Anyone who thinks Circuit City’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing today has the least bit to do with the ongoing financial whatsits in the country doesn’t know the history of the company. True, if we were still in a boom time right now, CC might not have had to take this step…yet. But it would be coming. The company has been sliding for quite some time now, and this has been predicted for over a year by many who spent time there.

That said, don’t look for the company to totally collapse just yet. Welcome to K-Mart!

Envelope-to: peterstork@realcountry1230.com
Delivery-date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:53:10 -0600

CBS ADVISORY — CBS RADIO NEWS

STATIONS— THE FOLLOWING IS AN ADVISORY FROM CBS NEWS:

***THIS CAN NOT BE REPORTED UNTIL 11PM EASTERN****

When the polls close at 11:00pm Eastern in California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii….

CBS News will estimate that Senator Barack Obama will get the needed 270 electoral votes and will be the next President of the US.

Top 3 minutes of the hourly newscast will be devoted to Senator Obama’s projected win.

There will also be a 1 minute special report at 11:00pm Eastern, Channel 39…

CBS RADIO NEWS

The air conditioning is on. Much better.

Weather this year has been just crazy. Saint Louis has averages 37 inches of rain each year according to the Source of All Knowledge. So far this year they’ve had thirty. And we’re only fifty miles northeast of there. So you see. Temperatures have actually been cooler than average as of late, but the humidity is just unbearable.

And it never stops raining. Never. Literally.

Friday night Emily and I found our way to Lincoln Park in north Springfield to play Disc Golf for the first time. That adventure would have to wait two days, because the sprinkles started as we entered town from the south, the drizzle started as we drove into the park, the downpour started as we huddled in the shelter waiting for the rain to abate, and the tornado sirens went off about ten minutes later. After five minutes of hiding in the stone-built bathrooms, we split.

Then the hail came.

The Cardinals played the Pirates on Saturday night in a game that saw no break in the rain, drops pouring down for all nine innings as the announcers wondered why they were bothering to continue the contest. Duh, thought I, because it’s never going to stop raining! And I don’t think it has.

Illinois, home to the worst economy in the Midwest, is not exactly rolling with extra tax dollars right now. Who is at fault is unclear; who is unaware is not: Springfield.

After the debacle of a budget negotiation that saw our Governor (D) and House Leader (D) practically come to blows, we were still left with an appropriations bill laden with probably-not-so-constitutional vetoes and several lawsuits by the executive branch aimed at the legislative. All this because the former wanted to expand spending on state programs such as health care, mostly with taxes on businesses that would have been disastrous (we won’t even mention the 107-0 General Assembly vote against it…oops…)

I’m all for universal health care, but Illinois does not have the money right now. All this does is give the concept a bad name, and provide ammunition to its opponents. But that’s besides the point.

What Illinois does have the money for, with the right tax plan, is to increase funding to the Regional Transportation Authority. The RTA oversees the three branches of Chicagoland public transportation: the CTA (city trains and buses,) Metra (suburban trains) and Pace (suburban buses.) User fees for the various modes of transport are reasonable as RTA receives funding from the state to make up the rest, a logical use of a certain portion of state tax dollars.

The problem is that RTA, specifically CTA, does not have adequate funding for this fiscal year, and threatened early in 2007 that if more dollars were not allocated to its coffers in the new state budget that a “doomsday scenario” would be reached where thirty-some bus lines would be cut and fees on certain CTA trains would go up a dollar or two. Given that many of the regular patrons of mass transport are lower income earners that need the services of CTA to get to work or school, that’s a big jump in a non-optional expense.

Of course no money was found in the budget, because there really wasn’t money found for much of anything. The reasons: there’s really no more money to go around, and even if there were legislators wouldn’t have been able to agree on how to spend it anyway. Which brings us to the Governor’s announcement today that he will buy RTA time by releasing all of their state money to them at once in order to keep the lines 100% operational while Springfield looks under the cushions and the car seats. This extra $24 million up front was good enough for RTA to push their doomsday device button-pushing back from this coming weekend ’til November.

Where legislators will find money, I’m not sure, and neither are they, which is a shame since the answer is staring them right in the face: gas taxes in Chicagoland. While RTA’s funding is really a tiny drop in the state budget ($37 million out of $51 billion, asking for a total of $110 million,) taking more money from general tax revenues is unfair to the South of I-80 Crowd (as well as the West of I-39 crowd.) So raising the tax on gas by four to five cents per gallon in Chicagoland and devoting that cash exclusively towards mass transit would raise the necessary funds only from those regularly benefit from the service. Yes, gas prices are already high, but an extra sixty cents every time you fill your fifteen gallon tank would hurt a limited number of people, and perhaps drive a few to *gasp* use mass transit when possible, which would fill an empty seat on the red line and put a few more dollars in CTA’s tank.

