In May, George Ryan’s son revealed that his father, late of the Executive Mansion and the federal pen, was writing his memoirs. Ryan fils promised it would be a “humdinger,” a “no holds barred book” that will “tell it like it is.” We can only hope. It can’t be easy for a politician to plainly […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Fighting financial felons
In “Short arm of the law” I addressed the failure of federal prosecutors to go after financial criminals with the same zeal they show in pursuing political insiders. “Why do not our protectors seek to return us to the day when businesspeople made and traded things rather than stealing what others made?” I asked. “The […]
Posted inOpinion
Too afraid to talk about death
This morning Ezra Klein of the Washington Post adds more than two cents’ worth to the not-quite debate about end-of-life medical decision-making. Klein discusses the legislation proposed by Oregon rep Earl Blumenauer that I described yesterday. The problem with Blumenauer’s legislation isn’t that it goes too far. It’s that it doesn’t go nearly far enough….We […]
Posted inOpinion
Personalize Your Care
In “Happier endings,” I ventured the opinion that patients with life-threatening conditions ought to talk sooner with their physicians about end-of-life issues. News comes that a Democratic congressman has introduced a bill to make such conversations easier. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) sat on the Portland city council in the 1990s when I lived in that […]
Posted inOpinion
Trial by juries
In 2011’s “Good and true,” I took up the problem of biased or incompetent jurors rendering our criminal justice system anything but just. In a recent post, Slate’s Brian Palmer looked at the research and reports that juries might reach the correct verdict between 75 and 90 percent of the time. I can’t argue with […]
Posted inOpinion
Manufacturing mediocrity
In July the National Council on Teacher Quality, a D.C.-based reform group, issued a study that concluded that the nation’s teacher-education colleges have turned into an “industry of mediocrity.” Oh, the Council thought well enough of most the central Illinois’ colleges of education, specifically those at Eastern, U of I’s Champaign campus, Southern’s two campuses […]
Posted inOpinion
Makers
In “Three strikes and you’re in,” I endorsed the idea that what Springfield needs to make its economy perk is the entrepreneurial energy and enterprise that immigrants supply. Turns out that the Small Business Administration commissioned a report on that idea in 2012. Robert W. Fairlie, an economics professor at the University of California at […]
Posted inOpinion
Taxing work
In 2011, the General Assembly, kicking and screaming, did what was good for it and ate its spinach. Members raised the rate at which the State of Illinois taxes the income of its citizens, thus forestalling a revenue crisis. That tasted so bad that they could not swallow it; the rate will have to be […]
Posted inOpinion
Quotes for the day
While I’m in a patriotic mood, I thought I’d pass along a few quotes from the Founding Fathers, courtesy of David Atkins over at Hullabaloo. Among them: James Madison: “The growing wealth acquired by [corporations] never fails to be a source of abuses. Thomas Jefferson: I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy […]
Posted inOpinion
America
Ah, another Fourth is gone – the ritual burning of dead animals, flags made in China waved by just folks celebrating our glorious victories over the world’s peasant armies, speeches by people convinced that if the Founders were alive today they sit at their table in the cafeteria and not yours, all experienced through an […]
Posted inOpinion
A city moving backward
More questions about the Jefferson Crossing project. * The project will require subsidy in the form of $9.2 million in tax increment financing — believed to be the largest single TIF award in Springfield’s history. Is creating buildable land in a floodplain necessary in a city that has thousands of acres of unbuilt or underused […]
Posted inOpinion
Qestions about Jefferson Crossing
The slogan of the Qik-n-EZ gas station chain is, “The two things you cherish most in your life, make it QIK and make it EZ!” The company’s owners have found that redeveloping the old Jefferson Mall property is neither qik nor easy. That property is part of a 44-acre parcel on Winch Lane just off […]
