Sarcasm

Great news! According the Baltimore Sun, O'Malley is pledging to lead Maryland through the recession! I feel better about our economic outlook already. Thank Buddha that we have politicians to lead us through this mess.

If a tree falls in the woods

One of the most interesting things to me about this year’s State of the County (.pdf) address is how little notice it got. It’s been two weeks or so and I have not seen any interesting discussion about it anywhere. That could be due to the fact that the message was somewhat bleak given the state of the economy, or maybe because only one live speech was given this year (just one speech is good because it saved the taxpayers some bucks). Better luck next year.

Lights, camera, action

Native Marylander and professional film director Barry Levinson came to Annapolis to beg for a handout to the film industry:

Levinson said he has opted to shoot movies in Canada over his native Maryland because of tax incentives. Several Maryland-themed movies, such as "Hairspray" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," have also been filmed elsewhere.

"It's a shame these Maryland movies move out of state," said Miller. "It's a travesty."

Despite an economic climate that makes any costly bills unlikely to pass this year, Miller said that if the rebate program "can be shown to be a benefit" to Maryland's economy, it would be "penny-wise and pound foolish" to reject it."You're not simply giving money away," said Levinson, the creator of Baltimore-based movies "Diner," "Avalon" and "Tin Men." "You would be giving a discount in terms of the money that comes in ... All you're doing is creating an incentive."

Under the proposal advocated by the Maryland Film Industry Coalition, filmmakers would receive a "post-expenditure rebate" of about 28 percent of their qualified spending on in-state film production.

The most surprising thing to me is that Levinson is not simply asking for a tax break. If Maryland actually cared about luring jobs and economic benefits to Maryland, perhaps a tax cut would be in order. However, that is not at all what is being asked for. He is actually asking for a 28% “rebate” of qualified film expenditures. This basically says that if you spend $100 on certain crap for a movie, you get $28 back from the taxpayers.

If that plan works, why limit it to the film industry? Why not give a 28% rebate to EVERY company that conducts business in Maryland? The reason why because Maryland would go flat ass broke. Maryland tax rates aren’t even 28% high. We’d be shoveling money out of state coffers faster than it comes in.

Final scene: after figuring out how to make Maryland taxpayers pay for a quarter of the cost of making a movie, the producer rides off into the sunset.

Lisbon Hotel

Welcome to the Hotel California. Uh, I mean Lisbon Hotel. The Lisbon Hotel is an historic property that has fallen into significant disrepair, as evidenced by the photos below. I don’t care how people maintain their own property, it is their right to maintain it however they want to. What does irritate me is when “historical activists” rail against the destruction of historical property the day after the bulldozer leaves, but they don’t do anything to raise funds to purchase and renovate the historical property while the opportunity exists. A few vocal people in the community pretended to be upset about the recent destruction of two dilapidated houses in Lisbon, so we will see what they try to do (if anything) to save this hotel. My guess is that they will just demonize the developer or property owner after the building falls down.

Here is the front:



Here is a shot of the back of the hotel. The whole back is plywood that does not appear to be pressure treated:



Here is a shot of the brick side:



Here is a shot of the non-brick side of the hotel and the only place in Lisbon that you can't park (besides in the mail truck parking spot):




Here is a shot of the giant pit behind the hotel. This is where the bad children were made to stay:



Here is a shot of the upper porch. Note the missing supports:

The same thing, only different

This is why politicians should have no authority to steal our money and redistribute it in an effort to "stimulate the economy". They do not understand economics at all:

The president also used the session to reassure Congressional leaders and Americans that money would be used wisely, promising to impose tight controls. He criticized companies that have used federal money they received under the financial bailout for low priority or wasteful purposes and promised not to let that happen.

He cited “reports that we’ve seen over the last couple of days about companies that have received taxpayer assistance, then going out and renovating bathrooms or offices, or in other ways not managing those dollars appropriately.”

I do not support any government bailout of a private company, so don't misconstrue this post as such. But please explain to me the difference between these two scenarios:

1. National Banking and Trust Company receives bailout money from the government and uses $50,000 of it hire a construction company to remodel the bank's offices.

