Conservatives Already Seeing Through Kristi Noem Facade

All conservatives got with Kristi Noem was looks. Observers outside South Dakota are already seeing that, far from a true Tea Party crusader, Noem is just another pork-seeking farm-state politico. Take her comments on subsidies for ethanol:

Speaking on the Scott Hennen Show Noem says “Ethanol has been very good to South Dakota.” She said that this is not the time to repeal the subsidy “when you look at taking away that subsidy it is the wrong decision.”

She says that supporting the ethanol industry with subsidy promotes investment and continued hiring “In the long run it will get the economy back on track faster” [Kurtis Workman, "New South Dakota Congresswoman Say Ethanol Subsidy Good For Recovery," PlainsDaily.com, 2010.12.09]

Wait a minute: isn't Noem the same lady who spent a lot of time this year blasting federal stimulus efforts?

Let's tour the blogosphere. Rob Port at Say Anything:

How are ethanol subsidies any different than Obama’s economic stimulus spending? The fiscal conservative argument against the stimulus spending spree was that government cannot create jobs because government cannot spend anything without taking away from someone else.

Given that, if Obama’s stimulus spending hasn’t resulted in job growth (and we know it hasn’t) then how is spending on ethanol subsidies any different? [Rob Port, "South Dakota Rep. Kristi Noem: Ethanol Subsidies Are Economic Stimulus," SayAnythingBlog.com, 2010.12.09]

Rand Simberg:

This is depressing. Kristi Noem hasn’t even taken office yet, and she’s already defending home-grown pork as “stimulus"... [Rand Simberg, "And So It Begins," Transterrestrial Musings, 2010.12.11].

The Lonely Conservative from New York:

Kristi Noem is conservative only when it suits her.... I'm glad I didn't waste my time blogging about this woman ["Just When I Was about to Praise Kristi Noem," The Lonely Conservative, 2010.12.12].

Ah, but we shouldn't be too hard on our Mrs. Noem. She's just following the lead of John Boehner and the other big Washington Republicans who are engaged in the same hypocrisy on the pending $855 billion tax-rate and stimulus deal. Stimulus packages and deficit spending are bad, bad, bad when Democrats will get the credit and we need to rile up the voters. But when stimulus packages and deficit spending send money to our favored special interests, be they the ethanol industry or the richest 1% of Americans who pay for our campaign ads, then spending money we don't have becomes our patriotic duty.

Stimulus Buys Madison Trail Signs

Hey, Kristi! Here's more federal money for you to send back to Washington. That nasty, dirty stimulus package just spent $14,213 on trailhead signs for 13 South Dakota towns, including Madison.

I'll admit, this tiny sliver of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act looks pretty nickel-and-dimey. Spending several thousands dollars on signs seems to be about as good for the economy and the general welfare as spending thousands of dollars on banners to hang on Madison's lightpoles to remind everyone to keep looking for the Unexpected™. It certainly doesn't put anyone else to work in Madison: Ted LaFleur and his crew will just add those signs to their long work list.

The intent of the Communities Putting Prevention to Work Initiative includes increasing physical activity and decreasing obesity. These signs address these goals only indirectly. The trails are already there; in Madison, people won't see these signs until they've already made the decision to go walk or bike on these trails. Maybe the signs vaguely increase the enjoyment trail users experience and thus induce folks to come back for more walks... but I'd have a hard time floating that line in a debate with Rep.-Elect Noem and others determined to criticize the stimulus that they accepted to save the state budget.

Now surely some wood shop somewhere in America got a really nice order for couple thousand big signs that kept their machines turning and workers ratcheting and staining for a few more days. In return, we get an innocuous, durable product that makes our trails a little more attractive and useful. Back in the 1930s, the CCC and WPA also put up signs alongside all of their useful public works. The signs don't seem like the best possible investment of stimulus dollars, but I guess they're jsut part of the total program.

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Bonus Sign Snark: If we have to spend stimulus money on signs, maybe the Madison Chamber could apply for a grant to get a sign out in front of the Depot that motorists could actually read.

That Darned Stimlus: Boon for South Dakota Wind Power

The stimulus is working. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act isn't just about creating immediate jobs, ending the recession, and restoring confidence... although South Dakota unemployment is sliding back down, the economy has grown every quarter since Q3 2009, and rural bankers' confidence in the economic outlook for the next six months has risen over 11 points since August. The stimulus is also about laying the groundwork for long-term jobs and economic growth.

Consider wind energy. Mitchell Technical Institute just announced their receipt of $1.17 million in federal money to buy into a wind turbine on the White Lake PrairieWinds site. The state also kicked in stimulus dollars in the form of bonds to the Mitchell School District, which oversees the technical school. MTI students will get to train on that turbine. Those students, including a cadre of Native American students mandated by the federal money, will come out of MTI better equipped to compete for jobs in the growing wind energy field.

