Houblog

To be able to stop referring to Google as the Chinese Oppressor’s Search Portal.

Freaking libtards took this long to figure out that the Chinese government was going to roll them for info? Eeeeeeeediots.

No, not lesbian. We knew that.

She’s a conservative?

Methinks the LA Times doesn’t know what the hell it’s talking about. Someone who has silently financed Bill White’s spending agenda is not a conservative, fiscal, or otherwise. Conservatives keep government spending restricted to the necessities, and do not waste time with worthless amenities such as sports stadiums, useless/expensive/dangerous trams, and wind energy schemes that only benefit friends. Nor do they spend a million dollars on consultants just to cover their political butts for the next run. That’s been the last six years, and the controller has fiddled while Rome burned. We will now discover if this was political pragmatism or agreement with the Democratic machine that Bill White has built.

We’ll be watching to see just how “conservative” this new mayor is.

Steven den Beste backslides into political blogging once again, with a post at Hot Air. If he isn’t careful, he’ll be at it full time again.

Pity I can’t register for comments there, as I wanted to follow up with this: “Is it worth noting that extreme cases of teleological belief would fit the technical definition of schizophrenia?”

As in, iceberg dead ahead!

Lemer/Farb/Roberts assessment of City of Houston Finances (22 October 2009)

Bob Lemer has become known as a bit of a “disaster monger”, and has been about as welcome as a global warming skeptic at a Greenpeace convention. Unfortunately, he’s also correct, and he’s not pulling his punches.

The City of Houston is financially broke and it appears that the mayor who takes office in January 2010 may have to captain the City through bankruptcy procedures.

Well if that ain’t telling it like it is.

Ok, here is my non-accountant read on it: Yes, if we honestly ‘fess up to what the (out of date and UNaudited) books say, we are flat broke. As in, we have a negative net value. That’s not the same thing as bankruptcy though, and while he confuses the point deliberately, I think he’s doing it in good faith. Bob and his co-signers, Aubrey M. Farb and Tom Roberts, are trying desperately to turn the Titanic before we hit the iceberg.

I recommend the full read above, but if Accountant Math makes your head hurt, you may want to skim at least the first half. If that’s too hard for you, I have highlights for the really attention-impaired, presented somewhat out of order, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since March, there have been rumblings inside the City of Houston’s PW&E department that a large shortfall was pending in the Combined Utility System’s funding. The public first learned about the city’s overall budget problems in Bill King’s oped, which we discussed here. The CUS, which is supposed to be independent of the city’s general fund is a separate issue altogether, though certain funding tricks used during the White era make their appearance once again. Specifically: back-loaded borrowing in which the city pays only a little up front, but then faces a balloon note down the road. According to Lee McGuire’s article for KHOU:

…nearly $1 billion in credit must be renegotiated early next year, and debt payments have spiked $50 million above earlier projections. All told, the system currently faces a $100 million cash shortfall – a significant problem for a department that took in $332 million in water bills last year.

“Re-negotiate” is CPA-speak for “re-finance” or “obtain debt relief, rather than default.” Simply put, the city’s rate-payers are about to face the music for years of living off borrowed money. How bad is it? The city has been making ordinary expenditures, such as yearly water meter purchases, from the capital funds instead of operating expenses. In household terms, they’ve borrowed money to pay for the groceries. And while this specific example represents only a tiny portion of the total, it’s one of the ways that total has been accumulated.

Today’s article was based on item #13 on today’s agenda, a proposal to hire consultants McKinsey & Co. to look for inefficiencies in the Public Works Department. This item was tagged and will return on next week’s agenda. Once again, the mayor is proposing to spend a large amount of funds for a questionable purpose. Unfortunately, KHOU’s article contains a few key errors, and some misleading statements. This may simply be the result of deadline pressure, or it may be that not all of the information provided to the press was…. shall we say, totally accurate.

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Some people wonder why a city employee would blog anonymously (on the rare occasions when I still do).

This is why, and the snark didn’t even work for the county….

I haven’t got the time to blog this properly, but head over to Texas Watchdog this morning for a look at what almost certainly prompted Vacar’s sudden “retirement.”

This is outstanding investigative reporting, the likes of which has been abandoned by the Houston Chronicle, which now relies on bloggers to cover the news while it keeps us informed of, well see for yourself.

Of course considering that the Chronicle’s loss (in staff) has been TW’s gain lately, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

From The American Thinker:

There is a point in tournament poker where one player doesn’t have the chips to play out the next raise, but they have great cards, so they call “all in.” At that point, nobody can raise them and the hand gets played out — either to a game changing win or a total loss for the person who made the call. It appears Sarah Palin decided she and her family could no longer deal with the thousand cuts, so she is “all in.”

One of the best articles I’ve seen on the surprise story of the weekend; I recommend reading it in full.

Meanwhile, if I have any readers left out there on RSS, I suppose I owe you a bit of an explanation.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been working on a new project. Bloggers can’t save the world, the country, or even Houston. It’s going to take people working hard and making things happen. Tea parties are only a start, and there are some things that I just can’t do as “Ubu Roi.”

I hate letting the blog lie fallow, and I may be back here from time to time — the city is in bad shape right now, as anyone who reads blogHOUSTON should know, but our elected “leaders”, especially the Mayor, continue to dig the hole deeper. In another six years, at this pace, Houston is going to be a Left Coast basket case. We’re spending our savings down, and borrowing to pay the house note and groceries, while adding a new plasma-screen TV, and that’s just not sustainable. There will be a reckoning, and it’s going to be ugly.

