Recent editorials published in Indiana newspapers
The Munster Times. Oct. 16, 2015.
Federal trade assistance is excruciating slow.
The federal government's machinery is in motion to investigate complaints of steel dumping, but it's moving so slowly that by the time a determination is finally made, much damage to the domestic steel industry has already been done.
Steel has long been king in Northwest Indiana, and Northwest Indiana has long been the king of the domestic steel industry, at least when it comes to production levels.
But the king is a lot weaker than he used to be.
Steel imports have hit a three-decade high, and it's not because the domestic industry isn't competitive. It's because not everyone is playing fair.
On Oct. 1, the U.S. International Trade Commission determined a flood of $1.9 billion in imports from seven foreign countries is damaging the domestic steel industry. Well, duh.
But that just set the wheels in motion for an additional lengthy investigation of alleged steel dumping by Australia, Brazil, Japan, the Netherlands, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The ITC will also look at whether Brazil, Korea and Turkey illegally subsidized exports sent to the United States.
The final result could be countervailing and antidumping tariffs imposed against steel from those countries.
The ITC similarly ruled that $1.2 billion worth of cold-rolled imports - 9.3 percent of the market - was unfairly subsidized.
But the wheels of the federal trade machinery turn with excruciating slowness. A preliminary ruling on countervailing duties against hot-rolled imports is expected by Nov. 4, and a preliminary antidumping ruling is expected by Jan. 18.
Meanwhile, domestic steelmakers and their work force are suffering. Steelmakers said they've laid off workers and idled facilities, including East Chicago Tin and Indiana Harbor Long Carbon, primarily because those imports caused prices to drop 50 percent since 2008.
Roy Berlin, president of Hammond-based Berlin Metals, is pointing a finger toward China. Demand for steel has dropped there, but production hasn't. That excess steel is flooding foreign markets.
The U.S. steel industry has been battered by imports before. Anyone who lived here in the 1980s will remember that.
"Back to the Future II" predicted a Chicago Cubs World Series in 2015, and we're more than OK with that. But we don't need or want the steel industry to suffer the way it did in the 1980s, when that movie was made.
"The wave of imports in this country here has been huge," Berlin said. "I've been in this business for 30 years. I've never a percent of market share this high. The percent of market penetration is huge. It's a problem."
The federal government is working on this, but its trade regulation bureaucracy could use additional speed. We should keep that in mind as the new trade treaty goes through the process.
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The South Bend Tribune. Oct 15, 2015.
More testing, more answers at LaSalle Park.
The agreement recently finalized by the city of South Bend and Honeywell International Inc. with the Environmental Protection Agency to further test LaSalle Park for unsafe levels of contamination is the latest chapter in the sad history of "the lake."
Testing could begin as early as next spring for the 40-acre park at West Washington and Camden streets, which was included on the EPA's Superfund National Priorities List in 2013. If unsafe levels of contamination are found, it could take several months to evaluate the potential solutions.
Questions about the industrial waste dumped in the west-side neighborhood by local factories beginning in the 1930s are nothing new. The concrete-block houses later built atop the dump were demolished in the late 1960s at the site that would become LaSalle Park. But the concerns by neighbors about possible contamination there and at the adjacent Beck's Lake haven't gone away.
That's thanks in no small part to numerous delays over the years and a repeated failure to act that only heightens residents' suspicion and fear. Consider that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management began conducting the first of several inspections of the site in 1985 - and later issued a report that has been described as inconclusive and confusing.
In 2001, IDEM labeled the site and lots a "brownfield" and acquired a federal grant to study it. It would take about three years for residents to learn the results of that study: lead, arsenic and the chemical benzo(a)pyrene were found in the pond, in levels the agency deems too high for residential use of the land but low enough for industrial use. In a May 2005 Tribune story, a city official noted that IDEM's slow response frustrated everyone and helped feed conspiracy theories about hidden dangers in Beck's Lake, and efforts to hide those things from residents.
Although no immediate threat to public health has been detected in the park, preliminary sampling results in 2009 found elevated levels of metals below the surface. Later sampling discovered arsenic levels within the range considered safe for residents using the park. In 2013, at Mayor Pete Buttigieg's request, EPA officials held a public forum to address residents' questions and concerns.
