Timber Lake Playhouse in Mt. Carroll is Celebrating a Milestone This Summer…Our 50th Season!

I am so proud of this place and the art that takes place on TLP’s stage each summer. Who would have imagined that a small theater in the middle of nowhere would still be thriving after 50 years . . . that we are now a business with a budget of more than $600,000, drawing more than 25,000 visitors and talented actors, designers and directors to Mount Carroll each summer?

But TLP is not just “Mount Carroll’s playhouse.” People travel from all over to sit in our audience and, from the beginning, our by-laws have allowed only five of our 15 board members to be from Mount Carroll. The others come from all over and we always seem to assemble a diverse group who bring their individual talents to the organization.

Our 2011 season began on June 2 with the beautiful “Sunset Blvd.” and will continue through Labor Day weekend with six more “main stage” plays and two children’s shows. To make sure that TLP is thriving at the end of another 50 years, we have to make sure that our 371 seats are filled every night.

TLP has been called one of northwest Illinois’ best kept secrets. That’s nice, but we don’t want to be a secret. Let me personally invite you to come to the rest of the summer’s shows and special events, and when you do, bring your friends and family.

Thanks to everyone who has supported Timber Lake Playhouse in the past five decades and continues to share in the magic that gets created there every summer. Come to TLP and be part of its history.

Sincerely,

Larry Libberton

President/Board of Directors

What I Learned at the “Educational Seminar”

I learned that if a smaller dairy is having issues with milk being picked up, it has nothing to do with the economics of a larger dairy taking away business. It has to do, most likely, with milk that the small dairy is producing isn‘t up to quality standards. Really?

Also acknowledged, some large mega-dairy operations have failed. I wanted to ask but didn’t get the chance. “Wouldn’t it make more economic sense to support the smaller diverse local family farmers instead one that is too big to fail?”

No one could tell us how many CAFO’s are in Illinois. Nic Anderson from the Illinois Livestock Development Group was there and I asked him if he knew. He said he did but wouldn’t tell us. I thought he was the “go to” guy? Doesn’t the industry want us to know?

Marcia Wilhite was unable to attend but Sanjay Sofat was there to replace her. He was able to confirm that yes, CAFO’s do pollute.

Warren Goetsch? He has his program and is sticking to it. There was some debate over if it would take 10 or 40 years for a 40 acre manure pit to leak. But it will leak. He didn’t seem all too concerned in my observation. I doubt I’ll be around in 40 years but I’m counting on at least 20.

There were about 35 people in attendance. It was everything I expected it to be but I’m glad I was there to record and witness. I think it would behoove the JDLWV to next time include speakers that offer solutions and alternatives to industrial farming. We all agree that agriculture is changing but do we want future generations to remember us for protecting their environment and having healthy foods, or never forget us for short term greed?

Vicki Grizzoffi

Galena, IL

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Extra, Extra, read all about it! Is it lies, or just honest politics? President Obama said “Chrysler has paid every dime and more back to the American taxpayer and paid it six years ahead of schedule.”

Matt McCall, Pres. of Penn Financial says the American taxpayer gave $14 billion to Chrysler in four separate loans. We have gotten back $7.5 billion and still owed $6.5 billion. The kicker is, of the $7.5 billion paid back, $3.5 billion is from a grant from the Energy Department.That is just a slight of hand like the old pea under the shell game.

A similar game is played with Obama Motors/ GM. Taxpayer gives them a $50 billion bail out. They pay us back $6.7 billion and they call it debt paid. For the balance, we the taxpayer own GM stock worth much less than we paid.

As McCall said this is clearly a union bail out. They should have gone into bankruptcy like most companies do. That would have been the only way they could clear the books of union demands. The union bail out is even more obvious with the government unions. From IL. Taxpayer Education Foundation - in January, IL. State income tax increased from 3% to 5%, and the corporate tax rate from 7.3% to 9.5%. 100% of the tax increase is going towards the pension and benefits of retired governmemt employies.

Our politicians are protecting the government union pensions, because in turn they have to protect their own one or two pensions. The NEA is the largest political campaign spender in the nation. The new union dues increase will give a additional $40 million per election cycle. There are 4,352 Government retirees in Illinois receiving pensions over $100,000! Many will draw social security also.

Illinois debt is $146 billion. Will our politicians buy union votes or watch out for the taxpayer?

Bill Dietz

Stephenson County Tea Party

Lena IL.

Inferior Products?

