Many of the letters we found (and a couple of the Editorials) shared the same theme. It was a public economic policy death match between The Enlightened vs.The Aginners. Vision vs. Venom. Nuance vs. Naysaying.

The letter above was a classic example. Referring to the two previous elections when the local citizenry voted down proposals to create an ED Sales Tax, this author unflinchingly lays at the feet of the "Naysayers" the loss of 3,500 local jobs. Please note that this letter also beats the "The Oil Is Running Out! We Must Act Now!" drum. To which I respond, "Welcome, Apache!"

The more I read these letters, the more I come to realize that the fear-mongering that the proponents of the ED Sales Tax employed to get this thing passed almost exactly mirrors the tactics of the Global Warming crowd. Indeed, passing this tax was outright deemed a good and proper response to the attacks of September 11, just two months earlier.

Opponents couldn't possibly have any principled opposition to the tax. They could only be "Naysayers", "Aginners", "Haters of Midland", cheap skinflints, or perhaps just mentally ill. My personal favorite was "the usual suspects". But the arguments used by many of the "Aginners" should have at least sounded familiar to the proponents. They are the exact same arguments that so many of the ED Sales Tax proponents voice when talking about governmental involvement in the marketplace. At least when it takes place on the other side of the Midland County line, anyway.

This letter goes on to school the non-believers and lack-of-visioners with a bulleted list:

• Implementing a well-conceived action plan is always preferable to doing nothing.
  
  Really? What's your point? Okay, that is too easy. Ten years after the passing of the ED Sales Tax all talk of well-conceived action plans still has them residing in the future somewhere. The landscape is littered with the corpses of what were evidently ill-conceived action plans. Dean Baldwin Painting. Countrywide Mortgage. Entrada Building A. So as snarky as it sounds, at this point and with ten years of empirical data to look at, we really are able to ask, "What's your point?"


• 25 cents per $100 is an insignificant investment to insure [sic] a positive economic future for Midland.
  
  Yes, this looks so much better than, say, "Paying out almost a million dollars per year in administrative overhead in order to bank $25 millon dollars is the way to ensure a positive economic future for Midland."
  


• Midland must diversify its economy if it is going to survive the future.
  
  And by "Midland" we mean six political appointees getting together and spending public funds to try and move the local economy in a direction they think is desirable by distributing money to out-of-town rent-seekers and local friends of the Chamber.


• Economic diversification doesn't just happen without competitive advantages.
  
  This is one of the most maddening arguments offered up by self-professed "fiscal conservatives". Please explain to me when it was that a lower tax rate became a competitive disadvantage. The difference seems to hinge solely on who it is that gets to spend the money. Again, again, and again....those "Other People" tax and spend, "We" invest! Dr. FrankenChamber is able (and certainly willing) to re-animate the dead hand of government. But it only works when "we" do it, you see. I guess it's that "vision" thing. Or maybe nuance. Or something.
  


• For Midland to continue to be a vibrant community it must keep and attract its young people.
  
  I agree. Midland needs more attractive young people and if I thought an ED Slush Fund could do that, I might vote for it myself.
  


• The only way to attract young people is to create good paying jobs and economic opportunities.
  
  Beating a dead horse here, but how is it that these "fiscal conservatives" so easily allow themselves the idea that the most direct and streamlined route to a vibrant economy and job creation is...wait for it...the creation of a tax-sucking bureaucracy. But of course!
  


• If you lose your job next week, where will you move to find a good paying job?
  
  Gee, I don't know. Maybe I'll ask one of those 3,500 people that I helped usher out of town by voting against the ED Sales tax the first two times where it is they went. Pathetic.

Well, it is 10 years later. Yes, where would Midland be today without this tax?

• Part I: If we don't pass this tax, then the Terrorists will have won!
• Part II: This economic development stuff is easy!
• Part III: We will use this money to diversify the economy. Except when we don't.
• Part IV: Government bailouts? No problem!
• Part V: Naysayers! They have no vision!"
• Part VI: That Free Market thing? That's like sooooo Reagan. We're smarter than that now.

Have you ever wondered how other units of local government learned how to tax their residents into prosperity by implementing various economic development taxes?

Are you tired of your neighboring communities stealing your corporate welfare shopping prospective industries?

Do you want to learn the secrets of having economic development tax dollars roll in to your locality?

Then you need to read the Texas Attorney General's SMASH hit: Economic Development Handbook for Texas Cities (2008) (298 Pages, 1.4MB).

For the low cost of multiple hours of your life you will never get back you can learn the secrets of "Sales Taxes," "4A/4B," "Abatements," "Venue Taxes," "TIRZ/MMDs/MDDs," even "NAFTA Impact Zones"!

Stop wasting the opportunity to do some Economic Developing! Just listen to the Attorney General's cover letter:

Fostering a vibrant, thriving economy is critical to the future of our great state. All across Texas, cities and counties are working to nurture small business, encourage entrepreneurship, advance commerce, and create jobs.

Fortunately, Texas law offers many options for local leaders seeking to generate economic development and opportunity. This compilation of state economic development laws is published to help Texas municipalities and counties realize the wide-range of legal tools that are available to them.

What are you waiting for? Just put your plans on the next ballot and enlist your chamber of commerce and every local booster in town and get started today!

It seems like I have heard something recently involving Chrysler and taxpayer assistance...although I am sure I don't what it was.

Now, while the author of this letter apparently has no problem with even serial government bailouts, the fact of the matter is that most Midland voters probably do. And anyway, these are not bailouts, right? Or even subsidies. They are forgivable loans. Forgivable loans with hard-wired, iron-clad, taxpayer-protecting, "Clawback Provisions" that sometimes make the more traditional loan agreements with professional private lenders look tame by comparison. In fact, in many of these agreements the Shilocks at the MDC/City are even harder on the "Lendee" than would be any private sector lender. I know this because I read it in the paper:

Ten years later, reality has asserted itself. Currently, several of the MDC's "clients" are attempting to renegotiate their agreements; presumably to make them less stringent, not more. We shall soon see what the actual level of enforcement on these agreements is going to be. It is a tough one. On the one hand, these companies are probably hurting. On the other, we certainly don't want to be written down as patsies to future "incentees". Well, as much as one can have an economic development fund at all and not be seen as a patsy, anyway.

