IT WAS ONE OF THOSE government-can-work-magic stories — a parks department repurposes an old municipal dump into a new golf course. Shazam! Happy citizens playing cheap golf, manicured greens and fairways instead of smelly sludge and trash. The problem, government being government, is that a new municipal golf course is run, well, like an old municipal dump. Unaccountability and the resulting oversights and miscalculations end up costing somebody — taxpayers — a lot of money.…

by Andrea Neal Chief Justice Earl Warren gets most of the credit, and rightly so, for the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing segregated schools. But were it not for a Hoosier — Justice Sherman Minton of Floyd County — the Brown case would not have even been before the Supreme Court at that time. In 1952, prior to Warren’s appointment, the court had to decide whether or not…

“In an all-Navy message published Tuesday, Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Robert Burke said a three-pronged training approach will equip senior leaders and rank-and-file personnel for the changes (to open transgender service).” — military.com, Sept. 16, 2016 HAVING BREAKFAST one Sunday off U.S. 931 in Kokomo, reading about NFL players protesting Western Civilization, I was witness to one of those micro-events that runs counter to the popular narrative. It was a group of veterans on…

by Martina Webster We should educate people on the tax-rate formula every chance we get. The more who understand the concept, the better the dialog on government spending. For starters, could giving up a tax exemption lower your taxes? Consider that it is time for the Legislature to designate something other than the Homestead Credit as the marker for the benefit a property owner gets with the 1-percent property tax cap. Let me explain: Tax…

by Andrea Neal Though many might be tempted to confer the honor on Benjamin Harrison, Wendell L. Willkie is the only native Hoosier ever nominated for president by a major political party. Harrison was from North Bend, Ohio. Born and raised in Elwood, Willkie was the Republican standard bearer in 1940, securing the nomination on the sixth ballot at the party’s national convention. As of the first ballot, Willkie was in third place behind Thomas…

by Tom Huston A description of Donald Trump’s child-care plan in the Weekly Standard is a perfect example of why I believe so much of what passes for conservative thinking these days is totally irrelevant to the real world. Trump’s tax deduction for child-care costs would be available to a taxpayer with taxable income of up to $250,000 for single filers and $500,000 for a joint return. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist…

by James E. McClure, Ph.D., and T. Norman Van Cott, Ph.D. In a 2011 article, “Too Many Rhinestones,” Professors T. Norman Van Cott and the late Clarence Deitsch examined Ball State University’s (BSU) grade-inflation problem. After comparing grade distributions and grade-point averages (GPAs) from fall 1990 and fall 2009 in principles-level courses, they found that BSU was no exception to the nationwide trend of ever more A’s and B’s, fewer D’s and F’s and higher…

The author is an attorney with a national practice specializing in disparity studies, called as an expert witness in challenges to racial preferences in public contracting. He wrote this for the foundation based on work being commissioned by a client group of contractors. Contact him at jcharlessullivan@yahoo.com. The foundation’s white papers are intended to make scholarly research on Indiana issues more widely available to policy analysts and researchers. White papers represent research in progress and…

by Andrea Neal In the segregated world of the 20th century, a street called Indiana Avenue came to symbolize the identity and aspirations of Indianapolis’s black citizens. “It was the heart and soul of the African-American community,” says David Leander Williams, author of “Indianapolis Jazz.” From the late 1800s, “the Avenue” offered a vibrant residential, commercial and cultural environment for a growing black population. The middle class built homes there, entrepreneurs built businesses and entertainers…

“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies,” wrote the historian Robert Conquest. With most Indiana cities in economic doldrums, we are told that we can’t cut taxes on the job creators. It would endanger the sewer utility fund, they say in Terre Haute. It would put stress on school budgeters, they say in Fort Wayne. And these are the…