Peoria Pundit

About 20 years ago, I saw Johnny Carson interview a women who polished
hardened bird droppings and made it into jewellery. It looked pretty and
she apparently made a living at it.

But I couldn’t help but think that no matter how much she polished it,
it was still birth poop.

Substance, not style, is what matters most.

On a completely unrelated note — and I don’t know why I am bringing it
up — Ricky West is redesigning his template again
.

Seriously, Ricky, it looks fine. Just keep up the quality of the posts.

There is no reason to applaud the resolution to the city’s fiscal crisis.

We’re still short one fire engine folks.

Journal Star: All fire stations to stay open

The nearly six-month battle over how to cut the Peoria Fire Department budget ended Monday with a decision to sideline one
engine and relocate one truck, leaving all stations open and staffed.

A firefighters’ union representative expressed mixed emotions over
the move, scheduled to take effect Thursday, while the fire chief
and city manager said the arrangement best suits the City Council’s
mandate to cut $600,000.

Station 3, located at 1204 W. Armstrong Ave., will lose its truck
but keep its engine under the deal. The truck will be moved to
Station 11, 1025 W. Florence Ave., which will lose its engine.

“This will permit us to keep all the stations opened and staffed,”
City Manager Randy Oliver announced during a press conference Monday.

Since July, the City Council has struggled with how to cut $600,000
- exactly the amount needed to hire 11 firefighters or staff one
fire station. For months now, the city had been staffing Fire
Station 11 by paying overtime.

Peoria has nearly doubled in geographic area, yet it being served by the same number of firefighters, engines and trucks.

This is not a good thing. Although this solution is superior to closing a fire station in any part of the city, it it vastly inferior to what should have been done: Cut spending on non-essential, yet politically popular spending.

The absolute perfect solution would have been to non make commitments on economic development spending that for the past 20 years has failed to generate true economic development. If the Civic Center, Campustown, MidTown Plaza, RecPlex, Riverfront, etc. had actually developed our economy we would have a better economy.

But we’re in debt.

Something’s got to give.

And it isn’t essential services.

? /Journal Star/: League: End city election panel, cost

/The League of Women Voters filed petitions Monday to place a
referendum on the March 16 ballot asking voters to abolish the city
of Peoria’s Election Commission.

The group collected 1,300 signatures – 300 more than required – to
place the question, “Do you reject City Election Law?” on the
ballot. If a majority of city of Peoria voters approve the measure,
city and county election offices will be combined.

“Once (registered voters) heard it would not only simplify the
election process, be more efficient and save $200,000 per year, they
wanted to sign (the petition),” League President Cheryl Budzinski
said Tuesday.

If the referendum passes, the County Clerk’s Office would serve as
the central location for year-round election work, including voter
registration, supervision of polling places and the training of
election judges. The League estimates such action would save
taxpayers $200,000 annually./

I’m all for saving money.

But, I don’t like this idea.

I vote in the city and it runs smoothly. I know people who vote in
county-run precincts. They don’t run very smoothly. I have no confidence
that the county will be able to absorb the responsibility.

$200,000 is a small price to pay for elections that aren’t disputed.

Since his appointment in U.S.
Attorney in 2001, Patrick Fitzgerald has generated a bunch of
indictments and investigation against corrupt politicians of both
political persuasions. Right now, he prosecuting our former governor for selling favors in the infamous license for bribes scandal.

Here is a video of Fitz announcing the indictment of George Ryan. And the Chicago
Tribune has this list of Fitzgerald-related articles and commentary.
Read more »

I have three days off in a row. Wonderful news, right?

WRONG!

*First:* My car broke down over the weekend, and the cost of repair is
more than the car is worth.

So, I spent Monday visiting used car lots looking for a suitable
replacement. My ironclad policy is that I never buy new cars. Ever. New
cars are a sucker’s bet. The car that broke down was purchased used at
less than 100,000 miles (I can’t recall the exact mileage) and when it
gave up the ghost, it had nearly 250,000 miles. That’s more than 100,000
miles of usage — more than most people get out of a new car before it
is sold. Including the original cost and original repair, I spent far
less on it that I would have spent on a new car, including whatever
trade-in value I could have gotten for it.

