Fayette County needs foster families for 320 teenagers. Will you help? | Opinion

Foster families needed

For 43 years, Gateway Children’s Services in Mt. Sterling has provided “A Lifeline for Change” to Kentucky’s children who have been abused, neglected and abandoned.

Our Therapeutic Foster Care program serves children:

▪ Ages 0-21

▪ From across all of Kentucky

▪ Children who reunite with biological families

▪ Children who will be adopted

We urgently need families to foster teenagers. The state of Kentucky is currently in a crisis – there are not enough families willing to accept teenagers into their homes! Teenagers are smart, funny, resilient, and need just as much love and support as younger children. We are currently offering financial incentives to any family that certifies and accepts a teenager into their home.

Fayette County has only 63 foster homes accepting children ages 12 years and older. There are currently 320 children age 12 years and older in out of home care in Fayette County. That means that that only 59.5 percent of the need is met.

Gateway Children’s Services is a registered 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit organization in Mount Sterling, KY. Please call Olivia Ledford at 859.498.9892, email fostercare@gatewaychildren.org, or visit gatewaychildrensservices.org/foster-care-services/ or facebook.com/gatewayfostercare to learn more.

Olivia Ledford, Gateway Children’s Services, Mt. Sterling

https://www.kentucky.com/sports/college/kentucky-sports/uk-basketball-men/article287643230.html

BBN

When we’re born, we’re dressed in Blue and White, our nation now expanded.

A pole, backboard and goal placed in the yard, no grass to surround it.

We teach our young to play the game, hard work is demanded.

With dreams to play, for UK, and yearning it would be granted.

Our love for the game instilled for life, the breast plate that we wear.

Kentucky Fans are passionate because we really care.

We come from our family farms, our factories and our mines.

When duty calls, we show up, each and every time.

Winning championships and hanging banners is our tradition.

A challenge that’s embraced by all and accepted as our mission.

In the rafters of our baron’s house, 8 banners suspend in time.

For us, 8 is not enough, it’s time we hang number 9.

We’ve been called fabulous, runts and unforgettable.

Comebackers, fiddlers and untouchables.

Don’t call us crazy, we’re born to love this game.

Our teams and us, stand as one, never to refrain.

With reverence for the game, 22,000 + will be at our station.

We bleed blue. We are the Wildcats. So call us, “Big Blue Nation.”

Tommy Ramsey, Spartanburg, SC

Mack Truck

Here we go again! Almost eight years ago this country was hit by a Mack truck named Donald Trump, and if we don’t wake up it’s going to happen again and this will be more like a fleet of semis.

I find it unfathomable that this one person can be free to run for political office when he’s not even suitable to be a dog catcher. He has broken so many laws, continually snubbed his nose at every great institution we have and shown utter disrespect for our true heroes, veterans. He regards women with the same disdain as he has for POW’s. He flaunts religion when it suits him, yet has probably broken every commandment. He wants to be a dictator and holds Putin in higher regard than American statesmen.

The USA has been totally dumbed down if women, the religious, our military, law enforcement or immigrants can support his re-election. If this happens, neither the Hammer nor For the People can right the collision that will occur. The ensuing crash will effectively destroy what this country was founded on and the outlook is abysmal. We chant USA, not God Save the King!

Sara Wellnitz, Lexington

Black voters

Polls keep reiterating that President Joe Biden is losing support among black voters. I can tell you first-hand that those polls aren’t accurate.

The majority of African American males in this country don’t participate in polls or surveys. Many young black men don’t vote, period! Let me tell you why black people are angry with President Biden. Inflation. Extremely elevated grocery prices.

Black people, especially young black men, think the President of the United States can just wave a magic wand and immediately make grocery prices drop to what they were pre Covid. Remember when President Donald Trump’s “yes men” were telling him he could do whatever he wanted to do because he was President of the United States? Many black men truly believe that. I have to say this - there are way too many black men who aren’t trying hard enough to succeed. The US has programs in every state started years ago to help black people get ahead in life. Unfortunately, many of us don’t have it in us to take advantage of those opportunities. Instead they continue to work menial jobs and complain about how their lives suck, when they aren’t really trying to help themselves.

Yolanda Averette, Lexington

Dog behavior

This regards an incident at the Masterson Station Dog Park and a participant in the Bluegrass Classic Sheep Dog Trials (BGC). To be brief, a woman walked her sheepdog on a leash into the off-leash dog park, and then backhanded my dog in the face when it approached her dog. My dog was acting very calm, showing no signs of aggression. A very loud and profane altercation ensued. This same woman kicked at another dog on her way out of the park, and started a second profane altercation with another patron. She is not the only BGC participant that has shown “attitude problems.”

