The Internet has given us many new rituals, the endlessly passed around "This is funny" being the main one. The number of shriek marks and "Fwd" prefixes give warning. If you're like me, you gauge whether you ought to delete it without reading by the number of them that you get from an individual, the number being more important than the taste of the individual. There's room in that alone to be quite disobliging to anyone, if that is your bent but I'll try to be good today as Vita Nova, the new house, is progressing nicely and in particular the eerie in which I'll mount the rail-gun technology that GE developed for Star Wars but which I will use to take out low-riders bouncing to hip-hop.

That said, I did get one which did not seem to be a mere rehash of last century's Darwin Awards, and it is this:

One of the sayings of the redistributionist left is getting a fair share of the pie. Not only is this a cheap metaphor, but it assumes that there is one pie and that is of one size and cannot grow--an idea which is instantly disproved when one realizes that we no longer live in caves. This is of course the saying they use as an excuse to dig into your pocketbook and take an amount of their choosing to give to someone of their choosing, and then tell if you don't like it that you're being mean. This is like the rat-faced Barney Fife here giving you a ticket when you were not the one speeding and then insisting that you smile in appreciation for it.

But then the left also has the conceit that the rights pie is infinitely expandable--that one group may be accorded rights not given to another group and that all are the better for it. I hope that this is their conceit; even I do not hate them enough to suggest that they would rejoice in causing some groups pain. Perhaps I don't hate them that much. Come to think of it, reality might compel me to hate them that much.

It is obvious to even the meanest intellect, or the meanest intellect properly understood, that if, for example, you deny entrance to medical school to a candidate who is white and male and better qualified than one who is none of them, then you have taken a right from the well-qualified white male and given it to someone else. There are as many rights pies as there are people and the only people who have a right to serve up a slice are the people who own the pie.

Come to think of it, there are as many property pies as there people, and the only people who have a right to serve up a slice are the people who own the pie.

Notice that the left has got both of them backwards, utterly backwards. Just who's the pervert?

The Texas House has just passed the "Sine Die" Resoultion... and Speker Craddick is still standing. Though this political cat may be another life short.

Mike Lake, a Canadian MP, wants Bigfoot to be protected as an endangered species. He was petitioned to do so by a Bigfoot researcher named Todd Standing.

Mr. Standing has convinced Mr. Lake to fill a bill to protect Sasquatch under Canada's Species at Risk Act, according to the Vancouver Province and over 500 of his constituents signed a petition to effect such protection.

Mr. Lake, the father of this, says that he has evidence of Bigfoot's existence but, fearing for its safety, will not release it until Bigfoot is protected. A hoaxer and insane. And getting away with it.

Do not laugh, folks: this is no sillier than any other clap-trap about endangered species. One popular book released about a decade ago, whose name I repressed, says at the first that 100 species vanish from the earth every day and in another part that 1000 species vanish every year. Or the other way around. Either way, the species vanish either 36.5 times more often or less often as you read the book. And the only thing that we know about these species is that they are vanishing. We. Don't. Know. Anything. But. That. They. Are. Vanishing.

People get paid for this and we will probably elect a president by this sort of rubbish for it is the twin brother of Global Warming.

Have you laid in supplies? I bet that the Mormons have some good tips on how much you'll need and the hardiest and cheapest forms.

You have to love Texas Politics. Especially the tenure of Speaker Craddick. Democrats Fleeing to Oklahoma, then New Mexico (though I think Dewherst should get that tag) and now a second assault on his position of Speaker.

The knives are out on both sides of the isle, yet Craddick is still standing. I peeked in on the session and between conference committee appointments and house resolutions, friend and foe alike were posing Parliamentary Inquiries of the Speaker, mostly for the joy of hearing their own voice, I presume. I say that because it seems his enemies and speakership suitors gave up trying to ambuscade Craddick with parliamentary contortions, since the targets today seemed to be the newly appointed Chief and Deputy Parliamentarians.

Craddick is seasoned and shrewed, and his argument as to the applicability or existence of a "motion to vacate the chair" in Texas Law is compelling. Read it yourself, but basically, the logic goes, since he is a Texas Constitutional Officer, to remove him takes impeachment, just like the leader of the Senate, the Lt. Governor. To follow any other procedure would require an amendment to the Texas Constitution.

