Here are some odds and ends that I just don’t feel like writing a whole post about:
- It looks like District 150 has just about settled on a new superintendent, and her name is Grenita Lathan. She’s currently the “interim deputy superintendent at California’s San Diego Unified Schools.” Other than that I don’t know much about her, and there’s surprisingly little on Google, Lexis-Nexis, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, or any number of additional sources I checked. Oh, there are some snippets here and there. You can see some interview footage with her here. Commenters on another post have several links to quotes and information they find troublesome. Some have already passed judgment. I’m kind of old-fashioned, though. I like to wait until someone actually screws up before I start criticizing them. From what I’ve heard, the first thing she wants to do is purge the administration of unnecessary and ineffective administrators. I certainly can’t complain about that.
- John Vespa was not endorsed by the Journal Star to succeed his brother as the 10th Judicial Circuit judge. The reason they give for passing him over is that “Vespa fell below the 65 passing grade” on something called the bar poll “and is ‘not recommended.'” They say the bar poll (where responses are anonymous) is “controversial,” but they evidently believe it. Not surprisingly, the Vespa campaign begs to differ. They report: “To understand the relevance of the bar poll … it is important to look at … the number of people participating. There are 911 lawyers in the Circuit that are eligible to participate in the poll, according to the ARDC website. Of those 911, there were only 152 that registered an opinion. (16.3%) The majority of those 152 felt John met the requirements of the office. Of course John would expect to have some legitimate detractors, particularly given the fact that half of his practice is devoted to criminal defense. In fact, it would be troubling if he did not. (All of his opponents practice for the most part, civil law only).” As the Journal Star would say, “Voters can make of that what they will.”
- One of my readers recently told me about this site called “How We Drive” — and specifically, this post on “Parking Availability Bias.” Very cool site full of interesting information.
- The “religious group” that the city is considering to operate the public access channels on Comcast’s cable system is called GPS-TV, and is located in Washington, Illinois. Here’s their website.
- You can download a transcript (PDF format) of Mayor Ardis’s State of the City address here. Of course, the biggest announcement of the speech was this: “I have spoken at some length with County Board Chairman Tom O’Neill and we are prepared to put together a group that will be charged with exploring the opportunity to move Peoria City?County towards combined municipal government.” It will be interesting to see what recommendations that group makes in the future. Will it just be combining certain functions, or a total UNIGOV proposal?
What is up with the District 3 School Board Candidates? Considering how near and dear the goings on of District 150 are to local bloggers, I am surprised no one has waterboarded… er.. quizzed them yet. The primary is only 5 days away.
A supporter of Royster, another lawyer, or a county board person. Hmmm I can’t believe I will be supporting a lawyer in this selection.
What’s troublesome about this Superintentdent candidate? If they had paid attention to all the troubling info. about Royster, and not hired her, they could have saved the schools and taxpayers that whole sorry episode.
I found it strange the state of the city address did not even address the impending largest project the CSO issue.
Martin: Because they have been ignoring that project for decades. Why would they focus on it now? Unless they are going to put it on the UNIGOV project list.
Re Vespa vacancy. Do you mean ISBA rather than ARDC? What is your source for the 911 lawyers in the circuit? The ISBA poll shows 596 ballots mailed and 264 received in response.
http://www.isba.org/judicialevaluations/Judicial%20Evaluations%20and%20Polls%20outside%20Cook%20County.pdf
Vinron – The bar poll is open to all lawyers in the circuit. Ballots are mailed to members of the ISBA, and non-members are mailed a ballot upon request. There are 911 lawyers in the Circuit, according to ARDC (Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Committee). 596 ballots were mailed out. 264 were returned. Of the 264 returned, only 152 were “opinionated” and factored into the “rating”. Therein lies the controversy of judicial bar polls. The polling is anonymous. The polling reflects a very small percentage of eligible participants. The poll is subject to political manipulation. The ISBA website does not reflect the internals of the poll, which are extremely relevant. The poll does not provide a margin of error. A copy of the data has been forwarded to the blog owner.
Re: SOTU address by POTUS. I still believe in Obama as an honest man who wants to help those who are struggling. I think he inherited an impossible situation. Also, he does not seem to be a politico who can wring arms and twist minds. Alas. God speed Barack Obama.
Do you believe in the Easter Bunny, too, tulip?
The “religious” group is the business formally known as Video I.D.. They’re the same ones trying to take over channel 20.
Mouse. I believe in the Easter Bunny more than I ever believed in or believed George Bush.
George who? Is that the one that attacks nations his father couldn’t finish off? Is he the one that practically threw the constitution away in order to “protect us” with Homeland Security? Is he the one that started the $750,000,000 bailout of his benefactors in the financial industry? Is he the one that sat for 7 minutes after being told “We are being attacked”? Is he the one that tried all those terrorists in Federal Court rather than military tribunals? Is he the one that appointed his friend as Attorney General in order to bury his illegal war and illegal interrogation tactics? The one that didn’t show up for his National Guard commitments? The one that is now a motivational speaker? That George Bush?
Charlie,
You forgot to blame George W. Bush for the Haiti earthquake. Everyone knows he’s responsible for that too 🙂
You aren’t implying he is the devil the Haitian people made a pact with are you?
What about the “impossible” situations that Bush inherited from Clinton. When are you people going to quit blaming. Don’t tell me, Obama will need at least 4 additional years to clean it all up. He asked for the job. It wasn’t like he was forced to be President. Now that he is, he (and everyone else) needs to accept the responsibility that goes with it. Quit whining or call someone that cares.
