“Nearly a third of property taxes now collected by City Hall go into 143 special taxing districts controlled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and aldermen, according to a new report by Cook County Clerk David Orr” — Chicago Tribune, July 24, 2018 by Craig Ladwig “I don’t care who does the electing, so long as I do the nominating,” said William M. Tweed, “boss” of New York City’s Tammany Hall. Few in Indiana know what it’s…

by Mitch Harper A few years ago, my city council considered a personal property tax abatement for a specific business. There was a lengthy discussion of the particulars of that request — quite lengthy. After the other council members had spoken, I raised my hand. I noted we had used up a lot of time talking about a specific business personal property tax abatement of a single business. I said that the view from 18,000…

by Leo Morris In 1657 the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote a letter in which he included the following apology (translated from the French): “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” I suspect that the Indiana Policy Review’s Craig Ladwig has that quote framed and hanging on a wall somewhere. When he recruited me to write these pieces, he said one of the cruelest…

(For the use of the membership only.) “I have never worked with a more honorable man than Dan Coats. He oozes integrity out of every pore. He is motivated by a sense of patriotism and duty to the security and the safety of this nation. I would tell anyone to heed his advice and his counsel.” — Gov. Eric Holcomb COULD IT BE POSSIBLE that the president knows something strategically important about Russia that hasn’t…

by Mark Franke I am conflicted. I love history. One of my historical heroes is Alexander Hamilton. I wrote what was the equivalent of my senior thesis as an undergraduate major in economics on Hamilton’s plan to put the new nation on a sound financial footing. Needless to say, I have looked up to Alexander Hamilton my entire adult life. But I hate musicals. Especially musicals that purport to be on historical topics but turn…

“There are very mediocre people out there who run stuff, but nobody out there told them they can’t. You’re just as capable.” — Michelle Obama to the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana, quoted by Suzette Hackney in the Feb. 13 Indianapolis Star by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. Recent news stories have again focused on affirmative action, the program established on behalf of those who have been disenfranchised by government design or cultural neglect. That groups of…

by Leo Morris I honestly wasn’t going to write about the Miss America pageant dropping the swimsuit competition, even when the news came that the Miss Indiana contest would naturally follow suit, so to speak. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say about it. I just calculated that anything I did say was likely to get me kicked out of the state, and, despite Indiana’s well-documented flaws, I still like living here. I’m…

The Indiana Republican Party is moribund, done in by the hubris of a supermajority and its flaccid governor, Eric Holcomb. That was clear at the state convention this spring in Evansville. Until recently, nobody read the platform texts approved at these gatherings . They were little more than boilerplate on family, patriotism, free markets and such — all words, no action. You are warned, though, to read the ones they’re writing these days. The crony…

by Mark Franke I took a class on business policy during my undergraduate days, back when Richard Nixon was still in his first term. My professor emphasized this key to business success: Serve the public. The point was that your business must always think about your customers’ needs and wants, and to use that as your starting point in making product or service decisions. He was right, of course, but things aren’t quite so simple…

by Leo Morris As a curmudgeon of long standing, I come from the “get off my lawn” school of private property. It’s direct, it’s simple, it provides no chance of misunderstanding. And just in case I’m not on hand to shout people off the premises, there is a nifty little sign that gets the job done: No trespassing. Seeing such a notice, even the most dimwitted of interlopers is sure to get the message that…