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…

(For the use of the membership only.) “Equality of opportunity, not only is it fair enough, it’s even laudable. But equality of outcome? It’s like, ‘No, you’ve crossed the line. We’re not going there with you.’” — Dr. Jordan B. Peterson THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, the wags used to say, those who believe there are two types of people and those who don’t. If that applies to any issue, it…

by Mark Franke Just when it appears that the political correctness brigade has exhausted itself tilting at ideological windmills, another incredulous story hits the internet news feeds. The city of Arcata, California, has determined that a statue of President William McKinley is an affront to our society’s moral purity and must be pulled down. William McKinley? What political sin did McKinley commit that warrants his banishment from our visual historical record? It apparently has to…

by Leo Morris There might be something more terrifying for a wheezy old man than sitting in a compact with a flat tire on the shoulder of I-465 in Indianapolis, watching nervously in the driver’s side mirror at three lanes of cars and trucks whizzing by at 70 miles an hour, but offhand I can’t imagine what. Staring into the muzzle of a .45 perhaps, being held by a crack addict three days from a…