Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » 2005

Monday, Dec 5, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Lynn Sweet reported yesterday on a “pressure tactic” to force Ed Eisendrath out of the governor’s race.

Backfire. Two Blagojevich allies cooked up a plot designed to pressure Edwin Eisendrath not to challenge the governor in the March Democratic primary — a letter signed by 25 A-list Illinois progressives urging him to stay out of the race.

But the folks solicited to sign — almost all dwell in the world of state public policy and it would have been hard to decline — include friends of Eisendrath. Some tipped him off before he got the letter on Friday.

Once the letter started to circulate, “some people called in advance,” Eisendrath said. “Some apologized.”

Eisendrath said he considers the whole exercise, orchestrated by state Sen. Carol Ronen (D-Chicago) and Democratic donor Leo Smith, a child welfare advocate, “irrelevant.”

“It was something I thought was a good idea,” Ronen said.

38 Comments

Reopened that Question

Monday, Dec 5, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Since we’ve moved to a new site, I can now reopen Friday’s quite popular Question of the day.

Letâ€™s say you owned a tavern, and instead of naming sandwiches after prominent politicians, you decided to rename various drinks for them.

Go there and comment if you want.

UPDATE: I’ve been tweaking the spam controls a bit today. Some people have had their comments inadvertently sent to moderation and some may have been inadvertently nuked altogether. That shouldn’t happen as much now. I hope.

UPDATE 2: This was a bad day for it to happen, but you may have noticed that the feeds weren’t updating this morning. Most of them are live again. Sorry about that, but it was completely beyond my control.

UPDATE 3: All of the news feeds have been switched over from java to php. This should greatly speed up the page loading.

UPDATE 4: Adjusted the font. I think it’s now easier to read.

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“The Hidden Cost of Tenure”

Monday, Dec 5, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Here is the link to that series of Small Newspaper stories I wrote about this morning entitled “The Hidden Cost of Tenure.”

Reporter Scott Reeder spent six months working on this series, and it kicks off today with three stories.

Tenure frustrates drive for teacher accountability is the top story.

If you talk to Cicero Elementary School Superintendent Clyde Senters, it wonâ€™t be long before the word “accountability” comes to his lips. Recently a tenured staff member was fired, who had been routinely skipping work during the past seven years. “Her last year as an employee, she skipped more days than she worked. Can you believe there was still a question of whether she should be fired?” he said,

Then there’s, School boards lose power to fire poor teachers :

Procedure trumps everything when a school attempts to dismiss an incompetent teacher. The slightest error on any of the many forms to be followed can result in a problem teacher remaining in the classroom.

And, finally, Firing Mr. Roth: $400,000 and counting

Firing Cecil Roth has cost Geneseo schools more than $400,000, and counting. The case illustrates why administrators fear dismissing tenured teachers.

They also have this chart:

28 Comments

Welcome to my new blog

Monday, Dec 5, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

I’ve been playing around with this site for the past few months, not quite sure if I should move from the arms of the safe, easy Blogger system to something a little more risky but much more pliable.

Last week made my mind up for me. I had to close several comment threads because of a handful of jerks. I am past tired of babysitting this place just because two or three people can’t seem to behave and appear determined to ruin the experience for everyone else. Next month session starts again and I won’t have the time to monitor it like I do now. Something had to be done.

In theory, I can now weed out the bad apples who come here simply to cause trouble. I can track them down much more easily and block them from commenting, or even accessing the site itself, and then confront them one-on-one. I will, of course, continue to steadfastly maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the vast majority of commenters who know how to act like adults.

I’m aware that the new three-column format will take a bit of getting used to. The columns are slightly narrower than before, but the main column is dynamically sized, so just increase the size of your window if it bothers you.

I’ll be tweaking this site over the coming weeks to make it look better and perform faster. For some reason, the silver background stopped working on my Firefox browser, but it’s still working on my IE browser. Weird. There are a lot of things I can do with this site, like conduct live interviews that readers can also participate in. I’m excited about the vast number of opportunities.

Many thanks to Illini Pundit for his help with dynamic sizing and backup.

And a huge thank you goes to Bill Dennis, aka the Peoria Pundit, for moving my archives over from Blogger and holding my hand throughout the weekend. The archives aren’t completely up yet (bug in the system), but that’ll happen soon.

UPDATE: Fixed a problem with centered text on some browsers. Sorry about that.

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Question of the day

Monday, Dec 5, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

First, read this.

Republicans have long been expecting a primary for governor, and recent efforts to pare what is currently a five-way race for the nomination in an effort to prevent a bruised and penniless nominee have so far been unsuccessful.

“My best guess is the field will look exactly this way after filing,” said one contender, state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger (R-Elgin).

Still, he said, he anticipated more discussions among the candidates–particularly between himself and the other two social conservatives–about whether it would be best for them all to proceed in the contest.

