I guess Chavez has threatened a couple times to blow up his oil wells if the US makes him mad, or something like that. This satirical piece pokes fun of this threat. Quite funny.

So at least Bin Laden tells the truth. The Darfur massacres are all about the Arab government killing non-Arabs so they can take control of the oil wealth in that part of the Sudan. I've been to Sudan and talked to the people, they hate their form of government, they can't stand how they have been manipulated and used to kill their own people.

New Orleans will take a decade to re-build, but right off the bat they are choosing politicians just like the old days. Too bad eh?

World Bank leaders are having a good debate. Is poverty reduction more important that eliminating corruption? Or can you even think about reducing poverty when corruption is so rampant in same countries?

Some European nations complained that the World Bank's president, Paul Wolfowitz, was emphasizing corruption-fighting at the expense of poverty reduction. The former top Pentagon official began his five-year term in June.

I got a lot of responses to my immigration posts last week. Some people wanting to focus on the "sin" issue of the immigrant. Some wanting to focus on the criminal nature of the employer. Others wanting to open our borders completely. Still look forward to your posts and comments.

I am moving toward a more open border stance personally. We need immigrants for jobs in the United States. We need their diversity and thier talents. The law doesn't allow fully open borders so I would suggest responsiblity in allowing more Mexicans and Central Americans to enter the United States legally, while fingerprinting and DNA printing all entrants for security purposes.

Now for the news of the week that I followed:

Iraq finally stopped wrangling and chose a prime minister who needs to form a government. Democracry is working, remember real democracy is hard work.

The trading price for oil topped $75 for the first time ever! It will drop this summer back to $55 but mark my words we will see $100 before the end of the year too! We'll hear a lot of calls for new energy sources and innovation ... it's just the kind of challenge we Americans have been looking for!

Chinese President spends time with Bill Gates and heads of Westcoast businesses. Looks like he may just agree to abide by international law and protect copyrites and begin to slow piracy. Chindia (China and India) are growing so rapidly that they are affecting other parts of the world by limiting supply of materials. Copper at all time high, Gold above $600, Silver up, Platinum up. Watch all commodities as they rise, now how do we innovate enough to hold price levels?

Google posts huge increase in profits from real income on advertising, so the internet does work, but similar to the old world, it has to make money to work

Mortgage rates start up and housing is cooling all over. Look for prices to get soft for new construction, some builders will try and buy market share by dropping prices. Some trades too will look to get aggressive and drop prices to drive some competitors out of the market. Frankly the biggest loser is the first time buyer.

Governor Daniels spent time in Afganistan and Iraq with soldiers, then spent some time in Porter County on Thursday with local republicans. A goverenor that we can be proud of.

Tim Scannell's financial update is interesting read ... read short newsletter

Oil hits $70 for first time since September, gasoline inventories are down again so gasoline is increasing another 5-10 cents a gallon, heating oil is up too, only natural gas is maintaining competitive commodity levels. Yahoo Finance Article

Iran says it will give $50 million to the Palestinians to offset their losses with Europe and US withdrawing support due to Hamas (a terrorist group) not allowing for a government of peace. Iran banding with Hamas and the radical Palestinians will not bode well for peace in the mideast.

Still no agreement on a leader in Iraq. Until this government can be formed, with the legitimacy that comes from democracy, the US will be mired for months to come. Read REUTERS updates

Market moving upward a bit on reports that Citibank earnings were up 4%. This flies in the face of the the "the sky is falling" folks in media. Looks like banks will do well even though rates have been increased too many times. Now it's time for the Fed to get out of the rate business, follow some Steve Forbes advice and use money supply.

With toll roads and bridges and airports being privatized and outsourced worldwide, the business of managing these lease and privatized assets is growing. Now it seems that GE may be interested in the airport operator from the UK that manages the Indy airport. Maybe they'll buy the consortium that just bought the Indiana toll road lease? This does bring up another daltonsbriefs constant complaint ... We really need to get serious about selling the United States Postal Service.

Free Trade is one of the most powerful tactics to overturn tyrants and socialism in the world. Read a well written thesis on why the Bush Administration will be remembered in history as one of the best at the implementation of free trade for the masses.

