guestcommentary
Reeder: Lazy legislators can’t bother to vote themselves
For the life of me, I’ll never understand why Illinois lawmakers are too lazy to push their own voting buttons. After all, that’s what we pay them to do — vote on our behalf. In 1988, when I first covered the General Assembly, a lawmaker …
McGrath: Small but crucial moments in a father’s journey
I never saw much advantage in being a father. My old man had to work every day, even in the summer. And he spent much of his measly two weeks’ vacation yelling at me and my five brothers to clean our rooms and stop teasing …
Reeder: Time to stop paying for cable TV for Illinois inmates
Every time I visit a state prison in Illinois for a story, I’m filled with wonderment at what I see. It’s not the starkness of the steel bars, concrete walls and barbed wire or the men and women locked in their cells that catch my …
Reeder: Mike Madigan and his marionettes
Twenty-five years ago, I covered my first session of the Illinois General Assembly. During the waning days of that session, the words most often heard were, “What will Mike Madigan do?” Back then, Democrat Phil Rock presided over the Senate as its president, and Big …
McGrath: The cost of walking up the down staircase
It happens mostly to young teachers. Maybe more often to English teachers, whose classes are forums for a variety of communication. Say a student confides in an essay or an anonymous poem that he is attracted to his teacher. Or infatuated. Or in love. How …
Reeder: Little voice for common man in Springfield
Shortly before World War II, the famous artist Norman Rockwell painted an image depicting a working man standing to speak at a government meeting. Surrounded by men in suits, he stood there in a flannel shirt and a laborer’s jacket with an agenda stuck in …
Handy: Education funding reform essential in Illinois
A September 2012 study by the Center for American Progress reaffirmed what we had known for decades — tremendous funding inequity exists between high- and low-poverty school districts in Illinois. We have the second-most inequitable education funding system of any state, largely because of public …
Shapiro: Main arguments against gun control lack logic
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. In 2008, a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court held that this …
Reeder: State government policies stymie jobs rebound
Illinois has the second-worst unemployment rate of any state. At 9.5 percent, it’s two percentage points higher than the national average of 7.5 percent. Two percentage points might not seem like much on paper, but that equates to 130,000 people. That’s more than the entire …
BGA: Iron fists needed to hold public funds
Rita Crundwell’s betrayal of the public trust was staggering. For years she served as Dixon’s comptroller. And for years, because she had almost sole control over town finances, she stole taxpayer money without detection. In fact, nobody noticed until, on one of her vacations, a …
McGrath: Mother’s Day (of reckoning) coming for senators
“This is just a new way of living,” Stephanie Decker told an ABC News reporter. “If the worst thing that ever happened is me losing my legs, I’m good.” The Marysville, Ind., mother traded her limbs for the lives of her two children. And if …
Reeder: He’s critical of Illinois because he loves it here
Every once in a while someone will ask, “Scott, why are you so critical of Illinois?” My response is simple — Because I love it here. This is the state where I was born and where I was raised. During my adult life, I’ve lived …
Varjavand: Immigrants should respect customs, culture of their new country
Why do we Muslims demand that Americans accommodate, even embrace, every odd thing we do under the umbrella of religion? We seem to have a predisposition to be obsessed with our religious rites so they have an almost pathological influence over us and others. Some …
Caterina and Gonzalez: Resetting underwater mortgages
Business groups with an ax to grind against the Obama administration, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, like to push the idea that “uncertainty” over government actions is the monkey on the economy’s back. As small-business owners …
Reeder: A guarantee that Illinois should not provide
Mix pension financing, constitutional law and politics and you’ll either have a recipe to cure insomnia — or the most important but under-discussed issue facing Illinois today. Illinois lawmakers are on the brink of making a mistake that could lock taxpayers in for hundreds of …
McGrath: Alleged Boston Marathon bomber: Jekyll and Hyde
It is not unreasonable to speculate that the three public defenders representing alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev might end up filing a plea of not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Evidence that might support their claim is documented in his birth certificate. Not …
