FOUR HONORED WITH THE 2015 FRIEND OF ILLINOIS COUNTY FAIR AWARD | Illinois Department of Agriculture

 

Springfield, IL - The Illinois Association of Agricultural Fairs (IAAF) presented their coveted "Friend of Illinois County Fair" award to Ray and Janice Swyear of Swyear Amusements of New Athens; Robert "Bob" Scherer of Boone County Fair; Jerry Jacobs of Carroll County Fair.

Each year the IAAF recognizes individuals who are outstanding Illinois county fair supporters, volunteer workers, or innovators in the industry that are respected by their colleagues and peers at their 104^th annual convention in Springfield.

Ray and Janice Swyear

Swyear Amusements of New Athens, Illinois, is celebrating its 57^th year in the amusement industry, making it one of the oldest Illinois based traveling amusement companies and one of the longest serving associate members of the IAAF. Ray Swyear Rides was started in 1958 by Ray and Janice when Ray purchased a small kiddie train ride. With the birth of three sons and a strong work ethic, Ray, Janice, and the family built what is known today as Swyear Amusements Inc.

With the passing of Ray in 1997 and Janice's retirement in 2013, the second and third generations have taken the helm. The Swyear Carnival is now operated by Ray's oldest son, Terry and wife Kathy, their son Adam and Terry's brother Roger and his wife Teresa; who all work in the day to day operations of the company. There are currently 19 members of the Swyear Family.

With the grandchildren's involvement, there is hope that Ray and Janice Swyear's legacy will continue on in the years ahead. With new purchase every year and a love for the industry, the show has grown stronger than ever. New rides, games, and food

concessions are upgraded every season, keeping current with the growing trends of the carnival industry.  Swyear Amusements play over 10 percent of the Illinois County Fairs and numerous festivals, homecomings and community events each year. They strive to present an attractive, well maintained Midway with a clean, wholesome environment befitting their family and the families across Illinois whom they serve.

Robert "Bob" Scherer

Robert "Bob" Scherer, of Genoa, has served on the Boone County Fair Board for 18 years. He is in charge of the free entertainment building and secures the entertainment for the building.

In addition, Scherer was instrumental in securing aluminum benches for the building. He is also the superintendent of the truck and tractor pulls and puts in countless hours overseeing the organizational needs and track preparation.

Scherer is an active board member and assists the other departments of the fair including the maintenance department where he helps put up portable fencing, trimming trees, running for parts or any job that needs to be done. He is always there to lend a helping hand.

Jerry Jacobs

Jerry Jacobs is a 26 year board member of the Carroll County Fair Association in Milledgeville. He is an exemplary board member and individual. Jerry is the first to volunteer for any project. He is the person with a smile on his face from morning to night. After two major commercial buildings were devastated so Jacobs was there, diligently working with other board members. He also assists with the boat and camper storage.

Jacobs has always put the needs of the county fair before his own. He passes his contagious love for the fair to his wife, children and grandchildren. He is passionate about maintaining the rural appeal of the county fair and works hard to share that passion with whomever he comes into contact with. Jerry has innovative ideas and actively solicits other organizations in the county to become involved with the fair.

He works with other area county fairs and drives his 1949 International H tractor in parades advertising the Carroll County Fair. He is an avid member of the Whiteside County Rabbit Association, the American Rabbit Breeders Association and the Illinois Rabbit Breeders Association. Jerry is also very active in his church and is a council member for the First Lutheran Church.

Over 3,500 county fair members and friends spent this past weekend selecting their entertainment and service needs for the 2015 county fair season. The 103 county fairs coordinate with the Illinois State Fair, August 13-23, 2015, and the Du Quoin State Fair, August 28^th through September 7th. Visit our website at www.illinoiscountyfairs.org.

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The Illinois Association of Agricultural Fairs is a non-profit corporation formed in 1910.  It serves 103 Illinois County Fairs and Expositions.  Its purpose is to provide guidelines, inform, and monitor and /or initiate legislation that promotes and assist Illinois County Fairs.  The association is volunteer based and is dedicated to the promotion of agriculture, development of youth, and as a showplace of American agriculture's traditions and future agricultural innovations

FOUR HONORED WITH THE 2015 FRIEND OF ILLINOIS COUNTY FAIR AWARD | Illinois Department of Agriculture

Diana Rauner to continue focus on education as IL's first lady

 

Just as Illinois’new governor is sworn in next month, the state will also be getting a new first lady. Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner’s wife Diana will fill a currently vacant position in the state’s Executive Mansion. The Chicago Tribune took a closer look at Diana Rauner’s career and life up to this point and examined how she might spend her time and energy while in Springfield.