The press is fueling this "remove the chair" insanity by dredging up the year 1871, which seems to be a very popular year for the press, or their information feeders, to recall. Too bad they ignore the fact that 1871 was the first regular session post Federal Military Rule, and as such they were operating under:

The Constitution of 1869, drafted by convention and adopted by the voters under congressional Reconstruction, retained many of the legislative provisions from earlier charters but added several that were destined for a very short life...

The Twelfth Legislature was, ['til now], the only one in which Republicans held a majority of seats and also the first to which African Americans were elected. Among unusual procedural incidents were the removal of Republican Speaker Ira H. Evans for opposing the change of election dates that in effect altered constitutional terms of office, the arrest of senators by the Senate and the forcible return of enough to make a quorum, and the expelling of a senator. In the 1872 elections the Democrats reclaimed both houses of the legislature.

Excerpted from today's Patriot Post:

Of course, the economic benefit case for retaining a large pool of unskilled agricultural and service industry laborers is overturned by the economic burden case.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the nation's premier think tank, The Heritage Foundation, estimates, "This $2.5 trillion cost is going to come smashing into the Social Security and Medicare systems at exactly the point those systems are already going bankrupt. So the bottom line is that these individuals will make no net contribution in taxes while they are working. They will be a deficit. But when they hit retirement, they will be an astonishing cost on the taxpayer." Rector warns that the Congressional Budget Office is providing only a 10-year estimate of costs, "but on year 15, it starts to cost a fortune. On year 30, it will bankrupt the Social Security system. It is a disaster, it's a sham, and it's a deception."

Rector notes that of the estimated 4.5 million households of low-skill immigrants who pay taxes now, for every dollar paid in, those households receive an average of three dollars in taxpayer-funded services.

Not Moore. More.

From the keyboard of the invaluable A. Coulter:

The only beneficiaries of these famed hardworking immigrants -- unlike you lazy Americans -- are the wealthy, who want the cheap labor while making the rest of us chip in for the immigrants' schooling, food and health care.

Read more here.

And from the keyboard of the just as invaluable M. Malkin, this:

And it deserves the attention of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has been too busy demonizing immigration enforcement proponents to make sure his behemoth bureaucracy is doing its damned job.

Read the rest here.

This. Not taxes, not the GWOT, not social security. This. Immigration. ILLEGAL immigration. Will be. THE defining topic of the 2008 Presidential race.

And so far, none of the aspirants has the right answer.

In looks as though West Texas' political juice both at the state and national level may be in a real flux over the next two to two-and-a-half years.

In two years our one-time Midland resident will leave the White House.

Right now it looks as though local State Representative and current Speaker of the Texas House Tom Craddick may be in danger of either losing his position during the current legislative session or at the very least in danger of not getting the Speakership for the next one. And should he either be unseated in this term or have an idea that he won't be voted Speaker in the next one I can't imagine that he would hang around the Lege any longer. Which means a freshman State rep for Midland for the first time in forty-something years. But at least any new rep would be in the majority party.

Which brings us to our local Congressional District. A Question: If Craddick had not been Speaker, would the 11th Congressional District....a district carved perfectly for a Midland-based candidate if not Mike Conaway personally...even have been created in it's current form? The point being that if Speaker Craddick is not there for the next re-districting will the 11th survive in it's current Midland-based form?

One more question: I am not sure how state funding works and how "locked-in" funding for yet started projects is....but if the worst happens and the Speaker does not survive the current putsch....does the big new performing arts center get built? Because payback can be tough and if they are strong enough to get Craddick they are strong enough to get his projects.

I suppose it's my advancing age and disposition to harrumph that causes me to cast a jaundiced eye at the people capering across the public stage offering cures, nostrums, panaceas, and exhortations to join them. I figure if they were happy at home, they'd stay there. Pascal, no fool in the slightest said, " All the evil in the world comes from man's inability to sit quietly and alone in a room for a while." That seems more and more to be the wisest thing I've ever read and explains neatly the Gorobots, that howling Crow woman, and millions more unsatisfactory people. Yes, I suppose I'm in a mood to harrumph.

I've noticed, with a twisted lip, all the moral superiority which accompanies all of these people. They find something of interest, some way to project themselves on others, and then haul up their trousers and let fly, and it never enters their minds if they're right, or what the consequences might be, or whom it might hurt. It's all about them, you see, and the more they claim it's not, the more it is.

It's the purity of their motives that counts, the snow-white conscience which they so tenderly cultivate. And it is the only motivating force that they recognize, one so overmastering that nothing else matters, for the world is seen through the prism of their self-regard. This was once called selfishness, then psychosis, and now it is called sensitivity when it is just the opposite.

