By Steve Rhodes
BREAKING 11:49 A.M.: Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski resigns.
Gov. Baloneyvich
“Want to ruin your day? Try dealing with state government,” Kristen McQueary wrote on Sunday.
“On Wednesday, Gov. Rod Blagojevich followed through on his threat to veto social service programs from the state budget.
“After reviewing dozens of pages of vetoed items, it’s clear the governor once again put politics ahead of policy. He kept the nearly $1 million in cost-of-living pay raises he and lawmakers are set to receive, but he slashed quite discriminately in other areas.
“He cut more than $240,000 for the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and $800,000 to address the state’s DNA testing backlog. Another $1 million to offset the cost of videotaping police interrogations was cut.”
If your day isn’t quite ruined yet, go read the rest of it and it will be.
[Editor’s Note: That link has suddenly and mysteriously become inoperable. I’ll leave it up in case it returns.]
The Berman Derby
Coming soon, but not soon enough.
From The White Sox Report:
“Over/Under: Infinite: The number of times you’ll want to throw the remote through your television as Chris Berman guides you through the Home Run Derby.”
From The Cub Factor:
“Over/Under: Amount of time the average baseball fan should spend watching the Home Run Derby: +/- 2 minutes.”
Totally unplanned.
Starting At Home
“[Obama] also said he favors parents having more choice of schools within the public system, but not the use of vouchers for private schools,” the Sun-Times reports today in “‘Education Starts At Home’: Obama Picks Up Endorsement, Says He’ll Fix No Child Left Behind.”
“‘We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools, not throwing our hands up and walking away from them,’ Obama said.”
Obama sends his kids to private school.
Obama Left Behind
“The story of Obama’s involvement [in local school councils] suggests that on similarly contentious fronts involving national education policy, like the No Child Left Behind Act, he might respond the same way – holding back when powerful interest groups collide, only to support the status quo of local control in the end. The candidate’s Chicago record on education also raises questions about his much-vaunted ability to bring different sides together to find lasting solutions,” Alexander Russo wrote in a Slate article called “Chicago School Days: Obama’s Lackluster Record On Education.”
“Based on Obama’s actions in Chicago in 1999, it’s hard to imagine him taking charge of the continuing debate over whether and how No Child Left Behind should be renewed. Forced to take a side, Obama’s record suggests that, ultimately, he would be sympathetic to local autonomy. But there’s not much evidence to show that he would be able to help mend deep and abiding schisms between testing hawks and local-control advocates. And without strong and unifying national leadership, our troubled public-education system stands little chance of making the dramatic improvements that it needs.”
Sister City
“Millions have been spent on beautifying parts of Chicago but little to abate the consequences of inadequate public housing and to improve lives,” Edward L. Palmer, former chairman of the Chicago Sister Cities Committee, wrote to the Tribune on Sunday (I can’t find it online). “Instead of residents having to march in parades to bring attention to communities in trauma and being told that they must halt the violence, they should look to the city administration to provide leadership – first by acknowledging to wounded communities that their policies have failed and that firms and invidivuals have garnered more than $15 million under a plan that has lost 13,000 public housing units, and second by developing plans in cooperation with communities that offer work and well-being for residents.
“No marches or beautifications can mask the ineptness of this administration and its cronies.”
Pot Kettle Black
“Across Midwest, Interest In Medical Marijuana Grows.”
The regular kind, too.
Car Max
“Gas Over $4 May Cut Auto Deaths By A Third.”
And gas over $100 would eliminate auto deaths altogether.
Kool-Aid Report
“The true believers who evangelized that Obama would transcend politics as we knew it are suffering a Barackian hangover.”
Blog Fog
1. Memo to Tribune editorial board: No one is asking you to read their blogs or subscribe to their Twitter feeds. (Editorial about GenY microbloggers not available online (!), but trust me.)
2. Yes, young people are so caught up in connecting with friends online they don’t know how to interact with humans in real life! Just like when the telephone was invented!
Will you please return to your home planet now?
Judging Julia
Yes, the rhythms of blogs are just killing us. No one wants to read anymore!
If only we could go back to the days when newspaper articles were works of great literature.
This Just In
Blogs are to blame for every ill in the universe.
Rappers breathe sigh of relief.
Keeping Up With Jones
“[I]t is outrageously sorry that state Senate President Emil ‘I need a pay raise’ Jones is refusing to reconvene his chamber until after the November election,” Carol Marin wrote on Sunday. “What that cagey little maneuver does is guarantee that an automatic 7 percent pay raise on top of a 4 percent cost-of-living increase will go into effect for all state lawmakers even though the House voted the pay raise down. The combined 11 percent boost for a part-time legislator will take rank-and-file members to about $73,000 a year while those in leadership slots, such as Jones, will rake in more than a hundred grand.”
Cop Shop
“[P]olice chief Jody Weis is revisiting two time-worn issues, one of which is much-talked about and the right thing to do but is in fact never done, and the other which is a disaster waiting to happen but far more likely to happen – perhaps even at the mayor’s behest.”
Cover Your Fannie
“Apparently, the people who lend you money have no money either,” Natasha Julius writes in her fabulous Weekend Desk Report.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Lender of last resort.
Posted on July 14, 2008