Published: April 20, 2008 05:06 pm            

Weekly wrap - Monday, April 21, 2008

On lack of health insurance:

Murder is never justifiable. So is death because of a lack of health insurance? In 2006, twice as many people in this country died from the latter cause than from the former, according to Families USA, a health-care advocacy group.

Lack of health insurance killed 22,000 people in the 25-64 age group in 2006, according to a study by The Urban Institute cited by Families USA. In Indiana, an estimated 460 working-age people died in 2006 because they didn’t have health insurance. That’s about nine people a week.

The three top presidential candidates — Republican John McCain and Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama — have all advocated for sweeping health-care reform to bring down costs while raising accessibility.

McCain puts it in strong words on his campaign Web site: “Controlling health-care costs will take fundamental change‚ nothing short of a complete reform of the culture of our health system and the way we pay for it will suffice.”

It’s our job, as voters, to make sure and ask all of the hard questions during the campaign about how to accomplish this. And then it will be citizens’ duty to hold our nation’s new top executive and our congressional representatives accountable when they take office.

— The Anderson Herald Bulletin

On failing schools:

Lake County has six high schools, three middle schools and an elementary school that are clearly failing schools. Those schools have been identified under Public Law 221 rules as being on probation — the worst possible grade — for three straight years.

Five of those schools are in Gary. In fact, Gary Community School Corp. ranks at the very bottom in the percentage of students passing both the math and English portions of the ISTEP.

It is hard to consider a school district successful when nearly two-thirds of the students tested fail to meet minimum standards on the ISTEP. Simply put, those students aren’t learning what they should.

Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Suellen Reed has said the state intervention that is threatened under Public Law 221 and the federal No Child Left Behind law could include getting an entirely new staff or closing a school and reopening it as a charter school. Gary school officials are looking to close some schools to cope with declining enrollment. That needs to happen, of course. But state education officials also need to get serious about planning for state intervention in those failing schools.

With charter schools, failing to meet standards means the charter could be revoked. If that contract isn’t fulfilled, action is taken. Shouldn’t the same be true with traditional public schools?

— The Munster Times

On Democratic presidential race:

That Barack Obama is in trouble in some quarters over remarks he made about working-class frustrations may be a measure of 11th-hour desperation by opposing campaigns more than any imprudence on the Illinois senator’s part.

At Ball State University in Muncie, Obama began the requisite public apologia and political backtracking. But these were his actual words that created the stir, uttered privately during a California fundraiser and posted on The Huffington Post political Web site: “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Is Obama suggesting that anger and frustration are the result of a government apparently not big enough or caring enough to pander to their every need or demand? He said the masses are left to “take comfort from their faith and their family,” as though both offer weak consolation to the prize of more government action.

It’s not entirely clear what Obama meant to say, but we’re concerned about remarks cut short before the debate can begin. We’re concerned that political sensitivities and correctness may deter airing this or coming issues more fully.

At this juncture, we find the feigned political indignation more insulting than amusing. It poses a real threat that style might triumph over substance, that posturing will win over clarity. And should that happen, Americans would be the losers regardless who wins in May or November.

— Richmond Palladium-Item

        

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