What if a law was introduced that gave Kroger a tax credit and required Marsh to pay for it? The law would also require Marsh to hire anyone who applied for a job, whether or not the applicant could speak English or count, and whether or not Marsh needed more employees. Meanwhile, the state would [...]

I don’t know about anyone else, but I?m awfully tired of seeing my tax dollars diverted from proper government functions (paving highways, paying police) to fund the ideological (not to be confused with logical) fixations of a few legislators. Some of this session’s proposals are not just bad policy, they are positively surreal.

I remember Carl Moldthan from my days in the Hudnut Administration, when you could depend upon his Taxpayer Association to challenge virtually every bond issue. Currently, he is Executive Director of TAG–an acronym for Taxpayers for Accountability in Government. On its website, the organization says it works for Indiana taxpayers by monitoring government throughout the [...]

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the measure of a society can be taken by looking at the policies that affect its children and youth. How children are nurtured and socialized reveals more about a society?s priorities and values than all of its public pronouncements or civic rhetoric.

We have literally decades of research that confirm what everyone in this auditorium already knows: families have a major influence–probably the major influence–on children’s achievement. A 2002 study reviewing recent research found that students with involved parents are more likely to earn higher grades and get better scores on standardized tests. They are more likely [...]