Tax Booze, Save Lives

I've reported previously that a a simple penny-per-ounce hooch tax could raise $29 million per year to help ease South Dakota's budget woes. A new metastudy from University of Florida epidemiologist Alexander Wagenaar finds that simply increasing the tax on alcohol to keep up with inflation could save thousands of lives and save millions in health care costs:

Wagenaar and his colleagues identified 50 papers published over the last 40 years that looked at how changes in alcohol prices affect health outcomes. These studies were mainly conducted in the United States, Canada and Scandinavia.

Their analysis showed that, on average, a doubling of the alcohol tax was associated with a 35 percent decrease in alcohol-related mortality (such as death from liver disease), an 11 percent decrease in deaths from traffic accidents, a 6 percent decrease in sexually transmitted diseases, a 2 percent decrease in violence and a 1.4 percent reduction in crime [Rachel Rettner, "A Hike in the Price of Booze Could Make Us All Healthier," LiveScience.com, 2010.09.24].

Wagenaar says, "The strength of these findings suggests that tax increases may be the most effective way we have to prevent excessive drinking—and also have drinkers pay more of their fair share for the damages caused and costs incurred."

Plug the South Dakota budget hole; make South Dakota's drinkers pay a fairer share of the cost of their irresponsibility; reduce death, disease, and destruction—sounds like a good plan from every direction.
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Update 2010.09.28: Then again, my teetoalling may be shortening my life expectancy. Cheers!

Proper Role of Government: Protecting Life and Liberty

Ned Hodgman understands that we form governments to provide some basic protections that we can't provide individually and that allow us to enjoy life and liberty and pursue happiness. Hodgman says that when government doesn't do its job, people can die. He points to some vivid recent examples:

1. The Army Corps of Engineers doesn't maintain the levees in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina hits. People die.
   
2. The Mineral Management Service doesn't enforce its rules on offshore oil platforms. The Deepwater Horizon rig explodes. Workers die.
3. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration drops the ball on enforcement of pipeline safety rules. The U.S. sees hundreds of pipeline accidents over the last five years, including this month's San Bruno explosion. People die.
   

(Don't forget: the PHMSA is run by a former oil company lawyer, Cynthia Quarterman. Perhaps to Quarterman's credit, while the PHMSA has issued 16 special permits since January 2009, only one such permit has been issued since Quarterman, an Obama appointee, took charge in November 2009.)

Hodgman offers a somewhat more reasoned response to government shortcomings than you'll hear from the teabaggers:

At the heart of Americans’ dissatisfaction with Democrats, Republicans, and politicians in general is not the legislative process or politicians’ foibles, as irritating as those things can be day in, day out. At the heart of people’s anger is real concern and fear about their safety and the safety of people they care about. In the richest country in the world, life remains unpredictable in large part because of government agencies that don’t push harder to inspect, monitor, and get in the face of life’s daily problems. Pushing them harder to do their jobs is our job [Ned Hodgman, "The Problem with Politics Is Toothless Government," Understanding Government, 2010.09.25].

Now don't anyone go quoting Ben Franklin on security and liberty here. We're not talking about giving up civil liberties to catch terrorists. We're talking about enforcing rules to make sure public works, oil rigs, and pipelines are built correctly so they don't collapse or explode. That's why we pay taxes: to create a government with the resources and the teeth necessary to ensure security and liberty.

TransCanada Brings Economic Benefits...

...for Consultants Who Say TransCanada Brings Economic Benefits

Yesterday I offered some counterpoint to the pro-pipeline corpspeak parroted by HeartlandCPD GM Mike McDowell. Mr. McDowell does offer a bagful of impressive numbers, including $470 million dollars in business activity and $685.6 million in property tax, all from the Keystone XL pipeline. McDowell says these figures (at least the former; I'm assuming the latter) come from an "independent study."

Hmm... I go looking around for $685.6 million... there it is! The figures cited appear to originate from this June 2010 economic impact analysis by the Perryman Group of Waco, Texas... an analysis paid for by TransCanada.

Now Mr. Perryman's math may still be correct, regardless of who paid him to do that math. But consider: Scott Heidepriem hires Steve Jarding for political consulting and analysis. Steve Jarding is smart, but if I wrote a blog post on Heidepriem and cited Jarding as an independent analyst, I'd be laughed off the porch.

