LOCAL GOVERNMENT has turned on us. You could watch it happen from a news desk. It was rather sudden actually. One day we were dealing with hard-pressed public servants doing their best in the impossible job of squaring public-policy circles. The next day we were facing mandarins (to use our friend Tom Huston’s characterization), expert at maximizing tax revenue and ducking accountability. This new-model public official is pitted against what may be the last of the real…

by Tom Charles Huston The members of the General Assembly have barely warmed their seats and the fury is already reaching pitched levels on social media. It is over the proposal by the new Republican governor (washed into office by the Trump landslide) and the Republican legislative leadership (known affectionately as the Mandarins) to hike gasoline taxes and impose a number of new fees designed to raise an additional $1.2 billion a year for highway…

by Andrea Neal Although Indiana’s bicentennial celebration is now history, there is a move in the Indiana General Assembly that has the potential to preserve its legacy for generations to come. Sens. Eric Koch, R-Bedford, and Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, would commit Indiana high schools to teaching a one-semester elective course on Indiana history. It would give Hoosier teenagers an opportunity to learn about the political, economic and cultural contributions of their ancestors — an option…

by Tom Huston I am disappointed in Donald Trump’s choice of former Sen. Dan Coats to serve as Director of National Intelligence. Senator Coats certainly has the competency to preside over the massive intelligence bureaucracy if the objective of his tenure is simply to maintain an even-keeled equanimity among the tribes which constitute the intelligence community (IC). On the other hand, he offers no hope to skeptics of the IC who believe it is bloated,…

by John Pickerill As the Indiana General Assembly begins its 2017 session this week, one would assume the Republican-dominated state government would be pushing legislation for a more limited and fiscally responsible government — and one that protects individual liberty, freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, and the sanctity of life. After all, that’s what their 2016 state convention said they stood for. That would be a bad assumption; the GOP…

by Martina Webster Hoosiers, we just paid our fall property tax installments back in November. Do you know how they were calculated? Where did your government come up with that number? And are property taxes really worse than the alternatives? The first thing you may not know is your home is assessed based on its market value. Locally, we had an assessor pull up the value on a lot of undervalued properties. When that happens,…

Indianapolis (Jan. 4) — The Senate Education and Career Development Committee was to hear testimony today on the state’s history curriculum and requirements from Andrea Neal, adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation and author of a book celebrating the Indiana bicentennial. “We continually lament the brain drain without seeking to understand all the causes,” Neal says. “Many of our young people do not have brand loyalty to Indiana. They are not proud of…

“They say you can’t study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.” — The playwright David Mamet by Craig Ladwig Tim George, program director at WBAT radio in Marion, asked a most serious question on the air this morning: Is this the session in which we begin a return to coffee-shop democracy, that is, sending legislators…

by Jason Arp In politics, the clock until the next election never stops ticking. While most folks are still licking their wounds or quietly celebrating the recent election results, the political class has already begun the next campaign. Of particular interest is the scramble to name the frontrunner in my city’s mayoral race. And since we’re in the season of making wish lists, and before the selection has been made, I’d like to submit some…

by Andrea Neal The Internet Revolution has changed the way I teach my Eighth Grade history students. In addition to learning about presidents and politics, students today need intensive instruction in avoiding plagiarism, verifying sources and spotting fake news. Since I left journalism and became a teacher 14 years ago, I have constantly battled the “copy and paste” mentality that is so prevalent in scholarly circles — and has cost both academicians and journalists their…