We hope that today’s “READERS FORUM” will provoke honest and open dialogue concerning issues that we, as responsible citizens of this community, need to address in a rational and responsible way.

WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND TODAY?

Gary Senator Seeks Democratic Nomination For Governor

By Lacey Watt
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS — Gary Sen. Eddie Melton is the first Democrat to announce that he’s seeking his party’s nomination to challenge Gov. Eric Holcomb in 2020.

Melton is expected to announce his foray into the race in his hometown before a group of teachers, parents, and others in the community on Tuesday with a focus on education funding, healthcare and good paying jobs.

Melton, currently in his first term as senator, is also the manager of Corporate Citizen and Community Relations for Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO).

One of the keys issues Melton focused on during the 2019 session was a gambling bill, House Enrolled Act 1015, that allows sports wagering but could change the gaming landscape in the Gary region.

The legislation allows two Gary casinos to move inland from where they currently sit in Buffington Harbor to a new site near Interstate 94. It also approves a new casino for Terre Haute and legalizes sports betting for ages 21 and up, including via mobile devices so long as they register with one of the state’s casinos.

Melton has supported the gambling bill with expectations that it will bring job opportunities to his community. And, in a news release, he said the legislation was passed in anticipation of a gambling expansion in neighboring Illinois.

“There is obviously a significant potential impact on the city of Gary,” Melton said. “We believe both these endeavors will do much to strengthen our regional casino value as well as protect, and even grow Hoosier jobs.”

Education has been another area where Melton has focused his energies, criticizing the governor’s new committee examining teacher pay issues for meeting in secret.

“While I understand this commission, by law, does not need to meet under the public’s purview, it does not seem a smart idea to make decisions or even brainstorm a topic as important as how to raise teacher pay behind closed doors,” he said in a statement.

In his community, Melton has been involved with programs for youth mentoring since 2005. For one of his more recent projects, Melton worked on “My Brother’s Keeper,” with former President Barack Obama. “My Brother’s Keeper” is a program that addresses opportunity gaps for boys and young men of color and helps ensure their optional is reached.

Phil Johnson, communications director for the state Democratic Party said that Rep. Karlee Macer, D-Indianapolis, and former state health commissioner Woody Myers are also considering running for governor in 2020.

Currently, there are no Republicans running against Holcomb in the 2020 primary, said Holly Lawson, press secretary of the communications for the state Republican Party.

Holcomb is finishing his first full term as governor.

FOOTNOTE: Lacey Watt is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

On Sunday, Attorney General Curtis Hill filed documents appealing a federal district court’s Friday ruling that an abortion provider may open a South Bend clinic without a license. Attorney General Hill also asked for an immediate stay that would prevent the unlicensed clinic from opening until Indiana’s appeal can be considered.

In March, Texas-based Whole Woman’s Health Alliance asked the district court to issue a preliminary injunction allowing it to open a clinic without first obtaining the standard approval from the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH). The ISDH previously has denied Whole Woman’s Health a license after the entity failed to provide requested documentation about the safety record of affiliated clinics in other states and other information.

The proposed South Bend clinic would provide chemical abortions – procedures in which one type of medication is used to kill the fetus after which another is administered to induce the woman to expel it.

In its preliminary injunction ruling, the district court held that requiring Whole Woman’s Health to obtain a license would, with all the administrative hassle, impose an undue burden on women seeking abortions.

“This federal judge seems to believe that every large city in the state is entitled to its own abortion clinic,” Attorney General Hill said. “She further seems to think that state licensing requirements must give way whenever a clinic proposes to open in a city without one. The U.S. Supreme Court has never even remotely implied that such a rule exists.”

Allowing the operation of unlicensed abortion clinics could cause harm to patients, Attorney General Hill added.

“This is a facility that would dispense medication that ends a pregnancy and causes women to expel fetal remains,” he said. “This course of treatment may cause substantial loss of blood and may prompt years of regret, depression and other emotional harm to women.”

