"I Did Not Get The Memo" -- December 16, 2017

Well, now we know how this Palestinian became a billionaire: catering for US troops during the reign of George H. W. Bush:

Sabih al-Masri, a Palestinian billionaire and the chairman of Jordan’s largest lender Arab Bank, was detained in Saudi Arabia for questioning after a business trip to Riyadh, family sources and friends said on Saturday.

They said Masri, a Saudi citizen and Jordan’s most prominent businessman with holdings in hotels and banking, was detained after heading to the Saudi capital last week to chair meetings of companies he owns.

Masri, who originally comes from a prominent merchant family from Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, amassed a fortune from partnering with influential Saudis in a major catering business to supply troops during the U.S.-led military operation to retake Kuwait from Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. 

Apparently he did not receive the memo:

Confidants said Masri had been warned not to travel to Saudi Arabia after mass arrests last month of Saudi royals, ministers and businessmen in the biggest purge of the kingdom’s affluent elite in its modern history. 

My hunch: the Russians intercepted the advice not to go to Saudi Arabia, and Masri thought all the CNN reports about Prince Salman rounding up rich folks in Riyadh was simply "fake news."

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Notes From Twitter

Brexit:

India in 1947 had rather less difficulty gaining its independence than we are having in 2017 leaving the Brussels empire. Time for Boris to go the full Gandhi.

Bakken economy:

Too many data points in this article to go through -- I will archive the article because it will disappear over time -- but for now, simply this: the public school enrollment continues to grow beyond expectation in North Dakota's oil patch.

Some years ago I said the metric to follow if one was curious whether families would remain in the Bakken "after the boom" was to follow school enrollment figures. In the very, very early days of the boom, "experts" said oil workers (mostly men) would be coming to work in the Bakken but their families would not join them, and that eventually the workers (and any families that might have joined their working spouses) would leave the state.

Apparently, to a large extent that did not happen. 

Maine governor wants to get rid of solar panel subsidies:

Maine's Republican governor says he wants to reverse regulators' move to delay a gradual ramp down in compensation for new solar panel owners who generate excess energy. LePage has said utility regulators should have gotten rid of the financial incentive system altogether.

By the way, if there is a shortage of money for North Dakota public schools, the Legislature is authorized to start spending oil money from the "Legacy Fund" as of June, 2017.

Another nuclear reactor ordered to shut down in Japan: link here.

Source for unexplained radiation over Europe: it was the Russians after all.

Another meth lab in Williston? Link here. Having said that, it must have been another slow news day in the Bakken.

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Semi-Finals

Championship Game: January 6, 2018