Open Choke

The LAW of Unintended Consequences...

When Britain announced their populist tax on Bank employee bonuses of 50% on all bonuses over 25,000 pounds, paid for by the bank, I am sure many Brits (and Americans, too) felt (perhaps smugly?) righteous. This law applies across the board... not just to banks that took bailout money, but every bank.  Anyone care to guess the effect?  

Royal Bank of Scotland, coincidentally now owned primarily by the British Gov, saw its stock price immediately tank by 10%, or $2.8 billion.   http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:RBS

Why? Perhaps because its investors understand that the bank is either going to 

1) have to pay bonuses anyway, and be socked with a 50% penalty relative to its global peers in order to stay competitive, or 

2) lose its rainmakers and management to non-British banks.

In any case, British pols lost $3 billion, paid for by British voters.  Had they been management, they would be fired immediately

Since politicians of all stripes are peculiarly immune to accountability and responsibility, at least we in the US, as weakened as we are today, may be able to at least outcompete the Brits, who have, in their parliament today, an amazing ball in chain in terms of their parliamentary representatives that outdoes ours in sheer incompetence.  The Clouseau of governments...

New Record Set For The Price Of Whores on Bourbon Street.

Louisiana, long known to other Americans as the home state to the real "what happens there, stays there" philosophy" set a new record Saturday in the Bacchanals of history.

As any male that has wandered down Bourbon Street on a saturday night can attest, friendly, dentally-challenged women of various creeds are a hallmark of that fine state, although typically proffering their favors for denominations that rarely exceed the cost of a Grand Slam meal at Denny's.  

Well, a new Queen of the Damned has emerged on the scene; one that totally redefines for the Oldest Profession the value proposition of Louisiana's greatest industry.  Mary Landrieu, Senator from La.,  did her state and profession proud and set the world record for her like, swallowing the legislative ejaculate of 59 other senators and countless other special interest authors smeared over some 2000 pages of healthcare pap for the stunning price of $300 million.  A new world record!  Unfortunately, those 60 Senators and special interest groups have elected to pay for their coital pleasure with either Yours and My Tax Dollars taken by threat of prison OR the destruction the the buying power of Yours and My Dollars without our consent!  

By God, post-coital bliss is SO much better when others pay for the orgasm, isn't it?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/21/AR2009112102272_pf.html

Tax "Loopholes" on Oil Simply Explained...

If you're not dead, you have been blasted lately with all sorts of bombast about "oil industry" tax loopholes and subsidies and the gallant efforts underway to do away with them.  I thought it might be a good idea to simply explain what these "loopholes" are, how they came into existence, and what happens when we get rid of them.  

One important fact to remember is that up until recently, everyone agreed that energy security was important and that domestically-sourced energy preferable to foreign-sourced energy. That is apparently no longer the case. 

First, lets establish who this is targeted at and what kind of product it is meant to discourage.  If you, like most Americans, think it is targeted at "Big Oil", you would be, lets see if there is a nice way to say this, Dead Wrong.  First, Big Oil... the big integrated American Oil Companies that produce less than 12% of the world's Oil (REAL Big Oil is the National Oil Companies owned by the countries that contain the supergiant oil fields), left the US in the late 1970's and early 1980's.  Today, they produce only 35% of domestic oil and 20% of domestic natural gas, and drill less than 10% of the wells in the US. 

Next, if you are like most Americans, you think that Dirty Oil is the commodity being targeted by this tax proposal, right? Again... DEAD WRONG.  80% of the wells drilled in the US today target Natural Gas.  Yep, the "Clean Burning Natural Gas" that Nancy Pelosi enthusiastically endorsed when she jumped on the Pickens Plan.

By now, you are probably thinking "What the Hell?  This isn't what I was told at all!"  Unfortunately, we seem to be living in a world where truth often takes a back seat to politics and agenda.  In any case, now that we have that settled (and, by the way, these aren't "spins" from "an anonymous oil executive", these are basic objective facts), lets go understand Taxes.  I have to be crazy to write on something this dry!

Intangible Drilling Costs- First, lets start with capital investing in general.  If you want to build a commercial building, you buy the land and you build the structure.  The structure has a fixed life and a salvagable value that goes down every year, thus its treated as an item that is capitalized and written off over the lifespan of the building, ideally at the rate the building rots.  Also ideally, the investor in that building reinvests the dollars s(he) is depreciating into capital investments in that building so that the building has an indeterminate lifespan, or that the investor can buy a new one when the old one falls down.

