Category Archives: General News

General News

Former Asst. Sec. General of the UN to speak in Peoria

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From my inbox:

Gillian Sorensen, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations under Kofi Anan and currently Senior Advisor to the UN Foundation, will speak in Peoria on Thursday, November 19 at 7:00 pm at Barrack’s Cater Inn. She will address the topic “The US and the UN: Controversy and Opportunity” for the Peoria Area World Affairs Council. With her high level experience and access, this program is certain to provoke a lively discussion of the role of the UN and the role the US in UN activities in this changing world.

All high school and college students may attend the program for no charge, with their valid student ID. Adults may purchase tickets at the door for $10. Dinner will precede this event, served at 6:00 pm. The cost of dinner, which also includes the cost of the program, is $35 per person. Reservations for dinner must be made by calling the World Affairs Council at (309) 645-2580.

General News

There is no honor among thieves

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From the Washington Examiner:

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes’ seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of “public use.”

A comment on the story in the New Haven Register says it all: “Karma working her magic in New London.”

General News

As if we needed any more proof the film industry is morally bankrupt

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I can find no better article on the Roman Polanski rape case and the film industry’s reaction to it than this one by Dennis Prager. Here’s part of the article:

As virtually no one has ever suggested the girl lied, it is universally acknowledged that at age 43, Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl.

One would think that anyone with a functioning conscience would condemn the terrible act. Or to put it another way: If a middle-aged man raping a 13-year-old girl is not obviously terrible, what is?

Yet, leading members of the film world in Europe and America world do not see it that way.

As Britain’s Guardian newspaper wrote: “The list of supporters giving Polanski their impassioned support read like a Who’s Who of the cream of the movie-making world. It included, among many others, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Harvey Weinstein, Pedro Almodovar and Ethan Coen.” […]

As noted by many observers, imagine if Polanski were a Roman Catholic priest — or a Republican politician — accused of the same crime. All hell would have fallen on the man’s head. The Boston Globe cited the Rev. James Martin, associate editor of America magazine: “If Polanski were in a collar there would be no boo-hooing about his recent plight. There would be zero pity for him. … Can you imagine a petition being circulated among actors, directors, and producers in the United States to have a Catholic priest reinstated in his parish after he had abused a 13-year-old child? If you believe this about Polanski — that his good deeds offset his guilt and that enough time has passed — do you believe the same about pedophile priests?” […]

We have reason to be grateful to the Polanski affair. It offers that most needed of virtues: clarity. It has made the average citizen aware of how broken the cultural elite’s moral compass is. [… T]he next time you see the Hollywood elite come out on behalf of or against some public issue, you can most likely assume the opposite is the morally correct position.

I was disappointed to see that Tilda Swinton also signed the petition supporting child-rapist Polanski. Swinton played the White Witch in the recent Chronicles of Narnia films.

It’s interesting that some in Hollywood are protesting that critics are painting with too broad of a brush. Screenwriter Josh Olson wrote a piece quoted on this Los Angeles Times blog lamenting the hasty generalization of some reporters who imply or state outright that “Hollywood” is supporting Polanski. I found this bit entertaining:

As a rule, when I read the news that a fugitive from justice has been caught, my standard response is to think, “How nice,” and turn the page. If it’s a particularly interesting story, I might tell my girlfriend about it, but until this moment it never occurred to me that I was supposed to alert the media as to my feelings on the subject. It’s hard enough keeping up with all the injustice in the world. Now we have to stand up and shout every time it goes the way it’s supposed to? No offense to Ms. Silverstein, but some of us have jobs. […]

But as far as Hollywood’s concerned, we’re not rallying behind anyone, and it sure would be nice if folks could find a way of discussing this issue without creating ridiculous and childish caricatures of people who have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Right. What was the plot of American Beauty again? How many Oscars did it win? How does Hollywood feel about Elia Kazan? How did they feel about George W. Bush? No, no, they never alert the media as to their feelings on a particular subject, especially about a specific injustice. And far be it from Hollywood to ever take part in ridiculous and childish caricatures.

I think Dennis Prager got it exactly right.

