Peoria Pundit

“Boy, this hand lotion sure is cold …”

But Midwest Pundits has a
funny post .
Saddle up.

Just for the heck of it, I’m bringing back *Newsbytes*, a segment in
which I post links from Peoria media Websites. The links are posted in
now particular order and are chosen on my whim. My whim being that the
links be about Peoria news, not Bloomington, Bartonville, Morton, Dunlap
or any stupid suburb.

*WHOI:*

? Cut Phones Causing Problems

? Farmer’s Market to Bring Breath of Fresh Air

/The City of Peoria is hoping fresh fruit and vegetables will keep
the downtown active on the weekends.

On Thursday Mayor Dave Ransburg and city officials announced plans
for a Riverfront Farmer’s Market. The outdoor market will set up on
Saturday mornings in June at Liberty Park. Downtown business owners
say they hope it will breathe new life into the area./

I will be shocked if this is approved. I’m all for bringing some
open-air capitalism to the downtown. I just hope some of the much-
despised-by-officialdom pushcart food vendors will be there as well.

I can’t imagine the proponents of all the tony development down there
want to see guys in overalls from Spring Bay selling sweet corn within
eye sight of their pretty new taxpayer supported buildings.

We’ll see how long it takes for some complaint from a corporate bigshot
to shut this venture down.

*CBS-31:*

? Peoria Tax Money Talk Stirring Up Some Controversy

? Man Tackled By Cleaning Ladies, Indicted Thursday

?Peoria Riverfront To Be Home To Outdoor Market

*WEEK:*

? Downtown Concerns

Absolutely no mention of the controversy over Ransburg meeting secretly
with the Civic Center Authority and hotel officials.

Yesterday, the Journal Star’s Jennifer Davis reported that City Council member Chuck Grayeb is annoyed at being left out of secret meetings with
Peoria Civic Center board members in which the use of hotel, restaurant and amusement taxes would be used to “save” two downtown businesses.
Today, Mayor David Ransburg denies the story … sort of. He says that there’s no money committed yet, and that’s its just some brainstorming and that a proposal could be presented at a later time.

That’s a non-denial denial, a tactic made famous by the Nixon White House to dispute facts about the Watergate scandal that they couldn’t really deny.

But, Phil Luciano reported today that just one day before the story hit, he asked Ransburg if there were any non-public meetings discussing using the HRA tax for these businesses. Ransburg gave Luciano a flat out “no.”

So, either Luciano’s is the most incompetent reporter on Earth — an allegation even I am not prepared to make — or Ransburg is a liar — which I am prepared to state.

Ransburg promised to bring a businesslike approach to city government.

We just didn’t know that business was Enron.

/”Bush cost me my job, my kids and my houses

“Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my mind. I lost my job
this past year. When Clinton was president I was secure and prosperous,
but in the last year, we had to close our operations. We simply could
not compete with foreign labor. This foreign labor worked for low pay
under very bad conditions.

“They worked very long shifts, and many even died on the job.

“This competition could hardly be called “fair.” I was forced out of the
place where I had worked for 34 years.

“Not a single government program was there to help me.

“How can Bush call himself “compassionate?” Far worse, I lost two of my
sons in Bush’s evil war in Iraq. They gave their lives for their
country, and for what? So that Bush’s oil buddies can get rich. My pain
of losing my sons is indescribable.

“While it is trivial next to the loss of my sons, I regret to say that I
also lost my home. I simply have nothing left. How can Bush call himself
a Christian when he neglects people like me? I am a senior citizen with
various medical problems. I’m not in a position where I can begin a new
career. I was reduced to the point where I had to live in a hole in a
ground, all because of
President Bush.

“And when the authorities found me there, did they have any compassion
for my misfortune and ailments? No, I was arrested. Mr. Bush, I dare you
to look me in the face and tell me you are a compassionate man! I dare
you to look me in the face and tell me you are a Christian. If I had any
money left, I would donate it to the Democrat Party.

“If Al Gore had been elected in 2000 I would still have a job, a home,
and most importantly, my dear sons!

“Regards,

“Saddam Hussein”/

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Via NewsMax .

