How often have we heard “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
OK, voters, ladies especially, so the GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said some things that hurt people’s feelings. Big deal — and that’s not to say I approve of his crude and off-the-wall remarks.
What is a big deal and what can really hurt is not having the money to put food on the table.
Let me get this straight. Some people are going to vote for Hillary because Trump said some things they didn’t like?
Let me get this straight. Hillary’s husband assaulted some women, then Hillary tried to destroy the women, but Hillary is better than Trump?
What about all the good things Trump has said such as creating jobs, taking out ISIS, closing the borders, etc.? Of course, those are just words but the real hurt to all of us will be if we don’t turn around this economy, get people back into the labor force with job creation, getting the excessive number of people off food stamps, and getting more people out of poverty, all of which has been caused by liberal socialist Obama policies.
I will take my chances with Trump who could potentially turn this country around. The other frontrunner won’t. Not a chance Hillary will do that. When Obama leaves office, he will live in Washington and make sure Hillary continues down the same path as he did when leaving office.
Action speaks louder than words. There’s a long history of abysmal behavior with Hillary in our government especially as Secretary of State and her private email server.
Trump has yet to show what he can do. Facts, logic, reality and common sense clearly shows going the other way with Hillary will literally hurt all of us – man, woman, and child.
Area Agencies on Aging in Kansas are again teaming up with Wichita’s National Baseball Congress to honor older Kansans’ contributions to their hometowns and communities.
The group is seeking nominees from all parts of Kansas who are 80 years or older to be honored as part of the 2016 National Baseball Congress World Series. Those selected for this honor will throw the Keeping Seniors in the Game!SM “First Pitch” at featured games of the 82nd annual National Baseball Congress tournament. The tournament takes place in Wichita’s Lawrence-Dumont Stadium from Friday, July 29, through Saturday, Aug. 13.
Names and contact information of nominees should be submitted to your local Area Agency on Aging by Wednesday, June 1st. To connect with your local Area Agency on Aging, call toll-free at (866) 457-2364.
“We are very happy to work with the National Baseball Congress to recognize the amazing contributions and the vitality of older Kansans,” said Julie Govert Walter, Executive Director of the North Central-Flint Hills Area Agency on Aging who leads the “Keeping Seniors In The Game!SM initiative.
“Area Agencies on Aging are all about helping older Americans and caregivers keep well and be active,” Walter said. “Honoring seniors at NBC’s World Series is a perfect way to celebrate the many contributions of older Kansans, essential services like Meals on Wheels and trusted information Area Agencies give every day to help seniors and caregivers ‘stay in the game’,” she said.
Nominations are also accepted by the North Central-Flint Hills Area Agency on Aging in Manhattan. Call 800-432-2703 or e-mail [email protected].
The NBC World Series was founded by baseball innovator Hap Dumont in 1934. For NBC World Series information and ticket prices go to www.nbcbaseball.com or call (316) 977-9400.
HaysMed will host Trauma Care After Resuscitation on June 29 and 30, 2016. The program will be held at the Hadley Rooms with registration beginning at 7:45 a.m. and the program running from 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. each day.
The topics to be covered include mobilization, missed and delayed injuries, sepsis and organ failure, rhabdomyolysis, nutrition, pain management, geriatric and bariatric patients, late complications, compartment syndrome, VTE prophylaxis, intraabdominal hypertension, wound and skin care, alcohol withdrawal, post-traumatic stress, fluid management and organ and tissue donation.
This program is designed for medical professionals. Continuing education contact hours are provided through The Laurelwood Group, a provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider Number CEP 15483, for 14 hours.
Fee for the program is $275 for non-HaysMed associates and $250 HaysMed Associates.
To register go www.tcarprograms.org. For registration questions, contact TCAR Education program at 855-GET-TCAR (855-438-8227.)
Fort Hays State University Swimming Tigers swim lessons will be offered during the summer of 2016. Public and private lessons are available for children six months and older.
FHSU will hold four sessions, starting on June 6, June 20, July 5 and July 18. Sessions are held Monday through Thursday for two weeks and are 30 to 45 minutes long. They are held in the FHSU pool in Cunningham Hall. Class times depend on swim level.
Public lessons cost $35, and private lessons cost $55.
Gove County Medical Center in Quinter was recently named one of iVantage Health Analytics’ Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals in the United States.
