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?

Sexism was once a word denoting making a woman fetch coffee for her boss who was not as intelligent and I've no doubt that a lot of that happened. But that term, as used today, has been deliberately debased, turned into a scattershot accusation to the point that it has lost most of its original meaning. It is now a cudgel to oppress the opposition.

We have no sexism, even when we call Hilary "Hildog" and insult Michele Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Cindy Sheehan

This from a commenter in these pages and was meant to be an ironic take on a conservative.

Now hear this. I detest Hillary Rodham Clinton because she's a power-mad, dishonest, lying, mean collectivist. I have said disobliging things about her fat ass, going down to the ad-hominem, for great good fun, and in this I have not descended to half the dirt that the left has said about Dubya. But if Hillary Rodham Clinton looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1975--and that was pretty impressive--and if said Hillary Rodham Clinton crooked a finger at me, favored me with a lubricious wink and said, "Come, Theocritus. You show me some things and I'll show you some things," I'd still dislike said Hillary Rodham Clinton for being a power-mad, dishonest, lying, mean collectivist. And I'd make nasty comments about that, all together now, power-mad, dishonest, lying, mean collectivist, but being a muscle-bound meathead instead of having a fat ass. We chose our (admittedly cheap) ad-hominem insults to fit.

I dislike the other women cited, not because of what's between their legs but because of what's between their ears, which has the tendency to come out their mouths. They're all loathsome, awful, horrible people, and for me to dislike them is not sexist. It shows judgment.

Oh. I get it. That's the point, isn't it? Independent judgment is dangerous to the received opinion of the bien pensant and that received opinion must be protected and cherished and in particular shielded from that nasty old spotlight of free inquiry.

Sexism was once a word denoting making a woman fetch coffee for her boss who was not as intelligent and I've no doubt that a lot of that happened. But that term, as used today, has been deliberately debased, turned into a scattershot accusation to the point that it has lost most of its original meaning. It is now a cudgel to oppress the opposition.

We have no sexism, even when we call Hilary "Hildog" and insult Michele Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Cindy Sheehan

This from a commenter in these pages and was meant to be an ironic take on a conservative.

Now hear this. I detest Hillary Rodham Clinton because she's a power-mad, dishonest, lying, mean collectivist. I dislike the other women cited, not because of what's between their legs but because of what's between their ears, which has the tendency to come out their mouths. They're all loathsome, awful, horrible people, and for me to dislike them is not sexist. It shows judgment.

Oh. I get it. That's the point, isn't it? Independent judgment is dangerous to the received opinion of the bien pensant and that received opinion must be protected and cherished and in particular shielded from that nasty old spotlight of free inquiry.

The idea that I cannot say anything disobliging about a member of an accredited victim group means that someone else has taken from me the right to make an independent judgment on my own. The person I dislike is a woman, ergo, everything that person is perforce just fine. Does that include Mata Hari? Does that include Margaret Thatcher? If I said something mean about Margaret Thatcher, the left would be elbowing each other in the sides to dog-pile on her and would be sniggering about stroke, as it sniggered by Reagan's Alzheimer's. The sheer smutty meanness.

In 1991 Clarence Thomas underwent a brutal Senate confirmation hearing, and what the left said about him was the first indication of how thin is the line between the bien pensant and a concentration-camp guard. If you have forgotten, Mr. Thomas is black. Ms. Hill lied about him and was rewarded. By a prestigious ABA award, presented by Hildog, the woman who would be president. I assume that that means that Attilla the Hilla is a racist, as is Anita Hill. This follows from the twisted logic that if I say something nasty about an accredited victim, I am a sexist or racist.

Notice that the left is permitted to look at people individually but the right is not. It is beyond the pale to be insulting to anyone who is not white, male, conservative, and heterosexual. To the left thought is dangerous, for it could destroy the official line. It is sacrilege and I mean that quite literally. It is sacrilege to the secular, totalitarian, absolutist religion that liberalism has become.

