by Adrienne Carrier Most of us have halcyon memories of the school-lunch line — the cafeteria ladies, the half-pint milk cartons, always making sure to bring money on pizza day. Nostalgia, though, may mask what the lunch line now represents, that is, an overreaching federal program measuring success by the number of dependent families. We now have a system that not only feeds school children but an entitlement mentality. For somewhere along the way we…

by Craig Ladwig To be sure, government as entertainment is an acquired taste. But if you can imagine a ballet with the dancers drafted from a personal-injury law firm and the Amalgamated Plumbers Union you can appreciate it. For the connoisseur, there is the planning and zoning meeting. David Mamet, the playwright, famously described this particular form of government theatre in an essay for the Village Voice: “In the abstract, we may envision an Olympian…

by Norman Van Cott, Ph.D. One of my earliest memories is the iceman delivering large blocks of ice to my parents’ small triplex apartment in southern California. The ice was deposited in our “ice box” and kept food cool. Frozen? Nope; just cool. Of course, the ice didn’t last forever. It melted and drained into a drip pan at the bottom of the ice box. The pan had to be emptied periodically to prevent water…

by Andrea Neal In 1959, a best-selling book by Hoosier Lew Wallace became a blockbuster movie, sealing Charlton Heston’s reputation as Hollywood’s leading man and winning a record 11 Academy Awards. Paramount Pictures hopes to repeat the phenomenon in 2016 with Timur Bekmambetov’s adaptation of Ben-Hur starring Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman. It opens in theaters nationwide August 19. If past history is an indication, Wallace won’t get the recognition he deserves. To the extent…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. As we observe Indiana’s bicentennial, here’s something from our history that we can’t celebrate: In 1907, Indiana became the first state in America to pass a eugenics law. Eugenics is the study of the hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled, selective breeding. The word derives from its Latin components — eu meaning “well” or “good” and genics meaning “born” or “birth.” Eugenics, then, seeks the products of “good birth”…

by Andrea Neal A walk along Evansville’s Riverfront Esplanade – even on the most beautiful of days – evokes memories of the worst natural disaster in the history of the Ohio River: the Great Flood of 1937. The levee is the most visible reminder – built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect the city from a future catastrophe. For 17 miles, earth embankments and concrete floodwalls serve as a border between the…

by Craig Ladwig The summer doldrums, with so many officials out of officialdom, is a good time to put forward some pet public policy positions that, in my opinion, would save the world. One would abolish parking meters as we know them and the other government finance committees. They loosely follow the “Perlini Rule.” My friend, the late David Perlini, chief of staff for former Fort Wayne Mayor Win Moses, had a sticky note on…

by Craig Ladwig You reach an age when you begin to repeat yourself, telling your best stories over again to the pained faces of friends and loved ones. Some of my stories are the exploits of a tobacco-chewing, free-range reporter who mentored me early in my career. He came to mind this week reading some rare good news for the hard-pressed newspaper industry — obituary readership is gaining on the rest of the paper. The…

by Craig Ladwig Eric Holcomb, Lt. Governor and GOP gubernatorial candidate, has yet another title, Explainer in Chief. And his first comment out of the box — “I want to provide high-quality, good government” — falls short of the times. Please know that with a supermajority in the legislature, the GOP economic record these last four years is in the dock. That is especially true in regard to small businesses, the engine of local growth.…

by Craig Ladwig “We’ve gotta protect our phony baloney jobs, gentlemen.” — Gov. William J. Le Ptomaine (Mel Brooks) in “Blazing Saddles” A section of your brain becomes inaccessible once you figure out how to make a living spending other people’s money on other people. It is nature’s way of protecting the virtuecrat from mortification. How else to explain the decision earlier this year by South Bend’s mayor to raise city salaries from $7.25 an hour…