He’s a human being. And he has the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. And he’s accused of getting into a bar fight. And from all reports no one was injured. This is not the crime of the century, folks.
The Journal Star hasn’t allowed comments on this or other articles about the mess he’s found himself in. But they have allowed comments on his column. And I’ve been amazed at the venom that’s been hurled at him. There’s even some of that nonsense here on C.J.’s site.
Here is a question for all of the boo birds, anonymous or otherwise: Ever been arrested? Ever do anything you could have been arrested for, but managed to get away with it? Think hard. It didn’t take me long to make a list.
I’m not defending Luciano. He’s going to have to do that himself. When this is over, he’d be wise to come clean. But he has the right to a trial and his attorney no doubt wants him to keep his big yap shut. And because he isn’t flapping his gums, all we know is what has appeared in police reports and those are based on information from the victims.
I’ve been very critical of some of Luciano’s columns. Some of his targets think he’s been unfair. Some people think his snideness is insufferable. Still, he has written some good stuff.
There’s too much important crap going on in Peoria and the world to waste a minute wallowing in schadenfreude.
There’s been some chatter about lowering the speed limit throughout the city to 25 miles per hour. Doing so, it was argued, would make the streets safer for the kiddies and make the city more livable. But someone who works for the city told the Peoria City Council this week that the federal government thinks it’s unenforceable.
That’s what ticked of C.J. and Randall. C.J. said:
So, if every neighborhood in Peoria requests a 25 mph speed limit, the city can do it. Apparently under that scenario, it’s enforceable. So what’s the difference between that and changing all the residential speed limits at once?
One more question: Why does the Federal Highway Administration have anything to say about speed limits on residential city streets?
I didn’t jump on the burgeoning bandwagon. While I like Peorians to make decisions about what is best for Peoria and not faceless, nameless federal bureaucrats, I was leery of lowering the speed limit. A law is a law only because it is enforced, and there are always unintended consequences when the government enforces the law.
also, I don’t want to have to drive no faster than 25 miles per hour. Seriously, folks, if people have a problem with speeding NOW, how does simply lowering the speed limit do anything except make criminals out of more people? It makes as much sense as expecting crooks to obey gun control laws.
And I also wondered what the Fed’s really meant by “unenforceable.”
First, the city would have to put speed limit signs on every single street in order to write tickets. That’s gonna cost $200,000 and doesn’t include the cost of having officers cranking out tickets (remember people, the passage of a law doesn’t mean people automatically obey it). Second, there is no data anywhere that says that a five MPH drop to 25 MPH translates into improved safety.
Any blogger could have made a few calls. I might have made the calls, had this been a subject I had been following and if I had the time. I know C.J. has been know to make calls to firm up facts, but didn’t in this case.
It illustrates a point I have been trying to make. Bloggers have a lot to contribute, especially as the mainstream media buziness collapses under the weight of corporate greed and bad planning.
But there is no substitute for full-time reporters with the time and resources to make some phone calls.
We need news organizations that employee full-time reporters and editors. These future reporters probably aren’t going to be working for existing news organizations.
Call me crazy, but if you are a celebrity journalist/radio personality who’s just been arrested for a violent crime, it might not be in your best interests if your employer runs your article about how a family of notorious criminals were not all bad.
I’ll buy that idea that months ago, the Journal Star stopped letting readers comment on stories about people getting arrest (a policy which silences readers on about about half of stories in the newspaper).
Columnist Phil Luciano should be asked, for the record, for his side of the story. If he declines, print that.
The Journal Star and WMBD 1470 need to answer readers’/listeners’ questions. Both organizations reported on the arrest, WMBD did so here, but there is nothing today about any possible repercussions. Today’s Journal Star printing a column I suppose was already in the can, and WMBD ran a tepid “Best of Markley and Luciano” yesterday.
So what happens next? It’s no secret that there’s been chatter on blogs that Luciano has been fired from the PJS.
Phil Luciano shares a quandry many will face on Feb. 5: Which party ballot should he pick up for the primary election? Lots of people want to vote for either Clinton or Obama for the Democratic presidential race, but want to chose from among John Morris, Jim McConoughey and Aaron Schock in the Republican race for Congress. I have no such dilemma. I’m not voting. In the primary, at least. I’m not a member of ANY political party, so I won’t be picking any party’s nominees.