By the way, Perryman's figures on business activity, tax revenues, and other goodies to come from Keystone XL are calculated over the lifetime of the pipeline, which is about 100 years. Citing the entire lifetime dollar figure makes the argument sound better—sort of the flip-side of how opponents of the new health care reform law like to shout about the trillion-dollar price tag, although that's over ten years, meaning we will spend much less to implement that law each year than we do to kill people and break things with our military budget. So to keep the direct, indirect, and dreamingly tangential economic impact of Keystone XL in a practical, annual perspective, be sure to divide TransCanada's rosy numbers by 100.

District 8 Heats Up: Stricherz Scolds Bjorklund

The District 8 House race is heating up. All four candidates have signs up, including Gerry Lange's recycled, hand-painted plywood.

And now Republican candidate Patricia Stricherz is asking some hard questions about—surprise!—Independent/9-12 candidate Jason Bjorklund. I reprint the following from candidate Stricherz mostly verbatim, with minor edits and added hyperlinkage:

It has come to my attention that my opponent Mr. Bjorklund leans towards libertarian beliefs. Actually, the longer I get to know him the more it is clear he doesn't really know what political party he stands with. During conversations I've had with him he stated that he thought he was a registered Republican but when he went to vote found he was actually a Democrat (his words not mine). Now he is running on the Independent ticket but associates himself with the Republicans, attending the Lincoln Day Dinners, setting up signs alongside Republican candidate, etc. But Ballotpedia has him listed as Libertarian.

The one thing I have learned that is accurate is that he is a grand manipulator. He's good with words, but his actions are a little shady. We do not need a person such as this to represent us in District 8!

Another thing he has personally said to me is that he wasn't interested in running for office but his little group convinced him to. He also wasn't interested in heading up the 9-12 group, but again was talked into it. If it is that easy to talk him into things what will he be talked into if elected?

Until these past couple of weeks Jason was calling me regularly to ask campaign questions, how do you do this or that, etc. Now he won't even look at me when I see him. Why? Because he feels so guilty for the trash talk he has been doing about me, telling voters I am progressive or liberal, etc. So this is a perfect example as to how he uses people to gain what he needs to get ahead. We do not need people users to represent us!

It was my understanding that it is this very type of behavior from political leaders is what the 9-12 project fights against? How can you fight against something and yet display the same behavior? Does he actually live by the 12 values of the 9-12 project, or this just a facade as well?

1. honesty
2. reverence
3. hope
4. thrift
5. humility
6. charity
7. sincerity
8. moderation
9. hard work
10. courage
11. personal responsibility
12. gratitude

How about the 9 principles?

1. America is good.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my life.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
4. The family is scared. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
6. I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
7. I work hard for what I have and will share it with who I want to. Government can not force me to be charitable.
8. It is not un-American to disagree with authority or to share mt personal opinion.
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

Get to know your candidates! what they say to the voters is one thing, what goes on behind the scenes is complelty different. Know their character, visit their personal facebook pages, look at their pictures, this clearly defines their mindset [Patricia Stricherz, e-mail to Madville Times, 2010.09.26].

I had expected both the Republican and Independent in the race to concentrate their fire on the two Democratic incumbents. Perhaps Stricherz, who in the only polling conducted on this race so far is running fourth, is working her way up the ladder, tackling third-place Bjorklund for his Glenn-Beck base first before taking on Fargen and Lange.

I was going to suggest we might see here a manifestation of the Republican establishment rejecting a Tea Party upstart, à la wicca-bunker and science-denier O'Donnell vs. Castle in Delaware. But the local GOP establishment doesn't have anyone in the District 8 House race. Stricherz is on their ticket again, but they certainly didn't rush to fund her last time around, and I don't see signs of that changing this year.

Perhaps the situation is just the opposite: Stricherz is suggesting that Bjorklund is trying to win the favor of local Republicans, while Stricherz remains the more independent, anti-establishment voice. Perhaps by November, we'll see Bjorklund is the Republican favorite, while Stricherz is the outside Tea-flavored insurgent.

Or maybe the local and state GOP will simply say, "It's District 8 House: who gives a rip? We can handle Mitch and Gerry."

Eager readers, you don't get better opportunities for juicy local punditry. What do you think is going on in the District 8 House race? Fire away!
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p.s.: Patricia, being called a progressive or liberal isn't trash talk, Patricia—it's a compliment! :-) I do understand where you're coming from... but I keep wondering if you might feel more at home with us Democrats....
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Update 2010.09.27 05:52 CDT: Candidate Bjorklund rousts me out of bed with a phone call to ask that I remove candidate Stricherz's above comments from public view.

