Elections are Feb 2 and still nothing posted on Potluck for readers to comment on those who are running in any of the races.

The Sun is reporting that the student who allegedly set fire to Scott School has obtained a TRO to permit him/her to return to school next week. The Sun reports only what is told by the attorney for the father. The school district had not responded for the story. Naturally, the comments to the story are all over the place because the story gives no insight as to why the father thinks his son/daughter should be returned to the classroom nor the judges reasoning for doing so.

The problem here is bad reporting on the part of the Sun. The complaint filed by the father is a public record. The reasons why the father believes his son should be returned to the classroom are contained in the complaint. If the Sun would do its job and go and get the complaint and report the reasoning by the father, then we wouldn't have to guess at what's happening. We would know because the Sun will tell us. Further, the Judge's TRO is of public record also. The Sun could have gotten a copy of the TRO and told us all what the judge's reasoning was. But, the Sun doesn't believe in investigating a story. The Sun just wants to be spoon fed by the attorneys. The public suffers as can be seen by the comments to date below the story.

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/1981965,Naperville-Scott-expelled-student-NA010910.article?plckCurrentPage=0&sid=sitelife.suburbanchicagonews.com

Let's not forget one other piece of the Clinton legacy: His conviction of a felony and the loss of his license to practice law!

Cycle of Democracy - Mistakenly attributed to Alexander Tytler (1747-1813):

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

"From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage."

Let us begin the budget trimming by getting rid of the Township level of government. What a waste of duplicated effort.

Anon on 12/19 @ 10:33 AM –

While agreeing that local governments have to tighten their belts just as citizens and private sector businesses have, I have to say I disagree with your posts regarding police & fire protection and the city government in general.

I prefer a local police and fire department because that makes them responsive to the citizens of our city. If we followed your example and went exclusively to a State run policing system and a county-wide or regional fire protection system, how do we make those agencies responsive to our needs? How do you fight the arguments that would surely come up that certain areas receive better service and coverage than others? Wouldn’t this system ensure that the vast majority of coverage would go to Chicago since their local politicians currently dominate the government?

And why stop there? If size dictates efficiency, shouldn’t we just relinquish all policing responsibilities to the FBI? Shouldn’t we consolidate all this power in the hands of the President? I didn’t think so.

Your own post points to the very reason why local governments shouldn’t merge into one huge conglomerate – you point to NYC as efficient but Chicago as corrupt. Under your theory, shouldn’t Chicago be just as efficient as NYC?

No, Anon, local is better in these instances.

T.B.

Many other local cities and villages have already cut a whole lot more positions than Naperville. Private sector, public sector, non-profit sector employers are run the same risk of getting fat and bloated when the times are good and the money is freely flowing. The private and non-profit sector have all been hit hard with cut backs, lay-offs, and even businesses that have completely failed. The attitude expressed by some that, for some unfathomable reason, government sector jobs should be some kind of sacred cow that is immune to the same economic pressure affecting all of us is simply selfish and self-centered. There isn't a single private or non-profit sector job that has been lost where the same exact arguments used by the government sector could not be used.

We simply have allowed most forms of local government to grow out of control. A direct result of out of control government is that government becomes far too intrusive in our daily life and starts becoming a living breathing entity that no longer exists to provide minimal, basic, essential services and instead morphs into a voracious economic engine that becomes insatiable in its appetite for a never ending and ever increasing flow of tax dollars.

The hard truth is that citizens tend to want local control over essential services. That control comes at an enormous price in terms of cost, scale of efficiency, purchasing, and especially administrative overhead cost.

As one case in point just look at the police. We have local police in every city. County Sheriff. State Police. Park Police. Forest Preserve Police. Secretary of State Police. Conservation Police. Metra Police. Railroad Police. and this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are lots more. Fact of the matter is all police have power granted by the State of Illinois and that authority is good anywhere in the state. We simply do not need all of these different competing and even duplicate forms of police. We could have one single police organization... say the State Police who become responsible for anything police related in the entire state.... and we would all save hundreds of millions of dollars a year and have better a better police force throughout the state as a result.

