I guess we'll be spared all the pap that goes with the current 5 person scrum for Bill Dingus' former At-Large Council seat.
(...or we're saving it all up for Craddick v. Dingus and McCain v. Obama)
]]>I don't gamble and barely drink and so the vices of Vegas are not for me, but I did want to see some place where there was no possibility of anyone saying, "Er, do you think that's a bit much?" And for a connoisseur of kitsch like me, it's heaven.
By the way, the Penn and Teller show literally does a great deal of flag waving, and they boast of how wonderful it is to be an American, after working in China and India. And there are six Chinese channels at the Wynn, and the new middle class in China can afford to come, and they do, they do. Penn rolled up a replica of the Bill of Rights and they pretended to burn an American flag in it, saying that if the flag were burned, it wouldn't matter for the Bill of Rights remains. They then rolled up a clear sheet of acetate, the Chinese bill of rights, which doesn't exist in a totalitarian system--which they're very quick to point out--and showed how they did not burn the flag and then tore the blank Chinese bill of rights into pieces. There were many Chinese in the audience. Go Penn and Teller.
The Spectator has several blogs, and I like reading them. I'd like to draw your attention to a certain Melanie Phillips, whose work reminds me of Mark Steyn's--without the double entendres and other word play. One of the newest outrages in Britain, other than the fact that people are still pretending that the Spice Girls have talent, is the Archbishop of Canterbury, a fool named Rowan Williams, who stated that he saw no problem with a two-tier legal system in Britain--Sharia for Muslims, and real law for the rest of Britain. Now the Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips (I swear that's how they say it) has jumped on board, braying more of the same pernicious nonsense. And here's her take on it.
She's worth reading.
]]>"We're creating a four-lane divided highway linkage of the four major metropolitan areas in West Texas -- Amarillo, Lubbock and Midland-Odessa. It will also help with University Interscholastic League competitions and college kids going back and forth. It just makes sense."
Uhhhhh....right. I don't think the 349 reliever route is going to make the trip to Amarillo any shorter, or easier on the pocketbooks of our local school districts.
]]>As a bit of history, Midland created the TIRZ while in the throws of our depressed economy in 2001. Which is also around the time the MDC started picking up steam. I can't say I blame our City Fathers for creating the TIRZ. At the time, they were desperate for some kind of economic shot in the arm, and were willing to try any club in the bag, regardless of the past performance of other TIRZ's in communities our size. Truthfully, the concept of a TIRZ is appealing, because the TIRZ only goes if the property values in the TIRZ go up.
The flaw in the logic, is that rising valuations are supposed to be caused by the spending of private money on public projects, or the spending of public money on TIRZ specific public projects. Then the "increment tax collections" generated by the TIRZ would re-imburse the property owner for their public improvements or re-imburse the City or County for pumping extra money into the TIRZ infrastructure.
I don't think anyone figured out how that is supposed to work when valuations go up by virtue of rising oil prices combined with the removal of structures from the tax base by demolition or public purchase.
For those who don't know, Chatper 311 of the Tax Code, is the section of the Texas Statutes that govern Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones. Basically a TRIZ can pay for, or reimbuse an entity for Project Costs which are defined as follows:
(1) "Project costs" means the expenditures made or estimated to be made and monetary obligations incurred or estimated to be incurred by the municipality or county establishing a reinvestment zone that are listed in the project plan as costs of public works or public improvements in the zone, plus other costs incidental to those expenditures and obligations. "Project costs" include:(A) capital costs, including the actual costs of the acquisition and construction of public works, public improvements, new buildings, structures, and fixtures; the actual costs of the acquisition, demolition, alteration, remodeling, repair, or reconstruction of existing buildings, structures, and fixtures; and the actual costs of the acquisition of land and equipment and the clearing and grading of land;
(B) financing costs, including all interest paid to holders of evidences of indebtedness or other obligations issued to pay for project costs and any premium paid over the principal
amount of the obligations because of the redemption of the obligations before maturity;(C) real property assembly costs;
(D) professional service costs, including those incurred for architectural, planning, engineering, and legal advice and services;
(E) imputed administrative costs, including reasonable charges for the time spent by employees of the municipality or county in connection with the implementation of a
project plan;(F) relocation costs;
(G) organizational costs, including the costs of conducting environmental impact studies or other studies, the cost of publicizing the creation of the zone, and the cost of implementing the project plan for the zone;
(H) interest before and during construction and for one year after completion of construction, whether or not capitalized;
(I) the cost of operating the reinvestment zone and project facilities;
(J) the amount of any contributions made by the municipality or county from general revenue for the implementation of the project plan; and
(K) payments made at the discretion of the governing body of the municipality or county that the governing body finds necessary or convenient to the creation of the zone or to
the implementation of the project plans for the zone.