The stimulus also kept a lot of American wind energy jobs alive by saving the renewable energy tax credit:

At a time when the Great Recession threatened some 40,000 American wind construction, manufacturing and other jobs, the 1603 tax credit program included in the Stimulus legislation passed by the Congress restarted stalled projects and preserved these jobs. This year, a study by Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory (LBNL) found that the 1603 tax credit supported shovel-ready projects and over 50,000 American jobs. The 1603 program led to a record-breaking year of 10,000 megawatts (MW) of new wind in 2009 [Mike McDowell, "Tax Credits for Renewable Resources Must Be Renewed," HeartlandCPD Blog, 2010.10.15].

Protecting those jobs doesn't just keep tens of thousands of workers buying groceries and paying the mortgage. Protecting those jobs keeps the momentum going in renewable energy. Without the stimulus, we would have fallen further behind China and other forward-looking countries in the race to get our economy oriented toward the energy of the future.

And about China: Republicans are trying to trick you into believing that the stimulus only boosted wind energy in China. Ha!

• According to data from the International Trade Commission (ITC) China currently represents less than 5% of the imported value of turbine components for the U.S. market.
• Today, only 3 out of 33,000 (0.009%) wind turbines installed across the U.S. were sourced from China while there are American wind turbine manufacturing facilities coming online including brand new facilities beginning operation is several states
• U.S. International Trade Commission states: “Overall, imports peaked as a share of the market in 2006 and U.S. production in 2008 and 2009 was significantly higher than in 2005, indicating a growing role for domestic producers. If planned U.S. manufacturing plants come online in the next few years, U.S. production capacity will continue to expand” [McDowell, 2010.10.15].

Remember, if wind-energy jobs are going to China, you can't blame the stimulus. Blame Senator John Thune and Republican obstructionists.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has helped the American wind energy industry weather the economic storm. It is laying the groundwork for students like thoe at Mitchell Tech to get the skills they need to compete in the new-energy economy that's only going to grow in the next five, ten, twenty years.

The ARRA stimulus has helped the recovery. But we're going to be seeing the Reinvestment portion of that legislation working through our economy for much longer.
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Update 2010.10.24 09:33 CDT: More forward-looking stimulus investment helping South Dakota: Governor M. Michael Rounds cheers another $3.8 million in ARRA money to support a broadband mapping project that will gather data vital to improving South Dakota's information technology infrastructure.

More Stimulus "Failure": $61 Million for Lewis and Clark Water

Oh, that darn stimulus package: it keeps doing things! Good things for South Dakota!

The latest benefit accruing to South Dakota thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: $4.5 million for the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System. That's in addition to $56.5 million in stimulus dollars pumped into the project last year.

Counter to all the popular South Dakota grumbling about big government, local boosters insist that slurping up 45 million gallons a day of Missouri River water is vital for the growth of rural communities like Madison, Parker, and Bereseford.

Local boosters should note that Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin voted for the stimulus package that is keeping Lewis & Clark's workers on the job, while Mis-Representative Kristi Noem still says she would have voted against the stimulus.

Noem continues to insist, counterfactually, that the stimulus failed. How's it feel to be a failure, Lewis & Clark?

Stimulus Helping Rapid City Small Business

Failed stimulus? Is Kristi Noem calling Mark Ruddeforth of Rapid City's Horse Creek Inn a failure?

Mark Ruddeforth saved about $7,500 in initiation fees on a $343,000 U.S. Small Business Administration-backed loan for his Rapid City area business, Horse Creek Inn.

Receiving approval of the loan made Ruddeforth one of the first business owners in South Dakota to benefit from the recently passed Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, which extends and enhances certain provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Signed by President Barack Obama in late September, the act affected SBA commercial lending for the 504 loan by raising the maximum net worth requirement for a business to qualify from $8.5 million to $15 million; increasing the maximum loan amount from $2 million to $5 million; and charging the bulk of the loan initiation fees to the government, according to Fran White, SBA 504 loan officer for western South Dakota.

The act is expected to benefit a larger group of small businesses.

“I’m already working on four loans that I couldn’t have been working on three weeks ago,” said White, who works with Black Hills Community Economic Development in Rapid City [Holly Meyer, "Local Business Owner Benefits from Stimulus Loan Program," Rapid City Journal, 2010.10.13].

President signs the bill two weeks ago, and already it's saving South Dakota businesses money. Who says government can't act fast to help the economy?

Ah, but what good is a measly $7500 in savings?

“Every little bit helps,” Ruddeforth said. “That’s 3 percent of gross revenue that is back in your pocket that can go back into the business.”

The saved and borrowed money will help with renovations to the property, including cabins and the restaurant dining room. Ruddeforth also added two full-time positions to his already eight-person full-time and part-time staff [Meyer, 2010.10.13].

Added two full-time positions. Added.

Ruddeforth also notes that this loan might not have happened without the stimulus, since commercial lenders are still balking at shaking loose funds. When the private sector can't keep the economy going, we step in as government to fill the gap.

Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Senator Tim Johnson supported this legislation. Senator John Thune did not. Neither did Rep. John Bohener or anyone else Kristi Noem would vote for for Speaker.

I told you, Kristi, and so did Stephanie: the stimulus is working.

Stimulus: Invest in Teachers, Tunnels...

