Newsburglar

I recently saw an article in the news that the City of Chicago wants to hire 400 new police officers. While I would normally say, yeah, go ahead…where are all of those officers that used to be monitoring our intersections for cars running red lights? Weren’t those cameras supposed to reduce number of accidents and free up police to do more important things like fight crime?

Any idea if there is a correlation between the number of intersection cameras, neighborhood cameras, crime rates (reported and unreported), and number of police officers on the force?

Tom provided us with this article from the WSJ regarding renewed debate on climate change in Australia. In order to expand upon that, I wanted to provide the text of the Happer Letter which is referenced in the article.

Brian,
I’d be really interested to hear why someone would get the same amount of money if they trade in a truck/suv but only get a smaller increase in mpg than someone trading in a car. Any chance you can look into this? Since I don’t trust detroit or their lobby, I would guess someone in congress caved on this one so that people would trade in their older SUV for a newer one that might get a couple extra mpg.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/autos/0905/gallery.clunkers_cash/index.html

A friend has asserted that they think I’m the Beach Bum Bandit.

What do you think? Could it possibly be true?

The government in Iran has basically shut down all outside access so its very difficult to figure out what exactly is going on. Everything you read should be taken with a grain of highly skeptical salt. That said, I found this Fark comment which appears to be one guy’s attempt to synthesize the information which is still able to flow. I highly suggest that you read the whole thing.

The healthcare reform debate is heating up. As you listen to the debate, its prudent to have some facts and figures at your finger tips.

Professional sports leagues have discovered that they are not immune to the current economic difficulties. Revenue is flat or falling. Fixed costs are high. The weakest franchises in some leagues are losing tens of millions of dollars a year.

Amid the carnage, a few smart operators are learning a valuable lesson: You can’t lose $30 million a year on an MLS team when you’re total expenses are only $10 million. Suddenly, an investment in MLS doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, an investment in MLS is starting to look like a pretty good idea.

MLS owners have created the perception that MLS has been losing money since its inception. That operations haven’t created a positive cash flow. And while that may have been true prior to the last couple of seasons and still might be true for individual teams today, that perception is mostly wrong. Do you really think that after 13 years owners would continue to infuse cash into their teams in hopes of future profitability? Or is more likely that they have non-cash charges that can be taken to show that loss?

MLS Teams have three primary sources of revenue: gate receipts, sponsorships and television. In order to improve gate receipts, MLS teams have spent the last decade finding stadiums which they can control.

MLS Teams have three primary sources of revenue: gate receipts, sponsorships and television. Over the last few years, MLS has found ways to increase revenue from all three sources.

In order to improve gate receipts, MLS teams have spent the last decade finding stadiums which they can control.

MLS is expected to have 18 teams in the 2011 season. Only three of those teams will play in stadiums (soccer specific or not) that do not provide the owner with primary control of the stadia and significant revenue streams.

MLS’s national television deals provided approximately $23 million in funding from ESPN, Fox, HDNet and Univision in 2007. That amounts to less than three percent of the Premier League’s new three year, $850 million-a-year television rights deal.

But just because the big dollars are not yet rolling in to MLS’ coffers from television does not mean that there are not silver linings in these digital clouds.