In “Wrong in principle” I recalled how, beginning in the 1830s and ’40s the arrival in Illinois of Germans, who spoke an incomprehensible language, and Irish, who obeyed an incomprehensible church, stirred the natives to use the power of government of the people and for the people against these people. I also recalled how Stephen […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Calhoun County revisited
Speaking of things Calhoun: In “Naming rights and wrongs” I remarked on a suggestion from Rich Miller to rename Calhoun County. That bucolic corner of the state, you might know, was named to honor South Carolinian senator John C. Calhoun, who in his later years was an apologist for slavery and a preacher of secession. […]
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Anniversary gifts
Attentive readers will recall that I have an unaccountable fascination with naming things – in particular the naming of public parks and schools and the like. I took up the topic here and here and, most recently, here in a column about the propriety of naming a county in a Union state like Illinois after […]
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Closing a deal
Bruce and Diana Rauner PHOTO BY ZBIGNIEW BZDAK/TNS Trust me, readers, I am no more eager to write another column about the closing of the Illinois State Museum than you are to read it. I have been moved to do it because the most important aspect of the story is the one that remains the […]
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CEO supports the arts
The other day I admitted that I was not quote convinced of the wisdom of the State of Illinois offering tax credits so that Con-Agra, a billion-bucks makers of processed foods, could move their corporate headquarters close to the home of its new CEO. (See “Home is where the boss is,” Oct. 8, 2015.) I […]
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Home is where the boss is
Well, looks like we got taken again by a big out-of-town jasper. The Omaha-based processed food giant Con-Agra – parent of Chef Boyardee, Swiss Miss and other take-in fast foods – is moving its 700-person corporate headquarters to downtown Chicago. The Tribune parroted the company line that leaving the firm’s suburban-style campus in Nebraska to […]
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Ghost writers
Home of Edgar Lee Masters in Petersburg. PHOTO BY KENROSSALEX VIA WIKIPEDIA.ORG The only class of people less happy to confront dead writers than high school sophomores are probably mayors. Dead writers cause more trouble in their hometowns than even the most factious of them ever do when they are alive. Over in Petersburg, I […]
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Give me your energetic, your trained . . . .
A new report from the Pew Research Center provides confirmation that immigration in the U.S. is not quite as simple as some political candidates would have voters believe. Among their findings: There are two great immigrant streams — the largely unskilled or underskilled that so obsesses Republican candidates like Donald Trump, and the educated professional […]
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The American way
More afterthoughts inspired by my Sept. 24 column on immigration, “Trumped-up charges:” One way to get rid of foreigners in our midst is to help them become Americans. Broadly speaking, that was the policy that made great the America that Trump wants to restore. Yet Illinois’ newest Congressman, Darin LaHood, voted against measures to allow undocumented […]
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Trumped-up charges
Photo by Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS Brother Trump is the savior come to rescue America, in the opinion of a majority of self-identified Republicans. On the stump he works crowds into a fever with his perorations against immigrants (how he spells “Mexicans”) who are surging across our borders without papers or prospects, taking “our” jobs […]
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Down on the border
Illinois’ newest Congressman, Darin LaHood, has argued that the U.S. must put more resources into securing the borders to stop the flow of immigrants coming in illegally. Really? More? Between 2000 and 2010, U.S. taxpayers spent something like $90 billion trying to secure the U.S.-Mexico border — National Guard troops , border agents, X-ray machines, […]
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The history of the history
The State Journal-Register today offers a useful retrospective on the evolution of the Lincoln Home National Historic Site by Tara McClellan McAndrew. (“Protecting Lincoln’s legacy in his neighborhood has evolved with the times.”) More might be said on that subject – indeed more has been said. In “A new old street” which appeared in […]
