by Eric Rasmussen, Ph.D. Why do 55% of voters think Biden stole the 2020 election? I think it boils down to three things. First, Biden’s vote was peculiarly high in just the places he needed votes, and those votes appeared late. Second, an astounding 68 million votes were by absentee ballot,  which are notoriously the easiest place to cheat. Third, there was no audit of the absentee vote count, and the propaganda press has been so overheated…

Newspapers for Sale — Cheap NEITHER THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR nor any other Gannett newspaper will be making an endorsement in this presidential election. Corporate headquarters says it is to protect journalistic integrity and independence. (You can stop laughing now). More interesting is Jeff Bezo’s frank and honest explanation of why his Washington Post will no longer endorse. It is a practical response to a historic decline in public trust in mass media, newspapers in particular and including the one he owns:…

by MARK FRANKE It’s just a few days until the election and there are already 165 lawsuits filed according to Bloomberg. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Harris campaign has 400 lawyers drafting legal documents to have ready, with 10,000 lawyers in reserve for election day deployment. We’ve come to that. It seems our litigious society prefers to settle things in the courtroom rather than at the ballot box. The Supreme Court justices better gird their…

A Political Strategy that Works “Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.” — Napoleon THE LATE JOE OVERTON was the strategic genius in our small group of early state think-tankers. He understood that meeting with politicians is a waste of time. Why? Because they are followers, not leaders, following anyone who will help them get elected.  Meet instead, he said, with donors and voters. Overton, who helped found the Mackinac Center, knew that…

by Ryan Cummins An open letter to state Sen. Greg Goode: Your newsletter announcing that Indiana’s average teacher pay now surpasses $60,000 is Interesting. In  my opinion, though, your and the Indiana Republican Party’s take on teacher compensation is at best flawed, and more likely destructive. In an essay disseminated by The Indiana Policy Review in 2023, I asked the related question: “Is going from $56,000 to $60,000 enough for teachers? Too much? Not nearly enough? Just right? No one…

by John Gaski, Ph.D. So, the two main political camps now need to soften the rhetoric because of too much mutual demonization? Fair enough, generally, although the level of offense has hardly been equivalent and the post-Butler kid gloves have come off. Even if such a civilized-combat rule were feasible in politics, an exception would have to be proffered — reflecting the exceptional circumstances that still merit the fullest condemnation, as follows.   The media and American people…

Opinion Polls and PR Jujitsu “There’s life and then there’s life in the newspapers.” Lillian Hellman, American author. WITH LESS THAN TWO WEEKS before the election, Jim Banks, Mike Braun and Todd Rokita can rest easy. The corporate media hate them, an essential condition these days for a political victory. In fact, against all conventional wisdom, the smart play is to poke a reporter in the nose — figuratively, of course. This relationship between negative media…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. Not long ago, a bit before 2017, my wife and I hiked to the highest point in the United States between the Rockies and the Spanish Pyrenees.  We visited Custer State Park, in one of the flatter U.S. states, and hiked to the top of Harney Peak.  I even bought a t-shirt.  The front said “Hiked It, Liked It”; the back had a picture of a fire tower atop a mountain…

LET’S DISPATCH one of our most vexing of public issues: Why is mass media so worthless? Spoiler alert, neither the Internet nor conspiracy theories has anything to do with the industry’s low favorability rating (sub 30 percent). The reasons can be organized in a logical cascade. It begins with the realization that individuals, specifically proprietary publishers, have quit investing. This is particularly true at the regional and state level. In Indiana, there is not a single statewide medium that even vaguely resembles a traditional,…

by MARK FRANKE Americans are deeply divided along political lines. Everyone knows this, but I recently learned how intrinsic this division is. At a recent lecture sponsored by the Fort Wayne-Allen County Historical Society, Michael Wolf from the political science department at the university formerly known as IPFW cited an eye-opening statistic: Democrats give their children names with more vowels than Republicans do. I trust Dr. Wolf implicitly, having known him for several decades, but this…