It's long past time to settle the issue of whether there are unsafe levels of contamination in LaSalle Park. A decade ago longtime resident Gail Brodie told a Tribune reporter, "I've lived out here for 50 years, and we want to know what we're breathing and what our kids are playing on."
Today, Brodie still has questions - wondering, for example, about the condition of the soil where people in her neighborhood maintain gardens. She and other residents of the LaSalle Park area deserve answers.
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The Elkhart Truth. Oct. 16, 2015.
Elkhart County Sheriff Bradley Rogers misses the target with gun control comments.
It's unlikely that the incident in an Elkhart retail store parking lot in which a man reportedly fired shots at shoplifting suspects had any connection to comments about gun control made a day earlier day by Sheriff Bradley Rogers.
But those two occurrences, along with the most recent mass shooting in Oregon, are timely reminders that the age-old issue of handguns and whether we need more weapons laws won't go away.
Rogers made headlines again after he appeared on WNIT-TV on Sunday and said he would not only defy a presidential executive order requiring law enforcement agencies to register guns, but also called for the elimination of gun-free zones - particularly in schools.
For starters, President Obama has not issued or proposed any executive orders that would require local authorities to register handguns. After the Oct. 1 shooting at a community college in Oregon that killed nine people, Obama did propose background check requirements for those who purchase guns from high-volume gun dealers. However, mandatory gun registration was not part of that proposal or any of the other gun-related executive orders issued or proposed by the president.
Whether handgun owners should be required to register their weapons - which they aren't in Indiana - is a decision that should be made at the state level. But it's troubling to hear our sheriff say that he would not enforce the executive order of any president, Republican or Democrat.
More troubling, however, are Rogers' comments on abolishing gun-free zones in schools. Whether teachers or other personnel should be allowed to carry weapons in the classrooms has been debated extensively since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in 2012, and many agree with Rogers that allowing staff to carry weapons would reduce the likelihood of another mass shooting.
No one knows for certain whether allowing guns in schools would deter the mass killings the nation is experiencing far too often. From our vantage point, the risk to students and staff that having guns in the classroom would pose outweighs any possible deterrent effect of arming teachers.
Letting teachers have guns would be a mistake. Most teachers feel the same way. In a 2013 national poll of educators, only 22 percent favored allowing staff to carry guns in schools.
To be clear, we are not calling for Indiana to adopt any additional gun control measures. We support the Second Amendment. But in the wake of recent gun incidents locally and nationally, Rogers' recent comments on this issue clearly miss the mark.
Much as we're glad the shooter at Big R did, too.
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The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Oct. 17, 2015
An all-too-frequent, preventable tragedy.
Let's talk about guns and children. We don't mean young teenagers. We mean toddlers.
You've occasionally heard stories about how some children find a loaded gun and fire it, hitting a nearby adult or even themselves.
For example, a 2-year-old kid in Jeffersonville was hospitalized in June after shooting himself in the leg with a handgun belonging to a man charged earlier in the year with two felony handgun-related charges. The Journal Gazette did not report the incident, which is not unusual; most shootings like that aren't widely reported.
But they happen a lot more often than you think. Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post spent a few hours sifting through news reports and found at least 43 shootings by a toddler 3 or younger.
In 31 of them, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself.
In the United States, about once a week this year, on average, a child has found a gun, pointed it at himself or someone else, and pulled the trigger. "Boys are disproportionately likely to do this: I could find only three cases where a girl under the age of 4 wounded someone with a gun," Ingraham wrote. "In 13 of the 43 total incidents, a child's self-inflicted injuries were fatal. In two other cases, another person died after being shot by a toddler: a father in Alabama, and a 1-year-old in Ohio."
The state where most of the shootings have happened is Missouri, with five. Indiana had the one, in Jeffersonville. Big states don't necessarily have more shootings. California had none, New York one.
What is most unfortunate about those shootings is that many could easily be prevented.
A state or city could require that guns be locked up. But, as Ingraham points out, gun-rights advocates oppose such measures, even though a majority of Americans support them. . I have two yellow flags that I put on the back of the trike. Yeah, I look like a major league dork on this vehicle. Go ahead, ask me whether I care.
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