By David Penticuff Our “Haves” are again turning to our “Have Nots” for monetary help through tax increment financing. Central Indiana Ethanol (CIE) is asking my city to expand its Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district to include the former Omnisource property, which CIE purchased last year, in order to finance a project already underway at the site. CIE wants a $3.65-million TIF bond to help pay for its $25 million expansion on property that is…

IT IS BEING SAID more often that the great disadvantage of Republican incumbents vis-a-vis Democratic ones is that their political party lacks conviction. Now, that is not meant to say Democrats have admirable convictions, merely that they have some — an adolescent sense of social justice, a willingness to kill the unwanted, wealth redistribution at gunpoint, climate hysteria, race baiting, etc. These are issues on which they gladly lose support at the margin. Few Republicans…

by Leo Morris I hate getting Thomas Jefferson wrong. I don’t like slighting anybody from our past, given how hard they struggled and strained to bring us to the present. But, considering how much he contributed to this country’s founding ideas, I especially hate getting Jefferson wrong. Alas, I did, though. While writing a column about the evils of socialism, I searched for a pithy quote about freedom. Nothing shores up a lofty commentary like…

THE PEOPLE GOVERNING my midsized Indiana city have plenty of vision. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have much to do with me or my neighbors. They have “rebranded” us. Hey, you wouldn’t recognize the place from our new and colorful branding website. It features videos about our exciting new life that can be used to entice people to our formerly boring old town. They can see us walking around having a great time in the architectural drawings…

by Leo Morris If I were asked to list miracles of human achievement in my lifetime, three would quickly come to mind: Humans set foot on the moon. The Berlin Wall was demolished. J.K. Rowling got 12-year-old boys to read books. The first two were one-and-done heroic acts that deserve to be memorialized and celebrated as long as people have the will to improve the human condition. The third was a small victory in the…

by Leo Morris If you had any doubts about the embrace of socialism by the 2020 Democratic presidential field, they should be gone by now. One of Indiana’s own potential contenders – South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg – has jumped into the collectivist basket with both feet. Although acknowledging that America has a market-based economy and is “committed to democracy,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper that a discussion about a policy can no longer be…

Q.  Regarding historical accuracy, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with how socialism is taught in Indiana public schools? Click HERE to participate in this quarter’s sample of membership opinion. 

A DIGITAL ECONOMICS EXPERT at the University of North Carolina estimates that for every newspaper that has closed in recent years, 10 have been so hollowed out that they exist in name only. She calls them “ghost papers,” newspapers that pretend to report the news but lack the resources to do so. There could be as many as 2,000 of them. I subscribe to one. Picking up this weekend’s edition, for example, there is an…

by Leo Morris I’ve been reading up on the wisdom of the crowd, the theory holding that a large group of people’s aggregated answers to certain questions are often superior to the answer given by any individual within the group, even one judged to be an expert on the subject at hand. It’s a well-documented phenomenon with a sterling pedigree, however our many experiences with various versions of “the public is a moron” might lead…

by Dave Penticuff The best thing, we think, about Foxconn Technology Group’s now reconsidered plans for a U.S. manufacturing plant is that they apparently never considered my Indiana county for the project. Where we would be if they had turned to our County Economic Growth Council for incentives to locate in our community? We’d be considerably poorer, no doubt. Foxconn is becoming Wisconsin’s lesson to be learned, and an unfortunate part of the legacy left…