by Mark Franke I write this on opening day for my local team, the Fort Wayne TinCaps. This being the upper Midwest, the weather report calls for rain to move in just in time for the first pitch. While I love baseball, sitting in 40-degree, rainy weather for an April night game puts that love to the test. Is there a solution for this? Not for us in the MidWest League, whose teams are mostly…

Statehouse Eyes Turn to Taxes “Read my lips.” — George H.W. Bush, 1988 GOP Convention HEARING HINTS from the Statehouse floor about details of a property tax “cut,” we are reminded of the “Bohanan Rule” named after the Ball State University economist Cecil Bohanon who first explained it to us. It says that taxes can be cut for no better reason than to keep government small enough to remain comprehensible. For the last 80 years or so we have…

The Not-So-Great Gatsby THIS WEEK MARKS the 100th anniversary of the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is an occasion, I read in the New York Times, to speculate on Jay Gatsby’s identity, his swarthiness. Was he a member of one oppressed minority or another, or, if not, a literary representation of the ways that race tragically interacts with wealth and social mobility? Scholars such as Henry Gates, Valarie Smith, Michael North and Marlene Allen have…

One of Donald Trump’s executive orders establishes an official administrative interpretation of the citizenship language of the Fourteenth Amendment. The question, contentious of course in these divisive times, centers on the right of “birth citizenship,” the automatic granting of United States citizenship to any baby born within the U.S. regardless of the parents’ citizenship status. Here is the relevant language from the amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to…

When Good Intentions Go Bad WE ARE GLAD to learn that Indiana University occasionally offers study-abroad courses in South Africa. What a wonderful chance for students to learn what happens when you discard the tenets of Western Civilization solely because they were developed by white people. To begin, because college students are interested in fairness above all, the World Bank keeps something called a Gini coefficient. It is a 0.00-to-1.00 measurement of wealth inequality with black-run…

The Statehouse: Our House of Mirrors SPRING IS IN THE AIR  and now is the time everyone — the Indy media, the legislative leadership, everyone — scrambles to pretend they know how the session will end.  They don’t have any idea, of course, for we once sent people to Indianapolis to represent us as our friends and neighbors. You knew what they/we thought about things. Now they go as mouthpieces for this special interest or that. Indeed,…

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. Consider the desperate job searches of a youth with limited skills in need of job training, a professional between jobs, or a worker constrained by location and personal responsibilities. Opportunities for flexible finite employment contracts enable individuals to freely negotiate wages, benefits and conditions of employment.        In 1981, legal historian Tibor Machan argued that national goals were undermining workers’ natural rights. His objection was not to safety regulations or laws banning force…

by Mark Franke By 2035 the number of senior citizens in America will exceed the number of children. I learned that fact at the annual meeting of a faith-based retirement community for which I am a voting delegate. While this may seem like a positive growth forecast for this ministry, it presents its challenges as well. What kind of living accommodations and health-care facilities will this aging population need in 10 years hence? Lutheran Life Villages,…

Tariffs Discombobulated THE FORMER CHAIRWOMAN of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce has written her list of “threats to democracy,” of chief interest here being her opposition to tariffs. Marilyn Moran-Townsend in a widely circulated letter calls on all Hoosiers — “progressive Democrats working with conservative Republicans, evangelicals working with Muslims and Jews, business leaders working with union leaders” — to join her. This fits the view of America as a magical democracy where to save the nation one need only summon “the power of the people, participating…

by Marilyn Moran-Townsend On April 30, 1789, in the first presidential inaugural address, George Washington said: ‘”The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government are … staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” When our first president spoke of the “Republican model of Government,” he wasn’t talking about a political party but rather what it means to be a democracy. Three…