JUSTICE IN AMERICA - One Year After Breonna Taylor’s Death

"One year after Breonna Taylor’s death, advocates still seek justice, policy changes" PBS NewsHour 3/13/2021

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SUMMARY:  The death of Breonna Taylor one year ago drew increased attention to the use of “no-knock” warrants and police raids.  Three states have since adopted “Breonna’s law,” banning the practice, and major police departments and cities have also prohibited its use.  But Kentucky, Breonna’s home, has not yet banned no-knock warrants statewide.  State Rep. Attica Scott joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss.

AMERICAN POLITICS - Tuesday's Off-Year Election

"The nationwide trends Tuesday’s off-year election results reinforced" PBS NewsHour 11/6/2019

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SUMMARY:  Tuesday's election outcomes represented successes and failures for both parties.  In Kentucky, Democrat Andy Beshear beat Republican Gov. Matt Bevin by a very slim margin, while Mississippi elected a Republican governor.  And Virginia voters put both houses of the state's legislature under Democratic control.  Amna Nawaz reports and Judy Woodruff speaks with the University of Virginia’s Kyle Kondik.

AMERICAN POLITICS - Kentucky the Bluegrass State

"Why pro-Trump Kentucky is facing such a competitive governor’s race" PBS NewsHour 11/4/2019

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SUMMARY:  The Kentucky governor’s race is one of three gubernatorial contests that will serve as key tests of Republican strength ahead of the 2020 presidential election.  President Trump is campaigning there Monday for the incumbent, Matt Bevin, who’s facing a very tight race on Tuesday against Democrat Andy Beshear, the state’s attorney general.  William Brangham reports from the Bluegrass State.

THE FUTURE OF WORK - Appalachia

"In rural Appalachia, can health care become the new coal?" PBS NewsHour 12/3/2018

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SUMMARY:  Pikeville is a small city of 6,700 nestled in the mountains of eastern Kentucky--a rural area that has struggled to survive the decline of the coal industry.  Now, local residents are pinning their futures on health care, which is desperately needed for a population whose life expectancy lags years behind the national average.  Amna Nawaz reports for our new series, The Future of Work.

FEDERAL COURT RULING - Kentucky's Medicaid Work Requirements

"A ruling against Kentucky’s Medicaid work requirements could affect other states" PBS NewsHour 9/1/2018

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SUMMARY:  A federal judge recently ruled against Kentucky’s work requirement for Medicaid recipients after it became the first state to impose the policy.  The judge called the mandate “arbitrary and capricious” in a decision that could have an impact on other states looking to implement a similar policy.  Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, joins Hari Sreenivasan.

GRAPPLING WITH HISTORY - Confederate Monuments

"Confederate monument removed by one Kentucky city finds another home" PBS NewsHour 9/13/2017

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SUMMARY:  Cities around the country are grappling with whether to keep or take down monuments.  In Louisville, Kentucky, a monument honoring confederate soldiers has been the source of controversy for years, even after its removal.  Forty miles to the southwest, in the town of Brandenburg, the statue was taken with open arms.  Jeffrey Brown reports on Kentucky's understanding of its past and present.

TRANSGENDER AMERICA - Kentucky Leads the Way

"As transgender teens struggle, here's how one Kentucky school leads the way" PBS NewsHour 6/7/2016

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SUMMARY:  Gender dysphoria is a difficult situation for a teenager to manage; nearly half of all transgender teens around the country report having suicidal thoughts.  Some schools are taking steps to address the issue, such as Atherton High School in Louisville, which became Kentucky's first to adopt an official policy for transgender students.  Yasmeen Qureshi of Education Week reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Public schools are caught in the middle of a political debate over bathrooms.  The Obama administration says restricting a transgender student's access to restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex is discrimination and can be grounds for withholding funding.

But that directive has set off some angry reaction.  Kentucky is one state where many leaders don't agree with the President.  And we look at how one school in Louisville decided to act proactively before the bigger debate began.

Special correspondent Yasmeen Qureshi of Education Week has the story.  It's part of our weekly education series, Making the Grade.

YASMEEN QURESHI (Education Week):  What's it like to question your gender?

MADDIE DALTON, Student, Atherton High School:  It's a little bit scary in the very beginning, I suppose, because you know that you're going to have to face a lot of discrimination.

Like, go through the YouTube comments on any video about trans people, and you will see, like, just how many people are still, like, openly hostile to this idea.

YASMEEN QURESHI:  Seventeen-year-old Maddie Dalton is transgender.  She says she's always been a girl, but didn't know it.

CASSANDRA KASEY, Parent:  Forever, she had that little widow's peak.

YASMEEN QURESHI:  She came out to her parents when she was 15 years old.

CASSANDRA KASEY:  It was chaotic at first.

And the way I felt it in the very beginning, when I was still coming to terms with it, was, if I had a friend who came to me and said that their child had come out to them as transgender, I would have thought, hooray.  You know, your — this young person is becoming who they are.

So, why would I not afford my own child that same — that same blessing?  So, even though it was difficult, it was the only right thing to do.

