MONDAY October 21, 2013
Fall Fest Scarecrow contest winners named
Memorial
NFL Bears lose
Victim of accident remembered
Cutler, fall to Washington
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Weather Partly cloudy skies with a 30 percent chance of rain. A high of 56 and an overnight low of 34. Page A6
Kendallville, Indiana
Serving Noble & LaGrange Counties
kpcnews.com
GOP: It’s not over Republicans
GOOD MORNING State’s working poor highlighted in studies INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A pair of reports released last week highlighted different angles of the continuing troubles faced by Indiana’s working poor and raised questions about who ends up paying for their safety net. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 182,000 residents fall into a health insurance coverage “gap” because the state has not expanded Medicaid coverage and a jobs study from the University of California, Berkeley found almost half of Indiana’s fast food workers are also receiving public assistance. The two reports provided sobering details as the state continues to struggle to pull out of the recession — the unemployment rate has hovered above 8 percent for more than a year now while the median income has declined over the past decade. It also helped shine some light on why the state’s leaders have been so heartily focused on improving job training programs statewide. “It’s not a good state to be poor, or out of work, or uninsured,” said Morton Marcus, a veteran Indiana economist and former professor at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. Putting the health care gap in context: there are 182,000 adults earning between roughly $2,700 and $11,500 a year who will not receive federal health insurance. That excludes poor residents with children and Indiana’s elderly, who receive Medicare. The Kaiser report found that Indiana’s numbers are not out of step with other states which have not expanded Medicaid under the federal health care law, but also noted that in the states which did approve an expansion, there is no insurance gap. That shortfall could be temporary here, however. Republican Gov. Mike Pence, long a vocal critic of traditional Medicaid, has said he would like to see the state expand the Healthy Indiana Plan to cover residents earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, of roughly $15,400.
AMY OBERLIN
“Life,” a 24,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, hangs in the basement of Steve Briskey of rural Angola, left. Briskey spent more than three years assembling
“Life” with the help of family and friends, becoming the first in the state to complete the puzzle.
Putting it all together Angola man first in state to assemble largest puzzle BY AMY OBERLIN aoberlin@kpcmedia.com
ANGOLA — Piece by piece — like any long-term labor of love — the world’s largest puzzle went together. It was assembled in the basement of a rural Angola home by Steve Briskey and occasional assistants. More than 14 feet long, the 24,000-piece creation took three years and four months to complete — a total of 819.45 hours. Briskey kept track of everything, from the moment he opened the box and mixed together four separate bags of 8,000 pieces each. The bags held the four quadrants of the puzzle, and Briskey decided he wanted to combine them for difficulty. A jigsaw aficionado, he found out about the Guinness World Record puzzle when he read an
NEIGHBORS STEUBEN
COUNTY
article in a newspaper on Dave Landwehr of Ottoville, Ohio, the first person in his state to complete it in January 2008. “I wanted to be the first in Indiana,” said Briskey. He achieved his goal, and has logged his success at worldslargestpuzzle. com on the Hall of Fame blog. A California family was the first to put it together in 2007 and the first individual to complete the puzzle was a woman from Belgium. Briskey has videos and photographs of the progression of the puzzle, which was assembled
Video at kpcnews.com Steve Briskey’s son Kyler kept a video log during the more than three-year process of building the world’s largest puzzle. See excerpts in an online video at kpcnews.com. Scan the QR code to watch it on your tablet or smartphone.
in his family’s basement. He used saw horses, foam board and a 16-foot table to first sort, then begin piecing together the puzzle. “When I had a chance, I was down here working,” said Briskey, scanning a basement where he now envisions a bar, widescreen TV SEE PUZZLE, PAGE A6
JOHN MOHRE
PRO FOOTBALL
Band advances to semistate
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East Noble High School’s marching band performs in a regional contest Saturday at Lafayette Jefferson High School. East Noble placed among the top
kpcnews.com Sports > Pro Football
Info • The News Sun P.O. Box 39, 102 N. Main St. Kendallville, IN 46755 Telephone: (260) 347-0400 Fax: (260) 347-2693 Classifieds: (toll free) (877) 791-7877 Circulation: (260) 347-0400 or (800) 717-4679
Index
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Classifieds.................................B6-B7 Life..................................................... A5 Obituaries......................................... A4 Opinion .............................................B4 Sports.........................................B1-B3 Weather............................................ A6 TV/Comics .......................................B5 Vol. 104 No. 290
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10 bands in Class B, qualifying for the semistate competition next Saturday at Pike High School in northwest Indianapolis.
making Obamacare their next target WASHINGTON (AP) — “Obamacare” escaped unharmed from the government shutdown Republicans hoped would stop it, but just as quickly they have opened a new line of attack — one handed to them by the administration itself. While Congress was arguing, President Barack Obama’s plan to expand coverage for the uninsured suffered a self-inflicted wound. A computer system seemingly designed by gremlins gummed up the first open enrollment season. After nearly three weeks, it’s still not fixed. Republicans hope to ride that and other defects they see in the law into the 2014 congressional elections. Four Democratic senators are facing re-election for the first time since they voted for the Affordable Care Act, and their defeat is critical to GOP aspirations for a Senate majority. Democrats say that’s just more wishful thinking, if not obsession. Although Obama’s law remains divisive, only 29 percent of the public favors its complete repeal, according to a recent Gallup poll. The business-oriented wing of the Republican party wants to move on to other issues. Americans may be growing weary of the health care fight. “This is the law of the land at this point,” said Michael Weaver, a self-employed photographer from rural southern Illinois who’s been uninsured for about a year. “We need to stop the arguing and move forward to make it work.” It took him about a week and half, but Weaver kept going back to the healthcare.gov website until he was able to open an account and apply for a tax credit that will reduce his premiums. He’s not completely finished because he hasn’t selected an insurance plan, but he’s been able to browse options. It beats providing page after page of personal health information to insurance companies, Weaver said. Under the new law, insurers have to accept people with health problems. Weaver is in his mid-50s, with high blood pressure and high cholesterol, but otherwise in good health. He says those common conditions made it hard for him to get coverage before. SEE GOP, PAGE A6
Shutdown is over; now what’s next WASHINGTON (AP) — Sixteen days in October could change everything, or not much at all. Will the partial government shutdown prove to be the turning point after three years of partisan skirmishing in Washington? Or was it just a halftime show to fire up the players? With federal employees back at work for now, lawmakers are getting a chance to find a compromise on spending cuts and settle their vast differences. If they fail, they risk a repeat shutdown in mid-January, followed a few weeks later by the recurring danger of the government defaulting on its debts. A look at where things stand after the shutdown:
The players
• President Barack Obama won a round by refusing to back down. The public didn’t applaud his handling of the crisis, but scored congressional Republicans even lower. Obama’s overall approval rating held steady, and so did the nation’s divided opinion of his health care law. He strengthened his hand for next time. • House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, conceded a loss for his party. But personally he came out OK. Boehner placated his boisterous tea party-backed members by letting them take a doomed stand against the health law, then got credit for finally allowing the shutdown to end on SEE SHUTDOWN, PAGE A6
DENNIS NARTKER
Chili cookoff winners Winners in the fifth annual Rome City Chamber of Commerce chili cookoff held Saturday at the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site are, from left: Dave Abbott, best traditional; Martin Fletcher, people’s choice; and Brian Mervau, best non-traditional. Each received a wood carving board. There were 12 entries. Judges were April Wolschleger, Greg Todd, Charley Fisher, Lance Harmon and Robert Bir. Abbott, the defending champion, said V8 tomato juice is one of his favorite chili ingredients.