A great local blogger George Johns over at Sleepless in Midland wrote a great summation of the recent battle with the Midland City Council read it over there as well! With his permission I re-post it here:

The Midland, Texas, City Council spent many grueling hours yesterday listening to, arguing with, and explaining to citizens why the citizens should want higher taxes.

When a taxing entity "issues debt" they are guaranteeing future tax increases.  Below is a list of the projects they are considering in this debt issuance. 

So the Midland newspaper ran the story entitled "Citizens irate over proposed city tax increase" regarding a couple dozen taxpayers showing up at a public hearing over the City of Midland's (COM) proposed tax increase.  The buildup to this story involved an editorial from Mr. Ott at the paper that sought to put the burden on taxpayers to figure out where to cut the budget. 

Congressional elections are held every two years. There are elections for 1/3rd of the Senate (who sit for six years) and for all of the House of Representatives who all stand for re-election after two years. These are held mid-way (two years) through a president’s term in office and are called mid-term elections.

Mid-terms can be used as an indicator of what the electorate think about the president’s performance and "their results can be of critical importance to the incumbent president."

George Bush had the following scenario:

Here's the budget hearing schedule for the Ector County Commissioner's Court for this week.  This is where the budget is truly built.  Thanks to Judge Redford for making this information available for dissemination!

After weeks (almost months) we almost have the site nback up and going...thanks to Josh and Robert over at Musketball Technologies! We will slowly be adding pieces of the site back over the next couple of weeks, so be patient as we troubleshoot all the damage done by hackers...and me trying to fix it...

Jason