Category: Indiana Writers Group

Misdirection — it is what makes a magician successful. The specific idea is to attract attention away from what is really going on. In a magic show its use is completely necessary and certainly approved, not so much when it is used in presenting news stories. The Indianapolis Star recently gave us a front-page story headlined, “Pence emails to cost state $100K.” The…

by Cmdr. John Pickerill There has been discussion recently over a possible wind farm in my county. Residents close to the proposed turbine towers are concerned about the health effects, about disrupted rural landscape and about what it will do to their property values. Some are suggesting that newly proposed countywide zoning would have excluded the turbines or minimized any harm. They…

by Craig Ladwig Looking over the raw data of contributions to a typical Indiana mayor, you are struck by the massive amounts coming from those involved in construction, architecture, engineering, etc. It is not an encouraging experience. For that is how progress is defined today. It is not in an increase in middle-class expendable income,…

 by Andrea Neal After Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill penned an op-ed article urging state lawmakers to resist the push for legal marijuana, he faced predictable outrage from a lobbying group that will say almost anything to sway public opinion to its side. Predictable because the pro-marijuana faction mastered – years ago – a public…

THE FATES OF INDIANA AND ILLINOIS could merge, literally, bailing the one out of a financial mess and filling a power vacuum in the other. Some think it a joke, but after watching the experts at my city’s public hearing testify in favor of a multimillion dollar (cost yet to be determined) riverfront development along…

  IT TOOK AN OUTSTATE EDITOR, Dan Carden of the Northwest Indiana Times, to compile the 45 different tax increases approved this year by the Republican-controlled General Assembly. And he tells us his count does not include allowing the Natural Resources Commission to increase 25 different fees or include a variety of increases for gaming and…

Talking Points • Indiana Doubles Down on Warm Beer — I don’t see this fight over liquor laws as a case study in cronyism. Here we have competing economic interests of approximately equal economic power fighting over public policy in an open forum subject to close public scrutiny. The author ignores the fact that large corporate-grocery,…

READING RECENT REMARKS on the state economy by the president of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, you are right to be troubled, even take offense. Was he saying that the problem with Indiana is Indianans? “It is evident that a lack of (skilled) workers, unhealthy lifestyle choices and limited Indiana-based funding to grow promising companies is…

 by Ryan Cummins What will it take for my town — or for your town — to be what the people who live there believe to be best? A hint: It is not parks, jobs, housing, industrial parks, downtowns or any of those things, although you might find them in the better cities and towns.…

MY MAYOR is the fellow you would like living next door — cheerful, thoughtful and civically involved, and his family until recently owned a tavern. So some of us were conflicted this week reading his uncharacteristically strong statement on the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. He opposes the decision, we learn, because he is “deeply concerned”…