By Tyler Watts, Ph.D. I recently heard a politician promise that he would protect Social Security, arguing that this vaunted program is an inviolable “contract” between the government and seniors. Hah. Now, this politician was just doing what comes naturally; that is, saying anything to appease a particular voting bloc, in this case the powerful American Association of Retired Persons. His statement about Social Security, however, obscures the economic and ethical problems that plague this…

by Andrea Neal Once runaway slaves made it to the home of Levi and Catharine Coffin in eastern Indiana, they were safe. Truly safe. To the best of Levi Coffin’s knowledge, every slave who passed through his Underground Railroad station made his/her way to freedom. The Coffins lived in a mostly Quaker community called Newport, now Fountain City, on the front line of the abolitionist movement. Levi Coffin was the “president,” his house the Grand…

by Craig Ladwig “It’s anybody’s guess how Republicans are thinking about this (open immigration),” Barack Obama said in Los Angeles last week. “If they were thinking long-term politically, it is suicide for them not to do this.” I hate to drag my great-grandmother into this, but she would have a point to make: Being “American” is a state of mind, an apparently changing one. My grandmother, please know, was not a model citizen. She spoke…

by Bruce Ippel, M.D. This is about decisions. It starts with your decision to read it. What about the other decisions in your life? If you’re an adult with, say, a high-school education and not currently in the Army or prison, then you should be making about all of them yourself. Or not. You probably believe that you should decide what kind of car you drive and what food you eat or what, if any,…

By Stephen M. King, Ph.D. Millennials, the age cohort between 18 and 29 who came of adult age around 2000 or so, are poised to impact the world around them. In some ways, they are scattered in their views, but in others they are consistently inconsistent. Still, this generation of nearly 60 million can and will have a significant impact upon not only culture in general but in politics and policy specifically. The most recent…

A FRIEND in the political science department at Taylor University argues that Indiana politicians have a spiritual problem, not a policy problem. Those of us in the policy-review business understandably have resisted this contention — until now. A weekend viewing of a classic Western parody brought me around. It was the scene in Blazing Saddles where Mel Brooks as Gov. William J. Le Petomane is exhorting his sycophants to action: “Holy Underwear! Sheriff murdered! Innocent…

by Andrea Neal Today his poems are written off as the sentimental musings of a time gone by. During his life, James Whitcomb Riley ranked with Longfellow and Twain as a best-selling author, and his works were required reading in virtually every school. Many historians consider Riley our most famous Hoosier, not only for the national acclaim he received but for the public image he created for Indiana. “More than any other citizen of Indiana,…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. Indiana’s public intoxication law looks like it will be overturned. That seems to me entirely appropriate — if we haven’t confounded the problem. Prior to 2012, if one’s blood alcohol content was above the legal limit, one could be arrested almost anywhere in Indiana. I recall a number of unconfirmed anecdotes around my campus in which students who had a few too many made a responsible decision and called a taxi,…

“Cronyism is the substitution of political influence for free markets. It comes about when government has a lot of power over private-sector decisions and when the government officials in power have great discretion over how to use it.” — David Henderson, editor of the Encyclopedia of Economics by Craig Ladwig It is the time of year we collect annual reports from the various economic-development outfits around the state, quasi-government models of the new regional public-private…

For the use of the membership only (556 words) “All the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” — George Orwell FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER the foundation’s annual Veterans’ Day essay is being written in advance of Nov. 11. As is the formerly procrastinating author’s custom, he is wearing his U.S. Navy baseball cap with the button, “We Were Winning When I Left.” This…