Yesterday, by an over 2 to 1 margin, the voters of our sister city to the east, Abilene, voted down a proposition to fund with public monies a "youth sports complex." This complex was touted to be a cure for low sports participation among the area youth, a cure for childhood obesity and a boon for hotel revenue for the city. Interestingly, the funding mechanism for the complex was to be to tap into Abilene's economic development fund sales tax revenue stream. Plus a large wad of private money. On top of donated land.

Sound familiar?

Well, the plan sounded familar to some Abilenians who paid attention to our sports complex. I would have been unaware of the issue were it not for a radio ad I heard on an Abilene station while cruising down I-20 last week. The ad cited our specific experience with the Midland sports complex: it's having been sold on the basis that it would not cost local taxpayers, but that the reality has turned out somewhat differently, with taxpayers spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to maintain the facility. And no earthquakes of tournaments, games, etc. bringing in tsunamis of hotel-tax-paying out-of-towners. We know this, eh? I am glad that someone learned from us.

A pre-election article is here (registration may be required).

...the Good Jobs for Abilene PAC, which is against using the economic development tax for a sports complex, continues to wage what treasurer Ray Ferguson said started as an "uphill battle" that now appears to be winnable.

Looks like he was right.

Sometime in the near future the City Council will sit down with the High Priests of the Church of EcDev to discuss what is being described by both sides as a "breakdown in communication."

What caused this breakdown is unclear, but I have an idea.

Currently, the MDC board had assigned a one-on-one system of informing the council: a board member partnering with a council member.

Is it just me (a rhetorical question, so shut up) or is this the system of communication you would use if you purposely wanted to create as many mixed signals as possible between the Council and the MDC?

Ask any law enforcement officer how many accounts he can get from x number of eye-itnesses to an incident of any kind. The number of version is always closer to x than it is to 1. So now we have six possible twists on a project coming out of the MDC and, using my own bastardized version of Magic ChamberMath we have a multiplier effect when it hits the seven council members.

Personally, I don't think that that is where the breakdown of communication occured.

The problem could be more serious than that. I have yet to read anywhere or get any kind of indication that the amount of information that the council received from the MDC on the Dean Baldwin Painting deal was any less or different than than what they have received on any other deal handled by the MDC.

On the Council's end, does the council really have a more intimate knowledge of the operations of Trace Engines than they do of Dean Baldwin's or were they just suitably comforted by the fact that is owned and operated by favored local friendlies including a former council member and former Chamber President?

And on the MDC's end, you have to get the feeling that they were shocked that the council would feel it necessary to have more information than was provided them by the MDC.

And on the public's side...why did the Dean Baldwin Painting Deal ultimately fail? Did it fail because information became available to the council that it was not that keen of a deal?

Or was it because that information became available to everyone?

The 45th vice president of the United States of America, the quondam Senator from Tennessee, whose state did not vote for him for President, and now high priest to Gaia, patron goddess of the First Church of Climatology, has now delivered himself of a bull in which he states that that the Burmese typhoon was a result of global warming. A report on his remarks is here.

This despite the evidence that the earth is not warming, but cooling off after a record period of warmth. This after some very good evidence linking the earth's temperature with sun spots--no sun spots, cold weather. I've seen the science involved: the sun spots emit radiation which affect our ozone and thus our weather. Note that the ozone is not affected by Freon other man-made chemicals, but the sun. It's only a matter of time until the collectivists pass laws on the sun's behavior. Well, they try it every day on economics: during the Depression, Algore's own state of Tennessee decreed that calculating with pi being equal approximately to 3.14159 was too much trouble so pi would henceforth be 3. And after all this magnificent disregard of reality, done with the insolence of a spoiled child, it is hard to imagine them regulating the sun? Not for me.

Something broke when Gore lost in 2000. He defined himself by his acquisition of the presidency. I've written in these pages before that he might have done less damage had he actually been in the Oval Office instead of spreading environmental bullshit to MSM types who are credulous, sensationalist and bossy, for he might have contented himself tinkering with trivia as did James Earl Carter, the stupidest, meanest, and most sanctimonious president of the last century. I, for one, felt much better knowing that Jimmy was occupied with trivia, which is made for small and interfering minds, and is our best friend.

NGSG released their quarterly earnings report today. The headline pretty much says it all:

Natural Gas Services Group Announces a 31% Increase in Net Income for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2008

Revenue: Total revenue increased from $16.7 million to $18.9 million, or 13%, for the three months ended March 31, 2008, compared to the same period ended March 31, 2007. This increase was primarily the result of a 30% growth in rental revenue.

Operating income: Operating income increased from $4.2 million to $5.5 million, or 30%, for the three months ended March 31, 2008, compared to the same period ended March 31, 2007. Higher compressor sales gross margins were the largest factor contributing to the increase of operating income.

Net income: Net income for the three months ended March 31, 2008, increased 31% to $3.5 million, as compared to net income of $2.7 million for the same period in 2007. Increased operating income, a lower income tax rate, and lower interest expense from our reduced debt balances contributed to the increase in net income.

Now, I'm all for profit, and I am delighted that NGSG is doing extremely well. In fact, I hope they continue their profitable ways.

