David Sarasohn: Fighting over lunch money

"I spent a lot of my time at my last school in Utah tracking down families who owed lunch money," he recalls, not exactly nostalgically. Welch has been able to think about education more lately because of a change in the school lunch rules in 2010, that allow schools with at least 40 percent of their students on food stamps or Medicaid to serve everybody free lunch.

June 4: Beth Israel, bathrooms and baseball

Manhattan: Re your May 29 editorial "Prescription for Bill": Though there has been much discussion about the proposed restructuring of Beth Israel Hospital, absent from the discussion to date is an answer to this simple and self-evident question: If Mount Sinai is committed to this transformation to outpatient care at its facilities, including a reconfigured Beth Israel, who is geographically poised to meet the inpatient needs of this community? The obvious answer geographically is Bellevue Hospital Center - and that should add even more urgency to solving the funding crisis that New York Health + Hospitals finds itself in. According to the most recent data, 57.25% of Beth Israel patients are either uninsured or recipients of Medicaid.

Baseline numbers good foundation for Hillary

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Smith: The ultimate question

Tell me, why on Earth would anyone in his or her right mind want to be president of the United States of America? I've often wondered why anyone would want to be head or chair of anything with more than 10 members and a budget of more than $100. I know people who have gone off the deep end having responsibility for the Ladies Aid.

Veto Seitz bill to protect voting rights in Ohio: editorial

Certain Ohio officials and lawmakers need constant reminders that messing with voting hours and shoveling other restrictions at voters that make voting harder in Ohio are violations of federal law. A federal judge issued just such a reminder last week -- rebuking the state's Republican legislative majority, and Secretary of State Jon Husted who supported the move, for eliminating so-called Golden Week in Ohio when voters can both register and cast a ballot.

Benefits of GMOs get collection of opinions

Other than being crops the majority of Americans consume and use daily, these items, unless certified organic, are genetically modified COOKE'S FOOD STORE and Pharmacy has its USDA Certified Organic produce in its own section. The store confirmed the locally grown produce, like Grainger County tomatoes, is not genetically modified either.

EDITORIAL: Improving US immigration courts

The immigration crisis that is so polarizing our country, our politics and our humanitarian beliefs, is now a judicial crisis - one manifested in outrageous federal court backlogs that are further compounding and complicating this issue. Currently, the median length of time to dispose of a federal immigration case involving a non-detained defendant is 665 days ; it's 71 days for a defendant held in a detention facility.

Liberals to the Barricades

From Austria, France and the United States, to Poland, the Philippines, and Peru, illiberal populists are on the rise. Some blame runaway globalization; others blame income inequality; still others blame out-of-touch elites who simply don't get it .

Kansas views on legislative elections, budget troubles, welfare restrictions, earthquakes

The ultraconservatives in charge have sabotaged the state economy, transferred the burden of paying for what's left of state government from businesses and well-off residents to those without resources to pay for anything additional, and without remorse are seeking re-election. How any of them can look at us with a straight face, let alone ask for our votes, is beyond the pale.

Opinion: Warren, – Bern whisperer,’ could play a pivotal role

ELIZABETH Warren has a rare talent for distilling political messages. In 2011, as she was running for the Senate seat that she won the next year, the former Harvard law professor delivered the kind of concise, pointed rationale for public investment - and the taxation to support it - that the White House had been striving to master for the previous three years.