I AM SUSPICIOUS of downtown economic development plans and their related public-private partnerships. That’s not because I know much about economics or even business generally. They simply don’t pass my grandfather test.  That is, my grandfather would be asking a question: If all you have to do to create a wealthy downtown is slap together a package of government grants, loan guarantees and revenue-secured bonds, plus some spare change from a municipal fund or two and…

by Mark Franke A recent column in the Washington Examiner magazine focused on a congressional candidate in Michigan running as a conservative Republican in a Republican district. No big news there except for the fact that the candidate comes from a low income, Latino, union family. This is Michael J. Fox and “Family Ties” in real life. It’s not supposed to work like this, is it? The young are supposed to be more liberal than…

by Leo Morris In the spirit of Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story” radio segments. Let’s call this the bestseller that never was, adapted from author J. Mark Powell’s version of the incident. “Shep” (that’s how he referred to himself) was born and raised in Indiana but after serving in World War II had a radio career in Ohio before becoming the overnight voice of WOR in New York City. Broadcasting in the 1950s…

EDITOR’S NOTE — For the serious political observer, regardless of stripe, it was an extraordinary outcome. A first-term Republican, a quiet former banker who nonetheless stood up to the local Chamber of Commerce and a phalanx of economic-development interests, was reelected while being outspent three-to-one in both the primary and the general. And this was done in a gale of hostile media coverage (he finally declined to meet with the newspaper’s endorsement board). This included disapproval, even derision, from both Republican…

THE TABLE TURNED SUDDENLY a decade ago. One day Indiana state government served us, the next day we served it. It happened during a state Senate Appropriations Committee hearing when the chairman took a moment to explain to a young legislator how things were going to work. The issue was repeal of the onerous and self-defeating inheritance tax. You can’t go around abolishing taxes, the young man learned, without designating how the lost revenue can…

by Mark Franke When I was nine years old, my career goal was to play center field for the New York Yankees after Mickey Mantle retired. Then I got bifocals and couldn’t figure out which ball coming toward me to swing at. No problem. Moving up to fifth grade the next year made me eligible to be on my school’s basketball team. This was big because there were still memories in Fort Wayne of the…

by Andrea Neal It is a given that American Christians will gather in churches this Advent season to celebrate the miracle of Christmas. We will hear the familiar passage from Isaiah 9:6: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us,” words that foretold a messiah’s birth. We will sing “Silent Night” in candlelit sanctuaries. We will do these things because they are the comfortable routines of Christian faith. There are…

by Leo Morris When I was in high school, we all knew who the smart kids were. They were the ones who had the most answers, solved problems the quickest, scored the highest on tests. I suspect nothing’s changed. Go into any high school today, pick out any student at random to ask, and you’ll discover who the smartest ones in that school are. You won’t need a battery of state-mandated tests or psychologist-approved yardsticks.…

by John Gaski, Ph.D. Several years ago, the South Bend Tribune printed a speculative, futuristic rendering of a potential South Bend skyline, along with an article featuring the titular question, “Can We Dream Big?” Most readers likely had my same natural reaction, to wit: The dream hardly matters and speculation is idle as long as our city has such economically misguided political leadership, the same kind of stagnant administration decade after decade. In fact, South…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. Economists Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell have written “Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World” — a breezy book on a stale and lousy economic system. Its casual tone is rooted in their use of beer as a metaphor and a key prop to describe socialism in various countries. Their punchline: Many people advocate socialism without knowing what it is. Socialism is when government owns all of…