Opinion of Housing Zone economist, the housing market is fine, but investors who were flipping properties in the last three years have retreated from the market. They may have been as much as 12% of the market in 2005, they aren't going to be anywhere close to that amount this year, which will feel like less buyers are in the market. This is no bubble! Countrywide Home Mortgage reported 10% funding increase in March or last year, no bubble here! Read blogger who suggests that this is good news for develoepers and for financiers.

I guess there is one Iraqi leader who has taken on the jihadists and decided that they are killing more of his people than Americans. This blogger and links suggest we look at this as a turning point of self-responsibility.

Thoughts on Immigration?

A quote to start the conversation:

Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

The Katrina construction projects are being called the "gold rush" for immigrants

Hispanic workers have gutted, roofed and painted houses, and hauled away garbage, debris and downed trees. Illegal immigrants have installed trailers to house returning evacuees at New Orleans City Park, their pay coming from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) subcontractors.
"It's all illegals doing this work," said Rey Mendez, a FEMA trailer subcontractor from Honduras. Read Article in Seattle Times

So, before I go on with my thoughts, let's hear some first. Who's willing to venture a comment?

if it works for healthcare let's try housing

So in Massachusets they are going to require all citizens to carry health insurance. If they don't then there is a penalty that has to be paid.

The thought being that companies will be forced to buy health insurance if they want to get and keep employees. So the government mandates health insurance, does nothing to control costs or even slow down the cost increases that they have created, then they levy penalties against companies?

Sounds a lot like housing. Costs of housing go up due to foolish government decisions that drive up lot costs and permits and fees. Then government starts to worry that too many people will be homeless so they limit rents so they can feel good. Then they raise the mimimum wage so that employers are forced to cut employees. Let's see if they also mandate health insurance and add more income taxes, let property taxes increase at twice the rate of inflation, this too will cut the number of people that employers will hire.

So we get a recipe for disaster. Less people employed. Ever increasing costs in an economy under attack from the East and Southeast Asia. Housing costs escalating, health care costs escalating, and gasoline heading to $4.00 a gallon quickly.

Maybe government should require all residents to own a home? That's the best way to make them pay property taxes to support the uncontrolled spending at local schools. If we force people to make good decisions they are bound to continue. Force them to pay the government for retirement, because we can't trust them to do something themselves. Force them to buy a house because they couldn't afford one otherwise. Arbitrarily raise pay rates, cause the market is too stingy.

Walmart Bank

Here's what I don't understand, unions and banks and retailers have banded together to fight Walmart's request to form an in-house bank. For starters they feel they can save themselves $30 million a year in debit and credit fees if they own their own bank. That's a good thing and would promote more competitveness.

There is wide-spread fear that Walmart would then open a series of bank branches. Oh no! Then we would have even more competition in the banking business right?

Vanity or Innovation?

Is it possible to develop a laser that can cut the fat below the surface of the skin without damaging the skin? How much would Americans pay to have fat burned off annually?

Sounds LIke Coffee Creek ... What went wrong here?

Utah Mining Company Planning to Develop a New City, Project Expected to Take More Than 50 Years
SOUTH JORDAN, Utah (AP) -- It's a plan for development that will take more than 50 years from start to finish, on the largest piece of privately owned land next to a U.S. metropolis for an expected half-million residents.

This megasuburb, twice the size of San Francisco, will be the work of Kennecott Land, the real-estate sister company of Kennecott Utah Copper Corp. Kennecott Utah Copper Corp. is a subsidiary of London-based Rio Tinto, a mining multinational and avowed convert to environmentalism, which decided to make a showcase out of its surplus Utah lands instead of just selling them off for cookie-cutter subdivisions.

Home builders were skeptical when the Salt Lake valley's biggest landowner laid out the plan for a 20-mile string of densely packed, "walkable" communities framing the rural west side of Salt Lake County. The communities would be laid out along a planned highway and light-rail lines connecting to Salt Lake City. Mining executives pitched the idea to some 50 builders. "A lot of them rolled their eyes and walked away," said Keith L. Morey, manager for Kennecott's flagship Daybreak project, where just seven builders were chosen to help build the first town of 14,000 homes.

"It was a mixture of excitement and fear," Brad Wilson, president and chief executive of Destination Homes, said of his decision to sign on with Kennecott Land to help build Daybreak.
"We didn't know if this was something people would wrap their arms around. It's so different -- the tiny lots and alley-loaded garages. It was a risk, but at the end of the day we felt they knew what they were doing," Wilson said.