Senator Cornyn and Senator Kyl (R-AZ) filed a competing plan about two months later. Cornyn-Kyl contained a complete approach to enforcement, including border security, workplace verification, interior enforcement, and measures that required those here illegally to return to their country of origin and get in line before becoming eligible for U.S. citizenship. McCain-Kennedy contained almost no enforcement, but concentrated instead on measures for illegals to stay and "earn" legalization through fines, work, learning English and avoiding criminal activity.

Emphasis mine. You need to read the whole thing here. Huge hat tip to Powerline's Scott Johnson.

Reform this. Call or write your senator or congressman. Let Sen. Cornyn know he's right. Let McCain know he's way off base. Cloture passed tonight on this abomination of a bill, McCain-Kennedy.

Over the weekend I saw a man flogging a product--a man with classic features, a flickering smirk, and a stubble of beard calculated to the hour--I'd say about 6:37 o'clock shadow. He was standing in front of a factory which was hiding behind various green icons--chlorophyll-producing things, and fertilizer-producing things, which eat one another by the way if you look at it long term, but that is not something that fits in with the huggy, warm, fuzzy feeling that we are supposed to get.

While Bambi walked in front of him, showing the limits of their Chyron, he vapored about the virtues of their car, and I emailed the company this:

Your commercial talking about your green factory says nothing about your cars but that your factory makes a Suburu a Suburu.

When you turn the key, does it go? Or does it merely look green?

Liberalism: coercive sentimentality. A chronic disease, ending eventually in the death of the body politic. During its final phase the victim suffers from delusions of grandeur and psychotic and/or schitzophrenic episodes resulting in the eventual paralysis of the powers of judgment and discrimination. There is no known cure.

A few days ago Shepherd posted a link to a story talking about the changing demographics in developed countries and a small dispute ensued.

In 1972, while a junior in high school, I was assigned the obligatory research paper, and I, who was even more objectionable then, was irritated in somewhat of a racist way by the changing demographics of this town. For my subject I used as a source Paul R. Ehrlich's The Population Bomb which advanced a model of increasing population, based on the work of Dr. Thomas Robert Malthus.

Dr. Malthus is the one who started this whole ball rolling; the Wikipedia article above gives a list of people and movements that he inspired, from the economists John Maynard Keynes to Marx, and even the entire Club of Rome movement. (What is to me the wryest part is that The Population Bomb, which I used as a cudgel to advance my views, has a special Sierra Club edition. And to find that I have been all along a closeted Sierra Clubber, a recondite member of the Knights Templar of the First Church of Gaia. Who'd have thought it? What closet will I next come dancing out of?)

The notion that Environmentalism is a new world religion seems to have become a self proving hypothesis, though many Mainstream Environmentalists deny this.

I however find it curious that there are environmental zealots who are doing things like choosing the shape and form of one of the most sacred religious objects of Judaism and Christianity to house "holy texts." They have even gone so far as to describe the ceremony and care under which the vessel was built, just like the biblical accounts. Either these zealots are openly mocking the place of reverence the "Ark of the Covenant" has for many religious people, or they are mirroring religious ceremony, reverence and spiritualism because they see environmentalism as a religion.

The Ark of Hope, a 49"x32"x32" wooden chest was created as a place of refuge for the Earth Charter document, an international peoples treaty for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century....The Ark of Hope also provides refuge for the Temenos Books, Images and Words for Global Healing, Peace, and Gratitude.

I also find it duplicitous that the Mainstream Environmentalists shy away from even acknowledging the zealots, while prominently displaying things like this "ark of hope" at the UN and in government buildings around the globe.

(h/t hotair.com)

Some years ago there was a magazine called Spy; it was quite irreverent and had a few good articles. For example Leo Damore, a relative of Teddy Kennedy, knew something about Senator Kennedy's murder of Mary Jo Kopechne and was pressured to keep quiet and treated poorly too, with typical Kennedy arrogance. Tiring of it, he wrote Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up, and tried to get it published but the Kennedys managed to quash it for years. Spy had a table showing the Kennedy connections to publishing houses. For this alone it was invaluable.

Spy also took after Donald Trump when the Donald was on television then more than those damned Geiko cavemen are now, and Spy always referred to him as that stubby-fingered vulgarian, which seemed just.