Another example would be the Fire Department. Same local model is a scale of waste and inefficiency. Fire Departments could be reorganized on either a county wide or even a state wide basis. With the mutual aid packs that have been in existence for many decades we really do have regional fire departments. What we have is the added expense and waste of all the duplicate fire department administrations in every city and village.

Local pride is great but the local city hall is also a hugely inefficient and wasteful operation. We have cities and villages sitting side-by-side... Naperville, Warrenville, Lisle, Plainfield, Aurora, etc. The vast, overwhelming majority of residents in these cities were not born here and have no real ties to the history... which for all practical purposes is pretty benign anyway. NYC is nothing more than a merger of many smaller towns that they were smart enough to figure out years ago was more efficient. We sit here and do nothing and let the majority of our tax dollars go to waste in the City of Chicago in the hands of corruption. Instead all the suburban towns and villages and cities could merge together and completely overshadow Chicago and end the huge sucking sound it makes for our hard earned tax dollars. Local community pride stands blindly in the way of economic sense.

Time to wake up and do something about it or stop complaining and accept what apathy wrought.

So to keep the history of Clinton's legacy to America fair and honest it no longer includes raunchy, adulterous sex in the Oval Office or the impeachment trial that almost was?

Very well put Ho Ho Ho....While Trickey Dick Furstenau is enjoying the holidays in his big old house, many city employees lost their jobs and cant enjoy this holiday season. Hope you feel real good about yourself Tricky Dick....

It is interesting to watch the city council, DF seems to always have an opinion on everything and is very concerned about every dollar. That is why I think its great he is paying back the city for his frivolous lawsuit that he couldnt win, so he dropped it. Wouldn't that be a great Christmas present DICK, since you probably cost 15 plus jobs at the city.

Bush had much to complain about with Clinton, and didn't.

Obama whined his way into the job after Bush 2 went on TV for 28 days in a row to tell everyone "the sky would fall if we didn't pass TARP" which has been, and continues to be, a total fraud. We had socialist light vs full speed socialism with Obama as our choice, we are now getting full speed Socialism.

Clinton's Legacy:

* Rolling brown outs

* Beginning of the housing bubble based on Rubin and Clinton getting people into houses they couldn't pay for. Massive fraud begun at Fannie and Freddi to boost the bonuses of the left wing political hacks running these enormous government failures.

* Multiple terrorist attacks resulting in the deaths of US military and civilians with no response.

* Passed on multiple opportunities to have Bin Laden or his head delivered to Clinton who passed.

* Completely emptied the Military's warehouses with disaster relief and the Bosnian war, the shelves were empty when we were hit on 9-11.

* Continued Bush 1s policy of reducing the Army by 50% which led to not enough troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

* Killed research into next generation Nuclear Reactors which we could be deploying now, zero emissions of any kind requiring no oil or coal.

* NAFTA which pried the door open for the manufacturing sector to be exported with NAFTA as the success model for cheap labor aka Free Trade.

* Put left wing imbecile Les Aspen in charge of the Defense Department, this is the guy who stripped our brave soldiers in Somalia of artillery and tanks because he didn't want disproportionate responses to the war lords, total fiasco.

*Tried to force open homosexual behavior into the military as a social engineer program as his first act. Later dropped the gays like a hot potato when he realized that the 10% of the population number was his own party's propaganda and the actual number was closer to 1%.

* As his final act, Clinton (with Eric Holder writing the justifications) sold pardons during his last days in office. Bush declined to prosecute him.

* Rumsfeld's audit of the Defense Department's books discovered that 1 Trillion was missing and unaccounted for. 9-11 happened a few weeks later, this discovery went nowhere.

Gingrich wrote the legislation and Clinton signed it when he realized he had to sign to get re-elected. Clinton's good acts.

