If you want to get something done in Naperville, it’s simple, just get elected to the city council, then have the courage to push it through. That’s exactly what councilwoman Jennifer Bruzan Taylor did during the June 20th city council meeting when she wasn’t about to take anything less than a ‘yes’ answer for her ‘pet project’ of a sidewalk extension primarily for kids walking to school.
It wasn’t that long ago when she was in front of the dais using her three minutes of public forum to advocate for the same safety issue. Now she is sitting behind the dais hearing a different version.
Watch and listen to Taylor interact with city traffic engineer, Michael Hynes, who was there in place of Bill Novack, Director of TED (transportation, engineering and development:
Taylor very tactfully yet assertively was able to accomplish what she couldn’t accomplish on the other side of the dais. Well done councilwoman Taylor.
After reading Karen Pecks goofy letter to the editor last week, I needed to respond. Below is from the WSJ and it bears reading. It lays out how goofy the American Left truly is, especially in Naperville.
Liberal commentators have been ridiculing conservatives for fearing negligible or nonexistent threats for as long as I can remember: communist infiltration during the Cold War, Islamic extremism in the 2000s, illegal immigration in the 2010s, gender ideology in the 2020s. The right might or might not have exaggerated the urgency of these problems. But they were, or are, problems. That isn’t the case with an array of issues Democratic politicians and progressive intellectuals are exercised about in 2023. You often feel they’re so invested in the idea of a delusional right that they can’t perceive their own penchant for dreaming up nonexistent threats.
Mr. Biden is worried about book bans. The American Library Association recently claimed in a report that 2,571 books were “challenged” in American libraries last year. These challenges the ALA calls “attempted book bans,” nearly all of which involve a request by a patron that a public library or school library remove a book from its shelves because it is obscene or otherwise offensive. I’m not sure such requests are improper—young-adult fiction has become sexually avant-garde and shockingly coarse over the past two decades. Anyway, to ask that a taxpayer-supported library not facilitate children’s access to a sexually explicit book isn’t to “ban” it. An interested patron may buy it and read it in public if he wishes.
Further, as Micah Mattix noted in his Substack of April 26, there are 117,341 libraries in the U.S., 76,807 of which are public elementary- and secondary-school libraries. “Some books are challenged multiple times,” Mr. Mattix explains. “Others are challenged once. How many unique books and resources were challenged last year? 2,571. How many challenges were filed in total? 1,269.” If, as seems likely, some libraries reported several challenges, that means less than 1% of all libraries received even a single challenge. Other organizations, particularly PEN America, assert that local and state governments are eagerly “banning” books, typically those of female, black, gay and transgender authors. All such statements engage in the verbal legerdemain of defining as a “ban” any request that children at a public institution not have access to books about sex.
This strange urge to tremble at the presence of imaginary beasts is accompanied by an astonishing lack of self-awareness. The closest thing to real book bans in the U.S. today is perpetrated by precisely the sort of people who bewail book bans. Major publishers have canceled books by authors ranging from J.K. Rowling to Sen. Josh Hawley because they ran afoul of progressive sensibilities. Amazon refuses to sell Ryan Anderson’s book “When Harry Became Sally” (2018), a measured and serious critique of the transgender movement. In 2021 the American Booksellers Association sent out paperback copies of Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage,” on the same subject. Activists targeted the ABA, and the trade group issued an obsequious apology for the alleged offense. ALA and PEN America say nothing about these attempts literally to ban books.
The president also noted, as a justification for his re-election, “MAGA extremists” wishing to tell people “who they can love.” That’s a reference to same-sex marriage, which the Supreme Court legalized nationwide in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), and which faces virtually no political resistance. One assumes Mr. Biden was alluding to Justice Clarence Thomas’s suggestion, in a lone opinion last year, that the court should “reconsider” its reasoning in Obergefell, which was rooted in a doctrine called substantive due process.
The idea that one statement by one justice about an abstruse legal subject signifies a mass political movement aimed at rolling back same-sex marriage is a species of madness. A certain variety of conservative may wish there were such a movement. But there isn’t one. Mr. Biden is seeing things.
What about those MAGA extremists “making it more difficult for you to be able to vote”? The nonexistence of observable voter suppression has been demonstrated many times, in this newspaper and elsewhere, but two recent data points are worth remembering. In January 2022 Joe Biden characterized a Georgia election-reform bill as “Jim Crow 2.0” and likened its supporters to George Wallace, Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis. The law passed, and in the midterm elections later that year more black voters cast ballots than before the law. A subsequent University of Georgia survey found that 0% of black voters reported a poor voting experience in 2022, whereas 72% of black voters said it was “excellent,” the same as white voters. Yet the president names voter suppression as a reason for his candidacy in 2024.
