Many reporters caught up in the bizarre world of official Washington have written extensively on political tactics and implications of the so-called government shutdown and disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov. Typical was a New York Times headline that blared “Republicans, Sensing Weakness in Health Law Rollout, Switch Tactics.”
The stock market is hitting record highs. Bank profits are their highest in years. The market for luxury goods is rebounding.
It’s likely that HealthCare.gov will be fixed by Thanksgiving and millions of Americans will (finally) be able to get a real look at what Obamacare is selling them.
Central governments are really good at just a few things. Waging war, funding interstate highways (maybe), and protecting our borders (well, sort of) come to mind.
John and Hank Green, also known as the Vlogbrothers, exchange videos with each other twice a week. Sometimes the videos are funny and sometimes they’re serious, but they’re usually thought-provoking.
We ask juries to do a lot in Indiana. In simple terms, juries are a body empaneled to be fact finders as part of the judicial process for resolving criminal charges or civil disputes.
If I had a dollar for every time I read a news article or post about a public official getting busted for sending or exchanging inappropriate emails and texts to fellow officials, colleagues and subordinates, I’d be well on my way to financial freedom.
While I have been a bookaholic since elementary school, few books made as much of an impression on me as E.D. Hirsch’s “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.” It was released in book form in 1987, rising to second on the New York Times Best Sellers List behind Allan Bloom’s less-readable but also influential and important “Closing of the American Mind.”
Legislatures in Iowa and California have seen the wisdom of eliminating partisan gerrymandering and the polarized bodies it generates. The call for redistricting reform is growing now that the federal government has been shut down and the nation’s credit and the world’s economy threatened.
In the state law that requires government meetings to be open to the public, there’s a wonderful preamble expressing the philosophy behind the statute. The intent of the Open Door Law, it declares, is “that the official action of public agencies be conducted and taken openly … in order that the people may be fully informed.”
We have a disconnect in Indiana that we need to fix.
The next legislative session is likely to feature several bills affecting “social” issues like same-sex marriage, curriculum controversies and religious activities in public schools, abortion and public prayer.
For those who can still bear to look, Indiana’s unemployment rate remains stuck above 8 percent.
The Indy Chamber is opposing the proposed state constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriages and civil unions. Fifty years ago—even 10 years ago—such a position would have been unthinkable. This is a remarkable change.
Twenty-fourteen will be a year of love and politics in Indiana.
We sometimes hear the advice to “get on the right side of history.”
Political crusades for raising the minimum wage are back again. Advocates of minimum wage laws often credit themselves for being more “compassionate” toward “the poor.” But they seldom bother to check the actual consequences of such laws.
Countries that don’t plan for the future tend not to do well there. When you watch the reckless behavior of the Tea Party-driven Republicans in Congress today, you can’t help but fear that we’ll be one of those.
It’s become common over the past year or two to note how well Wall Street is doing while Main Street is still struggling.
When Occupy Wall Street sprang up in parks and under tents, one of the many issues the protesters pressed was economic inequality. Then, as winter began to set in, the police swept the protesters away, the movement all but dissipated.
