It used to be a school district cliche to merely threaten canceling the football season if it’s desired spending referenda was not approved. Now one of our local school districts is going ten steps further and is suggesting everyone will be left in physical peril if 204’s desired spending package is not approved by the voters.
Interesting …
Ever knock on any of the doors of those million dollar homes in downtown Naperville during campaign season? Anyone that has ever been politically active in Naperville knows that many of those fancy homes are not just owned by doctors and lawyers. There are a whole lot of retired school administrators in our downtown hood too. These administrators have contributed greatly to the downtown becoming overwhelmingly “Blue” politically.
All of which makes 204’s safety campaign ever so interesting. Local liberals for years have suggested that raising concerns about crime and public safety is a political scare tactic, its racially bating, and its wrong.
Apparently it appears such methods are ok when employed by schools to increase spending. To be clear that is exactly what 204 is doing right now.
School boards are bankrupting Naperville taxpayers. Enough is enough. 204 needs to figure out a way to improve school security without a big hike in spending. Something tells the Watchdog taxpayers would not notice if there was a reduction in those high paying administrator positions … get the money from there.
Naperville taxpayers have been bled dry.
Vote No to this referenda question!
When we moved to Naperville in 2009, we avoided District 204 despite the better housing value (size and features vs price). One reason was because of the opulent high school it funded, putting financial strains on the district. Such tax and funding uncertainty benefits no one.
Times are hard for many. This measure is ill-timed and marketed by preying on fear. Shame on those who sponsored it. More shame on the voters if it passes.
Those downtown ‘mansions’ are not owned by anyone in District 204. This is an easy vote … NO
Laura pointed out the 204 School District does not include the downtown area and what parts of North Naperville that are in this district does not contain “mansions”. What it does contain is most of the apartment complexes within the city boundaries. So this whole part of this post is irrelevant.
Also, I thought his Website was the “City Council Watchdog” not the “District 204 Board Watchdog”. It was my understanding that this site was dedicated to issues important to all citizens of Naperville, not just some. In fact, a large chunk of 204 is not even in the city of Naperville, it’s in parts of Aurora, Bolingbrook and Plainfield.
Finally, this whole post is really nothing more than a rant against “Blue” Naperville and what is basically national politics. The constant efforts to make local politics about national politics is the real threat to our city’s prosperity and governance, not the city of Chicago or Cook County. The introduction of national politics into local elections is nothing more than an effort to divide our community, not unite it, in a way that benefits a national political agenda while distracting from real local issues that need addressing.
This is just another example of the type of post that would never have appeared on this site under the prior, original founding, management.
To be clear, crime rate stats are down across the country and in the overwhelming majority of cities in the US, so pushing a narrative of public safety issues based on anecdotal stories is misleading at best.
This is what the “blue” or liberal issue is, with people on the right using anecdotal criminal horror stories to promote their political agenda is all about. Criminal horror stories are nothing new. We have seen them in the Kansas Clutter family killings (In Cold Blood), Tate murder (Helter Skelter) as well as in Naperville with a mom drowning her children and a father executed in his car while waiting to pick up his child. Stories like these do not mean crime rates are up or that these types of crimes are more prevalent.
Concerns for public school safety have grown as the number of incidents of guns and gunfire in schools has increased over the years. This is not an anecdotal story but a documented crime stat. And how best to solve the problem varies greatly between the right and left.
The left wants stricter gun laws to make the increased use of guns by citizens of this country in schools harder. This is unacceptable to the right as it violates the 2nd amendment.
The right wants greater school security (more armed guards, metal detectors, ways to secure classrooms, etc.). The left is against turning schools into armed camps with prisons like security systems.
The common ground here is that both sides want their children safe in school and doing this is more important than how. Restrictive gun laws are bogged down in our legal quagmire, so the only alternative remaining is increased school security measures (guards, “safe-room” classrooms, metal detectors, etc). The one thing the left has been constant about is its willingness to find a compromise solution (making fixing the problem more important than how it is fixed).
So, while the left would prefer another solution, they are willing to accept the solution of the right for now. But more guards (increased payroll), metal detectors (increased equipment cost) and “safe-room” classrooms (increased capital cost) all mean spending more money and the only way a school district can do this is though increased property taxes.