Laws that suppress voting, triggering a short lived activist surge in voting, is not proof that suppress is not happening. When you close polling places in areas that are predominately minority voters while increasing polling places in areas that are predominately WASP the intent is clear.
Also if you are going to reference a survey or studies a link should be provided to validate the claims being made about what it concluded. On many occasion I have found that information from the conclusion of these surveys/studies have been quoted out of context providing an impression that is completely contradictory to the true conclusion. The reality is there simply is no good justification for any of these laws since the problems they claim to be solving have been proven by both non-partisan think tanks and internationals election monitors to not exist in US elections.
As to legal precedence. Unfortunately just because the SCOTUS makes a ruling protecting a given groups rights, it does not prevent radicals from enacting laws that make life more difficult for these people. Just ask any black person if the civil right laws have ended racial prejudice in their lives.
Public libraries are not just for the young, they are for everyone. “Protecting” children from exposure to literature some adults have a problem with can be accomplished by requesting the library restrict access to these books to only adults or children with parental consent. There is no justification for having any book removed from any publicly funded library. And saying a patron can always go out and purchase the book themselves if they really want to read it only demonstrates a complete ignorance of the purpose of the public library system initially setup and funded by some of our country’s founding fathers.
Are there radical groups that threaten our country and its citizens? Yes, of course, but that does not justify policies that target people based on a “characteristic” they share with these extremists. A large portion of the US populations shares several characteristics common to serial killers, does this justify targeting everyone that has these characteristics because they pose a “threat”? No, of course not. That said it is true that people and political groups that share political ideologies that encourage violence against the government, its elected officials or just citizens in general are a threat that should be targeted. Be they Al-Qaeda or MAGA.
The MAGA political group has repeatedly demonstrated behavior at rallies, protests, and in the media of threatening and even violate behavior toward the government, its officials and citizens. We need only look at the affiliations of MAGA leaders with White Supremacy groups, the election deniers, Jan 6th gang, false electoral electorates, conspiracy theorists (deep state, swamp), etc to see the danger this political faction represents to our country and everything it stands for. Just spending a few minutes online communicating with a self proclaimed MAGA quickly reviles their tendency toward violence and other forms of extremism to achieve their political goals.
When was the last time you had an online conversation with a MAGA, challenging anything they believe, asking for a rational explanation of any of their beliefs, were it did not quickly devolve in them using slurs, demeaning/derogatory language, implications about deviant sexual practices (they like to call everyone pedophiles), physical threats, etc. MAGAs have been lead to believe these are normal, acceptable behaviors by their leadership constantly engaging in these same behaviors, not just publicly, be very vocally while cheering on and justifying this behavior when MAGA members parrot it.
Sorry but the MAGA movement is as much a danger to democracy as the communist movements in Cuba, China, Russia, etc as well as the fascist movements in Europe and south America (including the Nazis and blackshirts). The MAGA movement is strongly based in the same very ultra nationalist beliefs and practice that both communists and fascists share. This ultra nationalism (disguised by MAGAs as anti-“globalism”) is the antithesis of democracy.
But I am not surprise to see people that support the MAGA political faction trying to marginalize the danger they represent to democracy. This is the very behavior they relish using in all media outlet as well as the behavior their leadership preaches and practices. Remember the way Stalin, Mao, Castro, Mussolini, Hitler, etc were able to gain complete control in their countries was to marginalize and bully anyone that pointed out the threat they represented to democracy and freedom. Lets not repeat this mistake in our own country.
As usual, you go on your rant and don’t address any of the points in the article with any original thoughts to refute what it says.
What talking points? This article states that because voter turnout in some states with voter suppression laws saw larger then average turn out this last election that these laws do not suppress voting.
This is classic example of taking an extremely small data set and using it to try and refute over 75 years of data on how these type of laws suppress voting.
That’s it. The entire article. It does not even provide access to the report making these claims. So there is no way to know what level of peer-review, if any, these claims were subject too.
Again this reads more like an opinion piece then an actual, unbiased, report on the impacts of these laws.
Your logic is hilariously bad. So it’s not an extremely small data set when voter suppression is alleged, but NOT when it is alleged? Even a 5th grader could spot this horrible logic.
You have one study from one election that has data indicating that in some states with voter suppression laws participation was up. And you are using this single study to refute the results of 40+ years of studies cover dozens of elections that indicate voter suppression laws prevent minority voters from voting. If that is your idea of “good” logic then your are indeed acting like a 5th grader.
Coyne and Adock are teaming up to go after naperville library! The book banners are at it again.