I have my eye on a very nice 1991 Buick with slightly more than 100,000
miles and I plan to get another two or three winters out of it. I’ll
have enough for a downpayment and license and title on Friday.

*Second:* I spent whatever remaining free time trying to get a computer
– which I have networked to my main computer — to be able to send
passwords through a wireless connection so I and other family members
can access servers that required password authentication. SBC Yahoo
provides great technical support — as long as the problem can be solved
by deleting cookies, deleting files or changing security settings in
Internet Explorer. Anything else, it takes at least four phone calls.

I finally got it to work after an hour on the phone with a Level 2
technician. It took that long to convince the guy that the problem was
with the actual wireless connection, not a problem with drivers or IE.
All he did was change my encryption setting and suddenly, I can connect
to any mail and news server and access Web mail.

So what happened next? I walk past the PC in question at about 10 p.m.
and there’s a scary-looking message — black letters on white background
– saying that the computer doesn’t have enough resources to perform an
unspecified function. I close the message and the computer restarts.

It turns out that I suddenly have lost all of my drivers. I try to use
plug and play to get the drivers back, but I keep getting a message to
reinsert my Windows 98 SE disc, but guess what? The CD-ROM drive doesn’t
work because it doesn’t have a driver!

After much tinkering, I get that to work and I’d say about half the
other drivers still don’t work. One of then is the new driver for the
USB wireless adapter that I spent an hour getting installed over the
phone today. The mouse also doesn’t work.

I gave up at midnight. I may have to reload Windows 98 tomorrow. It’s
not like I have anything else to do, /because I can’t go anywhere
without my car!/

*Third:* I went to the main computer and access my mail and this site,
only to discover that my remote host has been down and it stayed down
for more than an hour.

So that’s why millions of my loyal readers — perhaps it’s a dozen and a
half — haven’t been able to access Peoria Pundit.

And that’s why I’m too stressed to sleep on /my friggin’ day off./

? MetroTimes: News lite

/This column has heard that at least a few Detroit News reporters
are unhappy with the paper?s ?Real Life, Real News? initiative.
There are two problems with the effort launched in October, gripe
our sources. One is that the policy puts too much emphasis on soft
features, taking valuable resources and space away from hard news.
The other worry is that _attention may be increasingly shifting
toward the suburbs_, shortchanging Detroit./

*Snort* Tell me about it.

This guy , in a response to a comment
to his original post
about Website
design, made this comment

about my post here .

/I just can’t stomach Peoria Pundit’s content, though. The fact that
he can advocate development of low-yield nukes betrays such a
staggering ignorance of the lessons of history I have to wonder
where he purchased his journalism degree. /

Hrumph!

I don’t want to get into a flame-war in someone else’s comments box (or
perhaps I do) but I just wanted to mention here that my response was
*ahem* absolutely brilliant. I even invoked Robert Heinlein, which sort
of settles arguments, as far as I am concerned, anyway.

I’m sorry, but any guy who titles his Website “How To Save The World” is
just begging for a comedown.

Go read it.

Andrew Cline nails it
this commentary of a Washington Post report
on
the Dean campaign that focuses on the message delivery, not on the
message itself.

/If we’re talking political coverage as entertainment, this outlines
the central narrative of the Dean campaign as political insiders see
it, or as political insiders want the public to see it. But notice
that with the exception of questions about Dean’s experience, none
of these insider questions are politically useful. What does Dean’s
ability to win votes in the South have to do with the cost of health
care, problems in education, security at home and abroad, or the
environment?

Exactly what information are voters using to make up their minds?/

We’ve got to stop focusing on the politics and start focusing on the
governance. Granted, how a candidate campaigns for office reveals much
about their character and their ability to handle stress. But we’ve got
start giving readers an idea of what these people would do when in
office. And we’ve got to start doing it earlier in the process, before
the “frontrunners” have been anointed and the others discarded as
irrelevant.

