Peoria Pundit

I have often implied that the existence of the Peoria Civic Center is a fraud perpetrated against the taxpayers. After all, it cannot operate for a single day without the promised-to-be-temporary Hotel, Restaurant and Amusement Tax.

But this isn’t a post about that boondoggle. This is a post about a different boondoggle.

According to the Peoria Journal Star, Lisa Williams, who pretends to have the real-life power to communicate with the dead on Lifetime television’s “Life Among the Dead,” is bringing her magic act to Peoria Civic Center at June 7. Gullible dummies will be paying $45 to $65 to this con artist.

For those who are wondering why I am calling her a con artist, here is an explanation: There is no such thing as psychic powers. No one really talks to the dead. No one. There are no doubt grieving people who have convinced themselves that have. But people like Lisa Williams are frauds. All of them. Period. End of discussion.

It is a sad state of affairs, but even in the 21srt century, there are still people who believe this unscientific drivel. But then, some people still cling to the equally irrational belief that vaccines cause autism.

I blame the media, which thinks the standards of objectivity requires them to treat this nonsense with respect. Folks, we all have the equal right to have an opinion, but not all opinions are equal. The end result of “equal time for frauds and morons” creates the impression this B.S. is OK. Feh.

Now, I like television shows like “Medium” and Ghost Whisperer” like any American. But they are fiction. I liked Star Trek, but I know William Shatner is just an actor. And if anyone tried to sell me a boarding pass the USS Enterprise, I’m going to take a pass.

Lisa Williams is fundamentally no different than grifters who run scams on grieving widows. At least when she limited her act to television, she got money from advertising. Harmless fun, right?

Wrong. Now this active, practicing fraud is in town to take directly money out of grieving people’s pockets. These victims will be your friends, co-workers and relatives. It is disgusting. Why not just sell licenses to three card monte games, right next to the downtown pushcarts. Along as the Peoria Civic Center Authority gets a cut, right? I mean, we have to pay for those expensive new offices somehow, cause legitimate events aren’t coming here.

But, hey, I cannot image life in Peoria without the Peoria Civic Center.

On Tuesday, full-time journalists and bloggers in Peoria started getting calls and emails from folks tipping them off to the fact that Guy Cahill, Peoria School District 150’s hot-shot, hired-gun treasurer, had been fired. I’ll leave it to others to relate the details, because almost all of what I know I received second-hand from several bloggers and journalists who spent Tuesday trying to track the story down. And yes, this was the story I thought WEEK had all but nailed down when I asked readers to watch the news that night.

I would have printed it Tuesday, but had an ethical obligation to my source not to. The mainstream media held it because no official source would confirm it. But today the Journal Star’s Dave Haney has the story, based on anonymous sources from within the district, apparently.

The article was effusive in it’s praise of Cahill’s fiscal genius. My opinion of him was that he played games with numbers, essentially giving the board the numbers it needed to hear to justify the actions the administration and some board members wanted to take (moving Glen Oak School to the park and gutting the school day for grade schoolers) . I thought the board deferred to him far too often.

But things change. The information I am hearing suggests this departure is much more the board’s idea than Cahill’s.

Perhaps this is a coincidence, but the departure comes very shortly after the board put together a panel of experts to go over their budget. Did the process of gathering the panel expose the board to opinions of Cahill that were less than effusive with praise?

Peoria Blogger Emerge Peoria is engaging in some interesting commentary with a member of this panel. It’s a good read,  and perhaps indicating that this panel is going to operate transparently. Feel free to go visit and show her some leave and a comment or two.

You know how public radio was supposed to be in the bag for Barack Obama? Well, not so much, as it turns out. Here’s a few paragraphs from National Public Radio’s  On The Media:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The Obama Administration has been very explicit about wanting more transparency in government and about reestablishing the rule of law. Do you think this is less likely to happen?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: I don’t see anything happening in this. I happened to just file a couple of Freedom of Information suits on a story that I’m working on, and they were blanketly rejected. I just don’t think that the government is moving in the direction that the president has indicated.

I’m not all that impressed with the Obama administration. They seems to have talked a big game about a many of issues, but they are reacting like the Bush Administration would, albeit from a different ideological slant. Of course to hear any of them talk, you would think it’s the most open administration in history. It just isn’t happening folks. Of course, some of that may just be due to the government being about 10 years behind the curve.