When the TIRZ had no money, everybody could look at the plan and say "someday.". However now that the TIRZ has submitted its latest annual report (which isn't on their website) which reportedly shows a bank of around $785,000, one has to wonder what the TIRZ board is waiting to spend this money on?
To date, the TIRZ could have refunded to the City of Midland the cost of TIRZ Planning which was paid from a 1998 GP Certificate of Obligation, or the TIRZ could have refunded some dollars for City Staff salaries to administer the TIRZ, or the TIRZ could have participated in the City's rate modifications for the disposal costs of the demolition debris, or the cost of City installed infrastructure in Wall Street, but there is no evidence that they have in the Annual Audit or Current City Budget.
To be fair, since September of 2007, some of these things could have been done, but since the required annual report has not be posted on the TIRZ or City websites, we must rely on the media and snippets from the City Council agendas to flesh out the operation of the TIRZ and nothing in the audits or City Budget seem to indicate any expenditures of TIRZ funds.
Exit Question: What is the TIRZ waiting to fund, and when will the City of Midland general fund be "refunded" for planning and infrastructure projects already completed in the TIRZ?
]]>I have always thought of myself as a conservationist, and with the rising price of oil I am finding that there are some folks out there who's voices are starting to rise above the din of wacko environmentalism with rational conservation principles.
Case in point. I found this article on MarketWatch.com which talks about the debate about drilling off the coast of California, particularly Santa Barbara. Here are a few choice quotes:
Oil is still so plentiful in the region that it often bubbles uncontrollably to the surface, and shows up in the form of tar globules on some of the area's beaches. Tourists and new residents often curse the offshore platforms as they scrub their blackened feet, but long-time residents know the phenomenon has occurred naturally for thousands of years.
Bubbling Crude in California? I thought only Jed Clampett had that stuff.
[Bruce] Allen is the president of a group called Stop Oil Seeps, which argues that additional offshore drilling could be used to prevent oil from bubbling up on to beaches. And the region could produce nearly 2 billion barrels over a period of 25 years, he says.Natural seepage alone over a four-year period amounts to roughly the same amount of oil that spilled from the Exxon Valdez incident in Alaska in 1989. He points out that a University of California, Santa Barbara study conducted in the mid-1990s shows that seepage around one of the nearby oil rigs known as Platform Holly dropped by more than 50% over 22 years as a result of production.
Drill more to save California Beaches!? Ohhh...wait, but there is the "local environmentalist" who hearkens back to a drilling accident in 1969 that fissured the caprock and spilled oil into the sea and thinks it is risky.
I guess we need to add a few more dollars to the price for fuel to quiet everyone down.
]]>His son told me that after the funeral he was going through his father's closet and opened a box, which contained the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was a pilot on a dive bomber. He'd worked as a service-station owner for decades and had never mentioned it.
Michelle Obama, she who would be First Lady, complains of repaying student loans, and that since Barry could run for president she's proud of her country for the first time. And she was an intimate with Reverend Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright, until it was politically impossible to be further associated with him. In trying to justify that association, the father of her children, in her lapidary (and ghetto) phrase, threw his grandmother, the woman who stepped in and raised him, under the bus, saying she was a "typical white woman." Now we know the tenor of the first post-racist president.
I miss Hillary. I really do. Where is that mean, arrogant, power-mad totalitarian? Come back, Hillary. All is forgiven.
]]>For those who don't know, the demolition of the buildings between Wall, Texas, Big Spring and Colorado has been slowed by the fact the electrical service for a large portion of Downtown was routed through the center of the now demolished Permian Building and given one of the remaining buildings was the old Electric Company (TESCO) office, I'm sure they have found more of the same that needs to be fixed.
Now, the expenditure of $329.661.82 to remove, relocated and replace electrical facilities is a necessary and worthy project that will ensure the economic viability of downtown Midland...but why is the MDC forking over the dough for this project?
