Weekend Update, Part II -- June 6, 2015

Rationing? I just checked Target. No rationing of eggs in this store here in north Texas. Apparently HEB, the grocery store in Texas, is starting to ration eggs, limiting purchases to three cartons per person. Due to avian flue, they say. My hunch is that this is occurring in the more under-served areas of Texas, where mom-and-pop stores have a habit of using HEB, Wal-Mart, and HEB as their warehouses and supply centers. These little stores can double the prices.

Williston's new airport. This sort of gets lost in all the other news. Plans to re-locate the Williston airport continue. What I had forgotten was how big this project was. $250 million. Most of that money will come from the Federal government I suppose, and what doesn't come from the federal government will be low-interest loans with huge grants or tax breaks. This will be bigger (economically) than a Florida wind farm in North Dakota. Some Willistonites are going to do very, very, very well. Very well. $250 million. The Williston rec center was $65 million or something like that. The new Williston High School has broken ground and is quoted at $57 million. The rec center in Watford City is quoted at $83 million. Those numbers help me put into perspective a $250 million project. That $250 million is just for the direct costs. Imagine all the new building that will go up. It will be interesting to see what happens to the old airport and all the hotels in that area. The old airport certainly sits on what the old-timers call "prime real estate."

Unmanned airports. It was also reported that North Dakota now has the nation's first airport for unmanned aircraft. Pretty exciting. Just west of the air base just west of Grand Forks. Great partnerships among UND, the USAF, the FAA, the private sector, and Saudi princes.

National story for 2015: ObamaCare. For those paying attention, last week was a huge week for all the stories regarding huge premium increases for ObamaCare. The suggestion that New Mexico could increase premiums 289%, of course, will go nowhere. Now, today, we read that Hawaii has thrown in the towel. Hawaii will scuttle its state-run ObamaCare website after investing $130 million in that boondoggle (their words, not mine) and will piggyback on the Federal site. What a mess if the Supreme Court rules against ObamaCare; that ruling will be handed down before the end of the month.

The JV team continues to advance. The US mainstream media isn't talking about it much any more, but the JV's took another city in Libya. In the big scheme of things, each individual story is minor, not worth reporting in US newspapers, but the theme is this: ISIS continues to advance, and continues to consolidate its position. ISIS did not exist during the Bush presidency; this is how fast things change. No matter how the story is spun, ISIS became a "new nation" under Obama's watch. It's just a matter of time until the "new nation" sets up a virtual capital / capitol and asks for UN membership. ISIS certainly has more "citizens" than many countries currently in the UN.

Moving the goalposts. NOAA is fudging the data, and now Janet Yellen's suggestion to re-jigger the economic models is gaining traction. Even if you leave out the first quarter of 2009—when the recession that started in December 2007 was still ongoing--President Barack Obama has presided over the lowest average first-quarter GDP growth of any president who has served since 1947, which is the earliest year for which the Bureau of Economic Analysis has calculated quarterly GDP growth. Janet Yellen knows the economy is really not doing this badly and thinks it's the algorithms and the models that need changing.

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Multi-family units under construction, one street away from where new Williston High School is under construction, Williston, North Dakota, April, 2015: