Back in 1986 when I first started writing columns for the Chicago Sun-Times and serving on its editorial board, I was labeled Rupert Murdoch’s in-house, token liberal.

I wrote in favor of school integration, Community Development Block Grants, cleaner environment and issued one of the earlier warnings about global warming. While Republicans were praising President Reagan, I was making a stink about how he was financing much of his agenda by jacking up the national debt towards World War II levels.

But all that it took for my liberal label to disintegrate was writing an opinion piece responding to an op-ed, “”The conservative case for abortion.” My “liberal case against abortion” (reprinted here) prompted liberals to get out the tar and feathers.

Liberals already had started to move away from John F. Kennedy-type liberalism and into the strange reaches of the late ’60s hippy-dippy culture that changed everything and seeded American universities with today’s anti-liberals.

Anti-liberals? Let me count the ways:

Race relations.

Those of us who were around for the first salvos launched by President Dwight Eisenhower (yes, a Republican) against de jure school segregation have watched with sadness as “progressives” have dragged us back to those loathsome days of racial divisiveness.

Liberals then were on the Rev. Martin Luther King’s side, when he fought to end the Jim Crow standard for judging people. Not on the color of their skin, but on the “content of their character.”

Today, the same stink that arose from segregationists are enveloping “progressives. They want to divide everyone by race, from collegiate “safe spaces” and dorms exclusively for black students to the hoary theory that racism is inbred in white people. Today’s progressive have put their stamp of approval on the kind of separatism that we fought. It’s more than offensive.

Here’s just one recent example of progressive racism: “A Denver, Colorado elementary school has sparked outrage with a ‘segregated’ playtime for ‘families of color’ at its playground.”

The more I hear and see this crap, the more I see them as today’s Ross Barnetts, Lester Maddoxs, George Wallaces and Bull O’Connors.

Democracy

Oh sure, progressives (here including partisan Democrats) see the Trump era and the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol and anti-vote fraud legislation as evidence that the other side intends to wipe out democracy.

For certain, Trump’s hare-brained ideas and his desire to cancel the election scares the hell out of me. But the anti-democratic strains infecting progresses are just as scary.

Increasingly, progressives think (like some Republicans before them) that when they control the White House they can govern by executive fiat. Ignoring the Constitution’s Article I that endows Congress with sole law-making powers. Thankfully, the courts are working to disarm the president, in the case, for example, of his immigration executive orders.

For me, the scariest example of progressive authoritarianism is the insistence that parents’ have less of a role in the education and socialism of their children than educrats. School boards’ exclusion of parents and others from setting education politics is a violation of democratic principles at their most fundamental level.

Civil Rights

Once upon a time, the liberal American Civil Liberties Union was the strongest voice of liberal principles, going so far as to protect the rights of Nazis to demonstrate in Skokie, Illinois, the home of many Holocaust survivors.

No more. The ACLU has become the handmaiden of progressive ideologues, as it ignores the fight for the first amendment rights of free speech and religion. From social media to the college classroom, from the public square to independent media, progressives have declared themselves the ultimate truth-giver.

The examples of progressive muzzling of even slight disagreement are too many to list here. One stands out, though: When the New York Post investigators revealed damaging information about Hunter Biden’s corruption before the presidential election, the masters of social media kick the newspaper off their platforms. Never mind that the revelations were true.

Big Business

Go back to the early 1900s when progressives were fighting Big Business. Now watch how today’s progressives have betrayed that proud history by siding with and accepting mega donations from the Big Business likes of Google, Facebook and more. The tendrils of today’s Big Tech Business reach into virtually all aspects of our lives. Progressive still go only after the old targets, like Big Oil. Even for progressives, money from the mega-rich likes of George Soros, money still talks.

Foreign Policy

President Kennedy proclaimed in his inaugural address that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

Wow. Progressives now sound like Donald Trump, isolationists and libertarians who now dominate the debate by railing against “nation building” and trying to” impose democracy on people who aren’t ready for it.” We’ve given up thinking that liberty is a fundamental yearning of all mankind. That the world is better when freedom is enjoyed by everyone.

The 1900s were considered to be the America Century. The 21st Century won’t be. Instead, we crawling into a shell while bellicose China, Russia, Iran and others seek world domination. Only the despised neoconservative (“neocons”) like myself understand the importance of “the survival and success of liberty.”

So now, in our rush to flee the community of mankind we witness the tragedy that the Biden administration brought down on Afghanistan.

Science

Liberals long have proclaimed their dominance when it comes to science, as opposed to those–ugh–religionists whose lives are guided by something called “faith.”

So many progressives now, while calling the other side “anti-science,” now ironically have politicized science. From what corner came the most support or acquiescence to the wild predictions by some scientists at the start of the pandemic that 2.2 million would die from Covid-19? The same progressive corner that has ignored or ridiculed the actual science that challenges their love of lockdowns, shutting schools, ridiculous mask rules (e.g. wear them on the beach) and all kinds of mandates.

