The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1364176
Around Southwestern Indiana, orga- nized units have popped up working to control invasive plants. These partner- ships among county residents and orga- nizations like the Soil and Water Conser- vation Districts meet regularly, on Zoom or in conference rooms to plan as well as out in the field to pull weeds. Anyone can become a member of these groups, depending on the county in which you prefer to help. Invasive plants have a definition. Spe- cifically, a plant must be non-native and harmful in some way. Some native plants can feel rather invasive, but the definition precludes those plants from the defini- tion. Predominant examples of invasive plants in our area are Asian bush hon- eysuckle, Japanese knotweed, and poi- son hemlock. Garlic mustard is another prolific invasive. Invasive plants tend to have no natural check on their spread, be it diseases, insects, or wildlife feeding. This characteristic allows for the kind of spread that chokes out nearly all under- growth, in the case of Asian bush hon- eysuckle. To combat the spread of invasives, hu- man action is needed. Garlic mustard can be hand-pulled easily, while poison hem- lock or Asian bush honeysuckle are con- trolled more chemically. To spur that ac- tion, the Southern Indiana Cooperative Invasive Management board and the Natural Resource Conservation Service came together to form the Indiana Inva- sive Initiative, known as III. III then hired regional specialists to work with Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs) in as many coun- ties in the state as possible. The III and SWCDs then formed a Cooperative Inva- sive Species Management Area, usually the size of the county, and recruited local partners and residents to begin meeting, forming mis- sion and vision statements, and becoming their own independent entity. In Posey County, that entity is the Posey Invasive Partnership (PIP). The PIP meets about every other month, with their last meeting having been on the 19th. Their next big event is the Hovey Lake Weed Wrangle on April 24 at 12:30 p.m. CDT. Interested attendees should meet at the Hovey Lake FWA Office at 8401 Hwy 69 S. In Pike and Gibson Counties, the en- tity covers both counties. The Pike-Gib- son CISMA also meets every other month (February, April, June, August, October, December), but on the sec- ond Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. CDT. This group mostly consists of partner agen- cies at the moment. Most of the plans the Pike-Gibson CISMA had during 2020 were cancelled due to COVID, but they were able to participate in the Bradford Pear Bounty program. That program al- lowed homeowners to bring proof of dis- patch of a Bradford pear in order to re- ceive a free native tree re- placement. The Warrick county CIS - MA is called WISP ( Warrick Invasive Species Partner- ship). They meet every oth- er month ( January, March, May, July, September, No- vember) on the third Tues- day at 9 a.m. CDT. The meet- ings have been held virtual- ly since COVID and usually consist of a small group. The in-person meetings generally had more people in attendance. During 2020, the group held a Weed Wrangle® at Lynnville Park where ap- proximately 20 volunteers worked to re- move invasive species such as autumn ol- ive and bush honeysuckle from a promi- nent overlook area at the park. WISP al- so participated in a Bradford Pear Bounty program that distributed approximately 75 native trees to Warrick county land- owners to replace invasive Bradford pear trees they cut down on their property. Vanderburgh County also has their own active partnership. For more de- tails on these groups, contact your coun- ty Soil and Water Conservation District. For more general information, contact Hans at hschmitz@purdue.edu or 812- 838 -1331. The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, April 21, 2021 C-5 tuition, books, private tutoring, or other education services. Already popular with more than 70 per- cent of surveyed service members, mil- itary education savings accounts would be a boon to families as they transition to new duty stations. Currently, only 4 percent of school- aged children in military families have ac- cess to the highly esteemed base schools, which are exclusively located in the east- ern United States. Due to base schools' limited availability and the costs associat- ed with private school tuition, many mil- itary families often have no other choice than to send their children to their resi- dentially assigned school near the base, even if the school is not a good fit. Moreover, pandemic-induced public school closures added yet another ob- stacle for military families to navigate. According to the American Enterprise Institute's Return to Learn Tracker, the states that house the largest active-du- ty military populations, with the excep- tion of Texas, continue to provide instruc- tion in the fully remote or hybrid models. If these families had access to edu- cation savings accounts, they could en- roll in private school options, increasing their chances of having access to in-per- son learning. Private schools have pro- vided in-person instruction more often during the pandemic than their public school counterparts. Despite the welcome flurry of school choice activity in the states this year, ap- proximately half of active-duty military personnel continue to live in