Impossible situation.. the balanced budget? He took right good care of that…
Just curious, how does one become “a fan” of George W Bush? Is it respect for the Constitution? His love of peace and honesty? Is it is intelligence? Courage? Is it the “common, just folks” upbringing?
There are 247 + millionares in Congress, my question is;how many were that before Clinton took office? in 2000 got Congress to take the shackels off the SEC and Banks. and Hedge Funds ran wild. Clinton also signed NAFTA,
so how many jobs went to Mexico and Central America from SC,NC,etc.??
and he is now a Millionare also! We keep electing people on what qualifications ?
Only one CPA in Senate, how many Lawyers ? BLAME BLAME !
Grenita Lathan. ,go to search engine “Dogpile” ask Who is Grenita Lathan?you will find quite a bit on her.
Hope no long term contract with HUDGE BUY OUT or penalties!Make sure she does not drag bunch of cronies with her as consultants!! in other words DO NOT REPEAT ROYSTER MESS !
Since most of the Senators that were in office in 1990 are still in office, and the same is true for The House, the numbers are probably pretty similar. I was just looking at a list of the 100th Congress, (1988-1989…) it is amazing the names that are still there.
The ones that aren’t either died, got caught in a scandal or retired either the following year when Bush the first was elected or in the 94 “Contract on America”.
Whatever happened to term limits and citizen representation instead of professional politicians?
Charlie wrote: Whatever happened to term limits and citizen representation instead of professional politicians?
The Citizen Legislature Act provision of the Contract With America was introduced in the 104th Congress and would have imposed a maximum of 12 years of service for members of Congress. It was rejected by a U. S. House vote of 227-204 (a constitutional amendment requires a 2/3’s majority).
Most of the “no” votes came from Democrats, the main opponents to term limits.
http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/termlimd.txt
Actually the main opposition came from the Supreme Court in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton. I see where your boy Boehner voted for term limits, 15 years ago. He is now in his 11th term).
The point is of course, 12 years is not much of a limit. One could be a Congressman for 12 years and a Senator for 12 years and then at age 49 run for Vice President and then in 8 years, President… and retire at the sweet age of 65.
Term limits need to be 2 terms in the House 1 in the Senate, 2 as Pres or VP…PERIOD. No retirement, go back to work…
Charlie — I wonder what the unintended consequences would be of term limits, especially ones as short as you propose. Wouldn’t term limits increase the power of bureaucrats and staffers, and even lobbyists? There are no “term limits” on any of them, so they would have a pretty big advantage — continuity, institutional memory, a seasoned understanding of the legislative process. They would have quite a bit of influence over new legislators, magnified by the large number of them coming in every election. I’m not sure we wouldn’t be opening a whole other can of worms.
Charlie,
How many people who serve 12 years in the House and 12 years in the Senate then get to be vice president and president? You might wanna think that through some more.
It is my experience that the few people I know in those positions are above politics and see the elected officials as “dressed up monkeys” in the circus show, already.
Perhaps we can rethink the whole “professional politician” idea, elected, appointed AND lobbyist. The lobbyist, after all, is a paid excuse for the politician not to listen to his constituency.
David, just shut up. How many walk off the streets, or a half term as governor or the pages of Cosmopolitan?
We have term limits. Just vote them out. Clearly the public is against arbitrary limits to service or they would be voting these folks out left and right. What if you do get a really good representative?
I think most proponents of term limits are just people with sour grapes over the reality that ‘their’ candidate(s) can’t seem to get elected. They hope to level the playing field in their favor by arbitrarily denying people from further participation.
I attended the Lt. Governor debate at Bradley on Saturday — one of only around 40 people there. Seven candidates participated (4 D, 3 R, 0 G). The question of term limits was asked: should there be term limits on leadership positions and/or elected officials? Six of the candidates supported some form of limits, especially for leaders (NOTE: they were asked specifically about state house/senate positions). Most of the men argued it was not good for the business of the state that Madigan were still in the house after 40 years, most of that time spent as House Speaker.
Interestingly, the general consensus for the amount of time to which elected officials should be limited was around 16-18 years (long enough to understand the inner workings of the office, short enough to not be a career politician).
The “just vote them out” argument against term limits works well for statewide offices (we’re on our fourth open senate seat in four elections), but not for district offices. Only one of the 118 state legislative districts can do anything about Madigan, regardless of how much of the rest of the state may/may not like how he does business. I’m sure he’s been absolutely wonderful for his district, so why shouldn’t his constituents have the option of retaining him? If power weren’t so entrenched in one office — one individual — I could go along with that. But I don’t think one person of ANY PARTY should be in ANY OFFICE for 20 terms, 27+ years as the head of the legislative body.
* testimonial from one of the candidates at the forum over the weekend: Madigan bankrolled a candidate for state rep. (to run against a candidate Madigan DIDN’T like) to the tune of $700K of his own campaign funds; the other candidate was forced into a position of withdrawing from the race because of not being able to keep up financially.
Charlie wrote: David, just shut up. How many walk off the streets, or a half term as governor or the pages of Cosmopolitan?
Or a certain Illinois senator who, after two years in the U. S. Senate, announced his presidential campaign, then had the second-worst attendance record, missing half the votes by the Veterans Committee, of which he was a member (and sought the seat).
“What if you do get a really good representative? ”
The people voted 2-1 in favor of term limits before being overturned by the Supreme Court… enough for a state by state referendum to amend the Constitution but the Republicans chose to try and do it by legislation and failed. (How convenient and publicly rewarding)
What if you do get a good representative? Are they really that far and few between? We get exactly what we vote for, career politicians interested in nothing but getting reelected and lining their own pockets.
I would suggest that the big difference between Dems and Reps is that Dems go into politics rich and Reps come out of politics rich.