So happy together

The girls, three months and 28 months playing together...

Home at last!

Alexis Christine

The storm of 06

So I guess they never have been able to "officially" say that we had a tornado, but I guess it was sheetwinds instead. The highest recorded winds were at 106 mph, and they recorded upto golfball sized hail. We survived just fine, with us having a large part of one of our trees break off and collapse harmlessly into our yard. Sunday we ended up cutting it down as it broke apart in the trunk and would have died soon enough anyways. The worst we had happen was to be without power for 50 hours, which made for some interesting diaper changes, and we ended up throwing out a few hundred dollars worth of spoiled food. We spent about a half hour hiding out with Madison in the bathroom as the Tornado Siren's sounded, and the storm pounded. The biggest miracle of all was that no one was hurt by these storms, and after judging by the damage, I'll never know how. Anyways, now for some pictures.

This first one is a pic from inside our house, looking at our downed tree. The glare is pretty bad, but the thing to look for is the amount of hail still on the ground. Keep in mind this is about 15 minutes and a ton of rain after the storm blew through.



This is the same tree, with a little better picture of the damage, followed by pictures of the brushpile it and another branches in our yard created.





The next sets of pictures are from Washington Park up on Lake Michigan. It is sad because the park was just full of old growth oak and other trees, and they lost so many of them. It looks just baren anymore.



One of the wilder pictures was a set of bleachers that got blown for a ride...



now look how far it went. It started off next to the set of bleachers at the far left of the picture.




One more downed tree pic from the park.



My mom didn't have it nearly as lucky as we did. She had a tree fall and basically tear a back porch away from the house partially.





Finally we took a drive Sunday (storm was Wed nite) through Beverly Shores and the Pines which were hit even harder than we were. This pic really blew my mind. Look at the angles of the utility poles. Nipsco had two dozen or so trucks there trying to figure out how to fix them. Oh yeah did I mention they are all in a wetland swamp?

ABC's MC style... Another Bad Creation

As if to prove again why the Michigan City school system sucks, one of our own school board members tells a member of the community that the MCAS doesn't have to deal with the public, they just have to be in the public's eye.

MCAS board chided at meeting



By Deborah Sederberg, The News-Dispatch








Three women chided the Board of the Michigan City Area Schools on Tuesday for failing to answer questions during the public forum



They were also irked when the boark enforced the three-minute speaking limit against speaker Pam Edgington.



The board has a three-minute rule and board secretary Rick Carlson - who times the speakers - told Edgington her three minutes were up.



She asked to speak longer and another woman, Toni Lee, offered to give Edgington her three minutes but the board enforced the limit.



Edgington has voiced opposition to the preschool the corporation will open next fall because she objects to the funding plan.



“We are finding out more (about the preschool) at the City Council than at the school board,” she said.



She was referring to the last Council meeting at which school officials - seeking a contribution to the preschool project from the city - made a presentation and answered questions for the Council.



Edgington accused the board of passing the plan for the preschool at the Feb. 28 meeting with little discussion.



Board President Adrienne Gottlieb reminded Edgington the board had conducted a 2-hour public workshop meeting two weeks before the board voted on the matter.



Lee and Hazel Thomas told the board the public wants answers to questions asked during the public forum portion of the meeting.



The board has made it a practice to allow the public to speak without commenting during public forum.



“We deserve answers,” Thomas said.



After the meeting, Gottlieb iterated a point that has been made at several meetings.



“The board's public meetings are just that, a meeting of the board in public,” she said. The board meets to do the public's business in public, she added, but not necessarily to have lengthy discussions with members of the public.



The public forum is a time for the public to speak to the board, but it is not intended to be a question-and-answer session, Gottlieb noted.



As for Carlson's role as timekeeper, she said, “He was just enforcing a board rule. He was doing what the board asked him to do.”

A welcome back rant...

I know it has been too long since I blogged, and many are probably wondering where all of the baby pictures are... Well today I will disappoint again, and let loose on a nice rant about the immigration debate. I hope if you don't agree, hopefully you will learn something new, that has been totally ignored by the mainstream at large.

In honor of today being tax day, I would like to take this opportunity to declare that I don't feel like paying taxes anymore. Yup, I'm 32, and I think I have paid into the system long enough. I'm done. Also I think that whole paying for health care thing, yeah, the government should take care of that too. Plus there are a couple of other laws that I am pretty much just sick of following... I don't think I am going to bother with those either. And in conclusion, I am waiting for my reward from all of you taxpayers for doing so...

Is this really what it has come down to? This whole debate is maddening. We are literally punishing people who behave legally in this country to pacify basically one race in our society. The government is ready to punish all poor people, taxpayers, and legal immigrants immensely. Don't like the USA immigration laws? Don't feel like doing the paperwork, or waiting through deadlines? Come here illegally, eventually there will be enough of you that you will get made legal again.

We made this same mistake 20 years ago in 1986. We rewarded 3 million plus people for breaking our laws, under the guise that this would fix the problem. Well guess what, 20 years later we are looking at 12 million people, and the "solutions" they are looking at this time still don't hold any water, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that we are going to run into the exact same problem again in time.