If the left may spurn members of an accredited victim class at will, as a tool of exercising control, then to say that the right may not say anything against a accredited victim is an attempt to disarm the right, or any nonbeliever, by making an outrageous charge, which, although it may be utterly unfounded, has been made so fearsome that the accused will very often recant a justified criticism or remain silent--which is just the point. One of the true touchstones of fascism is oppression of opposition. Leveling charges of moral turpitude for daring to criticize the personal behavior of a member of an accredited victim group, regardless of the individual characteristics of that member, is without doubt oppression of opposition. It is thuggish.

It is nothing more than an intellectual blackjack to claim that others, not those of the anointed, have no right to form an opinion--all opinion must be received opinion, from the left. It destroys debate, threatens thought, oppresses opposition, and stifles individual judgment, which must be subjugated to the jackbooted march of a political correctness which cares only for the exercise of unbridled power.

It is intellectual fascism.

...to keep the public informed of its efforts and to serve as a counterbalance to local blogs that have been critical of the organization.

Unfortunately, the initial impression I'm left with is that the MDC may not take the advice of its consultant.

It turns out that DBP is rent-seeking in good faith rather than rent-seeking in bad faith, which is a better situation than we first thought. Our apologies.

"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."

What is lost on Ms. Obama is that history has shown that you cannot force people to produce the pie in the first place.

From the Charlotte Observer:

A panel of five women, each with young children at Dixon Academy, told Obama that the cost of living was taking its toll.

Kim Neely said groceries once cost $40 for a week of meals. Now it's triple that.

Not trying to turn a bunch of our food supply into gasoline could help with that.

Rising gas prices made it difficult to get to work.

It is generally the same set of people who are preventing the drilling for oil offshore anywhere, onshore in Alaska, won't ease restrictions to the point where a new refinery might get built every once in a while, won't let us go to nuclear power, and damned sure won't cut any of the taxes that make up almost one-half the price of a gallon.

Oh, and Mr. and Mrs. Obama are in that set of people. Pie cutters as opposed to pie producers.

Rebecca Allen, a registered veterinary technician, said her dog gets better health care than her family. "We'd like to have another child, but we have no maternity coverage and it would cost half of what I make in a year," said Allen, whose husband runs a small business.

Wait a minute. The maternity coverage would cost half of what she makes in a year? Not to be too callous, but kids once they are born are at least as expensive as maternity coverage aren't they? I am sure that this is Bush's fault either way, but if the family's cash flow is that tight, even if maternity coverage cost one whole dollar, should they have another child right now? And if your dog truly does get better health care than your kids then either you shouldn't have had kids or you should get rid of the expense of the dog.

Obama, like her husband a Harvard-trained lawyer, listened and then spoke off the cuff.

Most Americans, she said, don't want much.

"They don't want the whole pie," she told the women. "There are some who do, but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit. But that is becoming even more out of reach."

So let Michelle cut the pie and feel blessed should she allow you to thrive a little bit.

How are we best to tell the story of Michael Monsoor - a man who's sacrifice inspired a preacher to tell his story from the pulpit?

We'll begin at the end this time because, while many of us believe that it's how you lived that matters, how you leave this world can matter just as much.

Saving three of your brothers by giving your life...could you do that? Mike Monsoor gave three friends their lives that day.

As you will see, the embodiment of the idea of brotherhood is what Mike was all about...

The rest is here at Blackfive.

For more on Michael Monsoor I would suggest using this Google Blog search rather than just a regular Google News search. The bloggers will cover this better for the simple reason that they are interested in it. The national press covered it some but apparently had to leave room just in case Britney shaves her head again.

That "Craddick Question" that was looming over the Lewis-West run-off has apparently been answered. Answered so resoundingly, in fact, that it appears that it was more probably a "Buddy West Question" and the answer was, "No. Thank. You."

This morning brought news of Dean Baldwin Painting's possible abandonment of Roswell for the greener public subsidy pastures of Midland and now comes news of another of their ED projects, Millenium Transport Services, laying off three-quarters of their workers.

