Summit addresses predatory lending
Dawn Dannenbring, a staff organizer with the Central Illinois Organizing Project, a faith-based community organization that promotes social justice issues, has watched as the number of home foreclosures in the United States has surged from 8,000 per day to 12,000 per day since April. “It’s exploding right before our very eyes,” she says. Central Illinois…
Memorial temporarily halts kidney transplant program
Dialysis patients on the waiting list for a kidney transplant at Memorial Medical Center received bad news last week: The hospital will suspend its transplant program for at least three to four months, effective Oct. 1. In a letter dated Sept. 19, Rebecca Anderson, the director of transplant and bariatric surgery services at Memorial, notified…
The pros and cons of Con-Con
Bob Gray, president of the Citizens Club, steps to the podium in a third-floor room of the Hoogland Center for the Arts. In 1970, he reminds the members, legislators drafted a new state constitution. They included a provision that every 20 years (counting from when the idea took hold in 1968) voters could call for…
Kid Schock
In a flawless Saturday in Beardstown, Aaron Schock sprints to catch up with his parade float after falling behind to shake hands, slap five with little boys, pose for photographs, and hand out frozen miniature Snickers bars. Volunteers are decked out in crisp yellow-and-sky-blue T-shirts. The candidate himself sports a fresh periwinkle polo tucked neatly…
Plane talk
In the days since the first debate in which Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., discussed foreign policy, the economy, taxes, and earmarks, Illinois’ senior senator, Dick Durbin, has announced millions of dollars in federal funding for state projects. Durbin, the assistant majority leader in the Senate, secured $257 million from the departments…
Wall Street’s bailout wizard
There was a little news item recently about a man in Sheboygan, Wis., who was sentenced to six years in prison for robbing $20 from a child’s piggy bank. Think how much better things would have gone for him if only his name had been Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns or any of the other flamboyant…
