Fight Swine Flu: Eat More Bacon!

(Hat tip to Amanda Nolz at AgWired!)

You've heard me grumble about the word games the pork industry wants to play with "swine flu" and "H1N1." Hoosier Ag Today's Gary Truitt says the pork industry's effort to eradicate the term "swine flu" from the press has been a failure. Truitt suggests pork boosters quit whining and take laughter as their best medicine:

There is a web site that is selling a verity of products with humorous swine flu sayings on them. T-shirts that read, “Prevent swine flu eat more bacon.” They also sell neckties with photos of pigs wearing surgical masks. The internet is filled with funny photos, sayings, and stories all making fun of swine flu. One e-mail message that crossed my desk warmed me to disregard any messages asserting eating canned pork could give you swine flu, it said it was just Spam. There are rumors that a line of special swine flu get well cards is in the works. Perhaps Gary Varvel will do a cartoon showing healthy hogs in a bio-secure confinement facility watching CNN and saying they are glad they are not human so they can’t get swine flu [Gary Truitt, "Prevent Swine Flu, Eat More Bacon," Hoosier Ag Today, 2009.11.01].

Mmm, bacon! And pass the chops.

A Guy's Entitled to Change His Mind: Comes Stays as Madison City Engineer

Props to Chuck Clement, whose Internet updates suggest Jon Hunter is realizing the power of the Internet!

Looks like the City of Watertown won't be enticing Madison's city engineer away after all. At last night's Madison City Commission meeting, Chad Comes asked to withdraw his resignation letter and stay on as Madison's city engineer. Interestingly, Commission Nick Abraham thought the best course of action was to table Comes's request for a week and have further discussion. No one seconded that motion, and the commission went on to approve Comes's request on a 4–1 vote, with Abraham dissenting.

Any ideas on what Commissioner Abraham might have wanted to discuss?

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Media note: last time Newsmonger, the Watertown Public Opinion blog, broke the story that Watertown had hired Comes before Comes had a chance to submit his letter of resignation to Mayor Hexom. With this story on Comes's resignation withdrawal and two others published online after Monday's print deadline, Clement appears to be on a mission to make the Madison Daily Leader website the home for local breaking news. Hmmm... looks like I might have to hire some staff!

Unemployment Fund Idea: Apply Surcharges During Periods of Low Unemployment

The South Dakota Retailers Association is holding meetings this month to grumble about the unemployment insurance fund. If I were a retailer, I'd grumble, too: with more folks out of work, the state has to pay out more assistance. When the fund rops below $11 million, the state levies a 1.5% surcharge on employers to keep the fund afloat.

Now I'm sympathetic to the idea that it doesn't help a business in the middle of a recession to suddenly have Pierre (or Washington) increase taxes. But it also doesn't help workers to cut funding for unemployment assistance right when people need that assistance (just like it doesn't make sense to cut Medicaid when more people need it).

The retailers are going to talk reform during their meetings, so maybe they could discuss this reform: maybe we could avoid a surcharge when the economy is in bad shape by imposing a surcharge when the economy is in good shape. Maybe it would make sense for employers to chip in a little more when the economy is growing. Impose that 1.5% surcharge when quarterly state GDP exceeds some benchmark. Put the bucket out when it's raining, right?

Of course, we might achieve the same goal with a wisely managed corporate income tax....

Investors Quit Big Stone II: Harbinger for Hyperion?

Could good news breed good news? Might the death of the proposed Big Stone II coal plant in northeast South Dakota signal the impending extinction of Hyperion's proposal to bring dinosaur power to the southeast corner of the state? Big Stone II failed because it couldn't convince investors to bet their money on a big unsustainable energy project. Backers of the Grant County coal plant were trying to buck a negative investment trend that has seen 100—now 101—coal plants defeated or abandoned since 2000 as high rollers like Warren Buffet realize stuffing their money in the coal-power mattress is not a wise move.

