Peoria Pundit

The name of the blog is Willy Nilly, and he is an anonymous pundit blogger. Reminds me of me, when I first started out. And NO, it’s not me running an anonymous blog. Anything I have to say, I’ll say it here or in print.

Here is Willy’s take on news that Woodruff High School principal Herschel Hannah taking a temporary position in the district an no extra pay nor a new title. According to the Journal Star article:

Hannah said the transfer was not related to his sister’s controversial endorsement of board president Aaron Schock in Schock’s recent campaign for state representative. Hannah’s sister is Aurthur Perkins, principal of Harrison Primary School.

"I was approached by (deputy interim superintendent) Ken Hinton some time ago, before the hullabaloo broke loose," Hannah said.

To which Willy wrote:

Yeah right. And Ray Lahoods’ son was appointed the US Attorney in Las Vegas based on his legal prowess and not the fact that his old man is a congressman. Perkins has been the darling of the Republicans since then presidential candidate (in 2000) George Bush visited Harrison School to read with students. Incidentally, the child selected to read with Bush was Perkins grandchild, who did not even attend Harrison School. On a side note Arthur Perkins is now appearing in the campaign literature of Mayor Ransburg.

That’s an interesting piece of information. I wasn’t aware it it having appeared in the local media. Perhaps Mr. Willy is someone this his finger on the pulse of Peoria politics? Hmmm ….

Journal Star: Council seats a hot commodity.

Jennifer Davis touched base with some of the people who have taken out petitions. All five district seats are up for grabs, as is the mayoral spot.

I should have linked to this yesterday, but I was too busy posting pictures of Julia Roberts.

Journal Star: Slone seeking ballot recount

State Rep. Ricca Slone, a Democrat, lost a very close election to challenger Aaron Schock. A preliminary recount found more votes for Schock. Slone isn’t going away easily:

Slone is conducting a news conference at 9:30 a.m. today at New Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, 413 John Gwynn Jr. Ave., to discuss the specific reasons she is requesting the recount.

Slone said others at her news conference will talk about problems they experienced or observed that "seem to have been intended to discourage people from voting."

Those problems, Slone said, include postcards that several voters reported receiving that on the front read, "Your voter registration may be under suspicion. Voter Fraud = 5 Years in Jail."

There is no return address on the cards, nor do they state who sent or paid for them.

Slone said provisional ballots – "the way they were issued and not issued and counted and not counted" – will also be discussed at the news conference.
—
Jackie Petty, political chairwoman for the Peoria chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who will be a speaker at today’s news conference, said "many people" were denied their right to vote on Election Day.

"Intimidation has a lot to do with it. Confusion, like orchestrated confusion," Petty said. "It’s just very, very suspicious the way things happened."

That’s the way Ricca. Complain that your were denied victory because criminals and scofflaws who would have voted for you were afraid to do so. Shall we also investigate whether your campaign had anything o do with the college kids caught tearing down Schock campaign signs? What’s that? No evidence that was the case, you say? Well, doesn’t that apply to those flyers? Hmmm …?

The outcome of the election could ultimately be decided by the Democratic-controlled Illinois House, and a panel appointed by Chicago House Speaker Michael Madigan. The last time a recount made it that far was in 1990, Cray said.

Ah, the legislature will get involved. That’s the way to ensure the people’s will be be done. Because we have such honest elected officials in Illinois. Yep.

Also today, the Ethics Commission appointed to investigate whether Schock, president of the District 150 School Board, violated the district’s ethics policy during his legislative campaign will meet at 4 p.m. today at the district’s administration building, 3202 N. Wisconsin Ave. The three-member panel is expected to interview Schock, Harrison Primary School principal Aurthur Perkins, who endorsed Schock in a TV commercial, and Ernestine Jackson, who filed the complaint with the School Board.

My views about this are on the record. There might be a technical violation of school board policies, but it a rule prevents a school district employee from voluntarily making a political endorsement , then the rules are wrong and should be violated.

One might get the idea from this post that I supported Schock in the race . I did not.

Link: PJStar.com – Journal Star News.

Phillip Lenzini, one of the district’s attorneys, cited a May 25, 1983, transcript where state Rep. Barbara Currie, now the House majority leader, said during a discussion on the FOI bill that “we think that the kinds of job-evaluation forms in personnel files should not be made available for open public disclosure.”

