by Leo Morris Clichés are the cicadas of language. They disappear for years at a time, then show up in force again when you least expect them, to buzz and click their way into your brain. This season’s returnee is “sweet spot” as a political goal. The Times of Northwest Indiana had a story in which Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray speculated that everybody being “a little bit agitated” over the hate crimes bill…

by Mark Franke We were recently treated to an exchange between U. S. Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Liz Cheney about the purpose of the 22st Amendment to the Constitution. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who never fails to entertain and amaze, asserted it was passed by Republicans to prevent President Franklin D. Roosevelt from being elected for another term. Rep. Cheney, daughter of a U. S. vice president father and Ph. D. scholar mother, must have thought she…

by David Penticuff Our “Grant for Grads” program is gone, for which we are grateful. In a fit of logic and submission to real life, our county economic growth council will no longer be shoveling so many tax dollars out the door to new college graduates in order to entice them to buy or rent in our county. Forget that there’s a good chance they were moving here anyway. The old program offered a grant…

by Mark Franke Okay, so I’m not young anymore and haven’t been for a long time. But I still experience that mystical excitement every April just like when I was a boy and a new baseball season took off. My grandchildren don’t understand this, but we really did go through life back then without hundreds of TV channels to choose from. In fact I became a baseball fan before we even had a TV. Following…

by Leo Morris You’ve all heard the complaint. “If America can put a man on the moon, why can’t it . . . cure the common cold, or develop a long-lasting battery, or stop spending more than it takes in, or (fill in your favorite frustration)?” My current, less sweeping, version of that lament is: “If Hoosier politicians think they’re smart enough to legislate hate out of the human heart, why can’t they handle something…

Editors: You can check the social-capital index of your readership in the current issue of The Indiana Policy Review, “Social Capital: How It’s Created,” appendix tables, pp. 35-37 by Craig Ladwig A social-capital index for my Indiana county has decreased even as the population has increased. And a low ranking on such an index, according to some economists and sociologists, can mean trouble. The factors making up this particular index are meant to reflect a…

by H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. Republicans in the Indiana House are attempting to block the plan of Northern Indiana Public Service Company’s (NIPSCO) to prematurely shutter two large coal power plants and replace them largely with renewable energy sources. Republicans on Indiana’s House Utilities Committee passed an amendment to a Senate sewage and water bill to prohibit state regulators from approving any new power plants, power contracts, or changes in electricity generation sources until Jan.…

by Leo Morris The three major mayoral candidates in my town — the Democratic incumbent and his two chief Republican challengers — are all cheerleaders for “economic development.” These days, that means pushing huge capital projects with too much public funding and too little private risk for the purpose of moving huge numbers of consumers around. If enough of us can be persuaded to spend enough of our money in one preferred location instead of…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. The university admissions scandal “Operation Varsity Blues” is interesting on many levels: rich people working the system; corruption and bribery in institutions of higher learning; elite, liberal universities sullied by scandal and greed. But as an economist, the episode brings other comparisons to mind. First, consider how the scandal resembles both “legacy admissions” and “affirmative action” — two other strange aspects of university admissions. In all of these cases, students are…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. A useful way to help students understand economic arrangements is to place the phrases “completely free market” and “perfect command systems” at the end of a line and assign places to countries on the line. A completely free market, a polar end of the continuum, has no regulation governing private property and voluntary exchanges; a perfect command system has no private property and no voluntary exchange system. Neither endpoint would have…