Also I have yet to see one single politician tell me exactly how the country can afford this. We keep getting told that if we actually enforce our laws (silly thought) that wages would explode and jobs wouldn't get done. What I have yet to see anyone discuss is the fact that there is no way around the fact that this is going to cost the country more money in the long run. I know that it hasn't been said yet, but if the tax payers of the USA are broke into 5 groups based on their incomes, the bottom two brackets actually have a negative tax rate. Because of deductions, credits, and things like the earned income credit, they actually don't pay any money in taxes, in fact they make a net and gross profit off our progressive income tax system. I'm not even saying that they just get back everything they pay in during a year, they earn money. We keep getting told the people who would be ushered in as citizen through the guest worker program are by and large the working poor of the US. For the most part at least the anectoal evidence presented in the press shows that the vast overwealming majority of the new potential citizens are going to fall solidly into the lowest quartile of income earners, meaning we are not going to be adding to the income tax roles, by and large we are going to be subtracting from it!

Also with the US looking at millions upon millions of more working poor people to add to the country, how are we going to maintain our social welfare systems for the people who currently depend on them? There is also immencely clear common sense that saids it would be the lowest income earners who depend on things like welfare, WIC, medicare, medicade, social security, and other US government programs. So what happens to these programs when we add potentially 10 million or more people to them?

Quick recap, all of the sudden we have the room to have less tax money paid into the system, plus majorly expand our entitlement programs for 12 million new citizens?

What happened to all of the budget hawks on this subject? The same people who remind us seemingly daily about the mounting budget deficits and debt have been eeririly silent while we are looking at the biggest addition to the USAs entitlement programs in the history of the country? Most of all, why aren't the working poor of the United States being told that their very well being could be in danger because they will now have to either share their benefits with millions of more people, or without incredible budgetary increases (ie the demon deficit spending) face the potential collapse of these programs? I have seen numerous articles about the legal workers at Wal-Mart's plight because they are forced to use these programs, what is going to be said for the workers who by and large make even less than those WMT workers, and have even less benefits by and large than these poor people do now?

Also one more thing I haven't seen discussed to any extent yet. We keep getting told about the wage inflation that would occur if we sent back all of these workers who are willing to do the jobs that no one else will do, and doing it for less than minimum wage. When we make those very workers, citizens, they aren't going to be making less than minimum wage anymore are they? They now would have the legal standing to turn in all of those employers who are illegally subverting the US's and OSHA employment laws, so how is it exactly that we are going to avoid large wage inflation in key sectors such as food production? The answer is we are not. Only one side of the story is getting told in the media, and on here to some extent. Folks we are looking at significant wage inflation in one form or another in any sector where the prevailing wage is less than the current legal US minimum, if any action is taking place other than the status quo. There is no chance that legal citizens will pick fruit for $2 an hour today, what makes anyone believe that newly minted citizens will continue to be used illegally, when they would have the legal recourse to actually fight that wage, instead of knowing that fighting their wages would most likely earn them a ticket back to their place or origin? The answer is there is zero chance of that happening. Why is only the one side of the story being told there as well?

In conclusion, as usual I am disappointed in at best the laziness of the media, if not the outright one sided reporting being done on this issue. There is such a major lack of information, and as usual I am disappointed by the way this has been portrayed by our politicians as well. As usual the budget hawks are missing the boat, because there is nothing being said by them about the legitimate concerns here. Also not being said is that there has been no movement to fix they key part of the problem, and that is the fact that there are no penalites for being in the US illegally, in fact there are incentives. There is gainful employment to be found, social programs to be utilized in some states, and if you wait long enough eventually the years of illegal behavior are rewarded with citizenship.

Do you want to end illegal immigration today? One provision would do it. Fine companies who hire illegal labor $50,000 per illegal hire, and give some one the resources to enforce the new law. I guarentee you that the incentives to hire illegal workers under the table would quickly disappear with those kinds of finds looming overhead. We don't need bigger walls, or amensty programs, or guest worker programs, we need to remove the incentives for being in the US illegally, the biggest of which is gainful employment. If the US were to ACTUALLY address that one issue, the rest of the issues surrounding this, would quickly disappear. but as usual, the big picture of this issue is totally being missed, and I have no doubt my kid child will be wonder WTF we were doing in 1986 and 2006 by repeatly missing the boat here.

New pictures

Madison rooting for Team USA during his first olympic hockey.



Madison showing off how strong she is already, to go along with a little drool.



Baby Madison, being guarded by her playmate, Baby Pods



Madison with Southpaw at her first Soxfest.

I know it has been a while again, but I never can seem to make the time to get on here for an update. Madison is about 3 1/2 months now, and it still seems like every day she does something, that she has never done before. She now is able to pull herself to a sitting position, but not on her own. She can roll over from her belly to her back, and when she is happy, she will talk your ear off. At her last appointment a couple of weeks ago, she tipped the scale at 12 pounds 6 ounces, and a robust 25 inches tall. Her heighth alone has her growing out of many of her 3-6 month clothes. She really is a happy kid, and we are lucky that she that she thinks she is already way older than she actually is. From day one she was ready to sleep through the night, but she rarely takes naps during the day. Granted I will take that trade off anyday.. Anyways without further ado, here are some new pictures.