Of course, this won’t happen, even if residents of Chicagoland were up in arms demanding it. Will County recently asked the legislature for permission to have the county board vote to have a referendum asking the voters if they could raise the gas tax no more than four cents. The bill passed the General Assembly, only to be vetoed by the Governor.

Excuse me? Will County can’t decide whether or not the people get to vote on whether or not they can raise more funds through a slight gas tax? I understand the Governor’s aversion towards taxes, and it’s a far superior position to one of “tax and spend.” But it’s ridiculous to keep a local government from asking its people for permission, especially when the people have to vote yes for the tax to take effect. We’re not talking about a unilateral board decision that the people have no say in. Instead, the Governor decided for all of Will County.

After this, what hope can RTA have? There are no funds just sitting around in some state CD at Regions Bank to dip into. Additional funds will have to be raised, but any logical course of action won’t be allowed. Chicagoland should enjoy their two-month reprieve, because come November it’s going to be a lot colder in the Windy City, and some people are going to do a lot more walking.

To the people of Boston, my thoughts are with you in your time of trouble and need.

I hope you can hear my sympathy (err…mocking laughter,) because I’m doing it as hard as I can.

(Idiots.)

It snowed. But not here.

NASA’s released this satellite image of the Ice Storm.

I’m the blue spot just below the storm’s path (not original to the NASA imagery; most people think NASA is currently tracking me but it’s actually the National Science Foundation.) Needless to say, :p to the storm.

MISSED ME!

(Those that lost power…the line to kick my ass starts in back.)

I’ve talked on here (in previous versions of the website, at least) about the amusement our small town newspaper, the Sparta News-Plaindealer, provides. Not that one expects perfection, or anything close to it, from a weekly rag hidden in a town of 4500 well served by two regional chain papers (one of which owns the Plaindealer,) but it’s rare to find such golden examples of irrelevance, particuarly in the columns highlighting news in the smaller communities.

From this week’s edition:

I saw my good friend [name omitted] at Gas Mart on Sunday on her way to church.

Congratulations.

So it rained in St. Louis today.

For the second time in four months we lost power at work today. Actually, we lost it twice, and for unrelated reasons; when I arrived this morning the grid was down for causes unknown and we all got sent to Applebees for a free lunch prior to opening the store at 12:30 pm (original E.T.A. for power: 3 pm. Not bad.)

The storms moved through at seven this evening, and the power blipped a few times before finally failing for good. We moved to the back to duck the tornado we were directly in the line of (it skipped to the west) and left about 8:30 pm, leaving the area in the dark.

Odds and ends:
• Monty, the idiot out-of-town sports guy on Cards’ flagship KTRS (we’ve discussed this) described how the torrential rains and wind blocked the beautiful view of downtown. This included, he said, “the Arch…and the Capital.” One would hope one cannot see “the Capital,” since no such building exists in Mound City. Idiot.
• Tractor-trailers blew over on the Dickman, New COR and Discovery Bridges, leading to one KSDK reporter standing on the Old COR to cover the traffic jams. XM’s St. Louis traffic was for the first time I’ve seen on “Jam Factor Red,” meaning, roughly, “y’all ain’t movin’ soon.”
• The sign I hung on the door of work before leaving: “I assure you we are not open.”

Apparently, there are five leading candidates to be the US city campaiging for the 2020 Games of the XXXII Olympiad. Only one will have the support of the USOC, and have a snowball’s chance at awarding gold.

Your contestants: Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Bloomington-Normal.

Okay.

It’s less stupid than it sounds on the surface. Home to ISU and various IHSA state tournaments, the twin cities have the facilities for the Olympics’ various events, not to mention Route 66 and the world’s only shared Main Street. Only two hours from Chicago, it’s no worse than a Winter games where you fly into a major city and then trek through ice and snow to get to a remote village where the Eskimos run the ski lift. I-55 can accommodate your autos.

Not to mention what a ghost town(s) Bloomington-Normal can be throughout the summer. During my trip to Chicago in June 2001, gas prices started around $1.70 in the south of Illinois, shrinking to about $1.45 to $1.50 in B-N before slamming close to two bucks in Chicagoland. B-N, you see, had no one to buy gas since all the college kids ran home to daddy for the summertime, leaving service stations with excess petrol. A major city like Chicago would have trouble accomidating the overflow of Eurotrash introduced by the Olympic Games, but Bloomington-Normal would welcome a chance to fill a few hotel rooms.

Did I mention Route 66? The first Steak ‘n Shake ever?

Of course, the USOC says they will only support cities with a metropolitan area of more than 1.5 million, leaving Hancock Stadium empty for the Summer of Perfect Vision. Illinois just can’t get no respect.

Two quotes from a Forbes.com article about Radio Shack:

“When people want to shop at your store because of a unique battery, that’s a weak niche.”"I’ll go to RadioShack for a component or a connector, something small…but when I want a television or a computer, I go to Best Buy.”

Oh, so true. Closing 700 stores isn’t enough. I just don’t know what the answer is.