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Ethanol’s secret: Highly touted alternative fuel needs tax subsidies to survive

State and local leaders have been crowing about how ethanol plants will bring more jobs to Indiana and put more dollars in the pockets of corn farmers. If that prospect isn’t enough to make votecoveting politicians and corn farmers giddy, General Motors Corp. started singing ethanol’s praises this month in TV ads. Joyous motorists frolic under blue skies-all thanks to ethanol’s promise of cleaner air and energy independence from oil. But there’s another economic reality for motorists who use E85,…

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VIEWPOINT: Why don’t Republicans like Indy Works?

As you remember from the legend, Rip Van Winkle wandered off one day into the Catskill Mountains and ended up sleeping under a tree for 20 years. When he wandered back into his village, unaware that he’d slept so long, Van Winkle found things back home had changed in dramatic ways. You might have forgotten this detail from the story: Rip reappeared in his New England town on Election Day, shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War. When he…

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Lilly shares primed for rebound?: Stock analysts say 2006 may yield a rise in price out of the $50 range

Higher new-product sales, an influx of Medicare money, and improved market conditions might be just what the doctor ordered to bump Eli Lilly and Co. stock out of the funk it settled into last spring. However, as the Indianapolis company strives to meet 2006 earnings projections, analysts still see plenty to fret about, including declining sales of the company’s top-selling drug, the antipsychotic Zyprexa. Lilly shares dipped below $60 last May and spent the rest of 2005 oscillating beneath that…

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BULLS & BEARS: Indiana’s in biofuel game; now it should strive to win

Over the past few months, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar has been vocal in touting the benefits of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. It would be wise for the state’s government and business leaders to heed his message. The renewable fuel industry is gathering momentum and has a high probability of growing into a substantial industry. The energy bill President Bush signed into law last summer mandates the use of 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol each year by 2012,…

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Lessons from attorneys on the front lines in India: Be ready to grease palms, face cultural differences:

BANGALORE, India-Petty bureaucrats are more than a nuisance in India. Some like to line their pockets. And if minor officials don’t get what they want, they might shutter a U.S. company’s operations. Given enough time and money, disputes can be settled in India’s infamously slow courts. But V. Umakanth, a Bangalore partner with the Indian law firm Amarchand Mangaldas, counsels clients to simply make the small grease payments some administrators expect. “There is still corruption. Foreign businesses need to deal…

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Emerging India: Opportunity or threat?: Indiana businesses brace for growing global competition

Opportunity or threat? Indiana businesses brace for growing global competition Next month, President Bush will make his first official visit to India. To most of the American media, it’ll be just one more round of global terrorism discussions with a distant foreign nation, perhaps worthy of a brief. The Indian press knows better. Six weeks ahead of Bush’s trip, banner headlines about it ran in every newspaper. Al Hubbard knows better, too. Friends with Bush since their days at Harvard…

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Entrepreneurship the Indian way: A day with a Bangalore software-maker reveals business parallels

BANGALORE, India-HealthAsyst CEO Umesh Bajaj remembers when the only computers allowed in India were self-assembled. As recently as 20 years ago, the Indian government’s protectionist measures prohibited foreign companies from directly selling PCs. Instead, Indians imported microchips and built the computers themselves. In his first job as an electronics engineer for an Indian conglomerate, Bajaj crisscrossed the country marketing versions of mainframes and desktops made in India. Today Bajaj, a 55-year-old born in New Delhi, owns his own Bangalore-based health…

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CHRIS KATTERJOHN Commentary: Obesity must be conquered

By now, everybody knows obesity is a huge health problem in our country. The Centers for Disease Control reports that obesity is linked to 112,000 deaths per year and leads to an extra $75 billion in direct medical costs annually. We Hoosiers can hold up a mirror. Depending on which study you look at, Indiana ranks either fourth or fifth as the most obese state in the nation. Our local daily newspaper just published a series of articles on how…

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Emerging India: Passage to Bangalore: Hoosiers seek outsourcing and investment opportunities

Passage to Bangalore Hoosiers seek outsourcing and investment opportunities BANGALORE, India-The deal was falling apart. Despite a week of flirtation and friendly negotiations, the two young Indian entrepreneurs rejected the offer from the group of Hoosier investors. Frustrated, the investors walked out of the hotel conference room. The chance to speculate on an Indian software startup called Picsquare.comhad fizzled. But none of the six Indiana business leaders was demoralized. After all, they’d crossed the globe to pursue business opportunities in…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Those who put head in sand put next generation in peril

I have always been fascinated with one particular aspect of the life story of Al Smith. Here was a poor, unsophisticated, relatively uneducated kid from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who showed up at the New York Legislature in 1903 as a nobody, but in the space of 10 years became a major power broker, ultimately running for president. The secret to his success? Unlike his socializing, partying colleagues, Al Smith spent his evenings actually reading legislation. When it…