Big Spenders: Herseth Sandlin 71% in SD, Noem 55% in Texas

Where candidates get their money is important. But this morning, let's look at where candidates spend their money.

Hit the Federal Election Commission website, and you can download loads of info on our Congressional candidates' campaign finances. Right now the data is current through Quarter 2 of this year. Let's compare where South Dakota's main Congressional candidates, incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Republican challenger State Representative Kristi Noem, have spent their campaign cash:

Herseth Sandlin				Noem
State	Total	%		State	Total	%
AZ	$376	0.1%		CO	$5,000	1.8%
CA	$2,400	0.4%		DC	$700	0.3%
DC	$114,167	20.5%		IA	$2,305	0.8%
GA	$2,329	0.4%		IN	$1,000	0.4%
IL	$19,199	3.4%		MN	$17,383	6.3%
MD	$5,176	0.9%		SD	$91,142	32.9%
MN	$6,708	1.2%		TX	$152,300	55.0%
NV	$1,342	0.2%		VA	$6,994	2.5%
NY	$1,746	0.3%		Grand Total	$276,824
OH	$254	0.0%
SD	$395,921	70.9%
TX	$4,755	0.9%
VA	$3,724	0.7%
Grand Total	$558,097

Funny: Noem's supporters like spinning the lie that Herseth Sandlin actually lives in her husband's home state of Texas, yet Noem is the one spending a majority of her money on Texas ad-makers (and getting lackluster ads from folks who I hear have trouble with deadlines). Meanwhile, Herseth Sandlin has spent almost 71% of her campaign dollars right here where she lives, in South Dakota.

Now Noem does get a larger proportion of her individual contributions from in-state than does Herseth Sandlin (86% versus 64%... and that doesn't include all the political committee contributions, where the bulk of Herseth Sandlin's money comes from, and which spigot Noem only just opened post-primary). But from a pure economic development perspective, Noem is exporting our cash, while Herseth Sandlin is bringing cash into South Dakota's economy. Way to go, Steph!

Stay tuned for the Q3 reports.

TransCanada Pipeline a Big Bad Deal for South Dakota

...and for America, Canada, Ducks, First Nations....

Mike McDowell, general manager of Heartland Consumer Power District and my state senator's boss, parrots the corporate line that the TransCanada Keystone pipelines are "good for South Dakota and good for America." McDowell waves dollars and the Hugo Chavez boogeyman in our faces while failing to acknowledge that...

1. South Dakotans don't get many jobs from TransCanada;
2. Any jobs we get will be offset by jobs Canadians lose: refining jobs move south of the border, and the Canadian oil boom inflates the loonie, hurts Canadian exports, and kills Canadian manufacturing jobs (400,000 lost over the last decade);
   
3. China is buying most of TransCanada's tar sands oil;
   
4. TransCanada acts just as dictatorially and socialistically as Chavez in running roughshod over American landowners with eminent domain;
5. Decent American businesses like Walgreens are boycotting the tar sands oil TransCanada wants to sell us;
6. TransCanada still wants to build Keystone XL with thinner pipe with steel from Welspun, a company that supplied lots of defective steel to other pipelines;
   
7. Refiners say the tar sands pipeline system is unnecessary;
8. We could fully replace the capacity of both Keystone pipelines by fully recycling our motor oil (something I learned from McDowell himself);
   
9. Tar sands oil production and transportation threatens our prairie aquifers through industrial consumption and pollution (see also the Enbridge spill in Michigan);
10. Tar sands oil kills ducks (many more than industry data suggest).. and maybe First Nations people.

Ah, yes, our First Nations neighbors, the nice people who have to live with and get cancer from the immediate effects of tar sands oil production. I reported last April that TransCanada is party to genocide against some native peoples in Canada. Last week, some representatives of Canada's and America's First Nations traveled to Washington to press the case that the Keystone XL pipeline will only do more damage to the tribes' way of of life. They complained that while the Alberta government wines and dines American senators who live nowhere near the pipeline routes, First Nations concerns are ignored.