states that don't have private school choice options. Accordingly, education savings accounts for military families would offer families more flexible education options, regard- less of where they are stationed in the United States. Besides providing education alterna- tives to military-connected children, ed- ucation savings accounts could have myr- iad other positive benefits, such as im- proving recruitment and retention rates, since service members wouldn't have to choose between their career and their children's education. In fact, Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., has introduced a proposal that would pro- vide education savings accounts for mil- itary-connected children. This reform would provide crucial support for mili- tary families and could improve nation- al defense. Service members and their families already make untold sacrifices for their country. Their children's education, how- ever, should not be sacrificed. This being the Month of the Military Child, policymakers should remember that education savings accounts would provide the much-needed flexibility that accompanies modern military life and give military-connected children the ed- ucation options they deserve. Jude Schwalbach is a Research Associ- ate and Project Coordinator, Center for Ed- ucation Policy. MILITARY Continued from page 4 LY. Having somewhere to go is HOME. Having both is a BLESSING. ••• Blessed are those who can give without remembering, and take without forgetting. ••• Close some doors today. Not because of pride, inca- pacity or arrogance, but sim- ply because they lead you no- where. ••• Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, "I'll try again tomorrow." ••• Be happy not because ev- erything is good, but be- cause you see the good in everything. ••• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. ••• Trusting in God does not mean understanding His ways. Have a blessed week. Court Report FELONY Pike County Circuit Court Linda Jean Kemp charged with count I dealing in methamphetamine, a level 4 felony, and count II possession of meth- amphetamine, a level 6 felony. Danny Lee Rogers charged with deal- ing in methamphetamine, a level 4 felony. Preastyn Latta charged with count I auto theft, a level 6 felony, count II know- ingly or intentionally operating a motor vehicle without ever receiving a license and count III possession of marijuana. Robert E. McCarty charged with count I unlawful possession of a syringe, a level 6 felony, and count II possession of mar- ijuana. Gregory McCurtis charged with count I possession of methamphetamine, a level 6 felony, and count II possession of mar- ijuana. TRAFFIC AND MISDEMEANORS Pike County Circuit Court Terry L. Loveless, Sr. charged with dis- orderly conduct. Ivan R. Gonzalez charged with know- ing or intentionally operating a motor ve- hicle without ever receiving a license. Benjamin C. Greller charged with false government identification. Kimberly G. DeWeese charged with false informing. Paul R. Carnahan II charged with count I possession of marijuana and count II op- erating a vehicle with a schedule I or II controlled substance or its metabolite in person's body. Eric Martinez-Rodriguez charged with count I possession of marijuana and count II possession of paraphernalia. Jose A. Crespo-Carrero charged with count I possession of marijuana and count II possession of paraphernalia. Andrew Kyle Blackgrave charged with domestic battery. Kristann R. Thompson charged with possession of marijuana. Gary Bullington charged with crimi- nal mischief. CIVIL Pike County Circuit Court LVNV Funding, LLC sues Rodrigo Or- tiz on complaint. Mark Luebke petitions for vehicle title. Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance a/s/o John Hess and Benjamin Hess sues Bran- don Hawthorne on complaint. Morgan Carrico sues Andrew Carrico for dissolution of marriage. SMALL CLAIMS Pike County Circuit Court Stephanie Scott sues Melody Auten on complaint. Amanda and William Wilkins sues Shelly Lawson on complaint. Kayla Guzman and Fabian Guzman sue Robert R. Drew on complaint. INFRACTIONS Pike County Circuit Court Logan Andrew McGregor charged with speeding. Trent M. Romans charged with speed- ing, exceeding 55 mph. Arianna E. Poole charged with speed- ing, exceeding 70 mph. Kristi L. Fulcher charged with speed- ing. Michael R. Bowersox charged with speeding, exceeding 70 mph. Jeremy A. Hale charged with seatbelt violation. Ethan R. Gorby charged with seatbelt violation. Roy D. Hedge charged with driving while suspended. Jordan A. Pauw charged with count I registration and display or registration violation and count II driving while sus- pended. an announcer says it's "cul- tural appropriation month." I tell him: "Depending which things of yours I watch, I'm either honored or horrified that I influ- enced you. You're drowning a blonde doll in a glass of wa- ter? I don't even understand the joke." Crowder pushes back, ex- plaining that the episode is about China's one-child poli- cy, which "resulted in count- less girls being drowned in a bathtub. ... I don't think the joke is more offensive than the policy." Another "joke" that I didn't get: Crowder mocks the part of the COVID-19 stimulus bill that gives $5 billion to farmers of color. He imitated a Black man, saying, "I'mma buy a plow, man...! " Other media jumped on him for that. "Incredibly rac- ist," said Francesca Fiorenti- ni of The