Small stimulus note: If I'm reading the September Expenditure report correctly, the Madison Central School District has about $269,000 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars waiting to be pumped into the local Lake County economy in the form of salaries for regular employees, tutors, and aides. $269K is a lot of groceries at JubiShine....

Bigger stimulus note: like our Governor Rounds, New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie seems determined to sabotage the federal stimulus, not to mention make the daily commute for thousands of his constituents much worse. Governor Christie has canceled a new tunnel project from New Jersey to New York City. New infrastructure is exactly the kind of investment America needs right now. Building new tunnels and rail lines and other infrastructure creates jobs now and lays the foundation for long-term economic growth. But Tea Party thinking calls that investment taxes and socialism and takes America back... to economic decline.

Daugaard Policy Armor Cracks; Heidepriem Primed for Offensive

South Dakota GOP candidate for governor Dennis Daugaard must be reading too much War College. Daugaard apparently believes the propaganda that the campaign is over, it's a blowout, it's hopeless for Heidepriem... believes it so much that he's starting to slip.

First Team Daugaard puts out an ad so doggedly designed to deny reality that even mild-mannered journalist Bob Mercer, not the most obviously liberal journalist in the state, felt obliged to point out that the ad outright lies when it claims we balanced our state budget without raising taxes. Mercer catalogs a few tax and fee increases propping up our state budget; contact your local county commission and school board to learn the tax hikes they've had to pile onto your local assessment to make up for the state's budgetary neglect.

Then Daugaard tells nursing homes that they probably won't get the $21 million in medicaid stimulus Washington sent them. "We need to guard against the increasing tendency to look for the government to save us," Daugaard lectured the nursing home workers' convention in Sioux Falls Wednesday, even as he defended Pierre's pouring that stimulus money into the general fund to save our budget. That's the same shell game Daugaard and his boss are playing with the $26.3 million in education stimulus approved in August, diverting it from its intended purpose and guaranteeing it won't have the stimuluative effect lawmakers intended.

Now Daugaard skips a great opportunity to defend his record and his plans on a major state policy issue. Tonight's Inside KELOLand (10:30 p.m. CST) will discuss the recent Zogby poll, sponsored by the Associated School Boards of South Dakota, on South Dakota voters' views of K-12 education. Democrat Scott Heidepriem will be there. So will an ASBSD official. Daugaard was invited, but he won't be there. Team Heidepriem is telling supporters that Daugaard said he doesn't want to debate this issue with Heidepriem. Maybe Daugaard, like fellow Republican Kristi Noem, is just getting tired of having his indefensible claims challenged and thinks he can coast to victory in November with fluffy ads and nice hair.

Whatever Daugaard's reason for skipping this discussion, Heidepriem gets free shots for a half hour on the highest-rated TV station in the state. And what will those free shots include? Paraphrasing the latest Team Heidepriem e-mail, Heidepriem will likely cite various expenditures the state has incurred even while breaking its promise to schools and shorted K-12 education this year:

• Rounds and Daugaard happily sent TransCanada an extra $10.5 million in tax refunds to incentivize a pipeline TransCanada had already built through our state.
• The current administration has given over $533,000 dollars in pay raises to their top 19 executive branch staffers... who have turned around and given Daugaard over $62,000 in campaign contributions.
• They've refused to sell any of the state airplanes.
• They closed the Black Hills Playhouse while spending over $200K to renovate "Valhalla," the historic Peter Norbeck cabin just up the trail that Governor Rounds has turned into his personal playground.
  

Tonight's KELO broadcast is the beginning of what could be a big media week for Heidepriem. His big 30-minute documentary is already making the rounds at Dems events and hits the airwaves on all the major South Dakota channels this week Thursday. And by dodging a discussion of education and papering over bad policy with cheery optimism and plainly false claims, Daugaard may be making it that much easier for Heidepriem to grab folks' attention and make the big push for November.

Colton Uses Stimulus to Build Energy Independence

Visitors survey the renewable energy and energy efficiency upgrades to the Colton City East Shop.

It's the patriotic thing to do!

Twelve solar panels. Two wind turbines. It's not Sarnia or Buffalo Ridge. But those twelve panels and two turbines are enough to make Colton, South Dakota, the first energy-independent municipality in our fair state.

Mayor Erik Miller and Colton city staff hosted a ribbon-cutting yesterday afternoon to officially kick off their Energy Independent Community Initiative. Mayor Miller explained to a packed meeting room in the Taopi Hall that Colton has used American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars (you know, that nasty, useless stimulus money) to install enough solar and wind power production capacity to run city hall and the east and west city shops without grid power. Colton also used the money to weatherize the buildings, with new doors, windows, and insulation. Mayor Miller says their EIC Initiative has allowed the city to double its working shop space with no increase—and possibly a decrease—in energy cost.

Ken Hitzeman cuts the ceremonial ribbon for Colton's Energy-Independent Community Initiative.

