For immediate release (546 words) “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” Psalms 110:10 (KJV) Science and scientific authority are often interjected into political discourse. Two recent letters to the editor in my local newspaper are examples. One author claimed that “… the science is clear: Smoke-free laws have no negative impact on bars or restaurants …” On another topic a writer decried the recent bill allowing schools to teach so-called creationism…

For release Feb. 15 and thereafter (656 words) According to U.S News & World Report, it is one of the nation’s best large high schools. During the 2010-11 school year, 66 percent of its students passed both math and English assessments. In 2009-10, 30 percent of its graduates passed an Advanced Placement exam, double the state average and surpassing state Department of Education targets. Its SAT and ACT scores consistently outpace the state average. Its…

My daughter’s ballet master opens every season with a little speech. She tells the young women that her academy recognizes two types of dancers: those who love to be seen dancing and those who love to dance. She wants only the latter. Leadership, if not dancing, is a critical issue in an election year. If we parse what is being presented, though, it is more accurately understood as pretension. This is not cynical, it is…

For immediate release (622 words). Will we ever know the cost of “the Game” to the taxpaying citizens of Indianapolis? We ask the question because, even the day after, we are getting confusing reports in the media about the dollars involved. A couple of weeks ago we got a statement from the Capital Improvement Board (CIB), with some numbers at least estimated, that their part of the operation suffered a loss of something over $800,000.…

For immediate release (590 words). As a political strategists in battle-wearing Wisconsin watching union protesters threaten to block the Super Bowl spotlight in my homestate of Indiana, I could not help but think there had to have been a better way to make the Right-to-Work argument. A maxim of war is that you, not your opponent, defines the location of the battlefield, and the hype of a Super Bowl made a poor battlefield for the…

For immediate release (659 words). Mitt Romney pays lower tax rates than a teacher? Warren Buffett pays less than his secretary? Really? It’s not meant to happen that way. Our federal income-tax code is supposed to be “progressive”: those with higher incomes should pay higher rates. How does this work? First, exempted income — through exemptions and the standard deduction — causes average tax rates to rise with income. For example, if the first $20,000…

There was more, more, just inside the door In the store, in the store. There was more, much more, just inside the door In the corner grocery store. — Raffi, “The Corner Grocery Store Song” He was what we once called an ordinary American, a poor man’s capitalist growing up in an iconic corner grocery where his mother managed the cash register in front, his dad cut meat in back and he and his sister…

For release Feb. 1 and thereafter. (678 words) Merriam-Webster defines wishful thinking as “the attribution of reality to what one wishes to be true or the tenuous justification of what one wants to believe.” It’s an apt description for folks clamoring to spend hundreds of millions on a Central Indiana mass-transit plan. We can pump in more money, create faster bus routes, build a commuter rail system and construct a light rail line. But the…

Listening to our officeholders, insecure to the point of panic, make their recurrent promises to “fight” for us, I realize that my annual Veteran’s Day column is two months late. The date always slips by me, the holiday being understated to the point of ephemera in my politically correct corner of suburbia. That’s not entirely true. I always get a “Happy Veterans’ Day” from my wife and children, which brings a near tear and is…