Now Hyperion has to convince these same cautious energy investors to sink their capital into a project that will use an even dirtier fuel source and cause even more environmental disruption in its construction and operation. Shell Oil says the tar sands oil Hyperion would refine is cleaner than coal... but Shell also made $351M in profit on its tar sands operations in quarter 2 this year. **[Update!] On the climate change score sheet, BSII would have pumped 4.5 million tons of CO₂ annually. Hyperion's complex would emit 19 million tons.** Oil refineries are also more likely to explode than coal plants (pace BP).

As Dean Spader points out in a Sunday letter to that Sioux Falls paper, the Hyperion refinery would take 6,000 acres of some of South Dakota's most productive farm land out of production. "No advanced civilization destroys and pollutes its source of food," says Spader. "Nor should any Christian nation ever deliberately annihilate rich cropland when 1 billion people are starving."

Far be it from me to appeal to the Christian sentiments of venture capitalists. The business case alone is enough to make them back away from refineries. Valero, the biggest refiner in America, is losing money on oil and switching off refineries. The only bright spot in its portfolio: all those ethanol refineries they bought from bankrupt Verasun.

Blame the recession, blame ACESA... heck, blame me and my fellow bike-riding propagandists. The cold hard facts of the market say investors are looking for smarter, cleaner, more sustainable places to put their money than fossil fuels.

Memo to Preston Phillips, Albert Huddleston, et al.: have you thought of installing wind turbines and solar panels on that land you've optioned? There's some decent Class 3 wind down around Elk Point, and we can get you just about as much solar potential as down in Dallas. Plus, you wouldn't be dependent on foreign oil!

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Update 09:17 CST: Of course, don't tack this blog post up on your bulletin board in Union County. Elected officials there might threaten to fine you for speaking out against the refinery.

Madison Central Picks Farrell for Board Vacancy

The Madison Central School Board, operating tonight on the barest of quora, appointed retired Dakota State University educator Tom Farrell to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of retitred DSU educator Dennis Hegg. This decision leaves current DSU graduate teaching assistant Cory Heidelberger, the other applicant for the vacancy, a little freer to work on his dissertation.

Seriously, the Madison Central School Board made a good decision tonight. They couldn't not make a good decision. They had two applicants, both long-time Madison residents, both enthusiastic educators, both pretty good communicators... just the kind of people it's good to have in public office. Congratulations, Tom!

I told my speech students this afternoon that when you apply for a job, you go in with the attitude that you are the best person for the job, that you can out-interview anyone else who walks into that room. You never entertain the notion that you won't get the job.

I admit, when I read that Tom Farrell was the other applicant the board would be interviewing tonight, I entertained the notion that I wouldn't get the job. Even before my friend Michael Black called last night and said, "I think they'll pick Tom" (thanks, again, Mike, for the encouragement ;-) ), I had calculated that I might be at a bit of a disadvantage, that I might at least want to prepare myself for the possibility of coming in... well, not first. And as I contemplated that possibility, I thought, "If they don't pick me, I'll probably be disappointed for all of thirty seconds."

I was wrong. It was more like two seconds.

As Paul Weist made the motion to appoint Tom Farrell, as I did the same gut check I see interpers and debaters do when we line them all up on stage and hand out the runners-up trophies, to make sure I didn't slip and scowl or cross my eyes, I didn't find myself having to force a smile. My interview with Paul, Steve Nelson, Jay Niedert, and Mark Hawkes (no Michelle Tucek, no Tammy Jo Zingmark) was an enjoyable and challenging conversation about school policy, architecture, and community. While Tom and I waited during the board's executive session deliberation, we had a good conversation about methodology and DSU's graduate program.

And when the board cast their vote for Tom, I saw beside me a newly minted school board member, smart and passionate about education and ready to make some hard decisions for the good of our kids, our teachers, and our community. How could I be disappointed to lose to a well-liked, well-educated, well-spoken opponent—and that word doesn't even sound right tonight... competitor? neighbor?

Tom Farrell will do a good job on the board. And who knows? Maybe I can even convince him to start a school board blog (two years now... I'll keep trying!).

Big Stone II Fails! Backers Back Out!