In other words, we’ve got to stop writing articles designed to impress
each other and start reporting on the boring stuff unrelated to who’s
got the momentum, who’s made the latest overblown faux pass.

The news media needs to — dare I say it? — become more objective.

Mr. DiMera supplies three — or is
that six? — very good reasons
.

Not safe for work.

Jeff Jarvis is one of the best bloggers out there.

But he gets it wrong
when he writes
about objectivity.

/You see, for years and years, it was assumed that American TV
viewers wanted really dumb sitcoms because that’s all that networks
fed them and that’s all they watched. But when, at long last,
viewers were given quality choices — Cosby (in his early years
only), Hill St. Blues, Cheers — they watched the quality shows.
News consumers in the U.S. have been fed only attempts at
impartiality or objectivity. But now they have choices; they can
watch FoxNews and read the Guardian and click on weblogs — and they
do. So perhaps all along, that’s what news consumers have wanted:
not dull attempts at impartiality but perspective honestly revealed,
bias admitted, opinion included./

Also, on the topic of bias being a “non-issue” in most reporting:

/[W]hen I reported on a 4 a.m. fire on the midnight shift at the
Tribune years ago, I had no bias; I was concerned only with getting
the facts and quotes and lead right. What bias could there be in a
fire? Hot is hot.
/

Bias not an issue in “workaday” reporting? Lets look at a fictional
example or two or three:

*Edna Smith stood with tears running down her face as her home and
possessions went up in flames late Tuesday night.
The mother of three was helpless as she waited for the arrival of
firefighters to her modest, one story home was destroyed. When
firefighters finally arrived, the home was a complete loss.
*

Or:

*Firefighters braved subzero temperatures to prevent a house fire
from spreading to nearby homes Tuesday.
The home belonging to Edna Smith in the 2500 block of Northeast
Adams Street was a complete loss. There were no injuries.*

How about:

*A fire late Tuesday destroyed a home on the city’s North Side. The
home of Edna Smith, 2525 NE Adams, was a complete loss. Firefighters
arrived at the scene to find the home completely engulfed in flames.
Two crews fought the blaze for more than one hour. The Weather
Bureau reported that temperatures were 20 degrees below zero at the
time of the fire, which did not spread to nearby homes in the
densely packed neighborhood. *

One “workaday” story is biased against firefighters, the other makes
them look like supermen and the other tells the basic facts.

Avoiding bias in everyday reporting isn’t as easy as Jeff writes.

Jeff, like most other press critics, misses the point about media bias.
Namely, he thinks that the problem is *bias*. It isn’t. The problem is
*objectivity*. Bias is a mindset. Objectivity is a process. Everyone has
biases. It can’t be helped. But objectivity can be taught and standardized.

It requires that reporters make contact with and quote multiple sources
from differing perspectives, preferably more than a simple pro and con
position. It requires verifying facts. It requires reporting on the
possible biases of the people who are giving you the information you are
using. It requires the use of anonymous sources only when on-the-record
sources cannot provide the information.

It requires that reporters make more than one perfunctory,
late-in-the-day phone call to the subject of tough reporting. It means
that if the source just isn’t returning messages, you go and knock on
his door at home.

It requires editors to actually supervise their reporters and make them
do these things. It requires that staff editors have the power to kill a
story that doesn’t pass muster if the reporter hasn’t done all the work
he is supposed to do and even if it means an editor higher up the food
chain might get upset at his having done so.

The culture within the news organization has to value objectivity more
than it values filling the newshole or getting two bylines a day out of
each member of its staff.

It means that editors have to send out reporters to ask questions, not
get the quotes that support a thesis.

Objectivity is hard work. It’s also not as much fun as writing stories
that back up your own view of the world.

That’s why a lot of people don’t do it. And it is *because* objectivity
is so rare and precious it needs to be encouraged, and not discouraged.

Opinions are like rectums. Everyone has one.

They need honest reporting. And that is accomplished by giving people
the facts, not by “honest” biased reporting.

That is the contribution the news media makes to our democracy. We give
people the information they need to come to their own conclusions.
Subjective new articles do not do that.