However, I have found out something to elevate Trump. I was watching a documentary on skyscrapers and the Donald was announcing the Trump World Tower, which is about 85 stories. The maker of the documentary interviewed the architecture critic of The New York Times about it, and he was outraged. You see, the Trump World Tower is going to be only one and one-half blocks from the United Nations, and it will be taller. And that's a crime for something to be taller than the UN.

The critic was just what you'd expect--precious, with a cowardly, shifty gaze, hurt eyes, and a sense of being injured. And he was upset that the Donald was going to build a building taller than the UN.

I hope that the Donald has the top floor and spends his time lobbing water balloons at the UN, screaming "You're fired!"

Being technosexual, I of course have high-definition television, or what we can get on DirecTV until the new satellites are launched. Does anyone know the date of activation so I can plan a party? That said, something in HD will draw my eye more than its content might warrant so I can see the pretty colors on the nice big 60" Sony XBRD. No, I never did grow up and quit laughing.

Jeremy Piven's Journey of a Lifetime came on, about his visit to India, towing a cameraman of course. An actor looking for an audience enough to produce it, and of course he followed in the footsteps of the Beatles, making rather more of the Indian influence on their musical work than I had thought there was. Now their publicity was informed by it, yes, but their music? Perhaps so; I'm more qualified to call off the composers of late 18th and early 19th century Vienna than the Beatles' work. Not snobbery, merely an application of time directed by my interest. And there's a lot more to get tired of too--I'm practical if nothing else.

The entire program is based on his search for spirituality and indeed there is not that much about the culture, which I would have liked, or how the country works, which would have fascinated me, but his search for personal fulfillment. He meets an expat American who has been there for a decade, and she talked, with a fire in her eyes, of the time that she knew that she was home and that her three-month stay would turn into a lifetime.

With 1.5 children per couple, our best hope is a quiet death in a clean facility where the immigrant workers speak our language. And that's only the human face of demographic decline.

Wow! Read the whole thing. And happy Mother's Day.

h/t Insty.

I may be wrong but I think that the City Council's decision to stand down for now the effort to get a new convention center on the ballot this November has less to do with information that they don't yet have and more with information that they have received that they did not expect.

Sure, the "numbers" and the "feasibility" study are what they thought they would be, i.e. the "prove the feasibility" of the project through the anticipated demand and revenues for a new center....if only because these numbers only have to work on Planet Chambermath and not in any financial world known to non-space travelers.

More specifically, though, I do not think that they anticipated the resistance that they have received regarding this project both from the public and (I suspect) from the Convention Center Task Force.

So the push has been put off for a year and they are looking for a November, 2008 ballot date.

But they won't pick that date either because it is a general election and a Presidential election at that. Usually, with these types of ballot initiatives the strategy is to find some obscure corner of the election calendar and then try to energize your own base and hope for a small turnout to push it through.

Placing this unpopular initiative on a ballot during a national general election will almost guarantee its annihilation.

In the meantime, it is time to grab the popcorn and watch as elections approach for local offices when the council is not getting along with each other. We already have one declared mayoral candidate who is not the sitting mayor. We may get more. There is a bitter division over the Menchaca issue and it will be interesting to see how council members who are standing for office will position themselves against each other, the current mayor, and the new convention center.

As already noted, the Convention Center seems to be a reality which will happen in the manner and in the scope defined in the Consultant's report. In reading the latest installment in the MRT's Convention Center Coverage, there is no indication that anyone on the Council thinks building the Center by the plan is a bad idea, we just need to sleep on it for a year, or so, and find willing land owners.

The best "opposition" came from Councilperson Morgan, who is paraphrased saying:

[Morgan]...has been concerned about the fact that a new convention center would be operating in the red and indicated there are some "easy wins" the City Council needs to take care of before pursuing the construction of a new convention center. As an example, Morgan said she believes downtown would benefit from more green areas, such as parks.

Much to my dismay, none of the arguments from any of the players show any want to resize and re-scope the facility to lower the operating deficit, adjust to the reality of the convention industry, or abandon the project at all. No, every single comment is only a reason for delay to get other taxpayer funded big dollar projects out of the voters memory or is a reconsideration of location to avoid eminent domain.

