We welcome letters. Please include your full name, address and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to editor@illinoistimes.com. NOT JUSTICE I rent space from Chelsey Farley at her small business, The Soul Shoppe. I stayed to keep the shop open for her on Jan. 30 so she wouldn’t lose business while she attended […]
Opinion
Posted inRich Miller
Put new spending ideas on hold
Gov. JB Pritzker announced a plan last week to “manage Illinois pension commitments through a set of proposals designed to build on the state’s recent fiscal progress and further reduce long-term risk for taxpayers and retirees.” The price tag, however, is already giving one legislative leader pause. And “fiscal progress” is not the reality when […]
Posted inLetters to the Editor
Letters to the editor
VOTE YES In March, Sangamon County voters will decide whether to create a county mental health board funded by a small, dedicated sales tax (“Creation of mental health board will be up to voters,” Jan. 29). As a pediatrician and president of the Sangamon County Medical Society, I strongly support voting yes. Mental health needs […]
Posted inJames Krohe Jr.
America’s Parkopolis
The Scots poet Robert Burns famously said (I’m using the version in English) “Oh, would some power gift us / To see ourselves as others see us!” For me, that power turned out to be YouTube. I am a latecomer to the video blog posts of transportation planning and engineering consultant Ray Delahanty, known professionally as […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editor’s Note
“A Forum on the City Garbage Ordinance,” the title of a recent Springfield public meeting, sounded like a recipe for complaints about disastrous public policy. Everybody knows, don’t we, that the city’s trash collection system, using multiple private haulers, leaves many households without regular pickups, an invitation for fly-dumping? Not so, says the Independent Coalition […]
Posted inOpinion
New wisdom for a dangerous world
“We live in a world – the real world, Jake – that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” – Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, to journalist Jake Tapper […]
Posted inRich Miller
Senate candidates debate
The top three Democratic U.S. Senate candidates faced off twice last week. The first debate wasn’t televised, so the live audience was quite small. The second debate was televised, so the audience was bigger. However, these debates don’t attract even a smidgeon of the audience of presidential debates, when half the country often tunes in. […]
Posted inLetters to the Editor
Letters to the editor 1/29/26
We welcome letters. Please include your full name, address and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to editor@illinoistimes.com. THANKS FOR ELECTRIC RELIEF When people talk about high electricity bills, families and individuals are the first who come to mind. But businesses are heavily impacted by electricity prices, especially small business owners who have […]
Posted inRich Miller
Bears’ Indiana gambit changes tone of legislators
Illinois House Democrats were told last week that a state capital projects plan designed to assist Arlington Height’s bid to lure the Chicago Bears away from their Indiana stadium gambit would cost up to $895 million. None of the money would be used to directly build the new Bears stadium or the surrounding commercial district […]
Posted inLetters to the Editor
Letters to the editor
YES TO LOGAN COUNTY DATA CENTER As a proud Logan County resident, I support our county moving forward with the proposed data center project near Latham (“Data center opposition,” Jan. 7). Logan County has always been built on hard work, progress and providing for the next generation. This project brings over 100 long-term local jobs, […]
Posted inJames Krohe Jr.
Dumb. Outmoded. Unusable.
When people who live in the rest of Illinois complain about being fleeced by the sharpers in Springfield, they usually refer to state legislators, but the locals used to be pretty good at it too. Drop by the Levee district a century ago and you were likely to leave a poorer but wiser man, having […]
Posted inEditor's Note
Editor’s Note
Ryan P. Burge was pastor of an American Baptist church in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, for 17 years before his church closed for good in 2024. Since then he has become an influential political scientist, teaching at Washington University, while writing books about what happened to his church and many others like it. He’s been on […]
