Academy Award-Winning Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen directed this new ad taking on the coal industry, released by the Reality Coalition. 

As one of a dozen recent community education events aimed at restoring voting rights for former felons, the Madison County Chapter of KFTC organized a gathering earlier tonight, inviting former felon Tayna Fogle to speak to a crowd of community members and Berea College Students.

Over forty people turned out, and most signed postcards to legislators and took home call-in action alert sheets to use to call their legislators in the morning. 

"I made a mistake... but I'm not a mistake"

                                 - Tayna Fogle, KFTC Former Felon Spokeswoman

   

   

Dana and her son Stockton

As a mother, I’m fed up with the questionable choices made by the leaders who are entrusted to serve and protect their citizens. As a resident of Kentucky, I need to know that our leadership is willing to invest in the life that my son will have here. I need to know that when he’s old enough to go to school, he’ll have every opportunity to learn and succeed as well as his friends in Maryland and his cousins in California.

And I need to know that the air he breathes and the water he drinks is just as safe here as it is anyplace else and that he will experience a community in which people are treated fairly and justly.

Three little pieces of news led me to believe that perhaps a change had come to the Commonwealth and that we were on our way to a Kentucky I could be proud of. First, our elected officials started echoing Rep. Jim Wayne’s call for a comprehensive tax overhaul. Second, some House Republicans proposed a plan to expand the sales tax to a few of our untaxed services. Third, after years of watching our children’s class sizes swell, our teachers’ pay fails to keep up, our justice system and health services leave more and more people behind, and our colleges become unaffordable, even Senate President David Williams admitted that we need new revenue.

These three little pieces have allowed me to think that a positive change would come to our state. Like many Kentuckians, I was hopeful about the likelihood of real reforms.

Unfortunately, however, the closed doors that hid away the negotiations among House, Senate and executive leadership also prevented them from hearing the call for change coming from across the state. So instead, we get a plan to raise the cigarette tax by 30 cents, a retail sales tax on alcohol and deep budget cuts.

That’s the plan that’s supposed to save the day?

The legislature has a short memory. As easy as it is to blame the severity of Kentucky’s budget needs on the economic crisis, it isn’t accurate to do so. We knew about the revenue shortfall last year, but the legislature didn’t do anything about it except make another round of budget cuts, some deeper than the three rounds of cuts before that.

And although Gov. Beshear acted surprised to learn of that shortfall, the legislators knew better. The legislature-commissioned Fox Report confirmed back in 2001 that Kentucky’s tax system was out of date and could not sustain a basic level of services. Years of bad choices have left us with chronically underfunded programs, unaffordable higher education, abandoned school programs and unenforced environmental laws.

The legislature, once again, has made a big mistake. We now have a tax structure that asks the lowest income-earners to contribute about 10 percent of their income to state and local taxes, and asks the wealthiest to contribute not even 6 percent.

It’s the low- and middle-income earners — not our state’s wealthiest, with incomes above $300,000 —who are being hurt the most by our economic recession. Balancing our budget on their backs has never been fair, and now it seems especially unwise. Why aren’t we moving toward solutions that make our tax structure more balanced and, therefore, more sound?

Instead of adding some patchwork taxes that, in their weakness, will do very little for the public good, our elected officials could have moved us closer to a tax structure that reflects our values of fairness and cooperation.

Where’s the real revenue reform that the Commonwealth so badly needs?

Our taxes fit into the old trend. They are relics of a time when people bought into the falsity of small government connoting efficient government. Continuing to move in this direction will dig us deeper into the situation we are in right now, suffering from unemployment, extractive industries and facilitating policies that don’t work.

We all want our state to be efficient. But we won’t make it efficient by continuing the practices that make it ineffective. Our state government can only be efficient if it is able to do the work that we have charged it to do — help us protect and educate ourselves so that we can all realize our potential to succeed. Efficiency takes some investment. Our leaders can choose to support these investments, or they can choose — as they have — to only do what makes our budget legal.

I want our leaders to make better choices. I want them to invest in a better Kentucky.

From tonight's Presidential Address to Congress and the American people, followed by a response from Republican Governor Bibby Jindal.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

KFTC is joining with the United Mine Workers, the Appalachian Citizens Law Center, the AFL-CIO and others in calling for the defeat of House Bill 119.

HB 119 would reduce the number of Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs, also known as mine emergency technicians or METs) required at smaller mines.  Currently the law requires that two EMTs be available when miners are working.

