Recession, Republicans Stymie Nuclear Power

We hippies did not kill the Big Stone II coal-fired power plant. But the recession and the Republican obstructionists who killed climate change and energy security legislation in Congress this year also helped block a renaissance of nuclear power:

One major factor driving the cautious stance of both the industry and the government is the fall in electricity demand, which peaked in 2007. In 2009, demand dropped by more than 4 percent from 2007. So far, it seems that demand in 2010 will be higher than last year, but not as high as 2007. These are big changes for an industry that is accustomed to growth on the order of 1 to 3 percent a year. With slack demand, there is less urgency to build new plants.

...Also weighing on the nuclear industry is the unwillingness of Congress to pass climate change legislation that would put a price of some sort on carbon-dioxide emissions. Since nuclear power produces no carbon emissions, it would gain a competitive edge against coal and natural gas if a bill were passed. But while such legislation once seemed likely, sharp divisions in Congress and concerns about the tottering economy have stalled its prospects [Matthew L. Wald, "Economy Sandbags Plans for Nuclear Reactors," New York Times, 2010.10.10].

We shouldn't be too disappointed by the recession cutting demand to the point where new generating capacity isn't so urgent: that real conservation delays the need for any kind of new power plant, coal, nuke, or otherwise. And there's a big debate over whether nuclear power should play a role in fighting climate change and our fossil-fuel addiction.

But for those of you who dig nuclear power, remember: blocking cap-and-trade and energy security legislation this year means you'll be waiting that much longer for those nice next-generation nuclear plants to come humming to life in your backyard.

Recession Slows Plans for Brandon Wind Tower Plant

The wind power news isn't all rosy: the recession is stalling wind tower production in Brandon.

Broadwind Energy subsidiary Tower Tech Systems doesn't build the turbines; they build the 200-foot towers that hold those whirling turbines up. Tower Tech has built a plant just north of I-90 by Brandon, the company's third such facility, to build these towers. The building is 1150 feet long—that's three football fields, plus endzones! Materials go in one end, long towers come out the other, just like Play-Doh! Tower Tech picked the location due to good road access and proximity to wind projects. (I can't wait to see them try snaking those towers up the ramp at Exit 406.)

So Tower Tech has the building and equipment, they have the location.... now they just need contracts. Jill Meier at that Sioux Falls paper reports that Tower Tech had a big contract with General Electric, but that GE backed out. Just two years ago, GE was saying we had a wind turbine shortage. But then the recession hit and slowed all sorts of construction down, including green projects. (So, it wasn't enviro-hippies who slowed down green power; it was the gambling bankers who crashed the economy.)

The Tower Tech folks are saying optimistic things to the locals, assuring them the economy will turn around and the plant will be ready to create 150 new jobs soon. Their optimism may be warranted. The green stimulus is kicking into gear. Vestas Wind just landed its fifth big contract of the year (after landing none in gloomy 2009). GE is expanding its investment in wind in Europe and Idaho. GE is also supplying turbines to some other big projects.

So keep your fingers crossed and hardhats ready, Brandon workers: 150 green jobs may be a-comin'!

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Related: Even amidst the recession, green power made up more than half of the new electrical generation capacity constructed in the U.S. in 2009.

Domestic Raw Steel Production up 63% from Last Year:

I'm looking through some fascinating subscription-only articles on the response from TransCanada and Welspun Corp Ltd response to concerns that some of Welspun's faulty steel may have ended up in the Keystone pipeline. More on that later this weekend...

But for the moment, some hopeful economic news: I learn from the American Iron and Steel Institute that domestic raw steel production for the week ending July 10 was up 37.4% from the same week last year. Production was down 1.8% from the week ending July 3, but come on: those steel workers had to shoot off some firecrackers! For the year so far, domestic raw steel production is up 62.9% from the same stretch in 2009.

Somebody must be building something! Let's kick that recession!

Low Taxes, Deregulation, Privatization Contribute to Recession

Why Reaganomics Is Bad for America

Remember what I said yesterday about how our federal tax burden as a percentage of household inome has been decreasing since 1979? Lower taxes are good for us and for the economy, right?

