Open Mike, Black Hole

The Richardson City Council's Statement of Goals (pages 9-28 of this handout from the August 29 city council meeting) is full of noble ambitions, but it will be the list of near-term action items that city residents really should pay attention to. Those are the items most likely to show up on the council's meeting agenda sometime in the next two years.

After the jump, a suggestion for one easily achievable near-term action item regarding communication.

OTBR: A Wheat Field in Finland

Latitude 60.170800° N
Longitude 23.149300° E

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".

Richardson Eagles 37, Irving 14

From 2011 Football

In their first home game of the season, the Richardson Eagles Friday night put up a convincing 37-14 win over the Irving Tigers at Eagle-Mustang Stadium.

More photos from this game and all of the 2011 season can be found here.

Berkner Rams 42, North Crowley 6

From 2011 Football

In their first home game of the season, the Berkner Rams rolled Thursday night to a 42-6 win over the North Crowley Panthers at Ram-Wildcat Stadium. It's a great time to be a Ram!

More photos from this game and all of the 2011 season can be found here.

Repeat Tweets: Deficit, Heat, Drought, Quake

Repeat tweets from August, 2011:

• 2011 08 01 - Stock market off 0.5% after debt deal. Business understands economy's problem is *not* deficit, but jobs. And debt deal will cost more jobs.
  
• 2011 08 02 - What's the official name of the new deficit reduction committee? For the record, it's the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
  
• 2011 08 02 - Democratic stimulus in 2009 arrested economy's freefall. Now we see if GOP austerity in 2011 will lead to growth or double dip recession.
  
• 2011 08 02 - Cotton Belt Rail Corridor simulation on YouTube. Skip to about 7:00 mark for Richardson/Plano alignment options. http://t.co/LsdvtTd
  
• 2011 08 02 - ABC is bringing back "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." Updated, of course. For one thing, it'll be called "Who Wants To Be A Job Creator."
  
• 2011 08 03 - Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro: Memoir of growing up in a weird orphanage. Might be a better Twilight Zone episode than novel. C-
  
• 2011 08 04 - Headline: "Wall Street stocks drop 3 percent on economic fears." In other news, Boehner and McConnell are high-fiving each other.
  
• 2011 08 04 - Spoiler alert: Don't look at your retirement 401K balance. ... Correction: 301K. ... Make that 201K.
  
• 2011 08 04 - Texans, we're all supposed to pitch in and reduce our overall energy demands. I dunno, sounds like tree-hugging environmentalism to me.
  
• 2011 08 04 - President Obama defends debt ceiling deal as balanced. Equally significant concessions were made by Democrats in both House and Senate.
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

Austrian Economics, Meet Medieval Hungary

Serendipity sometimes causes seemingly unrelated matters to cross paths, crashing into one another, bringing new insights into the nature of reality. As I explored the City of Richardson's proposed 2011-2012 budget, a YouTube video was recommended to me. It's a lecture by Walter Block from the Mises Institute Media. Independently, I happen to be reading "The Origins of Political Order" by Francis Fukuyama.

I offer two excerpts. I leave as an exercise for the reader to decipher the tracks of the particles released in this collision of economic philosophy and history.

After the jump, the excerpts.

Keffler: These are Balanced Budgets

"These are balanced budgets." Those are Richardson City Manager Bill Keffler's words Monday evening at a public hearing on the proposed 2011-2012 budget. Keffler seemed unusually agitated as he tried to explain why the budget shows an excess of expenditures over revenues. He said public opinion had "misunderstood" this matter and he wanted to "set the record straight."

I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was speaking to me. So, even though I didn't think there was anything left to say, let's go, after the jump, to Keffler's argument and my response.

All PDFs Are Not Created Equal

The City of Richardson has been recognized for transparency and rightly so. But transparency is not like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant. You're either pregnant or you're not. With transparency, there's room for all sorts of in-between states. That's where Richardson is right now. That's OK as long as we're getting better. You like to think that we're living in Drew Barrymore's world where she can say, "I'm not only in the best place I've ever been, but it keeps getting better and better." We're not quite there.

After the jump, an irritating inconsistency in Richardson's transparency from year to year.

Speaking English: Balanced Budget

balanced budget: noun. A budget is balanced when current expenditures are equal to receipts
-- Dictionary.com

balanced budget: Government budget where the current expenditure equals current revenue.
-- BusinessDictionary.com

balanced budget: A budget for which expenditures are equal to income. Sometimes a budget for which expenditures are less than income is also considered balanced.
-- InvestorWords.com

There you have it. A general-purpose dictionary, a business dictionary and an investment dictionary all agree. So, when I looked at Richardson's proposed 2011-2012 budget, saw that expenditures ($188.6 million) exceeded revenues ($186.9 million), and pronounced it "not balanced," it seemed to be an easy call for me. I couldn't understand why the city insisted the budget was balanced. I did have my theories:

"Maybe there's a state legal requirement that city budgets be balanced, meaning there's a legal definition of what "balanced" means that doesn't exactly match the dictionary definition. As long as the city meets the legal definition, their budget is in (legal) balance, even if the numbers show a teensy-tiny (dictionary) deficit."

After the jump, Bill McCalpin fleshes out that theory.

Wildcats 34, Skeeters 27

From 2011 Football

On a hot summer night, the average lifespan of a mosquito is one to two hours. The Skeeters of Mesquite High School lasted that long and more, persistent pests until the end. The Lake Highlands Wildcats eventually prevailed 34-27 in the season opener for both schools at Wildcat-Ram Stadium.

The bands and color guards and drill teams and cheerleaders and everything else that goes into making high school football the best value in Friday night entertainment are also off to a good start. It promises to be a great season.

More photos from this game and all of the 2011 season can be found here.

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In other Friday night games involving RISD schools, JJ Pearce beat Lake Dallas 36-32 (w00t) and Frisco Centennial beat Richardson 51-7 (ouch). Earlier, on Thursday night, Berkner beat South Garland 29-23.