Remember when Playground Equipment was Made of Steel?

I spent a couple hours in Hubbard's Harding Park over the weekend and saw that at least one playground still has the old style steel pipe equipment.  There is a more modern playground in the park full of plastic equipment with a mulch base to ease falls but down by the creek you can still find slides made of sheet metal and steel tubing bent into insect shapes.

The Bug

This was the playground equipment of my youth.  This was the stuff we found on the elementary school playground at home.  On weekends and summers at Dad's house on the Southside we would walk up the street to Sheridan elementary on Hillman and find exotic equipment like steel pipe spaceships and our favorite, the red stagecoach with bench seats and large wheels made of bent pipe.

A steel jungle gym.  Or an eight year old's fort

There's a reason this equipment isn't used anymore.  I can't count the number of times I had skin burned by a sliding board made of polished sheet metal or risked a concussion by falling off a jungle gym.  Heck, all of this stuff had concrete bases!  Of course, when we were kids no one really thought about things like that.  You just played and if you skinned a knee or fell too hard no one wanted to walk two blocks to get home.  You just kept playing.

Progress is good and I'm sure today's equipment is safer but some of that stuff was just plain fun.

A Space Station?

The Deficit for April was 40.5 Billion. Why?

According to this story the Federal deficit for April was 40.5 billion dollars.  The good news is that amount was about half of what it was last year and tax revenues were up 45% compared to last year.  The bad news is that this pace of deficits leads us to a trillion dollars deficit for 2011.  But why?

I've done some digging and was shocked by what I found.  Dealing with numbers this big always leaves me a little stunned but when we're borrowing tens of billions of dollars a month, you have to see why you're maxing out your credit cards.

Unemployment benefits are costing the federal government about 60 billion this year or 5 billion for the month of April.  That's 12% of April's deficit.

Afghanistan war costs are 119.4 billion for the year or 9.95 billion dollars for April.  That's 24.5% of April's deficit.

Iraq (war? conflict? operations?) costs are 51.1 billion for 2011 or 4.25 billion dollars for April.  That's 10.5% of April's deficit.

Possible tax revenues for 2011 were reduced when the Bush era tax cuts were renewed.  That reduced the revenues for 2011 by 400 billion dollars or 33 billion dollars for April.  Those lost revenues account for 81% of April's deficit.

To summarize, 33 billion in revenues + 9.95 billion for Afghanistan + 4.25 billion for Iraq = 47.2 billion dollars for April.  And that's without factoring in the cost of unemployment payments.

So, if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were wrapped up and tax rates would have been allowed to return to year 2000 levels we would be running a surplus of 7.2 billion dollars even after paying the 5 billion dollars for unemployment benefits.  A surplus.

Sure, my back of the envelope scribbling may not take some nuiances into account but in our house we budget with money coming in versus that going out and we manage to break even or make a surplus each month.  That's why it's irritating to watch 537 elected yahoos sling mud at each other over the debt ceiling.  They all want their cake while they gorge themselves on it.

Forbes Says the Valley is the 5th Fastest Growing Industrial Area

The Valley is showing some strong signs of life as the nation moves to recover from the recession.  Forbes magazine lists the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman area as the fifth fastest growing industrial area in the country.  Here's the story from WKBN:

According to the story, "manufacturing has grown consistently over the past 21 months, and now, for the first time in years, according to data mined by Pepperdine University's Michael Shires, manufacturing regions are beginning to move up on our list of best cities for jobs." Other rust belt cities on the list include Lansing, Mich., Elkhart-Goshen, Ind., and Anderson, Ind.

According to a release from the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber, just last month the area registered the third highest percentage job gain in the last 12 months in the U.S. behind only Raleigh, NC, and Milwaukee, Wis.

Nice to see Forbes likes us again.

Why We Celebrate Bin Laden's Death

I have to tell you, I saw those kids at OSU on the Monday morning news gathered in the streets and chanting U-S-A, U-S-A, waving the flag and I was struck by the similarities between them and anti-American protesters in the many countries that hate us.  The flag waving, chanting and patriotic fervor had the same mood as those who dislike us so much.  It was enough to give me pause.

But then I really thought about it, how I felt about our killing Osama Bin Laden.  I decided I was happy he was dead.  This may be the first time I've ever felt that.  I've been callous before, shrugged my shoulders about other terrorists and criminals who get themselves killed.  I've thought, "well, if you're going to lead that kind of life, then this is what could happen."  I have never been glad, though, that someone's life was taken.

When I saw the news at 5:50 that morning it all came rushing back.  The horror of that terrible Tuesday ten years ago.  I could remember exactly where I was when I heard about the planes crashing into buildings, the disbelief on everyone's faces that an attack of that magnitude was occurring and I remembered how much I wanted vengeance for what was happening and now, ten years later, that feeling is quieted.

My politics lean liberal, as regular readers here know, but liberal doesn't mean weak or imbue me with a penchant for turning the other cheek.  What this man and his gang of thugs orchestrated was the murder of innocent men, women and children, of first responders, of Americans and other citizens of the world.  We simply cannot progress with men like this willing to hurt us this badly.  So finding him and killing him was a matter of justice and a matter of moving forward.

We've become immune to killing in the decade since the 9/11 attacks.  Thousands of our men and women in uniform have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Hundreds of thousands have died in those countries due to the warfare.  Now that we've been reminded that death matters we should demand a cessation to hostilities in Afghanistan and bring our troops home.  It's time for President Karzai to stand on his own two feet because there isn't anything important enough in that country to lose one more American life.

The Taliban is no longer in charge and we've killed the man responsible for 9/11.  The goals we set for ourselves have been met and our dead are avenged.  It's time to look inward and see how we progress from here.

Bin Laden Sleeps with the Fishes

And I'm stealing other people's stuff to celebrate...