Bob Donnell, executive director of the Chaves County Development Foundation, said he is uncertain about the terms of the layoffs but said they may not be permanent.

Let us hope not for Roswell's sake for they are in to that company deep.

How deep?

In 2002, NovaBUS announced it was closing the plant. That same year, a group of employees decided to restart the business in the same plant and formed Millennium Transit Services. The company borrowed money from the city of Roswell, the state of New Mexico and Pioneer Bank in 2003.

Roswell loaned Millennium $2.1 million, the state loaned the company $2 million and Pioneer Bank loaned $250,000. Millennium also got $2 million in training funds from the state Economic Development Department's Job Training Incentive Program.

Wow. The ED Poobahs in Roswell gave that kind of scratch over to a company that had already been shuttered once already? Well, sure they did....because using Magic Chambermath (I am going to have to Trademark that) the second Millenium Transit hired a receptionist, paid two water bills, and bought a ream of copy paper the deal probably "paid out".

In the 16th minute of Googling, Dean Baldwin Painting shows up on the guvmint's Excluded Parties List System.

What is the Excluded Parties List System? One who knows such things explained that, "The Federal Government has this system where contractors must not be in violation of the law to do business with them. If a contractor, or a person with a contractor violates the law, they are disbarred, or otherwise suspended from doing business with the government. The 'EPLS' is the online clearinghouse used by those persuing federal contracts to see if their contractor is barred.

Now, according to EPLS, Dean Baldwin Painting was listed as disbarred from Air Force Contracts on February 26, 2008, with a CODE B CAUSE.

A "Code B" being:

Suspension by an agency pending completion of investigation or legal proceedings pursuant to FAR 9.407-2, GPO Instructions 110.11A or 39 CFR 601.113, and based on (a) an indictment for, or adequate evidence of, the commission of fraud, antitrust violations, embezzlement, theft, forgery, bribery, false statements, or other offenses indicating a lack of business integrity; or (b) adequate evidence of any other cause of a serious and compelling nature. (See Code O-Suspension pursuant to FAR 9.407-2(a)(4) Drug Free Workplace Act of 1988.)

Gnarly, dude.

The "One who knows such things" mentioned above also says that we should emphasize that they are currently under investigation which means that the debarrment is not final and may only be temporary.

Duly noted. So they have some time to work this out. After all, it will take some time for us to go borrow the $16 million and then build the hangars for them.

UPDATE: Great. Just Great. Now I have stepped on Ospurt's posts TWICE in one day. Such bad form. Sorry, Os.

Dean Baldwin Painting was suspended from performing contracted work for the United States Air Force and was added to the Federal Government's "Excluded Parties List System" on February 26, 2008.

Details as to what has caused the suspension of their work for the Air Force is not available on line. However the general coding for the cause of the suspension is listed as follows:

Suspension by an agency pending completion of investigation or legal proceedings pursuant to FAR 9.407-2, GPO Instructions 110.11A or 39 CFR 601.113, and based on (a) an indictment for, or adequate evidence of, the commission of fraud, antitrust violations, embezzlement, theft, forgery, bribery, false statements, or other offenses indicating a lack of business integrity; or (b) adequate evidence of any other cause of a serious and compelling nature. (See Code O-Suspension pursuant to FAR 9.407-2(a)(4) Drug Free Workplace Act of 1988.)

At this time, according to the EPLS while Dean Baldwin is under investigation:

Contractors are excluded from receiving contracts and from directly or indirectly receiving benefits under Federal non procurement programs, and agencies shall not solicit offers from, award contract to renew or otherwise extend the duration of current contracts, or consent to subcontracts with these contractors, unless the acquiring agency's head or a designee determines that there is a compelling reason for such action. Government prime contractors, when required by the terms of their contract, shall not enter into any subcontract equal to or in excess of $25,000 with a contractor that is debarred, suspended, or proposed for debarment, unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Debarments are for a specified term as determined by the debarring agency and as indicated in the listing.