During the League of Women Voters presentation on the benefits of industrial scale agriculture, an audience member asked the speakers why some independent family dairy farmers had been displaced from their milk processor by a mega dairy in southern Illinois. Speakers John Oncken and Jim Endress concluded that these family farmers were producing milk that was probably inferior to the milk produced by the mega dairy. I find that hard to believe and terribly insulting to every family farmer. Milk from cows raised primarily on pasture has been repeatedly shown to be higher in many nutrients including vitamin E, beta-carotene, and the healthy fats Omega-3 and CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), than milk from cows fed primarily grain.

One of these displaced farmers wrote: “Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB) has absolutely ignored our plea for help in saving the only milk market we have in this area. Kasbergen Corp (a huge IFB corporate recruit) came down to Madisonville, KY and Fulton, TN and made a deal with the processor to process the “Corp” milk only, leaving us to hunt for a market even farther away. You can imagine what that did to our hauling cost and our over-order premium. Thanks IFB for helping put us all out of business.”

Cindy Bonnet

Family farmer in Jo Daviess County, IL for 35 years.

‘You Are What You Eat’

Recent World Health Org. reports of massive contamination of sprouts in Europe, which sickened thousands and killed at least 18 people, highlights our ever-worsening, Frankenstein-like food systems, world-wide. Some scientists speculated that liquid manure, used to fertilize crops, caused the near epidemic. The organic farm said it never used manure, so it might have been the seed they bought. Some corporate farms are laying the blame on an organic farmer growing the bean sprouts-any excuse to blame organic farming.

The chemical companies keep pumping out toxic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides to spray onto our food supply. The pests mutate, become more resistant, prompting ever stronger or changed chemicals to spray onto fruits, vegetables and grains and, coincidentally, costs the farmers even more money.

Then, agribusiness gets the bright idea to genetically modify (GMO’s) crops to allow sprays to kill weeds, without killing the crop. According to researcher and Professor Emeritus from Purdeu, Dr. Huber, the herbicide Roundup is creating pathogenic organisms in soil that affect vegetative and animal life-a rare occurrence. Artificial GMO’s are now in corn, potatoes, soy, beets and -now allowed in alfalfa. Many of these are fed to livestock, our meat supply.

Government officials, bowing to the rich and powerful agribusiness companies, over objections by many, approve use of dangerous chemicals and GMO’s. Researchers that find detrimental effects from genetically modified foods are silenced by threats to cut off funding to universities, or are fired. (see the videos “Food, Inc” or “ The Future of Food”).

Chef Jamie Oliver tries to get healthy food into our schools and is blocked by administrations-has to fight tooth and nail just to get safer food into school cafeterias. What is wrong with this system?

As our grandmas once said “You are what you eat”. I believe the only thing that will change this ever growing dangerous system is the power of the enlightened consumer. I now buy locally produced meat and eggs, CSA veggies, farmer’s market fruits and Organic Valley dairy products, and suggest you do so too. “Cheap food” could mean expensive health problems. Saving a dollar on a dozen eggs could result in a $10,000 hospital bill ( see August, 2010 factory farm egg salmonella recalls).

Ray Ruthenberg

Stockton, IL 61085

MythBusters III – Tax the “Rich”

One of the most tiring things we keep hearing from big spenders is that all our problems could be solved if only we could force the “rich” to pay their “fair share”, and, in the same sentence say that “millionaires and billionaires” need to get some skin in the game. Most talk about returning the top tax rate to 40% as the magic bullet which will fix everything. To simplify the math, I’ll go a step beyond this, and use 50% as a top rate. To further simplify this, I’ll assume we’ll triple the dividend and capital gains rates to 50% as well.

The most recent IRS analysis of taxpayer demographics provides the data we need to confirm this; http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

The projected federal deficit is over $1.6T. The total income of the top 1% of earners is $1.7T, but they only paid $0.4T in taxes, so they had $1.3T left. Clearly, even taking every penny they earned would not balance the budget, so let’s broaden the base to include the top 5% of earners:

These lucky folks brought home nearly $2.9T, and only paid $0.6T in taxes. By taking both the capital gains and top income tax rates to 50%, we’d get $1.5T, or a $0.9T increase. Well, that didn’t quite cut it, so let’s move on to the top 10% of earners:

These rich folks raked in $3.9T, while only ponying up $0.7T in taxes. Again, a 50% tax would yield $1.9T, an increase of $1.2T. We’re still well short, so who’s on tap for our massive tax hikes? Let’s move on to the top 25%:

These “millionaires and billionaires” stashed away $5.7T, and only forfeited $0.9T in taxes. Our new 50% tax would yield $2.9T, an increase of $2.0T. We made it, with enough left to fund some new spending, say, a war in Libya, bailing out Greece, or green (the same color as a $100,000 dollar bill) energy.