We have asked these questions (and others) before, but the opportunity presents itself again:

• Philosophically, what is the difference between the MDC taking money from the taxpayers and giving it to [Insert MDC Client Name Here] and the Obama administration taking money from the taxpayers and giving it to Chrysler or GM?
• Should the MDC/City Council decide not to actually enforce these contracts (or should they renegotiate them down) isn't that the exact same thing as a taxpayer bailout?

An interesting paragraph from above:

"The economic development agreement is sometimes more stringent than normal business agreements because public funds are involved, and the city has an interest in seeing that these dollars are protected and not wasted."

Really? Then given an actual choice, why would any company choose the more stringent agreement? They wouldn't ever.....unless they were betting that the provisions in the agreement, however stringently written, won't be enforced.

The dice are rolling on that as we speak.

And, yes, everything that is happening nationally applies here. Directly. Every reason there is on why the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress shouldn't try to direct an economy at the national level applies in every way to the Midland Development Corporation and the City Council at the local level.

• Part I: If we don't pass this tax, then the Terrorists will have won!


• Part II: This economic development stuff is easy!


• Part III: We will use this money to diversify the economy. Except when we don't.


• Part IV: Government bailouts? No problem!


• Part V: Naysayers! They have no vision!"


• Part VI: That Free Market thing? That's like sooooo Reagan. We're smarter than that now.

I've been nearly incommunicado for a week, causing some pleases smiles, owing to infirmities, all stacked up on each other. They're all treatable though but until they're resolved, or more so, I have no attention span. I've even been ignoring the internet(s) as much as possible.

But I didn't ignore this joke, which is a variation of an old one. But still good:

The Pope and Nancy Pelosi are on the same stage in Yankee Stadium in front of a huge crowd.

Just noticed this today: Google Earth has updated its satellite imagery for Midland. The photos were taken pretty recently although I am not sure exactly when.

I suggest a game: Determine the actual date the sat photos were taken by looking at the photos. I don't know the answer but here is a hint: Based on the shadows and the fact that the some (but not all) church parking lots are full and that the downtown parking lots are empty it was taken just after noon on a Sunday. Also, whatever Sunday it was..at the time the photo was taken there were no events at the Midland Horseshoe nor at the Scharbauer Sports Complex.....and there was an aircraft at one of the gates at MAF. Okay, Game On!

Update: It doesn't look as though it was the weekend of a big movie opening. Retail is open. MCT doesn't have a matinee running nor is there anything going on at Chap Center. And if you have an answer you had better hurry because I think I just found a killer hint.

In the archives are many, many letters just like this one. Too many to count. All with the same drumbeat: Midland is too tied to an oil-based economy and we need this money from the taxpayer so that we can go out and recruit businesses for Midland who are not part of the oil-based economy. That way we are protected from the downside of business cycles that inevitably come and go.

Actually, it goes a much further than that. The business cycles are usually a result of the market demand (and therefore price) of oil. When the price of oil is high, Midland thrives. When the price of oil is low, Midland suffers a bit. But these cycles are just that. Cycles.

There were also many letters like this one:

One of the biggest arguments offered by the campaign for an Economic Development Sales Tax and its supporters was not simply that we needed to protect ourselves from these business cycles but that the oil reserves on which our economy was based were simply going away. The author of one letter compared Midland to a mining town and stated that he was not aware of a town based solely on mining that survived.

But over the life of the MDC, it has given a lot of money away to companies that 1) are already here, 2) are already coming here without any MDC-driven public subsidies, 3) operate in the oil-based economy, 4) are currently in default (or about to be) on the terms of their agreement with the MDC, or 5) are all of the above. (In fact, here is a challenge: List the companies that the MDC has "incented" that don't fit into one of the above categories.)

Every dollar that the Midland Development Corporation extracts from the economy and turns over to these companies in the oil business like Basic Energy and now the global multi-billion dollar Apache Corporation reveals fully half of the reasoning behind the need for an ED sales tax to be an outright falsehood. I'd call it an outright lie but for the fact that it is a Sunday morning so I feel the need to be more civil. And also because, at the time, the authors of these letters probably really believed what they wrote about what the purpose of this tax money was and how it was to be used.

We have said before that the local economic development establishment behaves and operates as though economic development is whatever the hell they say it is on any given day. Ten years ago the oil patch was going away. Apache Corporation quite apparently disagrees and has decided (with zero artificial incentives needed) to set up a regional office here to handle the acquisitions they have made in the area over the past several years. Still, the local development corporation finds it necessary to hand over a quarter of a million dollars of public money to Apache Corporation to....to do what, exactly? Just spend it locally somewhere?

That kind of sounds like...um..."Stimulus Money"...if you know what I mean.

Go back and read the campaign literature...or wait for it to show up here. It doesn't take much reading to realize that the Midland Development Corporation, along with the City Council, has essentially re-purposed the money that they asked the public for back on November 6, 2001. Yes, I know that "The Law" allows the MDC to spend the money on these things, just as the law allows a panhandler on the street to buy a bottle of vodka with the money he asked you for just so he could get a hot meal.

I would like to think that there is at least one member of the City Council...or even more than one member who would take an honest look at the money that has been taken out of the economy in the last ten years and, taking into consideration the original claims of what the money was for and to whom it would go, and then compare that to what is obviously now a manifest change in philosophy (not to mention the spectacular lack of any success) and then wonder if, just perhaps, the voters should be consulted again.

But then, that's just crazy talk. Because what has happened to this money is what happens to almost all government-run "Investment in our Future!" programs. At the beginning, it was money that was to be used for a specific purpose from which specific results would be achieved.

Ten years on, the money has been re-purposed; there are no discernable results, and what was once asked for from the public is now seen as an entitlement by local public officials both elected and unelected. Among the incenteratti, immediately upon the failure of Plan A there will always be a Plan B (or C or D...), or the need for "improved communications", or the hiring of more consultants to point out Airpark on a map and call it an "Opportunity Zone" or some damned thing to justify the money they take and to help explain away their lack of (positive) impact.