Earlier this year, the Journal Star sued the district, saying it violated the FOI Act when it refused to release the documents – two evaluations and one letter – after Royster was placed on administrative leave July 30. The newspaper maintains the documents are covered by the state’s FOI Act and should be released to the public.

The school district says such documents are considered part of Royster’s personnel record and, therefore, not subject to FOI requests.

After hearing both sides argue their case for about an hour in October, Chief Circuit Judge John Barra ruled on Nov. 5 that there was “nothing personal nor private about those documents, nor should a superintendent expect that her evaluations and the explanation for her removal were personal or private.”

Lenzini, however, says the district didn’t have the complete “legislative history” or what lawmakers said during debate over the act when it was passed 21 years ago. Given the transcript, Lenzini said it’s clear lawmakers felt records such as the ones in this case should not be public.

Peter Storm, a Chicago attorney representing the newspaper, disagreed.

“The Board of Education documents we had requested were determined by the court not to be traditional job evaluation forms or records that would be found in a typical personnel file,” he said.

Physics Geek likes Julia.

Link: PJStar.com – Journal Star News.

“I have every confidence that the council is going to support the library,” said Marcella Teplitz, who represents the 2nd District.

Library officials have said they might close the McClure branch, 315 W. McClure Ave., and close the Lakeview branch on Sundays if the library doesn’t get a tax hike. The City Council is expected to consider increasing the tax rate for the library at its meeting Tuesday.

The tax hike would bring the rate to 31 cents per $100 assessed valuation. That would translate into a tax bill of about $104.50, or about $9.50 higher than this year’s bill, for the owner of $100,000 house if property values increase by 1.12 percent as Peoria County officials expect them to.

The increase would bring the library’s tax rate back to 2002 levels. It’s currently at its lowest level in a decade. About one-third of the tax hike would cover health-care costs, which were underbudgeted in 2004, and about half will cover salary increases required by contract.

Bob Black, the library director, has said library officials chose the McClure branch because usage is declining there. The McClure library, which was built in 1937, offers programs including storytelling, Internet access, literacy tutoring and children’s programs.

“Circulation is not the only barometer of success for a library,” Teplitz said. “It seems that budget concerns are reflected in just saying let’s cut services in the older parts of the city. To keep the center part of the West Bluff we need to probably put more resources in the McClure branch.”

The neighborhood around the McClure branch has been marked by white flight. The census tract the library is in is about 80 percent white, but the tract immediately south of it and across McClure Avenue is about 52 percent white, according to 2000 census figures.

Teplitz also criticized Black for going to the media to campaign for the tax increase.

“I wish the library director had not fanned people’s fears without waiting for some better information,” she said.

Washington Post (via Yahoo! News): Alabama Vote Opens Old Racial Wounds.

There are parts of the Blogosphere who are up in arms about how Alabama refused to give up its racist past be repealing a law that mandates school segregation. I am sure that some of those who voted against this amendment did so because they don’t like black people. But that’s not the whole story.

The amendment had two main parts: the removal of the separate-schools language and the removal of a passage — inserted in the 1950s in an attempt to counter the Brown v. Board of Education ruling against segregated public schools — that said Alabama’s constitution does not guarantee a right to a public education.

Leading opponents, such as Alabama Christian Coalition President John Giles, said they did not object to removing the passage about separate schools for "white and colored children."

But, employing an argument that was ridiculed by most of the state’s newspapers and by legions of legal experts, Giles and others said guaranteeing a right to a public education would have opened a door for "rogue" federal judges to order the state to raise taxes to pay for improvements in its public school system.

Newspaper editorialists and legal experts can debate it all the want, but the fact is that a state guarantee to a public education can cause taxes to go up, especially when coupled with a mandate to guarantee equal education. How could it not? It happened in Missouri, when I was a reporter in Cape Girardeau (this was more than a decade ago, and I couldn’t find anything on the Web that would refresh my memory enough to be more specific).

If you think it isn’t a problem, here is what one finds when one looks for "education funding" and "consent decree" in Google. There are cases all over the place of states and school systems being sued into passing tax increases. supplanting the representative democracy that is supposed to determine how money is spent.

