work, several colleagues couldn't wait to rib me about returning to the daily grind.

    "Are you surviving your first day back?" asked one colleague at about noon. "Did you have a hard time getting up this morning?" queried another.

  • COLUMN: Judge-executive deserves...

    A quick glance at the editorial pages this week reveals just how unhappy some people are with Judge-Executive Steve Cornish.

    From his zeal to pass a payroll tax last fall to his recent discussion of charging rent to the Humane Society, Cornish has certainly warranted a fair amount of public scrutiny, not to mention a healthy dose of criticism most weeks from this newspaper. Those issues and others have alienated a good portion of the public and his fiscal court, which consistently challenges him on everything from hiring county employees to setting tax rates.

  • COLUMN: Yes, prudes, I said cornhole

    I was Huck Finn and hamming it up big time.

    The cafeteria/gymnasium/auditorium in my tiny elementary school was packed, and the third-grader in me had no compunctions whatsoever of ad-libbing and ignoring the play's script.

    Giddy and full of myself after upstaging Tom, Becky and Indian Joe, I left the stage and was immediately upbraided by a teacher who said, "Everyone has seen you, Benny, now go sit down."

  • COLUMN: Uniting the world in .08...

    Who knew that the Olympics could be summed up in eight hundredths of a second?

    Somewhere around 11:30 Sunday night (EDT), the members of the U.S. men's 4x100-meter freestyle relay team made jaws drop around the nation, if not the world.

    It was a team effort, but Garrett Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones and even Michael Phelps would probably tell you this one really goes to Jason Lezak.

  • LETTER - Fiscal court owes more...

    To the editor:

    This letter is in response to "Fiscal news and notes" which appeared in the July 23 edition of The Anderson News and described purchases made by the county during the Anderson County Fiscal Court's July 15 meeting.

  • COLUMN - Plucking feathers from...

    Thanks to me abusing the power of the press, the judge-executive, mayor, city council and fiscal court can no longer do their jobs.

    That is the opening salvo of an awesome letter I received a couple of weeks ago, blaming me for "stymieing" city and county government via my editorials and columns.

    I lamented in last week's column that I could not print the letter in its entirety because when I called the supposed author, he denied writing the letter.

    Frankly, I believe him and still do.

  • COLUMN - Back to school - woohoo!

    The smell of crayons, the beginning of August and the regular sightings of those big, beautiful, yellow buses - it can only mean one thing: school is in session.

    And, I challenge you to find one person who is more excited about that fact than me. (Now that I don't actually have to go to school anymore, I can be excited about it starting back. Ah, who am I kidding? I'm a total dork, and I always get excited this time of year.)

  • GUEST COLUMN - Have wire, will talk...

    How do we maintain communications during and following a disaster?

    This is a question that I am frequently asked as I make presentations in the community. The question is very valid and certainly has been brought to the forefront in the aftermath of disaster after disaster that has struck the United States.

    As we have read in many media accounts, conventional communications systems seem to fail in disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes.

  • 'Live life until it ends'

    Sometimes you need a reminder of just how valuable life is. My reminder came in the form of a man named Stanley Baldwin.

    I met Baldwin at the Senior Citizens Center on Monday. He was the subject of an interview for a story that also appears in this issue of our paper.

    Long story short, about four years ago Baldwin's kidneys started to fail him, and he's been on dialysis ever since, but instead of getting down about it and moping because of his situation, he prefers to keep a positive outlook on life.

  • Thumbs up, down

    A round of atta-boys and raspberries for those who have earned them:

    Thumbs up to the Lawrenceburg-Anderson County Economic Development Authority for taking the initiative to survey businesses in an effort to figure out what is needed to get our economic development ball rolling.

    The survey, announced Tuesday morning, begins Aug. 10 and a draft of the results is scheduled for release in late September.

    Hopefully, this will lead to industry and jobs coming here instead of just the counties surrounding us.

Copyright © 2013

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