Even More For You To Read

Get a coffee and a toasted bagel with cream cheese and settle down to read these items that you may have missed:

SEARS TOWER TO GET NEW NAME

How sad. It probably should not be allowed. I think people should go to the streets and protest. March on the company's headqurters. Threaten to pull your business away from them. Create signs and banners. History and all that:

• "Tallest U.S. building to get new name
  
  CHICAGO (Reuters) - The 110-story Sears Tower, tallest office building in the Western Hemisphere, will be renamed the Willis Tower later this year, global insurance broker Willis Group Holdings announced on Thursday.
  
  Willis said it was leasing multiple floors in the 1,451-foot 442-meter building in downtown Chicago to consolidate several offices. As part of the agreement the building will be renamed the Willis Tower this summer when the move takes place, the company said.
  
  Sears, once the largest U.S. retailer, occupied what was then the world's tallest building as its headquarters after the structure was completed in 1973 but moved out in the early 1990s."

All I can say is:

WILL THE NEW WEDC V.P. FIGHT OUR MAYOR

It may get ugly given that the new VP has taken a position on the border in his previous employment. Here is a comment that I had saved:

• “I did read Chris [Vander Doelen]’s article in the Star as well about the remarks of Steven Landry, president of DaimlerChrysler Canada Inc, that "A leader is needed to rescue Windsor's auto industry from the political "merry-go-round" snarling the international border."
  
  [Landry also said this to put matters in a context:
  
  After his presentation, Landry said he "totally understands" how difficult it is for political leaders to "make that call" on where a new border crossing should go, and who should run it. "I don't know who the leader should be, but somebody needs to step forward and make it happen.
  
  "When we talk to the provincial government and the federal government, they basically say, 'The decision has to come out of Windsor.' When we go to Windsor, they say the decision has to come out of the provincial or federal government -- so it's a merry-go- round."]
  
  I was most interested as well in the comment of Patrick Persichilli of Nemak. He said "the entire industry is hoping for action... I don't know if the leadership needs to change but we need to be more aggressive," Persichilli agreed when told of Landry's comments. "The gauntlet needs to drop. We need to get on with life and make a decision about a new border crossing."

That BLOG was written in June, 2006. Guess who was the Mayor then? It is the same person who now joined the Undevelopment Commission Board along with the Essex County Warden.

THE AUSTRALIANS

I wonder if these are the people who were supposed to teach MDOT about P3 investing.

Looks like they haven’t done so well with their own investments in infrastructure:

• “MACQUARIE Group is losing hundreds of millions of dollars on investments in its own funds.
  
  The diversified investment bank, which yesterday confirmed it had sacked more than 1000 staff in the past four months, will take a $2 billion hit, one of the largest ever, on bad loans and poor assets as the global financial crisis ravages its fortunes.
  
  The worst of the write-downs will centre on Macquarie's investment in its own listed infrastructure funds, which have been smashed by the current market turmoil.”

In another story, I read the following:"

• "In response to an ASX price query later in the afternoon, [Macquarie] reiterated the warning given in mid-December that it expected to write down its toll-road portfolio from $8.6 billion to $6.5 billion. This is well down from the $10.2 billion it valued its assets at the start of 2008 - which include stakes in the Indiana Toll Road, France's APRR, Britain's M6, Toronto's ETR 407 and Sydney's M7."

SHARED BORDER MANAGEMENT

Here is an interesting story but you are not being told the real reason why we cannot adopt this concept at bridges although it works at airports:

• “Lawmakers want shared-border deal
  
  Business First of Buffalo - by James Fink
  
  Two upstate members of Congress has asked President Obama to restart shared-border management discussions with the Canadian government.
  
  Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport, and Rep. John McHugh, R-Watertown, have written to Obama and requested he re-open shared border management talks with his Canadian counterpart when the newly-inaugurated president travels to Ottawa on Feb. 19.
  
  The impact of shared-border management could be a major boost to the Buffalo Niagara region’s economy and may push the construction of a second Peace Bridge span. Under the shared-border management guidelines, pre-customs clearance and other factors relating to goods and travelers entering the U.S. from Canada would take place on the Canadian side of the border, even though it would be run by U.S. Customs and border patrol agents…
  
  Last September, Homeland Security issued a new report that noted five issues that stalled talks between the two countries, including arrest authority, finger printing and information shared between the two countries respective law and border enforcement agencies.”

The reason that they did not discuss is the Ambassador Bridge. When the Bridge Company wanted to be involved with the Tunnel, their idea included having the equivalent of Shared Border Management on the American side. If that happened, there would hardly be the need for a new DRIC bridge because traffic would flow so smoothly.

