THE LEGISLATIVE SESSION is ending and you need to know it was for naught. Our situation, our competitive position vis-a-vis other states and nations, our existential prospects, remain unchanged by the lawmakers’ tiny, calculated baby steps in this direction and that. And know this as well: Hoosiers have elected many fine legislators in recent years. There were more than enough this session to make the necessary changes had the political climate permitted. But the democratic process, alas, is overrated. Let the economist Milton Friedman,…

by Nathanael Snow, Ph.D. Markets are a mechanism for regulating the actions of producers of goods and services. Producers compete to sell to finicky customers, giving people what they want at lower prices. Interventions into markets are usually well-intentioned, though targeted to benefit some stakeholders at the expense of others. Some interventions are justified for cultural or moral reasons. However, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs, and justifiable interventions come at a cost, sometimes unintended. A…

A Random Sanctuary IS IT TOO EARLY to admit that I don’t care what happens to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the deported Salvadoran and “Maryland father”? First, I do not see the connection between my liberty and that of Mr. Garcia, unless of course I decide to transplant myself to another country as an ingrate to express disdain for its laws and culture. Nor do I believe as several congresspersons have projected that the deportation sets the stage for Donald Trump to “disappear” all persons of color. For contrary to the…

By Judge Dan Heath A current topic of debate on news shows and social media is the issuance of “nationwide” or “universal” injunctions against President Donald Trump on issues including immigrant deportation, the withholding of Congressional appropriations to universities for life-saving research, and more. The recent deportation case ruling that ordered Trump to stop the deportation of immigrants to El Salvador brought howls from Trump that Judge Boasberg was a “lunatic” who “ought to be…

by Mark Franke Hardly a day goes by without another federal judge somewhere issuing a nationwide injunction against something the Trump administration has ordered. Ask anyone for an opinion and you will hear it, and no doubt it will be partisan. Those who are anti-Trump will applaud the injunctions as necessary to preserve democracy against authoritarianism and those who are pro-Trump will call for constraint on a judiciary bent on overturning the democratic will as…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. I intend to explain what a synecdoche is, but first a story about a box of cereal. About 35 years ago, my oldest son, Cassidy, ate a bowl of Kix for breakfast. For those unacquainted with the cereal, a box of Kix contains corn-flavored balls, not flakes, appropriate to eat with milk and sugar. I ate the same cereal in the 1950s when I was a child. =He was just learning to read…

by Mark Franke I write this on opening day for my local team, the Fort Wayne TinCaps. This being the upper Midwest, the weather report calls for rain to move in just in time for the first pitch. While I love baseball, sitting in 40-degree, rainy weather for an April night game puts that love to the test. Is there a solution for this? Not for us in the MidWest League, whose teams are mostly…

Statehouse Eyes Turn to Taxes “Read my lips.” — George H.W. Bush, 1988 GOP Convention HEARING HINTS from the Statehouse floor about details of a property tax “cut,” we are reminded of the “Bohanan Rule” named after the Ball State University economist Cecil Bohanon who first explained it to us. It says that taxes can be cut for no better reason than to keep government small enough to remain comprehensible. For the last 80 years or so we have…

The Not-So-Great Gatsby THIS WEEK MARKS the 100th anniversary of the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is an occasion, I read in the New York Times, to speculate on Jay Gatsby’s identity, his swarthiness. Was he a member of one oppressed minority or another, or, if not, a literary representation of the ways that race tragically interacts with wealth and social mobility? Scholars such as Henry Gates, Valarie Smith, Michael North and Marlene Allen have…

One of Donald Trump’s executive orders establishes an official administrative interpretation of the citizenship language of the Fourteenth Amendment. The question, contentious of course in these divisive times, centers on the right of “birth citizenship,” the automatic granting of United States citizenship to any baby born within the U.S. regardless of the parents’ citizenship status. Here is the relevant language from the amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to…