Articles

Due to an error, the West Peoria News column was inadvertently duplicated under Heights News by Roger Larson in the October issue. Please go to our online edition at www.thecommunityword.com or go directly to https://thecommunityword.com/blog/2015/09/30/heights-news/ to read the October Heights…

Organic farmers sustain huge losses From GMO contamination

DANFORTH, ILL. – On a warm September day on the cusp of harvest season, about 70 farmers from throughout the Midwest drove to a cavernous metal equipment barn on Harold Wilken’s organic grain farm in Iroquois County. They came to…

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…

Teplitz confirmed as ambassador to Nepal

Alaina Teplitz, a career Foreign Service officer and daughter of long-time Peoria residents Marcella and Jack Teplitz, is the new U.S. ambassador to Nepal. Teplitz has served at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, and had previous postings in Bangladesh,…

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…

THE END OF THE LINE!

Interim Illinois Central College president Dr. William Tammone has announced the termination of the school’s contract with Jeremy Styninger who owns the license for radio station WAZU-FM. That means all programming originating from ICC will end Wednesday, Sept. 30. And…

Fraud and corruption behind GMO Food

It’s no surprise that big food, farming and agrichemical corporations want to defeat mandatory labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). What is surprising and depressing is how many Democrats approved a bill in the House of Representatives that…

What happened to America?

  BY LARRY JONES What kind of country do we want to live in? Thank goodness we live in a country with a Bill of Rights, guaranteeing to all freedom from abuses by authorities. Or do we? In New York…

POLARIZING AND PEACE-MAKING

A long time ago I heard this bit of wisdom from my Southern Illinois kinfolk. “It takes 50 strong hands to build a barn and one jackass to kick it down.” Or consider this description of a person as, “Someone…