Maybe teens would vote by texting via cell phones? Just a thought …
I really don’t know what all the consternation is about the request to put up a gate to keep the riff-raff out of the Coves of Charter Oak subdivision. The city had no trouble blocking off streets in the West Bluff to keep traffic from actually, you know, DRIVING ON ROADS BUILT AND SUPPORTED BY MY TAX DOLLARS. But when the riff-raff being kept off the streets is a higher class of riff-raff, then it’s insulting and cannot be allowed. The correct vote would be to deny the gate AND remove the barricades that keep me from using road in the West Bluff to get from point A to point B.
After a bit of an absence, I’m back with new links from the Journal Star:
Peoria Heights is going to spend $5,000 on its share of a study to see how a trail could be build along the existing Keller Branch rail line. It’s a step in the right direction, although I doubt that rabid trail advocates will go along, since I’m convinced much of the organized support for the trail is based more on developers’ desire to get rid of the tracks rather than any real need for a walking biking path. And I’ll hand it to Heights Mayor Mark Allen, he doesn’t hesitate to mix it up with detractors, as this article’s comment section indicates.
“New Urbanism” was evoked by a city staffer who wants to rezone some 18,000 square feet of property at the intersection of North Missouri and East War Memorial Drive from residential to “neighborhood commercial.” Here’s the problem: That zoning category was created, I believe, to encourage neighborhood-friendly businesses in older neighborhoods. That was so folks could walk down the block to get a carton of eggs, a gallon of milk, a cub of coffee, etc. But this scheme would create a business along War Memorial Drive, which was, last time I checked, a U.S. highway and one of the busiest streets running through Peoria. This scheme also called for a new traffic light on California. Here’s a litmus test: If a project requires a new traffic light, it’s contrary to the principles of New Urbanism. Plus, no one knows exactly what the hell developer Floyd Rashid wants to put in there. The correct Peoria City Council vote on this is a resounding “no.” Kudos to the city zoning commission for it’s vote.
Yep. Looks I make the right decision to shave my beard last month.
Prediction: If the Peoria City Council re-votes on the smoking ordinance, and it passes, look for the Peoria Police Department to be doing random inspections of bars and restaurants, looking to drum up revenue. I don’t care if they swear up and down that they have bigger priorities than keeping people from smoking, they WILL go after the revenue from the tickets. When Illinois passed the mandatory seat-belt law, law enforcement officials swore up and down that they would be going around looking for violators, but just ticketing folks when they were stopped for something else. Now, they do roadblocks to check for seat belt use. It’s all about revenue, folks, and the law was written to make it in police departments’ financial interest to write the tickets. Municipal government is no more capable to turning away from this source of revenue than a make dog is capable of saying turning away from a bitch in heat. The correct vote is “no,” of course. I’m holding out hope it fails.
But if it passes, look for incidents like this at bars and restaurants.
With vacant storefronts visible all up and down Pioneer Parkway (which was as far north as Peoria got a decade ago) the City of Peoria is on the verge of approving a new shopping center even further north. Naturally, the plan includes a request the city annex even more land to the north to be used for a new facility for Methodist Medical Center. And ever single cent generated by property taxes (not that Methodist Medical Center will pay property taxes) will be used to provide services to this new part of town. The correct Peoria City Council vote on this is “no,” although I harbor no illusions that there is a no chance in Hell this won’t pass.
Saturday night at home, with the team playing in Maryland, I kept dashing to my computer, desperate for updates. College soccer scores are hard to find, especially mid-game.
And when the final score came in, I couldn’t believe it. Bradley not only had erased a 2-0 deficit with 21/2 minutes to play, but won the game in a second sudden-death overtime. That’s like the Chicago Cubs scoring 10 runs to tie a game in the bottom of the ninth inning, then winning in the 18th.
No, Phil is is not like that at all. The difference is that if the Cubs scored 10 runs to tie a game in the bottom of the ninth inning, then won in the 18th, I would give a damn. Hell, if the Cardinals did that, I would be impressed. POed, but impressed.