 

This commercial building will fluctuate in value somewhat with market conditions, but, in general, will generate income on a flat line basis in current dollars.  Also, unless you are a complete bonehead (ie a member of congress anytime during the last decade), you won't build this building where you can't rent it out.  This is why, at least historically, you could borrow up to 80% of the cost of building to leverage your investment.  It only took $0.20 to buy a dollars worth of building... the building paid the rest.  You can borrow this money because the risk of loss is pretty small.

 

An oil or gas well, on the other hand, has a finite life span, and is, by definition, a depreciating asset.  It loses value every day it is in existence, and, unlike a commercial building,  it has very little salvage value associated with it.  No amount of reinvestment in that well can make it "good as new".

 

Combine this fact with the low likelihood of profitability on a one on one basis (only 30% of the wells make money, but they make enough to cover the cost of those that lose money), and the fluctuations in cash flow based from oil or gas wells from highly volatile oil and gas prices, no banker in their right mind would lend significant amounts to you to drill new wells, so investment leverage is much less than in commercial real estate or other industries.  Oil and Gas bankers make rational lending decisions in OUR industry because they are "unregulated"...  ie no greasy Fanny Mae or Freddie Macs for oil and gas lending that decouple people from making rational lending decisions. 

 

The relative lack of salvage value of an oil or gas well versus other capital investments along with the high amount of risk associated with drilling an individual well is similar in scale and risk to R&D investments by US industry in general, which, incidentally, is allowed to be wholly expensed for the same reasons.  This is why we treat Intangible Drilling Costs as an expensable item rather than a capital item.  

 

Clearly, although one can disagree with oil and gas drilling in general, this treatment of drilling costs has a clearly defined and rational basis, and is no more a special interest give away than expensing R&D is a corporate give away.  Recall once again... Independents and Natural Gas are the ones targeted to pay this change... not Big Oil and Oil.  The attached is a nice synopsis on this issue. http://www.heritage.org/research/energyandenvironment/IB86.cfm

 

Depletion Allowance- The next item that is currently being attacked is the Percentage Depletion Allowance.  Since this is called an "allowance", it is easy to see why people think "corporate welfare" by name alone.  I can hear you now.   "By Golly, how can you defend a "depletion allowance, 'choke?"  

 

The Depletion Allowance was a result of the Revenue Act of 1913 and applied to timber, mining, and oil and gas extraction.  The Revenue Act istelf  was enacted to deal with the taxation issues surrounding revenues derived from selling these "depleting assets" because the 16th Amendement of the US Constitution allows the Federal Government to tax income but NOT property.  

 

Since the revenue derived from our hypothetical office building is just revenue derived from a non-declining asset base, the "golden eggs" produced by our building goose, it is appropriately taxed as income.  However, if I were to sell my building, the income I receive would be taxed as Capital Gains, which has historically been taxed at a lower rate than income, because you are now selling the goose rather than each of the eggs.  The "goose" can no longer provide you ongoing income.  

 

Since oil and gas income is REALLY the sale of property, ie each barrel or MCFG produced depletes the original amount of property, how do you constitutionally tax the income derived from selling pieces of this declining property? 

 

For virtually all other properties, this is done via a Capital Gains tax.  The Depletion Allowance essentially "splits the baby" by treating this incremental sale of assets by recognizing that some part of the revenue is a sale of property, and thus subject to a lower rate than pure income... somewhere between Cap Gains and income.  

 

For major integrated oil companies (Big Oil), this is can only be done statutorily on a cost basis... ie they can deduct the cost of acquiring the asset. For smaller independents, it can be done on a percentage of sales basis. Lets look at an analogy.

 

For you homeowners out there, "percentage depletion" would be the equivalent of  taxing you at your income tax rate after you deducted 15% of the sales price of  your house, instead of straight capital gains on the difference between your original cost and sales price.  So, if you bought your house for $25k and sold it 20 years later for $200k, you would pay 15% of $175k, or $26.5k to the Feds under current law.  

 

The independent oilman equivalent would be that the house was taxed at 35% of 85% of the net profit, or a tax of $52.05k, nearly twice the capital gains rate.  The Major Oil Co. would pay 35% of the whole $175k, or $61.25.  