Mayor Miller did not take credit for this forward-looking energy project. The "spark" behind the whole project is local resident Ken Hitzeman. The mayor said Hitzeman, a local renewable energy expert, brought up the idea of putting Colton on the map with wind turbines—"whirlybirds"—and other energy-producing and energy-saving projects. Hitzeman's passion for the project, said Miller, came from a simple commitment to the idea of energy self-sufficiency. Hitzeman is driven by the dread of seeing American energy dollars go overseas and buy even one bullet that might kill one American soldier. For his patriotic commitment to making energy here in small-town South Dakota, Mayor Miller made Hitzeman blush, just a little, by declaring yesterday "Ken Hitzeman Day" in Colton.

Eletrical equipment turning wind and solar power into usable juice in the Colton City East Shop:

1. wind-solar hybrid converter
2. excess power sink
3. inverter
4. smart meter
5. battery pack
   

City officials took time to show us the nuts and bolts at the "East Shop" next to the Taopi Hall. The small wind turbine sits atop an old windmill tower which used to support a town emergency. How's that for recycling? (A city employee also mentioned his dad once towed that tower, upright, a couple blocks across town to its current location.) Three solar panels lie on the south side of the roof. Inside, a converter combines the wind and solar power for use. Excess power is stored in four batteries. The battery pack in the East Shop can hold two hours of power. They should last fifteen years, with a replacement cost of about $2000.

To extend the life of the batteries, a controller shuts off the wind turbine when the batteries are fully charged and doesn't switch it back on unless the batteries have been drained to 50%. The controller also shuts off the turbine if the wind exceeds 65 miles per hour. When the batteries run out, power switches automatically to the grid with just the barest flicker of the lights.

East Shop smart meter shows zero power input from the grid. That's a zero we like!

A smart meter shows exactly how much power the system is producing and how much additional power the system is drawing from Sioux Valley Electric. Yesterday's grid power intake reading, with the wind turbine quiet and only the three solar panels juicing the shop: 0.0 kW. Ah, self-reliance....

Colton's EIC Initiative is bigger than just energy self-sufficiency for three city buildings. Ken Hitzeman is helping organize a community task force to promote conservation and recycling in Colton. That citizen group will also look for ways to promote energy self-sufficiency for Colton businesses and residents. The EIC Task Force will storm up some ideas at its first organizational meeting on October 19 (7 p.m., Daybreak Express in Colton). They will also start a dialogue about local energy independence on a new Facebook page, which they plan to launch in the coming weeks.

Mayor Miller may be new to Facebook—he said he just learned it for this project, and there were plenty of chuckles from city employees when the mayor asked at the press conference if the shop staff had all updated their Facebook status. But he already gets that the Web and blogs can support real conversation and exchange of ideas both within a community and with communities around the state.

State Senator Scott Heidepriem congratualtes Colton on its pioneering energy-independence initiative

And Colton's EIC Initiative will generate lots of conversation. Gubernatorial candidate and fellow Minnehaha County resident Scott Heidepriem was among the dignitaries who stopped by to congratulate Colton on the EIC Initiative. He noted that Colton will now face the challenge of being a pioneer in energy independence. Pioneers charge forward and solve problems, and then, said Heidepriem, they have to field all the calls and questions from other communities who will want to follow their lead.

Colton's EIC Initiative is a truly visionary, groundbreaking project. Colton's green innovation isn't just about saving the planet (though they're helping!). Colton is showing communities much bigger than itself that we can build the infrastructure now to produce our own power and build energy security at home.

West Shop solar panels and wind turbine

City Hall solar panels

East Shop solar panels and wind turbine

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Update 10:40 CDT: See more coverage of Colton's push for energy independence on KDLT.

Stimulus Won't Bring Back Old Growth: Two Perspectives

The federal stimulus is doing some good. However, it will not bring us back to the happier economic days of the 1990s and a few of the G.W. Bush years. Two economists offer differing explanations with the same grim conclusion: the economy just ain't what it used to be.

First, Robert Reich says consumers are simply out of gas:

After three decades of flat wages during which almost all the gains of growth have gone to the very top, the middle class no longer has the buying power to keep the economy going. It can’t send more spouses into paid work, can’t work more hours, can’t borrow any more. All the coping mechanisms are exhausted [Robert Reich, "Why No Amount of Fiscal or Monetary Stimulus Will Be Enough, Given How Small A Share of Total Income the Middle Now Receives," Robert Reich's blog, 2010.09.21].

Then Jeffrey Rubin notes that we're out of cheap gas:

What's being overlooked is that last cycle's rate of growth was fueled for the most part with cheap oil--oil was below $30 a barrel for the first half of the period. Even today's oil prices weren't encountered until the last year of growth. That's not incidental to the performance of the world's largest oil-consuming economy, which relies on imports for over half of its 19-million-barrel-a-day requirement.

Feed the US economy cheap oil, and you'll see robust growth rates and a drop in the jobless rate to four-decade lows--no matter who's in the White House. But throw in $147-per-barrel oil, and the US economy stops dead in its tracks [Jeffrey Rubin, "Obama's Fiscal Stimulus No Substitute for Cheap Oil," Huffington Post, 2010.09.21].

