Local Opinion

My wife and I were starting to watch a Netflix series when I said, “This looks familiar. Have we seen it before?”

The current conflicts involving Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., NATO and Europe are complex.

Back in 1976, I read a short newspaper story citing French demographer and scholar Emmanuel Todd who forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his essay titled “The Final Fall,” Todd deduced that the USSR suffered from stagnation, low birth rate and high infant mortality, rising suicides, alcoholism and worker discontent.

In the weeks before the November 2020 election and subsequent Capitol insurrection, podcasts and Facebook postings lit up with allegations of massive voting fraud and calls for violence to address the spreading myth of a stolen presidential election.

Everyone will have a favorite piece of legislation to root for or against this session of the Indiana General Assembly, so there is a chance some of the lesser bills will escape attention.

Indiana lawmakers are considering a bill that would require all school curricula to be posted online for parental review and would ban schools’ ability to implement concepts like critical race theory.

Driving the country road toward Franklin, I notice ice forming on some farm ponds along the way. I allow myself to believe that, after a mild December, perhaps true winter has come to stay as January begins. I should be downtown in 10 minutes.

Six decades ago, many states, particularly in the South, passed laws to suppress the votes of people of color. The techniques varied, but they were all quite insidious: poll taxes, literacy tests, English proficiency requirements among them.

Last month the state’s largest healthcare firm, IU Health, announced it would freeze prices through 2025. That end date is tentative, and the plan is short on public details. However, there has been enough reporting about the issue that we can begin to understand how financially important this is for businesses and consumers. It is also useful to interpret this decision in light of the overall hospital monopoly problem in Indiana.

Cartoonists again have represented the new year of 2022 as a baby in diapers.