So, when you hear politicians talking about taxing “millionaires and billionaires”, who are they talking about? When we check the IRS data, the split point for the top 25% is a household income of $67,280.

Myth Busted.

Terry Smith

Lanark, IL

Thank You

The Carroll County Chapter of The American Cancer Society‘s Relay For Life would like to “Thank” everyone who participated in the 2011 event held at the West Carroll Middle School’s athletic field on June 11-12. There were over 110 survivors and their guests attending the survivors’ dinner at the Mt. Carroll United Methodist Church, 15 teams participating at the field, over 359 luminary bags lining the track and raised over $51,402.00 with more donations coming in. We would like to acknowledge our 2011 sponsors for this year’s event:

Corporate Sponsors: GM Productions DJ Service, Mt. Carroll Mirror Democrat, Manny’s Pizza & Saloon, Prairie Advocate News, Savanna Times Journal, Sievert’s Steak & Stuff, WCCI 100.3 FM, and West Carroll Middle School,

Gold Sponsors: Danisco, FHN, Milledgeville State Bank, Savanna-Thomson State Bank and The National Bank.

Bronze Sponsors: Brothers Restaurant, Brown Construction Company, Dambman Service, Eastland Feed & Grain, Exchange State Bank, First Savanna State Bank, Pharmacy Center and Z-Team pest Control.

Special & In-Kind Donors: Carroll County Locker, Casey’s Compliance Signs, Johnston Processing Plant, Lanark Food Center, Land of OZ, Milledgeville Food Center, Mills Machine, Palisades Fantails Turkey Federation, Pamida , Shaw’s Market, Sullivan’s, Swiss Colony, Tee Lee Popcorn, Becky Rath (RN, BSN, CHPN), Mt. Carroll Home Center, United Methodist Church of Mt. Carroll, Carroll Service, The National Bank (Chadwick, Mt. Carroll Downtown, Mt. Carroll Highway and Savanna Branches), Plein Air Studio, Mt. Carroll Bowling Center, Land-Mark Homes & Construction, Mt. Carroll Banking Center and True Value – Savanna.

“Thank You” to everyone that helped make “Celebrating More Birthdays – 10 Years and Counting” a huge success.

Morrison City Council Notes

Morrison held their regular City Council Meeting on June 13, 2011 at city hall. The room was over-full (again)! All council members were present with new city administrator, Jim Wise and Mayor Roger Drey.

Under public comment, Harvey Zuidema handed out informational sheets to the council about the easements for the proposed bike trail. All easements state “using asphalt material”. But the Recreational Trails Program states “The City of Morrison will develop a 10’ wide, 8 /10 mile long aggregate trail that will accommodate snowmobiles.” These are a few of the issues: inaccurate mileage, estimate of cost (aggregate versus asphalt), and Slavins’ sole ownership of the part of the trail he has an easement for which does not include a legal property description.

Bills payable for $67,964.90 were approved for payment after many questions. Chen Nelson Roberts, LTD was paid $352.00 for legal fees (this should be the last bill for GE lawyers). Illinois Dept of Transportation for Route 30 bridge received their $9,987.00 monthly payment. I asked when that will be paid off and was told sometime this year! Mid American Energy Co was paid $6,568.52. ComEd received $4,203.01 from Motor Fuel Tax for street lighting. (I asked what and where the electric bill for the Sport Complex was for the month---Gary will check on it.) Total bills at the Sport Complex (for this 2 week period) were $9,617.78. The city audit cost $3,000.00 payable to WIPFLI (accounting service).

The Historic Preservation Commission approved an application for Eric and Kathy Peterson to attach a porch and paint their home at 300 W. Lincolnway.

Opening a separate checking account for the Sport Complex was approved (7 ayes 1 no).

Replacement of the stop lights to use LED lights at 3 locations was approved with the city’s portion to be 5% of the total cost. Local funding for French Creek Bridge shared portion bike path was approved since it could be funded with Motor Fuel Tax for $14,000.00. Signing an easement for the East End Water Loop project with the Union Pacific Railroad was approved with a license fee of $2,000.00 to the railroad.

The issue of the city funding ($390,000.00 up front) for a bike path 8/10 of a mile long out of the city was brought up to reconsider as a motion. After much debate, many questions asked, many questions unanswered, a motion was made to approve accepting the Morrison-Rockwood Recreations Trail grant.