Maybe not. Neighbor John Hess pointed out a David Sirota article which says lower tax rates not only don't correlate with economic growth, but may actually make recessions worse. Sirota cites Eliot Spitzer's chart and commentary on the fact that from 1951 to 1963, when marginal tax rates topped 90%, the economy grew more than twice as fast as it has during the past decade, when marginal tax rates have been below 40%. He also notes that Greece, a current tea "party" favorite example of European socialism leading to fiscal disaster, is in Dutch not for spending too much but for taxing too little.

This makes perfect sense. Though the Reagan zeitgeist created the illusion that taxes stunt economic growth, the numbers prove that higher marginal tax rates generate more resources for the job-creating, wage-generating public investments (roads, bridges, broadband, etc.) that sustain an economy. They also create economic incentives for economy-sustaining capital investment. Indeed, the easiest way wealthy business owners can avoid high-bracket tax rates is by plowing their profits back into their businesses and taking the corresponding write-off rather than simply pocketing the excess cash and paying an IRS levy [David Sirota, "Are Low Taxes Exacerbating the Recession," Salon.com, 2010.07.09].

Robert Reich agrees, noting that since the late 1970s, we've been concentrating wealth in the hands of the wealthy few by letting the rich treat more income as capital gains, cutting capital gains taxes, and boosting sales and payroll taxes that hit lower-income folks harder the higher-income folks.

Reich also sees two more pillars of Reaganomics, deregulation and privatization, promoting income inequality and making it harder for us to get out of the recession. When big business give workers less pay and benefits, fire them at will, and ship jobs overseas without penalty, the middle class has less wealth to pour into the economy and lit us back out of recession. The wealthy class that cashes in on Reaganomics has a bad tendency to gamble that money on the markets, creating speculative bubbles that burst and leave all of us struggling to clean up the recessionary mess.

It's worth noting that Reich doesn't place the blame solely on Saint Ronald. He says we Democrats have lacked the guts to tackle income inequality. Income inequality breeds political inequality: money flows to the top, and the folks at the top buy legislation that keeps them at the top. Grrr.

The Reagan legacy of historically low taxes, deregulation, and privatization have contributed to today's persistent recession, massive debt, and growing income inequality. We can make our economy (and our politics!) better for everyone if we raise taxes on the rich, strengthen services and the safety net for the lower and middle class, and, yes, share the wealth of our nation more equitably.

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Related: Reader Jackie Bielke points me toward this interesting argument: if the tea "party" frets about the federal government (which is us, dedicated to the general welfare, accountable to the voters and taxpayers) consuming 20–25% of GDP, they should be just as alarmed by the top 1% of income earners (the unaccountable, unchecked, self-serving rich) eating the same amount of GDP... shouldn't they? If wealth is power, doesn't a wealthy elite that has as much money as Uncle Sam threaten the proper balance of power?

Who Caused the Recession? How About Christians with Bad Theology?

In case a little snow keeps you home from your Christmas Eve service, contemplate this reading on religion and the economy.

Who caused the recession? The latest Hanna Rosin article in The Atlantic (recommended by my Episcopalian friend Mr. Price) suggests part of the blame may lie with the prosperity gospel, the warped theology of many American Christians who conflate Jesus with Santa Claus:

Demographically, the growth of the prosperity gospel tracks fairly closely to the pattern of foreclosure hot spots. Both spread in two particular kinds of communities—the exurban middle class and the urban poor. Many newer prosperity churches popped up around fringe suburban developments built in the 1990s and 2000s, says Walton. These are precisely the kinds of neighborhoods that have been decimated by foreclosures, according to Eric Halperin, of the Center for Responsible Lending.

Zooming out a bit, Kate Bowler found that most new prosperity-gospel churches were built along the Sun Belt, particularly in California, Florida, and Arizona—all areas that were hard-hit by the mortgage crisis. Bowler, who, like Walton, was researching a book, spent a lot of time attending the “financial empowerment” seminars that are common at prosperity churches. Advisers would pay lip service to “sound financial practices,” she recalls, but overall they would send the opposite message: posters advertising the seminars featured big houses in the background, and the parking spots closest to the church were reserved for luxury cars [Hanna Rosin, "," The Atlantic, December 2009].