Aren't projects like this exactly why we created a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ)? According to Monday's MRT, the TIRZ had cumulative revenues of approximately $785,000 and revenue of $345,000 last year.
According to the City's 2007 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (pg 100) no funds had been expended through September 30, 2007, so there was a balance of $423,952. With this years revenue around $345,000, that means the TIRZ fund has a bank of around $785,000.
Which is curious, because under the TIRZ heading in the 2007 CAFR summary, there is a list of projects including improvements to Wall Street, the Midland Hilton, new water lines and infrastructure reimbursements for new housing built in the zone by the MCDC, yet no funds were allocated for these projects from the TIRZ account?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the CAFR would seem to indicate the City is publicizing projects as TIRZ based, but they are really banking the TIRZ money and using other funds and entities to do projects the TIRZ was created to do. How do you credit the TIRZ for something they didn't fund?
I wonder how the other taxing entities feel about the City banking TIRZ funds and paying for downtown infrastructure improvements with other funds? I'm sure that revenue differential could have helped reduce the property taxes for the County, Hospital and College Taxpayers.
Sure I understood the practice when the TIRZ generated no $$$, but the City seems to have been operating like they always have and now they wake up with over three-quarters of a million dollars in an account funded by the other Midland Taxing entities and they haven't spent a dime of it, all the while the citizens are unnecessarily paying higher taxes to those other entities.
]]>If this has been photoshopped, then I have fallen for the gag...
Update: OK, so I am way behind the curve on this one, and way, way behind on my reading. Check here and here and here.
And it would appear to not be photoshop but the real thing. I kinda was hoping for a hoax. Then I would have a higher opinion of Obama's staff's IQ.
]]>To Review: This is the company that the Midland Development Corporation wanted to spend over $20 mu...mu...mu...million of your tax dollars on (most of it borrowed, by the way) in order to bring them to Midland.
But it was all really just a breakdown in communications you see.
In the private sector something like this would cause resignations. Or worse.
Or even in the pseudo-governmental agency sector in a "fiscally conservative" place like Midland.
Well, Midland about 20 years ago.
]]>Barack Obama is abandoning public financing for his presidential campaign, reversing his earlier stance in bold certainty he can raise millions more on his own as the first major-party candidate to bypass the tax-checkoff system that was hurried into place after the Watergate scandal.
It gets better.
Last year, Obama filled out a questionnaire where he vowed to "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." But since clinching the Democratic nomination earlier this month, Obama has not broached the subject with McCain.
You can just feel the Change.
And Hope.
I know I do.
]]>The vice president of accounting for Natural Gas Services Group Inc., a provider of compression equipment and services to the natural gas industry, sold 5,000 shares of common stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday.
I am thrilled that NGSG is doing so well the directors of the company can cash out shares and bring home profits into their personal accounts. More power to them!
However, a company that is doing so well its directors can cash out about $450,000 in corporate shares over the last two weeks doesn't seem like a company that needs a $275,000 forgivable loan from the MDC. Right or wrong, the perception of spending economic DEVELOPMENT money on a business doing so well their directors can cash out hundreds of thousands of dollars is very poor.
]]>Turns out, Planned Parenthood contacted the Washington Post and ABC, reminding the Beltway media of what happened in Texas 18 years ago. After reporters called the campaign asking about the episode, McCain pulled the plug on the fundraiser.And who heads Planned Parenthood? Cecile Richards, the daughter of the late Texas governor, who was at her mother's side much of the 1990 campaign.
I guess that hatchet wasn't buried with the late Ann Richards.
Exit Question: does this mean that joke is now a generational political grudge, kinda like the old testament curses that pass down to the third or fifth generation?
]]>MyWestTexas.com is reporting that Midland County Republican Chairwoman, Sue Brannon said the event will happen.
... Brannon said the visit was postponed because McCain "had a personal conflict" and 400-500 people had already bought tickets -- far too many for Williams, an oilman, and his wife Modesta to accommodate in their home."It's going to be rescheduled at the (Hilton Midland Plaza)," said Brannon, who has been heavily involved in the preparations.
"That's just a bad story and not true. McCain is coming and will meet with the people giving megabucks. Everything is fine."
Exit Question No. 2: Who is McCain Spokesman Brian Rogers and just how politically clueless is he?