But, tell me again why this company sought after and received $275,000 of taxpayer money they obviously don't need?

UPDATE: Stewart over at Newsroom Stew, had similar thoughts today.

When I was young I wondered why the majority of Wall Streeters could be Democrats, and the same for so many rich people. I had no money myself and thought that having a bit more would mean a new car or a bigger place to live. Nice travel, things like that and that meant small government, ruling out the Democrats. (Now that rules out the Republicans too.)

Some years ago you couldn't turn on the television without seeing some Hollywood bubblehead in a soup line--handing it out, not taking it, a photo-op for their compassion. They were very pleased to have their charitable impulses known. These are, in general, also people of impeccable liberal credentials, the sort of people who, when hosting an awards show, say "Bush" to get an easy laugh. Well, no doubt that served during the writers' strike. Which had no effect on me whatsoever.

Warren Buffett has raged at the Bush Administration for its tax policies, claiming that the very rich pay income taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. He has offered a million-dollar reward to any Forbes 400 member who can prove him wrong. As of November at least no one had collected the money. This is not to say that the rich don't pay huge taxes: the top 1% pay 30% of the income taxes, and that is by any standard very progressive, in the worst sense of the word. (Is there a good sense of the word?) But still, in Buffett's thesis, he pays taxes at a lower rate than his secretary or receptionist. And from some computer work that I did in Dallas in the 80s restructuring real-estate deals, I believe it entirely.

So when the rich call for higher taxes, just who is being hurt? Higher taxes are usually accompanied by loopholes. The meltdown in Texas properties in the early 80s was caused by the lower Reagan tax rates because deals structured for tax benefit were no longer viable, and that was a major factor leading to the destruction of the thrifts.

So calling for higher taxes for high-minded social uses does not really hurt them that much, and even if it did, what does it really hurt? If you make $20 million a year and are taxed at an effective rate of 20%, then an increase in your tax rate is not going to keep you from getting that new Aston Martin. But it might keep your secretary from the vacation that she wanted to take.

The very wealthy can afford the best houses and cars and medical advice; it is foolish to think that they cannot afford the best financial advice. And they get it, and the investment in consulting, often in-house, is worth the money saved, and they can afford the people required to run it, while I find myself irritated by managing a few on-line investments. But then I'm small time and perforce my compassion cannot be bought by the hundredweight but must take the form of actually knowing people and their problems.

If the wealthy can afford the best houses, and politicians, they can also afford the best in conspicuous compassion. "See how virtuous I am? I'm wealthy and you can't believe the taxes that I pay and I'm willing to pay more for good causes." But the pain is not all that much. And the reward in conspicuous compassion is. And the reward in power is just as big.

Who are the people who produce the most expensive high-minded programs? The Democrats. Who are the people whose attempt to get everyone somehow dependent on the government gives them power? The Democrats. Who are the people who get the most charge in ordering people around? The Democrats. Who can afford to work the Byzantine system, usually set up by Democrats to their best advantage? The wealthy.

So it makes sense, in a rather sick way, to consider the Democratic party to be the personal shopper for a certain sort of the wealthy for the best buy in their conspicuous compassion.

I don't care what you call it or why you do it; if it kills people for an idea, it's murder. Mass murder.

The site administrator has directed our attention to an article on www.nationalreview.com by the always excellent Mark Steyn, and in it he makes much rather angry fun of the eco-warrior's self-righteous disregard of other people's opinions, and even lives. But this is only the latest manifestation of their murderous piety on a scale that would make Savarola and Torquemada blush. Or envious; take your pick.

In the sixties Rachael Carson wrote Silent Spring which tugged the heart strings of the sentimental, by claiming that DDT was harming wildlife. The usual suspects made breathless eschatological claims that fish were dying owing to spraying DDT to control mosquitoes, that bald eagles weren't reproducing, that ospreys were getting to be in short supply. I don't know about you but I couldn't live in a world without an osprey in every pot. Thin shells on the eggs, I think it was. I wish to God Carson had stuck with watching Doris Day movies; much safer as it turns out for the lives of innocent people and the studies about birds' eggshells have been revisited, and not to the credit of the original researchers.

And so the First World nations banned a cheap, effective, and relatively non-toxic (to humans) insecticide, and cudgeled Third World nations to ban it too. But Robert Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health estimated that 20 million children have died owing to the DDT ban, and that doesn't take into account those made useless for work and needing care by able-bodied people owing to malaria's unrelenting weakness and fever--if you survive it. Other estimates range up to 600,000,000 dead. Note that this was all owing to a leftist drama-queen moment, sorry, concern, over fierce-n-furry wild animals.

Sure, let's convert a big chunk of the food supply into fuel for our cars. What could go wrong?

From Mark Steyn:

"Unlike "global warming," food rioting is a planet-wide phenomenon, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Ivory Coast to the tortilla rampages in Mexico and even pasta protests in Italy.

So what happened?

Well, Western governments listened to the eco-warriors, and introduced some of the "wartime measures" they've been urging. The EU decreed that 5.75 percent of petrol and diesel must come from "biofuels" by 2010, rising to 10 percent by 2020. The U.S. added to its 51 cents-per-gallon ethanol subsidy by mandating a five-fold increase in "biofuels" production by 2022.

