Betsy DeVos is Donald Trump’s multi-billionaire education secretary who hates the very idea of public education and loves the plutocratic idea of corporate rule over democracy. DeVos presently holds first place in the contest for worst member of Donald Trump’s cabinet. Her claim to be first among the worst has been buttressed by her bizarre […]
Editor’s Note
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s Note 04/05/18
Sometimes our mail seems too important to pitch, so we feel compelled to pass it along to our readers. This photo arrived in an envelope with the return address, “Bruce R., Natural Resources Way, Springfield 62702,” and included the following note: “Here’s an actual photo of me after a hard day workin’ on the family […]
Posted inOpinion
Thieves in the suites
Today’s captains of corporate capitalism like to think of themselves not as mere businesspeople, but as modern society’s genius “innovators.” Sounds positive … until you ask the key question: Innovation for what purpose? After all, some of society’s most inventive minds are flimflammers, Ponzi-schemers, gamers and embezzlers. The latest of these is a hustle called […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 3/29/18
It’s hard for me to even find time to worry about Stormy Daniels with all the protest I’m getting from the puzzle people. What a determined group they are, pulling out all the stops in an effort to reverse our decision to put the puzzle online only starting in April in order to save on […]
Posted inOpinion
Everybody does better when everybody does better
My father, W.F. “High” Hightower, was a populist. Only, he didn’t know it – didn’t know the word, much less the history or anything about populism’s rich democratic ethos. But he knew about bankers who regularly squeezed small-business families like ours with usurious interest rates. He knew how rough it was for a local business […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s Note 3/22/18
Gov. Bruce Rauner says he’s “humbled” by his near loss to Rep. Jeanne Ives in the Republican primary, and that now he hears Illinois. But it’s not clear what he hears. Does he hear that Illinois did not appreciate the two-year budget shutdown and has no stomach for his war against public employee unions and […]
Posted inOpinion
The Dow Jones industrial average
The most common measurement that the media, politicians and corporations use to tell us whether our economy is zooming or sputtering is Wall Street’s index of stock prices. The media literally spews out some number every hour indicating that the Dow Jones industrial average of stock prices is up, down or sluggish.But wait – nearly […]
Posted inOpinion
The zeitgeist, it is a-changing
Last year’s grassroots progressive runs for office laid to rest much of the Democratic Party’s orthodoxy about who is “electable” and how it’s essential that candidates – in hopes of attracting moderate “swing” voters – run big-money campaigns on small-bore, middle-of-the-road issues. For example, meet these eight big-issue/low-dollar candidates who rejected party orthodox and won: […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s Note
Two events in Springfield this week recalled more hopeful times in U.S. politics and government. In the play All the Way at the Hoogland Center for the Arts – there’s still time to see it and you should – remarkable performances by Rich McCoy as LBJ, Tony Young as Martin Luther King Jr. and a […]
Posted inOpinion
What will the Trump mob kill next?
From the start of his White House tenure, the Trumpsters have plotted, stalked and serially killed vibrant members of the English language. The word “fact” was the first to go. Robust and universally respected, fact was assassinated last year when one of Trump’s hired killers poisoned it with an unknown substance nicknamed: “alternative facts.” Their […]
Posted inOpinion
Editor’s note 3/1/18
Big policy changes can happen fast. Politics and economics can move quickly. That’s one lesson I got from Dr. Jerry Kruse, dean of the SIU School of Medicine, when I interviewed him on health care reform for my column on this page. The nation’s response to sexual harassment is changing swiftly. High schoolers are leading […]
Posted inOpinion
The South is rising again
A fresh “Reclaim the South” movement of young African-American populists is emerging, kindling long-suppressed hope in the racially scarred Deep South and offering the possibility of real economic and cultural progress. Guess who’s mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, the state’s capital city? Chokwe Antar Lumumba – a black, 34-year-old lawyer who was raised in Jackson in […]
