The perfect progressive hand for making sure people pay "their fair share."]]>
Thanks for reading.
]]>Nonetheless, no matter how one tries to lampoon something like this, it always lampoons itself the best.
This article, which is of earth-shaking importance, is entitled, "Sex With Animals Can Lead To Penis Cancer."
Who cares? Who studied it? And most of all, why is this being reported in the Huffington Post?
What's next? The Daily Kos giving tips on the dangers to child abusers?
The perfect progressive hand for making sure people pay "their fair share."]]>
I have never cared for sports; I have nothing against them and I ought to have cared more for them for they would have done me good; my life has been nearly entirely centered in my mind. So I never did, really, see the point: balls are meant to be chased by dogs and children, and when I was in junior high I was already chafing at being a boy. I wanted to grow up. Then.
At the end of most PE classes we were told to play dodgeball. At least in Pecos it was played in the gym with the volleyballs which resided on two racks The coaches would divide the boys, and as soon as we were divided, I'd go and put my back against the wall, hiding behind the other boys.
The aggressive boys instantly went to get the new, perfect balls covered by pristine canvas over the rubber bladder. They were pretty. And they're big. You'd have to be an NFL player to palm one, and these were junior-high boys, who could only throw it as though their hand was a piston with the ball on top. Never got much aim or velocity.
So those balls were fairly easy for the first rank of boys to dodge; the boys in the second rank couldn't see them and got put out. When the balls got to the back, where I was trying to be invisible, I'd make a judgment call. If the ball was new and pretty, I'd toe it up for the aggressive boys to throw, and expose themselves to being hit. If the ball was old, and the older the better, it was for me.
I loved those, and put them behind me while I circulated the perfect balls up front.
As the boys kept putting each other out, I kept hoarding the good-bad balls. Finally when nearly everyone was out, I'd grab up the balls with the torn canvas handles, which worked just great, and I could sling a ball side-armed that was too fast to dodge well. I could throw one every two or three seconds, and faster by far than anyone else. A completely new method of dodge ball, not that the world was clamoring for one.
And you know what? I nearly always won.
For some reason most men don't see the humor in this one but then I don't see any virtue to sports other than the cardio. Perhaps something in the blood?
The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Obama is no longer President and no longer resides here."
The old man said, "Okay," and walked away.
The following day the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama."
The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Obama is no longer President and no longer resides here."
The man thanked him and again just walked away.
The third day the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama."
The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Obama. I've told you already that Mr. Obama is no longer the President and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"
The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."
The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow, Sir!"
]]>Diversification was the driving effort in 2001 when voters agreed to this tax. When voters passed the tax they wanted diversity and higher-paying jobs to replace the ones that left the community during the late 1990's oil bust.This goal and direction of the MDC has changed since voters passed this tax. The voters should have the final answer on whether to continue on this path, whether to dedicate the quarter-cent for infrastructure or eliminate the tax.
I applaud the MRT's Editorial Board for taking the stance that entities that are created and funded by the taxpayers should be held accountable to their purpose and mandate at the time they were authorized by the voters. Once an entity strays into areas that are contrary to their original mandate, it is time for them to determine the will of the voters through the ballot box, not through assumptions that lead to the adoption of the latest Plan from an out of town consultant.
]]>(Hanson is one of the most thoughtful of all journalists, and he's also a military historian and former classics professor, who has a long view of things.)
Here in America we have a nation which was founded entirely on a political idea and codified. We deliberately have an open and transparent society and it's been the result of two centuries of people who decided that America would be a meritocracy, and not judge people, as is done in the Middle East, by religion; not by caste as the Indians do; not by accents as the Europeans do; but by what people themselves can do. He points out, very rightly, that it is inconceivable that a black man could be president of France, even though France has traditionally been very friendly to blacks.
The Obama experiment of the last three years did not bring prosperity, and is likely soon to prompt a sharp reaction and a return to the American devotion to individualism and choice that made us the wealthiest nation in history. The American model is the antithesis of the socialism, Communism, theocracy, and statism that have impoverished so much of the world -- and the 21st century has brought that fact home in a way few imagined.
Suddenly I get Obama's sneer about American exceptionalism. To a progressive, there is no exceptionalism except his own because it hurts to look up to anything. And, if we can beat down the progressives, the equal-opportunity destroyers of wealth and prudence and character, the 21st century will also be an American century.
