Category: Indiana Writers Group

by Jason Arp In 2003, Capitol Broadcasting in concert with the city of Durham, North Carolina, put forth an effort to reinvigorate downtown Durham by redeveloping the American Tobacco Company properties there into apartments, retail space and offices. The project, costing far more than its real market value, reportedly ended in bankruptcy. Now we learn…

 by Mark Franke Every English school child knows the story about King Canute sitting on the seashore and commanding the tide to stop before wetting his feet. Needless to say, it didn’t, which was the point old Canute wanted to make. He may have been king, but the laws of nature answer only to God.…

by Leo Morris Those who worry about Indiana’s image in more enlightened sections of the country can relax a little now that one black mark on the state’s reputation has been erased: It is no longer one of only four states that do not have an official insect. Hoosier entomologists will no longer have to hang…

by Mark Franke When I was a college freshman taking my first political theory class, my professor explained why some government policies are good (meaning popular) and others are scorned. The answer is simple: It depends on whose ox is being gored. Tariffs are exactly that kind of policy. In a free-trade environment struggling domestic…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. Larry Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic (KB) have written JFK and the Reagan Revolution — a helpful history on their dramatic “supply-side” reductions in marginal tax rates. Bringing JFK into this discussion is particularly helpful in dealing with partisans (dramatic tax cuts have not simply been a GOP thing), folks who are…

by Mark Franke It’s great to be a retired senior citizen. I have plenty of time to spend on my favorite hobby — grousing. Of course the world has descended to perdition during my lifetime. I’ve got a list of things that have been ruined, eliminated or forgotten by the succeeding generations, all in spite of my…

by Leo Morris When the Indiana Supreme Court put the state’s capital punishment pursuits back on track last month, ruling in effect that it could choose whichever drug cocktail it wished for executions, it prompted my sister and me to have a discussion about the death penalty. We discovered that we had arrived at different but…

by Craig Ladwig An exchange during a meeting this week of an Indiana city council says all you will ever need to know about those public-private “partnerships.” It is between a skeptical councilman and two prospective developers regarding a huge downtown renovation project. The participants make clear that the elements of a “successful” public-private partnership…

by Fred McCarthy This morning’s paper uses approximately three-quarters of a page with text and pictures bemoaning the “pothole” problem. The fourth paragraph contains this quote from our mayor:  “The plain truth is also that the financial condition of our city from the past few decades has been deplorable, and it has simply not had…

by Leo Morris When I was growing up in Kentucky, my parents were eligible for the federal government’s commodities program, the forerunner of food stamps and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). I remember a few of the things they received, including powdered milk, which was just awful, and big blocks of orange-ish cheese, which was…