To his credit, several times Clinton vetoed the bi-partisan "screw the citizens Bankruptcy legislation" that the Banks were pushing. Bush 2 was in office for about five seconds before the Congress passed it again and he signed it. Any doubts about who runs the country are gone.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

By independent on December 15, 2009 6:31 AM

Bush didn't blame Clinton for any of that, but then, none of that was Clinton's fault .... and I say that NOT as a Clinton fan, simply because none of it was in place when Bush took over the White House. Difference? When Obama took over we were already in crisis (understatement). Is it time to move on and solve the problems and stop talking about how Bush and his folks screwed things up? Absolutely! BUT I also think it's time for all the Bush lovers Obama haters to get over it ..... Obama is the President, deal with it - and look at the positives instead of playing poor me.

Well said Psyche!!! You fill in many of the blanks from my comments.

And many of Obama's initiatives are NOT Keynesian. They are implementing liberal spending programs that have been surpressed for 70 years. They are so left wing that Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton all refused to pass them. These guys would oppose Obama's health care.

Same for funds to cover state deficits. I do not think Keynes would support this either.

Thanks for great comments. Time to enjoy the holidays.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those who follow such things:

>Bush, just like Obama, inherited a recession

>Unlike Obama, Bush did NOT use Keynsian economics and as a result, the recession he inherited was shallow and changed direction quickly and in a pretty big way. How? The way these things always change quickly ---- with tax cuts that resulted in economic growth and a marked increase in revenues received by the government.

>Unlike Obama, Bush (despite his unforgivable penchant for spending) did NOT use his emergency (ie 911) to create slush funds of a trillion dollars so his party could pass it out in an election year (read on).

>Unlike Obama, Bush did not use his emergency (911) to jam through any 50 year old projects (ie Healthcare) of his party

> TARP was a necessary move DESPITE all of our individual hate for its need.

>The stimulus (all of them ---- I, II, & III) was unnecessary and is nothing but a political ploy to buy votes in 2010

>Clinton's inability to deal with Al Queda, specifically the two times UBL was offered to him, led to the Bush emergencies you post of ---- 911 & the airline collapse (which resulted from 911)

>To understand our current mess, one needs to separate the pieces that, in fact, are not cause & effect. Specifically, the stock market, the banking system, and the base economy are all three different things.

>The banking mess is a single, stand-alone beast that came within a you-know-what hair of breaking the economy of the entire world. Anyone who missed that does not understand economics & banking. It was simple: There was one week-end last year where if the world hadn't began the bailouts (ie TARP) come Monday none of us would have been able to use a credit card, write a check, etc. Remember: all of those things represent interbank credit, which would have disappeared in its entirety!

>Despite your harping, the base economy was in good shape in September of last year. The banking crisis created a recession, and the crap job Obama is doing of ignoring the recession to implement 50 year old Keynesian policies (government spending, healthcare, cap & trade...) is making it deep, longer than normal, and quite possibly a "L" recession.

>Bailing out GM, etc was a waste of our money and, again, was a simple political genuflection to the Unions. It was bad economics, bad morals, and will eventually show to be bad politics in the longterm. We should NOT have saved GM. Let's remembr, FORD is doing fine now.

>Finally, let's remember the deal with the banks (TARP) --- We have already received about 200 bil back (with 10% interest), and it is projected that of the original 700 bil, we will "eat" 46 bil (not counting interest returned). If the Dem-controlled House and admin wasn't so busy trying to double spend these monies, we would be sitting pretty on it. The stimulus monies, on the other hand, is just money thrown down a rat hole.

OXOXOXOXOXO

Psyche

The difference, Independent, is that a year after President Bush took office, he wasn't giving interviews that blamed President Clinton for his problems. Also, you say the Bush administration had eight years to put their mark on the economy, but that ignores the fact that they only had a slight majority in congress, and really could not put their mark on anything without huge amounts of compromise. The same cannot be said about the Obama administration. The Bush administration did point out the problems with sub prime loans, and the Democrats shot them down when they wanted it fixed. Even now, the Democrats have a filibuster proof majority, yet are still trying to blame the Republicans for their inability to ram their programs through. While I agree that every administration inherits some problems, how they handle those problems is different. The Democrats, including the Clinton administration, seem to always look backwards instead of forwards, as President Obama is constantly doing.