Even more enduring is the progressive catechism that demands no questioning of global warming. To apply standard scientific principles of skepticism, collegiality, honesty, objectivity, and openness is to be “anti-science.” A label that so ironically applies to the many progressives who tolerate no apostasy.

Compassion.

Yes, yes, I know that progressives are compassionate and that conservatives are cruel and hard-hearted. At least that’s the myth. Just how compassionate, then, are progressives and (moderate) Joe Biden when it comes to the humanitarian crisis on our southern border.

Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants have run the gauntlet. Children have been abandoned. Migrants have died of hunger and dehydration in the desert. They have been crowded into pens. Families have been separated. Oh, and there are the overdose deaths of so many Americans from the illegal drugs smuggled across the border.

For progressives, any attempt to end this suffering by enforcing immigration law is a sign of cruelty. Laughable, that. The real cruelty is the progressives’ denial of a crisis that’s so obvious. Do progressives see it, but chose to ignore it because do something about it violates their ideology of open borders?

Family

Speaking of how progressives deny science, let us turn to their view of marriage, single parenthood and absent fathers. As slavish fans of social science studies, progressives are blind to those that demonstrate the individual and societal costs harvested from the decay of the two-parent family and the critical role fathers. You might says that there’s a scientific…consensus.

If progressives were to acknowledge the consequences of that decay, they would have to also acknowledge their role in creating a culture that not only tolerates but encourages that decay. It goes as far back as the turbulent ’60s, when the culture that respected traditional mores began to unravel at the hands of those who considered themselves oh, so cool. As much as Millennials make fund of Baby Boomers (“Okay, Boomer) they should known that they are not just captive of the Boomers worldview, but nourish it with their wokeness.

I could go on, but any reader who has gotten this far gets the point. Progressives have abandoned so much (but not all) of what has made them such an important voice in our national discourses. They have turned to an autocratic, anti-democratic, anti-science and other viewpoints that make them illiberal.

Conservatives in some cases have filled that void. But not always. I think of myself as liberal in some respects (coming of age as I did during Kennedy’s presidency and before) but conservative in other respects. With age, I also discovered that neither side has singular possession of the truth.

Maybe it’s just time to retire all these labels and acknowledge that not all Americans march in lockstep. Nor should they.

It started with a recorded message from the school district. A voice informed me that my child’s school was on lockdown. There were no other details.

My child happened to be home from school that day. My fear jumped to thoughts of my sister who is a teacher at the school. Then I thought of other parents whose children were in school that day. Then I thought of my child who could have been in school that day.

There were no details.

I texted my sister. She is the only living member of my immediate family. I talk to her at least three times a day. No response.

My child came into the room. “The school is on lockdown,” she told me as she read texts from her friends inside the building. They had no idea what was happening.

“This is a Goddamn nightmare,” I thought as I tried to show no fear. My mind flashed forward to the evening news reports. Was my community about to be the next school shooting? Would students and teachers be victims again?

There are moments before and there are moments after. The line between them is as thin as a sliver.

I endured the moment before and the moment after when I waited to hear whether my other sister was alive years ago.

I was on summer break from college; 20 years old. The phone rang. It was my sister’s friend asking to speak to my mother. Something in her voice made me pause for a moment before I reacted.

“I need to talk to her now,” she said. “Lissa might be dead.”

I jumped up and told my mother to pick up the phone. My sister was in a car accident. “Lissa might be dead.”

My mother listened and then hung up the phone. We had to wait for her friend to call us back with more information.

The moment before the moment after.

Yesterday, before I knew whether my sister was alive or dead I was brought back to that moment. Tension crawled across my neck and shoulders like a spider. Suppressed trauma rose in my body.

My neck still hurts today.

A text from my sister let me know she was okay.

I’d been spared from having to worry about my child. That moment before and after would have brought me to my knees. I’ve overcome a good deal of trauma in my life. Thinking of it was like staring into an endless tunnel. I am grateful I didn’t have to enter.

And yet so many parents had to experience that horror. Some friends had spouses and children in that building. They waited unsure what was happening to their entire family.

Two students brought guns to school. That is what happened. A community stood still collectively holding our breath. Children experienced what children should never experience.

This moment before and this moment after were handled efficiently by administration, staff and the police department. There was no in between where lives were shattered and forever changed.

But trauma rose in the bodies of every person connected to yesterday’s events. My hope is that they acknowledge it and take good care.

You can find more of Tania’s writing at Buy Me A Coffee

Reading is fundamental. It’s the rock that is the base of education for our youth. For adults, its the best way to gain knowledge on a variety of subjects as well as being entertaining.

I’ve always been a voracious reader. I think I inherited that from my father who always seemed to be reading multiple books at a time. I’m more of a one book at a time type of guy, but I almost always have something to read.

With the holiday season almost here, work schedules will slow and there will be plenty of downtimes. There will be plenty of opportunities to pick up a book or two, or in my case six.

Here’s a quick synopsis of what I’m going to be trying to read over the next couple of weeks:

Renegades-Born in the USA is based on a podcast from musician Bruce Springsteen and former President Barack Obama. They have discussions about growing up, marriage, family, music, politics and just life in general. It’s an interesting back and forth between two American legends. Also, there are plenty of visuals which include photos, copies of speeches and original song lyrics to keep it fresh.

