Correction
The Auburn sewage treatment plant exceeded the EPA’s limit on suspended solids by 229 percent in October 2001–not September 2001, as stated in Karen Fitzgerald’s May 22 article on Lake Springfield and the leptospirosis outbreak of 1998, “Troubled Waters.”
Still working for your trust
and respect
Dear Editor,
Your sympathetic piece on Marc Sanson and the now-forlorn Heartland Peace Center [“Still the Space,” May 15] achieves triple failure: disservice to truth, disservice to journalism, and disservice to the community the paper should serve.
It’s been a year and a half since Sanson and his crew ousted me, took control of Heartland, and moved it from Wabash Avenue to College Street. They have just about destroyed the organization that Illinois Times readers voted the “Best of Springfield” in several categories during years past.
It toys with truth to print Sanson’s plea for help paying the rent while ignoring the news. Of course support ebbs when this Peace Center offers no peace leadership in questioning a war, especially one with Iraq, the very issue which caused Heartland’s creation in 1990. Of course some donors turn doubtful when a not-for-profit is led by the head of a political party, as Sanson is for the Greens. The Peace Center’s published phone number is dead. Its website hawks Warner Brothers and Looney Tune products. Personally, I meet each day broken-hearted over what happened to my beloved Heartland, and I am hardly alone.
As for journalism, putting the label “News” on anything Ted Keylon writes
about what goes on with Heartland and others who occupy the building known as
“the Space” is just plain wrong. He has a very vested interest. Keylon sits
at the inner circle of one of those groups sharing the facility and its financial
upkeep. This is like assigning a fox to report on security down at the henhouse.
This failure is all the sadder as it mars Illinois Times’ significant
attempt to regain the community’s trust and respect as a newspaper.
Sincerely,
Doug Kamholz
former executive director of the Heartland Peace Center
Editor’s note:
Freelance writer Ted Keylon is part of Black Ops,
which hosts a weekly radio program on WQNA and has staged three concerts at
the Space. Keylon holds no title at the Space and has no say regarding its budget
and operations.
The SBC law goes to court
To the editor,
The contest between Illinois consumers and phone giant SBC over the cost of local phone service is now in federal court. Without a daring rescue by a judge, consumers will face higher phone bills and could lose $300 million in savings projected for this year.
As outlined in Rich Miller’s May 15 column [“Chicago’s big appetite”], passage of the law allowing SBC to double the wholesale rates it charges to competitors was a remarkable act of political muscle by the Daley brothers: William, president of SBC, and Richard, mayor of Chicago. Richard’s protégé, Governor Rod Blagojevich, signed the law within two hours of passage, guaranteeing SBC a monopoly over Illinois phone markets well into the future.
Significantly, state senator Dave Sullivan, who chaired a lengthy telecom reform effort in 2001, is introducing legislation to repeal the law. But for now all eyes are on the federal court to stop its implementation.
The nub of SBC’s plea is that it is forced to sell its wholesale services below cost. But careful study by the Illinois Commerce Commission, based on the company’s own data, says otherwise. What’s more, a recent study by the Competitive Telephone Association reports that SBC and the other Bell companies actually make $600 million in annual profits on wholesale sales nationwide.
That is why a range of plaintiffs–including the U.S Army, other federal executive agencies, and the Citizens Utility Board–are joining phone companies like ATT and MCI in court to block wholesale price gouging.
Governor Blagojevich promised a new approach when running for governor, but he seemed to revert to an old Illinois habit in taking the Daley side. He should have adopted the model of Adlai Stevenson instead. As governor, Stevenson had his own pragmatic relation with the Daley brothers’ father, former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. He once said, “Government is an umpire, denying special privilege . . . restraining monopoly and greed . . . making sure the game is played according to the rules. . . . Government has the duty of creating an economic climate in which creative men can take risks and reap rewards, so that our economic life will have a continuous flow of fresh ideas and fresh leadership.”
Stevenson’s approach is the right approach. Illinois citizens must now hope
that the courts pick up the umpire’s mantle, correcting the governor’s error
and, in Stevenson’s words, “restrain monopoly and greed” by SBC.
Hugh Carter Donahue
Editor’s note:
Hugh Carter Donahue, a former associate director
at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, works
as a consultant to telecommunications firms, including AT&T.
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2003.
