Author Archive

The heavy hands of out-of-state attorneys and a dominating national headquarters seem to be getting in the way of a settlement in the long-delayed unionization of Peoria’s Heart of America Red Cross Blood Services division. Local Red Cross administrators and civic leaders should reassert control of Peoria operations, negotiate a win-win package, and once...
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Greater Peoria is a medical Mecca, and it also has a significant presence of insurance companies, so one wonders whether there’ll come a time when central Illinois will be Ground Zero for a battle between health providers and health insurers. Patients already seem like financial collateral damage in an archaic health-care system that puts profits...
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One consequence of conservatives’ insatiable hunger to starve government could jeopardize people’s health by letting drinking water become contaminated and go unreported, according to a report from the non-partisan Government Accounting Office (GAO). For now, people can still track local water safety, however incomplete the data, and records show...
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Patience is a virtue, it’s said, and that might be especially true when reform is sought. If progress seems slow, impatience can lead to frustration and worse.Patience is particularly important when conventional wisdom, stereotypes, etc. become obstacles to change. For Peoria-area progressives – who are meeting at 6:30 p.m....
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I’m going to watch a lot of WEEK-TV 25 in the next few weeks. I’m going to watch to see which companies advertise there, because I won’t patronize companies who, with their commercials, enrich a New York corporation that devalues local journalists and disrespects its viewing audience: us. After I...
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I’ve had friends and family who worked at metro Peoria’s Par-A-Dice casino, so I appreciate that it provides jobs and revenue to government, but the legislature’s debate about changing the smoking ban to exclusively benefit gaming interests either oversimplifies or deliberately obscures the issue. A bill to allow smoking in...
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In mid-April the Peoria Journal Star ran a story about a Tea Party rally that, from the looks of the crowd pictured, barely had more people than the journalists covering it. That’s OK, but there had been mostly silence about a series of labor rallies of more than 600 people at the County Courthouse. The...
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As Major League Baseball resumes a few days early this season, a few familiar and obscure comments about the National Pastime might be a nice warm-up on a chilly Spring – and a respite from controversies. From ex-ballplayers Jim Bouton and Bob Uecker to scholar/executive Bart Giamatti and historian Jacques Barzun to Abbott &...
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The economy isn’t an abstract and government shouldn’t “operate as a business.”Economic woes affect employers and workers, consumers and kids, retirees and almost everyone in a community, a nation – now, a world. And government doesn’t exist to mimic corporations or those who profit from the Great Recession. Government...
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A cinder-block truck stop on the south side of Interstate 74 at Pittsboro, Ind., used to serve outstanding biscuits and gravy, and I made a point of stopping there every time I drove through our neighboring state – where I have friends living and working. I’ve long had a fondness...
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