Now before you think TransCanada's Keystone pipelines will solve that problem by swelling our supply with Alberta tar sands oil, heed Rubin's reminder that tar sands oil doesn't flow for much less than $100 a barrel.

By this thinking, fiscal stimulus doesn't do much but help us tread water instead of drowning in Depression. Under the concentration of wealth and high oil prices, the economy just can't rebound to the levels of growth necessary to generate the future revenues that would pay down the deficit spending we're using in the current stimulus.

But the answer is not simply to abandon the stimulus and hope everything works itself out. The "work itself out" crowd brought us to a shrinking middle class and continued dependence on oil. To get out of the economic doldrums and beat the deficit, we need to (says Reich) reorganize the economy to expand the middle class again and (says Rubin) kick our addiction to oil in favor of cheaper, cleaner energy sources.

Noem Claim of "Jobless Stimulus" False

Ask DSU, Sioux Falls P.D., Governor Rounds...

In her new lackluster TV ad, GOP candidate for U.S. House Kristi Noem recycles footage from her Texas ad shoot, footage that her own campaign manager Josh Shields criticized back in April when he was sinking R. Blake Curd's campaign.* What gives? Did your original ad plan collapse, and you had to paste together all the old footage you could find just to satisfy your TV ad contracts? Amateur Hour with Team Kristi continues....

Noem's ad also recycles an old Wall Street Journal headline into a bullet point about the "jobless stimulus."

Jobless stimulus? Really? Then who are those nice folks at DSU with new jobs in health IT, thanks to stimulus dollars? And where did Sioux Falls get those nice new police officers:

"If it weren't for the grants, there's no question we wouldn't be adding police officers this year based on just where the economy is," Sioux Falls Police Chief Doug Barthel said.

The police department hired nine new officers this year through federal grants. They cover salaries and benefits for the next three years. The department also has drug task force detectives who are paid through grants. And the county and city each have a domestic violence detective funded solely through grants [Ben Dunsmoor, "Federal Grants Help Fund Local Law Enforcement," KELOLand.com, 2010.09.15].

Now I don't know if those Sioux Falls police grants are Recovery Act dollars. To find out, maybe we can check with Governor M. Michael Rounds, whose own spreadsheet connects Recovery Act spending in South Dakota with over 6500 jobs. And on SDPB's Dakota Midday, the governor's Secretary of Labor Pam Roberts just said her stats show 1000 more job openings this month than last month.

Hmm... I thought jobless meant no jobs. The above examples look like jobs.

As usual in South Dakota, it's Uncle Sam to the rescue. And it's Team Kristi pretending words mean what Team Kristi says and not what the words actually mean.
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Update 2010.09.17: Add 110 jobs in northeast South Dakota and adjoining areas thanks to broadband stimulus.
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*In an interview with Jonathan Ellis ("Ads in GOP House Race Start with Noem Commercial Filmed in Texas") published in that Sioux Falls paper on April 30, 2010, Shields pointedly observed that the Curd campaign would respond to Noem's opening ad salvo with ads filmed in South Dakota.

HealthPoint Wins More Stimulus Dollars to Support Health Care and Jobs

Here's a half-million in stimulus dollars South Dakota's Republicans did not and just cannot approve of: on top of the $5.7 million Dakota State University received last spring to create the HealthPoint resource center to help South Dakota hospitals implement electronic health records (and create a few jobs right here in Madison), the health info-tech center now snags another $576K from the Recovery Act to provide technical assistance to rural South Dakota hospitals.

As one of my favorite local Republicans observed, a strong local health care industry is an "important asset for any community." Expanding the use of electronic health records will make it easier for rural doctors and nurses to do their jobs, as they will have more resources available. Among other benefits, the tech this grant supports will help a doctor at the clinic in Gettysburg get advice and treatment from a specialist at Avera without making the patient take a day off work to drive to Sioux Falls.

This latest stimulus grant for rural health information technology is an excellent example of government at work in our backyard, providing tangible benefits and improving basic services.

But if you prefer seeing rural communities struggle to recruit doctors and provide health care locally, well, go ahead and keep listening to the Republicans and teabaggers who tell you government can't do anything right.

Colton Aims for Energy Independence. Colton!

You can take the Kristi Noem position and contend the stimulus has failed. Perhaps Noem would like to double down and say the stimulus has driven folks crazy.

Exhibit A: Colton, South Dakota, which is announcing its plan to become the first energy-independent city in South Dakota:

The City of Colton has broken ground on it's Energy Independent Community (EIC) Initiative with the start of project construction at all city facilities. Recovery Act funding through the U.S. Department of Energy and S.D. Department of Energy will allow Colton to become the first city within the State of South Dakota to subsidize and offset electricity consumption of all city facilities by the use of small wind and solar hybrid system technology! In addition to producing a majority of the electrical energy needed to power city operations through renewable energy, grant funds will also be utilized to increase the energy efficiency at city facilities with improved insulation, upgraded doors and windows, radiant heat sources, upgraded electrical services and improved efficiency lighting. The project will drastically improve the viability and energy efficiency of city facilities, and effectively double city shop square footage without increasing and possibly even reducing current energy demands of city operations [City of Colton, 2010].