Some clues might be found in the 53-year-old’s personality and interests, the Tribune says:

Friends describe Rauner as confident, genuine and family oriented — with a knack for both the social and the academic.

Rauner currently is president of the Ounce of Prevention Fund organization, which focuses on providing and advocating for early childhood education.

“By outside standards and markers, I think people would agree The Ounce is doing very, very well. That’s due to the leadership,” [previous president Harriet] Horwitz Meyer said of Rauner.

Her planned continued involvement there will mark a departure from the roles of previous Illinois first ladies.

From the Tribune:

After the inauguration, Rauner plans to continue in her role there — she takes no salary — and focus on the issue. It’s a more policy-oriented approach than some of her predecessors. Illinois’ last first lady, Patti Blagojevich, planted wildflowers and trees along roadways. During the 1990s, Brenda Edgar sent teddy bears to abused and neglected children taken into state custody.

Rauner’s interest in early education and literacy programs was first sparked during volunteer work in New York as a young adult. She had just started a job at Lehman Brothers and would tutor adults who struggled with reading, the Tribune reports.

Living in Manhattan on a Wall Street salary, she started volunteering at a halfway house tutoring illiterate ex-convicts. Her parents taught her that “grown-ups volunteer.”

“I would sit across the table from young men my age who couldn’t read. It was just actually devastating,” she said. “It set me on the path of thinking about educational inequities. It wasn’t hard to figure out the connections between not being able to read and being an ex-con.”

She was raised in a suburb of New York City, where she played tennis, and then went on to fence at Yale University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She also earned an MBA at Stanford University and a doctorate degree in developmental psychology from the University of Chicago. It was during her time there that her interest in early childhood education really expanded, reports the Tribune.

She studied early language development and worked as a researcher and project manager. She said she used her time as a graduate school student to make a big transition from the business world to more academic-focused work.

From the Tribune:

“I went back to grad school in part because school is the easiest way for me to access — it’s easy for me. And I’m intellectually really deeply interested in the development of human potential. So that was the easiest entree for me to make what was a radical shift,” she said. “I went from being in venture capital, private equity, having a fancy job and a fancy car and a fancy life to being a grad student. That was a little bit of a rough transition.”

It was during that time with a “fancy job” that she married Bruce Rauner, in 1993, after both had divorced previous spouses.

From the Tribune:

“We have a lot of the same kind of energy,” she said when asked what drew her to Bruce. “We’re both very strong-willed and strong and independent thinkers. We have a lot of energy, we’re both — we love being outdoors. We’re outdoors people.”

Diana Rauner had moved to Chicago and in 1988 begun working at GTC, a private equity firm that would later be known as GTCR after Bruce Rauner rose to partnership in the company.

But her work in the Ounce of Prevention Fund and early childhood research has forged a name for Diana Rauner “in her own right,” says a University of Chicago senior research fellow, Deborah Daro.

And during her husband’s sometimes-rough campaign for governor against Gov. Pat Quinn, Rauner made sure to let voters know that she and Bruce Rauner the Republican candidate didn’t always see eye to eye politically–she publicly acknowledged her Democratic roots, possibly as a way to convince other Democrats that it was okay to vote for Bruce Rauner.

From the Tribune:

She often talked about how Bruce Rauner and Pat Quinn were alike on social issues in a recruiting pitch to moderate voters. She called herself a “lifelong Democrat,” though the Tribune reported that her history of campaign donations skewed heavily Republican.

She appeared in a TV ad aimed at undecided voters who were worried about Bruce Rauner’s supposedly “anti-women” views, social policies and his vast amounts of wealth. She used the ad to use those same points to turn Rauner’s image into someone without a social agenda who wouldn’t be beholden to special interests and so could use his time and money to improving the state.