EASTERN KENTUCKY - Cancer Epidemic

"Why cancer is so hard to fight in rural Kentucky" PBS NewsHour 3/25/2016

NOTE:  I made a correction in the first paragraph of transcript, shown below, where the transcript mistakenly stated "Judy Woodruff" for the paragraph.

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SUMMARY:  Cancer is epidemic in eastern Kentucky, a result of medical illiteracy, limited access to care, unhealthy lifestyles and poverty.  In fact, life expectancy in the region is five years shorter than the rest of the nation.  But state health officials are aiming to change that with comprehensive prevention and education initiatives.  Special correspondent Jackie Judd reports.

JACKIE JUDD (NewsHour):  There are a few certainties in Sam Wilson's hardscrabble life, bluegrass that sustains him, and cancer that he expects will kill him.

SAM WILSON, Cancer Sufferer:  I was laid up with cancer and didn't know it, in my bladder, kidney, prostate, some in my bowels and colon.

JACKIE JUDD:  In Eastern Kentucky, Appalachia, cancer is epidemic, and has been for decades.  The highest-in-the-nation rates are fueled by a toxic combination of poverty, medical illiteracy, limited access to care, lifestyle choices like smoking, and a fatalism that says knowing you have cancer won't save you.

SAM WILSON:  My whole family, they just won't go to the doctor anymore.  My mother died of cancer and she wouldn't go.  Two of my sisters died with cancer.  But they went to the doctor, but they still passed away.

JACKIE JUDD:  Irene, did you try to convince him to go to the doctor when he wasn't feeling well?

WOMAN:  He finally told me after a few years, and he said, it's so painful, something has to be done.

JACKIE JUDD:  After a few years?  Years?

WOMAN:  Yes, he's very lucky, yes.

JACKIE JUDD:  Not months or weeks, years?

WOMAN:  No.  No.  What, about four years maybe?

JACKIE JUDD:  Kentucky public health officials are trying to change that storyline, to get people screened, so disease is discovered before it is too late to treat.

KENTUCKY - Great Bourbon Theft

aka 'Making Al Capon Proud'

"Crime ring busted for stealing valuable Kentucky bourbon" PBS NewsHour 4/22/2015

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SUMMARY:  In 2013, 200 bottles of valuable Pappy Van Winkle bourbon whiskey were stolen from a locked and secure distillery in Kentucky.  On Tuesday, authorities said they found a bourbon crime ring connected with the heist; nine people were indicted for taking more than $100,000 worth of whiskey, including the Van Winkle.  Jeffrey Brown learns more about the case from Sheriff Pat Melton of Franklin County.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  For some time now, bourbon has been back with a boom.  Domestic whiskey sales are up 40 percent in the past five years.  Some high-end brands, like one called Pappy Van Winkle, can fetch big money, up to $1,000 or $2,000 a bottle or more, depending on its age.

And as prices rose, there was also a bourbon heist in Kentucky that authorities have been trying to solve that has now attracted national attention.

Yesterday, a big crack in the case.

Jeffrey Brown explains.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):   Call it the case of the missing cases.  It goes back at least to 2008 and included a 2013 high-profile theft of some 200 bottles of the much-valued Pappy Van Winkle from a locked and supposedly secure distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky.  Those bottles had an estimated retail value of $25,000.

Yesterday, authorities said it was an inside job, part of an organized crime ring, and indicted nine people for stealing more than $100,000 worth of whiskey overall.

Franklin County Sheriff Pat Melton has been pursuing this case and joins us now from Louisville.

So, Sheriff Melton, an inside job.  How do you steal so much bourbon for so long?

PAT MELTON, Sheriff, Franklin County:  Well, obviously, Toby Curtsinger as a senior employee of Buffalo Trace distillery.  Sean — Searcy was a senior employee of Wild Turkey distillery.  They both had the access to where the bourbon is stored and both worked on loading docks and in transporting moving the bourbon.

So it was actually — you know, you trust your employees.  And they had the opportunity to do it.  And I think it was a continued pattern of behavior.  That’s why we invited them for working with our commonwealth attorney’s office, Larry Cleveland and Zach Becker.  We indicted them for engaging in organized crime.

KENTUCKY - Coal Country

Note that is what happens when ANY area/city becomes too dependent on one industry.

"Will Promise Zone initiative lift Eastern Kentucky’s coal country out of poverty?" PBS NewsHour 10/18/2014

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NARRATOR:  In this south central mountain country, over a third of the population has faced chronic unemployment.

MEGAN THOMPSON (NewsHour):  For as long as anyone can remember, the coal country of Eastern Kentucky has struggled. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson came through here after he declared the War on Poverty.  This is the area became the face of his campaign.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON:  We are just not willing to accept the necessity of poverty.

MEGAN THOMPSON:  Back then, the poverty rate in some areas was around 60 percent.

Eastern Kentucky has made big strides in the last 50 years since Lyndon Johnson came through here.  But even still, the area continues to struggle today.

