“Joe Biden (@VP) has a little more than 179,000 followers. But fakers.statuspeople.com reports that 27 percent are fake. It reads like an official Twitter account, with very little personal engagement.” — Bill Murphy, Jr., www.ink.com, May 29, 2013 CAREER POLITICIANS have met their match, but it may not be health care, the shutdown or even the debt ceiling. I bet on Twitter. They are embarrassingly bad at it. Marketing experts tell us that users of Twitter…

by Tyler Watts, Ph.D. For the use of the membership only Building on recent fast-food strikes, an Indiana University law professor, Fran Quigley, a leader of the “Raise the Wage Indiana” movement, made an appeal for higher minimum wages in the Indianapolis Star. His reasoning, though, runs counter to my work experience as a young man and that of many others he professes to help. Quigley trots out the usual advocate research, plus celebrity endorsements…

by Andrea Neal If not for George Rogers Clark, we Hoosiers might be snacking on scones with jam and clotted cream and speak with cockney accents. An exaggeration perhaps, but as Kelley Morgan points out, “George Rogers Clark was almost singlehandedly responsible for the U.S. gaining the Old Northwest Territory.” Morgan is interpretive manager at Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, where a representation of Clark’s retirement home overlooks the falls with stunning…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. Government programs designed to help the poor are usually means-tested. This implies that recipients only get the benefits if their income earnings are sufficiently low. Most see this as a good thing because it ensures that persons who do not need the benefits don’t get them. It seems daft to tax middle-class and wealthy citizens to provide benefits to middle-class and wealthy citizens; programs for poor folks should benefit poor folks.…

For the use of the membership only (325 words) The polls agree that the Affordable Care Act, which took effect Oct. 1, is unpopular. More unpopular in Indiana, though, is that officialdom is perfectly comfortable exempting itself from the full cost of the law. A member of the foundation relates a conversation witnessed at a recent public meeting in Aboite Township involving one of Indiana’s U.S. senators. A woman in the audience asked the senator…

by Andrea Neal Roman Catholics claim bragging rights to Indiana’s oldest church. Jesuit missionaries visited the French fort at Vincennes within months of its establishment in 1732. A resident priest, Sebastian Meurin, arrived in 1748. People have been worshiping at St. Francis Xavier Church ever since. “If the French built a fort, there was a chapel,” says the Rev. John Schipp, parish priest at the Old Cathedral for the past 19 years. “They not only…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. The impulse to redistribute income did not begin with the Obama administration. In the 1970s, when income was seemingly more equally distributed, progressives called for increased government income redistribution. There are two ways for government to redistribute income from the rich to the poor. The first is through universal benefit programs. The second is through means-tested benefit programs, which will be addressed in future columns as well as why government should…

by Andrea Neal Bison made Indiana’s first highway. It started at the Falls of the Ohio near modern-day Clarksville where the beasts came together to cross the Ohio River at its shallowest point. It ended near Vincennes where they scattered to graze on Illinois prairie grass. If you look closely, you can still see signs of the Buffalo Trace. “You kind of have to know what you’re looking for,” says Teena Ligman, public-affairs specialist for…

In the 1990s at the morning coffee shop, I would run into a former mayor of my city, now retired. He was from the beginning a successful businessman and gifted politician, albeit a Democratic one. This is to thank him for his wisdom and prescience. One morning, the mayor let down his guard to make two observations — bons mots, perhaps, thrown to a young conservative friend. Whatever, both have stayed with me. Indeed, the…

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. Recent talks by Barack Obama highlight his personal mission to make higher education more affordable. Affluence at home and around the world increases the demand for education. This increase partially explains the doubling of average tuition and fees at four-year U.S. universities during the past 20 years. Rising educational costs threaten prosperity, according to David Weisel of the Wall Street Journal. The solution to rising costs, however, must be addressed…