An interesting set of quotes concerning Entrada Building A found in the MRT article of 11/06/2011, Economic Development Sales Tax: 10-Year Review:
But first, some history: Entrada Building A was determined by the MDC to be a much needed (and presumably demanded) feature of the Entrada Business Park. It was built at a cost of at least a couple of million bucks (I'm guessing) and was available for occupancy on August 18, 2006. It has yet to see an occupant since it was available five years ago.
Some more history: The "Chunnel" was built in five years.
More history that is even more history-ish: Hadrian's Wall was built in five years.
Now, we know what happens in the private sector when someone builds a spec building and it sits empty for five years. That someone either has a load of cash reserves to absorb the losses or the building is...um...removed from them. Either way, the market provides the proper feedback.
In the land of unicorns, fairy dust, and Economic Development there is no such feedback. Quite the contrary, in fact. A spec building that has gone un-occupied for five years is actually seen as an asset:
The building was completed near the end of 2004. It remains empty. But, [Economic Developemnt officials] said it's been a vital component of the MDC's economic development offerings."When we made the decision to put it out there, the people who we were in competition with had buildings," James said. "We were years behind communities that had been out there. We just didn't have those resources. It's obviously sad the building's still empty."
With the building, Billingsley said the MDC was able to stay on the list of cities being considered by several companies. Even if the company didn't end up needing the building, just having it there gave Midland an edge to compete in certain industries, he said.
"If you don't have that, you're not competing," he said. "The competition is over."
On the one hand we are told that it is sad that we have not found an occupant for the building. On the other we are told that in order to even stay in the ED game we need to have such a building available. So which is more valuable to us? An occupied building or one that keeps us competitive by being available?
To be fair I can actually see the argument for both (even if I do not agree) but taken together it only makes sense if they are willing to immediately build another building as soon as the first is filled. Even if it too has to sit empty for five years before an occupant can be found.
Keep that in mind while (if you have a few minutes) you get on Google Earth and look at Midland using the "Historical Imagery" feature and see for yourself what kind of development has gone on since Entrada Building A was built.
Development that has all gone on without the benefit of government directed incentives and subsidies.
CORRECTION: This Wikipedia entry states that Hadrian's Wall actually took closer to six years to complete and not the five years stated above. On the other hand, it was occupied almost immediately.
As the world knows, four women, at last count, have leveled charges of harassment, which sometimes has been defined down to being "uncomfortable," at him but the first two women remained anonymous and the charges were vague. Even reporting those was a bad day for the left-wing media. Anonymous charges are to be dismissed out of hand; recall the terror of anonymous charges in Leonardo's Florence. They truly did cause a reign of terror and it is one of the tenets of a liberal democracy that one gets to face one's accusers.
The charges that I've heard Sharon Bialek level against Cain are not that pretty. But let's look at them. Bialek said that Cain put his hand on her leg and tried to touch her private parts. She also claimed that he tried to pull her head toward his crotch. Both at the same time? But here's the telling bit: she also said that after she said stop, he did. And that he drove her to a destination and let her out. This is a far cry from Slick Willie raping at least one woman, which he most certainly did and the media tried to ignore that. Also do you remember Mary Jo Kopechne, murdered by the Lion of the Senate?
Back to the world where a Republican is guilty if he can be made to look guilty.
]]> Cain is an alpha male. Look at what he's done. He's aggressive; anyone, male or female, to achieve his position must be aggressive. Otherwise he'd be out of a job when the Godfather's he was making pizzas for went out of business. Aggressive people make advances; I have in my life been not aggressive enough, when in retrospect the other party was wanting me to take the lead. Without some initiative, people would never get together. No deals at all: business or personal.If we can take Ms. Bialek at her word, putting his hand on her thigh was not a good thing. But her tone of how traumatizing it was for her and how hard to live through just rings false. For her to use the same language that Iraqi veterans actually do not in general use for post-traumatic stress disorder. Really, Ms. Bialek? You are a fully grown woman, accomplished, intelligent, and I simply refuse to believe that it is traumatizing for a woman of your intelligence and accomplishments to have a hand laid on your leg by a man who then stopped when you asked him to.
