Author Archive for Bill Knight

If it’s a tag-team match between Hitler, Stalin and the Boogeyman on one side, and Santa, Jesus and Bernie Sanders on the other, I stand with the latter trio. “Ho! Ho! Huh?” you say? The connection is socialism. I don’t…

Peoria hospital ventures can be for-profit

Taxpayers who feel they already underwrite hotels, retailers or private development through publicly funded incentives or financing may lump in hospitals as businesses at the trough. Although hospitals are appreciated and respected institutions that provide communities with health care and…

Kindred heals, discharges patients

Hospitals soothe pain and save lives, which is advertised by Peoria’s well-known medical centers. A less familiar facility is Kindred Hospital on Romeo B. Garrett Avenue, the community’s only for-profit hospital, which some may mistakenly think is where seriously ill…

Is Illinois torturing its inmates?

Imagine sitting in your bathroom. Now imagine staying there. For more than a year. That’s how long some 30 percent of Illinois inmates are in solitary confinement, concedes the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). Another 10 percent suffers such isolation…

More questions than answers

Power brokers or power vacuum? BY BILL KNIGHT The increasing vibrancy of the Warehouse District is seen when crowds hear the Peoria Municipal Band play on Water Street, and the livelier downtown is showcased in Caterpillar’s Visitors Center or the…

Talking about drugs’ side effects, the late comic Robin Williams said, “There’s a product called Olestra, which is a very strange thing. ‘Olestra? What is that?’ It’s said on the little side of the chips: ‘May cause anal leakage.’ That’s…