Category: Indiana Writers Group

A LOCAL MANUFACTURER puts the challenge of economic-development agencies into a sentence. “If we’re going to turn our local governments into investment banks,” he says, “we’ll need to find smarter people to run them.” A hard truth, but there may be even harder ones ahead according to an economist for the foundation. Dr. Barry Keating, speaking…

by Leo Morris I come to some of the hot-topic debates of the day a little late because I get all caught up in the search for context. By the time I escape from the labyrinth of historical research and peripheral analyses, the zeitgeist has moved on, and nobody wants to talk about the issue…

by Mark Franke “Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams asserted after the Boston Massacre. “Whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Except for when they have the audacity to disprove the received wisdom of our current progressive elites. That is,…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. Indiana media outlets have recently reported on women’s ostensible pay gap. And USA Today wrote last month that the notion of bringing home 80 cents for every dollar pocketed by a man on a national basis is “unsettling,” calling it “a shortfall” and suggesting a lack of something owed. A northern Indiana paper…

by Leo Morris Donald J. Trump is a jerk. I feel as if I have a right to say that. I voted for him. He may be a jerk, but he’s my jerk. It was a difficult decision, probably the toughest call of my voting life. As a fiscal conservative, I was an early supporter of…

(For the use of the membership only.) “Equality of opportunity, not only is it fair enough, it’s even laudable. But equality of outcome? It’s like, ‘No, you’ve crossed the line. We’re not going there with you.’” — Dr. Jordan B. Peterson THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, the wags used to say,…

by Mark Franke Just when it appears that the political correctness brigade has exhausted itself tilting at ideological windmills, another incredulous story hits the internet news feeds. The city of Arcata, California, has determined that a statue of President William McKinley is an affront to our society’s moral purity and must be pulled down. William…

by Leo Morris There might be something more terrifying for a wheezy old man than sitting in a compact with a flat tire on the shoulder of I-465 in Indianapolis, watching nervously in the driver’s side mirror at three lanes of cars and trucks whizzing by at 70 miles an hour, but offhand I can’t…

by T. Norman Van Cott, Ph.D. The uproar over President Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariff pronouncements has been a déjà vu moment for me. Early on in the Jimmy Carter administration, I was an economist for the U.S. Department of Labor and a member of the administration’s “Footwear Task Force” committee. The committee was implicitly…

 by Leo Morris I enjoy my regular coiffure-adjustment sessions because they give me a glimpse of something I seldom get to see — the back of my head, when the barber sticks the small mirror in front of my face so I can see into the giant mirror behind me. He always asks a variation…