April 15, 2015

By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

Recent high-profile police shootings have put local law enforcement across the country under scrutiny. Will body cameras on police provide, as some experts think, a high-tech tool to improve behavior by both police and suspects, and thus de-escalate tensions over time?
The Economist, a highly respected United Kingdom weekly, offers trenchant analysis of American society by thoughtful outsiders. In December, the magazine excoriated U.S. policing for excessive use of force.
The publication noted that police in the U.S. shot and killed at least 458 people last year. In contrast, English “bobbies” felled no one in the period.
The Economist admitted that many American police operate in a violent world. Forty-six policemen were shot dead in the past year, and 52,000 were assaulted.
Policing has changed dramatically since I was a youngster in the 1950s.
In my rural county of Stark, for example, we then had simply a sheriff and his deputy; the deputy lived in the jail, and his wife cooked for the inmates. Read More

April 8, 2015

By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

Almost three out of four small town and rural residents across Illinois (73 percent) think overall economic prospects for families in the state will be worse in the next five years. This is according to a poll reported on recently by a rural research unit at Western Illinois University.
The same poll of 1,450 respondents found that almost half (49.5 percent) consider Illinois a poor place to live, versus only 26 percent who think it a good place.
And almost half (47 percent) think their quality of life has become worse in the past five years, with only 11 percent feeling it has become better.
Talk about singing the blues. Read More

April 1, 2015

By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

Talented linebacker Chris Borland called it quits this past week after just one year in the NFL. “I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” Borland told ESPN, referring to multiple concussions he has sustained. Several other NFL players have also retired this past year for similar reasons.
In Illinois, a class action law firm in Chicago has filed suit this year against the Illinois High School Association. The suit contends that the IHSA has failed in its responsibilities to provide adequate safety oversight for the 557 member high schools and their 47,000 football players.
The IHSA responds that if the suit is successful in requiring more and expensive medical oversight during practices and games, the death knell will probably be sounded for many small high school football programs. Read More

March 25, 2015

by Jerry Ginther
NP Columnist

As stated in my first article, the conductor is the boss.
Every member of the train and engine crew is subordinate to him, and the engine crew is under the direction of the brakemen/trainmen. The engineer is strictly a power operator and moves the train only when instructed to do so by a trainman or the conductor. The fireman, when they were used, was under the supervision of the engineman. Post steam engine era the fireman’s position was used to train future engineers or fulfill a union contract.
When the train picked up or set out cars at stations along the line, the conductor handled the business end of each transaction with the station agent. This business mostly amounted to the exchange of the waybills for cars left and those added to his train. A waybill contains a description of the car’s lading, weight, and destination and one must accompany each car in the train’s consist. It also contains the name of the shipper, point of origin, and the consignee. The conductor is responsible to know the total number of cars, whether they are loaded or empty and the total tonnage of his train. This information had to be provided by the conductor to agents or telegraph operators at predetermined stations along the line. Those operators would telegraph that information to the train dispatcher. Without this knowledge, the dispatcher would be unable to plan meeting places between opposing trains. At sidings used for the meeting and passing of trains, one of them would have to fit between the switches of the siding. Read More

By Jim Zachary

March 18, 2015
As we recognize Sunshine Week, the public’s right to know is under assault throughout the United States.
State lawmakers are whittling away at Sunshine Laws in multiple ways, not the least of which is the effort to remove requirements to publish public notices in the place where communities are most likely to find important information they want and need to know — in the local newspaper.
Efforts to allow local governments the option of placing required public notices on government websites, or on third party sites that bury the information is poor, ill-advised legislation that should be viewed as a threat to and further erosion of government transparency. Read More