by Leo Morris You’ve already heard from Don McLean about “the day the music died.” Call this the day the laughter died. It wasn’t until I glimpsed the monster inside him that I realized how much Bill Cosby had meant to me growing up. Back then, he was the funny man who helped me get through high school with my sanity intact. The monster was well hidden beneath wry observations about family life and urban…

The following is based on comments made at a foundation luncheon April 12, 2018, in Fort Wayne. by Barry Keating, Ph.D. Jerry Brown was elected governor of California in 1974 and again in 1978 before busying himself as mayor of Oakland. Californians in 2010 apparently wanted to return to the days of “Governor Moonbeam,” as Brown was affectionately known, and elected him governor again. Perhaps dating Hollywood movie stars and hanging with Cesar Chavez helped…

“Things reveal themselves passing away. “ — William Butler Yeats Reading analysis of the disaster that was the monologue at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the thought occurs: Can an entire generation in a given profession fail to reach maturity? The old newsroom guard had warned precisely of that. They said modern journalists lacked the judgment any readership expected, that they would be the ruin of the craft. But then, in my memory at…

by Leo Morris When I was a kid like you, I used to tell high school classes, people kept warning me to quit shooting my mouth off before I got into trouble. Now, I said, I’ve found the perfect job as an editorial writer. I get to shoot my mouth off every day, and they pay me for it. And the best part is, I don’t even have to be right. But it’s better to…

by Jason Arp Earlier this month, a group of Indiana businessmen, government officials and think-tank members were fortunate enough to host perhaps the state’s most preeminent economist. Dr. Barry Keating is a professor of economics and business analytics at the University of Notre Dame where he is the past chair of the Department of Finance. Dr. Keating was a protégé at Virginia Tech of Nobel Laureate James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, founders of the school of Public…

A LOCAL MANUFACTURER puts the challenge of economic-development agencies into a sentence. “If we’re going to turn our local governments into investment banks,” he says, “we’ll need to find smarter people to run them.” A hard truth, but there may be even harder ones ahead according to an economist for the foundation. Dr. Barry Keating, speaking earlier this month in Fort Wayne to a group of businessmen, believes there can be systemic flaws in the public-private…

by Leo Morris I come to some of the hot-topic debates of the day a little late because I get all caught up in the search for context. By the time I escape from the labyrinth of historical research and peripheral analyses, the zeitgeist has moved on, and nobody wants to talk about the issue any longer. Consider the “gender pay gap,” shorthand for the fact that when we compare the median wages for full-time…

by Mark Franke “Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams asserted after the Boston Massacre. “Whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Except for when they have the audacity to disprove the received wisdom of our current progressive elites. That is, when they just don’t fit the narrative, a term our former president loved to use. It is a sad commentary…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. Indiana media outlets have recently reported on women’s ostensible pay gap. And USA Today wrote last month that the notion of bringing home 80 cents for every dollar pocketed by a man on a national basis is “unsettling,” calling it “a shortfall” and suggesting a lack of something owed. A northern Indiana paper said, “Women in Indiana make 72 cents to the dollar that Hoosier men do on average, and they won’t see…

by Leo Morris Donald J. Trump is a jerk. I feel as if I have a right to say that. I voted for him. He may be a jerk, but he’s my jerk. It was a difficult decision, probably the toughest call of my voting life. As a fiscal conservative, I was an early supporter of Ted Cruz, and I favored many other candidates in the crowded GOP primary over Trump – most of them, in…