General News

Miscellaneous

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Just a few miscellaneous things of note:

  • The City’s Planning and Growth Department is considering combining the Planning Commission (PC) and Zoning Commission (ZC). The PC considered it at their September 16 meeting, and the ZC is going to discuss it at their October 1 meeting. The ZC agenda gives this explanation for the request:

    Request by Staff that the Zoning Commission discuss the merits of combining the Planning Commission and Zoning Commission and determine if there is potential to create more efficient service delivery. This request is being made due to the potential reduction of a part-time position in the Planning and Growth Management Department, which represents an estimated 20 hours per week of duties. Those responsibilities would be re-assigned to existing staff reducing staff support to both commissions.

    The ZC meets at 3:00 p.m. Thursday in City Council chambers.

  • Speaking of the Zoning Commission, they are also scheduled on Thursday to consider allowing cell phone towers to be erected at Expo Gardens, Columbia Middle School, and near Von Steuben Middle School. However, the Journal Star says this item “will be postponed as officials representing AT&T Mobility gather more information requested by the city’s Department of Planning & Growth Management. The commission will be asked to take up the matter during its Nov. 5 meeting.”
  • I’ve been seeing ads for OSF St. Francis Medical Center lately that say they OSF is “preferred 2 to 1” over all the other hospitals in the area. If you go to their website, they will even show you the survey results with colorful little graphs. It reminded me of Maggie Mahar’s film “Money-Driven Medicine,” which I saw on the PBS show “Bill Moyers Journal.” She talks about the differences between “consumer-driven” and “patient-centered” health care. One of the things she mentions is why competition among hospitals doesn’t improve health care:

    Typically, 4 or 5 hospitals within a 5 mile, 10 mile, 15 mile radius will all buy the same technology because they’re competing with each other…. One time Dr. Donald Berwick called a hospital in Texas and said, “We’ve heard you have a very good procedure for treating a particular disease. We’d like to learn more about your protocol so other hospitals can use it.” And the hospital said, “We can’t tell you that. It’s a competitive advantage in our market that we’re better at treating this disease and it is very lucrative. So this is proprietary information.”

    …A physician takes an oath to put his patient’s interests ahead of his own. A corporation is legally bound to put its shareholders’ interests first. And this is part of the inherent conflict between health care as a business, part of our economy, and health care as a public good and part of our society. Health care has become a growth industry. That means higher health care bills. That means more and more middle class people cannot afford health care in this country.

    It’s a thought-provoking film. It’s enough to make me look at those OSF ads in a different light. It makes me wonder why a fundamentally charitable institution like a hospital would want to compare itself to other hospitals. I mean, can you imagine St. Jude stating it was preferred 2 to 1 over the Salvation Army and Easter Seals? It’s a very strange marketing campaign.

General News

Katie Couric interviews Glenn Beck

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Why am I posting this? Because I know that I have some readers who are just dying to talk about Glenn Beck, health care, Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing fringe, etc., etc., but it’s pretty much off-topic in my other posts. So, here’s a post where you can take your shots. However, I would like you to watch this video first. It’s an interview with Katie Couric, and it’s relatively recent — it was put up on YouTube just five days ago. Note: it’s about 45 minutes long, so make sure you’re comfortable before you launch into it:

For those of you who don’t know, a boycott of Beck’s show is being organized by a group called Color of Change.org. According to their website:

Fox’s Glenn Beck recently said President Obama is “a racist” and has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” Beck is on a campaign to convince the American public that President Obama’s agenda is about serving the needs of Black communities at White people’s expense. It’s repulsive, divisive and shouldn’t be on the air.

Join us in calling on Beck’s advertisers to stop sponsoring his show….

Our campaign has been a huge success so far. More than 270,000 of us have stood up and 62 companies have pulled their support.

Their first sentence is factual. Their second sentence is their opinion about Beck’s “agenda.” Beck, according to the interview above, says that his agenda is that he doesn’t want government to get any bigger, and that he has opposed big government from George Bush just as much as he has from Barack Obama. However, he defends his belief that Obama is racist by pointing to Obama’s membership in Jeremiah Wright’s church — a church that teaches black liberation theology — and Obama’s immediate assumption that a white police officer “acted stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates, Jr., before he even knew the details of the incident. Color of Change.org and their followers believe Beck is race baiting.