Canada could not allow that so the entire concept was killed.

Now you know the real reason why this concept is not applicable at Bridge border crossings.

CONSEQUENCES OF MEGAPROJECTS

An interesting way that the Victoria Times Colonist looked at the huge cost of the Port Mann bridge that has doubled so far and the Olympics:

• “Those two megaprojects are getting the lion's share of provincial government capital funding and driving many of the spending decisions…
  
  Government ministries are squeezing spending, cutting programs and delaying necessary expenditures. They are facing intense pressure to cut a few dollars from here, and a few more from there, to keep the government's financial situation from becoming too dire.
  
  And through it all, the spending sprees on the Olympics and the Port Mann carry on. Both projects appear untouchable; both are so huge that they are almost unmanageable. We should not be surprised when we start hearing of cost overruns…
  
  Consider this: For $3.3 billion, you could build 100 Save-On-Foods Memorial Arenas, one for just about every town and city in B.C. Or we could buy a dozen new ferries, with enough left over for a fancy new terminal building at Swartz Bay. With $3.3 billion, you could run the entire Victoria Police Department for a century. You could cut income taxes in half for a year.
  
  It would be more to the point, however, to consider what we could do for individuals or for small-budget items. You could replace every book on the shelves of B.C.'s public libraries with up-to-date volumes and have enough left over to pay the operating costs of all of the libraries for the next decade. You could invest heavily in health care throughout the province, cutting wait times and improving the quality of life. You could provide hospitals where they are needed and train more doctors.”

On a much smaller but still relevant scale, that has happened to us because of the need to pay for the East End arena.

We truly have lost our sense of value.

TEST DRIVE OF AIR FORCE ONE

It sounded like President Obama treated his visit to Ottawa about the same as he treated his first use of Air Force One on a visit to a Democratic meeting:

• “And clearly, Obama enjoyed his first taste of high-flying presidential travel this week.
  
  He took both the Marine One helicopter and the president's jet for the first time in office on Thursday as part of a trip to a Democratic retreat in Williamsburg, Va.
  
  "Thank you for giving me a reason to use Air Force One," he told the lawmakers. "It's pretty nice."

He took another another “spiffy ride” here

• “Obama visit, short, business-only and largely private.
  
  OTTAWA - The official Canadian visit by Barack Obama is turning into a half-day presidential pit stop.”

SHOULD WARREN BUFFETT SUPPLY US WITH ELECTRICAL POWER

From his recent letter "To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc."

• Achievements at our electric utilities have been equally impressive. In 1995, MidAmerican became the major provider of electricity in Iowa. By judicious planning and a zeal for efficiency, the company has kept electric prices unchanged since our purchase and has promised to hold them steady through 2013.
  
  MidAmerican has maintained this extraordinary price stability while making Iowa number one among all states in the percentage of its generation capacity that comes from wind. Since our purchase, MidAmerican’s wind-based facilities have grown from zero to almost 20% of total capacity.
  
  Similarly, when we purchased PacifiCorp in 2006, we moved aggressively to expand wind generation. Wind capacity was then 33 megawatts. It’s now 794, with more coming. (Arriving at PacifiCorp, we found “wind” of a different sort: The company had 98 committees that met frequently. Now there are 28. Meanwhile, we generate and deliver considerably more electricity, doing so with 2% fewer employees.)

Hey, he owns some newspapers too!

OBAMA AND THE US ADMINISTRATION TOYED WITH CANADA

Now that we know who is really in control, life can get back to normal. Stephen just needs to worry about Iggy and not threaten the US with the cutting off of oil and energy if they dared try to renegotiate NAFTA:

• Security chief calms Canada's border concerns
  
  U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sought to reassure Canadians on Friday that a recent review of U.S.-Canada border security was simply a fact-finding exercise, not necessarily a prelude to tougher border measures.
  
  In an unusual step, Napolitano held a teleconference with Canadian reporters, and expressed concern that some of the media coverage north of the border had "misconstrued" the purpose of the review.
  
  "While I'm very familiar with the border with Mexico, given that I was the governor of Arizona, I have very little actual experience with the Canadian border, and I wanted to get a sense on where we stood up there."
  
  Two days after being sworn in on Jan. 21, Napolitano asked Homeland Security officials to conduct the review, noting that "members of Congress and homeland security experts have called for increased attention to the Canadian border."
  
  The review was completed and submitted to her on Feb. 17, two days before President Barack Obama visited Ottawa, but has yet to be made public.