Ken - I don't disagree at all that there were things the Clinton Administration did wrong that led to problems in the Bush Administration. Hindsight being 20/20 - doing more about terrorism and the less successful attempt on the world trade center absolutely should have been done. I think though that EVERY administration pays some price for what those who went before did or didn't do. It isn't always the poor Republicans paying a price for what the Democrat who came before them did. I'm afraid I also don't buy in that the fundamentals of the economy were strong when Bush and McCain were pretending it was .... the cracks were already showing, and had been for quite some time when they were preaching that. Was any of that Clinton's fault? Sure, probably, though you can only blame so much on that given the fact that Bush and company had 8 years to put their own mark on economic policy.

I think it's ironic that Tricky Dick Furstenau is popping off in the Chicago Tribune about the two pending federal lawsuits over the reality show "Female Forces", based on the female officers at the Naperville Police Department. This little creep has the guts to say that it was basically an invitation for a lawsuit, when he just cost the city 1.25 million with his stupid lawsuit. Big Dick needs to go away!!

The underpinnings for the collapse of the airline industry was rooted in deregulation back in the day. 9/11 was just an excuse to 'cleanse' the books of the ongoing incurred debt from back yonder.

Independent, even with 9/11 and the related reduction in flying, the Bush administration was able to bring about steady economic gain, until the sub prime mess came about.

Actually, Independent, if you look at it in retrospect, President Bush and McCain were correct. The fundamentals of the economy were, and are, good, otherwise this recession would have become another great depression. The only reason why this recession is lasting so long is because of the sub prime mess brought about by President Clinton's policy, and kept in place by Barney Frank even after President Bush urged them to change the sub prime lending laws ( http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75717 ). You and President Obama can blame it on President Bush all you want, but the facts point right back at the Democrats.

Independent,

Two reactions.

First, I think Clinton did not adequately deal with Al Qaeda. He allowed bin Laden to get to cracks at the World Trade and other attacks on US Citizens as well (the Cole and Embassy bombings). It would have been VERY EASY for Bush to blame him. And the recession did not happen after 9/11, it started earlier. The airlines were a disaster before 2001 as well.

Second, as the financial system is regaining its footing, it appears that the only thing that Bush did wrong was handling AIG. Specifically, the New York Fed (Tim Geithner) should have forced the counterparties with AIG (the largest being Goldman Sachs) to share in the losses (or fund the losses and wait for the recovery). I have done 20 transactions with AIG prior to 2007 and I know that they had adequately hedged their risk. We sensed problems and unwound our positions with them in early 2008 without a loss. Had Geithner forced the counterparties for these unsecured (and reckless) hedges--Read the Rolling Stone for a great summary of the problem). Today, Goldman Sachs would still have TARP money and would be on their knees begging the governement for flexibility. Instead, they have their cash and left the US holding the bag.

In short, the US Government bailed out Goldman Sachs, not AIG.

Ken,
I was referring to the post above that stated that Bush had to deal with 9/11 and the collapse of the airline industry ...... neither of those things were on the table when Bush took office, so it isn't a big pat on the back that he couldn't blame them on Clinton.

It's kind of funny that you reference the Clinton administration not wanting the Republicans to talk about the recession for fear of making it worse. Is that anything like Bush and McCain repeating over and over again the the fundamentals of the economy were strong? lol....... Didn't they say that right up until there was such a complete collapse that not even the most misinformed could find a way to believe it?

I don't disagree that hearing that this administration inherited a mess is getting old - I agree it's time to just move on, but that doesn't make it any less a fact that the mess was there when they arrived. I hate the mad spending that has gone on since as well, but I am not convinced there was much of a choice. People can yell and scream all they want that we should have just let GM and Chrysler and the big banks etc .... fail. It's good in principle, but if all those employees had been out of work in addition to what we already have, I'm not sure we could ever have truly recovered.