One other thing, having done my schooling in structural engineering, the comment about seeing if the County would consider moving the Library into the newly acquired Heritage Building is laughable. Libraries present a very unique structural challenge in that most office structures are not designed for the "live and dead loading" conditions of library stacks. I doubt an office building designed for 50, 80 and 100 lb/sq-ft (offices, corridors and lobbies) will hold up to library loadings of 60, 80 and 125 lb/sq-ft (reading rooms, corridors and stacks) plus a 65 lb/cubic foot dead load for the stacks themselves. Anything but a ground level structure is going to require a significant structural upgrade.

I'm very pleased to have been taken up on my request for some discussion; there are times that I feel that I'm thundering alone. And it's a lot of fun thundering, but not in an anechoic chamber. Thank you.

This discussion has gotten hijacked a bit, though, and not just because of one or two %%%%COMMENTS%%%% that I would have liked to have sixty-sixed. Six. Point sixty-six.

The point, I thought, was about character and what it is. It is not about politics, nor about being right. It is the ability to say, and mean, "Here I stand; I can do no other." To have a view of what is right, instead of what is expedient, and to hold to it. This requires a curiously selfless view of the world because someone with character is not permitted to let himself off the hook. He stands by his judgments and he stands by his judgments of himself. This is implied, utterly, in the people whom I praised, and praise.

The Democratic Party is now officially the only organization on Earth that does not take the threat of Islamic fascism seriously.

Ann Coulter on the recent national elections around the world.

The left howls in fury about George W. Bush but I've scooped no one in revealing that. It's easy to note it and to stand in awe of such naked fury; when I was younger I was afraid that some of it might wash over me, even at a safe and anonymous remove, which is of course fear of contamination, much like fear of catching something from a toilet seat. As I've gotten older, I've realized that I have a certain fastidiousness in not wanting to think too much about the roiling of the insides of these people. Have you seen the paintings of the psychotic made in loony bins before the development of good anti-psychotic drugs? Fascinating but dangerous, even looking in.

I've thought in the past that it was fury at not having their way. After all, Ronald Reagan is still reviled by this sorry lot, and he left office in January of 1989, having won the Cold War without firing shot, the single biggest diplomatic coup in history; he doubled the wealth of America in eight years, and blacks' income increased 40%, the most of any demographic; and Reagan wiped from our national memory that sense of sullen helplessness which was Jimmy Parson Carter's stock in trade.

The MRT's story about the passage of the Midland County Bed Tax by the State Legislature has this curious series of quotes at the end by Keith Dial, the general manager of the Hilton:

"I used to whine about it, saying it would be bad for convention business, although my main opposition is because I'm against taxes in the first place. ... I'm a libertarian," Dial said.

He added that Midland hotels are no longer receiving a lot of business from conventions and a 1 percent increase in the bed tax is unlikely to have a substantial impact on Midland's hotel industry.

"I think anyone that tells you conventions will go away is blowing smoke, it's kind of a hollow complaint," Dial said. "I hate taxation like any normal person would, but it's not exactly a big deal to me. If we had a lot of convention business it could be."

Huh?

The Theory of W.

There is no question that the media sells, well, what will sell; Mr. Darwin sees to that. Fluff sells, and salacity, which is merely fluff that makes one smirk and itch, and I have just heard that Paris Hilton is doing some time in choky. Some website throbbed that at me and I turned my eyes from it, like a vampire from a cross, or perhaps the other way around--ever think of that?--and went on about my business. From what I've seen of that trollop she has followed her bloodline of playing host to the world.

I fail to see how there could be serious news now for everything militates against it. For decades the Zeitgeist has been one of personal fulfillment, with the drum beat, starting in the loathsome sixties, of do your own thing. Now I'm the first to realize that you have to be true to yourself and really should, er, do your own thing, but I am also the first to say that you are not the only thing in the world, that others do in fact matter, and that the universe wasn't born the second that you were. Responsibility comes first. But if you look at modern trends in education, instant gratification comes first, and if that is the summum bonum of modern life, it ensures that people consider only their immediate comfort and are easy prey to flattery. And flatterers have a reason for their lip service.

If everyone is given a prize at every event, it only reinforces the sense of entitlement. I exist, therefore I am worthy. Sum, ergo dignus sum, which motto, oddly enough leads to quite a bit of indignity because Adam Smith's invisible hand is never stayed for good. Life doesn't work that way; you have to earn things. Ours is the society of announcement of achievement substituting for achievement itself, self-regard masquerading as self-worth, and all brought to you by the serious and dull people who find that their jobs are more secure if Junior and Missy all get As, even if they deserve Ds, because the parents are better satisfied with it, won't ask for their jobs, and might unbelt with some money for a pet project. What's frightening is that they probably believe it. What's more frightening is that they don't realize their treason in not educating children. This explains neatly the flight to private or home education.