We don't know what happened. We will never know. I do know that one other woman had a history of lodging complaints; we cannot know if something happened there either. But in any case, it is massive overkill to use the language of rape and violation and even PTSD for anything that Cain's been accused of yet.
Consider a Muslim woman who might have to live her life in a burqa. Her word is worth half a man's word. If she is raped, without several male witnesses, she can be gang raped to "punish" her for inciting her rapist. In Saudi Arabia there was a fire in a girls' school and the girls were trying to flee the flames, and were not dressed modestly enough. The morality police threw them back into the burning building to protect public morals where they died, but no public morality was corrupted. But they burned to death. A Muslim girl who decides her life is her own and who makes her own marriage can be killed by her brothers, lest she dishonor their family. I suppose that sororicide is more honorable to Muslims, or some of them, than according a woman full human rights.
In the grand scheme of things, a rebuffed grope, if that did happen, compared to the lives of hundreds of millions of Muslim women, is a year's worth of free dinners at the French Room compared to a seriously inedible Big Mac. If that is not redundant.
Oh, I forgot something crucial to my argument. Ms. Bialek's attorney is that ambulance-chasing left-wing hag Gloria Allred, which means of course that the odds are very good that she's lying. Based on form. Just sayin'.
Here's the explanatory statement for Propostion 4 from VoteTexas.org:
Proposition Number 4 (HJR 63)HJR 63 would amend the constitution to authorize the legislature to permit a county to issue bonds or notes to finance the development or redevelopment of an unproductive, underdeveloped, or blighted area within the county, and to pledge increases in ad valorem tax revenues imposed on property in the area by the county for repayment of such bonds or notes. The amendment does not provide independent authority for increasing ad valorem tax rates.
The proposed amendment would appear on the ballot as follows: "The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to permit a county to issue bonds or notes to finance the development or redevelopment of an unproductive, underdeveloped, or blighted area and to pledge for repayment of the bonds or notes increases in ad valorem taxes imposed by the county on property in the area. The amendment does not provide authority for increasing ad valorem tax rates."
Basically, the legislature was trying to give Counties the ability to be a TIRZ creator (which Cities currently enjoy) and borrow a whole bunch of money to try and redevelop an area and then confiscate the increase in ad valorem taxes from all the other taxing entities to pay for the County Government's investment.
Just imagine Midland County being able to do what the City of Midland did to create the downtown TIRZ (*shudder*). You know that entitity that sucks up all the increase in ad valorem taxes in downtown from every entity but the school board. Yeah, the one that causes many of our elected officials to wrongly state with great frequency that downtown development is reducing our homestead property tax burden beacuse of all that new value. It isn't. It is going into a downtown development slush fund with a pretty vague purpose right now.
I hope this means the public is starting to reject the idea that government of any type should be involved in financing, directing or otherwise participating in the real estate and development market.
]]>The deal with Apache Corp., which was approved in 2010, is an example of great expansion in Midland's chief industry, Rendall said.Apache may have come to Midland without the incentive, but it has been a great partner, Rendall said. The company already has nearly four times the jobs it agreed to in its $250,000 contract and continues to work with the MDC to recruit new employees to Midland.
Rendall said MDC will continue looking to diversify but that contracts like Apache's will have a place in Midland because the energy sector -- whether oil, wind or solar -- always will be a staple.
"You have to recognize that is our bread and butter industry," he said.
It should go without saying that oil & gas being our bread and butter industry here in Midland was pretty well recognized ten years and $47 million ago.
Ten years ago the voters were told by those campaigning for the 4A Sales Tax that only by diversifying our local economy away from the oil and gas business could we secure Midland's future. Actually, it went further than that. We were told that Midland was essentially doomed unless we passed the 4A tax. Now we award "incentives" to giant firms that not only are in the oil and gas industry (the same oil and gas industry that we were told we needed to diversify away from) but are companies that were already here in Midland.
Is the money being used as we were told it would be ten years ago? You be the judge. If you are interested, have a look at the series of posts from Jessica's Well in March/April of 2010 that went through a series of Letters to the Editor written by proponents of the sales tax in the run-up to the election. They are posted below.
]]>The ED Wayback Machine, Part I: If we don't pass this tax, then the Terrorists will have won!