UPDATE:The Houston Chronicle analyzes the political dance about donors and surrogates in the internet age:
Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, said the recycling of ancient controversies reflects a new reality of politics in the Internet Age.]]>"This whole campaign is about destroying the candidate by destroying the surrogates," Rothenberg said. The trend "is enhanced by the Internet and the ability to do research on those connected to the campaigns."
Because attacks spread so quickly on the Internet, campaigns have adopted a new philosophy, he said: "If there is a hot potato, drop it as soon as possible."
This movie satirizes itself in a postmodern way as being a cheap rip-off of 300, and I've never been that much of a fan of those movies of the Airport type, but then in the 80s I was a very serious young man about what I considered to be art. Now I figure that it's entertainment, and not art, and that it's in the eye of the beholder, this beholder. This gives me the added benefit of instantly turning off music that is labeled "challenging" but is really only ugly even if someone supposedly knowledgeable about music is listening.
MTS is a movie of, well, unresisting imbecility. The gags are sophomoric with an emphasis on the moron part of that word. Too many barf jokes, but no poo, pee or fart jokes, and the jokes are benign. Christopher Guest's mockumentaries such as Waiting for Guffman and Best of Show are very funny but there is an essential meanness to them. Guest takes simple people, fly-over country people, who are invested in some slightly ridiculous pursuit and hones and refines their lives down to being nothing but that, and mocks their artless sincerity mercilessly. It's rather British in effect, like the Mr. Bean movies. Very funny, but you have to steel yourself, to relax to the pain as you empathize with these dolts. At first you don't know where to look.
No such pain in MTS. One gag has the battle at Thermopylae between Xerxes and the Persians and Leonidas and the Spartans, one of the two or three most important to Western civilization, reduced to ghetto name-calling and break-dancing. "Yo mamma is so fat..." with side-to-side head action. Relax and enjoy it--I did. I don't know if it was meant to be a send-up of ghetto culture.
Another fetching gag is the bottomless pit, which Leonidas pushes irritating people into, and they are irritating. It's every curmudgeon's dream, the bottomless pit to shove whining people into, and Leonidas kicks fool after moron into it. This always works for me, and like a great Vaudevillian he left me wanting more.
Witless and fun.
--------------------
From Greek to Geek: Blu-ray really has won. This utterly trivial movie was released in a good transfer and with DTS-HD Master Audio. It is uncompressed, the same bit-rate and resolution as the original recording. The normal Dolby AC3 was wonderful, but this is as much above that as SACD is above the CD. And all this technical splendor for this movie. It's like eating a Big Mac off of Wedgwood but the potential is obvious. Warning. If you have a sound system capable of it, don't turn it up as loud as you normally would; you'll notice the airiness and transparency of the soundtrack, for compression always feels leaden, but after a while your ears will start hurting at sound levels that didn't seem all that loud. Yes, there is that much compression in normal DVDs.
Sen. John McCain on Friday abruptly canceled a Monday fundraiser that had been scheduled at the home of a Texas oilman, after ABC News contacted the campaign inquiring about a verbal blunder the Texan made during an unsuccessful 1990 campaign for governor.Clayton Williams stirred controversy during his 1990 campaign for governor of Texas with a botched attempt at humor in which he compared rape to weather. Within earshot of a reporter, Williams said: "As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it."
Just about any political junkie can remember all the way back to the 1990 Governor's Race, you know the now famous quote...but apparently John McCain and the rest of his staff didn't. I can't believe this is still making hay some 18 years later.
UPDATE:The Democratic National Committee is now pushing McCain to give back the $300,000 reportedly raised by Claytie.
"Mr. Williams' comments are not only outrageous and disgusting, they degrade our values as Americans," DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said in a statement Saturday. "John McCain should make it clear that he understands just how offensive these comments are by not only canceling a fund raising event but also returning the money Williams raised for his campaign."
Yeah, a little colorful Cowboy metaphor at the Ranch over 18 years ago qualifies as "outrageous and disgusting" and "degrades our values as Americans"!?
Talk about a hypocrite. I couldn't begin to list the scores of elected Democrats and Democrat supporters who in word and deed have done things that are "outrageous, disgusting and degrading to our American Values" in this election cycle, much less since 1990. Add to that, most of those folks are celebrated by the liberals.
UPDATE: Houston Chronicle's Texas on the Potomac Blog reaction. Along with CNN, and just about every news/blog in political punditry.
Exit Question: Why didn't Giuliani back away from Claytie?
]]>