From the June 20, 2010 CSI Walworth County Sunday "The Way we see it" column:

This week’s evidence of the disconnect between the public and private sectors comes from the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, which voted unanimously to hike tuition rates statewide by a whopping 5.5 percent, then whined bitterly about the meager salaries of academic employees.

A large tuition hike in the midst of a grinding recession is emblematic of the indifference government-education officials long have had for the people who pay the bills. It also suggests that the board, which has doubled tuition over the last 10 years, is inclined to dissociative behavior, retreating in troubling times to its happy place, where the public trough runs forever deep with other people’s money.

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From the June 6, 2010 CSI Walworth County Sunday "The Way we see it" column:

As the Obama administration continues to inexplicably wring its hands over mere mention of the global war on Islamic terror — the war that dare not speak its name — it’s worth recalling a savage and decisive battle waged 68 years ago in the South Pacific.

The first months of 1942 were grim for the United States and its World War II allies. Hitler controlled Europe with a ruthless, cutting-edge war machine. Imperial Japan, meanwhile, had destroyed the heart of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and conquered the Philippines, along with numerous other islands throughout the Pacific. But at Midway Island, an otherwise unremarkable atoll 1,200 miles west of Hawaii, U.S. forces beat back the Japanese advance and turned the tide of the awful war in the Pacific.

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From the May 30, 2010 CSI Walworth County Sunday "The Way we see it" column:

Over the years, as Americans became further removed from the great conflicts of the 20th century, we’ve wondered whether the soul of Memorial Day has been sacrificed to a national obsession with recreation.

Today, however, the continuing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan remind us — some more intimately than others, to be sure — that this solemn holiday always will be much more than just a day at the beach.

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