Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
A-Town HiltonLife Happenings
Driving home the other morning I found myself 13 minutes behind an SUV and Semi-tractor trailer fiery collision.
By the time I diverted (I was running late leaving work to head home), the
interstate, and road beneath the overpass was closed as firefighters arrived and battled the blaze.
By the time I diverted (I was running late leaving work to head home), the
interstate, and road beneath the overpass was closed as firefighters arrived and battled the blaze.Sadly, two persons were killed. Fortunately, for our family, one of them was not me, because that's exactly the route I typically take home in the morning after work. (Thanks for the delaying after-shift convo Hanna and Candice.. Without even knowing it, you guys (gals) rock!)
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Summers coming to a close?
If I have to close the pool, I'll assume that I no longer have to cut the grass.. Right? -Uh yeah. Probably not.
The kids had fun this weekend when hitting the pool. It was a bit cold, but they troop'd right through it. -Purple lips and all.
Grace was Noah's 'swim buddy', and I was Grace's 'swim buddy'.
I was out of the pool taking pictures as Noah flipped his aqua-aeroplane.. I jumped in without soaking/destroying our expensive Cannon digi and scooped Noah up-and-out.. He did Great! Held his breath, and did just what he was suppose to do.. BTW, the pic below was just mili-seconds before he took his underwater header.. (Note: the odd angle of his feet?)
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I made eggs and potatoes for breakfast last week..
-Grace woke up early the other morning and came in to tell me that she had made "eggs, for 
Mom, Dad, and Grace". -If curiosity didn't get the best of me, than safety did..
Mom, Dad, and Grace". -If curiosity didn't get the best of me, than safety did.. I smelled nothing burning, so I asked her to escort me to her 'surprise'....
It was great! The breakfast table was cleared, and three precisely place (raw) eggs freshly plucked from our refrigerator, sat waiting for our hearty consumption. (Did I mention that nothing was burning or broken?) 
I thanked her, and assured her that these eggs really needed cookin'..
We did. -And Grace's breakfast was perfect. = )
Until next time,
-C
Friday, September 4, 2009
Michigan Furlough Day
The Michigan Example
How government investment in business failed to create jobs.
A central belief in Washington and most state capitals nowadays is that government should "invest" in certain businesses—"clean tech," say, or manufacturing—to drive job creation. We hope it all turns out better than it has in Michigan.
For the past 14 years, Lansing politicians have offered $3.3 billion in tax credits through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and spent another $1.6 billion in outl
ays to create and retain jobs. The subsidies have ranged from tax breaks for Hollywood, to money for new industrial plants, to millions for TV ads starring Jeff Daniels and Tim Allen talking about business and tourism in the state.
It's one of the largest experiments in smokestack chasing in American history, but one thing it hasn't done is create jobs. An exhaustive new 100-page study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank, has reviewed where all the money has gone and what came of it. The study finds that for every 100 jobs that were promised with these tax credits over 14 years, only 29 arrived. Dare we call this cash for clunkers?
Economist Michael Hicks, a business school professor at Ball State, calculated the rate of return on the corporate tax credits. He found that for every $1 million in tax credits awarded, there were 95 lost manufacturing jobs in the counties where the companies were located—a result that is "strongly statistically significant." There was no gain in personal income in these counties. Perhaps more jobs would have been lost without the credits, but what is undeniably clear is that the businesses that got the government loot were not magnets for other employers.
Many of these handout programs were started in 1995 by former Republican Governor John Engler, who we criticized at the time in "A Governor's Gimmick." They have since been expanded 18 times under current Governor Jennifer Granholm. Two of the most celebrated initiatives were the Michigan 21st Century Jobs Fund and the Broadband Development Authority. Ms. Granholm's vision was that these grants and credits would create 500,000 jobs and $440 billion in new investment by 2010.
Liberals cheered this "progressive" alternative to tax cutting. But the jobs lured to Michigan were so few that the programs were killed in 2007. The broadband program's legacy was $14.5 million of bad loans eaten by taxpayers. Then State Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, an original supporter of the telecom program, called it "one of the biggest flops in state government."
An even bigger flop might be the Michigan Film Office. The program provides movie producers a 42% tax credit for rolling the cameras in Michigan. But because the credits are "refundable," they are mostly cash subsidies to the film industry to make movies. The Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency recently found that "if a film production company spent $10.0 million in Michigan, the State will gain less than $700,000 in income and sales tax revenues but will pay out about $4 million to the production company." So in a state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 15%, taxpayers last year gave out $48 million in subsidies to Hollywood millionaires.
