I Heard The Roar

There was a TORNADO WARNING for Rockford, Illinois that expired a few minutes ago. As I was heading to the basement I stuck my head out the door and heard the roar. It kind of sounded like continuous thunder. Scared the hell out of me. And I don't scare easy. All has passed now - everybody in the family has checked in and we are all fine. I'm still waiting for further reports to see if there was any major damage in the area. There are lots of leaves and a few tree branches down in my neighborhood. Nothing too serious here.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Rockford's Fifteen Minutes

The Daily Show on Facebook

My #2 son sent me a link to the above video. The scenes in the video are really from Rockford. Our 15 minutes of fame are now up I guess. At least until the next suicide bomber decides to attempt to blow up a mall in Rockford.

Hide Away In Rockford

H/T Hot Air

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Wisconsin Legislators Are Gone

As you may or may not know 14 Wisconsin Senators were camped out in Rockford. The first mate and I had gone out today for a late Valentines Day lunch (we often celebrate holidays early or late depending) at Aunt Mary's on State Street which is owned by Sam from Albania. We had the best Reuben sandwiches in Rockford plus a really decadent chocolate fudge cake for desert. When we got back home we were really full and decided that a Valentines Day snuggle was in order. Yummy. We stared the snuggle at about 3:30 PM local time and I didn't get up until a little after 9 PM. And I look at my e-mail and all heck has broken loose. Tall Dave (who blogs at Classical Values among other places) sent me an e-mail with the Gateway Pundit link above. And there were others like these:

Patriot Action Network

Rockford Tea Party - Facebook

Plus my favorite link resource:

Instapundit

I was planning to make it to their hide out at the Clock Tower tomorrow and take some pictures so I decided to watch the local news for an update - something I rarely do - and found out that the Wisconsin guys had left town. Dang. But you know a man has got to know his priorities. My personal coverage of the event would have meant lots of blog hits. Snuggles (naked) with the first mate? Priceless.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Rockford Tea Party Pictures 6 April '10

About 1,000 people at Davis Park as we arrive:



A view of the Rock River. The day started out cloudy.



As the day went on it got sunnier and the crowd got larger. At the peak I'd say there were 2,000 to 3,000 people in attendance. The organizers predicted 1,000.



An old friend of mine from my Libertarian Party days:



The crowd has definitely gotten larger.



I liked This Sign:



The other side of the sign:



One of the Bikers that escorted the Tea Party Buses to the park. The gentleman is a Marine Corps Veteran.



A good time was had by all.

And don't forget:

Click on the above image and learn how to spread it around.

Update: 6 Apr '10 2352z

Here is a video by Bill Whittle on what the Tea Party is about and what you should do. About 4 1/2 minutes and well worth your time. And the video pretty much explains what today's rally was about and what it was like and he wasn't even there. And in line with what Bill suggests (go to a Tea Party), I like Tea Party Patriots for information. There are other places. Find one you like and keep in touch.

Further update: 7 Apr '10 0024z

I got this link for a series of April 15th rallies in Illinois at today's gathering: illinoistea.org.

Rockford Is Improving

According to our local paper, fondly called The Red Star, only 25% of house sales in the area are foreclosure sales. Except that I know for a fact that the banks are putting off foreclosure as long as possible so as to avoid as long as they can booking the losses.

In Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties in February, just 62 of the 243 recorded sales were from bank, mortgage or government agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs.

That was the lowest number of bank-owned property sales in a month since December 2008.

The flood of foreclosures in the country has been largely to blame for falling prices, because the homes are usually sold at steep discounts. Real estate experts think prices won’t rise with any regularity again until we cycle through the millions of distressed properties in the U.S.

Unfortunately, February’s decline in foreclosure sales is most likely an anomaly. The number of new foreclosure cases being filed continues to rise.

And we haven't even started to tear into the commercial real estate bubble. It is only a matter of time. And then the housing market will re-collapse.

Good times? Only if you like breaking records. Take unemployment in the area.

Local economists weren’t the only ones shocked by the jump to the Rockford area’s January unemployment rate.

It was the highest year-over-year increase in the nation.

The metro area’s unemployment rate was 19.7 percent, a 5.8 percentage point increase, higher than all 372 metro areas in the country, according to an analysis released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Two other Illinois metros made the list of top five biggest increases: Peoria tied for second with a 5.5 percentage point increase, and Decatur was close behind with a 5.2 percentage point increase.

Rockford also had the fifth-highest unemployment rate of all metro areas, outpacing rust belt mainstays such as Flint, Mich., Elkhart-Goshen, Ind., and Detroit.

As far as the statistics go I'm not counted. I'm retired on Social Security. And my mate? She works for the school system so her job will be one of the last to go.

And what is one of the biggest problems our city faces? Public employee pensions.