The idea that this money is better left in the hands of the taxpayers never survives. Because, you see, in the eyes of Official Midland, it's their money now. Not yours.

• Part I: If we don't pass this tax, then the Terrorists will have won!
• Part II: This economic development stuff is easy!
• Part III: We will use this money to diversify the economy. Except when we don't.
• Part IV: Government bailouts? No problem!
• Part V: Naysayers! They have no vision!"
• Part VI: That Free Market thing? That's like sooooo Reagan. We're smarter than that now.

I am heartened to see that most of Manhattan's buildings ignored Earth Hour last night, though the Empire State Building probably could not.

I ended up being disappointed in my own efforts, though: even with everything on, I couldn't burn more than 4 or 5 additional kilowatt-hours...

The State of New Mexico doesn't put their WARN list on the internet, but the State of Oklahoma is nice enough to provide it in a spreadsheet. So what is a WARN list, well, it stands for the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act. According to the Department of Labor WARN helps ensure advance notice in cases of qualified plant closings and mass layoffs.

According to the list, Dean Baldwin Painting of Roswell, New Mexico, was scheduled to lay off 55 employees on February 17, 2010. I can't find any newspaper confirmations of them going trough with the layoffs, but to send in a layoff notice to the government isn't a good sign.

If this deal had gone through, I'd put the chances of their being at least two development contract renegotiations since inception at 100%.

UPDATE/ADDENDUM by Site Admin: For those whose memory may have faded a bit on this two year old story, Dean Baldwin Painting was the big fish that the MDC was not only going to throw money they had in the bank at, but also incur a bunch of debt also. The City Council took the MDC Board to task for this one thankfully. For a history of this you can look through the Jessica's Well Archives of April, 2008. With hind-sight, this MR-T article is also a good read.

Well, according to the MRT, it looks like the old FDIC Building at 303 Veterans Airpark Lane has a new MDC incentee! Welcome Apache Corporation, lets hope you stick around longer than the last incentee at that address.

Other business in the action-heavy session at City Hall included authorization of a $250,000 economic development agreement with the Apache Corp. oil and gas producing company to create a minimum of 51 jobs at the firm's new 48,000 square-foot headquarters at 303 Veterans Airpark Lane.

The contract calls for the MDC to make a $125,000 interest-free forgivable loan by May 15 next year and another such loan by May 15, 2012. A $750,000 capital investment by Apache is also required. Based in Houston, the company is opening a regional headquarters office here.

You have to admit it does fit in the MDC Strategic Plan.

Invest in the Oil and Gas Business and Support Energy Business Development in Claydesta/College/Airport Development Zone (though their current office is already at the corner of A & Wadley)

However, here is the question we always ask, why does a multi-billion dollar global company, need a $250,000 forgivable loan to create 51 new jobs in Midland? Especially a firm which has been acquiring fields for years.

Here's their track record:

1991 - Apache Acquires Amoco's MW Properties and enters the Permian Basin.

1995 -Apache Acquires Texaco Properties expanding Permian Basin holdings.

2005 - Apache Acquires ExxonMobil Properties in Permian Basin

March 2006 - Apache Acquires Amerada Hess Properties in Permian Basin.

June 2007 - Apache Acquires Anadarko Assets for $1 Billion

April 2009 - Apache Acquires Marathon Assets for $187.4 Million

It's not like they haven't been growing and expanding in the Permian Basin for a while, and you have to love how they described the area in one of their reports a couple of years ago:

Like Apache's Gulf of Mexico properties, the Central Region is a cash machine. In 2005, the region invested $369 million and earned $841 million, returning $2.28 for every $1 invested. In 2006, a budget of $400 million is expected to return $1 billion, and the region should exit the year with more reserves than when it entered.

Apache is fortunate to have this unsung core asset.

So what do you think the probability of establishing a large regional office in Midland was based on their acquisitions?

I'm just curious where they are going to drop $750,000 in capital improvements when their current taxable property value (excluding minerals) is only $188,540 with only $15,240 being furniture and fixtures.

Somewhere, Chuck Jones is smiling. I know it. And the person that wrote this headline knows it.

See? All it takes to make a multi-billion dollar global corporation do something it had previously thought was not in its interest is to throw just around $300,000 per year at them. And Cingular is big! They will always be here!

What a deal, indeed!

This economic development stuff is easy! We should do more of it!

(Note: In keeping with standard Well practice of not using anyone's names unless we just have to we will be blanking out the names of the authors of these letters. We do this for several reasons. One, Google is forever and while the issues at hand will always resurface from time to time there is no need to have anyone's actual name bubbling up through search engine results from now until forever. Two, we have a "No Hounding" rule here at The Well which states that once someone is out of the news for a period of time they are to be left alone. These letters were written almost ten years ago and none of the authors envisioned them re-surfacing stamped with their names. Further, we don't want this to be a personal gotcha to the authors. The content of the letters is what is important and this is why: 50% of all of these kinds of Letters to the Editors are written by the campaign itself and then a signatory is found for them. 40% are actually written by the signatory but depend heavily on direct information from the campaign. So reading these letters is the best way to get a feel for what the "official" proponents believed (or at least told others) the economic development sales tax would achieve.)

• Part I: If we don't pass this tax, then the Terrorists will have won!
• Part II: This economic development stuff is easy!
• Part III: We will use this money to diversify the economy. Except when we don't.
• Part IV: Government bailouts? No problem!
• Part V: Naysayers! They have no vision!"
• Part VI: That Free Market thing? That's like sooooo Reagan. We're smarter than that now.

Microfiche is a wonderful thing. Okay, I take that back. Microfiche is a total pain now that we have all gotten used to internet based archives.

Nevertheless, we have taken the time to go through some of the microfiched copies of issues of the Midland Reporter-Telegram around the time the Economic Development Sales Tax was passed on November 6, 2001......on it's third try I should mention...the voters obviously having gotten it wrong the first two times it was brought forth. Enlightened (and almost certainly outside-the-box) thinking finally won out and the voters decided the issue...(some say for all time)...with a vote in the affirmative. Midland would have its Economic Development Sales tax and thereby guarantee its future.

We found campaign ads, Letters to the Editor, a couple of "Speaking Out" columns, and some Editorial Opinions. Over the next few days (or until we run out) we will be posting some of the better ones.

