“No comment”

I often have no comment (at least on the blog) when it comes to politically-charged issues in Elgin. This is for two reasons: 1) I think blogging about a political issue should be something I turn to only after I’ve tried to contact politicians, attend meetings, write letters, etc. and 2) I have very little knowledge on a wide variety of issues and I don’t want to shoot off at the mouth (keyboard?) only to regret it later because I spoke before knowing exactly what I was speaking about.

I think #2 might be what I’ve done in regards to the U46 lawsuit. I read two newspaper articles about the lawsuit and one letter to the editor and formed an opinion. Now I’ve discussed it with others and done some digging for past articles and found out a whole bunch of missing information!
-This lawsuit started in 2005 and was a direct response to the 2004 school boundary change.
-The plaintiffs are charging that the discrimination was intentional.
-They are asking U46 to hand over months’ worth of emails in order to find evidence of this discriminatory intent.
-Obtaining the emails will cost U46 up to $500,000.

Hm…what I originally wrote was wrong. The intention of the people who redrew the boundary lines does matter, and appears to be what the focus is on.

This is much less interesting to me. Of course it is terrible if people intentionally discriminated. What is of interest to me is if the policy inadvertently results in discrimination, which would take objective research to determine. I still hope someone does some research like that I outlined.

I grew up in Elgin, but have only lived here recently since October–not even a full year. Probably going to go back to not sharing my opinion on politically charged events until I feel a little more sure about what I’m discussing.

Tags: blogging, blogs, Elgin, IL, Illinois, opinions, politics
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Powers quits City Council

A Council member quit. The Courier came up with this headline: Text of Powers’ resignation announcement. Maybe this shows what generation I’m a part of, but when I first read it for a split second I thought he quit via text message.

Click here for the resignation letter.

His brother was one of my middle school teachers. Elgin may be a big city, but it’s a small town in the sense of how connected people are. As for the actual resignation–no comment! I don’t know anything about it.

Tags: city council, Courier News, Elgin, IL, Illinois, politics, Powers, technology, text message
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No cuts to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources!

IDNR is threatened. Click here for an article on the topic. I contacted my representatives. Don’t really feel like getting any more political on here beyond sharing that.

Tags: Blagojevich, budget cuts, Department of Natural Resources, DNR, Elgin, forests, IDNR, IL, Illinois, nature, policy, politics
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Did you vote?

I did.

My first time using computerized voting! It was nice. Basically like using an atm, but after you make your choice it prints it onto a little receipt that you double-check before pushing “Cast my vote” for the last time.

So I was afraid that I couldn’t vote because I chose not to register with a party this time around, and I found a few articles online that said you could only vote in the primaries if you were registered with a party. THEN I found this article in the Kane County Chronicle that says in Illinois you pick the party whose primary you want to vote in right there at the polling place.

I went to the Kane County Clerk website to find out which local elections were going on and who was running (Click “candidates”). A the voting place I picked the Democrat ticket and voted for president, US representative, and County Board Member. I did not vote for a delegate because I never took the time to research the delegates, and honestly I don’t fully understand what they do any how.

Now that I’m out of grad school and actually have free time, I’m hoping to become more knowledgeable about politics. In the past I only paid attention to president and aldermanic (Chicago) races. Now I’m hoping to learn more about state and county level elected officials.

Tags: Barack Obama, Cristina Castro, democrat, Elgin, Hilary Clinton, Illinois, Jesus de la Isla, John Laesch, Jotham Stein, Kane County, local politics, politics, president, presidential race, primaries, republican, Richard Durbin, Super Duper Tuesday, super Tuesday, US, USA
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