If Democrats like Dave Koehler and Jehan Gordon are to be criticized for holding a town meeting at a public meeting place a few blocks away from the northernmost boundaries of their respective 37th senate district and the 73rd legislative district, as Peoria County GOP chairman Rudy Lewis did today, then in all fairness, we MUST apply the same standards to ALL politicians. This would include members of the Republican Party as well.

We’ll call it the Rudy Lewis Rule.

Of course, it’s not fair to invoke this rule about past behavior.

This would include our new Congressman Aaron Schock, who was often absent from the 18th District, allegedly to visit the movers and shakers for the purpose of creating a PAC to raise funds for OTHER members of Congress.

I can only assume that these visits mean that Rudy Lewis has serious questions about Schock’s ability to represent the 18th District.

And then there is State Rep. David Leitch, a Republican, who maintained an taxpayer funded office outside the 73rd District for more than five years years after the district’s boundaries had changed. No doubt that for every single day of those five years, Mr. Lewis was quietly fuming that the 73rd District was being represented by someone he certainly must consider too dumb to know how to read a map.

No doubt we’ll be hearing more about the Rudy Lewis Rule. I, for one, intend to apply it whenever I encounter Peoria-area politicians having anything to do with anyone or anything outside the strict boundaries of their districts.

And if any members of the GOP might object to this, they can just take it up with Rudy Lewis. It’s HIS rule.

UPDATE: Corrected info about Leitch office.

There will be an important meeting tonight (January 15, 2009) to discuss the proposed school closings and mergers as proposed by District 150 last night at their budget meeting. The meeting will take place at 5:00 PM at Godfather’s pizza. Godfather’s Pizza is located on the SE corner of Sheridan and Glen in Peoria. Anyone with a vested interest in the welfare of Peoria Public Schools should attend.

Last night I was ranting about property rights and eminent domain over on American Guesser. I observed that with the recession, we need to be on the looking for developers and politicians threatening to take private property away to make room for privately-owned projects.

And then it struck me: Are the powers-that-be planning on using eminent domain to grab the land needed to build the spiffy new and taxpayer funded expansion and renovation at the Pere Marquette?

So, I whisked off some letters to members of the council:

The first to reply was Gary Sandberg:

Question: Will the city use eminent domain to make this project happen?

In any earlier discussion, the use of eminent domain has never been mentioned. With the purchase of the Zuccarini /Abraham property by conventional means, I would think that eminent domain is not necessary. The only other potential use would be for he purchase of the underlying land at the Pere Marquette which for nearly a century had been under a land lease I believe. I asked Gary Mathews about what he “HAD” (note tense) purchased with respect to Pere and he stated that he had purchase agreements on both the building and the land. I suspect the presence of the term or power is more indicative of boiler plate and sloppiness of parties drafting the give-away than a power necessary for the development.

Question: Has there been any commitment with the developer to use eminent domain if they have trouble reaching a deal?

Not by the Councilperson, but I have NOT committed to anything more than the availability of any additional H tax from the Hospitality Zone for the local subsidy. In as much as meetings have been ongoing since and before Henry Holling was officially employed by the City as interim City Manager, yet he was involved and attending these meetings, I suspect that whether I have not made any commitment is mute,

Question: If eminent domain comes up for a vote, will you vote for it? Why or why not?

NO! I do NOT believe that the use of eminent domain for private development is legal. I do NOT believe (or have drank the kool-aid to make me believe) that the construction of a hotel, a skywalk, or a parking facility is public benefit. I also do NOT believe that economic development projects meet the legal threshold for public purpose. So NO!

I couldn’t agree more. It’s easy to understand why he has fans.

Patrick Nichting, 5th District, also replied, but he was much more brief:

I have not seen the development agreement so I can not comment as to its content.

Fair enough.

And then Barbara Van Auken, 2nd District, replied:

I know of no plans (or need) to use eminent domain. The City could not use eminent domain for this project in any event, as it involves a private versus public development. Even if the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled as it did in such matters, I wouldn’t support use of eminent domain for a private development.

And Mayor Jim Ardis put the issue to rest, as far as this project is concerned:

Eminent domain is always a possibility, but it won’t be necessary as the developer and property owners have already agreed on a price for the property.

Well, that’s that then.

Meanwhile, Merle Widmer takes a lok at the numbers here and here, while C.J. looks at the hype here and here.

UPDATE: Eric Turner replied:

One thing about this council is there is a belief in avoiding Eminent Domain we truly believe in and support property rights and will do all we can to avoid Eminent Domain. Hopefully we can agree by way of fair negotiations. As a council we are willing to work with all involved to avoid the negatives I.e. Eminent Domain.