Kennecott's whole plan calls for 162,800 houses in neighborhoods mixing the wealthy and wage earners in shared communities of gardens, pocket parks and surrounding open space.
The so-called West Bench development -- the string of communities along the base of a mountain range -- differs from other planned communities by emphasizing connections to a larger metropolis. "It's part of a vision for how the whole region grows," said lead planner Peter Calthorpe, a Berkeley, Calif., consultant who designed the trendy redevelopment of Denver's old Stapleton Airport, which is about the same size as Kennecott's Daybreak community.
Kennecott Land is developing the rolling foothills of its 144 square miles of land, which ranks as the largest piece of land anywhere in the United States that's under the control of a single, private owner and next to a major metropolis.

Single ownership of the land "gives incredible control over development and the execution of the plan," said Gary Hunt, a retired executive for Irvine Co., which developed one of the country's first master-planned communities, in California's Orange County, starting in the 1960s. "In other parts of the country you don't have that kind of opportunity." At Daybreak's information pavilion, manager Barbara Breen greets prospective buyers at a glass building with commanding views of the Wasatch and Oquirrh (OH-kuhr) mountains that frame the Salt Lake valley.
"We went on this incredible siege last summer, selling 40 houses a week, so we ran out," she said. More than 800 houses have been sold so far, half of them still under construction.
Daybreak was not without its environmental problems, a legacy of a century of digging at nearby Bingham Mine, which is expected to keep operating until at least 2018.

A small part of Daybreak was built over ponds that collected mining runoff -- along with heavy metals -- from 1936 to 1965. Kennecott Land scooped up 3 million square yards of contaminated soil and carried it back near the mine. Some buyers bluntly ask whether Daybreak would "glow in the dark or something," said Peter F. McMahon, president of Kennecott Land. He argued the Daybreak cleanup exceeded Environmental Protection Agency standards. "It's cleaner than a bunch of other parts of the valley," he said.
Kennecott Utah Copper is building a pair of reverse-osmosis filter plants to clean tainted groundwater over the next 40 years, while providing fresh tap water for the southwest part of the Salt Lake valley. It dug other wells 300 feet deep to provide ground-source heating and cooling for a new elementary school and community center and contributed $400,000 to kick-start an environmental study of extending a light-rail line from downtown Salt Lake City to Daybreak.

"It's a new business for Rio Tinto. Some people said, "What are you doing this for?'" McMahon said, pointing out that Kennecott Land acquired more land than it will ever need for mining. "We have land in an area with strong demographics and a strong economy. All that growth is heading that way."

"Sustainable" development is a term McMahon and other Kennecott Land executives often use to describe their venture. Daybreak, for example, will contain all of its own runoff, using it for irrigation for native grasses and 40 species of trees, said Greg L. Rasmussen, an engineer and Kennecott Land's director of land development.

At Daybreak, every house will be within a five minute's walk of a park on 37 miles of interconnecting trails, some lined with channel streams. It will be just as easy to walk or bicycle to grocery and other shops and restaurants in the village core. Kennecott Land banned the use of aluminum siding and fake cobblestone facades in favor of natural materials and insisted on rambling front porches for most houses. "My wife always wanted a front porch," said Craig Douglass, a 56-year-old software quality analyst for 3M Co., who moved from a nearby subdivision, where he found his half-acre yard too large to maintain.

At Daybreak, the couple bought a $273,000, 1,650-square-foot house with "a nice small yard, and we're looking forward to all the amenities" that will include a sailing lake, he said.
"The idea is these homes will appreciate in value because of their quality and the amenities of the neighborhood," said Wilson, the builder who has taken 200 orders so far and can't finish the houses fast enough for his buyers. Kennecott is selling lots to builders but can't control home prices, which are rising with demand and range from less than $200,000 to more than $800,000, depending on a menu of options the builders offer.

Wilson said Kennecott Land's first town is not only unique to Utah but the country. He's toured many planned communities in other states but adds, "I don't know anyone who has done it as well as Kennecott."
Daybreak: http://daybreakutah.com
Kennecott Land Co. http://www.kennecottland.com