Currently the matter is listed as under investigation and Dean Baldwin may be able to resume work on the lucrative Air Force contracts at some later date. For now, this is most concerning given the amount of money the City of Midland is about to pour into this venture. At a minimum we need some reassurances that Dean Baldwin will be keeping their Air Force Contracts before they City inks the deal the MDC has proposed.

"Foley, Richardson team up to help Dean Baldwin" - Roswell Daily Record (02/08/2008)

A collaborative effort on the part of local and state officials has apparently saved nearly 200 jobs at the Dean Baldwin Painting Company in Roswell.

Gov. Bill Richardson, with the help of state Rep. Dan Foley, R-Roswell, worked this week with the aircraft painting company to craft a long-term plan to pay $233,000 in back taxes owed to the state, according to Dean Baldwin Painting CEO Barbara Baldwin.

"Dean Baldwin current on rent" - Roswell Daily Record (01/14/2008)

Assistant City Manager Larry Fry recently informed the Record that as of Jan. 8, the company was past due on rent payments for the month of December only.

Councilman and Chairman of the Airport Council Committee Lee Rogers stated during Thursday's City Council meeting that Dean Baldwin was current on its rent payments and other fees to the city. The company still owes the city $53,498.60 for its UDAG loan, which includes payments that have been due for 10 months. However, Rogers said the city is working with Dean Baldwin on collecting these payments. Company officials are currently working on a budget for 2008 in which arrears to the city will be addressed.

"Dean Baldwin behind on rent, payments" - Roswell Daily Record (01/06/2008)

Dean Baldwin Painting, which specializes in aircraft strip and paint services, and has facilities at the Roswell Industrial Air Center, owes the city more than $90,000 in rent and loan payments, according to RIAC Property Manager Spencer Fields.

Roswell Finance Director Larry Fry explained that the total amount owed on the company's UDAG loan, $53,498.60, includes payments that have been past due for 10 months.

"ICE arrests 15 aliens in Roswell working for U.S. military contractor" - U.S. Immigrations and Customs website - 08/29/2006

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents today arrested 15 illegal aliens who were working for a local company here that is under contract to paint U.S. military aircraft, including Lockheed C-130 military aircraft.

Some of the aliens were in the process of painting these aircraft when they were arrested.

"Paint company receives $1.5M for fire suppression upgrades" - New Mexico Business Weekly (04/09/2003)

Roswell, N.M.-based Dean Baldwin Painting Inc. has been awarded a $1.5 million grant to upgrade its fire suppression system.

The grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration (EDA), will be used by Dean Baldwin to replace an 800,000-gallon fire protection water storage tank, four nonfunctional fire pumps, 16 deluge fire sprinkler riser assemblies, and four wet pipe fire sprinkler riser assemblies. The grant will also be used to install new wet pipe protection for eight filter banks, and a new foundation for a water storage tank.

U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) said the work was necessary to maintain Dean Baldwin's facility so it could continue to get contracted work from the government and the private sector. The U.S. Airforce contracts with the company to paint its aircraft.

The City of Roswell will match the grant with $400,000 and another $200,000 will come from Dean Baldwin Paint Inc.

Just so you know we are not making this stuff up.

"It is in no way official yet....," but according to the MRT, the Midland Development Corporation has agreed to offer Dean Baldwin Painting of Bulverde, Texas a lease on $22.8 million in facilities to be built, or upgraded, at Midland International Airport.

For now, let us ignore the recent problems with Dean Baldwin painting, such as hiring illegal aliens to paint Military Aircraft, being late on the rent to the City of Roswell, being about a quarter of a million behind in NM state taxes, losing Aloha and ATA as customers, and the slow-down at all the major Airline's and look at the deal itself.