Nonetheless, I’ve been called on to take a bigger role in my public ID, so this blog is going to have to remain a very small part of my activity in the future. I’ll write when I can, that’s all I can promise.

It’s a truism that big news that the city government doesn’t want you to hear will always break late on a Friday afternoon. Once again, it’s been proven.

Richard Vacar, who led the Houston Airport System for more than 11 years through several multi-billion-dollar expansion projects, abruptly left the post today, according to an announcement from Mayor Bill White’s office.

It was unclear whether Vacar was fired or left voluntarily. The announcement from the mayor’s office said he had retired.

Hey, he retired so fast, his own staff didn’t know. That happens all the time, right? Seriously, he was definitely shown the door, and the mayor obviously didn’t care if it hit him in the butt on the way out. Special inside knowledge? Nah, just the total abrogation of protocol.

Rorschach suggested that it might be the news leak over the new runway while the Lege is still in session, considering eminent domain bills. I don’t think I buy it.

This has all the hallmarks of MBW in full-blown rage mode. Now Vacar may have wanted the extra runway, and we know he’s the tool of Yellow Cab and the entire airline industry. (Or should I have stopped at “tool”?) But unless there’s a hell of a lot more to this.. as in “Bill, get us this runway and we’ll make damn sure you’re the next jr.Senator from Texas,” I just don’t see White going bonkers over this. In fact, I don’t see him even trying to make that deal unless he thinks such an obvious screw of the public (and our already broken budget) would look good right before he runs for office.

So did he catch Vacar eating babies for breakfast, or what?

Is the real problem that someone has proof that Vacar is as corrupt as we’ve always felt he was?

And is it just me, or is the Chron burying this story under swine flu and knee surgery infections at Methodist hospital?

We already seceded.

Just on the odd chance that anyone has managed to run across my blog without seeing any of the majors today, you need to get your butt over to Michelle Malkin’s place.

Reading this blog has problably resulted in your being designated as an extremeist.

The proof isn’t in this article.

According to police, they were driving a white Pontiac Grand Prix when they fired gunshots at the driver of a truck. Then they exited the freeway at West Gulf Bank.

The truck driver stopped on the West Gulf Bank overpass and got a rifle from his back seat for protection, police said. As he looked over the side of the freeway to see the license plate of the Pontiac, he saw the car’s driver’s side window open and feared the suspects would shoot at him again.

He fired several shots at the Pontiac, hitting the passenger who was sitting in the front seat and another man who was in the back seat.

The front-seat passenger, 17, was taken to Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital, where he later was pronounced dead.

It’s not that the guy said “Screw this, I’m shooting back!” It’s not that three punks got more than they bargained for. It’s not even the comments. Nope, it’s the ratings of the comments.

CPP wrote:
Gang punks shoot at Bubba & Bubba returns fire: end of story!
4/9/2009 11:13:07 AM

Recommend: (945 thumbs up) (18 thumbs down)

Yeowch!!!!!! I mean, damn.

Posting at Houblog:

HB 1388 passed the Senate today. That’s the GIVE act, aka “The Obama Youth Act of 2009.” It will:

“combine the best practices of civilian service with the best aspects of military service,” while establishing “campuses” that serve as “operational headquarters,” complete with “superintendents” and “uniforms” for all participants. It allows for the elimination of all age restrictions in order to involve Americans at all stages of life. And it calls for creation of “a permanent cadre” in a “National Community Civilian Corps.”
But that’s not all. The bill also calls for “youth engagement zones” in which “service learning” is “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.” This updated form of voluntary community service is also to be “integrated into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics curricula” at all levels of schooling.

(DC Examiner Editorial, emphasis added)

So in other words, it doesn’t matter whether your kid enrolls in it or not, they’re still going to get the indoctrination force-fed to them.

Republican senators voting AYE: 22. NAY: 19. That’s right, more than half the Senate’s GOP voted FOR this bill.

Read the rest of this entry »

Controller Anise Parker attempts to quell fears over the city’s shaky finances, by talking about how it’s borrowing money from itself!

City investments and debt on solid ground
As anyone with any investments knows, this is not your ordinary financial market. The city has an investment portfolio but also uses debt financing to pay for public works projects and other infrastructure improvements. The ongoing turmoil on Wall Street and within the banking industry requires innovation and quick action on both sides of the ledger.

“I want to assure Houstonians that we are exploring every possible option and taking utmost care with your tax dollars during these difficult times,” Houston City Controller Annise Parker said.

When financing public projects, the city commonly borrows using short-term instruments then watches the market for the best opportunity to convert to long-term fixed-rate financing. Last fall, when the credit markets all but dried up and several banks either failed or were struggling, Mayor White and the city controller announced they would pursue various financing alternatives to keep interest rates on city debt as low as possible.

The controller noted that financing through other governmental entities is one alternative that has been employed successfully. For example, she said the city has purchased the debt of (loaned money to) city governmental partners at Metro and Harris County. Likewise, Harris County and Metro have purchased city debt.

City invests in own debt

Parker said the city’s own investment portfolio holds about $229 million in city debt, made possible because the city maintains segregated funds. Interest rates in the municipal bond market have varied widely. By investing in its own debt, the controller said the city earns 1.5-2%. An earlier purchase of $30 million of Metro debt yielded about 4%, and investment in Harris County Flood Control debt returned 6.25-8%. In comparison, more traditional financing options are yielding less than 1%.

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Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit makes the following observation:

THE RACE TO find alien earths. In science fiction stories, you often see references to “forerunner races” who settled the Galaxy before humans emerged. But what if we’re the forerunner race?

Oh great. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. Now I gotta worry not just whether we’re screwing up my country, but the entire galaxy.