Join the Central Kentucky Chapter of Kentuckians For Single Payer Healthcare for a film and forum about single payer and Healthcare For All!

Janet Tucker of the Central Kentucky Chapter of both KFTC and KFSP says, "This question of single payer is very important issue for people in Kentucky.   So many of us are without health insurance, and we have a healthvcare system that isn't meeting the needs of the people.  This is a film and discussion about change."

WHAT:
America's Hope: Healthcare For All - A film & forum

WHEN:
Saturday August 29
10:00 a.m. Film: PBS FRONTLINE documentary "Sick Around the World"
11:00 a.m. Richard Dawahare - "Why Reform? Why Single Payer?
11:30 a.m. Panel - experts answer your questions.

WHERE:
Kentucky Theatre
214 East Main Street
Lexington

Free & open to all.

SPONSOR:
Central KY Chapter
Kentuckians for Single Payer Healthcare
http://www.kyhealthcare.org/

Representative Robin Webb has won the race for 18th District KY Senate today, by a slim 282 vote margin.

Robin Webb (D) - 8684 Votes - 48.1%
Jack Ditty (R) - 8402 Votes - 46.6%
Guy Gibbons (I) - 953 Votes - 5.3%

Total Registered Voters = 76,393
Total Votes Cast = 18,039
Turnout = 23.6%

Although 23.6% voter turnout is low, the turnout was slightly better than the average Special Election, perhaps because of the massive $370,000 candidates spent on their campaigns over the few weeks they ran - plus substantial statewide media attention.

This comes out to an incredible $20.51 spent per vote cast on average, not counting independent expenditures or any money the campaigns may have raised in the last few days of the campaign.  The high price tag for this race is a bad sign for our Democracy - showing the challenge of candidates who do not have access to large amounts of money.

The broader backdrop for this race is of course the battle over control of the Kentucky Senate.  With the Democratic Party's gain of this seat, they  now have 17 members to the Republicans' 21 (counting Leeper who is Independent, but caucuses with the Republicans).  Republican Majority Leader Dan Kelly is expected to vacate his seat later this year, triggering another election Senator Leeper is rumored to be considering a move as well. 

As always, KFTC endorsed no candidate in this race, but we actively contacted our members through email, mail, and phone, asking them to learn about the candidates, vote, and remind their friends and neighbors to do the same. 

Members of the Madison County Chapter held their chapter annual meeting last night in Berea.  “The annual chapter meeting is a great opportunity to reflect on the previous years work and gear up to move the Commonwealth’s democracy forward,” said Madison County KFTC Chapter co-chair Jeff From.

The first hour of the meeting focused on business that all KFTC chapters handle once a year:  electing new chapter officers, setting issue priorities for the upcoming year, and more.  The second hour featured a conversation and questions with State Representative Harry Moberly (D-Richmond). 

The group talked to Rep. Moberly about everything from clean energy to voting rights.  Rep. Moberly had positive comments to make about KFTC’s work in interjecting our social and economic justice issues into the public dialogue.  He was also positive about many of the issues we raised and agreed to meet with us again before the session to dig even deeper into our issues.

“I always look forward to meetings when our local elected officials are speaking.  Not only does it give us a chance to talk about issues that are important to us, it also helps us develop a good rapport with our representatives in Frankfort,” said Berea KFTC member Toby Wilcher.  “During the legislative session, when KFTC members spend a great amount of time lobbying legislators from all over Kentucky, we have a built-in, cordial working relationship with our own legislators, which often proves to be very beneficial,” she added.

"Rock Out For Justice!"

The Bowling Green Chapter has organized "Rock Out For Justice!" -- a benefit show starring some of Bowling Green and E-town's most beloved bands!  Only a $5 cover, and all the proceeds go to KFTC.

Friday, August 28 at 8:00pm at the Wesley Foundation at 1355 College Street.

A big thanks to our performers--Derbyandme, The Budget Band, Polytheon, Canago, and Austin 'Been Broox' Ashford--and the Wesley Foundation for letting us use the space!

(Come, by all means!  It's a guaranteed good time and we want to see you there.  But if you can't come, consider contributing $5 anyway!)

There will be a special election  TOMORROW (Tuesday) from 6am to 6pm in the 18th Senatorial District (all of Bracken, Carter, Greenup, Lewis, Mason, and Robertson Counties).  The election is to fill a seat vacated by Senator Charlie Borders.

The candidates appearing on the ballot will be Robin Webb (D), Jack Ditty (R), and Guy Gibbons (I).

If you live in these counties, please do everything you can to learn about the candidates, remind your friends, and get out and vote!  If you know anyone in this district, please call them and talk to them about the election.

For more information, including voting locations and County Clerk contact information, click Here.

There are a lot of challenges to running and winning in Easten Kentucky. 

But is all hope lost? 

Heck no!