Read Rosin's full article for some insight on the God=Mammon mindset that pervades too many American churches. Only in the prosperity gospel could a pastor happily moonlight as a loan officer for subprime lender Countrywide. Only in the prosperity gospel could craving a really big house be seen by mega-preachers like Joel Osteen as God's calling to goodness.

Fortunately, not all of the faithful are fooled by filthy lucre. Rosin points to a 2006 Time interview with Rick Warren (no poor preacher himself), who rightly laughs at the prosperity gospel:

This idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy? There is a word for that: baloney. It's creating a false idol. You don't measure your self-worth by your net worth. I can show you millions of faithful followers of Christ who live in poverty. Why isn't everyone in the church a millionaire? [Rick Warren, quoted in David Van Biema and Jeff Chu, "Does God Want You to Be Rich?" Time, 2006.09.10].

The next time you hear a preacher telling you that wealth is a sign of God's favor, remind him of Matthew 19:24—you know, the camel and the eye of the needle.

Here endeth the homily. Go forth and proclaim the good news... and hold the materialism.

Federal Oil & Gas Leases Undeveloped; Recession Cools Demand

Another campaign slogan popped by economic realities. All that faintly misogynist "Drill, baby, drill!" talk from the conservatives has gone poof in the face of decreased demand. Federal oil and gas leases for Bakken shale oil in the Dakotas and Montana brought in record revenues in the just-finished fiscal year (South Dakota brought in $163K, compared to North Dakota's $74.2M), but we're still far from a development rush.

As Interior Secretary Salazar looks at a comprehensive review of lease policy that may shift focus from Big Oil to sportsmen and conservationists, the recession may promote energy policy somewhat different from the crude-thirsty rantings of last year's Republicans:

[VP of The Wilderness Society's Public Lands Campaign Ann] Morgan says sportsmen and recreation groups want to see a slower pace of energy development, and more accountability for leaseholders to protect water, wildlife and public access.

Resource economist Thomas Power at the University of Montana says the recession turns out to be a good time for this review, when oil and gas production has been scaled back because of reduced demand.

"As a result, there's been less enthusiasm among companies for leasing more federal lands for oil and gas development, and vast amounts of existing federal oil and gas leases have gone undeveloped" [Deb Courson, "Experts: Time Is Right to Review BLM Oil and Gas Leasing," Public News Service, 2009.12.22].

Drill, baby, drill? Pfft. We've got leases available where the industry folks won't even bid, because the market isn't there.

Recession Thanksgiving: Upsides of the Downturn

You know me, always looking for the silver lining!

As Thanksgiving approaches, here are some more reasons that the recession may actually be doing some good for the country:

1. AAA says South Dakotans will travel 2.6% less this year for Turkey Day. That's less fuel burned up, less pollution. Travel will be up slightly nationwide... but it almost has to be up from last year's amazing 25.2% drop in Thanksgiving travel.
   
2. From the same report, air travel for Thanksgiving has dropped an "astounding" 62% over the past decade. Thank high prices... but also thank the Patriot Act: AAA cites "stricter airport security" as one of the factors in less air travel (so, the terrorists are winning?).
3. Urban sprawl has been knocked on its can. Bedroom communities that relied on long-distance commutes to coax residents to join their housing booms now are looking for ways to develop rail lines, denser and more efficient housing, and local business.
4. More folks are shopping at Goodwill, Salvation Army, and other thrift stores. The National Association of Resale and Thrist Shops (yes, there is one) reports a 35% increase in resales. Of course, the recession has also cut back donations at some stores, as folks hang on to their old clothes to get as much use as possible from them... although NARTS counters that almost 70% of their members report increases in incoming inventory volume. Good thrift business is good news for the town of Wilmot, South Dakota, which holds the grand opening of its new a community thrift store tomorrow. The Replay Thrift Store is a product of the Whetstone Valley Horizons community revitalization project.

So darn that President Obama, trying to end the recession. Doesn't he see all the good this recession is doing for the country?