 

In essence, under the current schema, oil and gas companies pay twice the tax burden of a guy flipping houses!  See how we PROMOTED people to speculate in buying homes with our tax policy? Too many did, and we had a crash.  Eventually people built many more homes than there were people to live in them.  This oversupply is bad because people that already have homes are faced with a value collapse because of the glut.  With Oil or Gas, we don't have that same problem, since we don't horde oil or gas, but rather burn it for fuel and energy.  We need as much as we can get because we currently import over 60% of our oil, which means we send our dollars to non-American sellers and remove them from our economy.  Unlike with houses, if we overproduce domestically and the market collapses for oil and/or gas, the consumer is happy! Ecstatic, even! Even better, domestic production hugely benefits our trade balance, in that every dollar of domestic production is a dollar not sent overseas!  But, alas, instead we are in the process of choosing to penalize domestic oil and gas.  Remember, these proposed taxes don't apply AT ALL to foreign imported oil and gas!

 

Major Oil had this treatment removed, perhaps not so coincidentally, around the time they abandoned the US.  Is it any wonder why Major Oil is NOTa substantive player in US oil and gas production today? 

 

So, do you still think of percentage depletion as a subsidy or give-away, or merely an effort to correct slightly the differential between Income, as its treated, and Capital Gains, which it really is?  Ironically, removing Percentage Depletion, as President Obama has proposed, does not affect Big Oil at all, it only further penalizes Independent Oil.  A good read on this is included here.  http://www.answers.com/topic/depletion-allowance

As I described above, it is very difficult to borrow money to drill oil and gas wells.  Independent oil and gas companies have historically invested 100% of their cash flow back into drilling new wells.  New capital comes into the business when prices are high, and flees when prices are low.  For idependent oil companies,  the cash flow of existing operations dictates how many wells can be drilled and how many Americans can continue to be employed in this business.

 

The Obama Administration's proposed tax regime would raise the US Independent Oil and Gas industry's all in tax rate from 37% to 45%, compared with the average of all other US industries of 33%.  Again, the target is painted squarely on the backs of Mom and Pop independents that produce Domestic Oil and Gas, and not Big Oil one iota!

 

 

So what does this mean over a few years of a well's life?  Essentially, it takes the majority of its cut from the first year of production.  Importantly, this means it directly reduces the number of new wells drilled in year two onwards, because, remember, we operate out of cash flow.  The chart below shows that over a 6 year period, over 20% fewer wells would be drilled due to cash flow limitations.

This, overall, is a case in point about taxes in general.  Some industries horde cash.  Some industries have access to lots of credit.  Big Oil itself hordes cash due to issues of scale.  Industries with the ability to horde cash or with access to big credit are strongly buffered from the negative consequences of taxation.  

 

The Independent Oil Business, with a demonstrable history of 100% reinvestment of its revenues in order to replace and grow a depleting resource base is particularly susceptible to tax increases, especially front-loaded tax increases, as our President currently proposes.  In other words, every dollar that is extracted from the independent oil and gas industry via taxation and tariffs comes directly and on a one to one basis from dollars NOT invested in private sector jobs, business to business investments, and new wealth creation (as opposed to moved around wealth) from domestic resources!  

 

Common sense dictates that if we want an economy that grows, we should keep the following standard... if government provides better returns, it should get the dollar, if private enterprise provides a better return IT should get the dollar.  Equally unambiguous and demonstrable is the answer to that previous rhetorical statement.  Yet today we see government taking dollars from the better stewards, and expanding its franchise beyond safety, defense, and regulation of commercial infrastructure into the intentionally poorly-served commercial banking and private equity investment realms of subsidizing private entities that a) don't make things anyone wants to buy or b) abject marketplace failures, such as troubled banks and General Motors!

 

We all hope that we can develop cost-effective alternative energies.  While we are getting there, we should be supporting domestic supplies, particularly natural gas, the MOST carbon neutral dependable energy supply.  Creating a tax schema that kneecaps our current capabilities to produce energy while promoting increasing trade imbalances and exporting even more US jobs overseas and that result in more and more foreign natural gas and oil imports cannot be in ANY American's best interest, can it?

 

Oh, for those that want the raw data and assumptions for the analysis above, here it is...

 

Current Tax Regime

 

Proposed Tax Regime

 

I hope this clarifies a complex and politically bombastic subject for you.

A 'Dark' Future, Indeed...

Want to know what 40 years of Liberal Hegemony in education has wrought?

Look no further than this latest poll.  http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_business/just_47_oppose_nationalizing_oil_industry

Less than a majority of the citizenry are opposed to nationalizing the US oil industry.  30 percent of our enlightened populace think government research is the answer to our energy needs.

Republicans are 4:1 in favor of private enterprise, while democrats are "evenly divided". 