But HB 119 would reduce that to just one miner if the shift is less than 18 miners.

“We worked so hard to get new laws to protect the miners and now the politicians want to start taking them away when they think the people aren’t paying attention,” said Carl Shoupe, a disabled coal miner, former UMWA organizer and KFTC member in Harlan County.

He expressed surprise and disappointment that the attempt to weaken this law is coming from eastern Kentucky legislators. HB 119 is cosponsored by Reps. Keith Hall of Pike County, Ancel Smith who represents Knott, Magoffin and part of Letcher county, and Ted Edmonds who represents Breathitt, Estill and Lee counties.

Rep. Hall told the Lexington Herald-Leader that he was looking out for  "the small Mom-and-Pop operators," who have trouble keeping trained EMTs available. Read John Cheeve's story here.

Hall has interests in coal mining operations that have fewer than 18 workers per shift.

The required number of EMTs at each mine was just increased by the General Assembly through the passage of Kentucky’s landmark mine safety law in 2007. That legislation was in direct response to and designed to prevent situations like the accident that claimed the life of David “Bud” Morris at H & D Mining in Cumberland (Harlan County), where the only EMT on the shift failed to treat Morris’ life-threatening injuries. Had there been another EMT on site, Morris likely would not have bled to death.

B
Bud Morris

According to the federal accident investigation report, both the ambulance service medic and the emergency room doctor who treated Morris stated that the results would have been different had Morris been properly treated by the EMT at the mine.

On Monday, a letter was delivered to all members of the Kentucky House asking them to vote against HB 119. That letter came from the United Mine Workers of America, the Appalachian Citizens Law Center, the Kentucky AFL-CIO and Morris’ widow, Stella Morris.

“The financial impact of maintaining the current number of METs is small, especially in light of the life-saving services which they provide,” the letter stated.  “Now is not the time to cut back on safety measures that were so recently enacted. Saving a few dollars for a coal mine operator is not worth risking a miner’s life.”

The Kentucky House could vote on HB 119 this week.  The legislation previously passed the House Natural Resources Committee without discussion or dissent even though Reps. Jim Gooch, Fitz Steele, Tim Couch, and Hubert Collins are on the committee, all of whom represent coal mining districts.

“There ought to be more EMTs than less. You never know the situation when someone is going to get hurt,” said Elmer Lloyd of Cumberland, also a KFTC member. “Instead of cutting back on EMTS, everyone in the mines ought be qualified for the training.”

MET training is provided free by the Office of Mine Safety and Licensing at all six district office locations in the state.

Lloyd said when he worked at the Scotia mine the miners’ contract required an ambulance standing outside and two EMTS on site. But that was when miners were represented by the UMWA.

The U.S Census Bureau has opened offices in Lexington and Louisville and will be filling 2,000 jobs across the state for early census operations.  In 2009, they will open five additional census offices in Kentucky to carry out the 2010 Census and will need people in every community in the state.

The jobs pay up to $13/hour and the door-to-door census jobs are some of the very best canvassing experience you can get in a non-election year.  We encourage all of our members to consider applying - because it's decent money and because you'll build skills that are valuable in community organizing and in non-partisan Voter Empowerment work especially.

The jobs are temporary, and some are part-time. Visit www.2010censusjobs.gov for more information and to apply. You can also call toll-free 1-866-861-2010 if you're interested.

Teri Blanton, Sen Kathy Stein and Rep. John Yarmuth

Please take a moment tomorrow and for the rest of the week to leave a message on the Legislative Message line to let your legislators know you support House Bill 70 to restore voting rights to former felons who have served their debt to society.

It's so easy and just takes a moment!

1. Call 1-800-372-7181 (The Message Line is open 7am-11pm Monday through Thursday, 7am-6pm on Friday.)

2. Ask to leave a message for some senators.

3. The operator will take down your name and address.

4. They'll ask you who to leave a message for. I'd suggest Dan Kelly, David Williams, Damon Thayer, and Robert Stivers and your own Representative and Senator (if you don't know who that is, they'll let you know).

5. Leave a message like "I support HB 70 to restore voting rights to former felons."

That's it! - You've just made a big impact on restoring voting rights for over 186,000 Kentuckians!

For extra credit, please call back with the same message for "members of the Senate State and Local Government Committee"

Oh - and get your friends to call too!

For more information on this issue, click Here.