Young Turks. "That was a joke," Crowder responds. "We go into an im- pression of hipsters in De- troit and A frican Americans living out on farms. It's a fish out of water tale. It's funny... I shouldn't have to justify ev- ery joke that I make." I push back. "But the way you did it was mean, nasty. I don't blame YouTube for say- ing, 'I don't want this on our channel.'" This upset Crowder. "I thought you had a better sense of humor than that," he replies. Crowder points out that YouTube is not consistent about what it limits. Con- servatives like him, he com- plains, are more likely to be censored. He referred me to a You- Tube video, viewed more than 100 million times, that portrays rapper Lil Nas X "being sodomized by Sa- tan, and not only is that monetized, but it's deemed child-friendly! " He's right when he says YouTube is biased. The company, owned by Google, restricted my vid- eo in which Black people ex- press skepticism about "sys- temic" American racism ( YouTube labeled it "hate- ful... content likely to of- fend marginalized individu- als"), one that criticized an- ti-school-choice politicians who send their kids to pri- vate school, one that says, "socialism leads to violence," and others. "There's an ideological motivation beyond the prof- it motivation," Crowder com- plains. Now, he's suing big tech companies, arguing that they break their terms of service by treating people like him differently. "I am unapologetic," Crowder concludes. "You don't have to like what I say. But I think at the end of the day, you'll be glad that there's someone there doing it." I am glad. YouTube should let people say what they want. John Stossel is author of "Give Me a Break: How I Ex- posed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." CROWDER Continued from page 4 FACEBOOK Continued from page 4 used to flow to the Saudis, Iran and OPEC nations, ma- ny of whom hate us. Trump wanted our oil and gas to come from Texas, Oklaho- ma, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and he consulted regularly with on-the-ground experts such as Harold Hamm, the president of Continental Re- sources and the largest drill- er of the Bakken shale in en- ergy-rich North Dakota. When America eliminat- ed its dependency on foreign producers, it also lowered en- ergy prices for the poorest Americans, with gas prices in many states falling to be- low $2 a gallon. As I write, the gas prices are hitting $4 a gallon in many states. The quest for energy dom- inance also yielded mas- sive job gains. The number of Americans directly em- ployed by oil and gas pro- ducers hit 800,000 last year. The domestic oil and gas in- dustry accounted for a larger share of all new jobs created in the first five years coming out of the 2008 financial cri- sis than any other industry. Many truckers and drillers in the oil patch make $100,000 a year or more — far more than workers installing so- lar panels. Biden and his media and technocratic allies view do- mestic energy production as a villain to vanquish. They are prepared to sacrifice the industry and its workers on the altar of climate and "sus- tainability." The left sees job losses in this industry as a small price to achieve its — unreachable — goal of zero carbon emissions by 2035. As a presidential candi- date, Biden promised he wouldn't push those work- ers into unemployment, and he even went so far as to en- dorse fracking. Now he's banning drilling on federal lands in many states, even though we have tens of tril- lions of dollars of energy re- sources. Let's have a grown-up dis- cussion on energy policy. The U.S. is going to contin- ue to use oil and gas for de- cades to come. Today, only 10.7 percent of our energy comes from wind and solar power. Approximately 2 per- cent of the cars on the road are electric vehicles. Even if that were to rise by tenfold over the next decade, we will still have 80 percent of cars using good old gasoline. If we don't produce the oil and gas here, we are going to fill our tanks with oil and gas from the Middle East or Russia. Biden must put jobs first and stop treating our domes- tic oil and gas producers as the enemies of progress. Oil and natural gas power our computers, our cars and trucks, our factories, our fur- naces, our cellphones — and all that our $22 trillion indus- trial economy encompasses. To "build back better," let those producers be part of an "all-of-the-above" clean, cheap and reliable all-Amer- ica energy policy. Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foun- dation and an economic con- sultant with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of "Trum- ponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the Amer- ican Economy." GREEN Continued from page 4 Down on the Farm By Hans Schmitz, Purdue Extension Educator Invasive partnerships provide weed control It is far more reasonable to assume that President Rea- gan would stand by these truths as adamantly and stal- wartly with our struggles to- day as he did in standing up to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. In the face of Reagan's sin- gle-minded and uncompro- mising stance regarding our core values, the Soviet Union collapsed. The same battle is being fought now in our nation. We must fight it with the same commitment if we hope to prevail. Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show "Cure America with Star Parker." DISTORTION Continued from page 4