“Gove County Medical Center is proud of the efforts of our physicians and staff who have contributed to our achieving this designation,” said Coleen Tummons, hospital CEO. “Our team works diligently every day to meet our vision: to provide excellent healthcare in a spirit of compassion.” She added, “we also appreciate the community support which helped us earn this award.”
Gove County Medical Center scored in the top 100 of Critical Access Hospitals on iVantage’s Hospital Strength INDEX®. The INDEX is the industry’s most comprehensive rating of rural and Critical Access Hospitals. The results recognize that the Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals provide a safety net to communities across rural America – measuring them across more than 70 different performance metrics, including quality, outcomes, patient perspective, affordability, population risk and efficiency.
The list of the top 100 Critical Access Hospitals and more information about the study can be found at www.iVantageINDEX.com. The four Kansas CAH hospitals on the list are: Gove County Medical Center; Greeley county Health Services; Newman Regional Health; Norton County Hospital; and in the rural or community category: Newton Medical Center and Ransom Memorial Hospital in Ottawa.
“Rural healthcare deserves the same performance analysis as all provider performance. It plays a vital role for communities across America, serving more than 60 million people,” said Michael Topchik, senior vice president of iVantage Health Analytics. “The services provided in rural America are similar to those needed in any major metropolitan area, yet the volumes and economic resources provide little economies of scale, making for little benefit from scale. These top 100 Critical Access Hospitals exhibit a focused concern for their community benefits and needs, regardless of scale, reimbursement and people’s ability to pay.”
About iVantage Health Analytics
iVantage Health Analytics is a leading provider of healthcare analytic and decision support tools. Health system and hospital leadership teams across the country rely on the company’s software and services to deliver customized insights on clinical and financial performance, strategic planning, market assessment and contract optimization. Employing a full array of public, private and proprietary data, iVantage tools and solutions – from dashboards and preformatted reports, to industry and custom guided analytics – are designed to help its clients move from data to action. In addition, iVantage analytics and tools are the basis of continuing thought leadership and insight in the areas of healthcare policy and research. Learn more at iVantageHealth.com.
A few showers and thunderstorms are possible this morning in central and south central Kansas. A few severe thunderstorms may develop late this afternoon along a warm front from east central Colorado into northwest Oklahoma and a dryline near the Colorado border. The primary threat will be large hail and damaging winds, but a tornado is possible in west central Kansas around sunset.
On Sunday, thunderstorms will likely develop across western parts of Kansas in the afternoon and early evening. These storms will continue overnight into Monday morning.
Today: A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms before 2pm, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 5pm. Patchy fog before 7am. Otherwise, cloudy, with a high near 65. Southeast wind 11 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Tonight: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly between 11pm and 5am. Cloudy, with a low around 61. Southeast wind 13 to 15 mph.
Sunday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 7am. Partly sunny, with a high near 80. Windy, with a south wind 14 to 19 mph increasing to 20 to 25 mph in the afternoon.
Sunday Night: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 64. Breezy, with a south southeast wind 15 to 24 mph.
Monday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 83. West wind 7 to 13 mph becoming south in the afternoon.
Photo by Andy Marso/KHI News Service Misty Kruger, left, director of public relations for Topeka USD 501, chats with Nicole Jahnke, the district’s director of child nutrition services, in the Eisenhower Middle School lunchroom, which doubles as a hallway during passing periods
Most Kansas school districts have moved to comply with stricter nutrition standards since the U.S. Department of Agriculture imposed them almost four years ago. But many still lack kitchen equipment necessary to make the healthier school breakfasts and lunches appealing.
The U.S. House and Senate are considering competing versions of a bill to reauthorize the nutrition standards.
As written, the law includes even tougher standards for the 2017-18 school year, with high schools expected to cut sodium in their lunches by an additional 24 percent.
“They really are lofty targets, and the food industry is going to have to do some new product development before we could meet those targets with processed foods or manufactured foods,” said Cheryl Johnson, director of child nutrition for the Kansas State Department of Education.
“But we can start working toward meeting those with some of the scratch cooking.”
Not fully equipped
Scratch cooking is not a reality for many school districts in Kansas and other states, though, as found in a survey by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2012 — the year the new standards went into effect.
Photo by Andy Marso/KHI News Service Lucia Wilson, left, and Rexie Schmuck chop potatoes in the kitchen at Eisenhower Middle School. Less than half of the schools in Topeka USD 501 operate their own kitchens.
Nationwide, 88 percent of school nutrition officials who responded said their districts needed more knives, refrigerators and other equipment in order to serve their students fresh produce and made-from-scratch meals.
