ASHLAND —
Many distracted drivers detected
As I was out and about doing the errands needed to run a household, I was amazed at the amount of adult drivers whipping and swerving around our city streets with disregard for public safety or courtesy while chatting away on their “smart” phones.
Several times I was ushered to the edge of the roadway while a mother with a SUV full of children drifted into my lane while checking her mascara in the mirror and sending a text on her “smart” phone.
I am constantly amazed how these other drivers seem to assume that since I am paying attention to the task at hand, they can turn their cars into a personal office and set the automobile on autopilot.
Why is it my responsibility to make sure that these multitasking individuals are not taking out my quarter panels or shoving my rear bumper into my trunk? If these phones are so “smart,” looks like they could put some kind of app on the thing that disables it if detects motion over 10 miles per hour. And the public service announcements on the radio asking teenage drivers to put the phone down while driving also should be aimed at the mothers and fathers setting horrible examples by texting, talking, emailing and networking on their “not-so-smart” phones.
In closing, please, fellow drivers, have some common sense and put away the phone for the measley five minutes it takes to get to the doctor’s office or Kroger’s or whatever. I promise that whatever conversation waits for those few moments will be well worth the time used for attentive driving.
The weather is warming up and more people will be out and about. Let's keep them safe by paying attention behind the wheel and have some courtesy for one another.
Cat Stewart, Ashland
Lee Hamilton flunks math
I am writing in reference to the March 10 column by Lee Hamilton. My question is, “What pie-in-the-sky gated neighborhood did he fall out of ?”
He says, “The biggest part of the federal budget goes to Social Security and unemployment.” Then he says, “Health programs make up over half of the federal budget.” Then he says, “Military programs make up over a fourth of the federal budget.”
Mr. Hamilton may have been be a member of our Congress, but he sure flunked math fractions in the sixth grade! Think about it.
Mr. Hamilton calls Social Security and Medicare “entitlements” and defends free lunches, free college tuition, free day care (called preschool by some people), food stamps, foreign aid and other federal handouts.
I’ve got news for Mr. Hamilton. People like me paid into Social Security and paid a “Medicare tax” most of our lives. If you allow for inflation, we will never in our lifetime draw out all we paid into Social Security and Medicare. Also if we get full Medicare, we have to pay for it out of our pockets when we get it! These are not “free rides” or “entitlements” as Mr. Hamilton calls them. We paid for this.
I think that before one penny is cut from a working person’s Social Security or Medicare every bit of the free federal programs like free lunches, foreign aid, food stamps and other federal welfare programs should be completely done away with. You would have a lot more people going to work!
Also Mr. Hamilton, please work on your math. It's pretty bad when a working stiff like me can pick you to pieces. You would have never passed Mrs. Calhoun’s English class or Mrs. Lewis’ math class.
Randall K. McGlone, Grayson
Opinion
In Your View
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Funding Rupp
The use of $2.5 million in coal severance tax revenue to help pay for renovations at Rupp Arena in Lexington has drawn the ire of some county leaders in the eastern Kentucky coalfields.
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Modest increase
Full-time students at Ashland Community and Technical College will be paying an average of $60 more in tuition this fall under a modest 2.86 percent increase approved Friday by the Kentucky Community and Technical College System Board of Regents.
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In Your View
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In Your View
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The next step
The people — or at least those who took the time to vote in Tuesday’s special election — have spoken. The issue of alcohol sales in Grayson has ben settled for at least the next three years.
In an outcome that surprised many, Grayson voters rather convincingly for the legal sale of alcohol in the city for the first time since 1937. With 511 voters answering in the affirmative to the question, “Are you in favor of alcoholic beverages in Grayson, Ky.?” as opposed to 393 voting “no,” the results were not even close. The measure passed in all seven of the city’s precincts. -
Words of thanks
Thank you letter
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Top Father
In the Spade family, the vote was unanimous. Both 12-year-old Emma Spade, who will be a seventh-grader at Verity Middle School this fall, and Emma’s 11-year-old brother Will, who attends Hagar Elementary, both thought so highly of their dad — Ponderosa Elementary School principal Matt Spade — that they both wrote essays nominating him for the Ashland Breakfast Kiwanis Club’s annual Father of the Year award, presented annually on the Tuesday before Father’s Day.
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An unselfish act
Even before the start of the recent Boyd County Health Department’s Bicycle Rodeo, Gavin Eckard said that if he won one of the two bicycle given away at the event, he would give his new bike to someone who needed it more than he did.
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Crop still banned
When their colleagues in the U.S. Senate rejected their efforts to legalize industrial hemp production as part of the Senate farm bill, Kentucky’s two Republican senators — Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and freshman Rand Paul — reacted to the Senate refusal to include their hemp proposal in the bill by saying they would oppose the comprehensive farm bill.
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It's not the breed
Lorie Akers wants the Ashland City Commissioner to adopt an ordinance banning pit bulls in the city. Since she claimed her Chihuahua Paco was attacked and killed by a neighbor’s pit bull while the little dog was chained in the back yard, it is understandable that Akers is worried that her children and other pets could be endangered by pit bulls.
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Funding Rupp
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