We're still far from the hard suffering of the Great Depression that made our grandparents such tough characters. But even the relatively small lemons of this recession may produce some cultural lemonade.

Merry Christmas (Shopping)? South Dakota Recovering from Recession

This should raise our happiness score: South Dakota's in recovery! From the recession, that is. E-Gov Monitor points me toward Moody's Economy.com, which says South Dakota is one of eleven states (plus D.C.) in recovery from the economic collapse. The other lucky states: Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota.

Now don't rush out to blow your cash on extra Christmas loot (remember the Advent Conspiracy!). On Moody's scale, "in recovery" means we've hit the trough after a decline. So maybe, just maybe, we've seen the worst. Keep your fingers crossed... and maybe buy a little bigger turkey.

Recession's Green Lining: Energy Conservation!

Maybe George W. Bush really had an environmental agenda: his laissez-faire non-management of the economy led us into recession, but it also led us to real energy conservation. Factory use of natural gas is projected to drop 8.6% this year. Consumption of electricity may fall 2.6% this year, better than last year's 1.6% drop and the first back-to-back declines since 1949. Demand for all petrofuels in the U.S. dropped 7.1% last year.

(Note for Hyperion fans: the drop in gasoline consumption has driven refiner Flying J Inc. to bankruptcy and shuttered its Bakersfield refinery. That same article reports Sunoco is trying to sell a refinery in Tulsa and will shut it down if it can't find a buyer. As many of us saw last year, the market for Hyperion's "green" refinery in Elk Point is shrinking fast.)

Industrial energy usage usually tracks closely with the economic cycle, but this recession has brought an unusual drop in energy usage in the residential and commercial as well. This reduction in energy usage at the individual represents a laudable frugality, a new thriftiness that more observers think will remain the norm even after we fix this recession.

After a decade of SUV-mania, credit-card bingeing, and home-equity hijinks, we needed a good economic kick in the pants to remind us how to manage our fuel and our finances. If we can learn our lesson and leave more resources in the bank for future generations, the Bush recession may actually reflect well on its progenitor.

Conservative Declares President Obama Among "Greatest Tax Cutters in History"

Some of my best sources are Republicans....

More props to Adam Feser, the half of Aberdeen's Red, Blue & Purple who actually reads things to back hup his blog posts. Mr. Feser points us toward "The GOP's Misplaced Rage," a remarkable Daily Beast essay by conservative Bruce Bartlett. Mr. Bartlett did little things like develop supply-side economics and work for Presidents Reagan and Bush pére (and farther back, Ron Paul!). He earned a spot in the GOP doghouse by calling President Bush fils a Nixonian "pretend conservative" and saying the Bush-Cheney White House displayed "an anti-intellectual distrust of facts and analysis."

Bartlett guarantees more time in that doghouse by skewering the GOP socialism-criers with these facts and analysis:

According to the CBO, federal taxes will amount to just 15.5 percent of GDP this year. That’s 2.2 percent of GDP less than last year, 3.3 percent less than in 2007, and 1.8 percent less than the lowest percentage recorded during the Reagan years. If conservatives really believe their own rhetoric, they should be congratulating Obama for being one of the greatest tax cutters in history [Bruce Bartlett, "The GOP's Misplaced Rage," The Daily Beast, 2009.08.12].

Bartlett also sees the clear hypocrisy of the GOP suddenly rediscovering budget discipline:

In my opinion, conservative activists, who seem to believe that the louder they shout the more correct their beliefs must be, are less angry about Obama’s policies than they are about having lost the White House in 2008. They are primarily Republican Party hacks trying to overturn the election results, not representatives of a true grassroots revolt against liberal policies. If that were the case they would have been out demonstrating against the Medicare drug benefit, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and all the pork-barrel spending that Bush refused to veto [Bartlett, 2009.08.12].

Bartlett also makes a very clear case that both the current deficit and the recession are primarily George W. Bush's fault. Read especially Bartlett's discussion of the recession's origins and his comparison of the performance of the economy under Clinton and Bush.