The numbers were slightly better in Kansas, where 72 percent of those who responded said they needed more equipment.
Jessica Donze Black, a child nutrition expert and researcher for Pew, said the organization decided to study the topic after the federal government made $100 million in stimulus grants for school kitchen upgrades available during the recession of the late 2000s.
The nation’s schools sent in $600 million worth of applications. In the absence of equipment for making their own meals from scratch, schools rely on large manufacturers to provide them pre-made.
There’s a limited selection of processed foods within the new standards, Black said, which makes students less likely to eat them. “Where we often see the impact of updated kitchen equipment isn’t so much on technically serving healthy food, but rather the variety of food that they can serve, their ability to serve it in a way that is most appealing to students,” Black said.
“So perhaps if it has the best color and the best temperature and it’s cooked in a relatively short amount of time.” According to the KSDE, the number of Kansas students eating school-made lunch has dipped since the standards were introduced — after years of steady increases.
Topeka as a test case
Photo by Andy Marso/KHI News Service Schools like Whitson Elementary in Topeka that don’t have kitchens use warmers to hold food until lunchtime
Nicole Jahnke, director of child nutrition services for Topeka USD 501, would like her district to serve more made-from-scratch meals. But it’s a district dotted with older schools, and more than half of them don’t even have their own kitchens. Their food is prepared at a central kitchen, trucked to various locations and placed on electric warming trays for hours.
“The food may start out really yummy and crispy, but after it sits in the hot cart for a couple hours, it’s definitely losing its quality,” Jahnke said.
Desmond Smith, a freshman at Topeka High School, said some of the meals he had at his two Topeka middle schools were served cold or “squishy.” “(In) high school, I don’t even eat lunch,” he said. “I just go home.”
Matthew Genrich is a fourth-grader at Whitson Elementary School. His school has no kitchen, but the principal is optimistic it will soon get the equipment to at least do hot food preparation.
Matthew, who usually brings lunch from home, said that would be a good step. “It would always be really warm since they would make it from here and it wouldn’t be shipped from any school,” he said.
Other Topeka schools already have the equipment and are putting it to use. Patricia Adolphson, kitchen manager at Eisenhower Middle School, raves about her new convection oven and the school’s salad bar.
Adolphson said she considers the lunchroom an extension of the classroom where students can try new foods, like exotic fruits and vegetables and even more mundane things like apple crisp
Although some Kansas schools like Eisenhower have been updated since Pew’s survey, Johnson said about half still lack some critical cooking gear. Both versions of the reauthorization bill in Congress include more money for kitchen upgrades for schools where at least half the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
The American Dairy Association and the NFL’s Fuel Up to Play 60 initiative are teaming to provide new grants open to all schools. Someday that grant money could translate into made-from-scratch meals for Whitson Elementary fourth-grader La’Mya Taylor and her classmates.
“I like school lunch, because if you don’t have any food to bring from home to eat for lunch — because you have to eat it for dinner and stuff like that — they provide school lunch,” La’Mya said, “and they make sure that you eat a meal every day.”
Andy Marso is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach him on Twitter @andymarso
SHAWNEE COUNTY -Law enforcement authorities in Shawnee County continue to investigate a shooting and have a suspect in custody.
On Friday, Noah Thompson, 23, Topeka, turned himself in to Police, according to a media release.
Just after 8:30p.m. on Thursday, police responded to a report of shots fire in the 2400 Block of Northeast Seward in Topeka.
They later learned that shooting victim Javier Valdez, 28, Topeka, was being treated at a local hospital for non-life threatening wounds.
Thompson, was identified as a person-of interest in the shooting. Police believed he was driving a white SUV and also involved in a hit-and-run accident
State Representative 19th District- Stephanie Clayton
TOPEKA – For Stephanie Clayton (R-Overland Park), using Twitter was part of her community activism before she was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives.
Now, it’s part of her daily routine. Clayton uses the #ksleg hashtag to track her votes and explain her stance on complex issues.
For Clayton (@SSCJoCoKs), being on Twitter and being engaged with social media has been an overwhelmingly positive experience.
Online harassment is at a minimum, she said, and when it does happen, the followers that like her usually drown out the few who don’t. More often than anything else, it’s other legislative representatives who send her mean tweets, she said.
“You would think since I’m a female politician, it would be like Gamergate, but it’s not,” Clayton said.