(6 ayes, Rose, Thorndike, Sullivan, Blean, Hayenga, Zuidema-2 nays, Wood, Kallemeyn).

The city will be hiring 2 part time students for 40 days during the summer to help with public service: painting (fire hydrants), sweeping, shoveling and cleaning the city’s right of way.

The next Morrison City Council meeting will be June 27, 2011 at City Hall. Please come and learn more about your city first hand. Feel free to contact your aldermen. Everyone is WELCOME!

Quote of the week: By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. (Richard Dawkins)

A Morrison Taxpayer

Marti Wood

Commentary . . .

Wilbur’s Gift

By Robert Morrison

President Obama admitted before his Competitiveness Council this week that the projects he touted to ram through his $787 billion stimulus package were not really “shovel ready.” The shovels weren’t ready but the sieves are. I learned about competitiveness from Wilbur.

Wilbur came to our school in fourth grade. I remember the day he arrived. I was a violin student then, but when Wilbur started in, he quickly moved past me and all the other scratchers and squeakers. I quit the violin and took up the bassoon. By seventh grade, Wilbur was the most advanced student in all the advanced classes, and we kids all knew it. His grade point average was 98.6, which we said was “normal” for Wilbur.

Those of us not as gifted as Wilbur didn’t really resent him. We all liked him; he was so nice and never boasted. Oh, yes, there was the usual kid teasing. And I was happy to be able to beat Wilbur on the soccer field and in student council elections. But we all acknowledged his academic superiority.

Our high school added a fourth year of Latin and a third year of Greek - because Wilbur needed them for his planned major at Harvard. He wanted to study the history of science. Jaws dropped when Wilbur’s science project arrived - in a trailer. He had actually found an alternate way to measure the speed of light. Albert Michelson’s method had won him the 1907 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Only in my senior year, when Wilbur began regularly to beat me on American history exams, did I feel edged out. I would happily yield to Wilbur’s superiority in the sciences. I took French to avoid competing with him in the Classics. But, hey, Wilbur: American history is my favorite subject. I buckled down, quietly determined that I would score higher on the New York State Regents exam in American history if it killed me. Three days before graduation, our grades were posted. I had beaten Wilbur by one point!

I never told Wilbur that I was determined to beat him. It was one of the few things I did quietly. More than thirty years later, I read that Wilbur had died. He had sailed through Harvard in just three years and was a tenured professor of the history of science at Stanford University. I asked Stanford to send me Wilbur’s curriculum vitae. It was an 82-page summary, single-spaced, of Wilbur’s published articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

I was proud to say I had been Wilbur’s classmate if never really in his class. He was always in a class by himself.

President Obama should have had a Wilbur in his life. When he told “Joe the Plumber” we are all better off when we spread the wealth around, I knew that Barack Obama had no idea what competition is and how it works to bring out the best in everyone. Should I be given a share of Wilbur’s honors for those 82 pages of juried journal articles? Should Wilbur be given my one point lead on the history Regents?

Not understanding competition, President Obama doesn’t understand justice, either.

Americans will never, I hope, agree that it is fair and effective to rob achievers of their achievement. It is not surprising that President Obama says he believes in American Exceptionalism, but that he believes it in the way that Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism and Brits believe in British Exceptionalism. The chaos - a Greek word - that is descending on modern Greece shows what happens when the politics of envy and class warfare are given free rein.

I was lucky that my friend Wilbur spurred me to excel. He gave me a priceless gift.

Who’s going to give that gift to the President of the United States?

- Robert Morrison is senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council.

DREAM is a Nightmare

By Larry Plachno

U.S. Senator Dick Durban from Illinois recently re-introduced the DREAM Act in the U.S. Senate. It gives legal status to illegal immigrants who complete education or military service in the United States. However, what it really does is reward those who break the law and penalize those who comply with immigration laws.

I disagree with encouraging or condoning breaking the law. Breaking the law is breaking the law whether it is murder, rape, the selling of drugs to kids or illegal immigration. Our society is already suffering because people have lost track of right and wrong; the last thing we need is to encourage people to break the law. Moreover, allowing some select individuals to break he law is a slap in the face to those who abide by the laws, whether immigration or otherwise. If the immigration laws are that onerous then they should be abolished for all, not just for some.

Wouldn’t it be better if we encouraged immigrants to abide by the law and help them meet legal requirements?