You read it here first, but the Big Stone II backers make it official today: the Big Stone II coal-fired electric plant is dead, dead, dead. Heartland and the remaining backers have finally come to their senses and acknowledged the market realities that Otter Tail saw two months ago. The future is not coal. It is wind, solar, other alternatives, and conservation.

The plant backers go out with an amusing whimper, calling this move a "wind-down" of the project. Wind-down—that's today's euphemism for cancellation, collapse, and quitting. They can't go down without griping, either: their release whines that the failed project was "a fully permitted project" and "had been determined to be the least-cost, environmentally sound baseload power plant for the project participants."

Funny: if this project really was such a financially attractive option, then why on earth did all those smart businesspeople at the utilities bail out? The Otter Tail CEO and all those other business folks are smarter than I am when it comes to making a buck. What on earth were they thinking? Might they realize that wind really is a better investment than another unsustainable fossil fuel plant?

Come on, guys, give up the denial. Just admit Big Stone II was a bad idea. Admit you were wrong, and move on. Trust me, you'll feel better.

According to the press release, Russ Olson is standing by at Heartland to take your questions. Give him a call, offer your condolences... and tell him to tell the boss to get over it and build more windmills!

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Update 2009.11.03 11:25 CST: While Dakota War College frets that the death of BSII will stifle wind power, Western Area Power Administration is working on 200-megawatts' worth of wind power deals with wind farms here on the Plains.

Solve South Dakota Budget Shortfall with 1.2% Pipeline Tax

As I scribble up the numbers on TransCanada's reported $40,000-per-mile payments for land rights and daily volume on the Keystone pipeline, my wife asks, "So how much oil would it take to cover the state budget shortfall?"

My wife always asks good questions. Scribble scribble...

• Potential South Dakota budget shortfall: $200,000,000.
• Projected daily volume of oil, Keystone pipeline: 590,000 barrels.
• Current price of crude oil: $77.28 per barrel.
• Annual value of oil passing through eastern South Dakota in Keystone I: $16,642,248,000.
• Tax rate on $16.6B that would produce $200M: 1.2%.

Keystone I will be pumping oil in 2010. Now, add in Keystone XL, which TransCanada hopes to have in service by 2012

• Projected daily volume of oil, Keystone XL pipeline: 900,000 barrels.
• Total projected daily volume of TransCanada tar sands oil crossing South Dakota: 1,490,000 barrels.
• Total annual value: $42,028,728,000.
• Tax rate required to put $200M in South Dakota's coffers each year: 0.48%.
• Time each day it would take TransCanada to pipe enough oil to cover that tax rate: 6.9 minutes.
  

Legislators, are you listening? Our "leaders" are loathe to ask South Dakotans to bear the burden of paying for state services. TransCanada, a foreign corporation, could be the gravy train that keeps you from putting the burden of increased taxes on your constituents in an election year. In the face of a $200 million budget shortfall, a pipeline tax is a no-brainer.

Madden Report Misses Distress Among Keystone Pipeline Neighbors

Report Also Finds Going Rate for Land Rights:
$40,000 per Mile

The South Dakota Public Utility Commission begins its hearing today on the Keystone XL pipeline permit. A public input session tomorrow (Tuesday) evening at 6 p.m. will be part of a week-long process in Room 414 of the State Capitol Building in Pierre.

The state appears ready to propagate the illusion that another strip of sovereign Canadian territory across South Dakota is hunky-dory. SD Tar Sands Pipelines highlights a report submitted to the Keystone XL docket by economist Michael Madden on behalf of the state. Dr. Madden assesses the socioeconomic impacts of the Keystone I pipeline TransCanada is currently completing in eastern South Dakota. Somewhat maddeningly, Dr. Madden finds that among farmers he interviewed near the pipeline route he didn't get to have the project on their land, "it was sensed that there was feeling of lack of good fortune on their part." He finds "no major worry road rehabilitation would not be performed by the company" [p. 13].

