by MARK FRANKE Now that election day is a week into the past, almost an epoch in the American attention span, some retrospection is in order. I stayed true to my election day ritual. At 5:35 a.m. I followed a neighbor out of our addition to the precinct polling place to stand in line waiting for the doors to open. After hearing friends complain about two and three hour waits to vote early because apparently…

By Tim Goeglein In 1516, Sir Thomas More published a book titled Utopia, which compared social and economic conditions in Europe with those of an ideal society on an imaginary island off the coast of the Americas. More wanted to imply that the perfect conditions on his fictional island could never exist, so he called it “Utopia,” a name he crested by combining the Greek words ou (‘not, no’) and topos (‘place’). The current use…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. I’m not a fan of either Trump or Harris — and whoever won, I had big worries about the country’s future, especially on government spending and debt. But I was thankful for a decisive outcome on Tuesday. I prayed for a large enough victory to avoid inflaming at least one set of partisans — and to give a better opportunity for the losers toreconsider their approach in the future.   To the…

Mike Braun: The Expectations LOOKING OVER Governor-elect Mike Braun’s transition team and governing plan and you get a is-everyone-happy-with-the-state-flower vibe. There’s nothing impressive there yet, especially considering that the Republicans have had a super-majority for more than a dozen years now. We appear to have elected a team of accountants. We had hoped for astronauts. The governor will be taking a deep dive into the abstruse fiscals of public-school administration, healthcare formulas, property taxes, the sort…

‘Prosperous’ Is a Matter of Deminiation A BALL STATE ECONOMICS PROFESSOR is saying forcefully in multiple interviews and articles including yesterday’s Indianapolis Star that the thousands of Haitians dropped into Logansport have made the town more “prosperous.” He cites data to prove his point. He is a pointy-headed fool. The professor’s conclusion is based on an assumption that certain businesses in the Logansport area would suffer if Haitian labor were unavailable. It is even possible that other businesses might be attracted to…

by Eric Rasmussen, Ph.D. Why do 55% of voters think Biden stole the 2020 election? I think it boils down to three things. First, Biden’s vote was peculiarly high in just the places he needed votes, and those votes appeared late. Second, an astounding 68 million votes were by absentee ballot,  which are notoriously the easiest place to cheat. Third, there was no audit of the absentee vote count, and the propaganda press has been so overheated…

Newspapers for Sale — Cheap NEITHER THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR nor any other Gannett newspaper will be making an endorsement in this presidential election. Corporate headquarters says it is to protect journalistic integrity and independence. (You can stop laughing now). More interesting is Jeff Bezo’s frank and honest explanation of why his Washington Post will no longer endorse. It is a practical response to a historic decline in public trust in mass media, newspapers in particular and including the one he owns:…

by MARK FRANKE It’s just a few days until the election and there are already 165 lawsuits filed according to Bloomberg. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Harris campaign has 400 lawyers drafting legal documents to have ready, with 10,000 lawyers in reserve for election day deployment. We’ve come to that. It seems our litigious society prefers to settle things in the courtroom rather than at the ballot box. The Supreme Court justices better gird their…

A Political Strategy that Works “Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.” — Napoleon THE LATE JOE OVERTON was the strategic genius in our small group of early state think-tankers. He understood that meeting with politicians is a waste of time. Why? Because they are followers, not leaders, following anyone who will help them get elected.  Meet instead, he said, with donors and voters. Overton, who helped found the Mackinac Center, knew that…

by Ryan Cummins An open letter to state Sen. Greg Goode: Your newsletter announcing that Indiana’s average teacher pay now surpasses $60,000 is Interesting. In  my opinion, though, your and the Indiana Republican Party’s take on teacher compensation is at best flawed, and more likely destructive. In an essay disseminated by The Indiana Policy Review in 2023, I asked the related question: “Is going from $56,000 to $60,000 enough for teachers? Too much? Not nearly enough? Just right? No one…