Today marks the 4-year anniversary of the December 1st, 2018 EF-3 tornado which ravaged our community. 

A special thank you to Missions For Taylorville who undertook the monumental task of trying to rebuild our community. You have done an awesome job. 

The City has received much needed financial support from the Illinois Emergency Management Agency in a check for $500,000. Thank you to Deputy Governor Manar and Governor Pritzker for this help. 

As we move forward, I am optimistic with the revitalization of downtown. A special thank you to DowntownTaylorville.org and Small Town Taylorville. Taylorville will be looking better than ever before. 

On December 1st, I ask that at 5:15 p.m. everyone in our community observe a moment of silence and a special thank you to our former Fire Chief Mike Crews for having our community prepared. 

Together we remain Taylorville Strong!

Mayor Bruce Barry

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Posted November 20, 2022

Dear Editor:

Thank God for freedom of speech and press. It became a great American institution in
December 1791! Those founding fathers called it the First Amendment to our Constructional
Republic because they recognized a Biblical pattern of nations who acknowledged their Creator.
If you cannot trust that legacy where do you look for a better one? Some call America a grand
experiment probably to satisfy the sciences which abound in a free nation. Like most nations in
history there comes confusion and rebellion. Many no longer exist. We can do without repeating
that history out of ignorance or conquest.

This writer has lived long enough to see such patterns and their consequences. The “rancor and
division in our country” stated in your editorial are such consequences. Listening to so much
balderdash from the news media, not only do they claim it but promote it. News and history
should be clues to a future worth living. Those pioneers of 1620 truly applied their convictions
and established a colony of grateful people on the east coast. In 1621 those who survived their
first year in a new country celebrated. We know it as Thanksgiving and is among the Holydays
celebrated in America. Yes, it is Holyday in place of Holiday; an actual USA Federal day of
observation. A review of President George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of October
03, 1789 should suffice. Dare we not forget.

Americans will celebrate again on November 24 a very honorable feast called Thanksgiving, in
spite of the commercialism and competing distractions of media. Families will make the effort to
meet together and enjoy great times and meals. Is once a year enough for citizens in a free nation
to Thank God for another year of life and opportunity? Probably not but it continues as a great
tradition. Even though we have not visited all 50 States it is amazing to live here with the
opportunities taken for granted.

Back in the 1990s as we drove across the plains I finally
recognized “for amber waves of grain” from a memorable song. The winds were literally waving
the grain fields around in the open plains. Thanks to Katherine Lee Bates who was overwhelmed
and inspired in the Rocky Mountains in the summer of 1893 and subsequently (1913) produced
“America the Beautiful” and another permanent memory among so many available in America.
Let’s keep it that way!

Sincerely,

Ernie & Ruth Poani
Edinburg, IL 62531
 

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Posted November 14, 2022

Dear Editor:

I would like to thank the voters of Christian County for their support.

I am very humbled to be re-elected to another 4-year term as Sheriff of Christian County. The election was a result of all the great work done by the employees of the Sheriff's Office. From the deputies, who do an excellent job of protecting and serving the public.

To the dispatchers, who receive all the emergency calls in a calm and professional matter. To the correctional officers, who oversee individuals who are incarcerated awaiting trial. To the court security officers, who protect everyone at the court house.

To the clerical staff members, who handle all the civil process paper work that needs to be served. It is an honor to work with such great employees, and I look forward to continue serving the wonderful citizens of Christian County.

Bruce Kettelkamp

Sheriff

Christian County

STATION EDITORIAL

Posted November 5, 2022

This is a station editorial, I'm Randal J. Miller, station president.  Well, it's the holiday season...the season of thanks for our many blessings and for the birth of Jesus Christ.  

Despite another year of rancor and division in our country, we still live in the greatest country in the world, where we can do and say just about anything as long as we follow the rule of law.  Not many countries have the freedoms we do and many times we don't stop and think about it.

Time marches on for us all.  I thank God for my faith, my family, and for the extended family I have in every one of you, our listeners.  

I'll be celebrating 50 years in the radio business I love, in 2023.  

I've been blessed to have been part of the Taylorville-Shelbyville-Pana communities with our Taylorville cluster of stations the past 30 years, and 15 years in our Clinton-Monticello-Lincoln markets.

Our 2 legacy stations this year celebrated anniversaries, too.  WTIM in Taylorville threw a party in May with the Greater Taylorville Chamber of Commerce to honor that station's 70th anniversary, and WHOW in Clinton is celebrating 75 years of service with a fun evening as well.