Dr. Madden evidently avoided speaking to Mike and Sue Sibson—"pipeline shoved up my..." doesn't strike me as an expression of "good fortune." Dr. Madden also apparently didn't catch the KDLT story (now deleted—evidently KDLT can't afford the server space to archive a few kilobytes of text each week) about TransCanada tearing up roads and dragging its feet on repairs in Beadle County. (For more on road concerns, see the Beadle County Commission minutes from July 30.)

But let's back up. Where did that "lack of good fortune" comment come from? Dr. Madden appears to have discovered how much money it took to keep landowners quiet and perhaps make other neighbors wish they could have cashed in on black gold and perpetual environmental disruption. While landowners were bound to secrecy by confidentiality agreements with TransCanada, Dr. Madden appears to have wheedled from at least a few of his interviewees some numbers.

Although exact numbers were not easily acquired from those interviewed, it appears that in the area where these interviews were conducted a typical access easement involved a payment of approximately $40,000 per mile of land. In addition ample mitigation has been arranged for loss ofcrop or grassland production for the interruption in production caused by construction activity and post-construction restoration. No one interviewed indicated that the amounts involved were unfair. In talking to other farm operators who lived near the project, but had no land on the corridor, it was sensed that there was feeling of lack of good fortune on their part [Madden report to PUC, p. 13].

$40,000 per mile. Given a 150-foot construction easement, that's $2,200 per acre. Compare that to $1,863–$2,634 ag land values, depending on the neighborhood.

But here's the real kicker: $40K per mile, across about 220 miles through eastern South Dakota. Total TransCanada would be shelling out to our landowners by Dr. Madden's estimate: $8.8 million... the current price of the amount of oil that will shoot through the Keystone pipeline every four and a half hours.

Looks to me like TransCanada bought its way across our state with payments hardly bigger than rounding error on their final balance sheet.

Why am I not feeling good fortune?

Wasson Goes Web, Questions Iraq Occupation, Flies Flag for ACESA

Hey, that Wasson character must be serious about running for Congress: he's got a new website, just the big kids! Among other things, candidate Wasson notes that American troops in Iraq will be protecting Chinese oil interests. I can't wait to hear the policy implications of that point on the stump!

Wasson is also blogging with my favorite free blogging tool, Blogger. On his blog, Wasson has the temerity to disagree with the rest of the GOP field and suggest South Dakota might be able to use climate-change legislation to its advantage. (Interesting: Wasson expressed the opposite position back in July. He's obviously cleared his head by reading the Madville Times.) I'm still voting Dem, but this guy could be the straw that stirs the Republican drink in the primary debates.

I also hear Wasson is planning some East River trips—expect some stern critiques of South Dakota's own East Coast intelligentsia. ;-)

Primary is just seven months away: bookmark those campaign websites now!

SD House (Dem):

• Stephanie Herseth Sandlin

SD House (GOP):

• Thad Wasson
• Chris Nelson
• R. Blake Curd

SD Governor (Dem):

• Scott Heidepreim

SD Governor (GOP):

• Scott Munsterman
• Ken Knuppe
• David Knudson
• Dennis Daugaard

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Update 10:32 CST: I notice Wasson is busy updating already. His blog sidebar includes a South Dakota blogroll that includes conservative and liberal blogs. Making Candidate Wasson's blogroll: Madville Times and Dakota War College, both of which have dished out criticism of Wasson's campaign. Now how many candidates do you know who have the moxie to allow opposing content on their website?

Sell Stuff! Skip School!

WARNING: The Blogger General Has Determined That Capitalism, Not President Obama, Is Dangerous to Your Children's Moral Health

Some professed patriots would bar the President of the United States from speaking directly to our children and encouraging them to stay in school. But many of those same critics remain silent when big corporations coerce captive kids into working as marketers with promises to let them skip school.

Las Vegas sixth-grade teacher Betty Buehler highlights the hypocrisy she sees in her own school:

Private employee to captive students: "Who's ready for more prizes?!"

President of the United States to students, many of whom are not allowed to listen:

"I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you...."

Private employee: "How many of you would like to get out of school for a show?" (The motivator describes a BMX show that will come to the school for certain sales numbers.) "The top 25 sellers of the school will sit in a special VIP section and get autographs."