The Economic Development Sales Tax has been with us for nearly a decade. In that time, the pseudo-governmental agency known as the Midland Development Corporation has pulled over $25 million out of the local economy. It has banked most of that both denying the taxpayers of Midland the use of their own money and also precluding the much vaunted "multiplication factor" used by the High Priests of the Church of ED when artificially inflating the impact of every dollar they re-direct from the free market.

Of the money that has been spent, no real success can be shown in regard to Midland's economic development nor its diversification. Companies are lining up to "renegotiate" the terms of their "forgivable loans" from the MDC. Indeed, the Mother of All Economic Development Success Stories, the original Cingular arrangement, has essentially collapsed as far as any promise to alter or diversify the local economy.

Now, almost ten years later, in light of all that we now know regarding the performance of our local economic development initiatives, have a look at these archived items and see how well the promises have matched up with the performance.

More tomorrow.

• Part I: If we don't pass this tax, then the Terrorists will have won!
• Part II: This economic development stuff is easy!
• Part III: We will use this money to diversify the economy. Except when we don't.
• Part IV: Government bailouts? No problem!
• Part V: Naysayers! They have no vision!"
• Part VI: That Free Market thing? That's like sooooo Reagan. We're smarter than that now.

Actually, they were against it before they were for it before they were against it again.

A quote from today's MyWestTexas.com article reporting on the City Council's discussion about "sunsetting" various boards and organizations...including the non-performing Midland Development Corporation:

Referring to the elections since 1999 in which the 4A and 4B boards were established, Councilman John James said, "The citizens have already made that decision."

There are two things that Councilman James knows for certain that make this statement really stand out. The first is that the ED Sales tax was voted down at least once (twice?) before it passed in 1999. I guess in those elections the voters didn't decide anything. They just got it wrong. Only when the voters agreed with Mr. James was the issue considered decided.

The second, in all fairness, Mr. James doesn't know for sure...but most everyone else does: If an election were held today to renew the ED Sales Tax it would go down. Big.

That is why all of the talk you will hear about trying to discern the will of the people is just that. Talk. The City Council will never in a million years unilaterally place a "sunset" proposal for the ED Sales Tax/MDC on the ballot. They know what would happen.

Them darn voters would get it wrong again.

One of the most used lines to bolster any economic development project is how this project will help to lower residential property taxes. In theory it sounds great, and mathematically any increase in commercial property valuations will reduce residential property tax burdens. What is tough is quantifying how much your property tax burden is going down because of all of this economic activity, because while there may be an increase in commercial valuations, residential valuations are rising also, and they don't move at the same rate, and they are not of the same magnitude.

Lets start with scale. Taxing bodies LOVE to pull out the impact of a certain bond on the taxes of an average home in Midland as a selling point. The idea is that even though the issuance seems large, your share through property taxes on an average house really is pretty small. Take the $115 Million Hospital Bond:

At a projected 5 percent interest rate, debt service on the 30-year bond would require a tax rate of 6.6 cents per $100 valuation for Midland County property owners. For the owner of a home valued at $100,000, the projected annual additional property tax required to repay the bonds would be $66 a year.

So, for the Hospital, to fund a $7.5 Million annual payment, it costs a person with a $100,000 home $66 a year.

The entities sell this as "insignificant" or "a couple of pizzas a year", however when it comes to "taking taxing pressure off homeowners" the entities want you to think significant dollars, but don't offer you the comparative math, like they did above.

So, lets do a rough, but illustrative calculation of how much money the average Midland homeowner with a $100,000 home is going to save with $15,000,000 in new taxable commercial value in downtown Midland. There are a lot of assumptions, that the property had no value before the project, that the $2 Million tax investment came from nowhere, we are only dealing with the effect on City taxes, that the whole taxable value was available to go into the unrestricted governmental fund of the City supported by ad valorem taxes only, and that it is 2008-2009 (because I can use the CAFR Numbers).

So according to the City's Year Ended 2009 CAFR, the City of Midland had a tax base of about $6.5 Billion. Residential properties account for about $4.5 Billion, before exemptions, or about 65%. This valuation generated about $29 Million of the City's budget, which gives a tax rate of $0.44615/100, (which with all my rounding is close to the City's actual tax rate of $0.4568/100).

So we add $15 Million to $6.5 Billion and we get $6.515 Billion. We still need to generate $29 Million for the budget. That equals a tax rate of $0.44512.

For a Midlander with a $100,000 house, before the project they paid $446.15, and with the project they paid $445.12. WOW, a whole $1.03 in property tax savings.

What if we forgo the $15 Million property tax addition and just dedicate the $2 Million to the City's budget and the City only had to raise $27 Million? That is a tax rate of $0.41538, or $415.38, for a property tax reduction of $30.77.

The real story, in the case of Basic isn't even this good. The property currently has some value (so it isn't all new valuations), and Basic is retaining jobs (not creating new ones, so no new residential properties are built for new workers).

Unless the MDC brings in a whole new industry (or series of new industries) requiring new capital facilities with a taxable value of $500 Million, you will not generate the same property tax relief as putting $2 Million in cash into the City Budget.

The only other way to do this is to have the appraisal district start devaluing residential property (which grew in value by 92.6% over 2005 values) and start increasing valuations of commercial property (which grew by 75% over 2005 values), thus changing the ratio of residential to commercial, but that is still going to take huge amount of commercial development to swing the tide.

A refresher course on the difference between "expressed interest" or "support" for a facility and actual demand: Entrada Building A, available on 08/18/2006, is still empty 1313 days later.

Something to keep in mind when talk of the ginormous, something-for-everyone community center inevitably surfaces.

...from Victor Davis Hanson.

This new America is ultimately predicated on the notion that we were born equal and must die absolutely equal as well. And this is entirely within our grasp, if we just understand that individual responsibility, talent, natural endowment, chance, merit, luck, tragedy, and a dozen other variables far too complex for government to imagine, much less solve, in fact, are not the real obstacles to ensuring equality.

A great critique, as is his norm. RTWT.

From MyWestTexas.com:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Texas Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer (NAW'-guh-bow-er) says he was the lawmaker who shouted out "baby killer" when Rep. Bart Stupak, whose vote was crucial to passage of the health care bill, was speaking on the House floor Sunday evening.

