Due to last-minute travel plans, posting is gonna be a bit light through tomorrow afternoon.
Life happens, right?
So let’s use this open thread opportunity to discuss what you think needs to improve in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
What’s the most urgent need of your immediate community?
Please keep it mostly clean, avoid personal attacks and let’s maybe keep the partisanship out of it for a change.
20 responses so far ↓
1 Mel // Nov 5, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Trey Grasyon is a dirty commiee bastard.
2 bestmid // Nov 5, 2009 at 4:59 pm
The most urgent need of this community is for visionary leaders, innovators who know that true leaders inspire the best in everyone around them.
3 le gardien de but // Nov 5, 2009 at 5:50 pm
May add–visionary leaders with integrity…
4 ahem // Nov 5, 2009 at 6:16 pm
“…what you think needs to improve in the Commonwealth of Kentucky…”
we need for the electorate to be better informed/better educated which would then solve many of our problems because they (we) wouldn’t fall for 60 second tv ads and even shorter soundbites resulting in the election of people like Steve Beshear, Jim Bunning, Richie Farmer, and many others. Until then, we get what we vote for!!!
5 anon // Nov 5, 2009 at 6:18 pm
from georgetown — some one needs to step up and tell our loony-bin mayor karen tingle-sames that her idea for a 6,500 seat arena/shopping center in a town smaller than richmond is the worst idea her pea-sized mind has ever produced. worse than when she fired a large portion of our police officers and firefighters to balance the budget. or replaced the sitting fire chief with a dunce that hasn’t a clue how to run a civic workforce.
pointing out the obvious here: if there isn’t enough money in the budget to hold on to your city employees, there sure as hell isn’t enough for some ridiculous arena.
6 Bruce in Louisville // Nov 5, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Agree with above — leaders and better informed voters.
Would add:
– more and better education
– more and better jobs
– effective government
I could go on, but those would be a good start.
7 Conservative // Nov 6, 2009 at 8:45 am
Roads. That’s the key to everything where I live. We need better access to the interstates and parkways. We will never get any jobs in this area until the 1920’s cow paths are reconstructed, and this would also provide better access to education and for commuters who want to live here but work elsewhere. We have people in this area who work at Toyota and they take their lives in their hands everyday to get to the four-lane, where it’s smooth sailing thereafter.
8 ahem // Nov 6, 2009 at 8:47 am
my point is that with a better educated electorate we get a better elected official…the other things (infrastructure, jobs, efficiency, etc.) all come with it…all stems to the electorate that keeps voting in these goofballs.
9 Forks of Elkhorn // Nov 6, 2009 at 9:31 am
Any of these lists need to start with REVENUE. Until one or all of you say “We need new Revenue” none of what you say is worth saying. The state is broke. We need to raise taxes if we are going to do anything differently. If you cannot agree to that, do not offer any new ideas.
10 AC360 // Nov 6, 2009 at 9:58 am
education, education, education
AND EARLY!!!
NO business wants to relocate to a place where 1 in 4 drops out of high school.
how can this be?
•Almost two thirds of low-income families have no books at all in their homes for their children.
•Children who have not developed basic literacy skills by the time they start school are 3-4 times more likely to drop out.
•88% of children with reading problems in 1st grade will likely have problems in 4th grade. Children without reading skills by 3rd grade are unlikely to graduate.
11 Davi // Nov 6, 2009 at 10:05 am
We in the Commonwealth of Kentucky need a campaign to make education itself more attractive and acceptable in general. Part of the reason we are so far behind the rest of the country and much of the world is that a large percentage of our populace thinks education is to be suspect rather than sought.
Until we get a positive attitude toward education, we will always be barefoot and pregnant.
The key to improving the future of the state is in breaking this barrier.
12 Terri // Nov 6, 2009 at 11:19 am
Owensboro has a real need for education and for the job opportunities that go along with it. I have hopes that the WKU satellite campus will help this. Sustainable growth and *smart* downtown development are integral. In the past few months, Darmac, HON, and GE have all announced layoffs/closures, with more than I remember even before these. People are hurting, big time.
