Some extremely rich fellows who’ve been hiding behind the tree to avoid taxation for years are the global financial speculators engaged in the high-rolling, computer-driven, fast-buck, multi-trillion dollar casino gambles that now define Wall Street. Unbeknownst to most people, the dominant investment banks today have been converted into casinos. Rather than amalgamating capital to finance […]
Editor’s Note
Posted inOpinion
Goons in Gucci
In the fierce labor wars of the last century, industrial barons employed Pinkertons and other goons to bloody the heads of laborers or simply gun down those struggling for a share of economic and political power. It was brutal, but organized workers persevered and eventually gained a share of economic and political power. Today the […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s Note 05/31/18
One good thing about the political divide in Springfield is that it keeps a lot of bad things from happening, bad things like casino gambling expansion. The proposal died in committee in the closing days of the General Assembly, but not before local officials got to think about having a casino in Springfield, proposed by […]
Posted inOpinion
Trump’s new war
Get ready, America – here we go … to war! This kind of war is an affront to the values that most of us hold dear, and this war is truly nasty and evil: A war on the poor. Generalissimo Trump is personally directing the hostilities in this assault on – surprise – the U.S. […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 5/17/18
In Hamilton, the musical, at one point the lead character knows trouble is coming. “In the eye of a hurricane,” he sings, “There is quiet/ For just a moment/A yellow sky.” In this week’s cover story, Sen. Sam McCann is using the calm before the storm to gather petition signatures. If he gets enough by […]
Posted inOpinion
Patience, secrecy in the Kochs’ conspiracy
In 1933, a handful of wealthy Wall Streeters were upset that the newly elected president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had dared to tax the rich in order to fund programs to lessen the painful poverty people were experiencing due to the Clutch Plague. They were so upset that they came up with a ridiculous plan to […]
Posted inOpinion
A plutocratic coup
Many Americans are reluctant to accept that coup conspiracies are part of our country’s history. We tend to believe that plots to overthrow the government are totally foreign to our national character. But we do do coups. In fact, the country itself was founded on an armed coup to replace the legal ruler, King George […]
Posted inOpinion
Examining the Kochtopus
Multibillionaires Charles and David Koch want nothing less than to supplant America’s core democratic principle of majority rule with their core plutocratic principle of inviolable property rights, also known as domination by the wealthy minority. From their early involvement in The John Birch Society, they continued their rightward march, and by the 1970s, both had […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 4/26/18
Speaking in Springfield Saturday at the annual Illinois Innocence Project dinner will be attorney Jerry Buting, of the 2015 Netflix documentary “Making a Murderer” and author of Illusion of Justice, who speaks to the workings of an often flawed justice system, as seen from his view as co-counsel in the sensational Steven Avery. Meanwhile Avery, Buting’s […]
Posted inOpinion
Learning from DeMarco
I apologize for turning inward for a personal commentary today, but Susan DeMarco is an admirable example of the virtue of citizen activism. She didn’t dwell in the media limelight, yet she’s one of our country’s everyday people who consistently works to make a positive difference in all they do, accomplishing so much more good […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s Note 04/19/18
Seldom is heard a discouraging word about Abraham Lincoln, around here at least, but Bloomington author and lawyer Guy Fraker, who has written two books on Lincoln’s circuit-riding days, told the Sangamon County Historical Society April 17 that the more he’s gotten to know the great man, the less he likes him. Lincoln’s ambition is […]
Posted inOpinion
A regime of austerity
Sometimes, it’s useful to state the obvious. Here’s a fact, for example, that we all know to be true: America’s economy is enormous. It’s worth saying that out loud and repeating it to ourselves and others, because today’s Powers That Be (economic, political and media) are wrongly forcing a regime of austerity on our nation. […]
