Harley's brilliant math

Kudos to the leadership at Harley-Davidson for coming up with shrewd investments like this:

Motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson completed the sale of MV Agusta, its sport-bike business based in Varese, Italy. The company’s announcement didn’t include the sale price but its 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed the company essentially paid MV Agusta’s former owners to take it back.

In the filing Harley said it “contributed 20 million Euros to MV as operating capital” that was put in escrow and is available to the buyer over a 12-month period. The buyer is Claudio Castiglioni, who, with his brother Gianfranco, ran MV Agusta for years before selling it to Harley two years ago for about $109 million...

Harley has previously write-downs totaling $162.6 million for the fair value of MV Agusta and began treating the unit as a discontinued operation after announcing its intention to sell it a year ago. The company said it anticipate additional related losses from discontinued operations in the third quarter of 2010.

Buy it for $109MM, write down $162MM in losses, then stick another $29MM in the company's piggy bank two years later and sell the whole thing back to the guys who sold it to you for just under $4.

Yeah, and the big problem at Harley-Davidson is the cost of labor.

I know what you read last summer

Greenfield's police chief is so concerned about the prospect of people stealing books and onesies for resale that he's decided to push an ordinance that'll just drive all the resellers to other communities.

The new code being adopted by cities around the state is based on a state law that already requires pawn shops and businesses that buy metals and jewelry to take and keep information on sellers and items. The code expands the requirements by including businesses that haven't needed to report transactions in the past and by mandating that the businesses install software from the Northeastern Wisconsin Property Reporting System and input seller identification and detailed merchandise descriptions each day. Businesses must photograph sellers and items, and they must keep the items for a set period of time - 10 to 30 days in most cities that have adopted the ordinances - before reselling them. Desch of Half-Price Books said it would be impossible to comply with that provision because of the storage space it would require.

The reporting system was developed a few years ago by the Green Bay Police Department, which maintains the database. Use of the system is free to municipalities, but some, including Greenfield and Wausau, are imposing transaction fees on resale stores to offset policing costs.

Greenfield will require retailers to pay 50 cents for each purchase they make up to $10, a dollar for every transaction from $10 to $100, plus an extra 1% of the transaction amount for sales over $100. Wausau, which enacted its ordinance in July, is charging a flat $1.50 fee per transaction. The Wausau ordinance has no exclusions for any resale businesses and includes consignment transactions.

This is something straight out of Reno 911.

I understand targeting pawn shops, but used bookstores? Seriously? How many books and CDs would a criminal have to steal to make a decent haul?

Confessions of a Tea Party Casualty

Great interview in Mother Jones right now with Rep. Bob Inglis, who discovered a few months ago that a 93% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union still can't keep you from losing a primary in South Carolina by 42 points to a teabagger (a phrase I use, BTW, because Tea Partiers have used it to refer to themselves).

During his primary campaign, Inglis repeatedly encountered enraged conservatives whom he couldn't—or wouldn't—satisfy. Shortly before the runoff primary election, Inglis met with about a dozen tea party activists at the modest ranch-style home of one of them. Here's what took place:

I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there's a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life's earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, "What the heck are you talking about?" I'm trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, "You don't know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don't know this?!" And I said, "Please forgive me. I'm just ignorant of these things." And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.

Inglis also talks about how the Tea Party phenomenon has infected GOP leadership.

For Inglis, this is the crux of the dilemma: Republican members of Congress know "deep down" that they need to deliver conservative solutions like his tax swap. Yet, he adds, "We're being driven as herd by these hot microphones—which are like flame throwers—that are causing people to run with fear and panic, and Republican members of Congress are afraid of being run over by that stampeding crowd." Inglis says that it's hard for Republicans in Congress to "summon the courage" to say no to Beck, Limbaugh, and the tea party wing. "When we start just delivering rhetoric and more misinformation...we're failing the conservative movement," he says. "We're failing the country." Yet, he notes, Boehner and House minority whip Eric Cantor have one primary strategic calculation: Play to the tea party crowd. "It's a dangerous strategy," he contends, "to build conservatism on information and policies that are not credible."

It's an interesting read. Some on the far right might call sour grapes, but the fact is that Inglis is about as conservative as they come. He's just not into pandering to uninformed, emotion-riddled extremism.

While the other kids were rockin' round the clock...

... Brett Favre was hoppin' and boppin' to the crocodile rock.

(Jenn) Sterger claimed she spurned Favre's advances because he was married, but also because she was working for the Jets at the time she didn't think it was the best idea to start a torrid affair with the team's highest profile player (the Jets have not responded to a question about any knowledge of the Favre/Sterger saga at this time). Plus, if she went forward with how aggressive he was and how skeeved out she was to some of her superiors, she suspected she might lose her job. The interactions were flirty and strange but she didn't think there wasn't anything that made her too uncomfortable. But then, one night, Sterger received a picture on her phone which was so shocking that she just tossed it across the room. It was his dick. Brett Favre's dick. And it happened multiple times. In fact, Sterger claims that, in one of the photos Favre allegedly sent her, he's masturbating — while wearing a pair of Crocs. In another photo, Favre is holding his penis while wearing the wristwatch he wore during his first teary-eyed retirement press conference...

If Favre returns I wonder if there will be a shoe deal in the works.

On this day...

49 years ago, a little boy was born in Indonesia, or possibly Kenya. And that little boy had a dream of someday making it to the United States, where he could live something that passably resembled the American dream and lead a nation to a new era of hopey changeyness.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President. I don't agree with you on a lot of things, but that you piss off the wingnuts and the teabaggers brings me unmeasurable joy.

DOComm introduces flashy new website

In an attempt to head off an MJS article today critical of its effectiveness as an advocate for Wisconsin business, the Department of Commerce rolled out a new website that's only about ten years overdue. Check it out. It's pretty spiffy.