The result is that big government accomplished at a stroke what the free market could never have done: They turned the food supply into a subsidiary of the energy industry. When you divert 28 percent of U.S. grain into fuel production, and when you artificially make its value as fuel higher than its value as food, why be surprised that you've suddenly got less to eat? Or, to be more precise, it's not "you" who's got less to eat but those starving peasants in distant lands you claim to care so much about.

The rest is here.

An Open Letter to Fire Ant Gazette from Jessica's Well:

Dear Sir: I read with great interest your post concerning Your Lovely Bride's squirrel smuggling operation.

CONTENT WARNING: If you are not an actual blogger you can stop reading at this point because the rest of this post will seem mind-numbingly stupid and inane to you.

I was also very interested in the way your entry appeared in the blog feeds at MyWestTexas.com. Specifically, the text under the title.

I am guessing that in your RSS Template you re-mapped another field (Excerpts, perhaps?) to the Descripton tags thereby giving your the ability to customize the how the sub-head appears over at MWTDC. I will figure it out eventually.

Or you can tell me.

Because if you don't tell me I will bag up all of my yard squirrels (17 at last count) and release them into your new yard in the dark of night*. And these are not your run-of-the-mill squirrels, either. These are supreme dog-taunting squirrels. The cream of the Dog Taunting Squirrel Magnet School.

You think about that.

(* Dark of night is used as a figure of speech here. After reading this post from 2006 I will more probably just toss them over the fence in broad daylight since sneaking around at night would be an altogether bad idea.)

And that is how the bureaucrats would have it. On Thursday I turned 53 and the phone rang, and on the other end was a voice from the past, someone I'd known well some decades ago, with the stated intention of wishing me happy birthday.

Full of himself as always--this from me--he prated on being quite pleased that, having worked twenty years for the Comptroller, he was now entitled to a pension.

Once in Austin some years ago I inflamed him by saying that the only time that I ever saw his fellow bureaucrats in a hurry was at noon and five o'clock. Heaven help him who was in the stairwell of the Stephen F. Austin State Office Building when it was time to go to Thundercloud Subs. One fat bureaucrat named Roger sighed with every step he took in the hall but when the lunch gong rang, it was like seeing the rolling boulder in the Indiana Jones movie.

Well, I feel good knowing that he and his coreligionists in taxation are vested in pensions after only twenty years, while I, their victim, have very nearly twice that much time on the job and I'm still in the process of saving up for mine.

If I could wave my hands and change any single thing, I would not choose a verifiable YouTube video of Hilldog eating a baby or Obama helping a Jeremiah Wright burn a flag. If I could issue one diktat I would impose term limits on every single worker in every single organization that we cannot fire, from the president down. It would be wonderfully clarifying to the bureaucratic mind to know that he would have to actually work some day and not be coddled by bosses with no need to show a profit or be any more responsive to the people who are meant to serve than they must. For if you believe in Darwin, anything that a government or any other monopolistic employee does of value for you is not directly related to his job performance but comes from the goodness of his heart. Which over time invariably becomes addled with the tender concern for himself that I've seen entirely too often.

Term limits for everyone.

From MyWestTexas.com:

San Marcos Mayor Susan Narvaiz has announced that the San Marcos City Council has narrowed the field of candidates for city manager to one person: Rick Menchaca, president of RKMenchaca, a management and consulting firm.

The former city manager of Midland from 2000 to 2007, Menchaca held various executive posts in Midland since 1990, including deputy and assistant city manager. He
began his municipal career in Lubbock in 1988 where he served as a budget analyst.

Pending the formal approval by the City Council of his employment agreement on April
30th, he will start work in San Marcos on Thursday, May 1st at a salary of $170,000.

We wish Mr. Menchaca the best of luck in his future endeavors.

This is a pilot as cat's eye marble pinched between boundless thumb and infinite forefinger of Heaven's own Wham-O slingshot.

Thank God he is back! It is a great article on several different levels, and is absolutely classic O'Rourke. Read the rest here. Via Insty. Thanks, Glenn!

or "Billion Dollar Solutions to Million Dollar Problems"

There is always reason to be optimistic about progress in almost every science-driven area of our lives: medicine, automobiles, electronics, energy, communications and, of all things, the environment. A post with a link to a great report on the continuously improving environmental quality of the world and especially the US is is found here on Powerline.

A taste:

Air pollution is on its way to being eliminated entirely in the U.S. in about another 20 years. Levels of air pollution have fallen between 25 and 99 percent (depending on which pollutant you examine), with the nation's worst areas showing the most progress. For example, Los Angeles has gone from having nearly 200 high ozone days in the 1970s to less than 25 days a year today. Many areas of the Los Angeles basin are now smog-free year round.

Arguing against the media's portrayal of any improvement being due to (the heavy hand of) government:

The chief drivers of this improvement are economic growth, constantly increasing resource efficiency, technological innovation in pollution control, and the deepening of environmental values among the American public.

Economic growth, increasing efficiency and environmental values. Not government mandates. Private ownership of property is the leading cause of our caring for our environment. E.G.: Privately held lands (read cattle grazing in Texas) are cared for much better than lands leased from the government (read cattle overgrazing in New Mexico).