With military contracts, Southwest, United Airlines and many other large airlines in the fold, the short to medium range business prospects look decent for painting aircraft. One can see where the MDC Board Members think they have "pocket aces" and are willing to "go all-in" with Dean Baldwin Painting. However, there are some interesting questions to be answered.

Is Dean Baldwin a "Real Fish", or is the MDC just Excited about building at the Airport?

The story doesn't talk about any cash incentives, or any "claw-back" provisions like previous announcements. It seems that the MDC is more excited about playing Landlord and collecting rent than having Dean Baldwin. This Dean Baldwin deal is so downplayed, is seems they are open to walk away from Midland at anytime. Maybe there is more to the deal than reported, but seems like the taxpayers on on the hook for the building without much recourse than a standard "breaking the lease" clause, which seems fine to the MDC with quotes like:

The company could become an anchor business for an aviation cluster in Midland, said Mike Hatley, vice president of economic development.

"Typically in our industry, the first one is the most expensive," Hatley said referring to cost of refurbishing and constructing the hangars. "But as soon as we bring in the industry, one begets the other."

Officials said even if the deal isn't successful, the demand for the hangar space at the airport is high so finding a tenant would not be difficult

Is Dean Baldwin good for Midland, or does the MDC just want a date to the Aviation Industry Dance, and will take anyone?

With Hourly Wages starting in McDonald's territory and manager salaries below $65k are these the "High Paying" jobs we're supposed to attract?

Trace Engines cost the taxpayers a whole lot less money in incentives than Dean Baldwin will, and according to their press releases, Trace is providing median salaries in the $50k per year range. Dean Baldwin is going to have median salaries under $30k. It seems to me we are courting a fairly low wage, high capital industry.

I'm just curious if Long Standing Development desires (i.e. the Airport) are more important than Due Diligence to the MDC right now?

My submittal to at the Absolut Vodka rhubarb Photoshop contest.

Update: With my Texas upbringing I would naturally assume that anyone anywhere viewing this would know immediately what it is, but for those that don't it is a famous old rendering of Santa Anna (replaced by the Absolut bottle) surrendering to Sam Houston (sitting at base of tree) immediately following the battle of San Jacinto. After San Jacinto, General Santa Anna, after sacrificing several thousand of his soldiers' lives to take the Alamo, gave up all of the rest of Texas to save his own.

And I realize that the word "Fail" is being using as a noun here....but just go with me on this....it is an internet/gamer thing.

A Michellanche! Welcome MichelleMalkin.com readers!

The Scandinavian Vodka maker, Absolut, has stirred up quite a controversy with their "In an Absolut World" ad campaign. Michelle Malkin has been riding the wave in regards to the ad which shows a map of Mexico controlling most of the current Western United States.

There has been a call at IMAO.us to create some different "In an Absolut World" spoofs, and I since I was feeling creative, here is my attempt:

Back before the advent of intellectual fascism, sorry, I mean political correctness, you didn't want to be a victim. A victim was someone who was robbed by a robber, murdered by a murderer, swindled by a con man, or governed by a Democrat. In each case you could have walked in Central Park at midnight, or bought diamonds over the phone, or cast you ballot for Jimmy Carter, or you could have been totally innocent but in each case you got something that you didn't want and I can't imagine even the most rabid Democratic partisan admitting that he liked the administration of Parson Carter. And therefore in each case being a victim was a bad thing, like getting, oh, say, robbed or killed or watching Parson Carter screw up the hostage rescue and the economy.

Now, in the noughts, being a victim is a good thing, or least a profitable one, because if you're a victim you have access to attention. You can spend a lot of time talking about yourself at high volume, flashing your wounds, and they don't have to be real ones--"recovered memories" come to mind--and if someone suggests that you ought to grow up, suck it up and go down the road, you can sniff and call him "insensitive" and "Republican" and "conservative" and "hard-hearted."

Yep. All that and more. Except the insensitive bit, for I'm sensitive as hell to being manipulated. I'm sensitive when people want to stand under the spotlight of attention, drawing attention to themselves to get that satisfying rush of Other People's Eyes. Pascal said that all the troubles of the world were owing to mankind's inability to sit alone in his room. The world must have the biggest housing shortage in history to judge from the whimpering human curs on every corner, on every television screen.