Microfiche is a wonderful thing. Okay, I take that back. Microfiche is a total pain now that we have all gotten used to internet based archives.
Nevertheless, we have taken the time to go through some of the microfiched copies of issues of the Midland Reporter-Telegram around the time the Economic Development Sales Tax was passed on November 6, 2001......on it's third try I should mention...the voters obviously having gotten it wrong the first two times it was brought forth. Enlightened (and almost certainly outside-the-box) thinking finally won out and the voters decided the issue...(some say for all time)...with a vote in the affirmative. Midland would have its Economic Development Sales tax and thereby guarantee its future.
We found campaign ads, Letters to the Editor, a couple of "Speaking Out" columns, and some Editorial Opinions. Over the next few days (or until we run out) we will be posting some of the better ones.
The Economic Development Sales Tax has been with us for nearly a decade. In that time, the pseudo-governmental agency known as the Midland Development Corporation has pulled over $25 million out of the local economy. It has banked most of that both denying the taxpayers of Midland the use of their own money and also precluding the much vaunted "multiplication factor" used by the High Priests of the Church of ED when artificially inflating the impact of every dollar they re-direct from the free market.
Of the money that has been spent, no real success can be shown in regard to Midland's economic development nor its diversification. Companies are lining up to "renegotiate" the terms of their "forgivable loans" from the MDC. Indeed, the Mother of All Economic Development Success Stories, the original Cingular arrangement, has essentially collapsed as far as any promise to alter or diversify the local economy.
Now, almost ten years later, in light of all that we now know regarding the performance of our local economic development initiatives, have a look at these archived items and see how well the promises have matched up with the performance.
(Originally posted by Walsingham on March 25, 2010)
]]>The ED Wayback Machine, Part II: This economic development stuff is easy!
See? All it takes to make a multi-billion dollar global corporation do something it had previously thought was not in its interest is to throw just around $300,000 per year at them. And Cingular is big! They will always be here!
What a deal, indeed!
This economic development stuff is easy! We should do more of it!
(Note: In keeping with standard Well practice of not using anyone's names unless we just have to we will be blanking out the names of the authors of these letters. We do this for several reasons. One, Google is forever and while the issues at hand will always resurface from time to time there is no need to have anyone's actual name bubbling up through search engine results from now until forever. Two, we have a "No Hounding" rule here at The Well which states that once someone is out of the news for a period of time they are to be left alone. These letters were written almost ten years ago and none of the authors envisioned them re-surfacing stamped with their names. Further, we don't want this to be a personal gotcha to the authors. The content of the letters is what is important and this is why: 50% of all of these kinds of Letters to the Editors are written by the campaign itself and then a signatory is found for them. 40% are actually written by the signatory but depend heavily on direct information from the campaign. So reading these letters is the best way to get a feel for what the "official" proponents believed (or at least told others) the economic development sales tax would achieve.)
(Originally posted by Walsingham on March 26, 2010)
]]>ED Wayback Machine, Part III: We will use this money to diversify the economy. Except when we don't.
In the archives are many, many letters just like this one. Too many to count. All with the same drumbeat: Midland is too tied to an oil-based economy and we need this money from the taxpayer so that we can go out and recruit businesses for Midland who are not part of the oil-based economy. That way we are protected from the downside of business cycles that inevitably come and go.
Actually, it goes a much further than that. The business cycles are usually a result of the market demand (and therefore price) of oil. When the price of oil is high, Midland thrives. When the price of oil is low, Midland suffers a bit. But these cycles are just that. Cycles.
There were also many letters like this one:
One of the biggest arguments offered by the campaign for an Economic Development Sales Tax and its supporters was not simply that we needed to protect ourselves from these business cycles but that the oil reserves on which our economy was based were simply going away. The author of one letter compared Midland to a mining town and stated that he was not aware of a town based solely on mining that survived.
But over the life of the MDC, it has given a lot of money away to companies that 1) are already here, 2) are already coming here without any MDC-driven public subsidies, 3) operate in the oil-based economy, 4) are currently in default (or about to be) on the terms of their agreement with the MDC, or 5) are all of the above. (In fact, here is a challenge: List the companies that the MDC has "incented" that don't fit into one of the above categories.)