So if you want to vent your rage in a futile display of patriotic fantasy, go yell at President Bush... and let President Obama keep cleaning up Bush's mess.

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Bonus link! Bartlett is also well-known (and reviled by Neil Boortz sheep) for linking the "Fair Tax" with Scientology.

Consumer Spending Up, Everything Else Down

6.1%: That's the amount by which the U.S. GDP shrank and China's GDP grew in Q1 2009. Economists consider neither number good (remember, China scored double-digit growth for much of this decade, and they need high GDP growth to keep their burgeoning population employed and content enough to not remember Tiananmen Square).

There's an odd twist in the numbers. I keep seeing a silver lining in the recession as a healthy retreat from excessive consumption. But consumer spending actually rose 2.2% during Q1: We evidently all went out and bought more stuff this winter, but exports dropped even more (30%!), as did business spending and (check this out, tea partiers) government spending.

Come on: if the recession is going to last, I'd like to at least see the benefits of folks buying less and saving more.

Stimulus Working: Lots of Competitive Construction Bids for Gov't Projects

Sometimes the promise of government contracts promote inflated bids from private forms hoping to cash in on government inertia and inefficiency. The stimulus money filtering down from Washington would seem to offer great potential for smart bidders to boost their bids and bring home the bacon.

But the Washington Post reports that, in this economy, that's not happening. Construction firms are so eager for work that bids on stimulus projects are coming in fast and low:

At Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, a recent project to reconstruct the area around Piers C and D received six bids instead of the usual two or three. The result: The estimated $50 million project will be built for $8 million less than was budgeted, and the savings will be allocated to other projects. There were 21 bidders for a $200,000 drainage project in Carroll County, more than anyone could remember.

"Our bottom line is more bidders and better prices," said Maryland Transportation Secretary John Porcari. "This we like" [Eric M. Weiss, "Bids Pour in for State Construction Jobs," Washington Post, 2009.04.08].

Instead of the stimulus money simply inflating prices, we might actually get more work done for the money than we expected:

...Construction firms' hunger for work means that the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress could result in more paving for the buck. The stimulus is supposed to pay for "shovel-ready" projects to stimulate the economy, put people back to work and get needed projects done.

"What it's going to do is giving us value for the dollar," said John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. "The two winners are the public, which gets more improvements, and a net gain in jobs creation. It's a win across the board" [Weiss, 2009.04.08]

And this trend of lots of competing bids is happening across the nation:

Kenneth Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, said he is seeing the bidding trend across the nation.

In Connecticut, a project on the Merritt Parkway was budgeted at $75 million. The final bid amount: $66.6 million. In North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, bids are coming in 19 percent, 15 percent and 10 percent lower, respectively, according to data provided by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

"Wherever I go, I hear of projects that used to attract two to three bids just a couple of years ago, now it's 20 or 30," Simonson said. "Many [contractors] are coming down on the minimum size of projects they will bid on, and ones who didn't do schools now are bidding on schools. Others are coming from out of state to a new region just to keep busy. And they are essentially giving away their services just to keep their key employees busy" [Weiss, 2009.04.08]

Let's hope we see that same trend with the stimulus dollars here in South Dakota.

Sioux Falls After Credit: Let's Go Fishing... and Data Farming!

Marketplace runs its second report on Sioux Falls and the credit card industry, specifically on how the recession caused in part by the credit industry has impacted Sioux Falls. Layoffs at Citibank, Department of Labor going from offering a job-hunt class once a month to four times a week, people glad just to cling to a job—as anyone with a credit card should know, the credit card companies giveth, and the credit card companies taketh away.

If the credit industry goes further south, perhaps Sioux Falls can find a roadmap in a couple other Marketplace stories on Iceland. Much like their fellow Viking descendants in Sioux Falls, the sweater-wearing Icelanders staked their economy on the financial industry and were making out like bandits. But now their three largest banks have collapsed, taking the national economy with them. In response, Icelanders are going back to their simpler, self-sufficient roots:

TEITUR THORKELLSON: Like Icelanders were all crazy about flat screens one year ago. They're now all crazy about going fishing , making a living, survival.