From the Tribune:

“I have never really understood this idea … that the size of one’s wallet indicates their empathy. The reality is this is the world that I spend my time in and I spend all of my day thinking about the education and well-being of young children in poverty and their families. I’m thinking about this all the time,” she said. “I’m incredibly lucky to be able to live a great life and live exactly the way I want to. And the way I want to work, the way I want to live, is to work 65 hours a week on the service of poor children and their families, so that’s what I do.”

And now, maybe partly because of her involvement in the campaign, Diana Rauner will be moving to Springfield with her husband as he takes on his governing duties. Rauner has said she will be involved in restoring the Executive Mansion with the couple’s own money, along with her work in education.

In Springfield, she said she’ll also have to get used to letting someone else cook her meals and continuing to stay in touch with her and the governor-elect‘s combined six adult children through text message and Skype.

And she says she plans to be fully engaged with what is going on in the state.

From the Tribune:

“I think the best thing I can do is just be partners with Bruce and help him in spending time with people and getting to know people and getting to know what their concerns are,” she said.

Diana Rauner to continue focus on education as IL's first lady

Rockford home sales hit second-highest mark in eight-year recovery | The Rock River Times

 

Rockford Area Realtors sold 4,032 homes and condos in Winnebago, Boone and Ogle counties in 2014, the second-highest total since the 2007 housing bubble burst, which then sent the nation into a recession.

Rockford market sales were down 49 homes in 2014, just a 1.2 percent drop from 4,081 properties sold in 2013.

Steve Bois, CEO, Rockford Area Realtors, said the local market could have hit a higher total in 2014 than 2013, “except for the polar vortex and the especially harsh winter early in the year, which crippled sales in the first quarter.

“This was a year of gradual continuing recovery,” Bois continued, “which, in many respects, is a good thing. It was fueled by significant improvements in the economic fundamentals for most Americans and historically low mortgage rates.”

The 2014 Rockford housing market showed steady advances over 2013, with significant improvement in the following key housing metrics:

• Prices up — The three-month average rolling price finished the year with six straight months of year-to-year increases. August through December average rolling prices reached their highest levels in the last five years.

• Foreclosures considerably down — 2014 saw fewer foreclosures and short sales in the composition of Rockford market transactions, from a high of 55 percent of sales in January 2014 to a low of 20 percent in August. In total, seven of 12 months had foreclosure levels below 30 percent.

• Less time to sell a home — It took 5.41 months to sell a home in December, matching the same level reached in March. This was the lowest absorption rate since the average home sold in just five months in April 2007.

Three major factors excite and somewhat concern Realtors heading into 2015: inventory levels, the economy and mortgage rates.

The Rockford housing market ended the year with the lowest monthly inventory in 12 years. Inventory levels were at 1,818 in December, the lowest since November 2003.

“One concern is that the local housing market may not meet the demand forecasted due to regional industrial growth,” Bois remarked. “What happens when the announced expansions hit our region in the near future? We need inventory to help meet that demand.”

The improving economy will also play a major role in the local housing market in 2015.

Unemployment dropped to 5.6 percent in December with nearly 3 million jobs created in 2015, the best job performance since 1999.

“Economists are predicting the economy will come closer to full employment in 2015 and that average wages will finally start rising,” Bois said. “This would lead to more folks feeling secure enough in their job situations to become first-time homebuyers.”

Mortgage rates continue to be a major positive factor in spurring on sales (especially among first-time buyers), but may go up in 2015. The 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.66 percent for the week ending Jan. 15, down from 3.73 percent the previous week and 4.41 percent a year ago. This is the lowest level since the week ending May 23, 2013.

However, rate projections from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the National Association of Realtors and the Mortgage Banking Association predict a rise in the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage to an average 4.28 percent in first quarter, 4.5 percent in second quarter, 4.78 percent in third quarter and 4.98 percent at year’s end.

“Interest rates will inch up,” Bois said, “but on the other hand, even if we end up at 4.5 percent, that is still a great interest rate.”

Bois said a significant housing development in 2014 was the growing understanding of housing as a major driver of the economic rebound.

“Congress has realized how critical all aspects of housing are to the overall health of the economy,” Bois said. “If the government takes any steps that affect housing this year, they should do so gingerly.”

