“‘Bipartisan’ usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.” — George Carlin PASSAGE IN THE INDIANA HOUSE of a moratorium on enterprise, in this case nursing-home construction, is cause to wonder why the Super Majority is such a big deal. Democrats could have done that by themselves and saved GOP donors tens of thousands in campaign contributions. We asked a friend involved in the backroom discussions how nominally conservative Republicans could vote for…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. The most recent issue of The Indiana Policy Review, Dr. Maryann O. Keating describes the priorities of the key “stakeholders” in K-12 education: a) parents and children; b) the general public, including future employers; and c) providers of educational services, including school teachers and staff (public, private or for-profit), testing services and textbook publishers. Dr. Keating leads us into a discussion of recent reform — most notably “No Child Left Behind”…

by Craig Ladwig Could Indiana live without 12 percent of its education budget, the $1.2 billion coming from Washington each year? The answer is yes if you trust cost-benefit analysis. An expert in that field, Dr. Maryann O. Keating, writing in the current issue of the quarterly Indiana Policy Review, raises an even more troubling question: Does that 12 percent have anything to do with education whatsoever? “Certainly, the $1.2 billion yields some directed benefits,”…

by Andrea Neal Even before Indiana began recruiting them, African-American Hoosiers volunteered to fight in the Civil War. An 1862 act of Congress allowed President Abraham Lincoln “to employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of this rebellion.” The Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, expressly allowed use of African Americans as combat soldiers. Racial prejudices initially kept Indiana from enlisting blacks, so the future…

Charles Edward Rice, Aug. 7, 1931 – Feb. 25, 2015 The officers of the foundation pause to praise Charlie Rice, professor of law at Notre Dame, who died last week in South Bend. We do so because we greatly admired Charlie, a founding scholar here, but also because Indiana is in desperate need of being reminded what endurance, character and hope look like in a man. Charlie’s resume is full of achievements requiring those attributes…

by Tom Charles Huston Insofar as the proposed soccer stadium for the Indy Eleven is concerned, don’t believe a thing you are told by its proponents or their mouthpieces at the Indianapolis Star. They are in a Putin frame of mind, and if you are inclined to believe that the Legislature has the slightest interest in protecting taxpayers from the rapacious grip of Ersal Ozdemir and his fellow schemers, you have lost contact with reality.…

by Andrea Neal “Left camp at 9 o’clock. Rained all last night. Bad roads, slavish traveling today. Snowed all day, stalled several times … Traveled 10 miles.” Private Albert S. Underwood of Parke County wrote those words on Jan. 18, 1864, as he moved south toward Tennessee with the 9th battery, Indiana Light Artillery, during the final phase of the Civil War. There were no skirmishes that day. Nothing remarkable to note in his diary.…

For the use of the membership only (649 words) PERHAPS IT’S JUST THE TONE, but the Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s approach seems the same regardless of the issue. There is the assumption that if Hoosiers knew what the Chamber knew — if we weren’t so dumb or lazy — then we would get out of the way and let progress progress. And so it is with government-sponsored preschool. It doesn’t cost, it pays — or…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. Indiana’s Common Construction Wage Law is typically referred to as a “prevailing-wage” law. Such laws are a state’s version of the federal Davis-Bacon laws dating back to the 1930s that provided minimum wages on public-sector construction. In Indiana this year, there are measures seeking to repeal or weaken the state’s prevailing-wage law. As always, the choice is whether to allow markets to do their thing or to use government to regulate…