The news wires are hot with the story of a delivery man for Pizza Hut in Des Moines who successfully defended himself with a handgun during a robbery attempt while making a delivery. As it turns out the delivery man had a concealed carry permit and was carrying the weapon legally.

Well, legal in the law sense. But apparently not legal in the Pizza Hut Corporate sense. He has been suspended from his job at Pizza Hut and it is doubtful if he will get his job back.

Vonnie Walbert, vice president of human resources at Pizza Hut's corporate offices in Dallas, made a statement that "as per company policy Pizza Hut delivery personnel are to remain stripped of any effective means of defense and that from this point forward it needs to be widely known that they are all to be considered extremely soft targets. Especially the women drivers."

Okay.....what she actually said was "employees are not allowed to carry guns 'because we believe that that is the safest for everybody.'" Which is the same thing.

Certainly it is Pizza Hut's right as an employer to make helpless their drivers before sending them into really crappy neighborhoods...at night...with cash...over and over and over again, but it needs to be said here that just because Pizza Hut believes that it is safest for everybody when their drivers are disarmed, that doesn't make it so. The driver had a valid CHL which means that statistically he was far less likely to commit any sort of crime than is the general population.

And then there is this guy over at Pajamas Media, who wrote:

But as a Des Moines resident - who like many people across the country frequently exercises my God-given right to order pizza and have it delivered to my door at any hour by a stranger - this is where I start to get almost as wary of the delivery guy as I am of the alleged assailant. They've both got guns, and neither is afraid to use them.

[snip]

.....wondering whether the pizza delivery guy trotting up my walk is packing heat along with my pepperoni isn't likely to do my appetite any favors.

It is a weird world out there. The vast majority of the times you go to answer your door it involves no danger. But sometimes.....well...you've read the papers. Attacks, assaults, rape, home invasions, etc. It does happen.

Now with that in mind, what if Pizza Hut announced a new company policy stating that, henceforth, all of their drivers before showing up on your doorstep and getting you to open your door to them, had to pass a background check that confirmed the following:

• The driver had never been convicted of a felony.
• The driver must not be currently charged with the commission of a Class A or Class B misdemeanor or an offense under Texas Penal Code, §42.01, or of a felony under an information or indictment.
• The driver must not be a fugitive from justice for a felony or a Class A or Class B misdemeanor.
• The driver must not be chemically dependent.
• The driver must not, in the five years preceding the date of application, have been convicted of a Class A or Class B misdemeanor or an offense under Texas Penal Code.
• The driver must not be currently restricted by or subject to a court order that restrains the applicant from injuring, harassing, stalking, or threatening the applicant's spouse or intimate partner, or the child of the applicant, the applicant's spouse, or intimate partner.
• The driver must not, in the 10 years preceding the date of application, have been adjudicated as having engaged in delinquent conduct violating a penal law of the grade of felony.
• The driver has submitted a full set of fingerprints to both the state and the FBI in order that a full background check be done.

Now who wouldn't feel better about their spouse or teen-aged daughter opening the front door to a guy who has met all of those requirements? I know I would.

And if she is opening that front door to someone who has a valid concealed carry permit that is exactly what she is doing.

Dell Computer has some serious issues of late. Of particular interest is the news that the company has announced that it will close its desktop manufacturing plant in Round Rock, Texas.

I seem to remember that this was a big "Economic Development" coup for Williamson County, but I have come up empty so far in trying to determine how much, if any, tax dollars were thrown Dell's way to locate their plant there in the first place.

The Taylor Economic Development Corporation website is no more forthcoming on their ongoing operations than is the Midland Development Corporation's website. Try going to either site to figure out who they are currently subsidizing or (Heaven forfend!) to find out how any of these legalized kickback schemes worked out.