MEGAN THOMPSON:  The poverty rate in Eastern Kentucky has dropped, but in some parts still hovers around 30 percent.  Unemployment in some counties is more than 10 percent, much higher than the national average.  And the region is still dependent on coal, which has meant trouble as the industry’s gone south.

MEGAN THOMPSON:  How big is the coal industry?

TOBEY MILLER:  Everything here stems off of coal.

MEGAN THOMPSON:  Like many here, Tobey Miller’s roots run deep, and they run through the coal mines.

TOBEY MILLER:  Well, my Papaw, he worked in the mines.  Used to tell me stories about when he moved here.

MEGAN THOMPSON:  Miller’s papaw – his grandfather – bought the family farm in Knox County in 1941 with the money he earned from coal.  Miller’s dad worked in coal.  And straight out of high school, Miller did too, welding the heavy machinery used in the mines.  Miller’s family – his wife, two daughters and granddaughter – lived well.  He earned more than $50,000 a year.  That’s double the median household income around here.  But then a year ago, Miller was told his job was being cut.

ACA HEALTH CARE - Kentucky's Example of How It Should Work

"For Uninsured, Clearing a Way to Enrollment" by ABBY GOODNOUGH, New York Times 11/4/2013

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Kelli Cauley’s fingers raced over her keyboard as she asked the anxious woman at her side a series of questions.  What was her income?  How many people lived in her household?  Did she smoke?  (“That’s the only health question it asks,” Ms. Cauley said of the application they were completing.)

The woman, a thin 61-year-old who refused to give her name, citing privacy concerns, had come to the public library here to sign up for health insurance through Kentucky’s new online exchange.  She had a painful lump on the back of her hand and other health problems that worried her deeply, she said, but had been unable to afford insurance as a home health care worker who earns $9 an hour.

Within a minute, the system checked her information and flashed its conclusion on Ms. Cauley’s laptop: eligible for Medicaid.  The woman began to weep with relief.  Without insurance, she said as she left, “it’s cheaper to die.”

Known as “navigators” or “assisters,” people like Ms. Cauley are going to work across the country, searching for the uninsured and walking them through the enrollment process.  Under the Affordable Care Act, these trained, paid counselors typically work for community groups or government agencies, with a mandate to provide impartial guidance.  Given the problems plaguing the federal online insurance exchange used by 36 states, the workers have become even more important in helping people understand their insurance options.

But in Kentucky and some of the 13 other states that have their own exchanges, which in general are running more smoothly than the federal site, watching navigators on the job also provides the clearest view yet of how enrollment could work once the technical problems of HealthCare.gov are resolved.

President Obama and proponents of the health care law have held up Kentucky in recent weeks as a model for the national enrollment effort.  The state is far ahead of most of the nation in signing up people: As of Nov. 1, more than 27,854 Kentuckians had enrolled in Medicaid under the law’s expansion of that program, and 4,631 had signed up for private plans through the state-run exchange, known as Kynect.  The state says it is enrolling 1,000 people a day.

In contrast to the federally run exchange with all its problems, Kynect has had relatively few — for several reasons, Kentucky officials said.  The primary contractor, Deloitte, worked closely with the state agency that runs health programs, ensuring guidance and oversight.  Unlike the federal government, the state tested its online exchange early and often, so problems were addressed before the website went live.  And people can check whether they qualify for Medicaid or subsidies without creating an account, a requirement that caused huge bottlenecks on the federal exchange.

While most states lack enough navigators to reach all who need help, Kentucky is spending $11 million in federal money to promote its exchange, and it shows: Ads for Kynect blanket television and radio, city buses and highway billboards in Louisville.

“Compared to other states, we’re sitting pretty,” said Jacquelynn Engle, who is overseeing the sign-up effort at Family Health Centers, a network of seven clinics in Louisville that treats thousands of the city’s uninsured.  The clinics enrolled 421 people in October and helped an additional 260 start the application process.  Officials in Louisville, a city of 600,000, have set a goal of enrolling about 29,000 people in Medicaid and 27,000 more in private plans by mid-2014.

So far, a total of 5,200 have signed up in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, far more than in any other county in the state.

Still, the first month’s tally barely starts Kentucky on the path toward enrolling the 640,000 uninsured residents in the state who are eligible for health coverage, a goal that Gov. Steven L. Beshear, a Democrat, has said is urgent because the state has high rates for smoking and obesity, among other health problems.  And if Medicaid sign-ups continue to far outpace enrollments in private exchange plans, with only the sickest people buying private coverage, the cost of premiums could rise.

Though people can sign up on their own, navigators can help those confused by the sea of insurance options.  The navigators listen to people voice their hopes and fears about the law, and their hard stories about being uninsured.  Often hugs are exchanged.  Sometimes tears flow.

EDUCATION - Learning Based vs Testing Based

"Kentucky School District Wants Project Based Learning to Outshine Testing" PBS Newshour 4/3/2013

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SUMMARY:  A public school district in Danville, Ky., has turned its emphasis away from traditional testing in order to encourage creativity and let students learn by doing.  NewsHour special correspondent for education John Merrow reports on "deep learning," and how it requires commitment from educators, students and parents.