2. National Banking and Trust Company receives bailout money from the government and lends $50,000 of it to Larry's Landscaping who hires the same construction company to remodel Larry's offices.

Both scenarios are the same freaking thing!

The song remains the same

This goes out to everyone who wanted change, but did not even seriously consider a vote for Ron Paul, Bob Barr or any other candidate that isn't politics as usual:

Blame da kitteh

At least Bush is gone

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.

But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

He suggests that we need selfish and greedy politicians to keep a watchful eye on selfish and greedy capitalists. Often, the selfish and greedy politicians enable the actions of greedy private individuals. Other times, the government creates something worse than it is supposed to protect us from. I would ask Obama this: was more harm done by Barnard Madoff’s ponzi scheme, or is more harm done by the ponzi scheme known as Social Security?

Our economic prosperity depends on the ability of each of us to use our own skills and resources in their most productive capacity. Historically, government action has not encouraged this, it has prevented this.

Constructive Ranting

At a $75 a ticket breakfast to benefit 9A Delegate Warren Miller, a high level state republican asked how many republicans were on Facebook. He seems to think that the reason the Dems cleaned their clocks is in part due to ineffective way in which the Reps used the internet to get out their message.

When it comes to teaching error, being a bad teacher is a virtue. Similarly, when it comes to getting out a bad message, poor use of communication is good. What message do they want to get out? Vote for us so we can legislate the bible? Vote for us so we can take away a woman’s right to choose? Vote for us so we can tell you who you can legally marry? Vote for us so we can continue to waste your money supporting the war on drugs? Even if many of them are against wasteful spending, it is hard to climb on board their wagon when they just worship the state in other ways.

I am exactly the type of dude that the Reps should not be alienating. I don’t buy into the liberal fiscal policies of the Dems, but I see no reasonable alternative in the Reps. Take that for what its worth.

Top billin'

We be rich:

After the 2000 Census, the richest county in America was Douglas County, Colorado. By 2007, Douglas County had fallen to sixth. The new top three are now Loudon County, Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia; and Howard County, Maryland. All three are suburbs or exurbs of Washington, D.C. In 2000, 14 of the 100 richest counties were in the Washington, D.C., area. In 2007, it was nine of the richest 20.

That's great! Remind me how we got so wealthy? Oh, yeah:

The problem is that, save for the tech corridor in D.C.'s Virginia exurbs, the Washington Metro area doesn't actually produce anything. Washington doesn't create wealth, it just moves it around—redistributes it. As government grows and takes control of more and more of the private economy—either through spending, regulation, or taxes—more and more wealth that's created elsewhere comes to Washington to be devoured.

This means that people in this area will tend to favor big government. It seems to me that many do.

Safety in Daisy

A commenter recently claimed that a car dealership would be unsafe at "the intersection" in Daisy. I don't understand how that is the case. I thought that the public safety argument against the car dealer was that the roads leading to the intersection from Rt. 97 or Rt. 144 could not safely handle the tractor trailers carrying cars. The CCWHC produced a video that attempted to show this (I think the videos failed to show a public safety hazard). Watch the videos here.

Parking in historic Ellicott City

Everything boils down to incentives. I always thought that it was really stupid for the British troops during the Revolutionary War to walk around in neat geometric lines while wearing bright red coats which practically had a bulls eye drawn on them. However, even back then it was known that the army who wins is the army that stands and shoots. If the army stands and shoots, it will probably break any charge although a few of its own soldiers will certainly be killed. However, if you are an individual soldier you have an incentive to turn and run to increase your own chance of survival. Wearing bright red coats and walking in straight lines made it difficult for any one soldier to slip out of formation in order to hide when things got dangerous. So the uniforms and practices of the British weren’t so stupid after all.

Many people have concluded that a parking garage is needed in historic Ellicott City because the parking problem is so bad. An article in today’s Sun discusses a few of the perverse parking incentives in downtown EC:

He said people could find parking, though an open space "might not have been just where you want it."