Why doesn't this kind of industrial policy work? One reason is that the subsidies have to be financed by somebody, which means raising taxes more broadly on the rest of the state. The subsidized businesses may bring a few jobs, but the overall employment and investment impact is miniscule at best.
In Michigan these programs were responsible for 0.25% of all new jobs created in the last decade, according to the study. Meanwhile, in 2007 Michigan raised business taxes by $1.4 billion on other firms to pay for many of Ms. Granholm's favored companies. Despite all the giveaways, Michigan was recently ranked as having the third most antibusiness climate among states, in a survey of executives by CEO magazine. If Michigan had simply cut taxes for every business, as Mr. Engler did in the 1990s when the state briefly led the nation in new jobs, it's a good bet unemployment would be lower.
When Ms. Granholm gave her state of the state address earlier this year, she crowed about the similarities between the Michigan and Obama Administration strategies of using tax subsidies to aid favored businesses. "President Obama's priorities are nearly identical to ours," she declared, and we can only hope the results won't be.
How government investment in business failed to create jobs.
A central belief in Washington and most state capitals nowadays is that government should "invest" in certain businesses—"clean tech," say, or manufacturing—to drive job creation. We hope it all turns out better than it has in Michigan.
For the past 14 years, Lansing politicians have offered $3.3 billion in tax credits through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and spent another $1.6 billion in outl
ays to create and retain jobs. The subsidies have ranged from tax breaks for Hollywood, to money for new industrial plants, to millions for TV ads starring Jeff Daniels and Tim Allen talking about business and tourism in the state.It's one of the largest experiments in smokestack chasing in American history, but one thing it hasn't done is create jobs. An exhaustive new 100-page study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank, has reviewed where all the money has gone and what came of it. The study finds that for every 100 jobs that were promised with these tax credits over 14 years, only 29 arrived. Dare we call this cash for clunkers?
Economist Michael Hicks, a business school professor at Ball State, calculated the rate of return on the corporate tax credits. He found that for every $1 million in tax credits awarded, there were 95 lost manufacturing jobs in the counties where the companies were located—a result that is "strongly statistically significant." There was no gain in personal income in these counties. Perhaps more jobs would have been lost without the credits, but what is undeniably clear is that the businesses that got the government loot were not magnets for other employers.
Many of these handout programs were started in 1995 by former Republican Governor John Engler, who we criticized at the time in "A Governor's Gimmick." They have since been expanded 18 times under current Governor Jennifer Granholm. Two of the most celebrated initiatives were the Michigan 21st Century Jobs Fund and the Broadband Development Authority. Ms. Granholm's vision was that these grants and credits would create 500,000 jobs and $440 billion in new investment by 2010.
Liberals cheered this "progressive" alternative to tax cutting. But the jobs lured to Michigan were so few that the programs were killed in 2007. The broadband program's legacy was $14.5 million of bad loans eaten by taxpayers. Then State Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, an original supporter of the telecom program, called it "one of the biggest flops in state government."
An even bigger flop might be the Michigan Film Office. The program provides movie producers a 42% tax credit for rolling the cameras in Michigan. But because the credits are "refundable," they are mostly cash subsidies to the film industry to make movies. The Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency recently found that "if a film production company spent $10.0 million in Michigan, the State will gain less than $700,000 in income and sales tax revenues but will pay out about $4 million to the production company." So in a state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 15%, taxpayers last year gave out $48 million in subsidies to Hollywood millionaires.
Why doesn't this kind of industrial policy work? One reason is that the subsidies have to be financed by somebody, which means raising taxes more broadly on the rest of the state. The subsidized businesses may bring a few jobs, but the overall employment and investment impact is miniscule at best.
In Michigan these programs were responsible for 0.25% of all new jobs created in the last decade, according to the study. Meanwhile, in 2007 Michigan raised business taxes by $1.4 billion on other firms to pay for many of Ms. Granholm's favored companies. Despite all the giveaways, Michigan was recently ranked as having the third most antibusiness climate among states, in a survey of executives by CEO magazine. If Michigan had simply cut taxes for every business, as Mr. Engler did in the 1990s when the state briefly led the nation in new jobs, it's a good bet unemployment would be lower.
