by Craig Ladwig Knowing for whom to vote is difficult these days. It won’t be any easier if journalists, whatever their political leaning, muddy the ideological labels. Economists talk about “rational” ignorance. Average citizens are “rationally ignorant and apathetic,” writes Dr. Eric Schansberg in the current issue of The Indiana Policy Review. “They know little and take little action — and rationally so, since their individual efforts can rarely move the political needle.” When you…

by Leo Morris In the dog days of summer, when the news dries up even as the humidity soars, it can be tough to find a current crisis over which to obsess. So we must turn to our earnest statisticians, always ready to furnish bored journalists with a fresh batch of state-by-state comparisons around which to build a good scare story. Here we see that Indiana is the 20th worst state when it comes to…

by Leo Morris Indiana Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly is a brave politician who went against his party to support President Donald Trump’s demands for billions of dollars to build a border wall. So says one of his campaign ads. No, no, no, insist attack ads aimed against him. Donnelly supported amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants and has waffled on the wall. Well, goodness. You suppose illegal immigration might be an important issue in Indiana?…

When Government Goes Bad As a student and teacher of political economy and public policy, I am frequently asked to explain the behavior of government agents. Whether the actors are local, in Indianapolis or in Washington; whether the policy realm is economic or social; whether the focus is foreign or domestic — citizens are routinely frustrated by policy and politics. The list is nearly endless: cronyism and TIF districts at the local level; frustration with “conservatives” at…

“It is your responsibility to do something, whether you think it’s your responsibility or not.” — A protester shouting into his megaphone as students this week toppled the “Silent Sam” statue at the University of North Carolina IN AN ICONIC FILM of my youth, “The Graduate,” Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is given a single word of advice from a parental friend — “plastics.” Today, I’m the one giving career advice, a difficult thing for a…

by Leo Morris As a good conservative, I naturally start each day vowing to do everything I can to help destroy the planet. I have never, ever recycled a single thing, since recycling is of course a Communist plot designed to divert our attention so our neglected landfills can be captured. I proudly display my “Nuke the whales!” bumper sticker. I bag up my leaves and other yard waste and transport it out and burn…

by Craig Ladwig The president didn’t actually say that American journalism was the enemy of the people but he should have. What he said was that “fake news,” not a free press, is the enemy. Nonetheless, 300 newspapers signed onto a campaign to protest the president’s comments and declare the importance of their particular definition of press freedom. Their coordinated editorials ran Aug. 16. You can read this as a dissenting view. “Trump’s references to…

by Leo Morris The defacement of Jewish temple property in Carmel with Nazi symbols seems to have created a tipping point in favor of finally enacting a hate crimes law in Indiana. Business leaders, editorial pages and politicians up to and including the governor are urging swift action in the next session of the General Assembly. So I’m not going to call for defeat of the legislation, as I did several months ago. It would…

by Andrea Neal Making sense of Mike Pence. That was the task I faced over the past year in writing “Pence – The Path to Power,” the first comprehensive biography of the Hoosier vice president. He is a man of both predictability and paradox. Since first running for Congress in 1988, he has never wavered in his public policy views favoring limited government, free markets and social conservatism. He is predictably loyal to family and…

(For the use of the membership only, not for publication, distribution or quotation.) THE TWO FOUNDING INTELLECTUAL MODELS for this foundation happen to be “persons of color,” as it is now phrased, Dr. Thomas Sowell and Dinesh D’Souza. The latter we have brought to Indiana many times for seminars, talks and research projects. The former we would have happily done so had we been able to afford his fee. What is important there are the…