Making education a right under a state constitution gives the courts a right to determine whether than right is being applied fairly. Whether or not taxpayers want to go along is simply not relevant.

And here is my question, if backers of this Alabama amendment really don’t think these concerns are legitimate, then eliminate the language that makes education a state right. Then, the opponents of repeal won’t have any peg onto which they can hang their concerns.

What I think will happen — and in their hearts, so do backers of the amendment’s current language — is that the entire state will gladly vote for it. But then, their real goal isn’t to officially desegregate the state’s schools. Federal law has done that already.

The real goal is to make it easier for lawyers and judges to do exactly what these newspaper editorialists and legal experts say won’t happen: Court rulings that tell districts to raise taxes to provide the "equal" education guaranteed by the state constitution.

Kudos to Alabama voters for recognizing this sheep in wolf’s clothing. Kudos for not letting the tax hike lobby use racism as a smokescreen to mask their real agenda. Kudos for not letting them push the guilt buttons.

First, we had a television reporter baring all for a ratings-friendly piece on a nude art exhibit.

Now, we have this from the Taipei Times

I had wandered into the production as a roving reporter just at a time when they needed extra bodies. I ended up as a naked corpse partly covered in flowers, and was told that if I had to move it should be, like virtually everything else in the show, in glacial slow-motion.

No pictures though. Not that I would run pics of a naked guy. No rule against male eye candy still stands, even on TypePad.

Marie at Disarranging Mine has a list of Springfield bloggers:

• Allie
• Prof. Schroeder
• Dr. Goldblatt
• Qaiser (formerly of Springfield, but still out there).

I’ll be adding them to my list of Illinois bloggers.

The SJR, owned by the Copley newspaper chain, as is the Peoria /Journal
Star/, recently ran this article from the Associated Press: Parents want
more gun control .

Maybe it will be another parent who receives the worst news
possible, that their child has been fatally shot. Maybe it will be a
lawmaker. Or one of the college kids Steve Young teaches about guns
and the law.

Young knows the danger far too well. Eight years ago, he was the one
hearing the words that his 19-year-old son, Andrew, had been shot to
death by a teenager.

He and other families hit by gun violence sued in an attempt to
_force gunmakers and sellers to be more socially responsible_.

I would have rewritten this sentence thusly:

He and other families hit by gun violence sued in an attempt to
force gunmakers and sellers to be more socially responsible get
money out of them.

First, as someone who has covered the court system, I assure readers
that civil lawsuits exist for one purpose only: To get money out of
someone. You cannot sue someone into social responsibility, not can you
sue them into thinking the way you thing. You can change their behavior
be taking money away fromt hem if they don’t, but that’s it.

Second, I long ago stopped being amazed at how reporters and editors –
even those working for wire services that should know better — assume
the liberal point of view is default position for the entiire world.
This report uses the language and rhetoric of those in favor of banning
guns.

Someone unfamiliar with the national debate on gun control could read
this and assume that the entire community was supported this lawsuit,
which could not be further from the truth.

There is not one single word in this entire, long article that presents
the position of someone who thinks that criminals — not the guns they
use — are responsible for the crimes. There is not one single word from
anyone who sees serious Constitutional issues in the act of suing
someone for engaging in a legally protected act of selling guns.

I’ve said this before: _Objectivity is a process, not a state of mind_.
Somewhere along the line, the Associated Press editorial process should
have required an editor to require that the reporter get quotes and
comments from someone opposed to suing gun manufacturers. A news
organization that takes objectivity seriously would also have solicited
an unbiased, “on-the-third-hand” opinion on the wisdom of the ruling itself.

What is the responsibility of the SJR and other AP member newspapers
that picked up this story? Myself, I have rarely changed the wording of
AP and wire service stories. But I recommend it for cases of bias this
blatant, or I recommend not running the story in the first place.

The way most small- to medium-sized newspapers work, however, doesn’t
allow this. There isn’t anough time to read wire copy — which is mostly
used as filler and often at the last minute.

But if I am the editor on the Small Town Gazette and Shopper, it’s my
name under the masthead and I’m responsible for every word. Many people
shirked their journalistic responsibilities for this mess to appear in
print.