•January 25, 2017•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

President Donald Trump faces a real conundrum in trying to meet the expectations of his white, high school-educated supporters. They want a bigger slice of the economic pie while Trump’s fellow one percenters want to see their taxes cut.

The incoming chief executive cannot satisfy both aspirations in our very slow-growth economy where wealth re-allocation is almost a zero-sum game. That is, to provide more for the low-skilled means taking something away from the wealthy to do it.

I am fascinated by this age-old conflict between labor and capital. That is, who should have how much of our overall wealth, and why?

Since the 1970s, more wealth has been going to the one percenters who control the capital and relatively less to those who catapulted Trump’s campaign to the presidency.

As a result, the 16 percent of us with $100,000 or more in income pay 80 percent of income taxes, according to the Pew Research Center. Read More

•January 18, 2017•

By Jerry L. Ginther
NP Columnist

Most of my class of ’64 would be approaching their seventh decade of life at this time. That is to say that we’ve lived quite a long time and are still participating in the game. We have our eyes and ears open and still learning.

Solomon said that the eyes are never full of seeing and the ears never full of hearing; however, the instruments by which we see and hear things have considerably modified.

Most of the news today is seen in vivid, high definition color on TV. However, there was a time in our lives when some of it didn’t arrive via television and none of it by social media.

Back in our day there was the party line telephone system which we all shared with equal contempt. The contempt we shared was for the lack of privacy and ready accessibility to the phone line when we needed it, not for what we gleaned from our neighbor’s conversations.  Read More

•January 11, 2017•

By Madison Uhlrich
OVHS Shadow Student

When I was a little girl, I loved to flip through National Geographic magazines and look at the photographs. I wanted to take photographs like those, too, photographs that would affect people.

I was very particular with my photography and with my academics. Practicing setting up fake photo-shoots in my backyard increased my interest.

But I knew it would take the best grades in the best classes to get me closer to my eventual career objective, traveling the world taking photographs that tell a bigger story. Read More

•December 28, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

At the risk of tiring readers (so what’s new, they muse) at holiday time, I turn yet again to the Illinois state budget impasse, the most important visible problem facing the state.

I continue flummoxed in efforts to understand the efficacy of the strategy(ies) Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner is employing in his all-out war to force nemesis House Speaker Mike Madigan to knuckle under, so the guv can figuratively plant his booted foot in triumph on the breast plate of a prostrate Madigan.

For two years, Rauner has been holding a state budget solution hostage, as if it were somehow akin to Madigan’s first-born, demanding that Madigan accede to a “turnaround agenda” of popular, business-friendly changes.

That might otherwise make sense, except that Madigan obviously cares more about his political power than about Illinois.

Insiders say Rauner’s real strategy is to play a multi-election “long game” aimed at taking control of the Illinois General Assembly.

That is sure a legitimate political objective, yet not one a budget resolution can await.

I worry that Rauner as well as most lawmakers and certainly the Illinois public all fail to appreciate the staggering magnitude of what will be necessary to straighten out the state’s finances.
Read More

•December 21, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

The state of Illinois has at long last started thinking about a bicentennial celebration for Illinois, admitted as a state December 3, 1818. [Next door, the State of Indiana devoted seven years to planning for its 200th birthday, which Hoosiers have been celebrating this year.]

Gov. Bruce Rauner has appointed sports marketing whiz Stuart Layne (Mariners, Celtics, others) to staff the 40+ worthies the guv recently named to a bicentennial commission.

Given the short time available, Layne needs our help, and we across the 1,200 or so communities of Illinois can sure use his.

The state has less than no money, so Layne hopes to attract corporate sponsorships that will pay for such as major touring historical exhibits, in return for the opportunity to link companies to the people of Illinois.

I am a little uncomfortable allowing, say, Anheuser-Busch to take credit for our state’s greatness. But, hey, this is a brave new world where governments, especially ones that are broke, are often being shorn of what some see as, at best, collateral responsibilities.

I guess we should take help where we can get, and be thankful. Read More