Second Thoughts

 A faithful reader alerted me to a fun piece in The Scientist, which describes itself as the magazine for life science professionals. As everyone knows by now, various species of Asian carp have come to infest the state’s waterways, in particular the Illinois River. People have talked about poisons or electric shock to rid the Illinois of these […]

The June 2 issue of New York magazine included a good piece by Will Leitch titled, “Is 2014 the Year Soccer in America (Truly) Goes Mainstream?“ Leitch charts soccer’s surprising rise in popularity among U.S. fans. He (aptly, I think) describes the current national men’s team going the World Cup finals in Brazil as “an […]

From time to time I have noted the baleful effects on the Illinois countryside of factory-style grain production systems that require fewer and fewer farmers. The day is approaching when raising corn or soybeans won’t need farmers at all. From the May 24 Economist, a look at how things are going down on the farm. […]

 In Give and take, I noted that the cost of non-wage benefits can be a brake on business hiring and depress wages, and that in recent years the cost of total compensation for U.S. workers has risen as a share of national income but wages have declined, as employers trim wage outlays to cover rising […]

(Michael Tercha, Chicago Tribune / May 19, 2014) As I noted in Cultural Arts Major, Star Wars creator George Lucas wants to buy some U.S. city a new museum to house his collection of graphics arts of the magazine, book, film and comic book genres. The City of Chicago would love to have it – assuming a site […]

One last thought on Chicago and the George Lucas Cultural Arts Museum. The man Lucas most reminds me of is Tom Monaghan, the former Domino’s pizza magnate. You might recall Monaghan as the man who for a time threatened to corner the market on everything Frank Lloyd Wright. For example, in 1987 it took a […]

 My column deriding George Lucas’ hopes to house his personal collection of Americana in Chicago was probably ungenerous. Maybe it was because I was mistaken for Lucas in shopping center not long ago, and the slur still rankles.   No collection should not be judged by its owner, and I fear I did just that. […]

 Emily Badger, who covers urban policies for the Washington Post’s Wonkblog, flagged for her readers a recent Wall Street Journal article about how once-Republican inner-ring suburbs of our big cities are turning Democratic. The results, she writes, suggest a larger relationship between population density and politics.   In the 2012 election…Dems overwhelmingly have a lock on […]

 In my recent piece about the challenges facing the Sangamon County Citizens Efficiency Commission, I noted that the adoption of township government in the 1850s, which has been intended to enhance local government, today only confuses it. The glut of small, single-purpose government entities in Illinois also was a consequence of a good-government cost-cutting mandate. […]

I have been writing about Springfield local government since the Great Satan in the White House was a Republican. During that time, able and earnest citizens sat down to recommend improvements to everything from local government, water supply and railroad relocation to industrial development, downtown redevelopment and historic preservation. Whatever the experience has taught me […]

Thanks to Jared Bernstein for alerting me – us – to a speech delivered by Larry Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University, Chief Economist at the World Bank, Clinton-era Secretary of the Treasury and, mostly recently the director of the National Economic Council. At a recent conference sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, […]

 In the fall of 2012, I remarked (“They’re b-a-a-a-c-k”) on video evidence that confirmed the presence in a Morgan County woods of an adult cougar. The animal was then only the fourth known to have been sighted in Illinois since the 1870s, according to the state Department of Natural Resources. I went on to say […]