13 Section Dispartue // Nov 6, 2009 at 11:59 am
All very good ideas, and one would be hard-pressed to disagree with any of them. By and large, roads in Kentucky are superior to our neighbors - given our high number of counties and the autonomy that comes with each one.
Education is always an easy answer. I believe that we should make educaiton leaner. There is an exorbitant amount of our money flowing into an educaiton system that spends far too much on the salaries of many staff members. NEA and KEA are far too powerful.
I agree with you ‘ahem’. A better informed electorate would make all the difference in these and other matters. We would see campaigns ran on intellect and officials would be forced to be better informed themselves.
Keep in mind, one can be education and ill-informed and vice versa.
14 Hopeful // Nov 6, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Education on all levels – good quality K-12 education, reasonably priced but good quality post secondary education, older adult education.
Better opportunities for unemployed or underemployed workers to get true job training or re-training, see Michigan’s No Worker Left Behind act.
A better and more wide-spread technology infrastructure. This will give people easier access to educational opportunities, better libraries and better schools. Additionally, this would attract more businesses – just as having sewers, electric, water and roads are important to business development, education and technology are just as critical.
Understanding that as great as the legacy of horse industry is, times have changed and we need to change if Kentucky still wants to attract new residents, companies and tax dollars. You can keep the heritage but we have to start thinking of Kentucky as growing and evolving into a place with a great history but a bright future. However, this also means that we , as residents, need to look for and elect new progressive thinking leadership and stop with the “Old Boy’s Club” and stop politics as we know it.
Kentucky has a lot to do, but it’s time that the people who are supposed to represent us on all levels actually LISTEN to us, look around at the hardest hit sections of the commonwealth and use their abilities and powers to give Kentucky a progressive future.
15 hersh // Nov 6, 2009 at 12:15 pm
“What’s the most urgent need of your immediate community?”
Healthy people.
Kentucky ranks at the top of list for about every condition.
16 Michael // Nov 6, 2009 at 3:58 pm
It’s seems Louisville has wanted to be a “bigger” metropolitian area for years. Maybe we could take the advice of the above posts and actually become a bigger, better city!
17 curtis morrison // Nov 6, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Kentucky needs to be friendlier to entrepreneurs.
Kentucky needs clean air and streams. We need to hang on to our natural assets like mountains.
How about just making this a great place to live?
18 tammywynette // Nov 6, 2009 at 5:30 pm
A focus on education for pre-natal parents, for home visits for at-risk newborns, for quality pre-school affordable to all, and full day kindergarten for our children would do much for the high rate of drop-outs and sorry health we have in KY.
19 Mark H (Not Hebert) // Nov 6, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Consolidate every three rural counties and their government infrastructures into one.
This state has too many political representatives and a disproportionate number of representatives from states that contribute very little to the economic productivity of the state.
Not surprisingly, Frankfort is like an anchor around the economic and educational viability of this state.
20 johnny masters // Nov 7, 2009 at 8:52 am
Yeah, since I have no power, I advocate anarchy. We don’t need a government. It’s pretty random anyways, out here, in society, and government many times adds to those trials. I am liberal, because I can’t stand W. Bush, and we need to stand up for ourselves, like Limbaugh, and Beck do, with a loud and proud liberal bias. It’s more entertaining, and a liberal Bill O’Reilly would be really popular these days. So while I advocate anarchy for now, I feel like I am doing that so that way the pendulum will swing as far left as it has swung far right. So I am only being an anarchist until I get power, and then I’ll just turn on the socialism, drowning every citizen with lots of valuable goods, and buildings, and bridges so that they’ll keep on reelecting me into office, again and again, to become a career politician, who have a 95% chance of getting reelected once they’re in. So once you’re in, you’re in. You’re in for life. And giving Kentuckians things they need, like toilets, whether they say they want it or not, it’s for their own good. Take your government gift. Remember government is the only entity out there left to fight big business.
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