This is how things work in Illinois: all the little people pay their taxes, as do all the small businesses. But if you’re big and powerful, just make a few demands. Not just for reductions of their taxes owed, but for cash back, in the form of being able to hold onto the state tax withholdings from their employees. ADM made that play in its “threat” to move its headquarters outside of Illinois (even though no other location makes as... Read more

These are the fragments of the piece that I’m planning to write for the Chicago Tribune’s Plan of Chicago project (yeah, I know, their call for submissions from the general public means the people who head up civic organizations or hold public office or have an academic position get published, and the peons get letters to the editor published, or get their submissions “published” in an online format, but it’s still something more purposeful than blogging, at least): There was... Read more

Dear Amy: I have been married to the love of my life now for almost five years. When we were dating, we both expressed a desire to have children. After we got married, we got two dogs that fulfill my needs. I no longer want children. I am content with our life. My wife still wants children. Should I agree to have children to satisfy her need for motherhood and fulfill an unspoken promise? She got married with the understanding... Read more

So this is an older book, published in 2010, which I happened upon in the main nonfiction section rather than the new books section.  I’ll just give a brief summary here: Boys are falling behind.  Anecdotally, there are valedictorian and top-honors groups in high school which are all-female, or nearly so.  Statistically, boys at every level, from poor to middle-class, of all races and ages, are falling behind girls in test scores, grades, and intention to attend college.  The conventional... Read more

So I clicked on their ad on Nat’l Review online and started to poke around, but don’t have time now for much. So, in the meantime, anyone heard of the Gatestone Institute?  They seem to be mostly about the dangers of Islamization in Europe; not sure if they’re exaggerating or if it’s a serious threat.  Any thoughts? Read more

. . . and the urban planning difference. Update: OK, when I posted this, I was planning on adding commentary after a day or two, then got sidetracked. (Sorry, short attention span = inconsistent at follow-through.) Anyway, here it is again, for any new readers, and this weekend I’ll write about this. Further update: Here’s the answer:  it’s on the outskirts of Nuremburg, that is, the medium-sized city (home of one of the more famous Christmas Markets) north of Munich... Read more

The fate of German women in the face of Soviet soldiers in the closing months of World War II and afterward is a pretty appalling one, as the Soviets took their revenge on pretty young girls and old women alike, and is pretty generally ignored, with a feeling that the Germans, as a people/ethnic group, don’t get to complain because of what they, as a people, did to others.  (Likewise, the fate of Germans who lived in what became the re-bordered... Read more

So one of the perks of working at home is that I can take a long lunch and run an errand. Today it was Aldi, where they’ve got a “now hiring” sign with the starting wage posted: $13 an hour. So, in other words, they pay significantly higher than minimum wage for what is, in terms of the skills required, a minimum wage job. Now, I don’t think they do this because they’re a German-based company; I think that they... Read more

I finally got new tires on the car yesterday, something that was on the to-do list to take care of before winter, or, specifically before travelling at Thanksgiving. I hate car expenses, not so much for the cost of it, as for the feeling that I’m being taken advantage of by the guy trying to upsell or get me to buy a service I don’t need. (Like the time I had the mechanic tell me I needed a new alternator,... Read more

Look, every conservative blogger out there is full of schadenfreude at the fact that the Obamacare exchange is so, well, malfunctional. And there are lots of reasons for the malfunction — various bloggers with knowledge of the field have offered explanations, but the one that I find most striking is that the coding is unnecessarily complicated by the fact that the system is designed to collect all of one’s personal and financial information prior to allowing the user to even... Read more