“I don’t think anybody’s ready to blink. But what I sensed was there was a genuine concern about us being prepared to go forward next year,” he said of the GOP field, which also includes state Sen. Bill Brady and businessmen Ronald Gidwitz and Jim Oberweis.

Do you think any of the conservatives will drop out soon? Why or why not? Who? Why?

32 Comments

What you missed at Illinoize this past weekend

Monday, Dec 5, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

President Nixon reminds us of Steve Rauschenberger’s role in the Alan Keyes fiasco.

Syverson said Rauschenberger suggested they pursue Keyes, and that the move was backed by Fitzgerald. Syverson said he and U.S. Rep. Manzullo, R-Egan, were the first to reach out to Keyes, an account confirmed by Manzullo spokesman Rich Carter.

Jim Muir also remembers back to last year.

Pat Hickey has an on-the-scene report from Alexi Giannoulis’ state treasurer kickoff.

Charlie Johnston whacks Joe Birkett.

Joe Birkett needed to accomplish two things last week: to indict the right man and to demonstrate that his office knows the difference between right and wrong. He got the former right. He didn’t even try for the latter. And justice remains an orphan in DuPage County.

And much, much more. Get on over there.

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Guv to appeal

Monday, Dec 5, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Not sure he’ll be too successful.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich vowed to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that shot down a new Illinois law banning the sale of violent or sexual video games to minors.

U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly ruled Friday that Illinois’ restrictions are unconstitutional and barred the state from enforcing the law. […]

“This battle is not over,” Blagojevich said in a statement. “Parents should be able to expect that their kids will not have access to excessively violent and sexually explicit video games without their permission.”

Actually, what the judge said was this:

â€œIf controlling access to allegedly â€˜dangerousâ€™ speech is important in promoting the positive psychological development of children, in our society that role is properly accorded to parents and families, not the state.”

And this:

â€œAt most, researchers have been able to show a correlation between playing violent video games and a slightly increased level of aggressive thoughts and behavior,â€ he wrote. â€œWith these limited findings, it is impossible to know which way the causal relationship runs: it may be that aggressive children may also be attracted to violent video games.â€

12 Comments

Quinn wants protest ban

Monday, Dec 5, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Pat Quinn has an interesting idea.

Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn says he’s introducing legislation that will prevent protests at funeral services.

Quinn says the “Let Them Rest in Peace Act” is a response to a series of demonstrations at funeral services for military personnel.

The act applies to all funerals and memorial services. It creates a 300-foot buffer zone between protesters and the site of funeral services.

The zone would be in effect from 30 minutes before to 30 minutes after the funeral.

I doubt this would be constitutional. And I’m not one for banning speech of any kind. But Quinn has attended almost every funeral of fallen Illinois soldiers, so he’s most likely had a bellyful of those Westboro Baptist “church” morons.

Quinn disagrees that the law would be unconstitutional.

But Quinn said the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the type of restrictions he is proposing.

10 Comments

Claypool gets two big endorsements

Monday, Dec 5, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Phelan and Simon support Forest:

Former Cook County Board presidents Richard Phelan and Seymour Simon are endorsing Forrest Claypoolâ€™s bid to be elected to their old job.

Mr. Claypool, who is to formally announce his candidacy Monday against incumbent board President John Stroger, also has signed up former League of Chicago Theaters President and CEO Marj Halperin as his campaign manager.

Not bad, but it’s like that old saying, “How many soldiers does the Pope have?” Claypool has $1.5 million on hand. Not bad, but not nearly enough yet to mout an effective TV ad campaign.

2 Comments

New poll has no surprises, produces no results

Saturday, Dec 3, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

A looong meeting between Illinois GOP Chairman Andy McKenna and the five candidates for governor produced almost no results. Only Bill Brady and Judy Topinka agreed to abide by a good conduct code. And nobody was impressed that Topinka was beating them like a mule in the party’s poll.

A GOP poll shows Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka with a commanding lead over her four potential Republican rivals, but the findings failed to nudge any of them from the race Friday.

In a bid to cull the herd of Republican gubernatorial wannabes, senior GOP leaders met privately in Chicago with the candidates and presented results of a party-commissioned poll, which had Topinka leading dairy magnate James Oberweis by a 39- to 12-percent margin.

The statewide survey of 400 voters taken Tuesday and Wednesday also found Topinka to be the only Republican in the field ahead of Gov. Blagojevich in a face-to-face matchup, leading by a 39- to 35-percent margin.

Buoyed by those results, Topinka has narrowed her search for a running mate to Rep. Jim Watson (R-Jacksonville) and Doug Whitley, head of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and member of former Gov. Jim Edgar’s Cabinet.

After Topinka and Oberweis, other Republicans trailed far behind. The survey showed Sen. Steve Rauschenberger (R-Elgin) with 6 percent, businessman Ron Gidwitz with 3.5 percent and Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington) with 3 percent.

I’ll open comments on this Monday.

4 Comments

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