President: "But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities."

Private employee: "Who wants to get out of school ... and ride in a limo?! YAY!" The kids scream madly. (Top-selling kids get a lunchtime limo ride to a pizza place.)

President: "[S]how up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents, and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed." [Betty Buehler, "Schools Shun Obama Yet Let Sales Firms Prey on Students," Christian Science Monitor, 2009.10.30]

The "values" of unrestrained capitalism are much more destructive to the moral health of our youth than anything our President wants them to learn.

Little Wound HS Wins Team Championship at DSU Interp

Several days ago, Dr. Newquist's post on Aaron Huey's Pine Ridge photo essay in the New York Times sparked a fair amount of discussion (review also here, here, and here) in the South Dakota blogosphere about the state of our Indian reservations.

More than tangential to that discussion, this good news: the Little Wound High School oral interp team won the Class A team championship at last weekend's Karl E. Mundt Dakota Invitational here at Dakota State University.


Mundt Dakota Invitational Class A Team Champs, 2009: Little Wound High School Mustangs. Pictured, left to right:

• Back: Coach Dan Snethen, Joe Bear Heels, Kyle Clifford, Wiyaka His Horse Is Thunder, Tressa Featherman, Elizabeth Charging Crow, Tyler One Horn, Chuck Good Voice Elk; DSU Foundation Development Officer for Endowments and Scholarships Beth Knuths.
• Middle: Melissa Hernandez, Harley Ferguson, Shyla White Lance, Tara Dull Knife, Fern Chase Alone, asst coach Crystal Apple, Tara One Horn, Kayla Hernandez
• Front: Liandra Young Bear, Halana Richards, Helene Stilson, Elaina Pourier

[Photo credit: Toby Uecker]

The Little Wound team distinguishes itself just by making it to the contest: their six-hour drive is usually the longest trip made by any of our contestants. For ten years, coach Dan Snethen has been rounding up busloads of speakers and student assistants to make the long trip to DSU. When he first brought kids to the contest, Snethen's interpers struggled just to place higher than fifth in preliminary rounds. In recent years, the team has gotten stronger, placing individuals and readers theater teams in finals against traditional interp powers like Sioux Falls Lincoln and Sioux Valley.

And this year, for the first time, they won the Class A team championship. Nice work, kids. And kudos to coach Dan Snethen for the time and effort he devotes to giving these kids some great opportunities.

Senate Bill Says Bloggers Are Journalists

Mr. Gebhart points to good news for bloggers: in a reversal of an earlier amendment, Senators Schumer and Specter have announced that new federal shield legislation for journalists will include a broad definition of journalism. Short form: if you are engaged in the following activity, the feds have to make a pretty strong case to force you to reveal confidential sources.

(5) JOURNALISM- The term ‘journalism’ means the regular gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public [S. 448, Free Flow of Information Act, Section 8, Clause 5, as published on OpenCongress.org, 2009.11.01].

Gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, publishing... yeah, we bloggers do all that.

Over four years of blogging, my own understanding of what blogging is and isn't has changed significantly. I once thought, as Mr. Epp did, that we needed to keep some daylight between blogger and journalist. But interacting with other citizen journalists, thinking about Paul Harvey, and banging out articles at a rate of over a thousand a year (this is #2982 on the Madville Times) has made me comfortable with accepting the label journalist. The United States Senate appears to be moving in that same direction.

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p.s.: Mr. Gebhart does the best epigraphs. Here's the quote with which he punctuates his post on S.448:

And it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing — writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology.

—Simon Dumenco, “A Blogger is Just a Writer with
a Cooler Name” [discussed at WordMunger]

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Update 2009.11.03 09:21 CST: Mr. Gebhart forwards to me an article from the Citizens Media Law Project, which gets the new language defining who's covered under the amended Senate bill. They "applaud this renewed focus on the function carried out by the individual in question, rather than occupational status." CMLP links to Zachary M. Seward at the Nieman Journalism Lab, who points out that the House version still shields only reporters who produce journalism "for a substantial portion of the person’s livelihood or for substantial financial gain."