A whole city producing as much power as it uses from wind and solar. Crazy, right?

Wrong. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act wasn't just about keeping and creating jobs. It was about inspiring long-term investment in really good ideas, like building renewable energy infrastructure and making improvements that allow us to produce more of our own energy and use it more efficiently.

Colton is thinking big. They're hosting a ribbon-cutting to showcase their big-thinking initiative at the Taopi Hall in Colton on September 28 at 3 p.m. Perhaps candidate Noem will come to Colton to learn what the stimulus is really doing for her fellow South Dakotans.

Herseth Sandlin vs. Noem: Get a Job! Get Lots of Jobs!

Part 8 of the Madville Times' South Dakota State Fair Congressional Debate analysis

The last question at Sunday's debate: What specifically would you do to fight unemployment and create jobs in South Dakota?

Kristi Noem blasted the failed stimulus package, saying the U.S. has lost 300,000 jobs and seen unemployment shoot past the President's assurances to 9.6%. The stimulus, said Noem, has done little but pile debt on our children. Noem defended her vote in Pierre to accept those stimulus dollars for use in South Dakota because the Legislature did not have the option to send those dollars back to Washington to pay down the national debt. We made the best decision for you, said Noem, to use those stimulus dollars here in South Dakota.

Noem then turned to her legislative record, saying she carried a bill on wind energy (HB 1263, I'm assuming) that dealt with easements and development periods. Noem said the bill passed unanimously and creates more opportunities for wind developers to come to the state. Noem said one potential wind project may create 3000 jobs, all without spending any tax dollars or creating any government debt.

Herseth Sandlin came out swinging again, saying, "The question is on what we will do." (That's the second time Herseth Sandlin explicitly pointed out that Noem wasn't answering the question.) Herseth Sandlin piled on the specifics of what she'll do to create jobs and opportunities for South Dakotans: she said she will promote blender pumps, investment tax credits, and continue to work bipartisanly to increase the Small Business Administration's loan authority to $5 million. She recalled the trade agreement point Noem made earlier in the debate and said she will work to get the South Korea trade agreement moving.

After those positive specifics (more than Noem laid out), Herseth Sandlin still had time to rebut Noem's stimulus argument. Suppose the Legislature had had the option to send the stimulus money back for debt relief, the way Noem wanted. What cuts, Herseth Sandlin asked, would Noem have made to balance the state budget? Herseth Sandlin said Noem imagines "the economy would have somehow magically cured itself." Herseth Sandlin said Noem is just politicizing the stimulus and not offering specific solutions.

Assessment: I'm still trying to untie Noem's logical knot of how the stimulus can do no good yet be good to spend here in South Dakota. And Herseth Sandlin is right about Noem missing the question. I could be generous and say that by pointing to her wind energy easements bill, Noem was highlighting the general kind of legislation she would craft and support in Congress to create jobs. But Noem herself did not say those words; she left me having to fill in those blanks... and that left a big blank for SHS to fill with a reasonable charge that Noem didn't answer the question with the specifics requested.

Both candidates threw punches here, but Herseth Sandlin is throwing them harder. That's how you win a fight.

On answering the question and the opposition and answering harder, advantage Herseth Sandlin.

Rounds Replaces State Ed Money with Stimulus; Where's Noem?

Would someone please untie the knot of Republican contradictions for me?

Governor M. Michael Rounds has accepted $26.3 million in federal stimulus dollars to fund South Dakota's K-12 schools. The insult and injury of Republican politics on this issue is a double whammy: not only is Governor Rounds happily bellying us up to the bar of the very federal spending that Republicans tell us is a reason to vote against our incumbent Democratic Congresswoman, but the governor is technically increasing our narcotic-like addiction to federal money by using the money to replace, not supplement, state education dollars.

Just curious, Governor Rounds: are you deliberately trying to sabotage the stimulus? The idea of this federal aid is to create more jobs and put more money in workers' pockets to spend. You could take this $26 million and give each of our 10,000 K-12 teachers a $2600 bonus and sustaining the committed funding levels for everything else. Even if you can't sustain that pay level next year, I don't think anyone, from the teachers on down to the merchants on Main Street, will mind teachers having $26 million to pump right back into our local economy.

I would love to learn (as would the Herseth Sandlin campaign) where GOP House candidate Kristi Noem stands on this issue. Republicans keep wanting to forget that Kristi Noem voted for depending on Uncle Sam's stimulus dollars to save South Dakota from fiscal disaster (i.e., from having to raise taxes on rich corporations to pay our own way).

Kristi Noem wants you to forget that Congress and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin have saved South Dakota's fiscal butt time and time again. Any Republican who thinks a vote for Noem is a vote for more principled fiscal conservatism is blowing smoke. Noem would go to Congress and vote for just as many earmarks for Ellsworth and highways and other popular prairie pork as our current delegation. Noem offers nothing different, just a slightly louder No never to be realized in actual policy. South Dakota depends on federal money. Federal money does good for our state. Noem's talking points on the stimulus and other federal money doesn't match our economic reality.