Teitur Thorkellson runs an energy consultancy called FTO. His firm's income has been cut in half. Everywhere, he says, there are signs of a new austerity.

THORKELLSON: If you travel the country now -- six months after the crash -- you will stop at a gas station, and the girl who's attending the gas station, she will be knitting socks. People are not spending. They're not eating as much out. So we're adjusting pretty fast [Stephen Beard, "Iceland in the Cold After Collapse," Marketplace, 2009.03.26].

Fishing and knitting—there's a plan South Dakotans can relate to! Clean up the Big Sioux, stock some perch and walleye, maybe offer a yarn subsidy, and folks laid off from Citibank could make a living!

Perhaps Sioux Falls and South Dakota could also compete with another Icelandic plan for economic recovery: data farming! Marketplace reports this morning that Iceland is hoping to establish a big international server farm. The big perk to doing it in Iceland: less cost for air-conditioning.

If temperature is the competitive advantage, South Dakota can offer Icelandic temps (or colder!) for at least a few months a year. Dig a nice deep hole (or just create some space out in the Homestake Lab) and you get even better climate control, plus a nice EMP/al-Qaeda proof bunker for everyone's data. Plus, for big U.S. companies, data retrieval from South Dakota will be several milliseconds faster than from Icelandic servers.

Fishing, knitting, and server farms: opportunity awaits, South Dakota!

Small-Town Job Loss: Putting South Dakota Faces on Recession

An eager reader points to a well-done article from Stateline.org on the recession in South Dakota. Forget all the blogospheric political posturing about socialism and GOP windbaggery: author Stephen C. Fehr focuses on what matters: our friends and neighbors losing jobs and struggling to pay the bills. Fehr spins his story around the very real impact of December layoffs at Scotchman Industries in Philip:

Today, three months later, Connie Schlim is collecting $260 a week in unemployment benefits and looking for work to replace the $12.50-an-hour job she had changing parts on a milling machine. But like many victims of this recession, Schlim says she feels trapped because there are no other jobs available nearby and no new employers coming to Philip. Other than the local hospital, Scotchman is the largest employer in Philip, with 72 people after the cutbacks. The Schlims are resigned to stay in Philip but say they will cut back on expenses.

“Our golden years won’t be as golden as we had planned on,” said Schlim, who has two grown daughters [Stephen C. Fehr, "Tracking the Recession: How Layoffs Affect One Small Town", Stateline.org, 2009.03.23].

Pick your perspective: Fehr notes that the week Scotchman laid off Schlim and 11 co-workers, major U.S. companies like Dow Chemical and Home Depot cut 80,000 jobs. But in Philip, 12 jobs equal 3% of the workforce. A loss like that in Sioux Falls would be 4,000 jobs.

Fehr also notes that Schlim's $12.50 an hour counts as a "high-wage" job. If that's full-time work 52 weeks a year, that's $26,000.

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One bit of blogospheric bloviation: I heard some talk on MPR this morning about the need for more "shared sacrifice." Small-town working folks, even those still hanging on to their $12.50-an-hour jobs, are already making sacrifices. Fehr notes the remaining employees at Scotchman have offered to cut their hours to save their neighbors' jobs. The big bankers who think they have to keep paying million-dollar bonuses to retain "talent" should take notes from Philip, South Dakota.

Recession Notes: Less Trash, More Tents

Another bright side to the recession: less trash! According to Saturday's Washington Post, landfill operators can tell folks are buying less stuff, hanging on to their stuff longer, and replacing their stuff with more used stuff:

It's all part of the cycle of stuff that people in the trash business say they've seen in every economic downturn since the end of World War II. People don't buy stuff, so there's less packaging -- which typically makes up one-third of all landfill trash -- to toss. With a drop in demand, manufacturers make less, creating less waste. More vacant homes and fewer people in a community mean less trash. A stagnant housing market means less construction debris. On tight budgets, people eat out less, so restaurants order less, so there's less to throw away. Landscapers are out of work, so there's less yard debris [Brigid Schulte, "A Trashed Economy Foretold," Washington Post, 2009.03.14].