Indiana has good reasons for requiring abortion clinics to be licensed, Attorney General Hill said, such as the state’s interest in protecting the health of the mother and preserving the life of the fetus.

“Criminal and civil penalties can only punish violations of the law after they occur,” he said. “Licensing makes violations less likely to happen in the first place. This is precisely why states have licensed the legal and medical professions since the mid-nineteenth century. Requiring abortion clinics to be licensed facilities is entirely reasonable and constitutional. For that matter, it’s the very least we should do to protect the health of women and unborn children.”

By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS – A few days ago, another disturbed man entered a crowded building and opened fire.

He carried two semi-automatic weapons, both apparently with extra-capacity magazines. One of the guns also seems to have been fitted with a sound suppressor. The man shot people at random before law-enforcement officials cornered him and shot him to death.

Before the police stopped his rampage, though, 12 innocent people were dead. Four others had been wounded.

The gunman, it seems, bought his weapons and their human-killing accessories through legal means.

That’s not surprising.

Virginia’s legislature, like Indiana’s and so many others in America, takes pride in being a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Rifle Association and the firearms industry. Like Indiana, Virginia has some of the laxest gun laws in the nation.

Just a few months ago, gun-loving lawmakers in the Virginia legislature knocked back a proposal that would have outlawed the larger capacity magazines the shooter in Virginia Beach used. Proponents for the ban argued that such devices weren’t needed for hunting or even for self-defense.

The only thing they’re truly needed for is what the shooter used them for.

Killing a lot of people in a hurry.

It didn’t matter.

Anything that slows the sales of firearms and the accompanying ring of the cash register is something the NRA is against.

Regardless of how many innocent people get killed as a result.

Now, 12 more people are dead.

God knows how many more will carry wounds and grief with them for the rest of their lives.

All to keep the NRA and the firearms industry happy.

The NRA has been in the news a lot lately.

Reporters from several news organizations and investigators in multiple legal actions have uncovered financial practices on the part of the gun lobbying group that would make a bank robber blush.

It turns out the NRA’s leaders have bilked their members and others out of tens of millions of dollars. They’ve channeled massive payouts to spouses, ex-spouses, friends, cronies and other hangers-on.

They’ve been so generous in spreading around this largesse that the NRA now spends less than 10 percent of its funds on gun-safety education and training.

Such education was supposed to be the NRA’s main mission, its reason for existing.

The organization’s financial irregularities are so great that its tax-exempt status now is threatened. If it loses its tax-exempt designation, the NRA likely will die.

But not before many more innocent Americans do.

That the NRA’s financial empire was made up of lies shouldn’t be news to anyone who isn’t terminally gullible.

The NRA’s commitment to lying knows few bounds.

In public policy debates, the organization’s flacks – and their stooges in the nation’s legislatures – will fudge and falsify the numbers relating to the epidemic of gun-related violence in America in any way they can to make a case that guns can’t be part of the problem. They will wrench “facts” out of context or just make them up if it suits their purpose.

They will fight to suppress the gathering of accurate information about gun-related deaths and injuries. That’s why it’s against the law for the Centers for Disease Control even to study gun violence as a public health problem.

The result of this slavish obeisance to an organization and industry devoted to telling lies about guns and gun violence is that we now have more Americans dying as a result of wounds from firearms than die in automobile accidents. An American is 2000 percent – that’s 2000 percent – more likely to die by gun than a citizen in the rest of the developed world.

We lead the world by a similarly wide margin in the numbers of mass shootings.

We added some more names in Virginia Beach to that tragic list, 12 more martyrs to the shameful cause of placing a higher value on guns than people.

Lord knows how many more will join them until we stop listening to the lies the NRA sells about guns and gun policy.

And the liars who tell those lies.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is the Director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

FOOTNOTE: Any comments posted in this column do not represent the views or opinions of the City-County Observer or our advertisers