The third-term congressman says he apologized to Stupak. He says in a statement that while he remains "heartbroken" over passage of the bill, "I deeply regret that my actions were mistakenly interpreted as a direct reference" to Stupak.

Liberals were understandably upset at the use of such a term on a Congressman and no doubt decried the higher level of incivility demonstrated by using such a phrase on someone other than a member of the American military.

From the comments here, a good question regarding those "publicly available" parking spaces at Permian Place that were paid for with taxpayer money (paraphrasing):

When the City Council members voted to approve the $2,000,000 public subsidy towards the development of Permian Place did they know that those 75 parking spaces that were to be "made available to the public" would actually only be available to the public after 5PM and on weekends?

(Yeah, I know it is a reach, but I just felt like typing out "Third Party Non-Tenantgate" just to see how clumsy it actually was.)

From Newsroom Stew:

The point here is to say that at some point the MDC needs to tell us in their words why those who write for Jessica's Well are wrong (if they are wrong). For a while now, Jessica's Well has been the most prominent voice talking about economic development, specifically the MDC. And while the development corporation has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing, it is hard to hear their responses. They might say why do we need to respond to these people?

One reason that they could respond is because while we may be bloggers we are also actual taxpayers.

A point of clarification: Walsingham actually does live in his Mom's basement.

As I drove past the intersection of Michigan and Garfield this weekend, I noticed the excavation going on in earnest for the Hospital Parking Garage. As I continued down Michigan to downtown, I decided to check on the Permian Plaza Parking Garage, and noted the weeds had grown a few inches taller. My prediction that the Hospital Parking Garage would be finished first seems pretty secure.

Tale of the Tape:

Midland Memorial Hospital Parking Garage

April 2008 - Fund raising for Tower/Garage Starts in Earnest.
May 2009 - Bond Issue Passes for Remaining Funds.
February 2010 - Parking Garage Construction Begins.
Parking Garage Cost: $8.6 Million
Spaces: 790
Taxpayer Cost Per Public Space: $10,886

Basic Energy Service Permian Plaza

August 2007 - Basic Energy Buys Permian Plaza Property
November 2007 - Basic Energy Announces their Private Permian Plaza Project w/ 600+ spaces.
February 2008 - Basic Energy Approaches MDC for "Informational Purposes"
May 2009 - City Council Approves $2 Million forgivable loan from MDC for project.
Parking Garage Construction - Announced as March 2010
Cost: Unknown - Never Published $5.7 Million
Spaces: 440 470 (75 "Public")
Taxpayer Cost per Public Space: $26,667 (for now)

Basic received a $2 million forgivable loan from the Midland Development Corp., and its application to obtain tax funding for part of its infrastructure costs is pending.

Update: Talk about being slightly ahead of the curve, a mere 3 hours after I post a parking garage update, the MRT has an update on Permian Plaza all ready to go for Sunday.

However, I'm more confused about the "Public" Parking after reading this new story:

Public parking will be rented during business hours and be used on a first come, first served basis after hours and on weekends, architect Mark Wellen said.

So we paid $2 Million for 75 spaces of after hours and weekend parking?

Ohh and for the "Misstatement of the Day":

"It will add desperately needed parking, spur commercial development and take taxation pressure off homeowners."

Not until the expiration of the TIRZ and not unless the Appraisal District fully appraises the complex upon completion. I have yet to find an MDC project that had a taxable value near the "required capital improvements" and all property tax increases in the CBD above the floor set when the TIRZ was established for every taxing entity except MISD, do not go to the bottom line to reduce the tax burden of homeowners, but are reserved for the TIRZ, and the TIRZ alone.

Queen Nancy's Hellthcare debacle continues, so to assist you, here's a little clarity from Mark Steyn for your Saturday.

It ain't over 'til it's over. Or:

Whatever is "deemed" to have passed in the next few days doesn't end the debate but begins it. If you're sick of talking about health care, move to Tahiti, because in the U.S. we're going to be talking about it until the end of time, or at least until the Iranians nuke Cleveland.

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is a good 'un. He is warning people who switch their votes from "no" to "yes" that he'll be after them.

Here's a transcript of the Senator's remarks:

I want to send a couple of messages to my colleagues in the House.

If you voted no and you vote yes, and you lose your election, and you think any nomination to a federal position isn't going to be held in the Senate, I've got news for you. It's going to be held.

Number two is, if you get a deal, a parochial deal for you or your district, I've already instructed my staff and the staff of seven other senators that we will look at every appropriations bill, at every level, at every instance, and we will outline it by district, and we will associate that with the buying of your vote. So, if you think you can cut a deal now, and it not come out until after the election, I want to tell you that isn't going to happen. And be prepared to defend selling your vote in the House.

Ann Coulter has a wonderful article about a good way to fix health care, and it is of course deregulation of insurance.

According to Coulter, if Congress were to amend the McCarran-Ferguson Act, it would allow interstate competition in health insurance. And insurance companies would be exposed to the marketplace. It would be very bracing to have some real choice in insurance, as one does even in submarine sandwiches.

Also if the federal government were forbidden to make regulations which applied only to insurance companies, that would mean that politicians wouldn't be able to force the populace to pay for their particular hobby horses.

Government determines what insurance companies must cover. Port-wine stains, while sad for people to have, are not the sort of thing which insurance is meant to cover. Or meant to be mandated to cover. If you bought a, I started to say Cadillac, then started to say Lexus, Ferrari insurance policy, it would cover port-wine stains and no doubt counseling for your poodle should it not take well to a move. If you are more sensible with your money, then you'd be able to choose catastrophic illness or anything in between.

Ann as usual says it best:

Instead of Harry Reid deciding whether your insurance plan covers Viagra, this decision would be made by you, the consumer. (I apologize for using the terms "Harry Reid" and "Viagra" in the same sentence. I promise that won't happen again.)

I've always like Bret, but thought him, at first, to be nothing more than an overgrown football player. Well, reading news, I thought, was better than selling tiffany sports lamps to sports bars, which is what some football players have done.

