Morning shorts
Friday, Nov 16, 2007 - Posted by Paul Richardson
* PeoriaPundit: Motley Fool says GateHouse is one of the ‘worst stocks in the world’
* Poll: Homeless concerns rising nationwide
* IDOT outlines 20-year plan
* Illinois Review: Abstinence program could be next state budget fiasco victim
* Editorial: A little ‘too far’ indeed
Schock showed the kind of swagger reminiscent of President George W. Bush standing beneath a banner reading, “Mission Accomplished,” when he said that “The Chinese will come around, I have no doubt.” Pardon us if we don’t share your confidence, Rep. Schock. We’ll be in the bomb shelter awaiting your all clear.
Two positives came out of this craziness. One, the criticism of Schock’s dangerously naïve foreign policy approach was so strong, that by this week he had acknowledged he was wrong to suggest the sale of nuclear weapons to Taiwan, saying he had gone “too far.” Like to Pluto.
* Confusion over job guarantee for 50 laid off ISAC workers
Walker said the layoffs announced earlier this month are not a result of the loan sale. Rather, he said there are several national factors, including the high cost of borrowing and federal legislation that cut funding.
Still, some lawmakers were skeptical.
“I don’t believe that, no,” said state Rep. Mike Bost, a Murphysboro Republican.
State Rep. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, said initial guarantees of jobs were “misleading,” but that he remembered ISAC officials conceding that they couldn’t guarantee jobs at committee hearings this year.
“For once, I can’t say I’m surprised or shocked or anything,” Rose said.
* Less classroom training to keep prisons staffed
The union representing most of the 11,500 Corrections employees points to the change as proof that state prisons need to hire more workers.
“There’s no debating IDOC’s rationale: The prisons are so desperately short of staff that they cannot afford to take employees off their posts for training,” said Anders Lindall, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
* Illinois Review: Democrats stand tall, two Republicans bow to Governor on JCAR
With billions of dollars in unpaid medial bills piling up, it’s hard to think of anything less appropriate than allowing the governor to massively increase state health expenditures without the approval of the General Assembly or the people of Illinois.
Representatives Mulligan and Hassert, members of a Republican Party that claims to stand for limited government, have no excuse. Their vote for the governor’s power grab looks like blatant pork-barrel politics at its worst.
* Bernie Schoenburg: Republican presidential delegates, Sen. Rutherford’s recall effort
* Chicago judge tapped for Justice post
* Poor marks for Chicago schools
In reading, where Daley ordered a huge push after his 1995 school takeover, CPS eighth-grade Hispanics topped Hispanics in every other city tested, and CPS low-income eighth-graders beat their peers in all but one other city.
But CPS white students produced the second-worst reading scores among whites, in both fourth and eighth grade. Their math scores weren’t much better.
CPS blacks scored near the bottom of the heap in most tests.
* Public school scores stagnant on national tests
* Stormfront grows a thriving neo-Nazi community
To the thousands of white supremacists who regularly visit Stormfront and its forum, Kelso is best known by his e-moniker, “Charles A Lindbergh.” He signs off all his posts with a quote from Lindbergh, a well-known racist and anti-Semite: “We can have peace and security only as long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood.” […]
In the three years he’s been a senior moderator of the site, it has grown from fewer than 10,000 registered users to, as of mid-June, an astounding 52,566. And while many thousands of that ever-growing total probably haven’t visited in years, independent Web monitors recently ranked Stormfront the 338th largest electronic forum on the Internet, putting it easily into the top 1% of all sites on the World Wide Web.
* Friday Beer Blogging: Elephant Edition
- Ghost - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 9:13 am:
IDOT has a “20 year” plan. Given the vagaries of politics and the general assembly, plans that extend that far in the future seemed to be designed to put off doing anything today. How about adding in 3 year and 5 year goals that start today. We could start with all the unsafe bridges we currently have and go on to talk about expanding the highways to account for increasing population.
- He makes Ryan Look like a Saint - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 9:16 am:
STOP THE PRESSES!!! Blago Lied again about the job guarantee, I dont believe it!!!
- dan l - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 9:18 am:
L0L. Stormfront isn’t a hate group. They’re Christians.
Paul, you’re an anti-Christian bigot and you want to infringe on their rights!!!
;)
- Skeeter - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 9:23 am:
Abstinence education? Of course it should be cut. Look at Texas: It cost a ton of money and caused no decrease in total sexual activity, and actually increased high risk activities. That should be the first thing cut.
Here’s an idea for state government: Let’s stop paying for things that don’t work.
- plutocrat03 - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 9:28 am:
The logic the Toll Road authority to build the new extension over repairing and expanding the existing traffic backups was that the new highway would produce a new revenue stream while repairing the old system would produce no new revenue.
The same logic shiould not apply to IDOT projects. There are projects in Lake County that have been on the books for 20 years and are still not done. What is the logic in that other than a disproportionate amount of the funds have gone to Cook and DuPage counties with their grandiose projects. Can anyone explain why it was more important to make the recent connection to I-80 through a relatively unpopulated area while Cook and Lake counties do not have a leg to complete the often maligned 53 extension where hundreds of thouands of people sit and fume in traffic?
Growth will follow the expansion of the highway system. No new highways should be built until the needs of the currently populated areas are served.
I guess the $$ of contributions from the developer wo profit from growth/sprawl are more important than the needs of the citizens.
