No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for December 17th, 2007

The ghost of E. Michael McCan’t lives

by @ 18:38. Filed under Law and order, Politics - Milwaukee County, Taxes.

Kevin Fischer has the details of how the Milwaukee County DA’s office declined to pursue any case against the Franklin School District for holding a mandatory indoctrination session for high school students of voting age the Friday before they attempted the 3rd-largest referendum increase in state history. I could’ve swore Paul Bucher filed charges against a Waukesha County school district for similar actions (again, if memory serves, that was settled without a trial).

Pure misuse of TIF district

by @ 18:20. Filed under Business, Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

Just because I’ve been focusing a lot on the Presidential race, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping an eye on the local stuff. I only hope I have a Shorewood reader or two so this one can get sunk. According to JSOnline’s DayWatch, the Shorewood Village Board is expected to vote on an $800,000 TIF district to provide the seed money to allow Lakewood Financial Services to put a new facade on a 5-story office-and-apartment building they own on Oakland Ave. Unlike the dead plan to put a House of Blues and an arcade in the former Pabst Brewing complex, I won’t say that this won’t get repaid in short order; it will. However, there’s still a couple things quite fishy here.

First, I’ll take the village’s claim that this will turn a $3,500,000 building into $5,756,000 one, plus provide a boost to surrounding properties of $305,000. Unless I’m missing something important like the owner putting some of its own (or privately-borrowed) money in this, that’s a 383% net return on valuation from nothing more than a new facade. That is simply too good to be true.

Second, let’s run through the developer’s numbers. There are 44 apartments that go for $850/month, and 7,500 square feet of office and commercial space that go for $12/square foot/month. The developer is claiming they’ll be able to up that to $1,050/apartment/month (a $300/month increase per apartment) and $18/square foot of office and commercial space/month (a $6/month increase per square foot) solely from the effects of that facelift. That’s $58,200 per month coming in solely on the basis of the improvement, something I’m sure would cause reputable lenders would literally trip over themselves to offer $800,000 in conventional commercial loans on that promised revenue stream. Again, assuming that the facelift is $800,000 and the developer isn’t kicking in its own or privately-borrowed cash, one has to question why they’re running to Shorewood to be the banker.

Going back to the village’s claims, the increase in revenue (42.3%) doesn’t exactly jive with the expected reassessed value (64.5%). Now, I’m not in the real-estate business, so I do expect a bit of disconnect between increased rent and increased assessed value, but that’s not exactly adding up.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the area, but the Shorewood portion of Oakland isn’t exactly blighted.

41 Taliban die of sleep depravation and airstrikes, but mostly airstrikes

by @ 13:24. Filed under War on Terror.

(H/T – Weasel Zippers)

I don’t know whether I should be complaining about the AoS commenting system since I hit the CPU Quota Exceeded error again, but since he isn’t on this one yet, I’ll jump in with the details from CTV:

Canadian military officials say they’re happy with a weekend raid carried out by coalition forces that reportedly caught the Taliban completely by surprise.

About 70 Taliban fighters were asleep in a compound when Canadian, Afghan National Army and British Ghurka soldiers attacked.

Forty-one Taliban died, with no coalition or civilian casualties reported in Operation Sharp Sword.

Airstrikes were used on the insurgents.

Good flying and hunting, men.

And the hits just keep on coming for Romney

by @ 9:59. Filed under Politics - National.

The man who may be kingmaker in Iowa, Rep. Steve King, endorsed Fred Thompson. What’s interesting is while Michelle Malkin had it right all along, MSNBC tried to push Mitt Romney. They pushed so hard, reps from Team Romney were in the back room bewildered when King delivered the coup de grace to them.

Guess when Huck-A-Boom turns into Huck-A-Bomb (or is it -Bust?), it will be a case of last man standing instead of returning to the default.

Romney shoots himself in both feet

by @ 7:33. Filed under Guns, Politics - National.

(H/Ts – Bryan and Michelle)

Shot #1 – Romney came out in support of the ever-so-meaningless 1994 “Assault Weapons” ban. The quote of the day – “But, but I would, I would look at weapons that pose extraordinary lethality"¦.” The odd thing is, I’ve fired both the MAK-90 (AK-47 clone firing a 7.62x39mm round) and a rifle firing a .30-06 Winchester round, and because the Winchester round is much longer (they’re both the same diameter), the hunting round is a lot deadlier. In the Hot Air comments section, MadisonConservative takes a very good whack at the other things that the Brady Bill said made rifles soooooooo dangerous.

Shot #2 – Romney wrongly claimed he got the NRA’s endorsement in the 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. While he did get a “B” grade from the NRA, not only did they stay out of the endorsement game in that race, but they gave his opponent an “A”. I will guarantee that he won’t get the NRA endorsement this time either.

Quick flashback to the YouTube debate. Several of the candidates were asked what their favorite gun was. Here’s how I recorded Romney’s answer: “To Mitt – But my son does (probably BB Ryders).”

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