               - Mike Dixon

In partnership with Wellstone Action, KFTC organized a Candidate and Campaign training this past weekend in Hindman with 30 participants.  The focus was overwhelmingly on running for office in Eastern Kentucky, but some members from other parts of the state came as well.

The goal was to encourage people to run for office or to help their friends run by providing a top-notch campaign training focusing on campaign planning and budgeting, telling your story, grassroots voter contact, fundraising, base-building, stump speeches, developing a winning message and more.

"KFTC nationally is held up as a kick-ass gold standard of community organizing," said Ben Goldfarb, Director of Training Programs for Wellston Action.  "I'm a little nervous to be training you all, but I think it will be great."

Local members with experience in Eastern KY races joined us to add what they've learned locally to the Wellstone model of running for office including Mike Dixon (mayor of Blackey), Bennie Massey (Lynch City Council), Carl Shoupe, (Benham City Council) and Randy Wilson (recent candidate for his Jackson Rural Electric Co-op).

"A big part of running is getting out there and talking to your neighbors, getting to know them, and talking about issues that they care about.  A lot of us are doing that anyway and we should be doing it even more."

This is the fourth time Wellstone Action has visited Kentucky and KFTC members have participated in each of the trainings.  We're considering another training if the Voting Rights constitutional amendment gets on the ballot next year. 

We're trying to schedule a smaller candidate training based on what we learned this weekend, tentatively in October in Lexington to replicate pieces of this training.  We'll put it on the KFTC Calendar as soon as we settle on a date and location.

Interested in speaking out for a national health care program? 

The schedule so far for health care forums, according to the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and the offices of these congresspeople:

• Representative John Yarmuth (District 3) has three tele-town hall meetings planned this month to answer constituents' questions about health care reform. 
  
• A live town hall meeting is being planned for September 2 at 6:30om at Central High School in Louisville.  You can call his office to register any time after early next week. The number is 502.582.5129.

• Representative Brett Guthrie (District 2) will speak outside of the Warren County Justice Center at 1001 Center Street in Bowling Green from 1:00 - 2:00 PM on August 22, 2009.
• Representative Whitfield (District 1) will hold tele-town hall meetings on August 27 for his constituents. 
  
• Neither Senators Bunning nor McConnell nor Representatives Chandler (District 6), Rogers (District 5), and Davis (District 4) have health care reform forums planned.  Their phone numbers are below:
  

Rep. Chandler -- 859.219.1366

Rep. Rogers -- 606.439.0794    

Sen. Bunning -- 859.341.2602

Sen. McConnell -- http://mcconnell.senate.gov/contact.cfm

The Cash Creek Coal Gasification Plant is one of three proposed huge coal gasification projects, which would process coal into expensive ‘synthetic gas’ planned for the Owensboro-Henderson area in western Kentucky. These plants – the Cash Creek Generating Station, Peabody NewGas, and Indiana Gasification – are financially risky and would adverse impact public health.

Monday's hearing concerns the water pollution permit that the Cash Creek plant must get from the Kentucky Division of Water. The plant would require 14 million gallons of water daily, and would discharge polluted water that contains arsenic, selenium and cyanide.

The hearing will take place from 6-9 p.m. in the Henderson County Fiscal courtroom, located on the third floor of the Henderson County Courthouse, at First and Main Streets in downtown Henderson.

Download a Sierra Club factsheet here.

The following is an except from an article in KFTC's most recent newsletter, Balancing the Scales. Go here to read the entire article bts article: Appalachian Transition

The conversation is changing

At the East Kentucky Leadership Conference in April, Dr. Ron Eller, recently retired professor of Appalachian History at the University of Kentucky, threw down the gauntlet to the political leadership of eastern Kentucky, "We must look beyond an extractive based economy to one that values and enhances the landscape and the resources that it holds, to one that connects our own sustainability and future to that of the mountains themselves," Eller said.

Though elected officials have generally supported the idea of a more diversified economy, few have had the courage or foresight to talk about the coming day when coal will not dominate the economy or the politics of the region.

That conversation is now changing, thanks to Eller's challenge, the work of KFTC members, and the realities of the coal-based economy that continues to discard workers.

"Elected leaders from my region, as well as throughout this state and nation, need to be visionaries. They cannot continue to dance to the beat of the same fossil fuel drummer," said Mickey McCoy, a Martin County member, "A transition to renewable energy must begin. The same great workforce in Appalachia which now supplies the power plants with coal to burn can be used in the green industry."

Rep. Greg Stumbo responded defensively to Eller's challenge but nonetheless said, "The debate should be about what happens in the end, when in fact, there is perhaps no more surface mining, or the coal runs out or whatever happens."

The coal industry is already in transition

For decades the coal industry has sought ways to stay profitable, and high on the list has been to become more automated. Even as production has remained constant, coal employment continues its long historic decline due to ongoing mechanization of the industry. Coal employment in Kentucky is only about a third of what it was 30 years ago.

