OPINION

A noble crusade

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge is on a noble crusade of sorts. She (and 37 other state attorneys general) wants the federal government to expand its Medicaid support for investigating potential elder abuse in unconventional care facilities such as private homes.

Right now, such Medicaid-supported, community-based homes fall through arbitrary and outdated regulatory cracks which, if reformed, would enable the state Department of Human Services and our attorney general to fully investigate possible abuses.

A news account by reporter Hunter Field quoted Rutledge saying, "no one should live through mistreatment, and I am committed as the state's top law enforcement officer to holding individuals accountable whether that abuse takes place in an institutional or non-institutional setting." Human Services officials have confirmed the effort toward reform was fueled by the recent discovery of potential neglect at two private adult-care homes in Central Arkansas.

Other than children, it's the aged, infirm and disabled who can't fend for themselves that truly deserve added defense. I believe members of both political parties could even agree on that. Well, possibly.

Field wrote that Deputy Attorney General Lloyd Warford had to learn from the newspaper a week after the fact that the Department of Human Services had removed the residents of one southwest Little Rock group home after inspectors found rules violations and signs of neglect. The home was shut down three days later.

So Warford fired off a testy message to the director of Aging and Adult Services Division asking to be filled in on what occurred in this home and why he had to learn of the action from this newspaper. Seems a valid question to me.

Well, several more days passed and a clearly exasperated Warford wrote again, asking to be clued in. Four days later, his office received a copy of the search warrant for the home and a week after that, both agencies finally sat down together to hash out the situation. Sounds to me like, in addition to freeing some Medicaid dollars through regulatory reform, a new inter-agency communications system might be equally beneficial. Just a thought.

Bypass reality

This week, motorists began driving in two lanes of 6.4 miles of the nearly completed Bella Vista bypass designed to connect travelers headed to and from Kansas City to Fort Smith with the 1-49 corridor.

The summer of 1995 seems like only last week when I arrived back home in the Ozarks to assume editorship of Fayetteville's Northwest Arkansas Times. At that time, Northwest Arkansas was just opening its doors wide to the country. That was a year before the dedication of I-540 between the Missouri border and Alma and three years before the regional airport at Highfill was opened to commercial flights.

In those days there already were discussions of one day completing a bypass around Bella Vista into Missouri.

Ah, the difference 22 years can make!

Officials gathered the other day to cut a ribbon, press flesh and pat backs in dedication of the bypass, which only lacks a few more miles and a couple of tweaks. Before we know it, just like the completion of I-540 (renamed I-49) it will be carrying thousands of vehicles a day along a faster, more efficient route.

My hat's off to all who had the vision for the bypass and made it happen, proving yet again (as in other notable achievements such as Haas Hall Academy and Dr. Tom Whiting's Madison County medical and surgery clinic), great things can happen when thoughts become reality.

Mystifying me

I took a look at what I wrote in my Jan. 14 column about what we can expect after electing Donald Trump as our 45th president. I'm now thinking of strapping on a turban and setting up a little fortune-telling shop in Eureka Springs under the name "Mystifying Mikey." Here's my forecast four months back:

"The national mainstream media (you well know the TV channels and newspapers after this election), a disgruntled Democratic Party and Hollywood multimillionaires will continue to slice away at incoming President Donald J. Trump with every tweet and decision he makes.

"Their hope will be to bleed him to death from a thousand paper cuts. This includes overplayed headlines, overblown story placements and obviously slanted language in 'news' stories along with a steady stream of legal actions designed to thwart Trump's goals for the nation.

"The populations of most states, wisened by this media onslaught they've witnessed, will remain wise to their sport while choosing to evaluate for themselves the new president's successes and failures, much as they did in electing him against all odds. Trump's family also will be equally hounded by various biased media with every action and comment."

Future predictions, you may wonder? More of the president's unnecessary, self-damaging tweets and the calculated mainstream media attacks, even though most Americans are flat-backed, dead-dog weary with the relentless, exaggerated and distorted savagings fueled by the obvious partisan agenda to find anything (perhaps including an unpaid parking ticket from 2010 or inadequate postage from nine years ago) that hopefully might spark an impeachment hearing.

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].

Editorial on 05/20/2017

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