Here Bret does a good job of making, or trying, to make Obama answer a question. Notice how Obama is completely at sea when he can't work his look. Details? Why bother. Just work his look. Policy? Huh? Follow him, and don't make him lose his patience.

He really is a star more than a president. Would that he were confined to Hollywood where we could ignore him.

The Guardian, of all places, the principal left-wing paper of the U.K., has noted that greenies tend to be selfish and smug bastards. Well, that's not the way they put it but it's confirmation, from not at all the usual suspects, of what the real world has known forever.

According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics".

Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write.

The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it - in other words, steal - they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.

It's very nice to have empirical evidence of something which was screamingly obvious from the first.

One of the many things that I've noticed in my sojourn in the fever swamps of America Left is how they don't bother with numbers all that much. They're all about feelings and "social justice" and their own hot-house sentimental demands, but something quantifiable? Fuhgeddaboutit.

They perceive themselves as being virtuous and they are the most sanguinary and selfish people that I have ever seen, short of spoiled rich girls in LA.

Mike Malloy, the 8-to-11PM moonbat on XM 167, has many bêtes noirs, but the one which bothers him the most is Glenn Beck. Who is very successful, unlike Mr. Malloy, who is complaining that he can't afford to give away more than one $50 podcast subscription a week. Well, he might be greedy too. Mr. Malloy was fulminating about Mr. Beck and issued a litany of imprecations: "I can't chop Beck up into little pieces. I can't send an IED to explode where he will drive his Escalade." And five minutes more of the same death wishes. "All I can do is talk about him on this twenty-five-cent radio show."

The first number he's used and it's accurate.

Oh for the good old days when a leech could be removed by a cigarette. And then stomped on.

As a public service.

If you believe that Obamacare is the biggest power grab in American history, you can express your opinion by telling your congressman not to vote for it. Here's a link.

My congressman's Washington line was always busy and so I faxed a letter to each of his six offices.

A perfect cartoon about Obama's arrogance.

Yesterday on the news I heard someone rabbiting on that Obama didn't watch the polls. He just did what was right. Considering that he was elected by popular vote, and that the people who elected him are now disagreeing with him, that is no recommendation for Obama's version of democracy. But then I never thought that these people were after democracy to begin with.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a TV Pilot called "Midland" that was in production at FOX. It seems the series has landed some serious star power, might we be the next incarnation of Dallas?

In his first regular TV series role, Jon Voight has signed on as a lead in Fox's drama pilot "Midland."

David Keith also landed co-starring role on the pilot, directed by Marc Webb.

"Midland," from 20th TV, centers on Bob (Jimmy Wolk), a con artist juggling two lives in two Texas cities with two women (Adrianne Palicki, Eloise Mumford), one of whom (Palicki), is the daughter of a Texas legend (Voight), described as a gravely voiced titan equally at home in boots or a three-piece suit.

Set your DVR's

I don't know who this woman is but she's got the key to my heart. (Click "Continue reading...." to see more. Possibly NSFW)

Question: What is an "incentive" for a company other than an opportunity to reduce its risk in any given venture?

And if there is any sort of meaningful "clawback" provision contained in an agreement with the MDC, how can there then be reduced risk for the "incentee" company?

And doesn't it then follow that the only way a company can look at any agreement with the MDC that contains a "clawback" clause as an actual reduction of their risk is if that company believes that the clawback provision won't actually be enforced if push comes to shove?

I guess we are about to see how seriously the MDC and the City Council take these Clawback provisions that have been trumpeted as having been set in place to protect the taxpayer's interest.

Or if these companies have guessed correctly on how willing the MDC and the City Council are to actually enforce the contracts.

The headline reads, "Midand College given $1 million to train Chevron employees" but it leaves out a pretty important piece of information, i.e. that this $1 million dollar grant is coming from the federal government.

I love Midland College. And I love Chevron.

But, no kidding, with Obamaian trillion dollar per year deficits as far as the eye can see (not to mention the single largest monthly deficit in U.S. history) does the federal government have any business shelling out grant money so that Midland College can train employees for a company that makes about $15 billion per year?

When I became a contributor to Jessica's Well way back in August of 2006, the invitation was based on several factors, but first my first big look at local government was EZ-Rider.

I'm past doing the annual analysis of the ridership and the costs per passenger. I think everybody who has read this blog for some time knows EZRider exists because of the Federal dollars that have historically funded more than half of the operating costs of our bus system.

Well, on February 16, 2010, the Federal Transit Administration posted their FY 2010 Section 5307 and Section 5340 Urbanized Area Apportionments, and Midland/Odessa will be receiving $1,228,874 from the Feds this year. Our share is a pittance compared to the $1.87 Billion allocated nationwide (most of which goes to the large metros).

Under the program that EZRider receives their funds, the federal share is not supposed to exceed 50%. The State kicks some money in, but with the budget shortfall projected in Austin, that may go down.

In the end, prepare for more discussion between Midland and Odessa regarding their obligations this year. That $300~$400k sure would fill in a lot of sales tax revenue holes.

(AP) The Midland City Council has announced plans to put before the voters a $125 million dollar bond issue for the construction of the "Reality Bridge" that will almost certainly guarantee Midland's future. This follows on the heels of observations made by a consultant that, "Securing Midland's future and making it a better place can only be done if the city government is well organized and avoids pitfalls like factionalism and shortsightedness." To better leverage the effectiveness of the proposed Reality Bridge, the city council will move to use the power of eminent domain to aquire both the blighted areas of Factionalism and Shortsightedness and re-zone them to "Forward Thinking-1" and "Planned District-Visionary", respectively. Additional ground-breaking information provided by the newest round of consultancy includes:

• The very nature of change is changing.
• Younger people text a lot.
• The world is different from what it was 10 years ago.
• In 10 years the world will be different from what it is now.
• Although technically possible given the previous two statements, it is highly unlikely that the world 10 years from now will be the same as it was 10 years ago.
• The very nature of the nature of change is indeterminant due to the changing nature of change. And nature.
• The I-20 corridor isn't any prettier than it was 25 years ago when we were told it wasn't very pretty.
• Hey, here's an idea! Let's revitalize downtown!
• It is better to be a crappy doctor who gets paid than a brilliant doctor with no friends.
• You can't pay too much for good consulting.