Blogs are constantly being accused of getting all their content from mainstream media. Unless the blogger is doing original reporting, there’s some truth to that. Pundit-style bloggers do get most of their information from media reports. Some of ‘em even cut and paste parts of the articles they use as source material. I’m one of them.

But that’s OK. It’s called “fair use.” If people are going to comment on news, they have to be able to tell people what they are commenting on. So, the law allows me to reprint paragraphs from Journal Star articles. I don’t reprint ALL of the article. And I don’t replicate links to all their stuff, and a rarely link to headlines without comment.

This practice helps news sites bring in new readers.

But GateHouse Media — corporate owner of the Journal Star — is facing competition from a bigger “Big Media” company, the Boston Globe. And the bigger company is threatening to use the smaller company’s own words against it:

According to reports, Boston.com plans to launch a line of town-specific sites that will cull content from sources like Boston Daily favorites the Cambridge Chronicle and the Allston-Brighton TAB, which are owned by GateHouse Media.

It’s one thing to occasionally link to a particular news outlet’s stuff. It’s another thing to scrape its site, place the content on a hyperlocal Website, sell ads and pass it off as your own.

But I wouldn’t place bets that GateHouse is gonna take sit back and take it. Look for GateHouse to protect its local information franchise.

If this is what the Boston Globe is going to do, it’s much different than what Google News is doing, which is spidering news organizations and providing the results of searches.

It’s not just this blog, folks:

(2008-10-27) – (gs) Grid-Service Cluster.2 Availability
Incident Tracker status: HIGH view incidents »
UPDATE
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 7:09 pm

We had another service interruption at ~5:45PM which has now been corrected. We apologize for the recurrences we have seen throughout the day. We are continuing to provide data to our vendor whenever possible.

Posted in (2008-10-27) – (gs) Grid-Service Cluster.2 Availability | No Comments »
UPDATE
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 12:42 pm

All services have been restored again as of ~11:30AM Pacific Time. We apologize for the intermittent issues we have been experiencing today thus far.

Posted in (2008-10-27) – (gs) Grid-Service Cluster.2 Availability | No Comments »
UPDATE
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 12:16 pm

We had another recurrence at ~11:00AM that our engineers are now working on. We will provide an update once services have returned. Thank you.

Posted in (2008-10-27) – (gs) Grid-Service Cluster.2 Availability | No Comments »
UPDATE
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 9:49 am

By 8:15AM our engineers successfully restored all services on Cluster.2. During this time some of our customers might have seen “403 – Forbidden” errors. This behavior is standard in some cases when restoring services.

Our engineers have also provided some “debugging” information to our storage vendor, which should provide some further insight into the isolated storage-related problems we have been addressing this week. This issue is a top priority for both us and them.

Posted in (2008-10-27) – (gs) Grid-Service Cluster.2 Availability | No Comments »
UPDATE
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 9:19 am

At ~8:00AM Pacific Time services became unavailable on Cluster.2. Our engineers are bringing the cluster back online at this time. We will update this page shortly with more details.

Posted in (2008-10-27) – (gs) Grid-Service Cluster.2 Availability | No Comments »

It’s time, once more, for the Peoria Pundit Blogroll Challenge. If you know who said this, please leave a comment and include a link to the post in question. If you don’t know, guess.

Really though, it’s not nice to laugh at people who are having catheters put in.

And leave a comment on the blog in question, to, just to be nice.

And please, no using Google.

Springfield State Journal Register columnist Bernie Schoenburg writes:

A few weeks ago, I had back-to-back telephone conversations with U.S. Rep. RAY LaHOOD, R-Peoria, and state Rep. Aaron Schock, another Peoria Republican who LaHood wants to be his successor in Congress.

Those conversations were odd because LaHood told me he had called Schock to recommend that Schock reimburse the city of Peoria for expenses surrounding a fundraising visit from President GEORGE W. BUSH. Schock, however, told me LaHood had told him not to pay. Schock said he later decided otherwise.

Schoenburg later asked LaHood about the contradiction:

“I had a conversation with him,” LaHood said. “And we talked about it. I gave him some advice.”

What advice?

“I told you what advice,” LaHood said. “He has a different recollection of it.”

I suggest that Schock try really had to avoid this sort of thing should he win election to Congress. The reporters in Washington are like hungry pit bulls on a chihuahua if they suspect they’ve caught a Congressman being inconsistent.