Street parking is free, with a two-hour limit, while lots provide a mix of free and metered spots. That might be backward, Connor said.

The authority might want to hire someone to more aggressively manage parking by offering incentives to park on the fringes of the district or in Circuit Court parking lots atop a nearby hill, the consultant said. That could result in prime spaces along lower Main Street turning over faster, possibly by adding parking meters.

Parking at the courthouse could be aided by a shuttle bus, Connor suggested. Restaurant or store patrons could be offered free parking for a return visit or other incentives, while employees and residents could be lured away from the most congested areas by lower parking fees.

Incentives are now reversed, he said, with prime spaces along Main Street available free, which encourages motorists to occupy them for longer periods or to move their cars to work around the two-hour limit.

I think that last paragraph is the most important. Giving away valuable things for free and then complaining that there is not enough to go around is very strange. I would be willing to bet that much or all of Ellicott City’s parking problems could be cured with a commonsense pricing structure that fixes some of the perverse parking incentives.

Me Vs. Obama: car edition

My only question is how does a diesel only get 8 miles to the gallon? That royally sucks.

If I was president, my car would look more like this (speaking of 8 miles to the gallon). I win!:

Impractical and Undesirable

I don’t often read Howard County Issues, but it just so happened that I took a look at the current issue, which I believe was just published. One of the articles that struck my interest was written by one of the so-called “Concerned Citizens of Western Howard County”. The article is really a speech that was delivered at a CCWHC fundraiser last fall. The speech was pretty lame and boring, even though it mentioned two hookers at one point.

The CCWHC are a group of primarily older residents (the group does not even have a website for crying out loud) who wish to stop progress and market driven development from coming west. They popped out of the woodwork after a car dealership in Daisy was proposed. I found this paragraph from the speech interesting:

The Millinix car business was one of the reasons the County more than 50 years ago designated the lots at the intersection as a B-2 zoning district. Then the County’s General Plans in both 1990 and 2000 set a new zoning policy for rural crossroads like Daisy, saying commercial development was “impractical and undesirable”. Unfortunately, the County failed to make our zoning laws conform to that policy- a big mistake for us. Hence, our current battle for Daisy’s soul.

Note the use of the phrase “impractical and undesirable”. Well, for whom? If commercial development was really impractical and undesirable in Daisy, why would it occur? Why would you even need a plan to make such a declaration? Why would a commercial RE developer want to build something where no one wanted to shop? Don’t those guys have something better to spend their money on?

I have little patience for this kind of anti-growth rhetoric. With all else that is going on with our economy, you would think that the new jobs that this car lot will bring would be welcomed. After all, there was a car dealership in the area as long as 50 years ago, and that intersection has always been commercial.

Of course, development there suddenly became impractical and undesirable.

Beating a dead horse

I know I have posted a lot about HHAP recently, but there is not much else going on. Greg Fox makes a whole lotta sense in this ditty in the Baltimore Sun in regards to the Healthy Howard Access Plan. The plan thus far has been a failure and a waste of money. Ulman had this to say:

"To me, I'm a bit bemused at this whole issue," Ulman said about Fox's criticisms. "We've been able to get over 1,000 people. That's a huge accomplishment. We always knew this would be a work in progress."

Ulman's comments are a fine example of Texas sharpshooting. He is trying to draw the target around the bullet holes, rather than shooting a bulls eye. This is the kind of fallacy that politicians use extensively during campaigns. No matter what the other guy does, it is twisted into an example of his or her incompetence. Similarly, no matter how far off the mark that HHAP strays, it will be presented by Ulman as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

If the goal was simply to get people enrolled for programs that they qualified for, why do we need the $500,000 dog and pony show that is the HHAP?

Second Chance Saloon

Since many of my blogging cohorts have tried Second Chance Saloon in Oakland Mills and they seemed to like it, I thought I would give it a shot. Overall, I liked the place and I will definitely go back. My wife and I split the spinach and artichoke dip, which was excellent. I had a Portobello mushroom burger, which was not on the menu, but was also excellent. I was concerned that since my entrée was not on the menu, that there would be mass confusion and it would take forever to bring it to me. My fears turned out to be unfounded, as the service was pretty quick. My wife was not totally disappointed in her salad, but was not impressed either. As they build the menu, I am sure she will find something good.