Following are Rockford market home sales by year:

2014 — 4,032

2013 — 4,081

2012 — 3,815

2011 — 3,213

2010 — 3,341

2009 — 3,642

2008 — 3,978

2007 — 5,844

Posted Jan. 16, 2015

Rockford home sales hit second-highest mark in eight-year recovery | The Rock River Times

Piatak named Rockford Institute president | The Rock River Times

 

After several months of successful work as vice president, Thomas Piatak has been named president of The Rockford Institute by the Institute’s Board of Directors. Former President Thomas Fleming will continue to guide the Institute’s flagship publication as editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Piatak has been writing for Chronicles since 2001 and speaking at Institute functions on a variety of topics, including immigration, the sanctity of life, the importance of U.S. manufacturing, and conservative politics. Serving as vice president over the latter half of 2014, he raised the profile of Chronicles, building strong relationships with new donors and writers for the magazine — work that he will continue as he takes the Institute’s helm.

“The board is profoundly grateful to Thomas Fleming for his 17 years of exemplary service as president of The Rockford Institute, and for his continued devotion to our peerless magazine, which, under his tireless direction, has been the vanguard of conservatism,” said Rockford Institute Board Chairman Raymond Welder. “Though filling his shoes seems an impossible task, Thomas Piatak, we are confident, will prove a worthy successor.”

Piatak earned his bachelor’s degree from Case Western Reserve University, where he graduated summa cum laude with honors in history. He received his law degree from the University of Michigan, where he graduated cum laude. His wife, Valerie, serves as a finance director for a non-profit organization.

Piatak served as Pat Buchanan’s campaign chairman in Ohio during the 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns and also served as the executive director of The American Cause, a non-profit organization of which Buchanan was chairman. In college, Piatak served as president of the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom and student representative of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and in law school he was active in the Federalist Society and later headed the lawyers’ chapter of the Society in Cleveland.

Before joining the Institute, Piatak practiced labor and employment law in his hometown of Cleveland at Frantz Ward, whose labor and employment practice is ranked in the top tier by Chambers USA. Piatak has also been a partner at Arter & Hadden and Baker Hostetler.

Piatak is confident The Rockford Institute and its flagship monthly magazine and website are poised for significant growth and an expansion of the uniquely conservative influence that Chronicles has wielded for nearly 40 years.

“It is a great honor to succeed Thomas Fleming as president of The Rockford Institute,” said Piatak. “The Rockford Institute and Chronicles have remained true to their conservative principles. My goal is to make this excellent work known to a wider audience.”

Since 1976, The Rockford Institute has carried out its mission of defending and advancing “the principles of a free society.” Founded in the year of the nation’s bicentennial celebration, the Institute has worked to preserve the institutions of the Christian West: the family, the church, and the rule of law; private property, free enterprise, and moral discipline; high standards of learning, art and literature.

Posted Jan. 19, 2015

Piatak named Rockford Institute president | The Rock River Times

GOP divided over using budget process on health care law - Yahoo News

 

At issue is an arcane process known as budget reconciliation. It's the only filibuster-proof option available to Republicans, who control the Senate with 54 seats but must still muster 60 votes to pass other legislation.

Senate precedents limit the number of reconciliation bills — one for taxes, one for spending and one to raise the government's borrowing cap — and so a major debate has begun among Republicans over what to put in it.

Hard-line conservatives want to use the process to force a showdown with Obama over the law.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told a Heritage Foundation gathering of conservatives last week that Republicans should "use every procedural tool available, including reconciliation, to repeal Obamacare with 51 votes in the Senate."

That's a view shared by conservative groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund and Heritage Action, and prominent voices on the right like Erick Erickson, publisher of the Redstate.com conservative blog.

"It's time to stop pussy-footing around with excuses and half-assed attempts at partial repeal, and get serious," Erickson wrote last week. "Make Obama veto the repeal of his signature legislation."

Pragmatic voices in the GOP, however, say the certainty of an Obama veto effectively means that Republicans would be wasting the opportunity given them under special budget rules that limit debate and can guarantee delivery of legislation to Obama.

"I'd like to get tax reform done. I think we could do infrastructure in that process. And I think that's something that could actually get enacted," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Commerce committee. "I mean we're going to have a lot of Obamacare votes one way or the other."