So my question for the right is – what is more important to you, your children being safe in school or your pocket book?
Note: Only about 1/3 of Naperville’s population has public school age children.
A purely gratuitous mention of North Naperville to illustrate a point on District 204’s grotesquerie-bourgeois ballot measure is tacky and beneath even your boorish pedantry. None of North Naperville is located in 204, and we have no particular desire to be tied to their fiscal shenanigans, TYVM. District 203, the vastly superior District in town, knows how to work that Denial of Football Privilege angle flawlessly. They will pass any ballot measure to insure the safety of those retired administrators pensions, and flog us with Loss of Programs every election season. The carpetbaggers in 204, on the other hand, seems to not know the value of telling this year’s Seniors that they might not have valid diplomas at graduation, or that bathrooms will only be open on alternate days in convincing that insignificant less than 30% family-engaged voting bloc. The “Building is Going To Fall On Your Head, Maybe” angle seems alarmist and overkillery of the worst sort. What gold-plated nest-feathering load of unnecessary taxation is this? We don’t need it. Instead- let’s give the financially unaliving NC-17 Network to the kids in 204 to work on their A/V skills, and double bonus- a building that isn’t falling down!
Blue Man Jim, seriously- let’s give the first statement a few moments to breathe and see if it can survive as coherent dialogue on it’s own, your time-honored tradition of talking to yourself in the digital void—truly classic. They say the first sign of irrelevance is when you’re the only one replying to your own posts. But hey, who better to appreciate your wisdom than… yourself? Keep the conversation going, Swami Jimmy—someone’s got to pretend to care.
Still sounds to us that you have acceptable levels of murder and mayhem that you accept in pursuit of your equitable fantasies. Guess that Suburban Violence Driven Rage is gonna hafta happen right? How did Mao put it- Sometimes you have to sacrifice a few cadres of the intellectuals to make an omelet?
You seem to be experiencing a comprehension problem. I did not reply to my own comment on this post.
I deliberately made two different comments with two different perspectives of this post.
Just to make sure my replying a second time to your comment does not confuse you into thinking I am commenting on my own reply, this is in fact a second comment addressing a different part of your reply to my comment.
I have never said any level of violent crime is acceptable. Your rant about me saying this is not only a classical example of pushing a false narrative but also of a hyperbolic rant mixing various issues together without making a clear statement on any issue. But this type of rant has become popular on the far right, so it is hardly surprising to see you display it with such pride.
To be clear, Mao Tse-Tung never said anything about “sacrifice a few cadres of the intellectuals” or “breaking eggs” to make an Omelet. This is another fallacy or false narrative you are pushing. This actually comes from a cartoon by Bill Mauldin in 1960 titled “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”.
Oh, and by the way, since you said I should be paid a quarter by people who engage my “Swami” articulation, I am letting you know your tab has become considerable. When do you intend to pay it?
“He (Ch’in-Shih-huang, the first emperor of China) only buried alive 460 scholars, while we buried 46,000. In our suppression of the counterrevolutionaries, did we not kill some counterrevolutionary intellectuals? I once debated with the democratic people: You accuse us of acting like Ch’in-shih-huang, but you are wrong; we surpass him 100 times”. (Mao’s First Speech to the Party Congress, May 17, 1958)
“When 900 million are left out of 2.9 billion, several five-year plans can be developed for the total elimination of capitalism and for permanent peace. It is not a bad thing”. (Mao’s Second Speech to the Party Congress, May 17, 1958)
“People say that poverty is bad, but in fact poverty is good. The poorer people are, the more revolutionary they are. It is dreadful to imagine a time when everyone will be rich… From a surplus of calories people will have two heads and four legs.”
– Mao Zedong
“There should be celebration rallies when people die… We believe in dialectics, and so we can’t not be in favor of death.”
– Mao Zedong
I claim creative license in paraphrasing the Great Helmsman, but the intent is clearly there. All predating the hack comic artist you mention, who was actually a friend of my family, and he would think you an ass for not getting my sarcasm.
If you are going to slur against folks at least use the correct spelling of their names. “Tse-Tung” is an crude and insulting phonetic holdover from colonialism and the opium wars when Occidentals couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to speak Chinese names.