One neat idea that I saw there was a book exchange, which I have never seen in a restaurant before. You can drop off a book and/or pick up a book. There were mostly children’s books in the rotation, including the classic Dr. Suess book “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish” which we read while waiting for our food.

Also, there was free (or at least unprotected) Wi-Fi!

CB58 website

I discovered an important website regarding CB58 and Turf Valley, thanks to an advertisement on the side of a truck on Route 40. Check out nopetition.com, where you can learn about CB58 and even learn how to revoke your signature if you already signed the petition for referendum against CB58. Spread the word!

Stimulus Spending

The thing to look out for with any stimulus package, especially one of the magnitude in which the Obama administration is planning, is wasteful spending. Such a plan will do doubt be full of pork barrel spending, which will do nothing to make us better off. A great op-ed in the NY Times this morning discussed this.

If you hire your neighbor for $100 to dig a hole in your backyard and then fill it up, and he hires you to do the same in his yard, the government statisticians report that things are improving. The economy has created two jobs, and the G.D.P. rises by $200. But it is unlikely that, having wasted all that time digging and filling, either of you is better off.

People don’t usually spend their money buying things they don’t want or need, so for private transactions, this kind of inefficient spending is not much of a problem. But the same cannot always be said of the government. If the stimulus package takes the form of bridges to nowhere, a result could be economic expansion as measured by standard statistics but little increase in economic well-being.

One has to wonder if what we need is a tax cut, not an increase in government spending (which is really a tax increase, since all government spending is taxation).

Libraries are lame

Reason number 8,402 why the Howard County Library royally sucks: they don't have any South Park DVDs. WTF! South Park is obviously a very popular show, so the reason for this lack of South Park in the public library is almost certainly political. Strangely, the Library does carry DVDs of Family Guy which is just as godless and irreverent as South Park. I am curious as to why Family Guy made the library's cut, but South Park did not.

Libraries are dinosaurs. Between Amazon.com and the big box bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble, libraries are not even needed. Even if there was a benefit to society from subsidizing books, it would make much more sense for the county to do so by handing out Amazon.com gift cards (which are basically book vouchers) every year instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate libraries. At least that way we could read or watch what we want and not be subject to the ridiculous moralizing of the library system.

Second thoughts on the tennis thing

I think I may have been far too easy on the group that wants to build a $20 million tennis facility. The Sun article is written very ambiguously, and when I read it the first time I got the impression that the group basically wanted to lease land from the County and provide all the funding to build the tennis facility privately.

After thinking it over and reading between the lines on the article, I suspect that this group really wants to put $500,000 into the facility privately and have the County secure and guarantee the debt to pay the remaining $19.5 million, which they claim can be paid off by user fees. That is a different scenario all together, and one in which I would not support at all. If things head South, the taxpayers will be stuck holding the bag.

I should have known better. If the thing would actually pay for itself, they would be building it now and not screwing around with the county. Pay for yo' own playground, people!

If I was in charge

If you woke up tomorrow and found out that you were County Executive, what is one change that you would make to make the community better? Without getting overly concerned about what the CE actually has the power to do (which isn’t much) but still paying some level of attention to political feasibility, there are a couple of changes that I would make. All of them involve reducing the amount of power wielded by the county government. There is one thing that I would do first.

The first change that I would make would be to have marijuana regulated in a manner similar to that of alcohol. I would forbid the HoCo police department from arresting any adult for growing, possessing, or using marijuana. Obviously, the Feds and the State police have the power to do what they want, but I'd be damned if the HoCo police would enforce any drug laws on my watch. There is not a bigger waste of taxpayer dollars, law enforcement resources and court system time than to arrest/harass consenting adults for using a substance that affects no one but themselves. I say this not as a drug user (because I am not, except for large amounts of caffeine), but rather as a rational adult who doesn’t like seeing his tax dollars squandered in an absurd way by a bunch of elected buffoons. The police should be worried about violent crime and theft. Wasting time with some 40 year old person for smoking a doobie in their own home is an epic misuse of police resources and a slap in the face to freedom. As a matter of fact, there are legitimate medical uses for marijuana, and it is still illegal. This situation defies common sense, and should be a complete embarrassment for any political figure with half a brain and an ounce of courage.