While all of us have challenges every day, it's important to stop, reflect, and be thankful for all that God has given each of us.

May you and your family have a most blessed holiday season, and may the love we share this time of year extend into the new year ahead.

Quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from the poem "The Harvest Moon":  
"It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!" 

That's our opinion, we welcome yours.  Our e-mail address is editorial@randyradio.com.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Posted November 5, 2022

Dear Editor:

Thank you for exposing more of the reckless actions of the Illinois General Assembly (IGA) and our wonderful Governor J.B.Pritzker. Since 2000 the security of ballot Elections has been at risk but our first Selected president succeeded in November 2020. It will continue as long as the diabolical wave ebbs and tides wash away American history and legacy. Illinois has a similar legacy and needs to retreat from immorality, socialism and taxation out of control. Unfortunately the Illinois Constitution is under assault again. Look carefully at the second long sentence of text in proposed IL Constitutional amendment:

(ILCON Art. I, Sec. 25 new) SECTION 25. WORKERS’ RIGHTS (a) Employees shall have the fundamental right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of negotiating wages, hours, and working conditions, and to protect their economic welfare and safety at work. No law shall be passed that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively over their wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment and work place safety, including any law or ordinance that prohibits the execution or application of agreements between employers and labor organizations that represent employees requiring membership in an organization as a condition of employment.

Organized labor and unions have their place but this is a major power plot IF the Amendment is passed. The Right to Work Law is targeted as well and could be eliminated or overridden. Non union jobs might become obsolete. More citizens and companies will migrate out of Illinois.

And education is reaching the limits of unbound behavior, from the sand pile until college indebtedness (K-12)! Remember when ‘conduct’ was a measure of responsibility and even morality. Well our wonderful Governor J.B Pritzker & IGA have been busy passing laws to re-imagine what and why children are taught in schools. Adolescent children became targets in the 1960s but Kindergarten and elementary children are the contemporary harvest.

American culture has rejected a moral compass, especially from a Biblical standard. The Book of Leviticus especially Chapter 18 clearly describes how immoral our culture has become. You may be surprised how accurate and overboard ‘conduct’ is now. Compare that with some reviews of JB’s obsessions from just a few websites

(some radical ABCs);

A https://hlerk.com/governor-signs-two-bills-updating-sex-education-standards-for-k-12-schools/

B https://will.illinois.edu/news/story/pritzker-signs-bill-requiring-illinois-schools-teach-lgbt-history

C https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-money-behind-the-transgender-movement/

D https://www.dailywire.com/news/illinois-gov-pritzker-billionaire-family-at-forefront-of-radical-gender-ideology-push-report

E https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers

Voting on Tuesday November 08, 2022 is vitally important to the future of Illinois.

Ernie & Ruth Poani

Edinburg, IL 62531

STATION EDITORIAL

Posted November 1, 2022

This is a station editorial, I’m Randal J. Miller, station president.  Well, the mid-term election is just days away, and while the statewide office campaign rhretoric is flying, Illinois Democrats have already stacked the deck in their favor long before Election Day.

According to some lobbyists I know in the State House, the General Assembly passed 2 bills basically assuring Democrats continued control of state government.  The first was a bill mailing ballots to all who voted Democratic in the 2020 general election.  But, my sources say just Democratic voters received the mail in ballots.

Secondly, you and I are the recipients of a classic con job.  We have some of the highest property and income taxes in the country.  So, to make us feel good about voting for the controlling party, the General Assembly in kahoots with Governor Pritzker, voted to mail out state rebate checks just ahead of the general election.  My wife and I got ours on Halloween October 31st, 9 days before the election.  How convenient.

Any Republican running for statewide office, and most Republicans running for state rep or state senate districts, don’t have a chance at being elected, except if they were granted the privilege of staying in office by the Democrats when they re-drew the maps back in 2020.

It’s all about control.  It’s a shell game.  And, we’re being played as suckers by the Democrats running state government.

Will my wife and I cash that state rebate check?  Sure.  It’s my money.  But, I’d rather they NOT take my money to begin with, than to tax me to death and then give just a pittence of it back to me.  That’s what I call an insult.

Illinois residents are moving by the thousands to states that tax less and their state governments are more transparent.  Sadly, that transparency ain’t happenin’ here anytime soon.

That’s our opinion, we welcome yours.  Our e-mail address is editorial@randyradio.com.