Progress is the result of hard work, science and economics. It is not the result of earth day protests in the US that are laughed at by folks in 3rd world countries who would like to have 10% of our standard of living and enough free time away from scrounging for firewood to protest their conditions.

An overview of the Environmental Indicators Report is found here.

El Paso has a large German-speaking population, owing to our military training. I hope that this time they get it right with the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. (Sad, isn't it, when the people that you had to whomp twice are better to you than the people you did it for. Sad but human.) This German population is served by Deutsche Welle TV, or German Wave TV, which I can't get enough of. And as always, one learns more about America through the eyes of others than through our own eyes.

A common European sneer is that of American vulgarity and cheapness, and I have to say there's a little bit to that. The self-absorption and license of Hollywood. Disney. McDonald's. I cannot defend the trashiness of Hollywood; when I watch a movie I have a sense of anomie, and surely it can't just be my age. Who are these people? Why are their "issues" important?

But the bottom line is that no one held a gun to European heads and made them buy any of it. The Europe that sneers is not (yet) a command economy. When I was in Paris in 1979 the McDonalds was popular for it was the only place that served ice in a drink, which the Parisians found worth paying for. As did I. And this year I read in an article in The Spectator that such is the declining quality of the Parisian bistrot that McDonald's is a good bet. To be sure, McDonald's in France may have duck on the menu, placing it a bit above the one in Monahans.

But McDonald's, and hot dogs, and American pizza, and tennis shoes and track suits and windbreakers and jeans, jeans, jeans, are all practical things, at a decent price, which we offered for sale and they were happy to part with money to buy them.

An American export which boggles my mind is the Kingdom of Hip Hop, which is how they would have it. (Be sure to see VH1's The White Rapper Show.) One explanation that I have heard for hip-hop performers, and notice that I do not debase the word artist, is that they rose to power in the nineties when so many of the people who would have made music were dying of an STD; no matter how these glowering, menacing, thuggish anti-artists got to be popular, and with white suburban kids yet, they are a true American embarrassment and one that I wish would have stayed in an American closet, not exported to the world.

But no such luck. Rap was popular in pre-wall-lapsarian East Germany in the cinemas but was banned on the radio. The Commies in charge then looked at the dancing and, always desirous of a fit proletariat, declaimed that the exercise was good so long as it was called acrobatic show dancing. And so they permitted it. This is the only excuse I can see for fascism--prohibiting hip-hop.

There is a German, a bald, pumpkin-headed fireplug of a man whose soubriquet is Joe Rilla, and he has dedicated his life to the Ossis, the East Germans, to let them feel "empowered" by hip hop.

On DW TV I saw a performance of his, screwing up his face and pointing and mugging and on the stage were pasty-white German youth break-dancing and making gang signs and doing it all very badly--they seemed to be on the whole rather too self-aware not to be uncomfortable doing something that silly.

Here is Joe Rilla

Let's see. The people who gave us Bach, Gauss, Beethoven, Leibnitz, Goethe, and Kant, now spinning on their heads.

Maybe we can unilaterally disarm insofar as the Germans go. Fat chance they'll be marching through Poland soon.

Some years ago the Dallas Morning News HBO (That's Hate Bush Orgasm) got so bad that people were mocking it with bumper stickers on the lines of, "I had a bad hair day and it's Bush's fault." The rag found enough people disgusted with them that they affected to reform.

But let's not ever forget that the world is filled with real, true, honest-to-god barking moonbats--people who would view reality as uncongenial if there were reality outside their little tiny minds. As we have found, they cannot be reasoned with, only cudgeled.

A man named Edward L. Daley, with more talent than I have, has rendered this:

And in it you do get to see an angry, edentulous woman with a placard saying that yes, Bush stole her dentures. Before or after her mind, I wonder.

The May 2008 edition of InfoTech & Telecom News includes an article about the Legislative Review of the Texas Emerging Technology Fund.

The $200 million TEFT was created in 2005 and reauthorized in 2007 at the request of Gov. Rick Perry (R), to seed technology companies, facilitate technology transfer from universities to the private sector, and fund technological research with potential commercial applications.

The program was initially popular among government and industry leaders, but it has subsequently raised concerns at the highest levels of the legislature. Some policy analysts worry the program encourages political favoritism.

Given his recent comments, who would have though Old Otto was a policy analyst.

Monday seemed to be a busy day for Midland News. First, we have Bill Dingus resigning from the Midland City Council, and we have the largest non-governmental employer in Midland, Basic Energy, merging with Grey Wolf. You can guess where their corporate offices will be. The rumor is it isn't Midland.

I'm sure everyone will have plenty to say about these developments, but I've been traveling all day long, so I'll see you in the comments.

This comes from the interestingly-named "Who's a rat?" section of websitetoolbox.com. Lots of the same stuff only a lot juicier.

Pay particular attention to the company's troubles with taxes and also with the repayment of loans to economic development authorities there.

On the local level, Dean Baldwin owes more than $58,000 in back payments to the city of Roswell on a $525,000 urban development loan issued in 1999.

