Perhaps you have read about, if not seen, Mitt Romney’s latest TV campaign ad. Mr. Romney, keep in mind, is the responsible GOP contender, the grown-up in the room, the calm voice on platforms otherwise crowded with gibbering idiots. He also is the candidate who, for those reasons, the GOP rank and file seem loathe […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
A house in a day
“Go east young man,” a neighbor advised my father, and in 1949 he and the rest of us did just that. For a veteran, it was cheaper in those days to buy than to rent, so we said goodbye to our apartment next to the Sangamo Dairy and headed to a GI Bill subdivision on […]
Posted inOpinion
Asphalt somethingness
Returning to Springfield after a trip, even a local patriot sees as if for the first time what catches the eye of so many visitors. Pretend that the gaudy billboards do not exist. Look the other way when passing the prefab buildings that are more appropriate to house a disc harrow than a business in […]
Posted inOpinion
Three strikes and you’re in
I have no idea what the American Dream means to the 63 persons from 25 nations who were welcomed into the fraternity of the free and the brave in October ceremonies at the Old Capitol. In my version of it, it means being able to order affordable restaurant dishes from south of the border whose […]
Posted inOpinion
Poor housing
If its aldermen were running Springfield’s fire stations, the city would have burned down years ago. On Oct. 18 the Springfield City Council passed a complex new ordinance that stiffened the penalties for owners of dilapidated buildings. The vote came a mere nine years after consultants urged that such action was necessary to slow the […]
Posted inOpinion
Gizmo-maker as god
Steve Jobs is dead, and the world talked about little else for a week. By now we have arrived at the transitional moment that was neatly described by columnist Rick Polito in the Pacific Sun – the one between “He was a genius who will be sorely missed” and “The battery has to be replaced […]
Posted inOpinion
The Durbin Fee
Is it really possible – even in a nation whose congresspeople believe that laying off people creates jobs and whose wealthy believe that helping to pay to run the country that made them rich is unpatriotic – that some people still believed there is such as thing as free banking? Apparently, judging from the hoohah […]
Posted inOpinion
Boomerangers
The Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce is talking industrial parks as the way to make Greater Springfield – which I prefer to think of as Bigger Springfield – a Great Place to Do Business. Springfield’s economic development plans aim to import companies or expand one already in the city. Alas, attracting a successful firm is […]
Posted inOpinion
Wise guys
Life is full of mysteries. Why would a beneficent god allow humans to invent ceramic cooktops? Why didn’t the Pyschedelic Furs sell more records? The public’s confusion is rich soil for the opinion-monger, which is why I have been able to make a living for 35 years telling other people what they ought to think. […]
Posted inOpinion
The college game
I know only two lawyer jokes. One is Rod Blagojevich. The other one is this: In a nation that already has more lawyers per capita than any other nation on earth, U.S. law schools are churning out many more lawyers than the economy needs. A consulting company that specializes in such things recently compared the […]
Posted inOpinion
Two schools for the price of one
On Sept. 11, the District 186 board announced that it would cancel classes forever at Enos Elementary School. The board approved plans to demolish the aging building on the north side and replace it with a new building on the site. As was reported by our Rachel Wells (“Plan to preserve Enos Elementary,” Jan. 6, […]
Posted inOpinion
Temples in ruins
I left one question unanswered when I wrote recently that the Horace Mann Educators Corp. building in downtown Springfield was one of four in the capital city designed by a world-famous architecture firm. (“Architectural dreams,” Aug. 4, 2011.) Why did a growing but still small insurance company in a not-growing and small Midwestern city hire […]