Regular patrons of Masterston Station Dog Park have seen many BGC participants fail to clean up after their dogs, as is required by local ordinances, leaving their mess for others to deal with. It’s not a pasture.

If the BGC cannot ensure that the participants will abide by local ordinances and refrain from disrespectful, harmful, or abusive behavior toward locals and their pets while they are in the park, then Lexington should revoke their permits and force them to go elsewhere. Hopefully, in a very rural setting where their antics will cause far fewer problems than where they are now.

Ron Hargrove, Georgetown

Polling problems

Some say that the recent New York Times/Siena Poll indicates that men don’t understand how to decently treat women. They’re arriving at this conclusion by combining the responses of men who responded that former President Donald Trump respects women “a lot” with men who responded that he respects women “some.”

So, they would have us believe these two groups of male respondents are about the same. Are they really about the same, I wonder? I’m thinking that these two responses might indicate the difference between absolute minds and nuanced minds. That’s a big difference, if you ask me.

We see similar combinations of opinion poll responses quite a bit nowadays. When opinion polls offer four responses, the activists, commentators, and politicians try to reduce to those responses down to just two to suit their agendas.

That looks like the logic fallacy of false equivalence to me. Let’s ask ourselves why any opinion poll would ask four questions, instead of two, in the first place.

Tom Louderback, Louisville

Presidential immunity

Former President Donald Trump has had “rich kid immunity” his whole life that he used to defraud the investors, contractors, vendors, and customers of all his failed, bankrupt businesses. Now he thinks he should have “presidential immunity” so he can get away with trying to overthrow the government. His new lawyers are pushing this fantasy while his old lawyers have all been indicted as criminal co-conspirators. Many have already pled guilty in exchange for testifying against Trump in court. They are all facing disbarment too. John Eastman, the lawyer behind the “fake elector” fraud, is appealing his disbarment in California. A far cry from his fiery speech to the insurrectionist mob on January 6, 2021.

Trump’s current lawyers are appealing “presidential immunity” to the Supreme Court. No doubt Clarence Thomas, whose wife was part of Trump’s conspiracy, will not recuse himself and will probably vote for Trump. The other conservative justices may follow the Constitution and agree that no person is above the law. But who knows? These are the guys who voted for “Citizens United,” a decision as bad as the worst of the 19th century Supreme Court decisions, “Dred Scott versus Sandford” and “Plessy versus Ferguson.”

Kevin Kline, Lexington

Lawlessness

If you’re over age 35, you always heard the phrase “Crime doesn’t pay.” But in the new world of progressive politics crime does in fact pay and it pays well. The current situation in America is reflective of a society that is so permissive that historic crimes are now simply ignored and criminals are free to roam as lawlessness continues to escalate nationwide.

One of the primary reasons for the adoption of the U.S. Constitution was the mob rule that resulted during government under the Articles of Confederation. Founding Fathers, John Dickerson, James Wilson, Robert Morris and Elbridge Gerry all suffered at the hands of the mob during Shay’s rebellion and other riots.

In today’s society illegals enter America with no regard for any laws, squatters seize private property, drugs cartel import millions of dollars into the country, thugs go free without bail and businesses are forced to watch criminals steal from their stores with impunity.

America is without law enforcement and taxpayers are billed for the tab. It’s wrong and must be changed, so watch how you vote this fall!

Robert Adams, Lexington

McConnell legacy

Humana co-founder David Jones was a major U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) supporter and friend. He was also a patriot who took an oath as a Marine to protect the Constitution. Towards the end of his life he realized he couldn’t be both.

Jones wrote to McConnell to express his alarm at Trump’s foreign policy - his “wanton destruction” of U.S. alliances, particularly NATO and his deference to Putin. Jones reminded McConnell that the Senate had “prodigious powers” to constrain an errant president, and it was his job to use them. McConnell did nothing.

Shortly before his 2019 death, Jones pressed McConnell, “What is the value of choosing judges for a republic while allowing its constitutional structures to fail and its strength and security to crumble?”

McConnell’s answer: Hundreds of judges like Aileen Cannon with little judicial experience who determine cases by party rules instead of the rule of law. Partisan Supreme Court justices who support Jan. 6 insurrectionists, accept (but not report) lavish “gifts” from billionaires with cases before the court, and who overturn longstanding legislation protecting voting and women’s right to make their own health decisions when pregnant. A Republican Party that repeats Putin propaganda. This is McConnell’s legacy.

Margaret Groves, Frankfort

Compiled by Liz Carey