Some landfills report 30% declines in incoming trash, which is extending the usuable lifespan of those landfills. Who says a recession is so bad?

But before I can launch all bright-sidey into my Monday, I have to notice the few hundred fellow Americans living in tents in Sacramento, Phoenix, Portland, and elsewhere. No, the recession hasn't encouraged Americans to get out and enjoy the great outdoors. It's leaving working Americans with no better housing option than tents and tarps:

Take, for example, 53-year-old Dave Cutch. His clothes suggest a suburban hiker, except that he stands in a muddy patch outside a tent that he's called home for the past two months. A year ago, he was a welder in Colorado.

"So the company I'm working for, I get laid off," Cutch says. "I qualified for unemployment — 24 weeks. My car's paid off, my truck's paid off, my bike's paid off, everything except for my house payment, right? But I feel like I'm still going to pull out of it."

Months went by without work. Cutch lost his house, his car was stolen, his savings ran out. This past August, he took up a friend's invitation to come to California, but that didn't work out, either.

"Trying to get back on my feet, you know," Cutch says. "Daily, I still go out looking for a job. But the thing I'm running into is when I put the application in they ask me, 'Where do you live at?' And I go, 'Actually, I don't have a place to live. I'm homeless.' That's it. They don't hire me" [Richard Gonzales, "Sacramento Tent City Reflects Economy's Troubles," NPR Morning Edition, 2009.03.16].

I'll bet the $165 million of bailout money AIG is spending on executive bonuses could create a lot of honest work for the folks in Sacramento's tent city.

Things I Like About the Recession

It's Friday! Think positive! Everybody wants good news, so here are some good things about the recession:

• The U.S. trade deficit dropped 9.7% in January to the lowest level since October 2002. Less cheap plastic junk from China, less foreign oil!
• South Dakotans are bucking up and paying their bills: our credit card delinquency rate went down 1.3% in Q4 2008. (Unfortunately, the national rate went up 1.2%. Nationwide average credit card debt per borrower: $5729—what are you people thinking?!)
• Mrs. Madville Times and I only put $33 on the BP gas card last month.
• The four-day school week is catching on around the country. (That means fewer kids will miss school for the Mundt Debate Tournament!)
• Usually it takes genuine good news to make the markets go up; now all it takes is less bad news.
• Shorter work weeks mean more time to spend with family. If you can find a way to keep your benefits and get by on less pay, more time around the house can be good for everybody.
• Coping with a dip in our fiscal well-being (and realizing things just aren't that bad) could be good for our mental health.
• One thing we sold more of last Christmas: piggy banks. Save, save, save!
  

Dang—there's some early 80's recession rock that hasn't aged! Nuts to the economy—enjoy your weekend!

Veterinarians Still in High Demand; Legislature Says So What?

AP runs a story on jobs that are still hot in the recession. Making the list: veterinarians:

"There's a tremendous demand" for veterinarians, particularly to serve livestock growers in rural areas, said Dr. Ron DeHaven, chief executive officer of the American Veterinary Medical Association. The government is also short of veterinarians needed to inspect slaughterhouses and undertake other food safety measures, he said. The Labor Department projects that the number of veterinary jobs will grow by 35 percent by 2016, DeHaven said [Christopher S. Rugaber, "Even in a Recession, Some Companies Are Hiring," AP via Yahoo News, 2009.03.10].

Now you'd think a big agriculture state like South Dakota, where the veterinarian shortage is particularly acute, would have the foresight to ride this job market wave and create programs that would help fill that demand.

Alas, our State Legislature is apparently as short of foresight as rural South Dakota will remain of animal doctors. HB 1248, which would have authorized the construction of a veterinary school at SDSU, died in committee (even Representative Larry Tidemann of Brookings voted against it). HB 1181 didn't go nearly as far to address the veterinarian shortage: it simply proposed a loan repayment program for up to three veterinarians a year. It received a pretty strong affirmation from the House, only to be shot down 7–1 by Senate State Affairs (District 8's Russell Olson voted the wrong way here... as did Abdallah, Gray, Heidepriem, Knudson, Turbak Berry, and Dempster).