The company has missed 11 months of payments, city officials say, but made its March and April payments. It is a month behind in paying its $1,000 monthly insurance payment on the building it rents from the city.

Assistant City Manager Larry Fry said the company has been "behind at times" in its payments. But he added, "We have appreciated their presence and their employment here."

That sentiment was echoed by defense attorney Bowles.

"I think no one would refute that Dean Baldwin is a great corporate citizen for Roswell," Bowles added. "They make a huge contribution to that community."

Obviously, authorities with the Roswell and/or State of New Mexico economic development organizations are kind of married to Dean Baldwin Painting at this point so it makes some sense to say nice things even while grinding your teeth. But what if they are not grinding their teeth? Or not even that displeased? Seems impossible, right?

Maybe not. Maybe it is the mindset of your basic "certified" economic developer to just not see the downside, period.

Keep in mind that on the 10pm news cast the night before the Midland City Council unceremoniously punted the Dean Baldwin Painting deal right out of the stadium that a representative of the Midland Development Corporation was taped telling the public that the MDC knew of the allegations/concerns/legal and financial problems facing Dean Baldwin Painting and that....this is important....all of the questions had been answered to their (the MDC's) satisfaction.

The MDC's problem now is that everyone now knows they were not at all sandbagged by Dean Baldwin Painting and that even after all that was discovered concerning problems with this company they were still willing to spend $23 million (most of it borrowed, mind you) on them and recommended to the council that they do just that.

In short, they still think Dean Baldwin Painting was a good deal for Midland that should have been done.

The MDC disconnected from its stated original purpose a long time ago when it became a subsidy candy store for all connected comers. I am glad to see that it might also be disconnecting from a lot of its usual defenders.

The goal of Paulville.org it to establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty.

I know of a certain compound in Eldorado, Texas that is in the process of being emptied out that would be perfect.

In fact, they wouldn't even have to empty it out first.

Something you will want to know about going on over at Wallace Craig's "Streams."

Some weeks ago Our Empress told us, with a straight face, that she had been under sniper fire while First Lady. She was roundly ridiculed for this transparent lie, and the fact that CBS News broke the story amused me nearly as much as the bankruptcy of Tony Robbins, the get-rich-quick guru.

I heard that Katie Couric had thought herself dissed by the Hildebeest and in a battle of egos of intolerable people decided that CBS would not cover for her, and therefore, possibly for the first time, Our Empress did not have the MSM complicit in her lies.

(I realize that I'm covering some ground again but we had the distracting flight of the moonbats recently.)

In the increasingly desperate bid for Supreme Power, I can see a commercial for the Hildog camp giving us her street cred in the best Rambo fashion:

"I'll fight for you, America!

Of course, considering her autocratic--hell, dictatorial--tendencies, it might be "Ickes, get out of the way. If you can't deliver the Super Delegates, I sure as hell can!"

This just came across the RSS feeds out of the Waco Tribune:

A federal judge in Waco ruled Wednesday that a Midland City Council member is ineligible to challenge Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick for his District 82 seat because he didn't resign his city council seat before filing for the Legislature.

U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Texas Democratic Party against the Republican Party of Texas in a court challenge over Bill Dingus' eligibility to challenge Craddick.

In a 19-page opinion and order in the lawsuit, which was filed in Midland in January but transferred to Smith's court, Smith ruled that Dingus should have resigned his council seat before he filed to run for the District 82 House seat.

Because he did not, he is ineligible to run against Craddick, the judge ruled, citing Article 3, Section 19 of the Texas Constitution.

I have received a communication from a JW reader of the outcome of the meeting. I look forward to more details in the Media over the next few hours.

UPDATE: First News Link at MyWestTexas.com

Even I can admit that there are some good (and certainly much better) ways to spend public funds in order to facilitate true economic development in the area. But if we must spend this money I would rather see it go towards things that benefit all comers to at least an industry segment or related segments rather than targeting one specific company to benefit with our largesse.

Think about it. Would we ever empower a public board to take public funds already banked, then borrow additional money in order that they may venture into the market and pick a single stock?

I think not.

This is exactly what the MDC has done up to this point.

At least with the Dean Baldwin Painting proposal we would theoretically get some actual brick and mortar out of the deal. But to then essentially lock up these new assets for 20 years at way below market rates? I'm less interested at that point. (Did we ever get an answer as to the rental term covered by the $57,000 rent that DBP is to pay?)

The airport is an asset and should be developed. If hangars are needed and can be justified on a cost/benefit basis then by all means build some. If there are some aviation industry companies out there that can't consider Midland unless a runway or ILS system can be upgraded to handle larger aircraft then we should consider spending the money that way so as to benefit any company who chooses to come to Midland because it makes competitive and economic sense without a heavy public subsidy directed at that one company (or stock, if you will).

The last two economic development deals have gone to two oil and gas-based industries who were already here to "incent" them to expand into the teeth of $100/bbl oil. As though any company who was not shaky to begin with hadn't thought to do so already.

Before that was Trace Engines, a company that had the virtue of not being an oil industry based manufacturer, but was simply not going to end up anywhere BUT Midland and still got public money anyway.

In these three deals it simply cannot be claimed that there was any sort of causal relationship between their respective expansion or relocation plans and their accepting public subsidies.

