Letters to the Editor

DRAIN THE SWAMPThank you for the article on Sam McCann (“Disrupter for governor,” by David Blanchette, Illinois Times, May 17). I am a staunch Republican, and my friend Kevin is a staunch Democrat. What do a staunch Republican and a staunch Democrat have in common? We are both voting for Sam McCann. Drain the Illinois […]

SPORTS GAMBLING The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibits sports gambling. I strongly disagree with the high court’s decision based in a states’ rights argument. I too believe in states’ rights, but this is not the issue in this case. The real matter at hand is whether the American people have […]

KEEP AMTRAK STAFFED When properly staffed, Amtrak train stations provide a vital transportation link for many communities with limited transportation alternatives. However, Amtrak has recently begun eliminating customer service representative (ticket agent) jobs at many stops across the country. While Amtrak trains will continue to stop at these stations, passengers will lose access to: • […]

FLOODS AND FARMSUnless you enjoy watching your home flood and losing everything you own from water funneled by levees upstream, it is difficult to understand how levee subsidies benefit you. Rivers have a natural flood plain adjoining them, but although farmers are subsidized to set aside acres, they insist on building levees, most of them […]

TOXIC CAFO EMISSIONS Both the U.S. House and Senate are responsible for a dangerous provision that was inserted into the omnibus appropriations spending bill signed by President Trump. On page 2,203 of this enormous bill is a favor granted to factory farming industry advocates who have been urging legislation in both the House and Senate […]

IMMIGRATION EDUCATIONI’ve known Rosanna Pulido (“The anti-welcome lady,” Fletcher Farrar, April 5) since her entry into the struggle to restore sanity to our immigration policy, and I think it is grossly unfair to say that she considers immigrants and refugees to be “illegal aliens.” I have never heard her even come close to making such […]

FAKE MORELS Thanks to the several sharp-eyed readers who called in and told us those are “not morels” in the photo we used to illustrate Ashley Meyer’s food column last week on “Morel mushrooms.” Turns out that what our photo service offered when we did a search for morels is a photo of one of […]

FAIR ELECTION ACTFrom questions surrounding the NRA’s use of foreign funds for election purposes to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency’s $50-per-night rental agreement for a Washington, D.C., townhouse that is owned by the wife of a prominent energy lobbyist, it seems that stories about money and politics are dominating our headlines. Yet our […]

CUBA IS COOL Bruce Rushton’s comments about Cuba (“Paradise and the Y Block,” Illinois Times, March 22) could not be further from the truth. I just visited Cuba in January. Every car had windshield wipers with no one there to protect them. The restaurants have wonderful food. Their economy is tough, but they survive well. […]

WAY TO GOIt seems to me that Illinois Times deserves some public acknowledgement of your recent media sponsorship of All The Way, as well as for Scott Faingold’s excellent March 2 article on All The Way, which was recently performed at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. The vitality of Springfield’s live theater community is […]

PLEASE PRINT PUZZLESI wish to peacefully protest (on paper) the proposed banishment of puzzles from the back page of your weekly edition. Working crosswords on a screen is not something I would choose to do even if I had a computer at home, which I don’t. Like a good, fair and open-minded citizen, I read […]

PREYING ON PAIN I just finished reading “The Pill Pipeline” (Bruce Rushton, Illinois Times, March 1). One piece of information that jumped out at me was that last year McKesson Corp. paid a $150 million fine for not reporting suspicious opioid activity. That sounded very punitive and draconian until I read on that they had […]