The council is undecided as to the timing of when to put the issue before the voters but will almost certainly follow the proven method of guaging the will of the people by selecting a date on the calendar most likely to suppress voter turnout by anyone who isn't a member of the "Reality Bridge To Our Guaranteed Future" Steering Committee.

If we are to believe MDC Board member Robert Rendall (and we very much should, I fear), the Midland Development Corporation has provided a low cost (zero interest, actually) loan to a company (several companies maybe) who either wouldn't warrant traditional bank lending (or at least didn't pursue it) and now said company would probably fail should it be required to make good on the terms of it's "loan" leaving the taxpayers to foot the loss.

Gee, that's sound kind of familiar.......

Save in terms of size and scope, is there a whit of difference between the operational philosophy of the MDC in this case and that of Fannie Mae?

Earlier/Related: "So...those so-called "Clawback" provisions are really pretty worthless then, huh?".

A friend at I Own the World did this rather nice shopped job, which is the perfect visualization of one of Rush's best tropes: the people look at the U.S. as a huge sow with 300,000,000 teats.

This is what progressives want when they're not breathing fire about crazy Republicans or insane right-wingers and wishing death on them. I'm not making up the wishing death on political enemies either.

From MyWesttexas.com's article on yesterday's Council meeting:

[Midland Development Corporation Board member Robert] Rendall came to the podium and said the company might fail if the council required it to pay back the money. "We are really encouraging them to try to make it," he said.

So the money that Trace was to pay back to the taxpayers of Midland should this venture not work out as was planned can't be paid back because...well..um...this venture hasn't worked out as was planned.

Yes, I know that in some cases that money has in fact been "clawed back" from some companies who did not make good on their employment numbers. But judging from the published council agenda regarding several ongoing MDC agreements the only clawing back of anything is being done by these rent-seeking companies trying to reduce their commitment to "create" jobs.

But the question still remains of these "claw-back" provisions: If these companies have the wherewithal to return these taxpayer funded subsidies after the projects that were funded turn out to be non-performing then why do they need the subsidy in the first place? In short, if they have the money to be "clawed-back" on the back end of a failure, why don't they use that money to self-finance up front? Answer: Because it isn't about financing, it is about free money for the favored.

And although we have asked these questions many times before, back when economic mistakes in one area can be papered over by economic growth in others, I shall ask them again in the hope that our finding ourselves in the midst of a real recession and ham-fisted Obamaian attempts at "re-forming" this country's economy will provide a bit more focus and clarity.

1. Does the Federal, State, or local government have any business provding these kinds of subsidies to privately held firms?
2. Philosophically, what is the difference between the MDC taking money from the taxpayers and giving it to Trace Engines and the Obama administration taking money from the taxpayers and giving it to General Motors?
3. Should the MDC/City Council decide not to actually enforce these contracts (or should they renegotiate them down) isn't that the exact same thing as a taxpayer bailout?
4. Can six political appointees actually ever at once:
   • Be knowledgeable enough about each specfic company's operations and product line as to ascertain the viability of it's business model, and
   • Possess adequate knowledge of the sometimes world-wide industries that these subsidy-seeking companies compete in in order to make any sort of educated guess as to their long-term viability in the marketplace?
   • At least use Google every now and again?
5. Given that the whole philosophy of development corporations is to force the flow of capital into areas that the free market has already decided against funding, how is the Midland Development Corporation's/City Council's arbitrary decisions on which companies are to be subsized and which companies are not anything but a corruption of the marketplace? Even if they get one right?
6. How soon will it be before the MDC moves from referring to "jobs created" to "jobs saved"?

The article mentions that one of the members of the City Council is an investor in one of the companies in the MDC troughdom. He will probably recuse himself from any vote on the proposed renegotiations.

Although, he could always vote against a renegotiation and to actually enforce the current agreement. Such a move would have the twin virtues of being a blow struck on behalf of true free enterprise and one that would also match up with his campaign literature.

But serial claims of fiscal conservativism and a faith in the free market notwithstanding, the "dead hand" of government intervention in the marketplace always seems to mean other people in some other governmental body somewhere else.

They spend. We invest!

(Hat tip to Ospurt for doing yeoman's work on this stuff.)

According to the MRT, the Midland City Council decided to table three of the four economic development agreement amendments at their most recent meeting. From the reporting, I can't really tell if there were serious concerns, or if the council was just running out of time after the Culver Drive issue.

We don't know what the amendments to Sentry Pumping or Natural Gas Services Group entail, but we do know that the amendment with Trace Engines was to lower their employment target to 25 jobs and, I assume, reduce their letter of credit by only $75,000, leaving $325,000 for Trace to borrow against, while keeping their $400,000 forgivable loan intact (the reporting isn't too clear on this and neither the City nor the MDC posted the complete proposed amendments for the public to examine).

Councilman Scott Dufford has the money quote, too bad he's not even half way to the full story with Trace Engines:

"So we paid $400,000 for 25 jobs?"

Actually, the State of Texas Paid $456,000 for 114 jobs, then the MDC/City paid $400,000 plus provided $400,000 in credit facilities for the same 114 jobs.

I'm not sure what lowering the employment target to 25 from 114 acomplishes, except taking that liability off the books, since other reports say Trace has until 2013 to meet that target.

This is a local blog, mostly political but sometimes other things are appropriate. A friend sent me a picture of the single woman in the world with the biggest pair of boobs. Read on to see her.

Tuesday night Glenn Beck on Fox News is going to have a full hour of Eric Massa. He is the Congressman from New York who claims that he was pushed out of office by the big-box Democrats because he voted against Cap and Tax and is against Obamacare. He's the one who, remember, at first was said to have resigned from making improper advances toward a male aide and for health troubles.

The White House is calling his contention "ridiculous," which tells me that there may be something to it. When is the last time that a Democrat was ever forced from office for sexual improprieties? Remember Gerry Studs was censured in 1983 for having an affair with a 17-year-old male page. Censured but not thrown out, and in 1983 too. We've had a lot of sex since then to immunize us.

Kennedys are notoriously immune to sex scandals.

Let's remember Bonnie Fwank from Massachusetts, and his embroilment with Steve Gobie, a male prostitute.

