Norman Jansen Common Sense blog

Let's put them in perspective.  Much has been made of “tax cuts only benefiting the rich” so let's put them in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every week, ten friends go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If each were responsible for his/her share of the bill, that would be $10 each.  Instead, they decided to divide the bill based upon their ability to pay, using the way we pay our federal income taxes as a guide, so this is how it went: The first four — the poorest — would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1, the sixth would pay $3, the seventh $7, the eighth $12, the ninth $18, and the tenth person — the wealthiest — would pay $59.  Seems more than fair, right? So that's what they decided to do. The ten folks ate dinner in the restaurant every week and seemed quite happy with the arrangement — until one week, the owner threw them a curve (in tax language, a tax cut). "Since you are all such good customers," she said, "I'm go...

The challenge of forecasting the tornadoes along with pictures of damage. Kalamazoo county was near the NE corner of an area where severe weather was a threat on Tuesday May 7th and  Mesoscale Discussion # 676  was issued by the Storm Prediction Center at 1:14 pm EDT detailing the risk after a band of light showers had passed through SW Michigan. At around 3 pm EDT  Tornado Watch #195  was issued along with the probabilities estimated below. As a teaser of what was about to happen in Portage Michigan, here’s an image of the back of a strip mall on the NE corner of Centre Ave and Oakland Dr. And a view of some of the semi trailers parked NW of the Romence Road / Portage Road intersection behind the Stryker office building that used to be called the Upjohn Quads. Some were tossed around like toys while others remained where they were parked, illustrating the turbulent nature of tornadoes. This before and after aerial view from the  City of Portage GIS Mapping web ...