All Blog Peoria sites — including Peoria Pundit — will be down for emergency maintenance tonight. The “window” will be from midnight tonight to 6 a.m. Central time. The emergency notification I just received states that “no one customer” will be down for longer than 30 minutes. The downtime is required to fix the issues that kept knocking this site and others down last week.

You can read the letter below:

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The Schaumberg Freedom Coalition explains itself:

The Schaumburg Freedom Coalition is a group of concerned citizens who are keeping tabs on the government of the Village of Schaumburg to ensure that the people’s rights are protected from overreaching government. We focus on issues such as corporate welfare, tax policy, government transparency and eminent domain abuse.

And their “blog” is organized like a news organization Website. And the reporting on freedom-related issues is top notch, including this piece that provides evidence against the benefits of stop-light cameras.

And kudos to PioneerLocal.com’s Blog Buzz for alerting me to this new site. Amazing … a newspaper Website that routinely informs readers of new and interesting citizen journalism.

Cross posted to The American Guesser.

Ex-pat Peorian Chase Ingersoll seems some dis-similarities between Peoria and his new home, Ann Arbor, Mich.:

Cities are like adolescents in the locker room. They are always comparing “theirs” to the biggest. Perhaps because of its proximity to Detroit, Ann Arbor understands that just because you are older and “bigger” doesn’t mean that you are better. Maybe the better city is one without a former mayor doing time (Detroit), or a record number of gang shootings over the last 12 months (Chicago).

Peoria, Illinois on the other hand is always looking down at itself and then looking over at Chicago. It says a lot about envious elite fish in a Peoria sized pond. What they value is not being looked down on as small fish by the fish in the Chicago, Springfield or Naperville ponds, even while they themselves look down on Pekin, Morton and Chillicothe fish as “small ponders”. And their answer to their inferiority impulses always seems to be, “…what sort of larger, grander phallic symbol can we build…so as to qualify Peoria as a larger pond…” , without regard to the many residents whom they must Shanghai to their tax payer chain gang.

Agreed. I am convinced that insecurity about our place in the universe is driving a lot of these make-work economic development projects that Peoria’s movers and shakers with which Peoria’s mover’s and shakers are so infatuated. Were these boosters a little bit less insecure in their masculinity, we would have spent the last 20 years letting free market forces drive our economy. Can you imagine the real economic development that would have happened if we had lower property, sales and utility taxes during the past two decades? Well, I’m a libertarian, so I can.

And there’s a certain amount of competitive measurement going on at the local corporate level, too. I imagine Caterpillar feels a bit of penis envy over the fact that John Deere has a shiny visitor’s center and they do not. And since politicians shrivel at the thought of Caterpillar not being happy, we’re going to get a Caterpillar visitor center right next to a museum no one really wants to pay for voluntarily.

All links via the Peoria Journal Star:

• Twenty-four members of the Illinois Air National Guard’s 182nd Airlift Wing are back home after a mission in Afghanistan. Welcome home. And best wished to the 80 or so members of the wing still serving overseas. Kudos to Andy Kravetz for a good article.
• Phil Luciano tells the story of how a Peoria native and Bradley University graduate helped free a man who was apparently wrongfully convicted of murder in Florida. This was done with the help of DNA testing.
• That guy in Florida spend about 28 years behind bars. Disgraced former Governor George as served slightly more than one year in the federal slammer for his various acts of corruption — which included giving fake licenses to unqualified drivers, including the one who caused a car crash that killed a bunch of kids. But that isn’t stopping U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin from considering asking President Bush to pardon Ryan. Funny how politics works, isn’t it?
• And the AMVETS building will not be placed on a list of historical landmarks. My two cents: Naturally, some folks are furious because of the loss of Peoria’s history. Hyperbole aside, Peoria’s history is just fine, thank, you, as no one has yet invented a time machine to go back and actually erase history. What they mean to say is that an old building that that they find more attractive than modern buildings might not be protected from demolition. Frankly, I like older buildings more than newer ones. But as a libertarian, I am able to grasp the concept that just because someone wants to do something I would rather they not do with their property, that neither I nor society as a whole has the right to make them stop. I even heard an argument made tonight that property rights are a legal fiction. This is the same person who would have a fit if anyone from the government stepped on HIS property without permission.

