Category: Indiana Writers Group

by Craig Ladwig One of my favorite lines was delivered by the provost at my daughter’s college: “The only thing in life that is exactly as it seems is professional wrestling.” The search for a new Indiana University basketball coach will fall well outside that definition. It is not a search for a winning coach,…

by Fred McCarthy The headline on a recent article out of Indianapolis says, “Council Panel OKs $148K to Fund ‘Economic Recovery Coordinator.’” The text tells us that the city council’s Metropolitan and Economic Development Corp. there approved $147,916 (for “salary and some basic administrative costs”) to fund the first year of the three-year contract position.…

by David Thomas, Ph.D. The political tumult surrounding the proposed replacement of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with a Republican alternative (Trumpcare), underpins a greater concern felt by many households: Will another inside-the-beltway proposal, imposed by the majority du jour, be an improvement over the previous effort, foisted on the minority? Or does another painful…

For the use of the membership only. IF YOU HANG AROUND LONG ENOUGH you begin to recognize historic moments. So it was when several officers of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation sat down for afternoon coffee in Indianapolis almost 20 years ago with two bright young stars of the conservative movement. Stephen Moore, a friend…

by Cmdr. John Pickerill Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is why the America tradition has always been separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial. By separating powers we citizens are better protected against government corruption or tyrannical behavior. One branch of government can hold the other in check. But somewhere…

Not for publication, quotation or distribution. For the use of the membership only. “This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s. And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would…

by T. Norman Van Cott Among economics data watchers, a country’s exports enjoy a hallowed status. The ability of producers in country A to sell goods and services to people in other countries is taken as a sign of A’s economic strength, although the underlying metric for economic strength goes unmentioned. In addition, job counters…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. I recently received an e-mail from Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., the publisher of the New York Times, to which I subscribe. He knows that the media are under attack from President Trump and he wrote to ‘defend’ the media and “assert the value of quality journalism,” since, after all, “the truth…

by Jason Arp Government-run economic development entities are having a difficult time replicating the real thing. News stories from around Indiana point to problems related to creating what I call synthetic economies: The Muncie building commissioner is charged with wire fraud, theft and money-laundering; a Marion tax district lost $2.5 million on a failed hotel project;…

IF YOU ARE AMONG THOSE struggling with a definition of “fake” news, we have an illustration (below). It is from page 4A of the Monday issue of the Gannett corporate national publication known locally as the Indianapolis Star. You can see that the page has three items on it: a news article and two advertisements. One…