by Downtowner, posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2012 at 7:28 pm
sadly too numerous to name. Today the number of Illinois counties designated as drought disaster areas rose to 98 of Illinois’ 102 counties. The four counties not named disaster areas (yet) were:
Cook, DuPage, Will, and my home county of Kane.
You can go look at the usda map for the whole country here. It is massive, with more than 50% of U.S. counties declared disaster areas by today.
As to why this cluster of four counties in Illinois are not included, I can only guess that, because we have been getting some rain over the last week, we are in somewhat less dire straits than the rest of the state. But we are still in drought, per the drought monitor map, which may tell a different story after it updates tomorrow morning. The still-brown grass here tells its own story.
by n0madic, posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2012 at 12:55 pm
from IllinoisCHannel TV
From Rural LaSalle County — we go on a tour looking at new solar and wind energy projects being developed in Illinois. We’ll hear about the costs, and how much these projects are contributing to the state’s electric generating capacity. We begin with an overview of the use of wind energy in Illinois, as described by Kevin Borgia, Director of the Illinois Wind Energy Coalition.
by Downtowner, posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2012 at 8:35 am
It rained last night. According to the rain gauge in my backyard it rained about 1 1/4″ and Tom Skilling said on Facebook that
Heaviest rain in nearly a year has fallen at Midway tonight! 2.02″ fell this evening amid 50 mph wind gusts. 1.50″ of that total came down in just 30 minutes! The last time that much rain fell at Midway was on July 23 last summer when 2.30″ fell.
Huge relief. We were all dancing around the house at midnight calling out to each other when we started to hear the drops fall on the roof (we’d been hearing thunder and seeing lightning for more than an hour prior to the actual rain). You can already see the grass starting to green up, and I’m sure my vegetables are loving this.
National Coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program and newest member of Progressive Democrats of America’s Advisory Board, speaks to PDA IL on the future of single payer and building a strong progressive movement.
by Mike Barr, posted on Saturday, July 14th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?*
Aurora, you once had such promise that it was thought by some that you would be the center of a great rail hub and lead the state. But alas, Chicago earned the broad shoulders and you are but a flickering secondary light now.
My home town’s downtown has been in decline for half a century and there seems to be no end in sight. Many will say that I am wrong. They may be right.
But it is my firm belief that as long as Aurora has an empty core it will not thrive. It will not really live. A few baubles do not a city make.
There are some businesses left downtown but they are mostly due to the industry of Aurora’s Hispanic community and I salute them. There is not one major retail store left. Carson’s left twenty years ago or more and now it’s building stands empty. A rather sad symbol of a time long past.
While not necessarily connected to the Obama campaign, there is a new push inside labor circles to draw attention to a small company based in Freeport, IL named Sensata. The company is owned by Bain Capital and is preparing to move 170 Illinois jobs to China. Factory workers are calling on Mitt Romney to step in and stop the plant closure.
I support the move to target Romney on this issue and I hope that national pressure causes Bain Capital to keep those jobs in Illinois and sign a union contract with the workers.
At the same time, I can’t help but call out the hypocrisy of the Obama Administration for blasting Romney in public while secretly (and I mean very secretly) holding closed-door meetings with 600 corporate advisors to write another free trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that will result in more off shoring and outsourcing of U.S. jobs. TPP is expected to be the largest and worst free trade agreement in global history.
“Bush was better than Obama on this,” Judit Rius of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign tells HuffPo. “It’s pathetic, but it is what it is. The world’s upside-down.”
by Ellen McClennan, posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2012 at 7:01 am
“I have a job and I have health insurance,” Representative Hultgren (R IL-14) said, and then paused for a moment proudly emphasizing the Republican spin talking point that when one has a job, one automatically has health insurance. It’s as if life is that simple. If you work, the spin goes, you have insurance. He was attempting to say that if we have jobs, we don’t need a national health insurance plan. We don’t need “Obamacare.”
The subtle part of this ‘argument’ is that not only is it flawed logically, it blames the victim. If you don’t have insurance, it’s because you don’t have a job. A job will furnish good insurance. And if you don’t have a job, it’s because you’re either not looking, or—to serve the Republican spin even further—it’s because Obama won’t do what the Republicans want so people can have jobs. So therefore, we can all blame Obama.
But this time his audience at the Oswego Town Hall meeting was not buying it as I noticed they have in the past. No one applauded. No one said, “Yeah!” There was silence as Hultgren paused and looked around for support he did not get.
by Ellen McClennan, posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2012 at 7:00 am
Representative Randy Hultgren (R IL-14) showed typical Republican spin at his Oswego Town Hall meeting recently. When asked direct questions regarding taxes, healthcare, social security, and Citizens United, he was long on spin, wrong on facts, and empty of solutions.
One frustrated attendant who tried to get a direct answer on healthcare, commented after the meeting that Hultgren “…seemed detached and unfeeling. His voice was just so syrupy and sweet he appeared unbelievable and unconcerned.”
His comments on Social Security were a surprise but shouldn’t have been, given the Republican Party’s relationship to corporate money and financial companies wanting to gamble with social security investment money.
“I’m not planning on Social Security,” Hultgren said. “Most people my age aren’t planning on Social Security.”