Sounds harsh, I know. So let me make sure and call up this quote from the Vice President in charge of Economic Development at the Chamber:

"Mike Hatley, the Chamber's economic development vice president, told the Reporter-Telegram after the meeting that when considering an application economic development staff do not focus on whether a company is likely to expand with or without an incentive [emphasis mine], but rather on the benefits that a company's expansion could offer to the community."

To be fair, he does not say that they ignore whether or not a company is likely to expand (or relocate) with or without an incentive, but I will let you come to you own conclusions on that after reviewing the NGSG, FibreRod, and Trace deals. But doesn't every company's expansion benefit the local community? Unless that company is the mob or a chain of topless bars then the answer is undeniably yes. What then is the intellectual defense of handing public funds over to some private firms that expand, but not to others?

So if this money is not actually incenting anyone to do anything what should we begin calling it? Tribute? An allowance? MDC Image Ransom?

Those who think they might be interested in serving on the MDC Board might want to consider joining the Chamber's M-Squad instead. Both outfits have the exact same effect on the local economy but the M-Squad gets into ribbon cutting ceremonies for free whereas MDC members have to pay sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Before the polls closed at 7pm last November 6th, candidates for city office almost universally agreed that the approach that was being used by the Midland Development Corporation to date needed to be overhauled or at least re-thought. Today will provide a good indication of the liklihood of that happening in the near future.

Regarding the Airport....I must state that I was 100% behind the terminal project and I have been for every single dollar spent by the City to leverage Federal funds for runway, taxiway and tarmac improvements. I'm even reluctantly for the concept of paying a consultant to help maintain, or expand our air carriers and level of passenger service. I'm even for building and refurbishing hangars, demolishing old and dilapidated structures, and courting aviation related companies for residence on the Airport Grounds.

However, I'm not a fan of this complex financing scheme that is underpinned by the MDC borrowing dollars based on the prospect of a company of questionable worth.

So what does that have to do with Assets? Well, in the deal before the council today, one of the selling points is the improvements will cost us $22.3 Million, but by the end of the term the property will be worth $30 Million. This is along the same vein as the Entrada Business Park were the MDC has speculatively bought some lots and built a shell building. These are the thoughts of real estate professionals, bankers and insurance salesmen, which are the day jobs of the good people at the MDC. For a private enterprises this is usually good thinking and good business, however, this is governmental money and a public accommodation.

In the world of government owned property, what good is it to the City of Midland if their hangar is worth $30 Million in 10 years? The MDC would have you believe that their accumulation and improvement of properties will transform their asset portfolio from non-ad valorem tax producing properties to nicely booked assets which will reduce our property taxes!

Truth be told, a venture like Dean Baldwin Painting may be successful in avoiding paying any property taxes if the City of Midland retains ownership of the property. After skimming through a series of Attorney General opinions that hold that these types of facilities at airports may be tax exempt (specifically facilities that maintain aircraft for the public use), I'm sure they'll make their case. Although, I do hold out hope that our current Attorney General may soon provide more guidance on this taxation issue, but for now, this property tax boon is up for interpretation. Property Taxation aside, if we spend $22.3 Million, and don't collect enough in rent to pay the full amortized debt service and O&M costs, then where is the benefit? The taxpayers are out the difference with only some ChamberMath (TM) calculations of the ripple effect through the local economy, and with a catch like Dean Baldwin, I'm not sure we have found a stable, well managed company, so the value of that is up for debate.

In short, I think the City should ONLY own or develop property in which it retains a full interest solely for the benefit of the public. If that benefit to the public is to generate income for general support of City operations, then the income from those properties should be sufficient to cover the capital improvement costs and maintenance of the facility. When the debts are paid, the income above maintenance costs should go to the City's general fund bottom line. The City should never speculatively own a property or "buy down a deal" because of the property tax increase or the "economic ripple effect" because one may never materialize and the other is akin to voo-doo. That and in the last two years you can't go anywhere around the industrial areas without seeing dozens of new combination office/warehouse/manufacturing facilities while Entrada sits.

If the City believes in building these hangars as part of their long range airport plan, then build the hangars with revenue bonds based on realistic anticipated rents and leave the MDC and their economic development find out of the equation....just how many deals have gone bad when somebody really wanted to build something and along comes their favorite nephew and his new girlfriend, who need a place after she got kicked out for being late on her rent, with a plan to "help you and them out?"

Over at Blackfive, an Aussie soldier forwards a letter from his son with his son's observations on the American military. The father then adds his own.

The Midland City Council has scheduled a Special Joint Meeting with the Midland Development Corporation on Tuesday, April 15th @ 1:00 PM to....

Consider a motion making a recommendation to the Midland Development Corporation Board of Directors regarding the modification, amendment, approval or cancellation of the proposed terms of the Economic Development and Lease Agreement between the Midland Development Corporation and Dean Baldwin Painting, L.P.

This meeting will be held as an Executive Session.

I am opening this thread in order that readers may submit questions that they would like asked by the council.

Warning: Don't screw around with this open thread. Ask legitimate questions. Anything that THIS EDITOR considers to be improper will certainly be deleted and multiple offenses will probably trip the much feared Site Admin's Ban Hammer.