Alaska, South Dakota Receive Most Stimulus Per Person

Hot on the heels of Governor Rounds's decision to take Scott Heidepriem's advice and accept the full $47 million in stimulus dollars Uncle Sam is offering to help with Medicare and education, the New York Times reports that South Dakotans are already the second-biggest recipients of stimulus dollars per capita. As of May, each one of us has received $1781 in stimulus (funny, I don't feel stimulated).

The only state more stimulated than South Dakota: Alaska. Sarah Palin's rootin'-tootin' independent-minded neighbors have hauled in $3145 in stimulus dollars per person.

NYT's Michael Powell points out a curious pattern of really red, anti-federal government states like Alaska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Louisiana raking in big stimulus dollars and federal aid and enjoying low unemployment.

Pro Publica provides a full sortable chart here. As I run some quick numbers, I find almost no mathematical correlation between the amount of stimulus per person and the April 2009 unemployment rates, the April 2010 unemployment rates, or the change in unemployment rate between those dates. However, I do find a slightly positive (0.37-0.39) correlation between total stimulus dollars delivered per state and April 2009 and 2010 unemployment rates, which suggests at least some sensible targeting of the stimulus dollars to the places with the highest unemployment. But these casual spreadsheet calculations, along with the fact that low-unemployment South Dakota has raked in big aid per capita, suggest we could be targeting our stimulus dollars better. Maybe Mike Rounds, Bobby Jindal, and other governors of low-unemployment states should have stuck by their guns, rejected all of the federal stimulus dollars, and sent them to places that needed the assistance more.

By the way, taxable sales in South dakota dropped 1.5% for FY2010. Taxable sales over the same period dropped 9% in Madison. If we each hadn't had an extra $1781 in our pockets from Uncle Sam, how much worse would those sales figures have been? And (cynical question, but worth chewing over at lunch) if South Dakota had received no stimulus dollars at all and the entire state economy had collapsed, would anyone in New York or Washington have noticed?
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Bonus stimulus model: The Displaced Plainsman brings to our attention an alternative model for stimulus spending: our German friends poured money into keeping people in jobs rather than supporting them once unemployed. The causality is surely more complicated, but Germany could see 9% economic growth this year.

Bailouts, TARP, Stimulus Avert Depression, Say Blinder and Zandi

President Obama's pitch for his fellow Dems in November is that the economy would have been a lot worse if he and Congress hadn't taken action. That's not the easiest sell: it's a lot easier to convince voters on the basis of what did happen rather than what didn't happen.

Now economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi take a swing at proving what didn't happen thanks to the Obama Administration (and yes, the Bush Administration, in its last months) pouring on the bailouts, TARP, and stimulus. They find that in the alternative world where we would have followed the do-nothing approach of this year's Palin-Tea-Party panderers, we would have seen...

1. Gross Domestic Product 6.5% lower this year;
2. 8.5 million fewer jobs (on top of the 8 million lost in our reality);
3. deflation instead of low inflation.

The Economist agrees that alternate-universe calculations don't persuade voters nearly as much as the fact that in this universe, they're still sending out résumés. And defenders of the faith on the other side will find tomatoes to throw at this analysis. But Blinder and Zandi paint a pretty grim picture of what could have been if we had let the economy crash without government taking the stick to engineer a softer landing.

President Obama Expanding Rights, Fixing Economy, Investing Wisely

With your breakfast, a side order of news on why President Obama is making your life better:

1. The new health insurance reform law creates a patient's bill of rights that increases your liberty when you go to the doctor. Taking effect this fall, those rights include the right to keep your health insurance when you get sick, choose your own doctor, and get emergency care without insurance companies restricting payment to only their chosen network of facilities. Of course, South Dakota's GOP House candidate, Kristi Noem, wants to take those rights away from you.
   
2. The Troubled Asset Relief Program is a moneymaker. So far, we're $10 billion in the black, with the 61 banks that have fully repaid our Depression-stopping loans giving us a 10% return on investment (10%—and how's your portfolio doing?). One big reason banks have hustled so hard to pay back our loans: executive salary caps! The sooner the banks pay their loans, the sooner their executives can get back to making millions more than the $500K cap we imposed as a condition of taxpayer largesse. I guess socialism can be an effective motivator.
3. President Obama also appears to be helming an economic recovery... or so says Warren Buffett, a fellow not known for economic wishful thinking. Buffett disputes Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman's contention that we are slipping into a Third Depression. Buffett says the stimulus was the right thing to do, has worked, and will keep working, producing a better economy over the next few years. He does agree that we need to check the debt as the crisis passes and confidence rises, but he also thinks making cuts on the backs of the unemployed is a bad idea.

In other words, keep on truckin', Mr. President!

Obama Stimulates South Dakota Small Town Broadband

We're not following Finland in declaring broadband a fundamental human right, but we're working on making universal access to the information superhighway a practical reality. On Friday, the Obama Administration announced an additional $800 million in stimulus dollars to boost 66 broadband projects nationwide.