When Ms. Granholm gave her state of the state address earlier this year, she crowed about the similarities between the Michigan and Obama Administration strategies of using tax subsidies to aid favored businesses. "President Obama's priorities are nearly identical to ours," she declared, and we can only hope the results won't be.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
LOGIC
A Disabled Former U.S. Marine was randomly chosen to ask..
"I, David William Hedrick, a member of the silent majority, decided that I was not going to be silent anymore. So, I let U.S. Congressman Brian Baird have it. I was one questioner out of 38, that was called at random from an audience that started at 3,000 earlier in the evening. Not expecting to be called on, I quickly scratched what I wanted to say on a borrowed piece of paper and with a pen that I borrowed from someone else in the audience minutes before I spoke. "
"I, David William Hedrick, a member of the silent majority, decided that I was not going to be silent anymore. So, I let U.S. Congressman Brian Baird have it. I was one questioner out of 38, that was called at random from an audience that started at 3,000 earlier in the evening. Not expecting to be called on, I quickly scratched what I wanted to say on a borrowed piece of paper and with a pen that I borrowed from someone else in the audience minutes before I spoke. "
Thursday, August 27, 2009
HiltonLife 'Regulators''.
As chaotic that life has almost instantly become, we're raising up some fine ranch hands to help keep justice and order around the Hilton house. Take Grace and Noah for example; They are ALL serious with their duties of maintaining order, and simply helping all around...
Around Lukes bathtime.. It becomes 'all hands-on'!
Next time if your visiting A-Town, you may want to watch your Ps' and Qs'. With these two Regulators on duty, there isn't much you'll be getting away with... Like drinking out of the milk jug, wearing dirty shoes in the house, or trying to use Noah's favorite "Linus" blanket.. Not gonna happen! -With "Steely Eyed Noah" and "Quick-thumb-draw Grace " Rowdiness is bound to end at sundown.. ...Regulators, lets ride!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
HOME, HOme, Home, home!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, it sure helps out my typing out posts.. Here are 11,000 amazing words about the HiltonLife Ranch. Moms home. Luke is home. Slowly getting back to life at home, together... Minus the regular sleeping pattern. (Does that apply to night-shifters?)
Grace? Well, she's just excited that everyone is finally home together. She is incredibly maternal and 'Big-sisterly' to Luke. The above picture illustrates her joy as she impersonates, and teaches the boys how to do a late night 'Curious George'. (Note: banana and 'zoo bars'.)
Noah is lovin' on his kid brother. Grace is doing the same; and then, Noah and I, are back to 'work' in the garden..
If you are a potential employer, Noah might not be super well suited to work on a vegetable farm. He tends to eat... ..Alot of the inventory. BUT, the boy certainly enjoys his work! (which might equates lesser wages? ; ) --Grandpa Hilton? I might give you the credit for teaching Noah to 'eat fresh off of the vine God has provided'.
Grace? Well, she's just excited that everyone is finally home together. She is incredibly maternal and 'Big-sisterly' to Luke. The above picture illustrates her joy as she impersonates, and teaches the boys how to do a late night 'Curious George'. (Note: banana and 'zoo bars'.)
-C
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The Arrival of Luke Hilton
08-11-2009
08:03am
7#12oz.
20" length
Started out quiet, but soon let the world know that he had arrived. = )
Thank-you Lord for the safe arrival of Luke, and the safety of Tess. We are humbled by your Grace and generosity. We pray that we are faithful stewards with what you have entrusted us with. Grant us your wisdom and truth to share for generations to come. Amen.
08:03am
7#12oz.
20" length
Started out quiet, but soon let the world know that he had arrived. = )
Thank-you Lord for the safe arrival of Luke, and the safety of Tess. We are humbled by your Grace and generosity. We pray that we are faithful stewards with what you have entrusted us with. Grant us your wisdom and truth to share for generations to come. Amen.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Do we have to?
Grace and Noah are up north with my Mom and Dad for a week. -It is so weird not hearing them running throughout the house or getting into things. I miss them.
Tess has been doing better. Laying low, as ordered. I spent the night finally fixing the right front side of the Nissan. New tire, new strut, and new coil spring.. You'd think that something as critical as a coil spring wouldn't snap like that. It's downright dangerous. Regardless, the critical parts are fixed; later this week I'll do the left side and it should be all good. -I guess all that tinkering in my dads garage as a teen paid off.. For the most part. (Sorry for all the broken and missing tools Dad. I now understand).