- Angry Chicagoan - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 9:38 am:
plutocrat03 — Lake County aggressively blocked any northward extension of 53. The politicians of Will County would have sold their own grandmothers to get the 355 extension. Politics is local, and nowhere so more than Illinois. If you want to do something about Lake County, deal with the NIMBYs — don’t assume it’s all bribes and backhanders.
Part of the problem is giving local governments a choice that basically says “highways or nothing.” If they had a real choice, they might act a little bit less parochially.
- Pat Collins - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 9:50 am:
stop paying for what doesn’t work
Hmm. We had all sorts of sex ed from the 70s on, and a growing illegtimacy problem. It only began to reverse after people started talking and promoting abstinence. Where are all the studies that examined all those other programs? The ones that somehow let the rates go up and up until the 90s?
Stormfront
I wonder how many of those 50K are groups like SLPC that montior hate groups…….
- Paul Richardson - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 9:53 am:
dan l, you caught me. I knew my hidden hatred would slip out eventually. I’m finished.
- Cassandra - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 10:17 am:
Agree with Skeeter on the abstinence education program. What an incredible waste of money. Somebody must be making money off it though…hence, the squeaks of outrage.
When we hear that Aon or LaSalle Bank or Motorola or whoever is laying off 2500 or 5000 or 10,000 employees, we may feel briefly sorry for the human costs to these employees, but we don’t linger. They’ll have to find other jobs. State employees, merely because they ARE state employees, don’t merit more job protections than anybody else. The ISAC employees will have to find other jobs like their private sector counterparts. This is not a modern tragedy…it’s the way of the business world, and government employees don’t merit more protections than any other employees, although they noisily lay claim to such protections.
Another group of government employees which needs to be reduced is those 11,500 Corrections employees, few of whom could likely earn the same pay on the outside. Now that the feds have changed
the rules on drug sentencing, the way is open to start reducing the sentences of the thousands of mostly African American prisoners in Illinois jails for drug offenses. You may not hear much agitation for this from the African American community, though. Their political leaders would rather keep the patronage jobs and the contracts than actually confront the huge pain and destruction caused by such incarceration. Money and political power trump everything for the Democrats.
- He makes Ryan Look like a Saint - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 10:48 am:
Cassandra, Unfortunately once again you speak about things you do not have a clue about. Have you ever been to a prison? Do you realize how dangerous a prison guard job is? Yet they are extremely UNDERSTAFFED.
As far as the Drug offense, unfortunately I have a family member that got caught up in the drug trap. It is a bad thing and devistating to families. We are not African American, Crack cocaine is color blind. Reducing sentences would be ok, but more importantly treatment is important, it will do nothing to fix the understaffing of Prison Guards.
- Cassandra - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 1:03 pm:
He makes Ryan–
The disproportionality of African Americans in the Illinois prison system absolutely cannot be ignored.
And it has to be fixed. Not only is it a human tragedy but it is really, really expensive to pay for prisoners’ food, shelter, health care, educational opportunities–in effect a totally paid for life…paid for by us.
And prisons are not treatment centers. If they need treatment, put them on probation and mandate outpatient or inpatient treatment.
Anyway, I’m proposing dealing with the staffing problem, if it really exists (as opposed to headcount going disproportionately to $100k and up management jobs for Blago/Emil pals and family memebers) by reducing the prison population. It’s a win win, except for our greedy pols and their
“contributors” and patronage recipients.
- He makes Ryan Look like a Saint - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 1:39 pm:
Cassandra,
A lot of drug offenders did get probation and failed that! (pardon the pun) The go to prison. We cannot make drugs legal, it will destroy more families.
As far as the ” disproportionality of African Americans ” it is a shame, but what is it going to take to get them to STOP comitting crimes? Throw more $$$ at education? It has not worked. More community service $$? That has not worked either.
- Captain America - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 1:43 pm:
I agree with the Skeeter and Csssandra comments. Abstinence programa are ideologically-driven, ineffective, and a complete waste of taxpayer money. Abstinence begins at home - if parental values and that good old-time religion can’t control raging teenage hormones, no government program can fill the void.
I second tha sentiment expressed by the Illinois review that Hassert’s and Mulligan’s JCAR votes make absolutely no sense,except in terms of pork barrel politics. The two lone Republican votes JCAR votes supprting the Governor’s emergncy rule represented political hypocrisy at its finest.
- Cassandra - Friday, Nov 16, 07 @ 1:52 pm:
I simply can’t go along with the argument that people who are on drugs should go to jail if they are not otherwise a serious threat to society.
This from somebody who lives in Oak Park, across one boulevard from Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, which has been characterized by local police as the biggest drug market in the country. A lot of those drug addicts wander around over here, after
purchasing their drugs (rather easily, I gather, despite all the hype about the CPD’s efforts to eradicate drug sales). Is it annoying? Sure. It lowers the quality of life here. Do I think they should all go to live a totally free life off my taxes–that is, go to jail–so I don’t have to be
annoyed. No. Most of their crimes are crimes of opportunity.
Our overstuffed jails are all about more money for pols and their friends, not about correcting anything.
And before you talk about the costs to the community…my house, purchased 30 years ago cheap, is pushing a million on zillow. It is possible to live a normal middle class life in proximity to a bunch of drug addicts.