Soccer is boring. Occasionally there’s a head-butting incident, a riot or collapsing bleachers to liven things up. But for the most part, soccer nothing more than a bunch of guys running from one end of the field to another trying to kick a ball into a net. The vast majority of the time, they fail to accomplish this.
And soccer is un-American. I strongly suspect that the Kremlin funded youth soccer in the 1970s and ’80s to drain the talent pool away from football, which is a perfect sport for training the next generation of military and political leaders. Quick: Name me one president OR general who grew up playing soccer. Thought so.
And how can I support the growth of any sport responsible for bringing THIS to America:
That Phil Luciano is such a wit. This time, he mines the obit pages for comedy gold. Is there nothing he cannot cut and paste into a column?
The bravely anonymous editorial writers of the award-winning (snicker) Journal Star editorial page has released its opinion on disease-causing viruses. They are opposed.
In 18th District campaign news, Aaron Schock is raising campaign cash in Toulon on Saturday. John Morris is talking to college Republicans at Eureka College on Monday. Five bucks says Morris mentions Ronald Reagan.
Here are the Journal Star articles on the 4 a.m. liquor license vote, the ArtPartner’s getting $75,000 from taxpayers, and putting the Gateway Building up for sale. I could find not one doggone word on the Website about the single issue that took up the most time during this nearly four-hour long meeting: Selection of a health care network and administrator. The city ignored the advice of the third-party consultant and selected an OSF/Proctor option that will cost taxpayers $3.64 million less over three years than the recommendation made two weeks earlier than the council rejected.
The Peoria County Sheriff’s Department will have to hire five new deputies to guard the Greater Peoria Regional Airport. The airport, on the other hand, will fire the five security guards it has now and not replace the five who have left for various reasons. My question is this: What will the sheriff’s department do with those five deputies it hires if the airport decides to not renew it’s six year contract? Who will these deputies answer to? The airport authority, or the sheriff? I’m thinking that these five new deputies won’t necessarily be the ones assigned to airport duty.
Here’s Karen McDonald’s version of the jaywalking press conference. She left out the part where one of the press crawled under the table to get at the recorder than had fallen over on the speaker’s podium.
Today’s links, unless otherwise noted, are via the Peoria Journal Star:
CityLift has reached a tentative agreement with it’s union bus drivers. There’s no word on this article on whether or not the “ringleaders” of sick out will be rehired. I would certainly hope so.
Peoria native Hal Fritz received a flag commemorating the Congressional Medal of Honor he received for actions during his tour in Vietnam. A full description of those actions can be found here.
PJS education reporter Clare Jellick asked on her blog for insight into why Pat Carroll was pushed out of her job at Notre Dame High School. Judging from the comments, I’m guessing that she must have worn out her welcome. The utter lack of outcry from the public says a lot too.
Phil Luciano is aghast that the state government turned down a 15-year-old kid’s request for a work permit that would let him legally mow lawns this summer. I am aghast that the kid and his parents were dumb enough to ask the government permission. Stupid laws are made to be broken, and telling a 15-year-old he can’t mow lawns is a textbook case of stupidity. Remember: They can’t say “no” if you don’t ask permission. And remember folks, the state doesn’t have enough money to adequately fund schools, but it can still find the cash to pay lard-assed educational bureaucrats to tell 15-year-olds that mowing lawns is unfit work for teenagers.
citylift,bus drivers,unions,work permits,medal of honor,Hal Fritz,Phil Luciano,Clare Jellick,Notre Dame High School
Phil Luciano tells of a violent schoolyard fight that sent one child to the hospital. He wonders why kids don’t follow the rules that they did when he was a kid. My two cents: I don’t recall being in many of the kids of friendly spats Phil seems to recall. I recall having to go to the hospital because that punk Mike Horton scratched the Hell out of my back when I had him on the ground punching the snot out of him. The police took photographs of my back because they were worried it MIGHT be child abuse. Hell, I was proud of my battle wounds. That P.O.S. Horton stayed the Hell out of my neighborhood after that. He ended up getting stabbed to death some 20 years later, as I recall. I generally spent my days avoiding fights, though.
Poor Phil Luciano has been taking a lot of hits from this online journal of news and opinion recently. I haven’t been too critical (I don’t think) but some of my commenters have been brutal.