Besides the racism charge, many complain that Beck is spreading lies about the proposed universal health care bill in Congress. Specifically, they say Beck is fear-mongering by linking health care reform to euthanasia and infanticide (i.e., suggesting reform would kill the elderly and infants, respectively). Beck doesn’t address that charge in the above interview, but he does say that his solution to the health care crisis is to “let the free market work,” and allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines.

Glenn Beck can be heard on 1470 WMBD-AM from 9-11 a.m. weekday mornings here in Peoria.

General News

Who’s out?

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  • Brent Lonteen is out. He’s resigned as President of the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. No one will say why.
  • Henry Holling is out. His job as interim City Manager ended Friday. Scott Moore takes over now.
  • EmergePeoria says that Craig Hullinger is out. However, I can get no independent verification of that. E-mails to Holling and Hullinger have gone unanswered. I have heard rumors, however, that if/when Hullinger does resign, the plan is for the city to hire him as a consultant. Sounds like a page out of the District 150 playbook to me.
  • Billy Dennis says Chuck Collins is out. No independent verification of that either. Even Billy says it’s just a rumor.
  • Summer is out. It ended a few days ago. Life goes on and the world goes ’round….
General News

The future is here: Flying car makes its debut

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Here it is, the car of your dreams:

It’s called the Terrafugia Transition, and it technically isn’t a car. It’s a “roadable aircraft.” That means it’s really an airplane that you can drive on the street like a car and even park in your garage, but it’s not — I repeat, not — a “flying car.”

Now that we’ve got that straight, I’m going to call it a “flying car” for the rest of this post.

When my mom and dad were growing up, a trip to the moon in a rocket was science fiction. Then in 1969, man got in a rocket and went for a stroll on the moon. It seems that if man can imagine it, eventually it becomes reality (except world peace, sadly), and we’ve been imagining flying cars for a long time. The Transition is not exactly the compact, wingless model I was expecting from watching The Jetsons, but it’s impressive nevertheless.

Also impressive is the price, anticipated to be $194,000. They won’t be ready to ship until 2011, but you can reserve one now for a $10,000 deposit. I’m sure the price will come down, though. And when it does, I wonder what effect it will have on American life.

The Transition runs on regular unleaded gasoline. You don’t have to rent a hangar to store it. And it doubles as your ground transportation. The cost of owning your own personal aircraft will be reduced to about the same as the cost of owning a car… albeit a very, very expensive car. But given the size and prices of SUVs these days, there’s not that much of a difference anymore. If you want to some minute upgrades for your vehicle, you can start with parts like a car sunshade.

So, what if these catch on? What will that do to our large suburban and rural lots? Will the installation of private runways be all the rage? How would it impact commercial air transportation if frequent fliers decide to use their own personal flying car in order to avoid delays and invasion of privacy at airports? Will local commuter air service disappear like local commuter rail did decades ago?

What about the increase in air traffic? What if, instead of 10 planes with 60 passengers each in the sky, we end up with 300 flying cars with two passengers each? And what if those cars can take off and land on any private runway? Suddenly, we could all be living next to an airport, and there would be no way to get away from it. Maybe the FAA would establish highways in the sky, a la The Jetsons, in order to relegate flight to certain approved airspace. I would imagine emergency landing strips would have to be provided along these routes in case your flying car develops a problem. (Incidentally, the Transition comes with an optional full-vehicle parachute.)

And think about how far away you could live from where you work. That would give “suburbia” a whole new definition. For instance, commuting from a home in Peoria to a job in Chicago would be a breeze in a flying car, effectively making Peoria a new suburb of Chicago. Of course, Hersey Hawkins already believes that (when asked where Bradley University is located during an appearance on Wheel of Fortune in the late ’90s, he replied, “just outside of Chicago”).

According to the Terrafugia website, it only takes about 20 hours of training of get a Sport Pilot license, which is the minimum required to fly the Transition. Who will be the first person in Peoria to get one?