Readers with long memories might recall my rant in 2010 about voter ignorance. (“The new Know Nothings,” Nov. 18, 2010.) Apparently the public has not taken my criticism to heart. After years during which Republican Party candidates and Fox News repeatedly, even obsessively talked about little else, after the more recent (and well-reported) wrangles […]
Second Thoughts
Posted inOpinion
Mostly educated
A while back, in “Teaching idiots,” I ventured the view that it has never been easier than it is today to give oneself an education. I did not however settle the question of whether is might be wise to do so. The self-taught tend to have patchy educations. This can be bad, it can be […]
Posted inOpinion
Teaching requirements
James Krohe Jr. Remember the news, announced by District 186 in March, that 68 of Springfield’s 1,329 public school teachers did not have the required paperwork in their personnel files showing them to be fit for the classroom? This except from A New Guide for Emigrants to the West, written by the American Baptist missionary […]
Posted inOpinion
Iffy prognosis
In “Midlevel Health Jobs Shrink,” Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Casselman analyzes a trend I noted back in 2011. In “Living too high off the hog” (March 3, 2011) I warned that while Springfield’s booming health care economy was sound enough over the short term, its longer-term prognosis is not so positive. The boom relies […]
Posted inOpinion
Superfast road to the future
James Krohe Jr. In “Unplugged” (March 28, 2013) I wondered aloud about why Illinois’ internet service is so backward. Certainly one of the factors is the near-monopoly of such service enjoyed by the big telecommunications firms. It’s an interesting topic about which more might be said. Is the solution more competition to bring down prices […]
Posted inOpinion
The way they weren’t
In noting the recent death of Rich Shereikis, I neglected to note what was perhaps his best work as a critic. In his review of Alan Ehrenhalt’s The Lost City, Rich exposed the nostalgia that so often masquerades as retrospective sociology. That book espoused what the author called “Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago […]
Posted inOpinion
Faulty deductions
It’s tax time, and the hunt for deductions is on. Back in 2009, I griped about the folly of the federal tax subsidy to home owners in my column, “Just extra money.” The deduction for home mortgage interest favors families spending more money on more house, because the more they pay in interest, the more […]
Posted inOpinion
Pedestrian design
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that a company that runs stores called Country Markets built a new one in the middle of Springfield that sits on the street like a roadside vegetable stand. In March, Steve Patterson, a St. Louis architect who blogged about the project at UrbanDesignSTL, criticized the indifference the new store […]
Posted inOpinion
A nurse by any other name
I recently made a case (“Nurse, Nurse!”) for the liberalization of the State of Illinois rules that restrict what nurse practitioners can do. A lot of people don’t know exactly what a nurse practitioner is, thanks to the unfortunate title he or she bears. A nurse practitioner by any other name would be better described. […]