From the Midland Reporter-Telegram's editorial on the Convention Center Task Force in this past Sunday paper.

The task force has studied the proposal and has deemed it proper for the city to go in this direction. That direction includes building a facility estimated at about $64 million in the downtown area. The committee was strongly in favor of making this recommendation by a solid 8-2 vote.

Well, it was solid 8-2 vote by those that voted. And maybe the five that did not show up to vote for whatever reason were all for the new center also and had they been there the vote would have been a really, really solid 13-2.

Then again maybe the vote would have been a flaccid 8-7 in favor of a new center thereby pegging the Task Force's level of enthusiasm to that of the non-chamber-member general public.

But in either case would it not have been worth five phone calls to find out?

Victor Davis Hanson, excellent as usual, on our modern "freak show" fetish that distracts us from what really matters.

The media run with this trivia because they know it will hook viewers. But why do we care about this transient fluff? After all, it's not as if there hasn't been real news this spring.

Read the whole thing. It isn't long.

Oh Boy! Another consultant report. I'm sure there are some great ideas in there, some marginal idea and some downright insane ideas, but what caught me eye was this:

The city of Midland should invest about $25 million over the next 15 years to assist private developers in implementing a series of projects intended to revitalize downtown Midland, according to consultants hired to develop the recently completed Midland SMART Downtown Plan.

Eight votes "For", two votes "Against", and five members not even voting. Is it possible to withstand the sheer power of this endorsement of a new convention center by the Convention Center Task Force?

So what do you do when the task force that is supposed to provide paper cover for your project delivers an endorsement so lukewarm so as to effectively torpedo the idea that there is any true enthusiasm for such a center...even among the usual (and in this case hand-picked) suspects?

Well, I guess you question the need for the task force in the first place:

"Task force member John Breier, president of the Midland Chamber of Commerce, responded that the study performed by the consulting firm Convention, Sports and Leisure, International revealed that there is sufficient demand from event planners to hold conventions and other events in Midland to justify the construction of a facility with 55,000 square feet of leasable space.

'Isn't that what the study did, wasn't that what the professional, who does this all over the country, who does this for a living (did)?' Breier said. 'They came back with their analysis and said yes.'

Okay. So why form the task force in the first place? You already had your answer, did you not? Judging from Mr. Brier's comment here it appears that he anticipated additional and pre-packaged affirmation of the project and got instead some actual critical analysis. Further, I will have to re-read the report from CSL but I remember being struck by how non-committal it really was in both its language and in any appearance of what you would call a positive "Green Lighting" of the project.

"Breier added that CSL was selected to perform the study because the firm is known for not simply providing the answer it believes its clients want to hear."

Apparently, that is what convention center task forces are for. Oops.

Now, on to Chambermath [See update below]:

"[Task Force member Jane] Wolf indicated it is not unreasonable to expect that a new convention center could draw in at least two conventions with 250 attendees staying for three days at a time. At that rate, each visitor would have to spend about $216 per day to generate $3.9 million in visitor spending."

So...2 conventions x 250 attendees x 3 nights x $219 = $328,500 Direct Spending.

All you have to do to get this level of direct spending to cover the $3.9 million in debt service per year is to....uh....well.....you just multiply it by twelve. Why twelve you ask? Simple. You determine the multiplication factor by dividing your costs by the direct spending.

You do this because you don't want people to think that it might be a problem that the hoped for (hoped for!) $328,500 in direct spending is only about half of what the anticipated annual deficit of operating a new center is estimated to be. And that is without any debt service.

Kudos to Mr. Spear and Mr. Coleman for pointing out the obvious. In such an environment it is much harder to do than you would think.

UPDATE: According to a comment from Task Force member Nelson Spear posted here, the annual debt service would be closer to $5 million and the annual operating deficit would be closer to $750,000 per year.

With these numbers the multiplication factor becomes 15 and the hoped for direct spending represents only 43% of the estimated annual deficit.

UPDATE: The paper has issued a correction on Ms. Wolf's quote above. She actually said "two 250 person conventions per month" and not simply "two 250 person conventions". This of course makes up for the multiplication factor of 12 as calculated above. But only if you hold the belief that there is a direct 1-to-1 relationship between "Direct Spending" and payout towards a new convention center.