First, the way you wrote your comment did not indicate “creative license”, it indicated a quote from Mao, which you now admit was misinformation and misleading.
Second, you once again make an unsubstantiated claim about “we buried 46,000” scholar. What scholars? Where are their graves? Just to remind you, the 460 scholars in China were not figuratively buried alive, they actually were buried alive by Mao.
Third, you are the one obsessed with Mao, not me. I never said or implied I approved of anything Mao said or did. You have used the weakest possible argument, augmented by misinformation and false statements, to justify your rants comparing Mao to the US leadership on the left. Nothing you point out that Mao did or said has actually been done or said by any of this leadership.
Finally, I find it interesting that you referred to the artist behind the comic mentioned by me as a “hack” while at the same time claiming he was a family friend who would “think you an ass for not getting my sarcasm”. Do you always make it a practice to feel justified in putting works in the mouth of a dead artist just because he was a “hack” and a “friend” of the family?
P.S. the distinction between Zedong and Tse-Tung has nothing to do with colonialism or a slur. Moa used Tse-Tung frequently during this lifetime. It was only after his death that the Communist Party of China started use Zedong and started the propaganda about Tse-Tung being a “colonial slur”. So congratulations on spreading communist propaganda!!!
Vote out Mark Rising from 204 school board. He’s awful.
Below is from the New York Times
A political misdiagnosis
The Democratic Party has spent years hoping that demography would equal destiny. As the country became more racially diverse, Democrats imagined that they would become the majority party thanks to support from Asian, Black and Hispanic voters. The politics of America, according to this vision, would start to resemble the liberal politics of California.
It’s not working out that way. Instead, Americans of color have moved to the right over the past decade.
The latest New York Times/Siena College poll offers detailed evidence. The poll reached almost 1,500 Black and Hispanic Americans, far more than most surveys do. (Our poll didn’t focus on Asian voters, but they have shifted, too.)
A key fact is that the rightward drift is concentrated among working-class voters, defined as those without a four-year college degree:
I know that many Democrats find this pattern to be maddening. They wonder how voters of color could have moved right during the era of Donald Trump, a man with a long history of racism. But the chart above points to a partial explanation: For most Americans, race is a less significant political force than many progressives believe it is — and economic class is more significant.
Most isn’t enough
The past four years have highlighted the ways that Democrats exaggerate the political importance of racial identity. Joe Biden, after all, promised to nominate the first Black female Supreme Court justice (which he did) and chose Kamala Harris as the first Black vice president — who has now succeeded him as the Democratic nominee. Yet Harris has less support from Black voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.
Biden also adopted the sort of welcoming immigration policies that Democrats have long believed Hispanic voters support. He loosened border rules early in his term, which helped millions of people enter the country. In spite of that change — or maybe partly because of it — Democrats have also lost Hispanic support.
Harris is still winning most voters of color. But the Democratic Party typically needs landslide margins among these groups to win elections. Today, a significant share of them view the Democratic Party with deep skepticism — roughly one in five Black voters, two in five Hispanic voters and one in three Asian voters, polls suggest.
Elite vibes
Their skepticism is linked to class in two main ways. First, most working-class voters are frustrated with the economy, having experienced sluggish income growth for decades. (Black men have especially struggled, Charles Coleman Jr. wrote in a Times Opinion essay, and Black men have shifted right more than Black women.)
The years just before the Covid pandemic — the end of Barack Obama’s presidency and the first three years of Trump’s — were a happy exception, when wages rose broadly. But the inflation during Biden’s presidency further angered many people. In our poll, only 21 percent of Hispanic working-class voters said that Biden’s policies helped them personally, compared with 38 percent who said Trump’s policies did.
More generally, many voters have come to see the Democratic Party as the party of the establishment. That may sound vague and vibesy, but it’s real. Trump’s disdain for the establishment appeals to dissatisfied voters of all races. As my colleague Nate Cohn points out, a sizable minority of Black and Hispanic voters think “people who are offended by Donald Trump take his words too seriously.”
The Democrats’ second big problem is that they have wrongly imagined voters of colors to be classic progressives. In reality, the most left-wing segment of the population is heavily white, the Pew Research Center has found. While white Democrats have become even more liberal in recent decades, many working-class voters of color remain moderate to conservative.