The debate over how to balance the city budget without cutting services has now zeroed in on the budget’s ticking time bomb: pensions.

Mayor Larry Morrissey, in his State of the City address earlier this month, got everybody’s attention with one example:

A 25-year-old police officer hired today at base pay and receiving an annual 3 percent wage increase and required step and longevity increases, with no promotions, will pay $304,506.25 toward his or her pension throughout a 30-year career. If the officer or the officer’s spouse lives 30 years after retirement, he or she will receive a total of $5.8 million, from employee and city contributions and investment returns to the pension fund.

Now, multiply that by the number of police officers and firefighters the city expects to employ in the next 30 years. Right now the number is 549.

The city’s annual pension obligation — the amount the state says it must pay into three separate state-mandated retirement systems for its union employees — jumped from $11.3 million in 2009 to $12.8 million this year to a projected $16.3 million in 2011.

But at the same time, money coming into the city’s general fund fell from $112.4 million in 2009 to $110.1 million in 2010.

Let me do the multiplication for you. And to make it easy we will say the obligation is $5 million for 550 people. That would be around $90 million a year in a city whose budget is $110 million a year. A total 30 year obligation of $2.75 billion. Roughly.

That is unsustainable. And that which can not be sustained will not be sustained. I see bankruptcy in the city's future. Some improvement.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Local News

The Sterling, Illinois man who went on a murder spree has been captured.

GRANITE CITY, Ill. - Police and FBI agents captured an ex-convict suspected of killing eight people in two states as he smoked a cigarette outside of a southwestern Illinois bar Tuesday night.

Nicholas T. Sheley, who was the subject of a multistate manhunt after authorities linked him to the deaths of eight people in Illinois and Missouri, was arrested around 7 p.m. outside of Bindy's, a Granite City bar, said bartender Katie Ronk.

Sheley ordered a glass of water and went to the bathroom before another bartender and customer recognized him, Ronk said. The customer, Gary Range, said he left the bar and notified a police officer parked in the lot outside,"I told (the police officer) the description and the officer said, 'That's him.' He got on the radio and eventually there were police all over the place," Range said.

I think this points out a few of the most salient facts of life. If you are going to go on a murder spree don't hang out in bars, don't drink anything, don't go to the bathroom, and don't smoke cigarettes.

Seriously though, I had read about this guy today and of course as irrational as it is you start worrying about your friends and family.

We live about 50 miles from Sterling and have a close friend from that area (who lives in Rockford). So your mind starts going into those dark alleys. The vast majority of which are actually blind alleys. I think this points out the old military dictum made famous by Patton, "Never take council with your fears." The best thing to do is face them, realize most won't come to pass and if you are still worried, take what steps you can to strengthen your defenses. Even if it is only mental preparation. "What would I do if...."

Cross Posted at Classical Values

At the Coranado

I saw my daughter dance tonight in the Nutcracker. She did a great job.

I also had a blogger meet up with Eric Scheie of Classical Values who was in town for the holidays and also came to the Nutcracker. One of Eric's friends took some pictures of us at the Coranado. When he gets home he will post them.

I will cross post them here when they go up.

The Nutcracker

My daughter is dancing in the Nutcracker at the Coranado Theater in Rockford. One of the most beautiful theaters in America. A short history of the Coranado. I saw Bob Dylan there. Among other places.

My daughter is one of the harem girls. The tall one.

Hemp in Illinois

Here is a piece I wrote in June of 2001. It is a historical note about hemp cultivation in Illinois during WW2.

==

Hemp has a very recent and interesting history in the Rockford, Illinois area.

The story starts in 1937 when marijuana was outlawed. Since American law enforcement was unable to tell the difference between hemp and marijuana hemp growing was outlawed.

Let jump forward to 1942. America is in a war with Japan and Japan has cut the US of A off from Asian hemp supplies from the Philippines and Java. Hemp was essential at that time for making naval ropes because of its long fibers, strength, and strength when wet. In addition it resisted rot and mildew making it relatively long lasting in a very harsh environment ranging from the frozen Arctic to the tropical Pacific.

The American response was to forget about hemp/marijuana prohibition and grant special licenses to mid-west farmers to grow hemp. In addition to educate and encourage farmers a film "Hemp for Victory" was made by the agriculture department to explain how important hemp was to the war effort and to encourage farmers to plant it.

Now we get closer to Rockford. A pilot plant built in Polo, Illinois in Ogle County was to serve as a center for hemp production in the surrounding area. It was expected that 42 hemp mills would be needed in the mid-west and 11 in Illinois.

The first harvest was in 1943. Because much of the machinery was untested, the hemp tangled machinery started breaking down. Production suffered and yet had to be completed before the end of harvest season. With a war on and labor at peak demand where could the Agriculture Department turn to fill its labor needs?