A reconciliation measure can only advance after the House and Senate have agreed upon a measure called a budget resolution, which sets broad parameters for spending, revenues and curbs to benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Democrats used reconciliation to help pass Obama's health care plan. And Bill Clinton and Republicans controlling Congress used it in 1997 to advance a balanced budget bill. Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich in 1995, tried to use it to pass a bitterly partisan 1995 balanced budget plan Clinton vetoed. Even though their budget resolution is likely to project a balanced federal ledger over the coming 10 years, Republicans are signaling they're not willing to do a party-line replay of their 1995 experience.

"The only way to do entitlement eligibility changes is on a bipartisan basis," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Thursday at a news conference at a GOP issues retreat in Hershey, Pa. "We do not intend to be offering unilateral, one party-only entitlement eligibility changes."

Republicans devoted a session at the retreat to the topic of reconciliation. A decision on what to do with it appears a ways off.

"At some point we'll decide if we're going to have reconciliation and if we do, we'll make some decision much later on," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters last week.

The view of some pragmatists is that reconciliation should be used to get a result that might get signed into law or as leverage to make Obama more uncomfortable than he would be in vetoing an Obamacare repeal measure. And some lawmakers think that an upcoming Supreme Court ruling could unravel much of the law, making them wary of wasting reconciliation on the health care law.

"It should be things like that that actually improve the long-term fiscal stability of the country and maybe provide us some revenues for things where we can agree, like infrastructure," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.

A telling episode last fall illustrates the passion over the issue.

McConnell told Fox News that repealing Obama's health care plan would "take 60 votes in the Senate .... and it would take a presidential signature." This sparked a mini-eruption on the right that prompted McConnell's office to release a statement promising to use budget reconciliation to repeal the law.

GOP divided over using budget process on health care law - Yahoo News

Supreme Court to Decide Whether Same-Sex Couples Nationwide Can Marry

 

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether all 50 states must allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. The court’s announcement made it likely that it would resolve one of the great civil rights questions of the age before its current term ends in June.

The justices ducked the issue in October, refusing to hear appeals from rulings allowing same-sex marriage in five states. That surprise action delivered a tacit victory for gay rights, immediately expanding the number of states with same-sex marriage to 24 from 19, along with the District of Columbia.

Largely as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s failure to act in October, the number of states allowing same-sex marriage has since grown to 36, and more than 70 percent of Americans live in places where gay couples can marry.

 

Read more by clicking on the following:  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/us/supreme-court-to-decide-whether-gays-nationwide-can-marry.html?emc=edit_na_20150116&nlid=53444314&_r=0

2014 Was Hottest Year on Record, Surpassing 2010 - NYTimes.com

By JUSTIN GILLISJAN. 16, 2015

Last year was the hottest in earth’s recorded history, scientists reported on Friday, underscoring scientific warnings about the risks of runaway emissions and undermining claims by climate-change contrarians that global warming had somehow stopped.

Extreme heat blanketed Alaska and much of the western United States last year. Several European countries set temperature records. And the ocean surface was unusually warm virtually everywhere except around Antarctica, the scientists said, providing the energy that fueled damaging Pacific storms.

In the annals of climatology, 2014 now surpasses 2010 as the warmest year in a global temperature record that stretches back to 1880. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997, a reflection of the relentless planetary warming that scientists say is a consequence of human emissions and poses profound long-term risks to civilization and to the natural world.

Of the large inhabited land areas, only the eastern half of the United States recorded below-average temperatures in 2014, a sort of mirror image of the unusual heat in the West. Some experts think the stuck-in-place weather pattern that produced those extremes in the United States is itself an indirect consequence of the release of greenhouse gases, though that is not proven.

Several scientists said the most remarkable thing about the 2014 record was that it occurred in a year that did not feature El Niño, a large-scale weather pattern in which the ocean dumps an enormous amount of heat into the atmosphere.

Longstanding claims by climate-change skeptics that global warming has stopped, seized on by politicians in Washington to justify inaction on emissions, depend on a particular starting year: 1998, when an unusually powerful El Niño produced the hottest year of the 20th century.

With the continued heating of the atmosphere and the surface of the ocean, 1998 is now being surpassed every four or five years, with 2014 being the first time that has happened in a year featuring no real El Niño pattern. Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said the next time a strong El Niño occurs, it is likely to blow away all temperature records.

Read more by clicking on the following:  2014 Was Hottest Year on Record, Surpassing 2010 - NYTimes.com