Case in point: A search for "Countrywide" on the Midland Development Corporation's website. That little episode is getting pushed down the memory hole as far as possible. The good news is that you can still watch a video of the still empty Entrada Business Park Building A that was purported to be so desperately needed by those annointed to decide such things.

What is lost on me is why the high priests of economic development think that their attempts to direct an economy will be any more successful than anyone else's have been historically. Or why they don't see taking millions of dollars of tax money per year..and now borrowing roughly $20 million more...and essentially placing bets on MDC-favored companies that compete in industries and markets that they simply cannot know much about is not the very epitome of the dead hand of government.

I say "cannot know" not because these are not smart people but because a board of six people simply cannot possess enough market knowledge in any one of these industries (much less across several industries) to determine where resources should be allocated between competing interests.

The problem may be that all of the various development corporations across the state of Texas that are transferring countless millions of dollars in public funds over to private concerns consider themselves "the market" for companies looking to relocate.

In fact, they are the very worst corrupters of the market.

The headline reads like it was a crime that could have occurred "2,000-10,000 years ago" if you are too given over to free association like I am, but it did lead me to Google up "Midland Man" and in the process learn that 1) Midland Man turned out to be a woman, and 2) that Time magazine has now has news archives that go way back.

According to the agenda for the Special Meeting scheduled for April 7, 2008, the Midland Development Corporation will consider a lease for the hangars at the airport:

Consider a motion authorizing the execution of a lease regarding the AMI Hangar at the Midland International Airport (located in Lot 1, Block 13, Industrial Park Regional Air Terminal, Unit 12, Midland, Midland County, Texas), and two new Hangars and a parking lot to be constructed by the Midland Development Corporation at the Midland International Airport.

I guess we won't have to wait to long until we learn who is going to get over $20 Million dollars in Midland's Economic Development goodness.

Now, given the fact TWO airlines have gone bankrupt in the past few days, (Aloha and ATA) should this be a cause for concern like the growing sub-prime crisis that surfaced about the day CountryWide was revealed as the MDC's last "Big Fish"?

According to the agenda for the Special Meeting scheduled for April 7, 2008, the Midland Development Corporation will consider an incentive package for a company located on the following tract of land:

Consider a motion authorizing the President of the Midland Development Corporation to negotiate and execute an economic development agreement regarding a 9.48 acre tract of land, out of a 102.313 tract of land out of Section 12, Block 40, T-2-S, T&P RR Co. Survey, Midland County, Texas.

This property is located more or less on the Northwest Corner of Loop 250 and I-20, and is about 281 feet OUTSIDE the City Limits of Midland.

Now, according to Midland Central Appraisal District Records:

Owner Name: THE FIBER COMPOSITE CO INC
100 RUNNELS ST
BIG SPRING, TX 79720
Legal Description: Acres: 9.480, N/2, SEC: 12, BLK: 40-T2S
Property ID: R000204354
Property Address: INTERSTATE 20 ~ 0 ~ W
Geographic ID: 00004020.012.5040

Now, who is The Fiber Composite Company? Well first off, they are a beneficiary of Moore Development Dollars over there in Big Spring, which means they are familiar with local Economic Development Funds. Now as to what they do:

The FIBERCOMposite Company, Inc. (FIBERCOM) founder and CEO / Chairman, Russ Rutledge has been involved in the use of fiberglass sucker rods in crude oil production for over twenty years. In 1978, he co-founded a company for the production of fiberglass sucker rod systems. This company, Fiberflex, expanded the sales and use of fiberglass sucker rods in both domestic and international markets, and developed new markets for industrial uses of all manners of shapes and sizes of fiberglass reinforced materials, compiling record sales from 1978 to 1985.

Now what was that word that keeps coming up in pretty much every speech by any politician, board member, or executive director since the inception of the Midland Development Corporation? Buelller? Bueller? DIVER----, anyone?, anyone?, DIVERSIFICATION, is the act of... anyone? anyone?...diversification is the act of.....anyone?... the act or practice of manufacturing a variety of products, so that a failure in or an economic slump affecting one of them will not be disastrous.

