Braun fails Indiana’s hungry, and the buck stops somewhere else
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Release Date: 05/21/2025
Why the new lie about the old lie is rattling the loyal believers of lies
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Last week, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced there will be no release of the “Jeffrey Epstein files.” It’s hard to predict when people will have finally had enough. The tolerance level of undesirable traits and behaviors from other humans will vary from person to person of course. And in today’s world of unexplainable group think, a rational understanding of group tolerance is often fleeting. This is not a column that will provide some new theories about what’s in the elusive Epstein files. No, I will never have confidence that the entire truth of that monster’s life will...
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Teaching fewer things leads to a population that thinks less
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Oh, to have existed in a period of time named the “Renaissance,” a French word that means “rebirth.” , “it was primarily a time of the revival of Classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation.” The recently enacted biennial budget crafted by the Indiana General Assembly is hostile toward learning in favor of stagnation. The Commission for Higher Education announced last week that six of the state’s public universities are suspending or consolidating more than 400 academic degree programs to comply with the new budget. “The cuts are...
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People will feel the one big, beautiful bill, and it will be ugly
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Every semester, the students in my business writing class are divided up into teams and are assigned a real-life challenge from a company looking to elevate its performance in any number of ways. It’s an opportunity to research the complexities of a market, to create an entrepreneurial solution and to effectively communicate all of it to the company looking to grow. And it’s an opportunity for me. I get to teach them the value of feedback. The worst ideas I’ve seen in my career come from organizations that spend too much time only talking to each other. The habit skews logic and...
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Maybe sexual harassment by elected officials shouldn’t end happily for them
Think About It with Michael Leppert
I spent last weekend in New York, as I try to do once a year, for the primary purpose of seeing the latest hot show or two on Broadway. I’d love to say I am expert at picking the best shows, but the truth is, if a show has gotten my attention in the heartland, it’s a safe bet. “Maybe Happy Ending” first caught my eye with its list of Tony nominations, so I bought the tickets. After my purchase, , including Best Musical. While I was in the city, the political ads were relentless on TV and on many of the digital billboards in Times Square. Tuesday was the Democratic primary election for...
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Three days of shock and awe illustrate an American culture in turmoil
Think About It with Michael Leppert
A quarter century ago, as a young bureaucrat, I had a disagreement with my bosses. Energy commodities markets were going through an historic price spike, and my agency set the final rates customers would pay. I wanted rates to mirror the market to send “price signals” to consumers and provoke a reduction in consumption. The bosses wanted to spread costs over a long period to mitigate “rate shock.” They feared the infinitely possible responses that could come from an angry public. The bosses won, as bosses usually do, and we kept rates flat, and the public remained calm. Governing has...
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Purdue’s breakup with its student paper feels like a gun shot
Think About It with Michael Leppert
I am working on publishing a new book this year. So, I’m spending time with other writers, readers, editors and consultants to make sure the finished product is as good as it can be. While online the other day, an editor wrote: “The purpose of fiction is to ask the audience questions to consider; the purpose of non-fiction, is to give them answers.” I assumed that was a famous quote, because it’s so wonderful, but I can’t find its originator for attribution. “Who said that?” is a question in need of an answer. I don’t ever seem to run out of questions, and neither does...
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Lt. Gov. Beckwith’s nasty warnings about Pride Month are exactly why Pride is needed
Think About It with Michael Leppert
I love June in Indianapolis. School’s out for me. The gardens, flowers and lawns around town are blooming and greening with optimism. And the city is quiet as it recovers from its traditionally hectic month of May. As my favorite performer, David Ryan Harris, sang in concert many years ago, this time of year transforms “slow like the breezes of springtime melt into summer’s grace.” As a dad, I am treated well in June. As a golfer, Indiana’s greens rarely run smoother. As a proud downtown dweller, my neighbors never love each other better. And that last one is all because of ....
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When knowledge is the enemy, greatness is impossible
Think About It with Michael Leppert
In the 1983 classic film, “Trading Places,” Louis Winthorpe III and Billy Ray Valentine are victims of a scientific experiment that is thrust upon them by the elite bosses of a Philadelphia commodities brokerage. Winthorpe is a young, snobby broker at the firm, with all the right credentials and upbringing. He is comprehensively replaced by Valentine, a streetwise but uneducated nobody. The amateur sociological experiment aimed to prove that environment is more predictive than genetics in determining personal success or failure. After the switch, Winthorpe spots Valentine wearing the...
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Braun fails Indiana’s hungry, and the buck stops somewhere else
Think About It with Michael Leppert
Bureaucracy is a word that is often used as an excuse. It is the bogeyman that serves as the source of mysterious and insurmountable odds preventing government from delivering the obvious good and right things to its people. Why are the streets in Indianapolis so horrible? Why is school funding seemingly always distributed unfairly? Eventually, the answers to those questions lead to the faceless phantom, known as bureaucracy. However, sometimes that phantom is identified, making accountability possible for whatever ails us. That’s when we point at an actual person, the sinister...
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‘The Talk’ won’t get us through the evil of ICE’s mask-wearing
Think About It with Michael Leppert
In of the film, “The Hate U Give,” a father is having The Talk with his two young children. It is a common discussion Black families have in America to prepare for the inevitable contact with law enforcement they will face, and how to stay safe in those situations. It is a sad necessity, but a necessity all the same. The movie was based on the 2017 . It was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, though plenty of important things have happened in real life since then. In The Talk, the father is instructing his kids how to be submissive when confronted by an armed aggressor with...
info_outlineBureaucracy is a word that is often used as an excuse. It is the bogeyman that serves as the source of mysterious and insurmountable odds preventing government from delivering the obvious good and right things to its people.
Why are the streets in Indianapolis so horrible? Why is school funding seemingly always distributed unfairly? Eventually, the answers to those questions lead to the faceless phantom, known as bureaucracy. However, sometimes that phantom is identified, making accountability possible for whatever ails us. That’s when we point at an actual person, the sinister “bureaucrat.”
On May 7th, Whitney Downard reported for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, “’A giant leap backwards’: Indiana opts out of summer program for hungry schoolchildren.” She reported that in 2024, Hoosier families who qualify for food benefits and reduced-price school meals got a summertime boost: $120 per child monthly for food while schools were closed. It provided that assistance to 669,000 children.
What made it news earlier this month is that Indiana’s participation last year, won’t be repeated this year. The reason? You guessed it, bureaucracy. Downard asked “three state entities” about the withdrawal from the SUN Bucks program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including the important question: why? At that time, no reasoning was provided.
I was hopeful more reporting would follow, and on May 16th, it did.
Rachel Fradette reported for WFYI that in a statement from Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration, that “clear direction” was needed from state leadership last year for the program to be rolled out in a timely manner. “Upon taking office, this administration quickly submitted a waiver application to the Food and Nutrition Service to explore all possible avenues for launching the program this summer…However, our review revealed that the gaps in prior preparations prevented implementation in time for Summer 2025.”
That’s the classic blaming of bureaucracy. But there’s a face here, and that face is Governor Mike Braun. Could this Trump loyalist have made a phone call to the White House? Yes. Did he?
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Michael Leppert is an author, educator and a communication consultant in Indianapolis. He writes about government, politics and culture at MichaelLeppert.com.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.