Friday, November 25, 2011
Am I the only one with a keen perception of the obvious?
I’ve gotta stop reading that Chicago Tribune op-ed page because it’s making me crazy. There was a time when, of the five newspapers arriving daily on my driveway, the Trib would be the first freed from its overstretched plastic prison. Now the Sun-Times is No. 1. And here’s one of the reasons for that top-five shift. In a Nov. 18 editorial, the Tribune tackled the touchy topic of Internet sales tax by coming out in support of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s “Marketplace Fairness Act,” which mandates attaching sales tax to every Internet purchase. Considering individual states’ prior boondoggle-ish attempts to collect that tariff, the editorial did manage to get one thing right. Durbin’s streamlined bill is head and shoulders above anything …
Friday, November 4, 2011
When it comes to comparing the suburbs and the big city, Chicago doesn't have a sporting chance.
It always amazes me how a non sequitur sentence in a column can set off some overly sensitive, surly and snooty comments. To wit, in my recent Patch piece concerning the city of Chicago’s rabid revenue raising ruses, I uttered this simple, but obvious truth: “The smart people live in the suburbs for a reason.” And after they got a suburbanite to read the column to them, those Second City citizens shrieked and howled almost as if I'd said that Starbucks stopped serving Iced Peppermint White Chocolate Mochas. (Chicagoans drink some rather strange things.) So now we know why they call it the “Windy City.” Ah, well! I suppose having to face a bitter truth can be difficult for folks who have to inhale bus fumes on a regular basis. In their …
Friday, October 21, 2011
We can park ourselves in Downers Grove, Elmhurst, Wheaton, Lisle, the Tri-Cities, Glen Ellyn, Western Springs, Hinsdale and Clarendon Hills! Power to the people!
As I perused my way through Patchdom this week, I was surprised to see we haven’t conducted a west suburban poll on the merits of the Occupy Wall Street movement. You already can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an East Coast Patch survey on the subject. Since I’d never want us to be considered behind a bunch of teeth-clenched-while-they-talk elitist New Englanders, I think it’s time we far-more-sophisticated-west-suburban folk wade in on this burgeoning protest movement. Of course, no Patch poll would be complete without me doing my darndest to skew the results in the specific direction. And I have to say, I haven’t felt this giddy since Mr. Dylan first uttered that subversive phrase, “The times, they are a-changin'.” Unless you’ve been…
Friday, September 30, 2011
It's a soap opera, really. What's next? Throwing little old ladies from moving trains?
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did! It wasn’t bad enough that their former director absconded with nearly half a million dollars. It wasn't bad enought that the board members, who failed to implement any kind of oversight, spent another $2.5 million just to determine how he did it. Then they refused to resign until Springfield threatened their sponsors with political death. And once those incompetent board members were finally forced out, the inept Metra management folks actually had the nerve to announce, “By the way. We’ve been borrowing money from our capital fund to pay operating expenses and, since that’s no longer sustainable, we’re facing a $100 million 2012 buget shortfall.” Nope! Apparently none of that was …
Les Dixon
9:21 am on Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Geneva should think about the reasons business is leaving Illinois before pushing for Internet sales taxes. Taxes going to the State are mostly consumed by public employees administering the money. Internet sales produce jobs as facilities are needed to get the products to the customers. Amazon is the prime example but has closed operations in states where they are required to collect the taxes. … more ›