Every dollar that the Midland Development Corporation extracts from the economy and turns over to these companies in the oil business like Basic Energy and now the global multi-billion dollar Apache Corporation reveals fully half of the reasoning behind the need for an ED sales tax to be an outright falsehood. I'd call it an outright lie but for the fact that it is a Sunday morning so I feel the need to be more civil. And also because, at the time, the authors of these letters probably really believed what they wrote about what the purpose of this tax money was and how it was to be used.
We have said before that the local economic development establishment behaves and operates as though economic development is whatever the hell they say it is on any given day. Ten years ago the oil patch was going away. Apache Corporation quite apparently disagrees and has decided (with zero artificial incentives needed) to set up a regional office here to handle the acquisitions they have made in the area over the past several years. Still, the local development corporation finds it necessary to hand over a quarter of a million dollars of public money to Apache Corporation to....to do what, exactly? Just spend it locally somewhere?
That kind of sounds like...um..."Stimulus Money"...if you know what I mean.
Go back and read the campaign literature...or wait for it to show up here. It doesn't take much reading to realize that the Midland Development Corporation, along with the City Council, has essentially re-purposed the money that they asked the public for back on November 6, 2001. Yes, I know that "The Law" allows the MDC to spend the money on these things, just as the law allows a panhandler on the street to buy a bottle of vodka with the money he asked you for just so he could get a hot meal.
I would like to think that there is at least one member of the City Council...or even more than one member who would take an honest look at the money that has been taken out of the economy in the last ten years and, taking into consideration the original claims of what the money was for and to whom it would go, and then compare that to what is obviously now a manifest change in philosophy (not to mention the spectacular lack of any success) and then wonder if, just perhaps, the voters should be consulted again.
But then, that's just crazy talk. Because what has happened to this money is what happens to almost all government-run "Investment in our Future!" programs. At the beginning, it was money that was to be used for a specific purpose from which specific results would be achieved.
Ten years on, the money has been re-purposed; there are no discernable results, and what was once asked for from the public is now seen as an entitlement by local public officials both elected and unelected. Among the incenteratti, immediately upon the failure of Plan A there will always be a Plan B (or C or D...), or the need for "improved communications", or the hiring of more consultants to point out Airpark on a map and call it an "Opportunity Zone" or some damned thing to justify the money they take and to help explain away their lack of (positive) impact.
The idea that this money is better left in the hands of the taxpayers never survives. Because, you see, in the eyes of Official Midland, it's their money now. Not yours.
(Originally posted by Walsingham on March 28, 2010)
ED Wayback Machine, Part IV: Government Bailouts? No problem!
It seems like I have heard something recently involving Chrysler and taxpayer assistance...although I am sure I don't what it was.
Now, while the author of this letter apparently has no problem with even serial government bailouts, the fact of the matter is that most Midland voters probably do. And anyway, these are not bailouts, right? Or even subsidies. They are forgivable loans. Forgivable loans with hard-wired, iron-clad, taxpayer-protecting, "Clawback Provisions" that sometimes make the more traditional loan agreements with professional private lenders look tame by comparison. In fact, in many of these agreements the Shilocks at the MDC/City are even harder on the "Lendee" than would be any private sector lender. I know this because I read it in the paper:
Ten years later, reality has asserted itself. Currently, several of the MDC's "clients" are attempting to renegotiate their agreements; presumably to make them less stringent, not more. We shall soon see what the actual level of enforcement on these agreements is going to be. It is a tough one. On the one hand, these companies are probably hurting. On the other, we certainly don't want to be written down as patsies to future "incentees". Well, as much as one can have an economic development fund at all and not be seen as a patsy, anyway.
We have asked these questions (and others) before, but the opportunity presents itself again:
An interesting paragraph from above:
"The economic development agreement is sometimes more stringent than normal business agreements because public funds are involved, and the city has an interest in seeing that these dollars are protected and not wasted."
Really? Then given an actual choice, why would any company choose the more stringent agreement? They wouldn't ever.....unless they were betting that the provisions in the agreement, however stringently written, won't be enforced.
The dice are rolling on that as we speak.
And, yes, everything that is happening nationally applies here. Directly. Every reason there is on why the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress shouldn't try to direct an economy at the national level applies in every way to the Midland Development Corporation and the City Council at the local level.
(Originally posted by Walsingham on March 29, 2010)