Democrat State Rep. Candelaria-Reardon supports the adult children of illegal aliens

One unintended consequence of our open borders are that we're educating the children of illegal aliens in public schools, but when they graduate, they're in just as much trouble as their parents. They can't go to college and get in state tuition. They can't get a job legally. They're in limbo.

Instead of cracking down on illegal immigration, State Rep. Reardon wants to "require" these kids to get an education or join the military, and in return give them legal status.

It seems to me that this is just a band-aid on a gaping chest wound. The problem is that people can come to this country, get a fake Socialist Insecurity number, and go out and get a job. The IRS knows who is illegal and where they are. At the very least, they could require everyone with a bogus SS number to verify who they are. Our illegal alien problem would be largely solved overnight.

And the children of illegal aliens would no longer be in limbo.

Spector bolts, Bayh is screwed

Now that Spector is a Democrat, there's going to be a lot of pressure on Evan Bayh. As a "moderate" Democrat, he is going to be what Spector and Snowe were for Republicans: swing votes that can be swayed by lobbying.

This could be a good thing for Bayh. All of a sudden, he matters a lot more than he used to. On the other hand, he will no longer fly under the radar, and with conservatives outnumbering liberals in the Indiana electorate 3 to 2, liberal lobbying does him no favors back home.

It's funny that Spector says that the stimulus vote is what lost him the Republican primary electorate. Bayh also voted against the stimulus. Is Bayh going to switch parties too?

Obama scares the hell out of New Yorkers: Priceless

Why Gitmo should stay open.

I blame Obama for this:

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) — The two young sons of a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo died when a grenade they were playing with accidentally detonated inside their home, a human rights lawyer and the detainee's brother said Thursday.

Damn the grenade industry! If only those grenades had child locks, this never would have happened.

McDermott makes an end run around the tax caps

Democrat Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott cut a deal with the Munster town council to fund part of the Northcote bridge raising with Sanitary District money.

One of the reasons given for why Munster just wants to seal off the roadway of the bridge and not raise it is that they're constrained by the tax caps. They simply can't afford to do it.

But the Sanitary District is not covered by the caps, as they get most of their money from fees, not property taxes. Thus, Mayor McCheeze gets around the tax caps by tapping the Sanitary Districts ability to raise fees.

Another opportunity to confront State Senator Sue Landske...

...that I can't attend because I'm working:

Why I didn't attend any Tea Parties yesterday.

I put in 13 hours at work yesterday.

One huge disadvantage that conservatives have compared to liberals is that our supporters have jobs and families. We have real responsibilities outside of politics.

Liberals get their support from government employees, teachers, professors, non-profits, and lawyers. These people often WORK on the issues that they advocate. When they put in 13 hours in a day, it is on the political issues that they advocate. Or else they have jobs that they can leave for hours at a time and not get fired.

Liberals also tend to be unmarried and childless, which also gives them more time to be activists for their issues.

Keep this all in mind as the media taunts us with how many people attended the tea parties. Getting 5000 conservatives to show up to a single tea party in Atlanta is huge. Those 5000 represent 5 million, at least.

Making mischief at Sue Landske Fundraiser?

Well, Landske never replied to my e-mail about her vote against getting rid of townships, so maybe I need to go to this:

Fundraiser for Senator Sue Landske and Representative Ed Soliday_



When: Saturday, May 30^th

Where: Home of John and Janet Curley

Time: 3-6pm



More information to come

Please contact John Curley at curley5222@aol.com

How do you pay for local government under a tax cap?

Answer: instead of charging property taxes, charge a fee on the water bill.

Winfield has a real problem. They rely on the Lake County Sheriff to patrol the town, but the Sheriff doesn't want to do it for "free" anymore. He wants to charge the town for the service.

Because of the tax caps, Winfield can't just jack up property taxes to pay for the service. Winfield has calculated that they have about $80k available under the tax caps, not nearly enough to pay off the Sheriff.

What to do?

It turns out that Dyer has found the answer: hire police under the auspices of "Homeland Security" to "protect" the water system, and then charge a fee on everyone's water bill.

Winfield uses the same attorney that Dyer does. Winfield is investigating if they can do this too.

I got all this from a guy that's on the Winfield Sewer Board.

Keep in mind that property taxes are deductible, water bills are not. On the other hand, having to pay a certain amount every month may be more... motivational... than a twice yearly bill. It's certainly easier to see what you're being charged on a water bill than a property tax bill, with all the assessment, credits, abatements, etc. issues.

More Republican soul searching

I linked to this guy before, and this is more of the same. He uses polling results to show that Republicans are on the wrong track with independents.

This guy is a fomer Lieberman aide, so he's a Democrat. It would be easy to dismiss him as such. It is certainly hard for me to read this kind of criticism.

But at the end of it all, I think that he's right. Unfortunately, I don't really know what to do about it.

And I am definately one of the people harping on Obama for bowing to the Suadis and taking crap about the US on foreign soil. It makes my blood boil. I'm also a big supporter of the "Bush/ Cheyney belligerance" that he talks about. Talk softly and carry a big stick. That's not Obama, as we are seeing with the pirate situation now.

How a 0.25% becomes a 2.5% tax overnight

The Senate is proposing that, before a 0.25% county option income tax can be implemented for economic development, option income taxes for property tax relief and public safety need to be implemented as well.

So to get a 0.25% income tax, it needs to be part of a package of income taxes that ends up being 2.5%.

