I am a healthy person (knock on wood!), but the U.S. healthcare system is not working for me, or for most of us in the 99 percent. Let me give you a brief example. In August of 2018, after spending…
Author Archive for contributor
Letter to the Editor | The CAFO loophole
by contributor • • 1 Comment
A CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) is threatening the entire town of Princeville, and politicians are helpless to stop it. That’s because of a sneaky loophole in the law. Nearby county boards have recently approved resolutions opposing proposed CAFOs in…
Letter to the Editor | A constitutional republic: Tyranny of an entitled minority
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Is the U.S. the “greatest democracy in the world” as is often claimed? As any conservative will correctly remind you, the founders were wary of too much democracy and established the country not as a democracy but as a constitutional…
Letter to the Editor | Peoria Public Radio: What Will Happen?
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Will Bradley University’s vital NPR radio station, WCBU-FM, survive as it is, or is it ultimately doomed to morph into a second WGLT or worse? That’s the question, but there are no clear answers yet. WCBU, branded as Peoria Public…
Op-Ed | Good community journalism scrutinizes American slavery and its evolution to today
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BY DECKLE McLEAN Behind every great fortune lies a great crime, French early 19th century novelist Honore de Balzac advised. Less flamboyantly phrased, Balzac’s message was that some fortunes start with a crime or two. If America’s wealth can be…
Reflections From The Clergy | Race, Mutuality and the Vision of God
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In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote these words: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” They are from his now-famous Letter from a…
Labor Roundup | February 2019
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Both the number and the rate of job injuries that killed workers declined by 1 percent in 2017, compared to the year before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Some 5,147 workers died that year, a BLS survey calculated, or…
Letter to the Editor | Stop excessive taxation!
by contributor • • 1 Comment
It seems like the Peoria city leaders are always coming up with new ways to hit us with more and more taxes. First came the sewer tax, then the landlord tax plus another additional tax on every apartment in Peoria.…
Op-Ed | Great disappointment in lack of disclosure regarding Bradley’s decision about WCBU
by contributor • • 5 Comments
BY SHERYL COHEN AND MARY BETH NEBEL The latest information regarding the fate of Peoria Public Radio is that the station will cease to operate on Bradley University’s campus and will be “moved” to WGLT in Bloomington. When WCBU’s facilities…
Op-Ed | Eat for your health and the health of the climate
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BY HENRY BROCKMAN We live in difficult times. We are hit with a daily drumbeat of near-apocalyptic news: climate change, natural disasters, migrants fleeing violence and poverty, a dysfunctional government at home . . . the list of things to…