Be afraid.  Our children's future is being sealed.  The Borg awaits.

EPA nomics...

The government doesn't mint very good lower level bureaucrats, but it does a great job of enticing idealistic young lawyers that want to change the world.  A recent event reminded me of Barry Goldwater's advice to Nixon in 1968. 

"You need to change out the top level of Civil Servants in each Department. Otherwise you won't run the government".

Ol' Barry said this to Tricky Dick because Eisenhower had lamented to Goldwater that the entrenched, newly bureaucratized New Dealers were able to stifle a lot of his legislative efforts through agency "interpretation".

Let me give you a modern example that will make you never want to take on that proverbial Big Ol' City Hall nestled in the asscrack of Maryland and Virginia.

Congress passed Storm Water legislation that treats murky water as a pollutant.  It called for all sorts of permits and surveys... botanical, archeological, etc. for construction sites over 5 acres that would shrink to 1 acre over time.  Oil and gas E&P activities were specifically exempted in this legislation, largely because there is not a single reported incidence of this attributable to E&P operations.  Like all legislation, tt was delivered to the appropriate Department to administer, in this case, the EPA.  Fun Fact... the father of the EPA was who?  That's right!  Tricky Dick Nixon, the most liberal president in the last 40 years!

The EPA, as is their wont, summarily and arbitrarily decided that "E&P Activties" begin when the bit begins to turn, NOT the pad development, and thus E&P activities were NOT exempted, regardless of the language of the legislation!  Real Legal Legerdemain. 

Of course, although it shocked and outraged the E&P industry, they should have seen it coming.  it shouldn't be a surprise that the EPA, being, like all organizations, an organization that seeks more power, would do this.  Add to that the fact that many EPA employees are green kool-aid drinkers, and the fact that this happened at the Temple of our National Religion shouldn't be surprising at all. 

In any case, the oil business, led by Tad Mayfield of Houston, sued the EPA for this seeming boundary crossing... you know, where it SAYS specifically that E&P activity is exempted and where it is "interpreted" unilaterally in such a way to effectively be the opposite?  The oil guys were fixing to win in the 7th Circuit.  The EPA granted a stop to its action, under the proviso that the oil and gas business could not sue the EPA again on this until the industry had been damaged.  OK!  Big win for the good guys! Uhhhh.

Never, NEVER think you can beat the brilliant legal minds of the EPA.  In a move that would do the Rock, or maybe Kimbo Slice if you like bludgeoning fists from places you don't expect, proud, the EPA lawyers pulled a trick that was, frankly, brilliant. 

The Environmental Defense Council sued the EPA over this "agreement", some say at the urging of some at the EPA, and shopped venue to the infamous 9th Circuit... infamous if you believe in property rights or for profit-based business or that sort of thing, vaunted and celebrated if you think communism as more than a good idea, corporations are rapers of man and land, you are a mommas against (favorite pet peeve here), and/or you think white men are cancers on the planet.

Of course, the 9th Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, OVERTURNED the EPA's weak defense of its forced interpretation of "literal reading" of the statute... ie E&P activities are EXEMPT.  As written.

What a beautiful whipsaw.  The "losing" defendant, the only one who can appeal, is the reluctant party that was forced to rescind its over-reaching interpretation in the first place.  By "losing" this case, they now they get to do what they originally set out to do! 

That was some Smart Lawyer'in!  Like Perry Kafka F***'in Mason.

More Drug Runner News from District 4...

Gate keys are going for anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $10,000 (offered) for the Gate Key to Jim McAllen's ranch.   McAllen uses one of those fancy microchip controlled locks, and tries to keep the runners off his place.

FBI is keeping it's eyes out for Basic Well Services trucks, and, to a lesser extent, Key trucks.  Not necessarily the real ones, but perfect knock-offs if not.

Everyone wants a job as a gate guard... great way to make $1,000 per entry... or an oilfield driver with little tight management.  Rio Grande City is the hub for this activity.

Guatemalan "Kaiba" runners with AK-47 are now boldly escorting groups of "poorly-document work seekers" carrying drugs across South Texas ranches.  Seems the local Mexican Military escorts were charging $2,000 per person for a day's worth of escort duty.  The Mexican government is cracking down, and Guatemalans have taken up the slack, willing to work for only $400.00 per day.  Maybe the PDR can make this a big issue come elections... they are exporting jobs "down south" so it seems.