Betrayal-The Final Act of the Trump Show is the latest in a series of books about the dysfunction of the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency. This one is written by Jonathan Karl of ABC News. There are plenty of these types of books out now. If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all…although I admit that this is the third one I’ve read in the last couple of months. I’m apparently a glutton for punishment.

Game Misconduct-Hockey’s Toxic Culture and How to Fix it takes a look at all the things wrong with Hockey starting at the youth level and which continues at the professional ranks. If you followed what occurred recently with the Chicago Blackhawks, you’re familiar with some of these abuses. Written by Evan Moore, who used to write at this site and Jashvina Shah, it goes deeper into other abuses such as racism, sexism and the violence that are prevalent in hockey culture.

Led Zeppelin-The Biography is written by Bob Spitz who wrote a biography of The Beatles. He’s also done features on Keith Richards and Paul McCartney as well as helped manage the careers of Bruce Springsteen and Elton John. This book goes deep into the career of one of the greatest bands of the classic rock era.

The Lyrics-Part One: Paul McCartney has done a two-book diary of one hundred fifty-four of his songs. You get all the lyrics along with a story about each tune. It’s done alphabetically so part one is A-K. As a tease, I’ll have a review of both books in the early part of January 2022.

The Echoing Green-The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and The Shot Heard Around The World: If you’re a baseball fan you know about one of the most famous moments in the sport’s history. One of baseball’s great rivalries, The Dodgers and Giants, a playoff to determine the National League championship and the memorable broadcast call from Russ Hodges “The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant.” Written by Joshua Prager, this book looks at all of that plus gives details that haven’t come out before about the game and the relationship between Thomson and Branca.

So that’s my list. I doubt I’ll get through all of them by the end of this year, but I’m going to give it a go. What about you? What will you be reading this holiday?

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An HVAC system is vital in commercial settings as it maintains a comfortable indoor environment for all occupants. The best ones offer programmable and on-demand control of the relative humidity and temperature and provide air filtration to maximize health. The worst still cover the essentials: heating, cooling and ventilation. 

Whether you’re replacing your building’s HVAC or purchasing one for a new property, a commercial unit can be incredibly expensive, so you’ll want to pick the right one. To do so, you must consider a number of different factors and features. That way you end up with the correct size, model and type for your property. 

1. Outline Your Needs 

HVAC systems come in different types, sizes and strengths, so the selection process can be a bit daunting. Outlining your needs is the best way to narrow down your search and determine the best unit for your commercial property. Square footage, number of workers and ventilation code requirements will all come into play here.

For example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration advises that employers maintain relative humidity between 40% and 60% in the workplace. Most units can sustain these levels. However, a hospital might require tighter control over temperature and humidity, so they may need a more advanced system. 

2. Review Part Load Efficiency

Most contractors install HVACs that are designed to handle a full load and are way too big for daily operation. In this case, heating and cooling can become a major expense — not to mention a huge energy waster. That’s why it’s so important to choose a system that’s designed for part-load operation. 

Technological advancements have made HVACs most efficient at full or maximum loads. However, efficiency rates decline after the load falls below 90%, a scenario that’s much more frequent than a full load. If you purchase with efficiency in mind, you’ll end up with a system that can handle all but the most extreme conditions and is way more cost-effective. 

3. Consider the Cost 

To understand the true cost of an HVAC unit, you must consider two factors: initial investment and operating costs. Your initial investment will include the purchase price and installation cost. The operating costs include maintenance and monthly energy bills, both of which depend on everything from your filter’s MERV rating to the system’s energy efficiency.

Ultimately, upgrading, replacing or installing a unit will cost you thousands of dollars. However, it’s best to look at it as an investment. After all, plants can only filter out so many toxins, and HVACs are much more effective for improving ventilation. And just think of the energy savings. Even replacing a unit that’s just 10 years old can save you 20% to 40% in cooling costs during the summer months. 

4. Determine Its Reliability 

Reliability is essential to every HVAC unit, especially ones that serve commercial properties. Just imagine what might happen if the cooling system stopped working in a cheese shop or candy store. You need a trustworthy system that’ll hold up under pressure and require few fixes over the course of its life. 

Make sure yours is reliable by choosing a newer model that meets — and will continue to meet — ventilation requirements and air quality standards. Under average demand, most HVACs last 12 to 17 years. Ensure peak performance by conducting frequent inspections and performing preventative maintenance to avert serious disasters. Read customer reviews to understand just how reliable a system is before making your final purchase. 

Making Your HVAC More Efficient 

Once you’ve chosen an HVAC for your commercial property, you can always upgrade it by making small refinements. For instance, you could add CO2 sensors to meeting rooms to determine occupancy levels and adjust ventilation accordingly. Even the smallest changes could mean a huge difference in cost savings and the company’s bottom line. 

Regardless of how or when you make these small improvements, remember to switch out your HVAC filter to keep your office clean and your employees healthy. A safe work environment is priority number one, after all.