So the question is: What can I do to make it up to Phil, and his cohort on WMBD 1470, Jamie Markley? I can post their favorite song:
I kid you not: As I’m creating this post, sitting next to an open window, the clip is playing. A neighbor walking his dog heard it and looked up at me with a pained expression on his face. My one regret is that I don’t have a serious sound card and speakers on this desktop.
the final countdown cover,final countdown,German,phil luciano,wmbd1470
Aesthetics. That’s a one-word way to say that some things just don’t look good. Trouble is, each person has their own standards.
My mother, for example, gets all bent out of shape when she sees people cooking on a BBQ on their front lawn or even on their front porch. She decided a looooong time ago that is something that is done only by those, shall we say, members of an economic underclass. She hates seeing it and lets everyone within earshot now her opinion of it.
To her, it just looks bad. Me, I used to grill on my front porch all the time. That’s where the shade was, as well as a place to rest my refreshing beverage. If anyone found the picture aesthetically displeasing, well, that was their problem.
Phil Luciano is right. One of the goals of zoning and city codes is to enforce aesthetic standards. That’s one reason the city doesn’t want this guy to park on his patio. Luciano makes a case that it’s a better alternative for this guy in this situation that leaving it on the street.
I agree with C.J. Summers. We can’t expect the city to conduct a full and thorough investigation before issuing a ticket. Besides, the guy who got the ticket has the option of arguing his case in Housing Court. Trouble is that Housing Court can be a pit of a kangaroo court, from what I hear.
But instead of thinking the guy should just shut up and do what he’s told, I’m thinking perhaps the solution is to reduce the responsibilities of the city inspectors to only those issues related to health and safety, not mere aesthetics.
I’m a libertarian, so I want as little law telling me what do with my property as possible. Americans hate being told what to do with our property, but there’s also a strong bluenose streak in society in which we like to tell other people what do do with their property. We are better off resisting that second urge and embracing the first.
I’m sure this guy’s neighbors — the ones who give a damn anyway — find having a pickup truck on the patio an aesthetically displeasing picture. In the end that’s all it boils down to. Aesthetics.
So if he wants to park there let him. It’s his own property values he’s wrecking by putting ruts in his yard.
Less than a week after delivering probably his best column ever — a spot-on perfect smack down on the foolish folks who think a history of Peoria museum will bring in tourists from all over the state if not the entire nation — Phil Luciano writes about how he doesn’t understand how his refrigerator works.
My two cents: Phil, your column is at its best when it hunts big game, but that doesn’t happen very often. There’s an abundance of stupidity and arrogance out there. Hell, there’s a friggin’ buffet. Grab a plate and a fork and dig in. Stop feasting on fluff.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates The Blog Peoria Project, which promotes community-based citizen journalism in his hometown, Peoria IL.
July 11-12, the Peoria PlayHouse will be soaring at the Prairie Air Show with engaging activities to entertain even the littlest pilots! Check out each of the PlayHouse Passport locations to have a passport stamped and receive a prize at the PlayHouse tent! Enjoy a weekend of airplanes and PLAY!
The fourth annual State Farm Tournament of Champions is a 4-day event that will take place on Thanksgiving weekend of November 2009. The dates of the event are Wednesday, November 23rd through Saturday, November 28th and will be held at Washington Community High School. The arena will play host to four separate national high school and prep school basketball challenges.
@tweet1211 That he was the last president popular enough at end of second term to win a third. Perhaps Clinton, but probably not. in reply to tweet12112 hrs ago
So I am not to worked up over Manuel Zelaya getting ousted in Honduran. Seems to be that Zelaya was staging a populist coup of his own ... 2 hrs ago
Imagine, if you will, Ronald Reagan deciding in 1988 that the best thing for America would be a third term, regardless of Constitution ... 2 hrs ago
RT AhmadiNejad is a puppet; he is a beard. No honorable man would let himself be used like this. He is a pawn.He is worthless. #iranelection3 hrs ago
All sorts of site issues at http://blogpeoria.com ... admin pages white, 404 messages for individual posts. Lotsa fun. Oh well, off to work. 14 hrs ago
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