The threat of violence is prevalent, and people are adjusting to how to deal with it.  Read "appease those that might kill you".  They still hate the oil companies, who actually pay for access and damages, can get sued, and pay people in dollars that will not send them to prison, and don't injure and kill folk.  Funny how effective real fear is in shutting people up.

I Bet She Ain't An Engineer...

Yale, not known in recent years as a bastion for talent for our oil and gas industry, has climbed a notable pinnacle of higher learning with student Aliza Shvartz's Performance Art piece where she both inseminates and later induces abortions on herself.  Her own description is really impossible to mock. It certainly makes me look at an Ivy League education in a whole new light.

"For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages. I created a group of fabricators from volunteers who submitted to periodic STD screenings and agreed to their complete and permanent anonymity. From the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle, the fabricators would provide me with sperm samples, which I used to privately self-inseminate. Using a needleless syringe, I would inject the sperm near my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so as to insure the possibility of fertilization. On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding.

To protect myself and others, only I know the number of fabricators who participated, the frequency and accuracy with which I inseminated and the specific abortifacient I used. Because of these measures of privacy, the piece exists only in its telling. This telling can take textual, visual, spatial, temporal and performative forms — copies of copies of which there is no original.

This piece — in its textual and sculptural forms — is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body. The artwork exists as the verbal narrative you see above, as an installation that will take place in Green Hall, as a time-based performance, as a independent concept, as a myth and as a public discourse.

It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership. An intentional ambiguity pervades both the act and the objects I produced in relation to it. The performance exists only as I chose to represent it. For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation — the part most meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the aspect that has not been discussed thus far) — is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading.

This ambivalence makes obvious how the act of identification or naming — the act of ascribing a word to something physical — is at its heart an ideological act, an act that literally has the power to construct bodies. In a sense, the act of conception occurs when the viewer assigns the term “miscarriage” or “period” to that blood.

In some sense, neither term is exactly accurate or inaccurate; the ambiguity is not merely a matter of context, but is embodied in the physicality of the object. This central ambiguity defies a clear definition of the act. The reality of miscarriage is very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming — an authorial act.

It is the intention of this piece to destabilize the locus of that authorial act, and in doing so, reclaim it from the heteronormative structures that seek to naturalize it.

As an intervention into our normative understanding of “the real” and its accompanying politics of convention, this performance piece has numerous conceptual goals. The first is to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are “meant” to do from their physical capability. The myth that a certain set of functions are “natural” (while all the other potential functions are “unnatural”) undermines that sense of capability, confining lifestyle choices to the bounds of normatively defined narratives.

Just as it is a myth that women are “meant” to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are “meant” for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not “meant” for sex at all), it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are “meant” to birth a child.

When considering my own bodily form, I recognize its potential as extending beyond its ability to participate in a normative function. While my organs are capable of engaging with the narrative of reproduction — the time-based linkage of discrete events from conception to birth — the realm of capability extends beyond the bounds of that specific narrative chain. These organs can do other things, can have other purposes, and it is the prerogative of every individual to acknowledge and explore this wide realm of capability."

Wow.  For some reason, I doubt she is an engineer.  I doubt if she has been in the same building as an engineering course. 

My first thought was "geophysicist"... with her talk about "normative understandings (of a) mythology based on form".  That sure sounds geophysical to me.  I think I heard these words from a geophysicist explaining away his dry hole once. 

But I think she has to be a landman due to what, in the "normative" sense, we might call her "gibberish" pertaining to "In some sense, neither term is exactly accurate or inaccurate; the ambiguity is not merely a matter of context, but is embodied in the physicality of the object. This central ambiguity defies a clear definition of the act".  Further, I would guess a Marcellus Shale landman, because I have never encountered a mineral owner this side of the Mississippi that would listen to this without reflexively reaching for a shotgun.

I say "landMAN", although I don't mean to promulgate "a sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are “meant” to do from their physical capability".  You know, not in the Normative Sense.

We Toldja So...

Gosh, Wally, I hate to say I toldja so, but...

This, from the NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/business/worldbusiness/15food.html?ei=5065&en=9e715f242c497f48&ex=1208923200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

is an analysis of the economic and food availability disaster created by subsidizing corn to create ethanol.  Food costs are spiraling upwards at a rate not seen since the late 1980's due to this very bad policy decision and the entire infrastructure of "Fighting Global Warming" with useless policies  is fanning class hatred across the world.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/14/ccview114.xml

Of course, maybe that is what its proponents meant to do.

