Lucas Oil Stadium: A Big Hole in the Roof IT WAS AN OUTRAGEOUS admission: Officials do not know the exact cost of the subsidized Lucas Oil stadium, specifically that part assigned to the retractable roof. The Colts had told the Indianapolis Star that the team was never given a “line item” on how much the roof added to the price of the stadium. Now Rick McKinney, a former member of the Hamilton County Council and the lone vote against…

Is China a Threat? by Mark Franke It is interesting to observe how public opinion can change in short order. Twenty or so years ago China was viewed as an ideal market for American goods as it began an economic liberalization away from state-controlled communism toward a somewhat freer market system. The thought was that the purchasing power of its peasant population would rise with this economic liberalization.  Now China is viewed by many as…

Woke Lives at the Art Museum ‘WHEN I HEAR the word culture, I reach for my Luger,” said Herman Goring. Good advice for those trying to follow the internal machinations of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, as it likes to now be called. Culture in Indianapolis, once known as Nap Town and a wide spot in a cornfield, is a sensitive topic for the haut mode there. They are constantly on guard for any cultural slip that might give them…

Big Ag and Coconut Cream Pies ‘THE GREAT PROBLEM of our age is the tendency of people to assume that economic growth is a universal cure for all ills, while it often brings new problems and exacerbates existing ones,” wrote the British economist E.F. Schumacher.  That is nowhere more true than in farming, where the notion that endless growth, a feature of industrial agriculture, is beneficial in all aspects. And to put it most simply, there is…

by Mark Franke My hometown minor league baseball team, the Fort Wayne TinCaps, has a bad habit of taking called third strikes. For the baseball agnostics out there, this means the batter doesn’t swing at a pitch and strikes out by doing nothing. It is extremely frustrating to the fans in the stands. I can only guess the reaction of the coaching staff. The other night, the TinCaps were rallying in the ninth inning from…

‘Isn’t the Way This Works’ ECONOMISTS TALK ABOUT “moral hazards,” that is, situations where someone takes on excessive risk because they do not have to bear the full consequences of that risk. Essentially, it’s the idea that if someone is insulated from the negative effects of their risky behavior, they might act less cautiously than they otherwise would. Our society is creating walking, driving moral hazards. Parents, teachers, somebody, is raising children who think they are immune…

Smaller Is Better, Local Is Best “THE AIM IS TO HAVE a society in which the great majority of people own their own homes and farms and small businesses,” wrote the Christian apologist C.K. Chesterton. That is, smaller is better and local is best in the organization of human affairs. “To be free and to be independent is to be a part of something bigger than oneself,” Chesterton wrote. “The idea is to get back to a society…

The Gospel from a DEI Queen I OPENED THE PAPER this morning to be instructed by the first-ever female president of our Chamber of Commerce, a comely white woman in her middle years full of social-justice sensitivity.  Now, I don’t know this woman but she knows me, a bigoted member of the unwashed in need of enlightenment. Undeserving as I may be, she had interrupted her cracking of the glass ceiling long enough to make sure I…

by Mark Franke (Francesville, Ind.) — It seems the epithet of choice among more than a few politicians is to charge an opponent with being “a threat to democracy.” Mostly this accusation is used against Donald Trump, his threat being primarily to the election prospects of his opponents. One can get into an endless debate on whether Republican policies or Democrat policies are the greater threat to our sacred democracy. A libertarian (and I have a libertarian chromosome…

Hey, It Sounded Good For the use of the membership only. I WAS SURPRISED and disappointed in Indiana’s ranking on the just-released Internal Revenue Service report on interstate migration.  I subscribe to the boosterish Indianapolis Business Journal, you see, and it seems hardly a summer goes by that it doesn’t report the governor is wheels up to Europe, China or somewhere exotic to bring back high-paying jobs. And were Eric Doden and his GOP eco-deco buddies ever turned down…