Prominently featured on Sen. Joe Donnelly’s website is a column by The Indianapolis Star’s Matt Tully, titled “Donnelly Hits It Down The Middle.” Tully lavishes praise on Donnelly, contrasting him with “partisan warriors such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.”
When my mother told me money can’t buy happiness, she was evidently onto something. Recently, the World Happiness Report recognized Denmark—a cold country with one of those high-tax “socialist, nanny-state” governments—as the happiest nation on Earth.
In 1957, then-Sen. John Kennedy published “Profiles in Courage,” chronicling stories of senators who (in Kennedy’s rendition) risked careers to do the right thing in the face of political pressure. Eleanor Roosevelt, who thought JFK more a show horse than a work horse, remarked that Kennedy himself needed “less profile and more courage.”
If Eli Lilly and Co. sneezes, Indianapolis catches a cold. The statement has been so oft-repeated that it’s become a cliché.
The “makers and takers” narrative—promoted most prominently by Paul Ryan and eagerly adopted by Tea Party activists—is just the most recent manifestation of a persistent American fable that encourages people who believe they “stand on their own two feet” to aim moral indignation and opprobrium at those they believe are “sucking at the public you-know-what.”
It’s possible that when this is published, President Obama and House Speaker Boehner will have worked out an end to the government shutdown and debt ceiling crises. I’m betting no. For now, the president doesn’t want to, because he thinks it’s hurting the GOP.
Politicians have been gerrymandering districts since the time of Elbridge Gerry, for whom the tactic was named—and he signed the Declaration of Independence.
Our state and city lost an extraordinary citizen last week, when my friend and partner Dan FitzGibbon passed at age 71.
In Florence, Italy, in one of that city’s many museums, there is a famous marble statue of Hercules and Diomedes wrestling. One of them—presumably Hercules—has his hands around the testicles of the other, and ever since we first saw it, my husband has referred to it as the “fight fair, dammit” statue.
The president’s handling of the Syria situation is a model of undermining U.S. credibility and influence. Three headlines from last week: 1. “Obama Got Played by Putin and Assad”; “Amateur Hour in the White House”; “Dazed and Confused.”
Public finance these days reminds me of those fellows we used to encounter at the county fairs—the ones who twisted balloons into fantastic shapes, making horses or dogs from oblong balloons they blew up. Push the balloon here and watch a shape emerge there, and wonder if it would pop.
Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Few speeches merit recall a week later. King’s will be remembered as long as America lives.
I know it will come as something of a shock to younger readers of IBJ, but I spent 35-plus years as an active Republican.
I don’t comment on columns by my liberal “Taking Issue” counterpart Sheila Kennedy. This week is an exception, prompted by reader requests to respond to her Aug. 12 “Detroit reflects our moral bankruptcy” column for impugning the motives of those who don’t share her views.
The city of Detroit has declared bankruptcy. It is the largest city in the United States ever to do so, and the punditry—what the late Molly Ivins called “the chattering classes”—are pointing fingers at those their particular ideologies suggest are to blame. It’s “white flight” or de-industrialization or lack of economic diversification or corrupt government or a combination of these and more.
It’s nice when a fellow Hoosier hits the big time. Latest is Princeton’s Sydney Leathers, who exposed Anthony Weiner, ex-congressman and now New York City mayoral candidate, for continuing the “sexting” behavior that forced his House resignation.
The murder rate in New York City is 3.4 per 100,000. The murder rate in Indianapolis is 17.5 per 100,000.
When it comes to the culture-war politics of same-sex marriage, our governor and legislators would be well advised to listen to Indiana’s business and corporate leadership and forgo their pious pandering to the shrinking number of Hoosiers spooked by social change.
The final days of June made me wonder if we’re ever going to get past race.
Congressman Marvin Stutzman is hardly alone in waging what seems like a mean-spirited campaign against the “least of us.”