Here is what The Chokester commented...

http://openchoke.blogs.com/open_choke/2007/07/corny-joke.html

http://openchoke.blogs.com/open_choke/2007/08/prescience.html

Hillary and Texas Oilmen?

Can anyone tell us why Hillary is behind closed doors in Fort Worth, Texas at the Worthington Hotel this very evening along with dozens of Texas Oil and Gas Industry Leaders? 

Talk about your unfortunate coincidence, if you are a democrat running hard left in the primaries.  Hillary is staying at the Worthington and booked at the same time as the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners annual convention.  A little innuendo, and, viola, a consipracy in the making!  Ol' Barak had the courage to laugh out loud when he declined the opportunity to debate Hillary on energy policy sposnored by energy groups in Houston.  They could be the "lights out" candidates!  Of course, all of our candidates this year are "lights out" candidates. 

I hear Arab oil burns more cleanly in Volvos anyhow.

It Takes a Village...

I live in a Village.  A 3,000 household village in a suburb.  We have a city council comprised of members that viscerally hate each other.  A typical council meeting has devolved into "Aha" moments where the mayor or the opposing group each claim the other side broke a law by saying the wrong thing or adding agenda items improperly and then asking for a censure vote.  They are, in  a word, pathetic.

These are my local partisans.  Although not weighed down with party names, they act just like it, they want you to belong to Tribe 1 or Tribe 2, with the requirement being only that you hate the other tribe because "the OTHER tribe will destroy the village with their (crookedness, stupidity, laziness).  Because we lack the easy metatag of "Democrat" or "Republican" to tell us who to hate, we actually have to pay attention to how each Tribe looks at the issues. 

One underlying fact about both Tribes... Both claim to be for the people, and both want to control heavily what the people do.  Both Tribes are huge control freaks with the only variation I can discern being a nuanced differential about WHAT they want to control.

Under the current Tribe, at least now I can put in a bird bath or replace my roof without being slapped with a "Red Tag".

I got a letter from City Council the other day.  It stated that California had demonstrated that wildfires were a real thorny issue, and that the Village had decided, as a service to the citizens, to arrange for a sticks and branches pick up day in late November.  Cool, I thought.  Good responsive governing.  I kept reading.

It then said that the sticks and branches had to be placed on the edge of property Just So, or otherwise they wouldn't be picked up.  Hmmm, I thought.  This isn't sounding so good.  Last thing I want is a huge pile of sticks in my front yard that were not picked up if I happened to bundle 'em wrong.

Then came the list of "Approved" contractors who were authorized to do this work in my little burgh.  Noticeably absent were the less expensive guys local guys... like the old Greek guy I use who always tells me that Tree or Branch removal is $X when we negotiate for the first one, then tells me, once I have agreed and his crew is onsite, that he can do two other trees for 1/10th X now that he is here.  This "government service" was seeming less and less appealing by the moment.

The kicker was contained in the last paragraph, however.  It stated that the City Council had voted to require citizens to clean up dead branches and sticks from their yard, and those that did not would be fined and possibly jailed if we did not comply.  There it was.  A big old steaming pile of government that I was holding in my hand.  Basically it said that they had voted to make me spend $10k or more to their "approved" contractors or face sanctions.  Nice. 

I told my Dad, who lives in Ruidoso, NM about this, and he laughed and said the Forest Service had done the exact same thing last year, with its "approved" contractor list that did not include anyone he had ever used.

These Bozos I helped elect than came out and said that they were supporting Free Markets by doing this through private contractors.  What a load of hooey.  Government Fiat represented as Free Markets.  Companies paying to become "approved" and then lobbying for the power of government to be used to force business. 

Don't let people totally misrepresent the term Free Markets that way.  Like I blogged a while back about my method to judge how bad legislation was by only its title ("Comprehensive Patriot Hungry Children and Mothers Homeland Defense Act" is a guaranteed to make toilet paper of the Constitution and what rights we might have left), the meaning of words are being intentionally mangled so that our underlying beliefs can be attacked.  If "Capitalism" and "Free Markets" equal "Enron", rather than "Enron" equals "Fraud", then you have not so subtly equated "Capitalism" and "Free Markets" with "Fraud", although Fraud exists everywhere there is an exchange of goods and services.  This isn't accidental "misunderstanding".  If you look at the bankruptcy and criminal records of our US Legislature, you could much more easily make the claim that "Legislator" equals "Crook". 

In any case, gotta get the government approved crew over here so I's don' get whupped by massa.  No one likes an uppity taxpayer.