The Outstater
A Defense of ALPR Cameras THERE’S A BIG DIFFERENCE between the automated corner camera and the venerable corner policeman, an institution long recognized for accelerating investigations, raising crime clearance rates, locating missing people, reducing auto theft and generally keeping our streets safe for the law-abiding. The difference? We can no longer afford the policeman. But the Read the full article…
Eichenberger: Meritocracy
by Dan Eichenberger M.D. The word “meritocracy” was born as an insult. In 1958, British sociologist Michael Young published The Rise of the Meritocracy, a dystopian satire warning that a society ruled by intelligence and effort would create a new, more arrogant elite and a resentful underclass. The Left later embraced the term’s pejorative spirit. Today the Read the full article…
The Outstater
Public ‘Service’ Understood I’M HAVING TROUBLE sorting out the Andy Zay settlement this week. Zay, a former state senator, describes himself as a “public servant.” As commissioner of the Indiana Utilities, though, he displeased his boss the governor and was fired, somewhat abruptly. But this is politics, not tiddlywinks. Wouldn’t grown-ups just agree to disagree and go their Read the full article…
The Outstater
‘Head Start Never Worked’ CAN A FAILED PROGRAM uphold a billion-dollar budget for decades? Yes, if it is run by the government and promises the impossible in the name of beautiful, vulnerable children. That in a sentence is Head Start, the federal program created in 1965 with a pledge to provide school readiness for low-income children from birth to Read the full article…
Franke Book Review: Mansfield
by Mark Franke “There is no vacant space left in the world today; founding something new requires destroying something old.” — Harvard Professor Harvey C. Mansfield I ran across this quote in Mansfield’s recently released book “The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy.” Mansfield, sometimes called the last conservative standing Read the full article…
The Outstater
Custer’s Vindication and More WE SORELY MISS the late Norman Van Cott, our curmudgeon and senior adjunct. Van Cott claimed to have wandered into an economics Ph.D. while looking for something more useful to do. Nonetheless, he left us with two sterling insights, one on the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the other on rabid Read the full article…