These voters say crime is a major problem, for instance. They are uncomfortable with the speed of change on gender issues (which helps explain why Trump is running so many ads that mention high school trans athletes). On foreign policy, Black and Hispanic voters have isolationist instincts, with the Times poll showing that most believe the U.S. “should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home.”
Immigration may be the clearest example. Many voters of color are unhappy about the high immigration of the last few years. They worry about the impact on their communities and worry that new arrivals are unfairly skipping the line. In our poll, more than 40 percent of Black and Hispanic voters support “deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally back to their home countries.” Support for a border wall was similar:
Multiracial similarities
The bad news for Democrats is that they adopted the wrong diagnosis of the American electorate. It is not divided neatly by race, in which people of color are overwhelmingly similar to one another and liberal. That misdiagnosis has been a gift to Republicans.
The good news for Democrats is that some of their weaknesses — with white, Hispanic, Black and Asian voters alike — overlap. If the party can find a way to stem its losses with voters of color, it may also win back a slice of white working-class voters. Remember: Americans without a bachelor’s degree still make up about 65 percent of U.S. adults. The share is even higher in swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Related: Democrats’ challenges with Black and Hispanic voters have left the party more reliant on college-educated white voters and suburbanites, write my colleagues Jennifer Medina, Katie Glueck and Ruth Igielnik.
Conservatives are hypocrites. Whenever there is a school shooting, their solution is schools should be hardened. Now here is the chance to harden the school and conservatives balk at having to pay for it. They don’t care
The 204 money grab has nothing whatsoever to do with school shootings, and none of the contemplated improvements are addressing physical hardening in any way. Their “making schools safer” is about adding bathrooms so the deviants can have multiple choices for their school time toileting needs. And providing more amenities for the administrators, while protecting the diversity and equity programs to insure the “safety” of the kids who choose non-traditional social presentations. We do care about kids, especially about keeping them alive. We also care when the libs trot out more lies to advance their agenda against society.
So you can show us the 204 budget and exactly were these fund are being spent on the things you claim?
Can you backup you claim ?
On the morning of Feb. 17th, 1898, a Spanish Guardia Civil officer who was stationed in Havana challenged one of the surviving officers from the USS Maine to a duel, feeling that his honor had been besmirched by the suggestion that the explosion that sank the Maine came from under the vessel. The officer, lying in a hospital bed when slapped, replied that a reply was only needed if the Initiating Party qualified as a gentleperson by proving that they were “of the White race, and owned at least 2 clean shirts”.
Our question then to the both of you apologists- how many clean shirts do you own? This discussion is about a proposed action that is reprehensible to all persons of good character. It is a money grab to insure lots of funding for bad ideas proposed for the future, and even further anticipating really truly bad decisions after that. There is no existing budget, because it is proposed.
So you can’t back up your claim to what the funds were for. Thanks for clarifying that you have no idea.
First, I never said I agreed with the plan to increase spending or the methods being used to promote approving this funding increase. So, once again, you are spreading false information to distract from your previously posted false information.
Second, my posts were all about how the right does not want reasonable gun laws to help reduce school shootings, saying instead the answer is safer schools through armed guards, metal detectors, “safe-room” classrooms, armed teachers, etc. All of these “improvements” will cost money to implement, costs this school safety spending proposal is supposed to fund. Nowhere is there any mention of more bathrooms, safe places for bullied students, etc. as you have falsely implied, etc.
Finally, I live in the 203 district, so whether the funding for safer schools is approved or not does not really directly affect me in any way. That is why my comments focus on the “two-faced” nature of the arguments from the right against this proposed increased spending.
Let’s get one thing clear. An apology is an admission of wrong doing and an expression of regret for doing wrong. So, an apologist would be a person that admits someone or some group has done something wrong and is apologizing for them.
None of my comments have been in anyway an apology for anything. They are clear statements of documented supported assertions, supporting a person or group’s actions.
As such, all “labeling” of me as an “apologist” is just a lame attempt to marginalize my comments rather than refute them with actual facts from reliable sources. The only reasonable justification for this type of behavior is that they can not refute my comments, so they make lame attacks on my character instead.
I consider such attacks a victory, since they are not only an admission of failure but also a clear indication of the character of the person behind them.
Thankfully the voters in 204 voted yes by a large majority.