In addition, the Site Admin may be correct (see coments) when the $750,000 estimated annual operating defcit for a new center probably already has this anticipated increase in usage figured in.

Bloomberg News wrote

April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of "An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

They'll also find the Gaia equipped with waterless urinals, solar lighting and recycled paper as it marches toward becoming California's first hotel certified as "green,'' or benevolent to the environment. Similar features are found 35 miles south at San Francisco's Orchard Garden Hotel, which competes for customers with neighboring luxury hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont.

This is all very droll, of course, on the surface. I wonder if there is a sign enjoining you to use just one square of toilet paper, two if you must, and if you're supposed to shower with a friend to save water. Well, if Sheryl Crow can, why not you? Perhaps it is paranoid of me to see more in it than birdlime for trendy fools.

Let's start out by calling the "Convention Center Project" what it really is...a MUNICIPAL EVENTS CENTER. In reality, the Midland Rah-Rah team wants to spend $3.9 million a year in debt service and $0.5 million a year out of the budget to cover operating LOSSES to have a nice Municipal Events Center. Not just any events center, no, one for those few local events that pack out the current Midland Center, are too High Brow for the Horseshoe, and can't wait for the grand opera house of the mesquite to open.

The "spoonful of sugar" the boosters are using to force this bad medicine down is based on a "study" that says we can host all kinds of outside conventions and garner that all important visitor dollar. All this is is hope upon hope. This center is going to have to go into overdrive booking out of town conventions to bring enough of those outside dollars into the government coffers to pay for this thing. It is harder to recoup the costs when you only get to pocket the tax on the hotel and food spending, and pray for the "economic activity" multiplier.

Can Midland host some outside conventions? Sure! Will we host a 1,000 attendee convention that will sop up 50% of the hotel rooms in the City? NO. We'll be doing good to add one or two events a year over what Midland Center or the Hilton/Midland Center Combo hosts now.

The short of it is, the boosters want a really nice, 1,200 person, table seating, banquet hall, and they are too afraid to just ask for what they need. No, they have to expand the project and sell up its Economic Development and Downtown Development aspects. Ironically, the downtown development aspects may wind up dislocating a series of cornerstone downtown businesses.

We have economic development corporations letting people out of development contracts because they can't get workers because there are no workers because the economy is too good (no thanks to them), and we have the City looking to do a project to continue their efforts to revitalize downtown at the expense of businesses which stuck with downtown from the beginning.

This logic means one thing: Our community leaders are trying to solve yesterday's problems, with yesterday's thinking, by spending today's money while ignoring the reality of today and the challenges of tomorrow.

I might consider supporting a modestly sized multi-use municipal events center to replace the Midland Center so long as it is sold to the taxpayers as a truly municipal project that will be paid for out of our local pockets, with no consideration to visitors. Selling a 112,000 S.F. convention center under the ruse, other people will pay for it, but for them to pay for it, it has to be bigger than we really need, is just wrong.

This just hit the afternoon headlines at MyWestTexas.com

Task force recommends construction of convention center

Though, looking at the story the Vote to recommend was 8 For, 2 Against with 5 not present.

Today I licensed my car, which turned two. One fee, printed in small type, was a charge of $0.30 for reflectorization. It's at the office so I cannot haul it out of the Hillary to see if I've been having delusions, which some people might accuse me of anyway.

The very word reflectorization will not be found in any thesaurus; it is the invention of a mind far gone with dementia bureaucratica and George Orwell wrote that bad English is the beginning of the end. On the evidence of this, we are well into the end times.

This cheeseparing charge irritated me beyond the 30 cents; that is after all nothing on earth, and I've given people many times that without them asking. But I can see the pantywaists in Austin confecting this, and being serious about it too, saying that they'd like to get a bit more money, and for a good cause, of course, and that 30 cents a pop per license would suit them, and they'll call it reflectorization to make it go down better.

And a spoonful of bureaucratic sugar
Makes the medicine fetch up, fetch up
And a spoonful of bureaucratic sugar
Makes the medicine fetch up
In a most emetic way.

Safety, you know. It's all for safety. When it's not all for the children. When it's not all for the environment. When it's really what suits them and we're supposed to be bullied into going along with it. The judo of using one's better instincts against one; it's an old trick that I learned when used against me by one enamoratus I had and it's not any prettier when used by people with power over me. Locksmiths do not avail against these people.