I hear from my friend/co-worker Alex
that the word “Peoria” translates into the word “portal” in several
Basque dialects.

So, when Basques visited my site looking for Alex’s guest post
about the Basque
nation, many were thrilled to have discovered a Basque-language version
of Yahoo or MSN.

Instead, they found a 40-year-old former journalist’s rantings and
rumblings about his small, midwestern city.

Sorry to disappoint.

*BTW:* Alex bored me to tears held my rapt attention with yet another
tale of how his ancient computer failed him as he was working on a
letter protesting treatment of Basque Mexican nationals within Mexico.
They were accused of supporting Basque terrorist causes.

I think I am going to have to hold an Internet fundraising drive so Alex
can buy a new computer. It’s for the good of the Basque nation, after all.

I’m just too doggone busy.

I’ll have something on Saturday.

Thanks for stopping by …

… you know, if I had a co-blogger, this wouldn’t happen.

Dispatch from the Star Chamber

? Grayeb wants openness in Downtown discussions

/Private meetings between Mayor Dave Ransburg and select Civic
Center Authority members about using taxpayer dollars to somehow aid
two private historic Downtown businesses aren’t illegal, but it
looks bad, says at-large City Councilman Chuck Grayeb.

“If it can’t withstand the light of day, then we shouldn’t be having
these discussions,” said Grayeb after learning the mayor and others
have discussed using HRA taxes (hotel, restaurant and amusement) to
possibly support the Hotel Pere Marquette and the Madison Theater.

As the council’s liaison to the Civic Center, Grayeb said he
“shouldn’t be excluded from talks that include such a major shift in
policy for the use of HRA. I find these secret meetings to be
inappropriate, especially after they continue over a period of seven
months.”
/

Open meetings? We don’ need no steekin’ open meetings!

/Ransburg said he’s sorry Grayeb feels left out, but “it’s premature
to say there’s secret meetings.”

“As mayor, I feel a responsibility to see what we might do to
revitalize those properties. We are concerned about the Pere
Marquette. I’d hate to see it not do well financially. And there are
those who are concerned about what might happen to the Madison
(Theater) as well,” Ransburg said.

While in recent years some HRA funds have been used to support other
groups, such as the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, the
majority of HRA taxes still go for the Civic Center’s operation and
debt. And with the Civic Center board pushing an $80 million
renovation and expansion, they worry about losing that revenue./

So, it’s OK to meet secretly about how taxes are being spent as long as
it is done to the benefit of /private businesses/?

Business as usual in Peoria.

Jeff Jarvis has this to say
about the the
Hutton report
,
which blames BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan for essentially making up
facts that supported his belief that Britain had no business going to
war in Iraq:

/But the more I saw of Gilligan, as a symptom of the disease, and
the more I saw the BBC leadership allow Gilliganitis and its lies
and irresponsibility and journalism-by-agenda to spread through its
organization unchecked, and the more I heard the head of the BBC
attack American journalism, the more I believed that the vaunted BBC
was blindly destroying its own credibility and even that of journalism.
Thence the arse. /

I completely agree.

But I also recall that Jarvis is, himself, a proponent of journalism by
agenda . He
writes frequently that the industry needs to learn from the Fox News
model, that as long as the agenda is out in the open, the public is
smart enough to separate facts from the opinion. Did anybody doubt for a
moment before or after this mess that the BBC had an antiwar agenda? Why
the outrage if the public wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.

I like Jarvis’s blog. He is of the best out there. But this outrage over
the BBC’s and Gilligan’s agenda is a more than a little contradictory.
Either he wants objective reporting, he he doesn’t. He needs to make up
his mind.

The quote I lifted from Jarvis supports my belief that objectivity is a
process . If the BBC had
made objectivity important to its culture and had procedures in place
that were followed, the whole mess could have been avoided. But someone
had an agenda.

The Community Word , that
is. The City of Peoria’s only locally-owned general interest newspaper
has hit the streets. It contains two pieces written by yours truly.

? The Referendum on Future Elections in Peoria: How Will You Vote?
; as well as

? City Beat: Mea Culpa

Roger Monroe also has a few things to say
about local politics
and the local media, as does J.D. Wheeler
.