chuckmo48 wrote:
Not where I was an educator at...you just like to paint everyone/everything with your broad repub rube brush...
You have to admit that you Ree-jects, Reej-tards, and Regionites make it pretty easy to paint with a broad brush. You wink and nod at corruption and waste, you live with the mistaken notion that because you can see the Chicago skyline from Whiting and Gary that somehow you have a degree of sophistication not possessed by the rest of the state (you don't. Really, there are probably more rubes per square mile in Lake County than even the most concentrated collection of farmers in Indiana (wherever that is) could muster) and that you are just one tax increase or one convention center away from prosperity.
chuckmo48 wrote:
Personally, why do you care what happens in Lake County IF you do not reside here...Funny though, when the rest of the state freeloads from the amount of tax money we have to send to the state...and IF you do not live in Lake County why aren't you complaining about the local tax you must pay that we don't have too...
Well, I do care, to a degree, sort of. I still have relatives there. I also own a small bit of rental property--though mercifully nowhere close to Hammond/Gary/East Chicago/Whiting. Your embrace of mediocrity and endless tolerance for the aforementioned corruption and waste does have a small bearing on my net worth. The property is vacant now and I don't make a whole lot from it when it is rented and it isn't a real drain between occupants. It's just frustration with the fact that no matter how nice I keep the place (and really, it is pretty nice) your politicians are working overtime to find ways to pick my pockets, as well as those of the relatively few remaining honest, hardworking, and entrepreneurial people that live there--and that that way of life is just accepted by the electorate. Further, and more selfishly, the same incompetence will have an effect on my family's estate.
Why don't I complain about my local taxes? Simple. For the most part, they are used as intended, and not to provide take-home vehicles to cronies and consulting jobs for countless friends and family members of an old guard. The city in which I live has it's share of graft, but it isn't ingrained in the culture and there is far less tolerance for it.
As far as the rest of Indiana freeloading off of you--well, that goes back to your chummy relationship with wasteful, corrupt (Democratic) politicians. You all know it exists but pretend to have a right to be indignant when the rest of the state says "enough. No more good money after bad." You simply ignore fifty years of theft and probably over 100 public officials marched off to jail and can't understand or accept that other people may just be sick of it all.
It's really just catharsis. I know I'm not going to change anything by writing here and my own relatives chose to stay there and just keep taking the beating. As for my property, that's just my tough luck. It'll sell if I choose to do so, but now is not the right time, and really, it's just not that big of a problem managing it.
I know that you, and Mayor McDermott, and his goon squad, and the staff of WJOB can find occasional wrongdoing anywhere, and by both Republicans and Democrats. However, your guys just never, ever quit. You all just seem to revel in the fact that your leaders may be thieves, incompetents, and losers, but they are YOUR thieves, incompetents, and losers--that's just how it's done in Da' Region and everyone else just has to be fine with it.
P.S. Not that it matters greatly, but what I should have written was that rental income from my property won't really make or break me. The house itself actually does represent a decent chunk of my net worth. Democratic shenanigans and the north Lake County's decades-old crappy reputation make it much tougher to attract people that can afford to live there (and the rent isn't all that extravagant) and that I trust to keep up with their share of the maintenance.