The other day the Springfield School District 186 board took a break from discussions about finding a new superintendent – which it is not in a hurry to do – and heard a few things about something they ought to be in a hurry to do. Capital Area Career Center director Bob Klingborg informed the […]
Illinois – James Krohe Jr
Posted inOpinion
Dancing around the issue
“It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.” – King Kong The Motor City finally ran out of gas. The recent bankruptcy of Detroit’s municipal government has been explained and re-explained. It was a single-industry city, the equivalent of the mining camp, that failed to diversify its economy. It was badly run, meaning […]
Posted inOpinion
Throwing in the towel
It’s mid-summer, but the thoughts of every red-blooded Illinoisan are already turned to autumn. The fields resound with the satisfying crunch of pads against pads, helmet against helmet, brain against skull as college football squads go through their two-a-days. College football, like basketball, is a tribal thing, and I’m not of that tribe. It isn’t […]
Posted inOpinion
Hoping for a humdinger
In May, George Ryan’s son revealed that his father, late of the Executive Mansion and the federal pen, was writing his memoirs. Ryan fils promised it would be a “humdinger,” a “no holds barred book” that will “tell it like it is.” We can only hope. It can’t be easy for a politician to plainly […]
Posted inOpinion
Manufacturing mediocrity
In July the National Council on Teacher Quality, a D.C.-based reform group, issued a study that concluded that the nation’s teacher-education colleges have turned into an “industry of mediocrity.” Oh, the Council thought well enough of most the central Illinois’ colleges of education, specifically those at Eastern, U of I’s Champaign campus, Southern’s two campuses […]
Posted inOpinion
Taxing work
In 2011, the General Assembly, kicking and screaming, did what was good for it and ate its spinach. Members raised the rate at which the State of Illinois taxes the income of its citizens, thus forestalling a revenue crisis. That tasted so bad that they could not swallow it; the rate will have to be […]
Posted inOpinion
Qestions about Jefferson Crossing
The slogan of the Qik-n-EZ gas station chain is, “The two things you cherish most in your life, make it QIK and make it EZ!” The company’s owners have found that redeveloping the old Jefferson Mall property is neither qik nor easy. That property is part of a 44-acre parcel on Winch Lane just off […]
Posted inOpinion
The cantaloupe and I
The French are happy to explain, whether you want to know or not, about terroir, the peculiarities of geography, geology and climate of a certain place that impart to plants such as wine grapes their particular character. The way we spell “terroir” in the Illinois River melon country is s-a-n-d. You can’t grow anything worth […]
Posted inOpinion
Temple of the Law
The words audi alternam partum – roughly, “hear the other side” – are inscribed on the wall of the Illinois Supreme Court chambers in Springfield. As a maxim to guide the administration of a state court system, it doesn’t rank with “liberty and justice for all,” but in Illinois, you don’t want to aim too […]
Posted inOpinion
Certain-kind-of-family guy
When I want to learn what a politician thinks, I read what she writes. When I need only to learn what a politician says he thinks, I listen to him speak. Here’s why. Republican governor wanna-be Kirk Dillard ventured an opinion to a radio reporter last week about what kind of people ought to inhabit […]
Posted inOpinion
In defense of the politician
For years now, Illinoisans dismayed by their elected officials’ failure to clean up the messes they made on the voters’ behalf could console themselves with the thought, “Well, it could be worse.” And it was, in California. Its state government confirms the truth of the old saying that California is just like the rest of […]
Posted inOpinion
Watching out for fools
Oklahoma’s governor said what they always say. “We will rebuild.” Sigh. Again? There? That way? Really? Tornadoes, we have all been reminded yet again, are nature’s most violent storms. (Not the most destructive; earthquakes and hurricanes, which affect vastly more area, wreak the widest devastation.) The Moore twister was one of the worst of the […]
