A Chicago Blog

Eric Zorn reminds us that the latest Meeks stunt was years in the making.

BTW, I won’t be blogging tomorrow. I’ll be at the Cubs game. It’s my first of the year! And it’s Cubs/Cards. Can’t beat it.

*”He apparently thinks he’s King, not Governor,” says Sen. Radogno about the Gov’s plans to rewrite an ethics bill using his amendatory veto authority.

*Blagojevich is also calling lawmakers back to Springfield for a special session … another one. Apparently, he’s rewritten the capital construction plan and wants a vote. Hmmm …. that constitutional convention is looking better and better.

*Phil Kadner recites the union talking points in his latest column on education funding. What I wouldn’t give for the media to spill half as much ink on how money is spent as they do where it comes from. I’ve written exstensively about the state’s contribution to education and how it is a red herring here and here.

Kadner writes: “Local school districts in Illinois are forced to raise 62 percent of their revenue from the property tax on homeowners and businesses.”

This simply isn’t true. Wealthy districts often get +90% of their money from local sources, while underserved districts get +90% of their funding from state sources. Citing one statistic for the whole state is a gross simplification worthy of the Bush Administration.

We shouldn’t be focusing on spending more money on education statewide, but instead on how to help those districts most in need.

Here’s a bit of political irony. Last night, Dick Durbin was on Chicago Tonight arguing that drilling won’t affect the price of oil for 8 to 14 years because it will take that long to bring the new oil to market. But this is just hooey. Once there are new supplies scheduled to come into the market, it has an immediate impact the investment calculus for so-called “speculators,” reducing the price now because of anticipated supply later.

So does Dick Durbin just not understand basic economics? Well that, and he announced this morning that he’s planning to crack down on “speculators,” thus effectively diminishing the impact of any new oil supplies on the price of gas.

So here’s a perfect example of a politician being RIGHT only by virtue of his economic stupidity. Gotta love it.

Forget the polls. There is a new metirc to consider when judging the strength of presidential campaigns: web presence. It is a dose of dramatic irony that Obama is literally beating the pants off the man who eight years ago broke new ground in online campaigning. The Maverick McCain in 2000 beat the establishment candidate in New Hampshire through a combination of town hall meetings and aggressive email campaigning. Of course, His efforts would soon be eclipsed by Howard Dean who truly brought the internet to presidential politics. But McCain’s crew should be given their due for laying the ground work.

No longer though. Obama is trouncing McCain when it comes to his online presence. Take a look at these charts from Google Trends. The first compares the two candidates’ official web sites by unique visitors:

johnmccain.com in red, barackobama.com in blue

The next chart compares how often the candidate’s name is searched.

John McCain v. Barack Obama Search Traffic

Of course, Google isn’t the only metric that counts. But it gets worse when you look at Alexa:

Obama v. McCain - Page Views

Now, no election to date has ever turned on web presence and it will likely to be years befor any election does. But every year it becomes more and more important, for sure.

So apparently, Blogsnetnews.com does a ranking of Illinois’ most influential blogs. I’m not on this list … in fact I’m not even in their damn system! That’s #$%)@*#&$_@(#*$&)@(#*$&)(@#*$&.

[Hat tip: Prairie State 2.0]

Prairie State 2.0 writes:

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives wanted a vote on domestic oil drilling prior to adjourning for the August recess.

The House Democrat leadership did not … so they adjourned …

The Republicans kept debating.  So the Democrats turned the microphones off.  And then they started kicking media out of the chamber.  Then they turned off the House television feed - so no C-SPAN.

But the Republicans kept debating.  They figured out how to turn the microphones back on.

Then the Democrats turned the lights off.  And turned the mics off once again.

But the GOP kept at it.  They even invited members of the public into the House chamber to listen to the debate.

So if the mainstream media wasn’t allowed to cover it - and C-SPAN didn’t carry it.  How did we all know about it?

One word:  Twitter.

One of the reasons public education is such a mess in this country is lack of clear ownership. Ownership produces accountability. But who owns the public schools? Well … the public, I suppose. But how can the public be held responsible for failure and besides, what incentive does the public have to hold itself accountable? It’s about as absurd as an Edward Albee play.

It also means that, when controversies arise, there is no clear way to resolve them. To mangle Harry Truman: the buck stops nowhere.

Take the case of John Freshwater whose stands accused of “branding” a student with the sign of a cross. Yikes. Sounds horrible. But once you read the story, you realize this is a complex issue. It’s not clear that Freshwater intended to harm the kid, and some even think the story is fabricated. Freshwater is an openly religious man teaching in public schools and has apparently long been a target of criticism for having religious paraphenlia in his classroom. So his supporters suggest, the incident wreaks of career assasination.

And so it is, an issue of child safety gets blown up into an issue about religion in the public schools. A local decision becomes a proxy for a national battle.

A private school would no doubt contain the damage by being decisive; immediately fire Freshwater or staunchly defend him, those are your options. But instead the whole district is now involved, a committee is being called, hearings will be held, arguments proffered about the meaning of public safety, the meaning of education, the purpose of public schools, the merits of evolution, and the separation of church and state.

In short, the whole apparattus of public education will be caught up in something that has nothing to do with its function: education. This is a failure of owership, and more fundamentally, a failure of our existing public education model.