I’m too busy working and too wrapped up in Blog Peoria nuts and bolts stuff to get much blogging done today. Go visit C.J.’s site for updates from Tuesday’s Peoria City Council meeting.

I’ll no doubt get some stuff posted Wednesday evening and on Thanksgiving. This weekend will be filled with overtime. Yay.

For four days only, a $50 order from my CafePress store receives free shipping. Just be sure to use the code “FEMHOL10”

If you haven’t visited in a while, you will notice many new designs, including high school designs.

Peoria Pundit is not my only blog.

One of the blogs I operate is called The American Guesser. Its name comes of a pen name Ben Frankin used to advocate for American independence. So to maintain the tradition, I use a pen name on the site, although the “About” page makes it clear it’s me doing most of the writing.

The site is about third parties and issues related to individual freedom. Here are some posts I put up today:

• Now, where did those votes run off to, hmmm?
• Constitution Party to hold special convention in Peoria in January
• Good news, bad news regarding Obama and free speech
• Consensual high school sex play gets woman 12 years on sex offender list

I know that a lot of people are very frustrated right now because they cannot leave comments. They can’t leave comments because the process of registering for this site is too difficult, or because the site won’t accept passwords.

That’s because this WordPress Mu installation began it’s life of a pre 1.0 release candidate that’s been upgraded too many times. There are still bits and pieces of very old code rattling around in here and it makes troubleshooting nearly impossible.

I figured out how to bypass the clunky registration process. I’ve installed a plugin that allows for OpenID registrations. Honestly, folks. It’s incredibly simple especially if you already have an account at places like AOL, Yahoo, Blogger, LiveJournal, Flickr, Vox, WordPress.com and others.

To register using any of these services, do the following.

1. Sign into your account with any of these services.

2. Go to Peoria Pundit login page here: http://pundit.blogpeoria.com/wp-login.php

3. Enter your OpenID in the entry field. If do not KNOW your OpenID, click on the link “What is OpenID” and you will see the format you should use.

4. Once you submit your ID, you will be sent to your site’s verification page where you give them permission to tell the Blog Peoria server that you are who you say you are.

5. Once this is done, you are a registered member of Peoria Pundit and can post comments. You will be redirected to your profile page, where you can set up the username you want to use.

And ANY Blog Peoria Project blogger can also activate the plugin on their sites.

I see this taking off in a big way.

(press release)

Mayor Jim Ardis announced today that he intends to file nominating petitions for another term as Mayor. With solid support from his family, Mayor Ardis is committed to continuing his focus on providing a strong environment for business, maintaining an intense focus on crime and supporting strong neighborhoods with an emphasis on education.

Mayor Ardis will hold a press conference in the coming weeks to outline his re-election platform.

Rich Miller of The Capitol Fax Blog doesn’t think highly of of the political and government acumen of whoever it is who wrote this editorial in the Peoria Journal Star:

* The Peoria Journal-Star editorializes about the need for constitutional amendments on property taxes, the number of local governments, TIF districts, ethics reforms, the unfunded pension liability, etc., etc., etc. and then has this to say…

We fully expect good government groups to lead the charge in drafting and generating support for these amendments, to prove as some promised just how easy it is to amend Illinois’ Constitution without having to resort to something so radical as another Con-Con.

While they’re busy writing up amendments and getting the signatures necessary to put such citizen initiatives on the ballot - please, let’s not rely on the Legislature to do that for us - here’s one issue they should put at the top of their list.

Um, PJ Star? Those dreamy amendments of yours cannot make it onto the ballot without first clearing the General Assembly. Here’s a handy link for future reference.

The same paper recently endorsed Sen. James Clayborne for Senate President apparently without realizing that Clayborne was privately backed by Gov Blagojevich. Oops.

The Journal Star used to have reporters in Springfield. Not so much anymore, thanks to GateHouse Media mandated staff reductions and buyouts. Not that actually having a reporter or two covering Springfield full time would have made much of a difference. I have found that the JSEB is often perfectly willing ignore the reporting that appears in news articles, as long as it promotes the agenda of whoever is writing the editorial that day.