Category: Indiana Writers Group

by Martina Webster Hoosiers, we just paid our fall property tax installments back in November. Do you know how they were calculated? Where did your government come up with that number? And are property taxes really worse than the alternatives? The first thing you may not know is your home is assessed based on its…

Indianapolis (Jan. 4) — The Senate Education and Career Development Committee was to hear testimony today on the state’s history curriculum and requirements from Andrea Neal, adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation and author of a book celebrating the Indiana bicentennial. “We continually lament the brain drain without seeking to understand all the…

“They say you can’t study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.” — The playwright David Mamet by Craig Ladwig Tim George, program director at WBAT radio in Marion, asked a most serious question on the…

by Jason Arp In politics, the clock until the next election never stops ticking. While most folks are still licking their wounds or quietly celebrating the recent election results, the political class has already begun the next campaign. Of particular interest is the scramble to name the frontrunner in my city’s mayoral race. And since…

by Andrea Neal The Internet Revolution has changed the way I teach my Eighth Grade history students. In addition to learning about presidents and politics, students today need intensive instruction in avoiding plagiarism, verifying sources and spotting fake news. Since I left journalism and became a teacher 14 years ago, I have constantly battled the…

“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” — H.L. Mencken by Craig…

“Newspaper editors separate the wheat from the chaff and print the chaff.” — Adlai Stevensen by Craig Ladwig You won’t read any of this in your morning newspaper but Indiana is hurting for news, “false” or otherwise. The Associated Press Bureau here is minimally staffed. The capital city newspaper, once the state’s arbiter of sound…

by John Pickerill As I’m writing this, the stock market is breaking above 19,900. That’s a 1,000-point increase since Donald Trump was elected. So this must be proof that people believe Trump will generate a healthy economy, right? After all, if people are willing to buy stock in American companies it must mean they’re confident…

by Tyler Watts, Ph.D. Advertising on talk radio and cable news is full of alarmist inducements to stockpile gold and food, rife with implications and predictions that the next economic crisis will feature food riots and a complete societal breakdown. As both a Christian and an economist I am bothered by this kind of alarmism.…

by T. Norman Van Cott The notion that additional government expenditures magically increase national output is ingrained in the national psyche. Keynesian economics professors can certainly take credit for this mindset; it is they who have schooled multiple generations of college students in Keynesian multiplier analysis. The professors’ counter-intuitive tease in this effort has always…