Second Thoughts

 Back in June of 2015, in “The Razor blade in the apple,” I speculated about the likely effects if passed of Mr. Rauner’s ballyhooed property tax freeze. Among its provisions, the Rauner tax freeze would exempt local governments from the Prevailing Wage Act and allow those governments to limit what is on the table when […]

 In my 2013 column, “Throwing in the towel,” I talked about the several proposals then on the table to treat elite college athletes like the semi-pros they really are. New York‘s Jonathan Chait makes a valuable contribution to the discussion in this recent piece, in which he argues against the notion of marketizing our youthful […]

I touched on only only a fraction of the issues regarding recycling in my recent column on that topic.  The market for recycled materials is down, which is putting private recyclers under financial strain. Cheap oil makes it more profitable to make new plastic than to recycle old. People read less news on paper. China, which […]

 A few further thoughts triggered by my recent column about the hoped-for restoration to health of the Ferguson Building at 6th and Monroe in downtown Springfield: The federal taxpayer significantly subsidizes such projects, since the tax credit earned by rehabbing properties in officially designated historic districts, as this one is, reduces the flow of money […]

 In a recent column I described the razing in 1978 of the Hotel Abraham Lincoln. Readers interested to learn more about this consummate act of stupidity might enjoy this piece I wrote a few weeks before the building’s execution. It was published under the title “Adieu to the Abe,” and appeared in our paper that […]

 For years, sagacious observers have warned that the real threat to prosperity in Illinois is not high taxes or low politics but stagnant population growth. I addressed the issue in a 2014 column titled “Stuck in Illinois . . . “ Emily Badger at the Washington Post gives us the most recent demographic data about […]

 This is week in my print column I dusted off a column from my old Prejudices series that recalls the demolition in 1978 of the Hotel Abraham Lincoln. I was pleased therefore  to learn that a series of still photos depicting that very event will be part of a new exhibition of more than 40 […]

 I’ve put this off until the last minute, as so many of us do when it comes to Christmas errands. There’s still time, however, to share one of my favorite treats — Christopher Hitchens on the humbuggery of the season. These lines appeared originally in The Wall Street Journal of December 24, 2011, and are reprinted […]

This week in my actual column, Dyspepsiana, I recall my time as a tenant in the Ferguson Building at Sixth and Monroe in downtown Springfield. The building is now undergoing redevelopment by new owners Rick and Kim Lawrence, but these worthies already have done the city a service by removing the metal cheese-grater façade that […]

 At the risk of sounding like a killjoy, I pass along this suggestion for your next Thanksgiving dinner  from the late Christopher Hitchens, which appeared in a 2005 piece in the Wall Street Journal  in the new posthumous collection of his occasional pieces (And Yet . . . , Simon & Schuster). Hitchens recalled the […]

Last week, Bruce Rauner signed a letter sent jointly by Republican governors to President Obama asking him “respectfully” to suspend all plans to resettle additional Syrian refugees in the U.S. “Respectfully” — but also confusedly and cowardly. Readers who don’t regularly read Rich Miller’s dispatches at Capitol Fax.com might wish to read his Monday post critiquing […]

Sadly, two weeks after writing a column extolling a senior Illinois Republican for his brave stand on admitting refugees from the horrors of World War II Europe into the U.S., our state is shamed by a senior Illinois Republican who has surrendered to fear and xenophobia. I pass with applause this comment by the editors at […]