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/climate-journalism-is-broken
Good read regarding climate change journalism. Always read with a skeptical eye.
The author of this opinion piece is a long standing denier of climate change as well as the cause of the pandemic.
The journals mentioned in this opinion piece are the ones commonly quoted in all articles on any science or health issue, not just climate change. That is because these are the peer-reviewed journals most easily accessible to the journalistic community and the public in general.
These journals can usually be found at newsstands, public libraries and books store, something that simply does not happen with the vast majority of peer-reviewed journals. The studies in these journals also tend to be written in a way that make the science more easily understood and followed by a non-scientific audience.
This easy public access, meaning easy validation of any article claims, and the simply language used are the most compelling reasons for journalists to use these sources for articles.
At no point in this opinion piece does it claim that peer-reviewed articles from other sources commonly contradict articles in these journals. In fact it does not even discuss this issue, instead simply implying a misleading bias exists because these peer-reviewed journal are so commonly referenced. This is like claiming everything in the Encyclopedia Britannica (or Websters Dictionary) is misleading and biased because it is so commonly used as a reference source.
This opinion piece does nothing more then to repeat and try to justify the bias this author demonstrated in all his written, which contradicted, without scientific support, peer accepted scientific conclusions.
Too bad you couldn’t actually refute what he said, just repeated your talking points
To bad you can not actually understand rational, logic based reasoning. If you did you would know I did refute this opinion piece completely.
Sorry but your post only demonstrations the problem with trying to have a rational, logic based discussion with someone so far down the rabbit hole they can see anything.
Or you didn’t actually take the time to read what I wrote.
Sorry, I must have missed your scholarly research refuting the quote below. Can you point me in the direction of your research refuting what Roger Pielke wrote in the quotes below? I am dying to read your extensive knowledge on Climate change.
“Let’s take a look at the numbers.
Of the 51,230 peer-reviewed papers on climate change published in 2020, Perga and colleagues found that only about 9% of them saw any media coverage, defined as a single mention in the paper’s Altimetric score. About 2%, or ~1,000 papers, saw more than 20 mentions in the media. These “mediatized” papers are the focus of Perga’s paper.
The 2% of papers most covered by the media are disproportionately focused:
at the global and continental scales;
on the end of the 21st century;
on the natural sciences and health;
and come primarily from just 6 journals (3 from Science journals, 2 from Nature and PNAS).
I looked at their dataset and — as we might expect — RCP8.5 features prominently in many of the papers receiving the most media attention in 2020, including 4 of the top 5 most covered papers.
The biases are large. The paper reports that:
Overall, 56% of the top-100 mediatized papers on natural science report rate or magnitude of climate-driven changes at continental or global scales (40% being projections by the end-of-the-century), while those represent only 4% of the random paperset.
Reporting disproportionately deemphasized studies in the social and political sciences, economics, technology, engineering, energy and agriculture — these are all topics related to what might be done on climate change.
The authors conclude that as a result of these biases, news coverage is biased and the public is misinformed:”
So in your expert opinion Jim, what in this article is false?
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/2023-update-what-the-media-wont-tell
DEI works. https://youtu.be/_ZkxjAGlP9Q
anonymous,
Thank you for proving the very point I was making. That the reason these peer-reviewed journals get quoted and used as a source most often is because they are easily accessible to people outside the scientific community. Unlike the vast majority of peer-reviewed journals which require community membership and a subscription (very expensive subscription I might add), so you will not find them at your local newsstand or bookstore like the journals mentioned in this article.
And again the studying being used to make this person’s argument never claimed the content of the published studies in these journals in anyway differs in their conclusions from those of other peer-reviewed journals. It only implies a bias exists because of there extensive use by journalists. That is like saying journalists are biased for using Websters as a reference because they don’t use any other reference as a source. Lack of diversity in sources is not in and of itself proof of a bias.
To show a bias you need to show that the predominance of studies published in other journals differ in conclusion from the finding in these more commonly used journal source, which this study does not prove. In fact it does not ever address.
What this study is talking about is the on focus of these journals as a source compared to other journals. That is because of the very nature of the makeup of the peer-reviewed journal community.
Almost all of the journals in the peer-review community are highly focused and would never publish an article on these subjects to begin with so including them in the dataset introduces an automatic bias skewing the results of this study. Including these journals in this study is like saying a magazine that publishes articles on fashion is biased because magazines that publish articles on interior decorating never publish fashion articles.
Yes, a bias exists, but not in the journals. Only in the way this studies presents the peer-reviewed journal community as a whole. Like it is not make up of subset of research that have very little if any overlap, when in fact this is exactly how this community is structured.