I'll close with one of my latest 'Graceneese' quoted conversations.
Me: Grace, you know that since you are the big sister it carries alot of responsibilities, right?
Grace: Yes Dad..
Me: And honey, you know, Mom is going to need alot of help since she has to rest?
Grace: Well yeah, sure Dad..
Me: Well honey, pretty soon you're going to have a new little brother to help mommy with, right?
Grace: Yes Dad.. But Dad?
Me: Yes Grace?
Grace: Since I'm getting a NEW little brother, what are we going to do with Noah?
Me: We'll keep him honey...
Grace: (Sounding almost disappointed.) Oh, well, okay....
Tess has been doing better. Laying low, as ordered. I spent the night finally fixing the right front side of the Nissan. New tire, new strut, and new coil spring.. You'd think that something as critical as a coil spring wouldn't snap like that. It's downright dangerous. Regardless, the critical parts are fixed; later this week I'll do the left side and it should be all good. -I guess all that tinkering in my dads garage as a teen paid off.. For the most part. (Sorry for all the broken and missing tools Dad. I now understand).
I'll close with one of my latest 'Graceneese' quoted conversations.
Me: Grace, you know that since you are the big sister it carries alot of responsibilities, right?
Grace: Yes Dad..
Me: And honey, you know, Mom is going to need alot of help since she has to rest?
Grace: Well yeah, sure Dad..
Me: Well honey, pretty soon you're going to have a new little brother to help mommy with, right?
Grace: Yes Dad.. But Dad?
Me: Yes Grace?
Grace: Since I'm getting a NEW little brother, what are we going to do with Noah?
Me: We'll keep him honey...
Grace: (Sounding almost disappointed.) Oh, well, okay....
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Never a dull moment
Busy around the HiltonLife Ranch.
The garden (our first year of planting) is doing awesome. It's amazing to watch all the prep ground work and plantings culmunate. Soil + seed = blossoming vegatables. Even though we sweat and prepare, God does the rest. (See Genesis). Even though we're sentenced to toil over the earth for our keep, God still provides what we could never do.
Our beloved Nissan Altima shattered a front coil spring and punctured the front right tire. Thank-God Tess was parked when it occurred. She came out of a store and had a flat tire. I got the call, tried to be a hero and drive in to change it for her, and found out the spring had broken and wrapped around the strut saddle. Weirdest thing. Coil springs NEVER break. -Never say never, I guess. Had it happened while they were driving, it would have been all bad.
After calling EVERYWHERE, I ended having a Nissan dealership in Holland find one for me... In Chicago.. -Pair of struts, bolt kits, coil spring, and new tire, $340.00. Didn't see that coming.
Tess is doing okay now. After a bout of contractions and a tense stay in the hospital this past weekend, we are trying to lay low (her, literally. Bedrest) at home. Any and all prayers are welcome and coveted. All we need is to get to 34 weeks.
...Well, time to go. I was going to keep on, as I havent posted in a very long time (partially due to the convenience of Facebook) but, I hear Noah calling. Naptime is over, back to Daddy-daycare time.
The garden (our first year of planting) is doing awesome. It's amazing to watch all the prep ground work and plantings culmunate. Soil + seed = blossoming vegatables. Even though we sweat and prepare, God does the rest. (See Genesis). Even though we're sentenced to toil over the earth for our keep, God still provides what we could never do.
Our beloved Nissan Altima shattered a front coil spring and punctured the front right tire. Thank-God Tess was parked when it occurred. She came out of a store and had a flat tire. I got the call, tried to be a hero and drive in to change it for her, and found out the spring had broken and wrapped around the strut saddle. Weirdest thing. Coil springs NEVER break. -Never say never, I guess. Had it happened while they were driving, it would have been all bad.
After calling EVERYWHERE, I ended having a Nissan dealership in Holland find one for me... In Chicago.. -Pair of struts, bolt kits, coil spring, and new tire, $340.00. Didn't see that coming.
Tess is doing okay now. After a bout of contractions and a tense stay in the hospital this past weekend, we are trying to lay low (her, literally. Bedrest) at home. Any and all prayers are welcome and coveted. All we need is to get to 34 weeks.
...Well, time to go. I was going to keep on, as I havent posted in a very long time (partially due to the convenience of Facebook) but, I hear Noah calling. Naptime is over, back to Daddy-daycare time.
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