"My job is to show folks there's a lot of good music in this world, and if used right it may help to save the planet." - Pete Seeger

"The world will be saved by people fighting for their homes. Homes will be saved by people who fight for the world." - Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger, the activist/singer/songwriter who tried to change the world with every note he uttered, died January 27 at age 94, and we are all the poorer for it.

A longtime friend whose letters I treasured for their hand-drawn embellishments and whose words of encouragement urged me to keep on fighting, Seeger belonged to a dying breed of Americans who cared more about making a difference using whatever resources were available to them than luxuriating in creature comforts and basking in the glow of their greatness.

Long before the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix or Bob Dylan, there was Pete Seeger, a lone ranger fighting injustice with little more than a five-string banjo in hand and a gift for putting words to music. Unarguably one of the most important musical influences of the 20th Century, Seeger helped to lay the foundation for American protest music, singing out about the plight of everyday working folks and urging listeners to political and social activism.

Who do you think is responsible for the performance of elected representatives and the thousands of agencies/bureaucracies throughout local, state, and federal government? Who do you think is responsible for protecting your unalienable rights?

Perhaps it is you? I bristle at the endless complaining about politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate leaders' under-performance, especially when coupled with unreasonable expectations that those folks make all the changes necessary to relieve our discontent.

Why on Earth should they when we choose not to do our own part in America's governance? The old adage "Labor respects what management inspects" is no less true for We the People. We are the managers, and in today's political and civic environment, the huge majority of us completely abdicate our personal duties and responsibilities required to live in a free and open society.

If Bruce Rauner manages to successfully back away from his recently unearthed statement from December that he favored reducing the state's minimum wage by a dollar an hour, he will have dodged a very serious political bullet.

According to a new Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll, the idea is absolutely hated in Illinois. Asked if they would be "more likely or less likely to vote for a gubernatorial candidate who supports lowering the state's minimum wage to the national rate of $7.25 an hour," a whopping 79 percent said they'd be less likely. That's definitely a result that could move actual votes on Election Day, particularly in the context of the messenger - a hugely wealthy political unknown whose advertising campaign is trying hard to turn him into a "regular guy."

Women were 84 percent less likely and men were 73 percent less likely to vote for a candidate who wanted to lower the minimum wage by a buck an hour, according to the poll taken January 8 of 1,135 likely voters with a margin of error of 3.1 percent. Democrats were 90 percent less likely, while independents were 77 percent less likely, and even Republicans were 63 percent less likely to vote for such a candidate.

On December 19, the Scott County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to adopt the following language for the information-technology (IT) policy for county staff: "The IT Department will maintain a copy of all e-mails sent or received for a period of three years from the date in which they are sent or received. Records may be retained for a longer time period if it is subject to a litigation hold."

A day earlier, I published an open letter to the board asking it to defer action. (See sidebar.) At the meeting, I was allowed to address the board prior to the vote, and the 14-minute audio recording of that exchange is available below.

Prior to the meeting, I had phone conversations with Chair Larry Minard and supervisors William P. Cusack and Carol T. Earnhardt. On these calls, it was explained to me that "all the important e-mails will be saved." When asked about details - such as who will be determining what e-mails are important - the answers varied from department heads to staff to one or two county attorneys. When pressed what the criteria were for retention past three years, the answers included "We just have to trust staff to know what to do" to "The frivolous e-mails will go." The policies of the State of Iowa and the City of Davenport were cited several times in these phone calls and at the meeting, but no particulars were given. The party line was that these entities destroy old e-mails much sooner than the county was proposing.