Over the approximately past 10 years I have helped 11 people from the Philippines come to the United States. With eight of them, I was responsible for their move from start to finish. With the other three, I stepped in and helped when they had a problem. All of them lived in my home when they arrived in the United States. All of them complied with immigration laws including paperwork, tests, interviews, physical and fees.

All of them are bi- or tri-lingual and speak fluent English. Eight of the 11 are adults. All of the adults are now fully employed, pay taxes, and have autos and homes or apartments of their own. Six of them are employed as registered nurses, thus helping with our shortage of medical personnel. One of them has gone into law enforcement while another is a manager and officer of a corporation. The oldest of the youngsters recently completed high school as a straight “A” honor student, number five in her graduation class, and president of her class three years in a row. She recently started college working on a five-year medical program. Several of these people have qualified for and have become U.S. Citizens.

These 11 Filipinos (and hundreds of thousands of other legal immigrants) are living proof that the immigration laws work and are well within reason. I, and many others, am upset about going through the time and expense of complying with the U.S. immigration laws while others want to be excused.

Let me ask a few questions regarding the proposed DREAM Act.

First, if you want to give legal status to illegal immigrants, will you then refund the money and pay for the effort for those who complied with the U.S. immigration laws and fees?

Second, if granting legal status for attending school or military service is such a great idea, why limit to the illegal immigrants who have broken the law? Would it not make more sense to give this special privilege to those who have not broken the law? I am sure there are hundreds of thousands of young people who would welcome the opportunity to come to America under a law like this and gain legal status by attending schools or serving in our military.

Third, if we think it is a good idea to reward those who break the law and penalize those who abide by the law, then how do we reward murderers, rapists and those who sell drugs to kids?

Now is the time to phone or write to your elected senators and representatives in Washington and let them know how you feel about rewarding those who break the laws rather than rewarding those who abide by our laws.

Capitol Report

By Jim Sacia, State Representative, 89th District

Another amazing dairy farm – Larson Acres Dairy near Brodhead, Wisconsin, a short thirty miles from Freeport, Illinois. Thanks to Doug Block of Hunter Haven Farms, Pearl City, Illinois, I was offered the opportunity to visit this 3,000 cow facility. Regretfully I missed their open house, Halloween Day, 2010, but over 3,000 people visited and I would be shocked if even one left there unimpressed.

Evolving to four generations this fifty five employee facility started out much like the farm I grew up on. Thirty plus cows in the 40’s to one hundred fifty five in the 70’s to where it is today. The Larson’s have quite a story to tell. Their Holstein stock is recognized and highly sought after throughout the nation. The herd average is over eighty pounds per day and their somatic cell count is envied by dairymen far and near. Simply put, like all modern large dairies, it is run like a well oiled machine and as I have said so often, contented cows give more milk.

Ah but the naysayers will tell you “confined cattle don’t live as long”. Really – a very proud Mike Larson points out the average useful life of one of their milk cows is ten to twelve years of age, identical to their 155 herd free range milk cows back in the 70’s.

Oh there are those who will point out that they had an environmental issue due to a complaint with their young heifers that are house five miles from the dairy. Safe to say they resolved the issue immediately.

There is little doubt that large dairies can operate in concert with the smaller one and with the environment.

Having now visited fourteen dairies of at least 2,000 milk cows to as many as 22,500, I remain totally convinced that large dairies have a significant place in the dairy industry and it is not to bury the “little guy” as the naysayers will have you believe. I so appreciate the Jo Daviess County League of Women Voters hosting a seminar on June 11, 2011, dealing with the pros and cons of large dairies.

Northwest Illinois is livestock country. We’ve lost over 11,000 milk cows in Jo Daviess County alone in the past twenty years.

The fact remains, our farmers feed the world. Each U. S. farmer provides food and fiber for 155 people. Because of the efficiency of our American farmers, we spend ten percent of our disposable income on food, unlike Pakistan whose citizens spend fifty percent, Jordan spends forty three percent, China thirty two percent.

Our farmers are the finest environmentalists in the world. They care deeply for their animals and share a deep concern for future generations by preserving our soil and our other natural resources. The genetics of our dairy cattle have increased their production many fold in the past fifty years. And, yes, every size operator cares deeply for their cattle.

Milk doesn’t come from the dairy case - it comes from the American farmer. I applaud every one of them.

I will be available at the Market House in Galena from 1:30 PM until 3:00 PM on Friday, June 24, 2011.

As always, you can reach me, Sally or Barb at or e-mail us at . You can also visit my website at www.jimsacia.com. It’s always a pleasure to hear from you.