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EYE ON THE PIE: Coffee, doughnuts and liberty

There is nothing like the aroma of strong, fresh coffee. So it was as I woke one recent day. My executive officer had left for work, but graciously left the coffee and its aroma for me to enjoy. Down the stairs I tottered with my dog (who pretends to be too feeble to manage the stairs by himself). I let him out, let him back in, gathered a cup of the brew, and entered my office. “Hi,” she said in…

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Conflict avoided, but not revealed: Director didn’t participate in hiring Sallie Mae unit for $15M state project

Records filed with the Indiana Ethics Commission show that Goode last July removed himself from involvement in vetting the contract his department later OK’d between the Indiana Department of Revenue and General Revenue Corp., a Cincinnatibased subsidiary of the student-loan giant. General Revenue, which pursues overdue payments for Sallie Mae, was hired in August to help the state collect $255 million in back taxes through a tax amnesty program last fall. But the Department of Revenue never sought competing bids…

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STATEHOUSE DISPATCH: Slow-moving lawmakers have an economic upside

Is the wall finally crumbling? After years-or decades-of assiduously avoiding certain issues because they were so fraught with controversy, lawmakers now seem to be tackling them … and, at least in some cases, are finding their actions are met with a collective public yawn. Last year, spurred by Gov. Mitch Daniels, legislators confronted the controversial matter of daylight saving time, long considered the last “third-rail” issue of Hoosier politics and policy. The issue had not even been debated in recent…

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New FBI facility: tough case to crack: Government struggling to find site to build field office for bureau

The highly-sought-after job of developing a new building for the FBI’s Indianapolis field office is still in play, but it’s hampered by the federal government’s inability to find a site for the building. A bevy of local and national developers are expected to throw their hats in the ring to develop the building, which the Government Services Agency says needs to be 110,000 square feet. For the winner, it would be a high-profile project and one of the more significant…

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VIEWPOINT: State’s STIF-necked response shortsighted

Chances are, most of you have never heard of the acronym “STIF.” The four letters stand for sales tax increment financing. Indiana has created so-called STIF districts around the state to stimulate economic development, or so we thought. STIF districts work simply: They allow a portion of sales taxes generated at new retail projects to be redirected to pay the cost of public improvements related to the projects, things like curbs and sidewalks, streets, sewers, other utilities, drainage and landscaping….

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Want-ad battle brewing: Newspapers feel threatened by state’s deal with Monster

A four-year, $2.8 million deal between the DWD and McLean, Va.-based Monster Government Solutions to develop and maintain an online job search and recruitment system is coming under heavy fire, with newspaper operators saying a system funded by their own tax dollars will harm their business. DWD officials said the deal is designed to lower unemployment and boost Indiana’s economy. “We think this deal is going to result in a brain gain, keeping people employed and keeping our college graduates…

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Roll the cameras: State cranks up efforts to court film industry under new task force

North Carolina offers a 15-percent tax credit to filmmakers to help offset production costs. The credit recently helped sway a national retailer to shoot an in-store commercial there instead of in Indiana. While the $600,000 production hardly compares to a multimillion-dollar motion picture, losing it was a big deal for local companies that didn’t get the work. Holli Hanley of Grand Illusion Lighting Inc. in Zionsville, which rents lighting equipment to production companies, lamented the loss. “Everyone in the entire…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Let the private sector operate the Toll Road

Watching the tug and pull of partisan politics in full bloom in our state capital brings to mind that old saying about making laws and making sausage. You don’t really want to see how either one happens. But as our elected leaders posture and fight over the table scraps of new revenue that can realistically be said to be squeezed out of what has historically been an overcommitted state budget, another, more hopeful, vision comes to mind. It’s a vision…

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EYE ON THE PIE: Good ideas merit communication

Finally, the Daniels administration is getting around to explaining the tollroad-leasing proposal. On Feb. 3, it released Volume 1, Issue 1, of “Major Moves Help Desk,” a newsletter to tell its side of the complicated toll-roadleasing story. Perhaps a newsletter is pretentious, but it is a move in the right direction. The idea of leasing the toll road is an attractive one, but I have felt in the dark about why this lease and its many details are best for…

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INVESTING: Fraud sparks furor only when stocks are slumping

My wife and I recently saw the movie “Fun With Dick and Jane.” It’s the story of a CEO who cooks the books at a tech firm, and all the employees lose their jobs and are wiped out. I walked away thinking Wall Street could win best supporting actor in the film. As the credits rolled, the producers of the movie thanked recent corporate evildoers, such as Kenneth Lay from Enron and Bernie Ebbers from WorldCom, for their inspiration. Coincidentally,…

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