News Progress

August 20, 2014

by William C Bailey
Professor, School of Agriculture, Western Illinois University

Let’s be honest, while an excellent university, not many world records are made at Western Illinois University. But that changed recently when a member of the School of Agriculture’s faculty and Good Hope, Illinois resident Associate Professor Mark Hoge, sold a pig (Yorkshire boar to be exact) for a staggering $270,000 – a world record price, according to the National Swine Registry. Assuming the pig weighed 280 pounds when sold, that pencils out to be about $60 an ounce, very comparable to the price of some caviar.  The price of a prime filet mignon is about $30 an ounce.  And the price of the hamburger purchased from a fast food establishment is about 50 cents an ounce. Read More

August 20, 2014

by Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

We cannot let investment in our strong transportation infrastructure go the way of state pensions, putting it off until tomorrow—until it’s too late.

Our transportation system is the jewel in the state’s somewhat tarnished crown.

We have 2,300 miles of interstate highways, more than any states but California and Texas. Six interstates radiate into Chicagoland and three into metro-East St. Louis. Read More

August 13, 2014

by Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

The official insect of our state is endangered, at least here in Illinois. The numbers of the glorious monarch butterfly have declined sharply in recent years throughout the Midwest and at the overwintering sites in central Mexico.

Should we care? What can be done about it, if anything?

Twenty years ago, when I walked the Rock Island Trail northwest of Peoria, I would come upon profusions of the orange butterflies with their striking black and white markings.

Yet this past weekend, on a prairie walk at Jubilee College in Peoria County, my associates and I saw but one monarch, and we all noted how scarce they had become.

A subtropical species, the monarch butterfly ventures north from Mexico each spring in search of its larval (caterpillar stage) host, the milkweed. Two or three generations of the insect later, the monarch arrives in the Midwest. Read More

August 6, 2014

by Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

After five years in the works, the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for American education are here.

Near the end of the 2014-2015 school year, students in Illinois and 40 other states will be tested according to new learning standards. The standards are about what K-12 students should know in English and mathematics at the end of each grade.

By eighth grade, for example, students will be able to do linear algebra and linear functions.

Based on talking with teachers in my locale, I sense that some are confident while others are deeply worried about how things will go in this first year of testing to what most observers consider more rigorous standards. Read More

July 30, 2014

By Gerald Tilley
Social Security Dist. Manager Decatur

Medicare went into effect 48 years ago on July 1, 1966. Earlier that same year, Medicare workers went door to door trying to get seniors to sign up. Medicare was not the cornerstone then that it is today, and people did not know whether it was going to work for the long haul.

Now, nearly half a century later, Medicare remains one of the most popular government programs in the nation. 

We can’t see the future, but one thing’s for sure: Medicare is here to stay. Medicare provides health insurance to more than 50 million Americans. Forty-two million are people age 65 and older and the other eight million are younger and have disabilities. Read More