It turns out that Camp Grant in Rockford had quite a few German prisoners of war from the African campaign who were brought in by bus to help harvest the hemp. By January 6th of 1944 fifty-two truck loads of hemp had been brought to the hemp mill. One hundred and fifty one tons of fiber total were delivered to spinning mills on the East coast. The hemp brought a little over ninety-three dollars an acre.

By 1944 the government started closing the hemp plants because of the availability of alternate supplies from Central America and the Mediterranean region. By 1945 the Hemp for Victory Program was over.

If you would like to find out more about this story you can go to:

Polo's Hemp Mill.

Hemp for Victory video download.

Let me know if you have trouble with the Hemp for Victory video. All I have is a 28.8 dialup and haven't tested it.



Update: 29 Aug '06 2121z

The Hemp Industries Association has the latest hemp news. Today they are covering the California Hemp Bill Extensively.

Wind in Rockford

Note to my readers. I live in Rockford, Illinois. This was written about two years ago or so. It pertains to the problem of government impeding the process of letting people get what they want. Rules need to be fixed but variable. I hope that is clear.

===========

What are the prospects for wind energy in Rockford? In the short term not very good. The United States Government at:

Wind Power Maps

has maps showing the wind potential of every state of the union. Even though Illinois is rated as the 16th best possible production state for wind power most of the state is rated as marginal to fair in terms of site economics. The best general site is between Springfield and Quincy which runs in the fair to good category. Local conditions such as the amplifying effects of hills can increase the economics of certain sites even if siting windmills across the landscape is not feasible.

Generally what you have to do in these cases is to do a year long site survey. You do this by erecting a tower and mounting instruments on it. If there is already a long history of instrumentation at a site but not at the right place or height it may be possible to do a correlation with existing data and reduce the time it would take to do a survey with reasonable confidence of the results.

Since Rockford is in the marginal category we would need quite a bit of field work done before siting our first wind turbine. What we want to look for is wind amplifiers. Places that channel the prevailing wind from a wide area to a narrow one. A topographical feature that doubled the wind velocity would change a site from marginal to superb. An increase of as little as 25% could change a site from marginal to good.

To make wind energy more than a hobby in Rockford will require that we do some intelligent prospecting. Fort Collins, Colorado which is in an outstanding area (just short of superb) has had a wind energy program for some years. They handle the whole thing in a most democratic way. Those who want wind power pay 2.5 cents more per kilowatt hour and the power can be bought in blocks of five dollars. Thus those on a fixed budget need not pay more and those who want to pay for a move to renewables can do so in affordable increments. For those who wish the company can also charge all your useage every month to renewables. To find out more about their energy program and their installed wind turbines go to:

What the paper work looks like

and

Wind Turbines

The thing to do here in Rockford is to try and get Com Ed to take more of our money based on the source of the electricity we want to buy. They should do something like this state wide it is true. But since they have to start somewhere let it be Rockford.

Which brings me to the question of subsidies. In past years the Federal government has provided a subsidy of about 1.5 cents a kilowatt hour for wind electricity. This just about covers the cost difference between the current cost of coal electricity and the cost of wind. It is one of the reasons 1,700 Megawatts of wind was installed last year in the US of A. 1,000 Megawatts in Texas alone. In fact Enron is slated to deliver a very large percentage of those megawatts. The people Enron employs on these wind projects are still at work. So what should be done about the subsidies? As you know I am very anti-tax and pro-small government so I want to announce here that I am about to violate my principles. Since the industry is addicted to the subsidies and I believe wind energy converted to hydrogen is critical to reducing the amount of military effort we need to defend our energy supplies, I am in favor of a declining subsidy. Fix it to start at current levels and let it decline to zero over eight years. By that time through increased manufacturing efficiency wind will cost less than coal even without a subsidy.

In the long run the best answer to all this is to let well educated consumers make informed choices. If every household in Rockford signed up for a $5 a month boost to alternative energy there would be wind turbines sprouting at all the favorable sites in Rockford almost over night.

Unfortunately ComEd is a regulated utility so any change in the billing structure may require government approval. Can you believe it? We need government approval to pay more for our electricity! And they call this a free country.


M.L. Simon is an industrial controls designer and independent political activist

(c) M. Simon - All rights reserved.

BTW The subsidy was slated to be 1.8 cents per KWH this year but I don't know if it was approved by Congress. I'll update ya and have more good links.

Wind Power Monthly is from NZ but covers the world.

American Wind Energy Association covers the American scene plus they have a nice map and data on current projects.

This map shows what has been done so far - more than 6,000MW peak - roughtly 2 nuke plant equivalents!

John Atkinson over at winds of change linked to this. Some other nice energy updates there as well

John's Blog is here

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