Fortunately, there are a few politicians out there at the state and federal level that are slowly beginning to see the basic common sense of this argument.

Anyway, that’s what I would do. Anyone else want to take a shot?

Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

I am curious to know how the $500,000 that was earmarked to the Healthy Howard Access plan is being spent. Since not many people have enrolled in the plan, is most of that money unspent? Or is that money being used to fund operations (salaries, office supplies, etc.) for the rest of the year since no other revenue is coming in to the plan. I assume the latter, but I am curious to know for sure.

If that $500,000 will be burnt up by year end, Healthy Howard Access Plan could be a financial catastrophe. Enrollment has been open for a calendar quarter, and only 66 people have enrolled. If that embarrassing pace keeps up, there will only be about 250 people enrolled after a year. That is a cost of about $2,000 per person. For that amount of money (or close to it), each qualified participant could have been enrolled in a boutique medical plan.

So far, the only thing that HHAP has done is guarantee a federal/state tax increase by creating a flood of participants in government health insurance plans.

A little bit of intelligent market research is worth a lot of money. A desire to "do good" doesn't cut it, and I hope that certain people have learned this lesson.

Max Range

I don’t think the line of logic in this opinion piece about the proposed animal murder law in the Sun is particularly good:

You see, in addition to arbitrarily doubling the safety zone (more about that later), the proposal also would prohibit anyone from firing a gun "in the direction of any dwelling, house, residence or other building or camp designed for occupation by human beings which is within the maximum range of the gun being discharged."

Verbosity and grammatical error aside, there's the little matter of the last seven words. I'll repeat them: "maximum range of the gun being discharged."

Maximum range is as unknowable as the number of bubbles in a Coke.

What size Coke? Cold or warm? Diet or regular?

It's the same thing with shotguns, a fact that apparently escaped the Howard County lawyer who drafted the bill.

I don’t think that this fact escaped the writers of the bill at all. In fact, this is probably exactly why the bill was written as it is. If you could determine down to the inch the maximum range of any potential shot, then the bill would probably be written as such. But because the range of different firearms can vary (although probably within a tight standard deviation from the mean), the burden of being a safe distance away from sensitive areas is left in the hands of the animal murderer. Who has the best incentive to keep the public safe? Some bureaucrat who has never been in the woods in his or her life, or an animal murderer with some knowledge of firearms and who is legally liable for damages? Although you cannot know a maximum range down to the inch, you can know a safe distance. The evidence seems to support this, as animal murdering accidents such as the one that gave rise this "shock doctrine" legislation is very rare.

All this talk about types of shotgun ammo/ranges has caused me to re-examine what I am using in my home defense shotgun. I have upgraded to 00 Buck (pronounced "double ought buck" for all you Columbians). This is the type of shot recommended for deer and bear, so I think it will work nicely on an intruder. It is not legal to use on deer in Ho Co, because you must use a slug.

You got served

There is great stuff to blog about in today’s Sun. Hopefully, I will have some time to put my fingers to my keyboard. There is one article I want to briefly mention, because it warms my heart. This article is making my resolution to be less bitter very easy. There is a private group of tennis enthusiasts who want to construct a $20 million tennis facility. What do they do? Do they ask the local government for money like the advocates for a 50 meter pool are doing? No, they don’t, and this is what makes me like them:

The Howard County Tennis Patrons are providing the money to build the $20 million facility through fundraising efforts and user fees.
Art Tollick, who leads the Howard County Tennis Patrons, said his group brings a deal any government would have trouble refusing.