Who's the Sucker?

UPDATE Apparently SMITHS Group recently purchased FiberRod (March 19, 2008). So we have not only incented a long time Permian Basin Oil Field Company that is on the public dole in Big Spring, we are giving funds to a Multi-National Corporation headquartered in the UK, with significant holdings in the Medical Arena and Specialty Engineering Services.

Nobody here claims to be any good at reading tea leaves, but...early guesses as to which company it might be that the Midland Development Corporation is trying to lure into the proposed updated/new hangar space focused on MD Helicopters.

Apparently, it wasn't MD Helicopters.

The other sort-of-wild guess is Dean Baldwin Painting, an aircraft painting outfit who has shown themselves very, very willing to soak local taxpayers wherever they happen to be so it would be a perfect match.

An hour's worth of Googling told us enough to know that, whether or not it turns out to be, it darn well shouldn't be Dean Baldwin Painting.

Whichever company it turns out to be, it appears that it is attractive enough to compel the MDC to begin to borrow money to throw at them.

The Washington Post reported that U.S. soldiers fired on a civilian bus in Iraq killing 16 people. The only problem? That isn't what happened.

Still, this is probably enough for Hollywood to green light a project "based on a true story" or at the very least "based on a news report that was actually printed" which meets the standard of accuracy that Hollywood requires before they slander the troops.

Actually, that isn't true. There is no standard of truth or even probability that Hollywood requires before making a movie that slanders the troops.

And what about the news report itself? The flagship paper of our nation's capital ran with this story based on a telephone interview with two people who admitted not actually having seen American soldiers firing at anyone.

"They shot me with small arms from the beginning of the bus to the end, the whole side, then they shot this rocket," Qader, 58, said in a telephone interview.

[snip]

Qader and Jubur [the other witness/telephone interviewee] said they themselves did not see American soldiers firing but heard the gunfire and were told by the Iraqi soldiers that the American troops had fired.

Newspaper ads sales dropped further in 2007 than they have in any of the previous 50 years. Certainly, some of this is due to cannibalism from online ad sales, but ad sales are based on readership and you have to wonder how much of the readership drop comes from an ever increasing lack of reliability on the part of the mainstream press whether it be from incompetence, sloth, or outright bias.

Icing on the cake: Our capital's premier and storied paper of record, was punked by a Milblogger.

Or as the kids say, P0wned.

On March 26, Walsingham, who may one of these days go mano a mano with me to be the regnant champion curmudgeon on Jessica's Well--I'm getting very jealous--posted the hilarious video Hillary Rambo Clinton.

Here is the original exposure on CBS News.

The rumor I heard is that Hildog was disobliging to Katie Couric and Ms. Couric therefore did something decent and exposed the Hildebeest. I do not know the details but I'm sure it was Our Empress' self-importance and her feeling of being entitled to, well, everything. Which must be a bit rich for Ms. Couric to take because Ms. Couric feels entitled to, well, everything. Neither one is entitled to more than an infestation of armpit fleas.

I recall just after the Rodney King beating that Ms. Couric had a falling out with Bryant Gumbel, who also has a feeling to being entitled to, well, everything, and he was moaning in his usual fashion about racism, which is pretty rich from a rich, celebrated, famous black man who's made it far higher than most people of any stripe will ever make it, and Mr. Gumbel's attitude got right up Ms. Couric's nose and she insisted on running the entire Rodney King video, which showed that the other passengers of the car got out, made no trouble and were not touched. This inflamed Mr. Gumbel, for after all, nothing is worse than an inconvenient truth to a leftie, and a good time was had by all. Well by all I mean Ms. Couric and Theocritus.

One cheer for Katie Couric.

Oh, if you watch South Park you'll find that there is an episode about a contest on who can produce the biggest turd in the world, and the unit of measure is the Couric.