by Andrea Neal In 1796, John James Dufour left his native Switzerland to seek a new life and opportunity in the United States. Less than a decade later, he opened the country’s first successful winemaking business — in southeastern Indiana. It was still the Indiana Territory at that time, but the settlement would soon become the town of Vevay in Switzerland County. It was briefly a popular destination for Swiss immigrants fleeing revolutionary Europe. Dufour…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. Central to the success of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, are 20- to 30-year-olds buying government-approved health-insurance policies. The administration, its friends and allies are running a full-court public-relations drive touting the advantages of health insurance to these young folks. Advertising may facilitate some to sign up, but economists generally believe that incentives are more important. How, then, does the ACA change economic incentives so that the young and…

Did you hear the howls of pain throughout Indiana from local officials on announcement that the Pence administration would phase out their golden goose, the business personal-property tax? The governor thinks it will level the playing field, attract investment and create jobs. The anguish is genuine. The amount of revenue to be lost — about a billion a year statewide — means that county and city officeholders won’t be able to finesse this. They may…

“If the actions of government officials lead citizens to conclude that those officials are no longer meaningfully bound by the law, then citizens will rightly conclude that neither are they.” — Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute testifying before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Dec. 3, 2013, on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. by Roman Buhler The authors of our Constitution would be astonished at the arrogance and growing power of 21st-century…

(For the use of the membership only; copyright © 2013 by Tom Charles Huston, all rights reserved, reprinted by permission) by TOM HUSTON As a young lawyer, my first encounter with the Byzantine system of governmental land-use regulation resulted from the desire of a client to expand its manufacturing plant. The plant was located in an aging and ultimately derelict industrial area on the near east side of Indianapolis and the contemplated expansion consisted of…

by Andrea Neal In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson asked Meriwether Lewis to lead an exploration of the Louisiana Territory in search of a Northwest Passage. Lewis invited William Clark to join him. It would become one of the most famous partnerships in history, and it started in Indiana. “When they shook hands, the Lewis and Clark expedition began,” wrote Stephen Ambrose in “Undaunted Courage,” the best-selling account of the trans-continental journey. Lewis was working at…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. Recent census data indicates that, although the total number of households in the United States increased between 2008 and 2011, the number reporting an earned annual income of $35,000 to $100,000 actually decreased by 676,000. This is significant because it confirms the narrative of middle-class decline. I have always thought that if middle-class decline is accompanied by a decline in households with lower income (under $35,000) and an increase in upper-income…

(For the use of the membership only) by Tom Huston I don’t have a thing against moderates. Indeed, some of my best friends are moderates. I am confident that they are genuine moderates because they assure me that they are. They are leery of extremists (whom they associate with the Tea Party and evangelical snake handlers), but they still invite me to an occasional cocktail party. That, I think, demonstrates that they also are tolerant.…

(For the use of the membership only; copyright © 2013 by Tom Charles Huston, all rights reserved, reprinted by permission) By Tom Huston I have been ruminating lately on the debt I owe to that generation of American conservative thinkers who were my mentors in the early morning hours of the modern conservative renaissance. The clock is working against those of my generation who were present, if not at the creation, then at the hour…

by Andrea Neal In the history books, William Henry Harrison was the first president to die in office, but Hoosiers should remember him as the man who shaped the Indiana Territory. Indiana was a territory for 16 years before it became a full-fledged state. Following a multi-step process set out in the Northwest Ordinance, citizens first had to get practice in governing, grow in population, petition for statehood, be accepted into the union and write…