I'm beginning to feel just a little bit sorry for the Gorobot--he couldn't steal the election in Florida, even with the help of a Daley, and then he banged on about global warming, which we find just isn't so. I heard him on Larry King intoning, "Larry, the earth...has...a...fever!" with a delivery which would have embarrassed Mortimer Snerd.

Here's a bit of fluff for your fun.

Well, he is an absolutist--he's absolutely right. And he's an absolute loser.

Sad, washed-up old pol.

Sheesh! I know Walsingham's posted on this already, but What's Up with continuous linkage to a Lubbock blog on the front page of MyWestTexas.com?? I don't get it. And, yes, I read the comment from the Lubbock blogger a few days ago. Still doesn't make sense. How about linking active local blogs guys? Like you said. (I do like the redesign of the MRT website. Much better. Nice work!)

I was very glad to discover that Jimmy the P. is still reading Jessica's Well from time to time. Jimmy, maybe the issue that you touch on in your post, linking to J's W, is the reason we're no longer "featured." We can't not rock the boat, if the boat needs rocking...

I have always wanted to use that headline. Always. And now I can do it legitimately. Go vote on the Best New York Post Headlines.

BUMPED: Because in the comments you can see someone actually say, "The dog ate my browser cache." It has to be an internet First.

Dr. Lyle Rossiter, a greatly experienced psychiatrist who trained at Chicago, has written that liberalism is a mental disorder. Wondering why so many of the patients that he has diagnosed presented with views that were utterly resistant to argument, he was led from the traditional view that they were informed by ideology and instead has come to the opinion that liberalism, as understood today in its coercive rather than libertarian sense, is a mental disorder, and, informed by his reasoned thoughts over decades of practice and thousands of cases, has written The Liberal Mind.

WorldNetDaily has done an article on it, and this is a bit of it:

... the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;

satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;

augmenting primitive feelings of envy;

rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

"The roots of liberalism - and its associated madness - can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

Strong stuff. But illuminating.

In a post titled "The Liberal Mind" I rather cruelly set a trap for Pandora, in which I challenged her to defend just one of her assertions, either way. If she did not, then she would prove my assertion that liberals are are talking handbills who cannot or will not defend their statements and are therefore demented. At the very least, operating in bad faith. She responded with rubbish, dancing from the point and pitching out more platitudes.

I responded with

Pandora, you have it backwards again. He formed his conclusion after decades of practice.

Thank you, Pandora, for answering. I was afraid that you would not. Wanting to ease you of the work of studiously avoiding the point every single time, I confected the above article as a trap. It is not nice and I'm not that proud of it, but I'm tired of the yapping.

I called you a handbill of sodden liberal pieties and then went on to call you demented. This is very strong and a slap in the face. Now I am going to close the trap.

The thrust of the article is the liberal's inability or unwillingness to engage with other people. Your response above was a textbook case I couldn't have bettered had I written it myself as a parody.

Here is a task for you, and how you handle it determines whether or not you are demented and the Well is watching. You have three possible choices.

Twice you have called me a sexist because I do not like Hillary Clinton. I say that is a logical fallacy.

1. You can prove that I am a sexist because I do not like Hillary Clinton. This requires you to prove that saying anything bad about a member of a group means that I do not like anyone in the group.

2. You can admit that I am not a sexist just because I do not like Hillary Clinton.

3. You can respond with another platitude, or veer off in the Brownian motion of your mind, or assume that the argument is settled and accuse me of anger, or using too much energy, or any other misdirection.

If you choose 1 or 2, you are engaging with a single point.

If you choose 3, it means that you either will not engage in debate about a single, well-defined issue that you brought up, and that indicates that you operate in bad faith, or it means that you cannot engage in debate which will considerably support Rossiter's contention that liberals are demented, which was much amplified by what I wrote above.

Pandora, this is a serious challenge. If you choose 1 or 2, it means that you are engaging with other people.

If you choose 3, it means that you are demented, either by choice or by nature.

Which way will you have it?

And digging herself in deeper Pandora chose 3, and gave us

To form an opinion of whether another human being is crazy, you have to go about it as a scientist. The minute one begins to label people as insane for having a political opinion which differs from one's own, science is in the scrap heap. It's as silly as saying, "All Baptists must be insane, all Catholics," etc.

Walsingham, I'm so sorry I no longer have the data you wanted several days later. Strangely enough, the growing of trees is one of my biggest passions, so I was quite happy that we could talk about it. I bet you could Google this subject and come up with the same pages, if your search terms are right. [Pandora was giving good value for money, avoiding Walsingham.]

Theo, your little "trap" reminds me of what Brer Rabbit said in the Uncle Remus story, "Oh please, PLEASE, don't throw me in that briar patch!"

Notice that there was utterly no attempt to defend two baseless (to my mind) charges she made, and the challenge was put in the starkest possible terms.

Has Pandora proven my thesis? Is there anyone who has a question?

I welcome anyone who can answer the question above, or who wants to engage in a discussion of modern coercive liberal versus conservative/libertarian/Randite. But you must engage, and not utter platitudes.

