Opinion

Homestead Nursing Center wants to thank all the many volunteers, individuals and businesses who donated their time and prizes for our Fall Festival that was held on Oct. 14.

The Festival’s success would not have been possible without them. Just as important we want to thank the community for coming out and supporting our residents through your purchases and participation.

I confess to being a Facebook fan.  While I don’t spend a lot time on Facebook, I do find it an interesting place to visit.  Recently, a friend posted the following: “If you didn’t hear it with your own ears or see it with your own eyes, don’t invent it with your small mind and share it with your big mouth.”

As chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Resources, it is my responsibility to periodically review programs under my jurisdiction to ensure they are an effective use of taxpayer dollars.

Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and I worked together to accomplish that result with legislation that was signed into law last week by President Obama.  The Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act (H.R. 2883) reauthorizes and improves two important child welfare programs to continue serving children and families in need without adding to the deficit.  

While no one can accurately predict where a traffic accident might take place, information gathered by the Kentucky State Police gives us a pretty good idea of when the odds are certainly more in our favor.

Based on its latest annual report, which was released last week, one of the safest places to be on the highway in 2010 was in a vehicle driven at dawn on a Sunday in March by a woman in her late 60s or early 70s who was making her way between Owensboro and Henderson on the Audubon Parkway.

While traveling the Fourth Congressional District during August, it was clear to me that the top priorities of Kentuckians are jobs and economic growth.  The need for these issues to be our top priority is reinforced by the latest jobs report that zero net jobs were created in America last month, and the unemployment rate remains unacceptably high at more than 9 percent.

As lawmakers returned to Washington last week, President Obama addressed a special joint session of Congress to outline his plan to get the economy moving again and create jobs.

“Buy land,” Mark Twain once said.  “They’re not making any more of it.”

That investment advice has been taken to heart by the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission, which formally celebrated 35 years of service last week.

Since it began, the commission has permanently set aside more than 25,000 irreplaceable acres for future generations.  Their 60 nature preserves range from the Blanton Forest near Virginia to Three Ponds along the Mississippi River.

My name is Billy Sanders and I am the appointed Henry County Jailer.

A few weeks ago, both the Republican and Democratic Parties announced their nominations for the Nov. 8 election. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and declare my intention to run as an independent, write-in candidate. To the citizens of Henry County, I say this: I love my job and I am the best qualified candidate.

Traveling through Kentucky’s Fourth District during the August district work period, I have had the chance to speak with a number of small business owners, local bankers, health care providers and farmers who are very concerned about the impact of new regulations on their businesses.  They want to know: what is being done to deal with the unaccountable onslaught of these job-crushing rules?

While the classroom experience for Kentucky students invariably changes from decade to decade, there is still one constant that binds one generation to the next: A field trip to the state capital.

Thousands of children make the trek each year, seeing such common sites as the larger-than-life statue of President Lincoln in the Capitol Rotunda and, just a few miles away, the Old State Capitol’s self-supporting staircase, which for more than 180 years has been anchored by a well-placed keystone.