"Every other group is saying, 'Come and give us the money,'" the 59-year-old King's Contrivance resident said. "We're saying, 'Work with us and we'll bring the money.'"
If the deal goes through, the county would lease the land to the tennis group. Tollick's group would raise construction funds and pay off the debt through fees charged to players, he said. The $200,000 already raised and about $300,000 more hoped to be raised would go for planning and engineering costs.

Later…

Tollick said his group comprises 600 tennis enthusiasts who want to build a $20 million center with 11 indoor courts, 19 outdoors, and stadium seating for 2,000 spectators. The facility would be on 16 acres near the park's planned entrance next to the Troy Hill Corporate Center. If built, he said, it would be the largest facility of its kind in the Mid-Atlantic region.

I am so happy with the precedent that this type of arrangement may set, and I wish this group the best of luck. This is a good tangible scenario to point to and show other groups that are begging for money from the government for entertainment venues.

The most expensive things are sometimes free

George Will making some points about health care. I added emphasis to the last line, because I like it so much:

Suppose, says Leavitt, buying a car were like getting a knee operation. The dealer would say he does not know the final cumulative price, so just select a car and begin using it. Then a blizzard of bills would begin to arrive -- from the chassis manufacturer, the steering-wheel manufacturer, the seat and paint manufacturers. The dealership would charge for the time the car spent there, and a separate charge would cover the salesperson's time.

Leavitt says that until health-care recipients of common procedures can get, upfront, prices they can understand and compare, there will be little accountability or discipline in the system: "In the auto industry, if the steering-wheel maker charges an exorbitant price, the car company finds a more competitive supplier. In health care, if the medical equipment supplier charges an exorbitant price, none of the other medical participants care."

Medicare is a price-fixing system for upward of 12,000 procedures and drug codes -- and for hundreds of categories of equipment, the providers of which tenaciously oppose competition. Leavitt began implementing a tiny program of competitive bidding covering just 10 products in 10 cities. Based on the 15 days it lasted before Congress repealed it, savings were projected to be substantial. That is why equipment providers got it repealed.

Rather than ruining the new year by dwelling on Medicare's unfunded liabilities of about $34 trillion (over a 75-year span), ruin it with this fact: In the next 50 years, Medicaid, the program for the poor -- broadly, sometimes very broadly defined -- could become a bigger threat than Medicare to the nation's prosperity.

This is partly because of the cost of long-term care for the indigent elderly, some of whom shed assets to meet Medicaid's eligibility standard -- sometimes as high as income under 200 percent of the federal poverty level. And many states, eager to expand the ranks of the dependent with the help of federal Medicaid money, use "income disregards" to make poverty an elastic concept. For example, they say: A person who gets a raise that eliminates his eligibility can disregard the portion of his income that pays for housing or transportation.

Governments with powerful political incentives to behave this way will play an increasingly large role in health care. As is said, if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it is free.

I am very curious to know what kinds of ideas were generated by the recent local meeting on health care. Hopefully, the County will update their website soon.

Happy New Year!

Here is something to ponder in the first quarter of the new year: what is the chance of Bin Laden being captured by March 31? Probably extremely low, but certainly possible given that Bush may want to get him before he leaves office in an attempt to portray himself as a fighter of “tara” (terror to the rest of us). Also, Obama and Biden might get lucky enough to catch Osama Bin Laden early in their term and show how tough they are on terror.

As I write this, on Intrade contracts that pay $10 if Bin Laden is captured or neutralized by March 31 are selling for 50 cents each (5% chance). Ignoring the 5% commission, if you threw $50 at some contracts they would pay $1,000 in the unlikely event that Bin Laden is captured. That doesn’t seem like a good bet, IMHO. But, if the price drops to 10 cents (1% chance) before or shortly after Obama’s inauguration, it might be a good bet to throw a few bucks at some contracts. $25 worth of 10 cent contracts would pay $2,500 if Bin Laden is captured. The odds of capture are slim, but the payoff may be just compensation for the risk involved. The guy can't run forever.

Besides, if your bet does not pay off, you can ask the government for a bailout!!! That strategy has worked for mortgage lenders.


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