Kentucky's economic development, energy and tax policies all focus on continuing to prop up the coal industry, even as it sheds jobs in a job-starved region. A recent MACED report estimated that in 2006, Kentucky provided a net subsidy of nearly $115 million to the coal industry."

Now is the Time - Creating new jobs along side the old jobs

"We have a narrow window of opportunity in Appalachia today, global warming, the financial crisis, international recession and world terrorism create an opportunity for change, if we can seize the moment," Eller said. Clean energy jobs are the logical place to start and twenty years is considered a reasonable timeframe because it allows existing coal related workers to remain working and provides training for the next generation to become a green workforce.

According to an Apollo Alliance report, investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy could affect Kentucky's economy over 10 years with an additional 44,783 new jobs.

Based on those figures, if Kentucky were to invest $43 million per year (half of what coal industry is getting now) over the next 20 years, the state could transition the 18,000 coal-mining and 52,000 coal-related jobs into other employment.

Recent Appalachian Regional Commission studies concluded that a set of energy efficiency policies in the Appalachian region would save consumers almost $10 billion annually on their energy bills by 2020 and create more than 37,000 jobs.

But KFTC members know that the transition of the Appalachian economy is not just from one job to a different job, it is about a fundamental restructuring of the economy.

While many of the jobs associated with renewable energy and especially energy efficiency are not income equivalent with some mining jobs, they represent jobs for the many people who are unemployed or under-employed and new jobs to rebuild a skilled workforce in the region.

MACED has identified other new or expandable sources of good jobs, they include:

• Enhancing the quality and value of the region's forests and creating a sustainable forest products economy;
• Expanding a sustainable local food system;
• Restoring the land from the effects of past abusive mining practices;
• Providing residents access to clean drinking water and basic wastewater systems;
• Cleaning up illegal open dumps and abandoned landfills;
• Repairing and building parks and trails and promoting eco- and outdoor tourism;
• Restoring the region's watersheds.

It will not be easy, it takes real leadership

"We have to be honest about the challenges we face in creating a new economy. It will not be easy," points out Roy Silver, a KFTC member in Harlan County. "This is particularly challenging in light of the fact that coal-mining jobs [can] pay about $60,000 a year. We need to work with people on creating alternatives that pay a family living wage."

Ken Ward, a reporter for the Charleston Gazette, wrote, "Everyone should stop trying to make it sound easy, and explain that it's hard. REAL political leadership tells the public that something is hard, but that we're up to it and are going to work together until we succeed."

From KFTC's blog comes this post by "Todd," a Kentucky miner. "The only hope for eastern Kentucky is through a diversified economy. In which, I believe, coal should play a vital part. We, the citizens and taxpayers, need to have a much louder voice in the path for our state and country. I truly believe, with good, intense discussion from all sides (miners, environmentalists, etc...) we can come up with some solutions."

All indications are that a successful economic transition in Appalachia, and consequently Kentucky, is possible; but it won't be easy and Appalachia cannot do it alone.

Read Dr. Ron Eller's speech.

Read MACED's Economics of Coal and The Impact of Coal on the Budget

A limestone quarry in Northern CA. Photo by Flickr user Joe_13

KFTC member David Bell has been spending the last 18 months trying to protect his rural community along the Ohio River from a limestone quarry. 

Big Bend, in Meade County, rests on limestone, which is used to "scrub" sulfur dioxide from coal-burning power plants.  Bell has reservations about the costs, in Eastern Kentucky and now in his part of the state, that are going into to generating dirty energy. 

I believe in my heart that we need to be doing other things.  There's a direct parallel with what's happening in Eastern Kentucky, going after the coal at all costs, and what's going on with this loop on the river.  I think most people are unaware of it.  It's happening on Louisville's doorstep, and most people are unaware of it.

The real asset of this part of the world is that it's still green.  It could be used for recreation along the river, pasture, aqua, ponds, orchards, vineyards...It's important habitat for wildlife. There's a quarry in Battletown, about ten miles upstream, and it's just a big gargantuan pit.  We've got to hold onto some of this green space.

What you can do:

Right now, the quarry attorneys are trying to get the agricultural landed zoned for heavy industrial use.  There is a zoning hearing tomorrow night at 6:30 p.m. at the Meade County courthouse in Brandenburg.  Come show your support for David and his community!

Stay tuned for more details on the next steps.  Thursday's hearing will be followed up with a hearing in the Fiscal Court, but there's no date for that yet.  The permit for the quarry, which Bell and Tom Fitzgerald (Kentucky Resources Council) are challenging, will be discussed during a Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet administrative hearing Sept. 15 in Frankfort.

You can read more about the quarry and David's efforts here, in this Courier-Journal article.