I can be wrong. If I am, I'll apologize and change my views. In fact I can spot some holes in my original post myself, which I think I can defend but it's up to someone else to point them out. Defending them would have made it much too long. But there are places of attack, as stated.

My views are, I very much hope, based on ratiocination and lucubration. In other words, the hard sport of thought. Thought is a survival characteristic. Feeling is, well, nice and cuddly, but a luxury. I feel deeply, now more than ever, but know that the world doesn't are about my feelings and it is infantile, that is, selfish, self-centered, demanding and whining, to suppose that it should.

Someone has to think. But the thing about thought is that it is by definition not a catechism, and conclusions are subject to challenge as data comes to light and one's thought matures. But that challenge requires engagement, not flash cards of platitudes and shop-worn pieties. Liberalism is a feel-good secular religion based on the happy-clappy demands of emotional two-year-olds whose temper tantrums and demands are just barely tolerable in toddlers and insufferable in adults.

Back to the dementia of the liberal mind, at least as typified by its exemplar Pandora:

Is there anyone who doesn't understand now?

The New York Times, the flagship publication of the bien pensant, has been flogging its Sunday edition on the goggle box. In three-second video bites popularized by MTV, which I personally hold responsible for the ever-shortening attention span of America, a young man says, "It's like having a table of contents to the rest of the world."

The arrogance. And after the Jayson Blair scandal, the reporter who just made things up, phoning in stories. In an unusual fit of honesty, even liberals posited that Blair might have been promoted faster than he ought to have been or farther than his ability permitted owing to his being black.

Also the Gray Old Lady had the Judith Miller scandal, in which she reported a good probability that Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction. Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfield and Colin Powell all said that Miller's story was in part the reason for going to war with Iraq. That this appeared in the NYT must gall them.

And now, if we get the Sunday edition, we'll have a table of contents to the world. This defines liberal amour propre and Manhattanite insularity.

Olympic Torch Survives Buenos Aries Argentine runners in Buenos Aries carried the Olympic torch past the customary anti-China protesters, protected by the customary security guards and had customary water balloons hurled at them. Guards batted the balloons away.

Maybe you don't need to read further after that summary. (Who knew that the Wall Street Journal employed staff writers with senses of humor?) In case you do need more, here is the story, from the AP via WSJ.com.

Many Argentines didn't want any of the controversy. Ana Maria Tassano, who runs a chic leather goods store, said people should simply be celebrating the Olympic torch. "We have too many other problems to be worrying about the torch," she said.

Ain't that the truth. Though the Tibetans might differ...

Free Tibet!!!!

In what will be Special Meetings No. 3 and No. 4, the Midland City Council and the Midland Development Corporation Board are going to meet together on April 15th to:

Consider a motion making a recommendation to the Midland Development Corporation Board of Directors regarding the modification, amendment, approval or cancellation of the proposed terms of the Economic Development and Lease Agreement between the Midland Development Corporation and Dean Baldwin Painting, L.P.

So far, the MDC and/or the City Council have had (or will have) Dean Baldwin Centric Special Meetings on:

March 14, 2008 (MDC)
April 7, 2008 (MDC)
April 15, 2008 (MDC)
April 15, 2008 (City)

That's an awful lot of special meetings, what's the rush?

If this quote from the March 25, 2008 City Council Minutes is any indication, maybe this whole things needs to be slowed down A LOT, because apparently a couple of weeks ago the chamber didn't have a full handle on what they were promoting:

Mike Hatley, Vice President for Economic Development for the Midland Chamber of Commerce, stated that the method of financing had not been determined and that he was not familiar with bond financing. He said the project is moving at a rapid rate and the Chamber is prepared to answer questions concerning the project.

The MDC's got FirstSouthwest and F&J on the agenda for the meeting 3 Days after this quote is offered to the Council and you don't know what the financing method will be and that you aren't familiar with Bond Financing?!?!?!?

How else is a governmental entity going to scrape together at least $12 Million to go with the $10 Million+++ in the MDC's bank to do this project?

By collecting bellybutton lint?

From various news outlets around the internet:

Frontier joined a growing list of airlines filing for bankruptcy amid rising fuel prices and a slowing economy. In recent days, Skybus Airlines, Aloha Airlines and ATA Airlines have all shut down. Charter carrier Champion Air will cease flying at the end of May. Additionally, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines grounded its aircraft and asked for the appointment of a liquidator.

That's either a lot of planes that are going to need re-painting, or a lot of planes are not going to be painted for a very long time.

I got nuthin' really. I am just getting froggy about getting bumped down by an out of town blog. Front page access was a privilege a week ago. Now it is a right!

This post has been 'bumped' because there is just way too much time and effort being put in in the comments for it to disappear down the page.

CBS, the home of the most celebrated news division in broadcasting, has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its news-gathering operations to CNN, two executives briefed on the matter said Monday.

I suppose that they have chosen CNN so as too keep their soon-to-be-outsourced news product ideologically pure.

The rest is here at the New York Times....who may not be far away from such an arrangement themselves having already outsourced their Middle-east news coverage to Al Jazeera stringers.

So here is my question: If CBS News is now going to assemble and comment on news gathered and produced by others, doesn't that essentially make them...you know...bloggers?