Daily Archives: October 16, 2007

2008 Campaign, Internet

A couple cool things I found on the Web

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Here are a couple of interesting sites I thought I’d pass along:

  • Complete Broadcast Day, September 21, 1939. All 19 hours of broadcasting, unedited, was preserved by radio station WJSV in Washington, D.C. on 9/21/1939. The whole day is here at this site in mp3 format (fortunately in separate files so you can easily sample it). You may recall that Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, setting World War II into motion. This broadcast includes President Roosevelt giving an address to a joint session of Congress explaining how the U.S. was going to remain neutral. Also included is the last regular season baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and Washington Senators that year. And a little after 12:30 a.m., you can hear the Bob Chester Orchestra play that smash hit, “Shoot The Sherbert To Me, Herbert.” (It makes me laugh every time I see that title.) It’s really a fascinating time capsule.
  • Select a Candidate Quiz. My parents forwarded this to me. It’s a short quiz you take identifying your position on certain hot-button issues, then your answers are compared to the stated positions of the presidential candidates. The candidate with the highest score is the one that shares your positions the closest. I took it; Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson tied for the highest score (43) based on my positions. I’m not quite sure how to feel about that. Bottom of the list: Chris Dodd. He and I disagree on almost every issue, apparently. Who tops your list?
The Peoria Chronicle

The sun also rises

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You may have noticed that the header for my blog has a new picture. I’ve been wanting to change it for some time, but just haven’t gotten around to it before now. The old picture was one was a great picture of the Peoria skyline at night that I found online. The new picture was one I took this evening around 5:30 at East Peoria’s riverfront park. The view of Peoria’s skyline from this park is really spectacular. I highly recommend it to all you shutterbugs out there.

Peoria Pundit

Kudos to Billy

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I’ve been noticing lately that Billy Dennis has really stepped up his citizen journalism. He’s always been the “blogfather,” of course, but I’ve noticed an increase in his first-hand reporting lately. He’s doing an especially good job of covering the 18th congressional district race.

I frankly can’t keep up with him anymore. If he keeps this up, I may give up my blog and just occasionally post guest commentary on his site. 🙂

Peoria Public Schools

Just when I was about to compliment them….

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Peoria Public Schools logoI was all set to praise the District 150 school board for being open-minded about the two-school option in the East Bluff/North Valley area, and reconsidering their plans to remodel the district offices… and then I read this:

District 150’s newly named deputy superintendents will receive temporary pay raises until Superintendent Ken Hinton recovers from back surgery and returns to work.

The School Board approved 15 percent raises for deputy superintendents Cindy Fischer and Herschel Hannah. Their pay will return to normal when Hinton comes back.

What is the matter with these people? Let’s review. Royster is fired. Board wants Hinton to replace her, but Hinton doesn’t have certification to be a superintendent. They hire him anyway (as “deputy” superintendent) and hire Fischer and Hannah as co-interim superintendents. Then Hinton gets his certification and becomes Superintendent.

Then the board decides to keep Fischer and Hannah on anyway, even though these positions are unnecessary now because the Superintendent position is filled. They call them “Associate Superintendents” and gave them a huge pay increase just a few months ago.

Now that Hinton is out on medical leave, they give them both another huge pay increase (albeit “temporary”) while he’s out of the office. These two superfluous positions already pay over $114,000 a year before the increase. Fifteen percent of that is over $17,000 (annually).

I can find no other school district the size of District 150 that has as many superintendents as District 150. This is the district that is always complaining about not having money, using the Chamber of Commerce to get donations to keep the truancy center open, considering outsourcing the lunch ladies, negotiating low or no raises for teachers, etc., etc. Yet they can spend gobs of money on superfluous administrative positions and give them mammoth raises without batting an eye.

Priorities?

General News

“Moment of silence”? Whatever could it mean?

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I was amused by this headline in today’s paper: “School struggle with meaning of law: Administrators say moment of silence rule is still unclear.”

I know there’s a lot of controversy over this law, and frankly I don’t think it’s the state government’s responsibility to mandate a moment of silence (shouldn’t they be working on other things, like overriding Blagojevich’s veto on education funding?), but hearing school administrators profess their confusion over what “a moment of silence” means makes me fear for public education.

Really? They’re “struggling” with the meaning of the law? They’re not quite sure what constitutes a “moment”? Here’s what the law (called “The Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act”) says:

In each public school classroom the teacher in charge shall may observe a brief period of silence with the participation of all the pupils therein assembled at the opening of every school day. This period shall not be conducted as a religious exercise but shall be an opportunity for silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.

The act itself isn’t new; what’s new is that they changed the word “may” to “shall” as noted above, making it mandatory. Incidentally, the legislature had to override the governor’s veto to pass it. There didn’t seem to be any confusion about the act when it was optional, but now that it’s mandatory administrators are suddenly befuddled. Maybe they should look up the words in a dictionary, or even online with one of those computers they put in classrooms nowadays.

But here’s my favorite line from the paper:

“At least as it stands now, it’s not costing us any money,” [Don Beard, superintendent of Tremont Community Unit School District 702] said.

Yeah, that’s a good point. This legislation isn’t costing any school any money. Unlike another recent piece of legislation that will cost District 150 taxpayers millions of dollars. Sorry if I’m not more sympathetic with the plight of schools having to muddle through the “trouble” of being quiet for ten seconds a day.

Crime

Vehicular endangerment the right charge

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Tossing a brick from an overpass onto a passing car was a senseless act, and the perpetrator should definitely be brought to justice. But charging Rakiem Campbell with first-degree murder was excessive. I’m pleased that Campbell will be punished by being sent to prison for 15 years, and that his charge was reduced to the proper one: vehicular endangerment.

He plead guilty to a couple other crimes in the process, and will also do time for those. The Journal Star reports, “In total, [his sentence is] 22 years, but with credit for time served and day-for-day ‘good-time’ credit, he could be released in slightly more than 10 years, said Kevin Lowe, one of his attorneys.”

I think justice was served as far as the charge and the sentence, but I do question a system that lets criminals out after serving less than half their sentence. Is this just to free up prison space? What is the reason for not requiring a full sentence to be served?