My wife and I have been married 36 years. I suppose you could say that we have 72 years of combined experience being married. Does that mean that I should be a marriage consultant?
Judging from the use of “years of combined experience” in advertisements, many people must think that combined experience adds up to expertise, even in the Show-Me State, where people are not sheeple but skeptics. Here are some samples: Read the rest of this entry
I received an email from a Realtor friend which included some strong rhetoric about the 3.8% tax on gains from the sale of residential real estate included in the new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act.
The point of the quoted rhetoric was to fuel voter sentiment against Democrats running for Congress in November by alleging that the bill is “set to screw the Read the rest of this entry
Within a week, the heat wave will have run its course and we’ll surely have a little rain. Then we can get moving again in the wonderful Ozarks outdoors and watch the greens become gold, orange and red.
Here are some links for outdoor activities Read the rest of this entry
Tourists bring their money to the Ozarks to spend on fishing, canoeing, theme parks, and entertainment. While they’re here, they buy food and drinks and rent rooms and campsites. Retirees bring their money to the Ozarks and buy housing, medical services and the necessities of life with money they earned elsewhere.
In some ways, the Ozarks economy is like Read the rest of this entry
It’s nothing new that a New York Times columnist would write about Missourians with a tone of good-natured condescension. That’s how Gail Collins approaches many topics. But did she make her points about why Missourians voted the way they did on August 3, 2010?
In today’s editorial, “Show Me Your Insiders,” Collins’s first point is that Missourians are “crazy Read the rest of this entry
Barker’s horse bolted through an open gate on Matchett’s farm and ran onto the highway. A car hit the horse, then careened into Gromer’s car, injuring Gromer, who filed a lawsuit in Butler County, Missouri.
Gromer settled with the other driver and Barker before the trial. Then Gromer convinced a jury that Matchett should be at least partly responsible. He owned the farm with the open gate where Barker boarded his horse.
Missouri’s Stock Law, section 270.101 RSMo, makes a person whose livestock gets onto a highway responsible for Read the rest of this entry
The disputes between growers (of cattle, hogs and poultry), the small number of purchasers (packers) and the USDA dwarfs the Shirley Sherrod affair in economic importance, especially in the Ozarks.
While the character assassination and redemption of Shirley Sherrod was essentially contrived by and blown up by the media, the real economic tensions between those who raise animals and those who buy them and convert the meat into consumer products has reached a point at which Congress in the 2008 Farm Bill asked the USDA to propose regulations to address several problems.
The problems arise out of the unequal Read the rest of this entry
Cliff Sain’s excellent report on Branson Landing in the July 18 Springfield News-Leader contains statements that illustrate some of the dilemmas faced by developers and local governments when planning a large project.
Branson’s aldermen (none of whom were in office when the Branson Landing project was approved for construction) have chosen to take $1.4 million from the city’s general fund and $1.2 million from the city’s transportation fund Read the rest of this entry
As Missouri’s public roads have been straightened, many odd kinks of roadway are left over, along with triangles of land between the old roads and the new roads. As we drive, we see these pieces of the old roads, sometimes serving as frontage roads along divided highways. In some cases, such as in McCullough v. Doss and Allen, the triangle on the west side of the new road was sold to McCullough, even though they might have been able to claim that at least the west half of the abandoned right-of-way of the old public road was theirs. Here’s an image from the Stone County Assessor’s maps:
The State of Missouri built Highway 39 in the mid-1950s, mainly along an old public road. At the point shown in the image, the severe dogleg Read the rest of this entry
On January 3, 2010, I posted a glum summary of published economic reports from Federal Reserve Banks in Kansas City and St. Louis and other sources from the metro areas that surround the Ozarks. My rough guess is that the economic activity in the Ozarks is primarily generated by the surrounding metro areas, which create demand for goods and services produced in the Ozarks, an idea that looks something like: Read the rest of this entry
Ozarks Law & Economy 