Gamergate refers to an online campaign attacking female game developer Zoe Quinn. Clayton started tweeting from local government meetings, and when she was elected to the House in 2013, she felt the need to continue.
She not only tweets about the big and complex votes, but also the smaller ones that may be less interesting to her constituents.
As always, #ksleg Twitter, you have been great! It is so rewarding to have the opportunity to interact with all of you.
“It’s nice because it keeps me honest, and frankly, it helps me keep track of my vote,” Clayton said. “I think my constituents really like it because whether they think it’s right or wrong, they know what I’m doing.” Clayton said that for her, despite the backlash from other representatives, it is worth it to keep tweeting.
She said that she is unique in the way that she tweets every single vote and most of her actions relating to her job. She said that while more and more politicians are doing it at the national level, it is pretty rare to see it at the state level. “Politicians just don’t do that. It’s very new, and they don’t do it,” Clayton said.
“They don’t know how to handle it.” However, Shawn Sullivan (@SSullivan66610), the state budget director, also uses Twitter to explain the budget to Kansans. “Following a budget presentation or press conference, if I see something that needs clarification or is factually inaccurate, I will often correct it through Twitter,” Sullivan said in a statement. He also said that it’s a way to get information out to news sites. “I also know that the political beat reporters are active on Twitter and will see the information I post on #ksleg,” Sullivan said.
The official Twitter handle for Gov. Sam Brownback (@govsambrownback) has more than 14,000 followers who receive tweets about press releases and the governor’s activities.
“Our goal is to communicate Governor Brownback’s vision to make Kansas the best state in America to raise a family and grow a business, so we utilize multiple platforms to reach every Kansan across each demographic,” deputy communications director Melika Willoughby said in a statement.
“Twitter allows us to instantly announce the Governor’s latest actions, share photos and conversations as he visits with Kansans from across the state, and post stories about the positive impacts of his policies.” It’s unclear whether the governor’s office monitors tweets that mention or reply to Brownback’s tweets.
For every one of Brownback’s tweets, there can be a dozen responses, many of which are negative. For example, the governor’s office tweeted this message: “The Obama administration is undermining the refugee resettlement program by refusing to provide adequate security assurances. #ksleg”
One user replied, “You’re undermining the refugee resettlement program by refusing to participate in it because of the people seeking refuge.” The #ksleg hashtag and social media use by elected officials can turn bad in an instant. The hashtag use usually gets more intense during the hot-button issues, with more and more people engaging when they feel it’s something they need to sounds off on.
Anyone can use the hashtag, which can have a powerful effect. In a 24-hour period from May 4 to May 5, 218 users posted 517 tweets with a total of 1,437,440 impressions on Twitter, reported Keyhole.co, a website that tracks analytics on hashtags.
LIBERTY, Mo. — Logan Leigh Antenen, Hays, received the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award in Nursing and was named to the Phi Epsilon Honor Society (the top 10% of the graduating class) at the Celebration of Honors held last month on the William Jewell College campus in Liberty.
William Jewell College, located in Liberty, Mo., is the only national liberal arts college in the Kansas City region. This year William Jewell has been named an Apple Distinguished School and also was recognized among America’s best colleges by Forbes Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, The Princeton Review, Washington Monthly and Money Magazine for overall value, student outcomes, academic rigor, low student debt and service.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Secretary of State Kris Kobach has asked a federal appeals court to stay a judge’s order to add to voting rolls for federal elections thousands of Kansans who did not provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote at motor vehicle offices.
The Kansas Republican argued in a filing Friday to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that the process would be administratively burdensome and would involve thousands of hours of work by election officials.
U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson issued the preliminary injunction Tuesday after finding more than 18,000 eligible voters would be disenfranchised in the November federal election under the Kansas law. She put her order on hold until May 31 so the state could appeal.
Kobach is asking for a stay while it appeals the order.
Fort Hays State University Swimming Tigers swim lessons will be offered during the summer of 2016. Public and private lessons are available for children six months and older.
A few showers and thunderstorms are possible this morning in central and south central Kansas. A few severe thunderstorms may develop late this afternoon along a warm front from east central Colorado into northwest Oklahoma and a dryline near the Colorado border. The primary threat will be large hail and damaging winds, but a tornado is possible in west central Kansas around sunset.
LIBERTY, Mo. — Logan Leigh Antenen, Hays, received the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award in Nursing and was named to the Phi Epsilon Honor Society (the top 10% of the graduating class) at the Celebration of Honors held last month on the William Jewell College campus in Liberty.
