•January 27, 2016•

By Jeri C McFarland
NP Guest Columnist

Facebook, like everything else, has its pros and cons.

For lonely, single people in a small town such as Sullivan, Facebook helps connect you to the entire world.

Fran had had a computer for some time but had not joined a Social Network.  Sooner than later her curiosity and loneliness got the best of her, and Fran posted her profile pic on Facebook and began seeking friends.

First, she only befriended school classmates and neighborhood acquaintances.  Then she began getting friend requests from people she didn’t know and some of them were single men.  Fran had been married for a brief time right out of high school, and no children were born to this union.

There weren’t many single men in her small town so she became more enamored with her Facebook relationships.  Fran had started communicating with two different men who were keeping her more than interested.  One was from Pennsylvania and one, a guy from the Chicago area, was in the military stationed in Nigeria.   Read More

•January 20, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

I have covered much of this ground earlier, yet the dysfunctional state of our state is so dire that I feel compelled to rant yet again, to add my ever-so-faint voice to the chorus calling for action on the stalled state budget.

There is now widespread speculation that the budget impasse won’t be addressed until the November elections are in lawmakers’ rear-view mirrors, more than 18 months after the fiasco began. This is sickening irresponsibility.

The strategy of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner is to hold out support for a tax increase until Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan caves to the governor’s “turn-around agenda.”

The strategy apparently rests on the premise that the speaker needs a budget to provide funding for the poor and dispossessed, who comprise much of Madigan’s political base.

The flaws in this strategy are, first, that every close observer knows Rauner will have to support a tax increase regardless, as there is no other way to balance the state’s budget. So where is the leverage in his threat?

Second, Madigan cares less for the poor than for his power as speaker, so he will wait until the cows come home before knuckling under to the first-term governor.

[Nor does the larger public care much. I chatted recently with Eddie Webster in Connie’s Country Kitchen, just down main street from my home office in Toulon.

[“Jim,” observed Eddie, a good citizen farmer, “I see we haven’t had a state budget since last summer, yet I haven’t seen how it affects me. What’s the big deal?” Read More

Oh Brother...

•January 20, 2016•

By Mike Brothers
NP Managing Editor

I don’t think I will ever get warm again.

So when the first hit of cold weather arrives I start adding layers of clothes until eventually I’m like the little brother in The Christmas Story who has so many clothes on he can’t put his arms down.

Some may call it thin-blooded, but I personally want to blame my inability to deal with cold weather on an Oh Brother incident from my teenage years.

When I started going to the community college near my home town, I gave up my hot rod Chevelle and bought a 1959 Volkswagen from my cousin.

It was quit a shock to go from something that could get you somewhere quicker than necessary to something that may never get you there at all.

This was the fear one cold January night when a group of us were sitting around Fuzzie’s Cue and Grill and decided to take a ride to Golconda on the coldest night of the year.

The genius move was me volunteering to drive. Golconda was a river town, and we had met some kids from college and figured we would find them hanging out. Not the best plan on a cold night. Read More

•January 13, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Whenever talk comes up of compromises necessary to end the lamentable Illinois budget impasse, business-friendly changes in workers’ compensation law are mentioned first.

What is “workers’ comp,” as it is called; why is it important, and should we change it?

A century ago during the Progressive Era, business, workers and insurance companies came together to support laws, soon adopted by all the states, to provide that workers would be compensated on a “no fault” basis for injuries incurred on the job.

Arbitrators employed by each state would determine the severity of each injury and the amount of medical costs and lost wages to be compensated. Employees gave up the right to sue their employer as part of the bargain, and employers were required to buy insurance to cover their claims.

Business benefited by avoiding the possibility of huge jury awards in favor of injured workers. Workers gained from the likelihood of more timely compensation than from a prolonged lawsuit, and insurers wrote more business.

Work is dangerous, some tasks more so than others, so employers engaged in hazardous work such as mining pay more for their insurance than do businesses that employ white collar workers. A company that incurs numerous injury claims see its insurance costs go up, so there are incentives to make the workplace safe.

Workers’ comp (WC) insurance is a major business cost, at about $2 per $100 of workers’ wages nationally in 2014, though much less than health care costs for business, at about $12.52 per $100, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Read More

•January 6, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

This may be the year, unprecedented, that Illinois simply skips funding for its colleges and universities as well as for students on state scholarships. As a broken-down professor, I hope I am wrong, as the consequences will be severe.

Yet there is little outcry. Higher education is, I fear, out of favor.

We must create a broad-based blue ribbon commission to look ahead and advise our colleges and universities as to what is in store for them in terms of state support.

Don’t snicker. In the 1950s, a blue ribbon task force called the Illinois Commission on Higher Education provided a blueprint for the state that ultimately gave us a tiered system of public higher education that has been admired across the country.

In this present budget year (July 1, 2015-June 30, 2016), most of the state’s functions are being funded by court orders, even though the legislature and governor have never agreed upon a budget.

Higher education is the one major function of state government that has not been covered by the courts. Thus, there is no money from the state for operating the colleges and universities, nor for paying the tuition scholarships for 130,000 students (out of about 900,000 total students in all Illinois colleges and universities). Read More