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Plea deal raises questions about ice firm’s local clout BEHIND THE NEWS:

Plea deal raises questions about ice firm’s local clout BEHIND THE NEWS Home City Ice Co. has a stranglehold on the Indianapolis-area ice market. Good for the company, you say? Not if the Cincinnati-based ice powerhouse avoided competition through old-fashioned, monopolistic shenanigans. Whether Home City did is a reasonable question to ask in light of the June 17 announcement that the company has pleaded guilty to conspiring to suppress and eliminate competition in the Detroit and southeast Michigan ice markets….

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Expert: 75 mph might be safe

A Purdue University civil engineering professor made news this week by rolling out a study showing the new
70 mph speed limit on rural interstates in Indiana caused virtually no increase in fatalities or injuries.

The study was prompted by the…

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Biotech database gives G&S high hopes: Firm sees more demand for grant-award research

By conducting market research for some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, locally based G&S Research Inc. has grown into a $10 million firm. But founders have even higher expectations for their G&S Discovery division, which was formed two years ago. Its flagship product, Navigrant, provides a database of government grant awards for national biomedical research. The total market worldwide for life sciences research is estimated at $45 billion. Navigrant has compiled information on 450,000 awards from 60…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Why economists focus on increasing the size of the pie

I recently was invited to attend a t ow n – h a l l – s t y l e debate between members of a local fire department and an a n t i – p r o p e r t y – t a x group. For those of you who are sporadic readers of this column, it is important for me to clarify that I have recently angered both groups. It seems my research on government…

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Farm and suburban polluters

Drive through areas hit by the deluge of rain in the past few days and youâ??ll see mind-boggling soil
erosion.

At the base of myriad fields lie deltas of sediment washed downhill from elsewhere in their respective watersheds.
Not only was…

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Flagship rises over post-GM town: Incubator has helped preserve automotive talent base, foster diverse businesses

ANDERSON – Along Interstate 69, in a new industrial building with side-windows covered in paper to foil prying eyes, Altair Nanotechnologies is perfecting a ceramic oxide battery with three times the power of a conventional lithium battery. Up the road, Comfort Motion Technologies has written software to make a car’s power seat jiggle ever so subtly, to keep one’s back, butt and thighs comfortable on long drives. And everybody is keeping an eye on Pete Bitar, whose green laser device…

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Commentary: Listen, learn at summer camp

The war in Iraq is intolerable and interminable. We are struggling with a recession, a flawed energy policy, a weak dollar and an enormous government deficit. President Bush has earned a lower approval rating than Cinderella’s stepmother-and I’m sitting here thinking, “What if the election of 2000 had gone the other way?” Join me and pose that question to Ron Klain at the men’s edition of Mickey’s Camp this summer. Klain is arguably one of the most well-known national Democrats…

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Depending on a three-legged stool

Economic development experts have long contended that business investment and good jobs gravitate to places
where business, government and higher education are on the ball and get along together.

If one of the three legs doesnâ??t carry its weight, the other…

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EYE ON THE PIE: Home cooking not always good for us

The conversation between my neighbors, Paula and Paul Plain, interrupts the enjoyment I get from sitting on the deck in the dark of the night. They generally agree on whatever subject they discuss, but their voices nonetheless displace nature’s quiet. Thus, I find myself an unwilling participant in their nocturnal conversations. Last week, they were discussing the idea that young adult Hoosiers should be encouraged to remain in Indiana. “I’m so glad,” Paula crooned, “that 80 percent of central Indiana’s…

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Officials turn up call for 2-year degrees: State putting emphasis on higher education options

State and local leaders are turning up the amp on the importance of higher education, but they’re also trying to tune students into the message that being college-educated doesn’t have to mean spending four years at a university. In recent weeks, both Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels have loudly proclaimed the state’s need for more workers with twoyear degrees. While government officials have long said the state needs a more educated work force to attract business,…

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Local mental health centers caught in funding limbo: Federal effort to shift costs to states on hold, but not-for-profits’ budgets for next year must be completed now

At Indianapolis-based Adult and Child Mental Health Center Inc., Executive Director Bob Dunbar has developed a contingency plan as he works on the agency’s $25 million budget for next year. He has two versions of a spending plan for the center, which provides mental health services for 4,200 children and adults a year. One includes moderate cuts tied to state funding changes, and the other deals with massive cuts pushed by the federal government. In the worst-case scenario, as much…

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Making companies say, ‘I do’

Lots of Indiana towns will do almost anything to get a factory or warehouse. That often means skipping pointed
questions about corporate citizenship for fear of losing the project.

A Lebanon city council member isn’t looking the other way, though.

Dick Robertson…

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Return Weir Cook to airport title?

Weir Cook has been dead a long time, since 1943, but a military veterans group wants to bring his name
back to what is now Indianapolis International Airport.

The war heroâ??s name was on the airport from 1944, a…

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INVESTING: Law of supply and demand wreaks havoc on oil prices

One of the first things a student in Economics 101 learns is the fundamental concept of supply and demand. Who can forget those familiar graphs that show the two crossing curves and the critical point where they intersect-the price of the particular good. Next, we learned the effect of shifts in supply and demand, which lead to either an increase or decrease in price. Visually, those graphs allowed us to see how an increase in demand, without a commensurate increase…

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IRS requires not-for-profits to disclose more info: Organizations gearing up for new rules in 2009

For the first time in decades, the Internal Revenue Service is making a major revision to the way not-for-profits disclose information about their finances, governance and operations. Coming in the wake of scrutiny from federal lawmakers and regulators alike, the changes to IRS Form 990 that take effect next year require not-for-profit leaders to provide more information on executive compensation and potential conflicts of interest, for example. And for the first time ever, most organizations will be required to file…

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Farm bill stranglehold

It isn’t easy providing tomatoes to the nation. Consider the ongoing struggle at Red Gold Inc. The state’s largest food processor, which is headquartered north of Anderson in Orestes, was all but locked out of buying tomatoes from Indiana growers under…

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VOICES FROM THE INDUSTRY: Projects require much work before ground is ever broken

Encouraging new development-residential and commercial-is such a high priority in many communities these days that one would think both the private and public sectors would rush to break ground before the impulse passes. But as ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso often responds each Saturday during the season to the observations of others, “Not so fast my friend.” Before construction actually starts, all parties involved in a proposed project, if it is to be successful, must reach consensus on a…

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EYE ON THE PIE: Globalization in the fast-food business

My buddy Andy hates his name. He suffers because his parents were excessively influenced by “Wheel of Fortune” and named him Andreas Fawlty Towers. After years of teasing, Andy now hates just about everything. For example, he and I were having lunch at the redesigned “Steak, Shake and Sushi” as he complained about the new menu. “Foreign foods,” he said, groaning. “They take a perfectly fine menu of American classics and add something no one ought to eat. It’s bad…

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