Author Archive

Christmas Trees and Crony Capitalism
by RYAN CUMMINS

I’ve been involved in selling fresh Christmas trees for as long as I can remember. Our family vacations often consisted of walking grower’s fields with my dad, tagging the trees that he wanted for the upcoming season.

So my interest was piqued when word got out that a federal bureaucracy, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), working in cahoots with some Christmas tree growers, tried to slap a “tax” on every fresh Christmas tree sold.

In government parlance, this particular scam is called a “market order.” In effect, a business owner or small group of owners captures the force of government for individual gain. Read the rest of this entry »

by JEFF ABBOTT, Ph.D.

Public school superintendents are greedy, selfish, over-paid, a big waste of taxpayer dollars — or so popular thought goes. Such perceptions are fueled by news reports of superintendent compensation packages, retirement packages and contract buyouts.

The Philadelphia School District this fall bought out its superintendent’s contract for $905,000. And closer to home, an Indianapolis-area superintendent retired this year with a $1-million retirement package (but a few weeks after retirement decided to forego $200,000 of the retirement pay). Another Indianapolis-area superintendent a few years ago settled a contract buyout dispute by accepting a settlement of $470,000. A Fort Wayne-area superintendent received a retirement package of $495,000 a few years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

By Craig Ladwig

Of all the things you have to worry about in these serious times, you don’t have to worry that the Indiana Legislature, GOP majority or not, will do anything substantive to improve Indiana’s budgetary, fiscal or economic position. With Organization Day around the corner, Nov. 22, and a governing class marking time until the gubnatorial election, that is not cynicism, merely reality. Read the rest of this entry »

By Craig Ladwig

‘THE OUTSTATER’

Siwinski vs. Ogden Dunes

When the Indiana State Supreme Court behaves as a micro-legislature, setting aside Rule of Law to pursue its notion of the sublime, it opens itself to political criticism — and here comes some on the issue of property rights.

In a myopic ruling in Siwinski vs. the town of Ogden Dunes, Justice Steven David led the court in deciding that homeowners couldn’t lease their property even short-term if located in an area zoned for single-family residences.

Justice David, you will recall, was the Mitch Daniels appointee who led the majority in arguing that Hoosiers had no right to resist police entering their homes, even if that entry was later determined unlawful. Read the rest of this entry »

By Craig Ladwig

When our friend Ryan Cummins is in town we always learn something. Cummins, a former Terre Haute councilman, comes to Indianapolis to buy flowers and plants for his family landscaping and garden business.

Did you catch that? The man actually makes a payroll. At my foundation’s occasional social event, I take mischievous pleasure searching out other politicians so I can introduce Cummins as “a man who hires other people with his own money and figures out ways to pay all of our taxes.”

There is almost always an uncomfortable pause. Read the rest of this entry »

By Craig Ladwig

A friend of mine, a professor, has a fancy way of telling his family that he’s not doing much — “I’m covering variable costs,” he might say from the couch on a Saturday afternoon. He is using the economist’s term for someone engaged in activity unrelated to overhead.

We journalists are never supposed to admit such a thing, always giving the impression our words are playing a central role in saving the world. This column, though, if you promise not to tell, is covering variable costs, in this case two bits of authoritative-sounding misinformation.

The first is the troubling reaction of the Daniels administration to a former member’s congressional testimony. Read the rest of this entry »