Anyone else surprised and disappointed that we decided to use our police force to aid in the production of entertainment programming for A & E. I certainly hope that the next "opportunity" to showcase the city is quickly denied. Let the police do their jobs without television cameras and we can avoid future lawsuits. ( If the plaintiff is correct that she was made to wait 30 minutes until the television camera arrived, I'm afraid she's entitled to compensation -- again, a waste of tax dollars.)
I'd like to know who authorized our participation in this television production. Seriously, we have a right to know who makes these decisions.
Recalls the "award" that the police "earned" a number of years ago from a firm I beleive was called Summerall productions. They touted the award on the city website, until a neighboring community exposed the whole thing as an award "earned" simply by paying a fee to the company issuing the "award."

I think the police generally do a fine job. I don't need a phony award or a television show to demonstrate that fact. Again, who makes these decisions?

Subj: federal pay increase

Last week Congress passed a 2% salary increases for all civilian federal employees. It doesn't sound like much when you read the quote in the Washington Post, below, from Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). It fact it almost seems like federal pay is way out of line, even meager, compared to private sector salaries and benefits.

When you finish that, read the BLS pdf (link below), released the very next day. Pay special attention to the retirement and health benefits in Table A. Do you think federal employees are underpaid?

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf

I read that the DuPage Water Commission has created a financial mess. Public Officals who make mistakes such as these, should resign from office. Water Commissioners turn in your resignations.

Any elected official who approved publicly of such policy decisisons should not seek reelection or election to any office.

The water pipe line should be privatized.

I stumbled upon a really good blog post today about the disappointing turn the healthcare "reform" has taken lately.

http://langer.tumblr.com/post/283875416 (Appropriately uses a couple four letter words, fair warning.)

I couldn't agree more. It makes me wonder how many other Obama voters have been disenfranchised by this whole "change" thing just turning out to be "more of the same, only in a slightly different flavor".

But, that's politics for you-- Not sure why I'm surprised.

Well, Independent, you have re-written history a little. President Bush was pointing out the recession long before he was elected, and the Clinton administration told him he should be quiet about it so it didn't get worse. I notice that the Democrats didn't feel quite the same way when their sub prime lending policies came back to bite the Bush administration. Terrorists were another thing that the Clinton administration tried to ignore, with the exception of bombing an aspirin factory while trying to draw attention away from Ms.Lewinsky.

Many "Bush lovers Obama haters" have gotten over it, and just wish that President Obama would too. Time for him to do his job, and make some positives happen instead of playing poor me and blaming the last administration.

Bush didn't blame Clinton for any of that, but then, none of that was Clinton's fault .... and I say that NOT as a Clinton fan, simply because none of it was in place when Bush took over the White House. Difference? When Obama took over we were already in crisis (understatement). Is it time to move on and solve the problems and stop talking about how Bush and his folks screwed things up? Absolutely! BUT I also think it's time for all the Bush lovers Obama haters to get over it ..... Obama is the President, deal with it - and look at the positives instead of playing poor me.

I have two simple concerns regarding Obama.

1. He blasts Bush for creating record deficits. Increased the deficit from $4 billion to $5 billion in four years (I know the Obama people out there can supply the correct number).

Obama's solution, Raise the deficit another $4 billion in the next four years. Hypocrtical? How is this even possible? You cannont criticize someone and turn around and make matters substantially worst.

And all of the TARP money except AIG from the Bush term has been repaid. All of Obama's TARP spending (Gm Chrysler) looks like a total loss.

2. After 9/11, George Bush had to deal with a major terrorist attack, larger than the ones from his predecessor who in retrospect hoped Bin Laden would go away. He had to deal with the collapse of the airline industry ($5 billion in lost money) and a recession.

Now think hard. Did George Bush and his staff blame Bill Clinton ten times a day for their plight? Did he pass a Stimulus Bill that was an udder fraud to promote his agenda (Obama's stimulus bill is 10% stimulus, 90% spread the wealth)?

The answer was no. He took charge and I never recall him blaming Clinton.

So from here on out, the problem is all Obama's. Be a man and get it right. Or get out!!