Northwest Indiana Discussion

Wow. I wonder what would happen if a locality tried to build a bridge to a steel mill with highly trained and experienced union labor. Oh, wait, NWI did that and 20 workers were killed, then they did it again and the bridge was deemed unfit for use. At least region funeral parlors were able to make a few bucks off the whole thing. Like they used to say about the stockyards, "we use everything but the squeal."

I guess I could have been more specific, considering I am dealing with a University of Chicago graduate that never made it out of Hammond. What all but went out in the late 1970's is not all heavy industry, but that aspect of heavy industry that emphasized brawn over brains and allowed a generation and a half of Reege-tards and Ree-jects to drool their way through high school, drop out or be handed a diploma worth less than a piece of toilet paper, phone Uncle Louie down at union hall, and get a job that would keep them in muscle cars and vacations to Sumava Resorts until they died of cancer at age 54. The problem is, the bulk of your population has failed to grasp that the world has changed significantly in the past 35 years and for reasons I have not been able to fathom, your schools are still "preparing" students for a way of life that no longer exists.

With all of the supposed expertise in steel and refinery work that permeates Da' Region, why is the area such an economic basket case?

12 were killed. All they did was replace the sections that fell. I was a first responder at the Cline Avenue Bridge Disaster.

Except it was not the fault of highly trained and experienced union labor, it was the fault of highly trained and experienced engineering calculations. The concrete supporting pads were too thin. It was people just like Laffy, the highly trained and experienced pencil heads who fuc*d up, not union labor.

I know (because I've been told) that union labor and supervision is the best there is. These guys were right there, up front and hands on. With all of their experience and blue collar know-how, they should have known something was wrong and walked away from the job.

NWI is the largest steel producing region in the country and the upgrade of BP is of great benefit to that area of Indiana as well, huh? Aren't these the sort of large, multinational corporate polluters you say you detest? If you were King of Da' Region, instead of British Petroleum and the steel mills, there would be a couple bankrupt solar panel companies and a handful of windmills on all of that real estate--at least that's what you say.

You have three casinos and wildly inflated real estate assessments, but your leaders still can't make ends meet. Their careers are devoted entirely to circumventing real estate tax caps that were put in place to curb their waste and inefficiency.

The reason your real estate values are stable is because they were falling precisely at a time that a good portion of the rest of the country was experiencing increasing home prices--again, thanks to your leaders' decades-long exploitation of large region employers.

The last time I checked, NWI unemployment was in the 10% range. That's hardly an encouraging number compared to the rest of the U.S.

Your schools are atrocious and although you think of yourself as one of the hubs of the labor and heavy industry universe, British Petroleum has to import workers from around the country because the bulk of your workforce is too stupid and backward to perform the tasks they require.

You yourself are depending on public handouts to send your own kid to Purdue.

The young, brown liberals with whom you are so enamored shoot, rape, and/or kill increasing numbers of people in Hammond/Gary/East Chicago/Whiting every week.

Your largest, best-attended, most widely advertised social events are coat drives and soup kitchens.

Your local elected Democratic officials are routinely hauled in front of judges and sent off to jail by the handful, but that is O.K. because a downstate Republican named Charlie White got himself busted for vote fraud.

I don't have to "spew low information stupidity". Da' Region is doing a fine job of circling the drain without me.

What does any of the above have to do with the fact that Lake County is a backward cesspool which offers little opportunity to those who want to achieve more than a take-home, taxpayer-owned vehicle, the chance to (if you show promise and work really hard) to become a shift manager at a cheap Greek restaurant, and multiple venues at which you can sit with other down-and-outers and gamble away your welfare checks and meager pension draws?

How is it that a University of Chicago graduate came to depend on Hammond taxpayers to pay his kid's college tuition and will live out the rest of his days in a neighborhood in which the ambitious wouldn't even consider looking for a starter home? What do they put in that city water Hammond officials seem to think they created out of thin air?