After each decennial census, the law requires redrawing the City-County Council districts. A decade ago, after a Democratic mayor vetoed a redistricting ordinance adopted by the Republican majority following the 2000 census, the Indiana Supreme Court rejected the partisan maps proposed by the two parties and adopted a neutral map that established the districts through the 2011 election.
Will Rogers once said, “Congress is in session; hold onto your wallets.” Now, with the General Assembly in session, and with Rogers’ spirit of affectionate cynicism, I offer a corollary: “Hold onto your open government.
No more than an hour had passed on that awful day at Sandy Hook Elementary School before the usual suspects began their mantra: The whole thing was because of the gun.
A word I like to introduce my students to is “intractable.” This is a fancy, 75-cent college word that means can’t be solved, can only be dealt with—as in, the problems of homelessness are intractable.
Everyone knows you are not supposed to discuss taboo subjects such as religion and politics in the workplace.
Americans in general and Hoosiers in particular like to see the economy as a morality play. If you are rich, it is because you are hard-working and clever. If you are poor, it is because you are lazy and stupid.
Daily, I see politicians arguing, reciting their talking points, without facts. I hear political pundits repeating those talking points, urging on the political rhetoric.
It’s hard to tell when the notion began to sink in that too many Americans have forgotten the point of the American Revolution.
I had a happy Valentine’s Day visiting with members of the General Assembly.
Gov. Mike Pence doesn’t just want a tax cut for Hoosiers. A tax cut was foundational to his campaign and his philosophy of conservatism: Growth comes faster when individuals and corporations spend their own money, because it is more productive (leveraged better), more diversely spread (less likely to be bet on winners and losers), and more reflective of actual markets.
Do the politicians care what nonvoters think? House Speaker Brian Bosma recently took issue with the WISH-TV/Ball State Hoosier Survey because, he said, it wasn’t a voter poll. When challenged, he said that he cares what everybody thinks, but the message he delivered was that the opinions of voters matter more than those of adults who don’t get to the polls.
Something important is missing on planning desks of Indianapolis leaders as they contemplate mass transit, waterworks and other big-ticket projects. It is well past time for a strategy for a new criminal justice complex outside of downtown.
Arguably one of the most passionate and polarizing debates in the General Assembly this session is the allocation of the transportation budget. Gov. Mike Pence and many legislators agree that money should be spent on repairing deteriorating roads and constructing new highways.
Most days I wish the government would take less of my money and let me use it to save, invest, donate or just spend frivolously. I figure I earned this money, it’s mine and I deserve to keep it, right?
Promising to cut taxes is not political leadership. It’s cheap and easy.
The cloud is what we call the storage areas we never see except in our browsers—that online, cyberspace world that holds our files and often our working applications.
People such as John Cleland and Dr. Larry Einhorn are the real heroes.
In response to Deborah Daniels’ [Feb. 4] column regarding legalization of marijuana, everyone can agree that we should protect children from harm—there is no debate there.
A number of accusations on both sides in the 2012 elections were extrapolations rebroadcast out of context. I began to wonder if the very notion of fairness was worthy of study, or if the word had any substantive meaning beyond complexion and the weather.
John Kasich (Ohio), Rick Snyder (Michigan), Jan Brewer (Arizona), Brian Sandoval (Nevada), Susana Martinez (New Mexico) and Jack Dalrymple (North Dakota) are all conservative Republican governors opposed to the Affordable Care Act.