There are some truly attrocious quotes in the article:

Sen. Brandt Hershman, R-Wheatfield, said he introduced the amendment to House Bill 1607 in the hope he can convince the northwest corner of the state to fall in step with other counties in reducing property taxes.

"(Income taxes are) the wave of the future in terms of Indiana tax policy," Hershman said. "Voters want property tax relief."

Homeowners in Northwest Indiana could see their property tax bills fall 50 percent if the income taxes were passed, Hershman said.

What a dumb ass. Seriously, if my property taxes were cut in half, but I had to pay a 2.5% income tax, it's a wash. I'm not saving any money. And how could I? The money has to come from somewhere. You're just robbing Peter to pay Peter. It's a zero sum game.

More on the national Republican implosion

Some of the numbers in this article are frightening for Republcians, and don't bode well for a '94 style revolution in '10.

I think a message of fiscal austerity might resonate with young people. Look, this recession is so bad because we binged on consumer credit, and we're all in over our heads. The Democrats answer is to borrow and spend like crazy, to make up for the lack of spending by overextended consumers.

Wouldn't a better approach be to encourage consumers AND government AND corporations to rebuild their balance sheets? We need to transition to an economy where indiviuals pay for things through their savings, businesses expand via profits, and government lives within the natural growth of tax revenue.

If government were reined in one the spending side, I myself would be OK talking about certain kinds of tax increases. Maybe phase out the mortgage tax credit or something of that nature (we are totally overinvested in housing, and it lowers our GDP by something like 10% per year).

Also, we desperately need to reform the elderly entitlements. The Democrats are never going to do it (they created the entitlements, after all). Entitlement reform will hurt with the elderly vote, but could turn young Democrats around.

Lake County Commisioner Gerry Scheub rants

Far be it for me to complain about someone else's writing (God knows I have my own problems in that area), but isn't this best described as semi-literate?

Gerry tries to pass the buck and goes on some wicked tangents that have nothing to do with anything.

Fact is, there are Lake County Democrats in jail. Lots of them. He belongs to a corrupt party, and he hasn't done a damn thing to purge the corruption.

Gerry is guilt as Mitch charged. Lousy and corrupt.

First, they came for my beer...

One of my pet peeves is Sports Socialism: government ownership of sports facilities, inevitably paid for with taxes on the wider community.

Well, Indianapolis is taking it to a new level: they're going to tax alcohol statewide to fund the Colts and Pacers arenas.

Being a fan of the Chicago Bears and Bulls, this is just insult to injury.

Don't tax my Old Style or Pabst!

Once again, here in Lake County we have a pretty big tax/ cost advantage on liquor compared to Illinois. People come over here to get cheap gas, cheap booze, cheap cigs, Powerball tickets, fireworks, etc. etc. etc.

This law erodes that advantage, and will cost us business and jobs.

The screws get turned a little tighter on Lake County

Propoerty taxes in Lake County really started increasing in 2002, when the state took assessments of BP, Mittal, and US steel's plants away from local assessors and gave that function to the state Department of Local Government Finance.

In Lake County historically, industry paid almost all the taxes, and homeowners paid almnost nothing. The companies accepted this during profitable times as a way to keep labor peace, avoid strikes, and just run balls to the wall to make money. As the economy changed, and they became less profitable, they started to look for ways to lower their obscene taxes. They were eventually successaful, which started taxes on homeowners to spiral upwards.

Anyway, Indianapolis continutes to tweak the laws to further limit taxes on Lake County's industry. Now they're limiting appeals to DLGF rulings".

My fear is that this just puts more pressure on the county to implement an income tax.

Bayh is one of two Democrats to vote against Obama's budget

Bayh votes against the insanity. Good for him.

Dumezich to run against Bayh?

He's considering it.

For what it's worth, my Lake County Republican Yoda says that Dumezich is one of the bad guys. He's hooked up with Chicago Democrats, and had ties to Bob Cantrell, who got 6-1/2 years in jail for corruption, sentenced just yesterday.

State Senater Luke Kenley tries to screw us again

Republican State Senator Luke Kenley, chair of the appropriations committee, who I have called a f-ing bastard on previous occasions, is up to his old tricks: raising Lake County's income tax.

The Senate Transportation Committee voted Tuesday to create a four-county regional transportation district em-powered to levy an income tax as high as 0.25 percent to pay for mass transit in Lake, Porter, LaPorte and St. Joseph counties.

The ambitious plan could raise $52 million per year to subsidize big-ticket capital projects and operating expenses, circumventing the local officials who have been unwilling or unable to adopt a tax themselves, particularly in Lake County.

If the income tax were levied at its maximum amount for each county, Lake County residents would kick in $22 million annually, Porter $12 million, LaPorte $5 million and St. Joseph $15 million, according to Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, who offered the proposal as an amendment to a House transportation bill.

Not coincidentally, Kenley's plan could pay the $350 million local share of the $1 billion-plus South Shore rail extension to Lowell and Valparaiso, and underwrite bus service in the area.

"There is a rough correlation there," Kenley, R-Noblesville, told the committee in explaining why he settled on a 0.25 percent maximum.

The nine-member, first-of-its-kind "super board" Kenley envisions would include a county council member and a county commissioner from each county, as well as a governor-appointed chairman, who would vote only to break ties.

The state budget agency would get final say on how high an income tax residents of each county would get saddled with, taking into account the capital improvement needs in each county, and the number of passengers and passenger miles each county contributes to regional mass transit.

I really don't understand why Kenley can't stay out of our business. We don't want an income tax. We don't want mass transit. What's this all to him? I think that he just likes excercising power. He's doing this because he can.