And, again, the White House is calling Massa's charges "ridiculous." I have found that it is good strategy to believe the opposite of what this White House says.

Tonight, Tuesday, on Glenn Beck.

UPDATE: Glenn Beck apologized for wasting an hour of the viewer's time and I apologize for wasting fifteen seconds of yours. Unlike Glenn Beck I shall not claim to have wasted your time for the first time ever.

From KyleSmithOnline.com:

...an absurdly awful would-be actioner that stars Matt Damon as a US warrant officer in 2003 Baghdad who, during ongoing combat operations, security scares, political problems and the search for weapons of mass destruction, takes a break on his own initiative and decides to launch a one-man crusade to investigate....the United States and its intelligence-gathering operations.

I miss the Hollywood of Lee Marvin. Good actors who also had it in them to be real heroes. Guys who grew up in the Depression. Guys who actually did go to war.

Not guys whose idea of strife and hardship is second billing, a smaller on-set costume trailer, and a near-empty bottle of hair product.

Truly, is there a male A-Lister in Hollywood whose a** couldn't be kicked by Sarah Palin?

I went to the CNN website--got to find out what they're up to--and found this.

Nathan Daschle is the executive director of the Democratic Governors [sic] Association, which gave a half million to White to run against the Republican gubernatorial nominee. Dashle explains his enthusiasm:

Bill White is different from any other Democrat who has run in that state,"

He is smart. He is authentic.

I see. Different from any other Democrat who has run in Texas by virtue of being smart.

This from the mouth of a high-ranking Democrat.

One of the best features of the internets in general and blogs in particular is access to different points of view and thought processes. A superb example just crossed my screen.

Our President's physical this weekend has evinced lots of discussion on whether Obamacare would cover Obama's care, especially his colonoscopy procedure, done with a CAT scan rather than the long, apparently alien-designed anal probe many of us are all too familiar with. I, along with many others, was concerned/outraged that Our President partook of a procedure not offered to the rubes in flyover country. I have now been convinced of my error in thinking.

Instapundit has a commenter that came up with a stunningly pursuasive reason for us spending a ton of money on Mr. Obama's alternate colonoscopy technique.

There is one reason and one reason alone why we should give Obama a pass on the virtual colonoscopy: President Joe Biden. Colonoscopies require general anesthesia, which would require a temporary transfer of power to Biden. Who knows which country Biden would trisect during the procedure. I for one applaud this judicious use of money.

As he says, "Heh."

Van Jones was one of those sneaky czars that Barack Obama wanted to advise him; it seems he's very comfortable surrounded with a rabble of hard-lefties. Jones was the czar for green jobs, which is a phrase fraught with terror if I ever heard one, combining a hot-button word and coercion.

Mr. Jones called President Bush a crackhead and he was forced to resign in September from his job after it came out that he was allied with one of those 9/11 truther organizations. Hard to imagine behavior too raw for this administration to get rid of someone, but this was.

Mr. Jones is now a lecturer at Princeton University (Einstein's old home; I wonder if he's spinning in his grave) and at Washington's Center for American Progress, where he will be giving us the same old tale: that green is good. It is of course nothing more than an excuse for socialism. The Center for American Progress was founded by rich liberals for a left-wing think-tank; they also founded Air America, which just died, a complete and total failure. When the water reaches the top deck, follow the rats. The last rat from Air America is Senator Franken.

Mr. Jones explained in an official Princeton statement he looks forward to "exploring solutions to our nation's toughest challenges with the students and scholars of Princeton."

"America is at a crossroads, facing economic and ecological crises. The next generation of job-creating, green solutions will be even more challenging to conceive. And they will be even more difficult to implement."

But Mr. Jones feels that a university education must help students become revolutionaries and he has stated that students who are not activists are getting "worthless degrees."

On the face of it, Mr. Jones' stated aims of green jobs would require engineering and other talent to make them possible, and none of that talent is made by activists getting degrees in political science, but by non-activist engineers getting degrees in, er, engineering. I recall when I was in college we sneered at the politico types because we were doing quantifiable things.

But then for Mr. Jones and his friends, it's really all about the socialism, and destroying capitalism, which made him the perfect pick for Mr. Obama. It doesn't bother Mr. Jones, if he's thought it through, that he'll need smart scientists and engineers to have his green jobs. But then he has called himself a communist and that's his true belief, not greenery or environmentalism.

Do not expect to see Mr. Obama take a dose of reality as did Mr. Clinton in 1994. He's a True Believer too.

Glenn Beck keeps advertising for a Gore sighting. Recall that our ex-vice president canceled his appearance at the Copenhagen smash-and-grab-rich-economies summit, which should have been the tailor-made audience for his Jeremiah schtick.

The left: the gift that never quits giving. Last night Michael Malloy on America Left outdid himself. I really ought to subscribe to his podcast so I could transcribe it; surely no one is as insane has he seems to be.

After a much put-upon sigh, he got animated and went into one of his rants:

"You crazy conservatives! You're sick, pathetic cowards! You listen to this show! I know you do! You've had your heads cut off by the likes of Beck and O'Reilly!"

He then said that all the right-wing audience was Poor, Broke, Toothless People of Wal*Mart people.

"My Italian grandfather would string up eight chickens at a time!" he'd grit out, his teeth grinding. "He'd take out that big Dago knife [his word] and cut off their heads! And then do you know what they do? Do you know what they do? Do you know what they do?

"They run around! They run around! That's what you brain-dead conservatives, and I know you listen to this show, I know you do, are after you listen to Beck."

Mike took off time to call Glenn Beck Heinrich Himmler and then went back to his blood-thirsty rant.

"I can still hear it. No cluck cluck cluck--their heads had been cut off--but the whump whump whup.

"And then we put them in boiling water. Do you know why? To get the feathers off.

"You conservatives are like those chickens and we'll put you in boiling water."

This is the best that I can remember it. I don't know if it's better for me to question my sanity, since I am one loud-mouthed blogger in a small town, or his, and he has a national radio program.
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Graphic courtesy of www.IOwnTheWorld.com.

The Littlest President has been graced with his own board game. It's Obama Bullshit Bingo.

Warm testimonials at the link.