Two South Dakota outfits get a piece of this broadband stimulus pie:

1. Triotel Communications of Salem gets $12.3 million to lay fiber-optic cable (that's the fast stuff) to homes in Canova, Alexandria, Emery, Farmer, Salem, and Spencer. Triotel says the project may benefit over 4000 people, just about 1000 businesses, and 100 community institutions. Interestingly, Triotel's homepage features a banner link calling on us to oppose the FCC's National Broadband Plan... apparently based on the plan's setting rural braodband standards 25 times slower than national standards.
2. Highmore-based Venture Communications gets $5.2 million (to be supplemented with $1.7M in private capital) to run fiber to homes and businesses in Cresbard, Faulkton, and Orient. Over 2000 people and dozens of businesses and institutions stand to get faster Internet.

Among neighboring states, Iowa is living highest off the broadband stimulus hog, winning $69.8 million for six broadband projects. On an entirely unrelated note, these stimulus grants are administered in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, headed by Secretary and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack.

But South Dakota's $17.5 million is no sneezable sum. Iowa and Montana were our only neighbors to get more of this broadband stimulus, and most of Montana's money is $15.5 million dedicated to building a fiber network everywhere on the Crow Reservation.

Of course, we all know that South Dakota's reliance on federal money is bad, bad, bad. When will Kristi Noem go to Salem and Highmore and tell them to send this Executive Branch pork back to Washington? Hmmm... maybe she can get some support for that argument from Wisconsin Democrat and chair of House Appropriations David Obey, who wants to cut $602 million from the total $7.2 billion of stimulus dollars targeted at broadband to offset war costs.

Recovery.org Transforms Government Spending Transparency

You may not like President Obama's economic stimulus package, but you should at least like President Obama's use of the Web to account for that stimulus money. Recovery.gov isn't just another government website. According to Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board chairman and Inspector General Earl Devaney, the stimulus-tracking website has permanently and positively transformed the concept of government transparency:

...it's transformational. I think that the government is going to do business like this in the future. This is probably the biggest experiment going on right now, and they'll take the good and build on it and we will probably learn a lot of lessons as we go along [Earl Devaney, quoted by Chad Vander Veen, "Earl Devaney, Chairman of the Federal Recovery Board, Talks About Building and Running Recovery.gov," Government Technology, 2010.06.15].

But wasn't there some ruckus last fall about recovery money being spent in non-existent Congressional districts? Yes... and that ruckus wouldn't have happened without the transparency of Recovery.org:

...the downside to transparency is often embarrassment. When we went live [with stimulus spending data] in October, there was a lot of outcry about the data. Some of the data was bad. There are 99 data elements that the recipients [of stimulus funds] had to send in to FederalReporting.gov and get right. One of the big snafus was that turns out not many of the recipients knew what congressional district they live in. So they just put in two numbers, they didn't care if they were the right numbers because the system allowed them to move on to the next question. Well, when we had a database full of incorrect congressional districts, that didn't make Congress very happy. There's a technical fix to that; we tied the ZIP codes to the congressional district, and if the ZIP code entered by the user doesn't match the congressional district, the user is told there is a problem. That corrected that problem in the next reporting period, so that data got a lot better [Devaney in Vander Veen, 2010].

Devaney sees himself and a couple dozen other inspectors general now backed up by thousands and thousands of reporters, bloggers, and regular citizens searching Recovery.gov for information on local projects and eager to print critical news stories or hit the "report fraud" button if they see something questionable. He says the stimulus money has as much potential for waste and abuse as past government spending programs. The difference is that it's a lot easier for us to find out about it, alert the overseeing agencies, and stanch that waste and abuse.

All thanks to a website and citizen participation... and an Administration that understands the value of both.

Obama Administration Saving Money with Cloud Computing

The Obama Administration is saving you money with cloud computing. The White House announced yesterday that it will move the stimulus website, Recovery.gov, to "hardware and services [that] are shared, and not owned by the government."

As Nicholas Carr explains in The Big Switch, cloud computing is to information technology what the power grid is to electrical service. When electrical equipment first came about, each factory built and maintained its own electrical generators, just as factories previously had to generate their own mechanical power with onsite water wheels and steam engines. Then manufacturers realized they could outsource power generation to a big utility that generated oodles of power in a coal-fired plant or hydroelectric dam while the manufacturers concentrated on the widget-making they were good at.

Similarly with information technology: as computers developed over the last 50 years, businesses had to create their own IT departments to install and mainatain all of their own mainframes and servers and software. Cloud computing says, "Hey! You're not a computer company! You're a widget maker (or, in this case, the federal government). Focus on your core competency. Let us generate your computing power and manage your software." Instead of having your own bank of high-powered computers with expensive software, you just plug your vanilla computer into the Web, switch on your browser, and access software and processing power from a central utility.

The Office of Management and Budget says switching Recovery.gov to cloud computing will save $750,000 this year alone. Switch a million (oops! 1.15 million) more programs, and we'll have the stimulus paid for!