HB 1248 proposed to spend $30 million over the next seven years. I can understand legislators' squeamishness over approving a big-ticket item like that during a budget crunch, but investing in a new veterinary school would have produced a slam-dunk return for Brookings and the whole state. The expense of HB 1181 was minuscule and would have served small communities well.

On both bills, our Legislature demonstrated a lack of vision. We have missed a chance to strengthen South Dakota agriculture and cash in on a high-demand job area.

Stimulus Saves 7100 State Jobs in Virginia

Less than two weeks after passage, the federal stimulus can claim jobs saved: the state of Virginia just passed a budget that uses stimulus money to prevent the layoffs of as many as, by Governor Tim Kaine's count, 7,100 state employees.

Now even if you're a government-shrinking conservative, you've got to see the merits of keeping several thousand people out of the unemployment line and in the Wal-Mart check-out line when we're trying to revive the economy. Jobs are jobs, government or otherwise, and we need every job we can get.

Note also that the Virginia General Assembly managed to incorporate the stimulus money into its budget and adjourn on time in just eleven days. Meanwhile, no budget from Pierre yet, as South Dakota's unemployment rate jumps from 3.7% to 4.4% in January, the highest since 1987.

Banks Wimping Out, Stimulus Just What Renewable Energy Needs

Leave it to the private sector to solve the recession, and worthy projects will die for lack of capital while bank execs hoard their perks. That's why the stimulus package is exactly what we need.

One industry poised to put that federal aid to work: renewable energy. From Wednesday's Marketplace:

SAM EATON: By injecting billions of dollars into renewable energy projects, the federal stimulus package aims to do one thing -- fill the financial void left in the wake of the banking crisis. New Energy Capital CEO Scott Brown says the number of big banks willing to finance wind and solar projects has dropped from nearly two dozen to a handful.

SCOTT BROWN: Lehman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Wachovia. All of those players essentially are now out of the market.

Taking with them the principle funding mechanism that made renewable energy the fastest growing source of power. Rhone Resch with the Solar Energy Industries Association says the federal stimulus package narrowly averts a catastrophe.

RHONE RESCH: We have literally hundreds of projects that are in the queue, we've got thousands of installers ready to go and warehouses filled with equipment. What we were lacking was the financing to get these projects off the shelf and moving forward. We now have that through the stimulus bill. [Sam Eaton, "Stimulus Enables Green to Grow," Marketplace, 2009.02.25]

There are no guarantees of success, but this lifeline to the renerable energy industry is a good example of how government action in a time of crisis can create jobs and economic activity, not to mention pleasant side effects like environmental gains and energy security.

Drive Pro-Life II: Americans Drive Less, Die Less

Back in August, I featured a study by Dr. Michael Sivak of U.Michigan that found a correlation between high gas prices and a steep drop in traffic fatalities.

That trend apparently continued through the autumn gasoline price collapse, as economic woes took over to keep Americans driving less. The results (according to the Governors Highway Safety Association, reported in last night's print MDL, but making USA Today a couple weeks ago): traffic deaths down in 42 states last year, and down by double-digit percentages in 25 states (including South Dakota!) and DC.

In South Dakota, 121 people died on the road last year. That's 25 fewer than in 2007. How many more lives might we save if we kept gasoline at $4 a gallon (gas tax, Governor Rounds?)?

A lot of lives were saved just by being on the road less: over 13 months ending last November 30 (o.k., what statistician counts things in 13 month intervals?), Americans drove 112 billion fewer miles... and that's only a 3.4% decrease! But people were apparently driving more safely on the miles they did cover: deaths per 100 million miles also decreased 6.5%. Safer cars, more safety features, sure, but also less leadfooting: the GHSA survey cites "multiple states" reporting lower highway speeds.

So nationwide, we saved a few thousand lives by driving less... and less stupidly. See? High fuel prices and a recession aren't all bad. But I wonder: how many more lives might we lose from suicide, crime, less access to health care, or other trouble that might increase due to economic woes?

Figure that out when you get home. For now, just put down the phone, ease up on the pedal (unless you're bicycling!), and focus on the road.