As McDowell says, the TransCanada pipeline is a big deal... a big bad deal for South Dakotans, for Americans, for Canadians, and for the First Nations people who have to live with the environmental destruction wrought by the tar sands oil a few corporate mouthpieces pretend is so wonderful.
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Bonus economic query: McDowell contends that the electricity demands of the Keystone pipelines and pumping stations will strengthen our rural electric cooperatives. But co-ops have to build more infrastructure and generation capacity to handle TransCanada's power demands. Ratepayers and taxpayers are subsidizing some of that construction. Once all that new capacity is installed, TransCanada's electric bills should pay back the investment but if the volatile oil market dips, local ratepayers may end up paying for it. And if TransCanada uses all that power, doesn't that mean the rural electric co-ops will be pushed to peak demand more often, have to use more expensive peak generation, and thus send us all higher electric bills?
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But don't worry. As Great Plains Tar Sands Pipelines notes, TransCanada will respond quickly to any spill... if it's not stormy out. And we have keen government oversight from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration... which is run by a former oil company lawyer.

Vote Now in Lake County Sheriff Poll!

My readers have been itching for a poll on the Lake County Sheriff's race. I'm happy to oblige. Vote here in the right sidebar for the man you think would best serve the people of Lake County as chief law enforcement officer:

• Madison city patrolman Jason R. Lurz
• Madison city patrolman Dan Wyatt
• Incumbent two-term sheriff Roger C. Hartman.
  

This race could be more heated than one might expect from a local sheriff's race. Patrolman Wyatt has already demonstrated his willingness to criticize the incumbent sheriff in pretty direct terms. Patrolman Lurz is less direct, but his clear expectations of the sheriff's office suggest he sees something lacking in the current regime. And a potential race-shaker: the rift exposed between the police and fire departments by the DUI arrest of on-duty fireman Scott Johnson. If there is a candidate's forum for the sheriff's race, expect awkward but necessary question #1 to be, "Suppose you see a local volunteer fireman drinking to excess. At what point do you intervene?" (Candidates, feel free to respond now!)

The sheriff's poll will stay open until Tuesday, September 28, at 11:59 p.m. So tell your friends, and vote now!

Katus for Treasurer: Keep State Money Local!

Tom Katus just gave me a reason to vote for him for state treasurer. The Democratic candidate says he wants to put more of the state's money in local banks and credit unions. Instead of propping up Wells Fargo and other national players with our taxpayer dollars, Katus wants to let local lenders like the Miner County Bank and East River Fderal Credit Union mind a bigger share of our money.

Wow! Katus must be on the same wavelength as Ariana Huffington and I about community banks. I just read about Katus's "bank local!" position in last night's MDL, but Katus has been offering this idea since early in his campaign (shows how much attention we pay to the treasurer's race). It makes sense. Just as we'd expect state government to hire South Dakota contractors whenever feasible to maximize the circulation of dollars in the local economy, we should expect the state to use its savings (assuming it has savings, when there's a huge deficit to plug and no federal stimulus coming to protect the Legislature from hard decisions next time around... but that's another issue) to support lending and investment in as many of our communities as possible.

Getting folks' attention when you're running for any statewide office below governor can be hard. Tom Katus's desire to shift more of the state treasury from Wall Street to Main Street deserves our attention.

Grassland Wilderness Bill Would Prevent Problems Seen in Black Hills

South Dakota's Republican candidate for U.S. House Kristi Noem says she opposes the Tony Dean Cheyenne River Valley Conservation Act because the federal government has mismanaged its forest land in the Black Hills. At least that's one of the lines her handlers fed her about the six-page bill she couldn't be bothered to read herself.

Larry Kurtz offers some useful points that illustrate why Noem's opposition to the grassland wilderness around the Badlands is really just uninformed teabaggery. On Interested Party, Kurtz notes that "The Forest Service manages about 1.25 million acres in the Hills, most of the other 5.5 million acres of the Black Hills hydrologic region are privately held lands whose owners largely blame forest failures on Federal or State mismanagement."

The majority of hydrologic region is privately held, but Noem and other Grover Norquist apers blame the government for... well, something. The private sector is sacred, so we must blame something else, right?

Mr. Kurtz then cites this passage from a Rapid City Journal commentary from 2002:

From a socio-economic perspective, the existence of so much private land has caused forest managers to fear fire, prompting even greater fire suppression and more commercial logging and thinning for fuels reduction and breaks. While this may make landowners feel more secure, these activities have not and will not maintain the natural processes that regulate the health and the vitality of this ponderosa pine forest. Unquestionably, private development has also contributed to the cultural loss and impoverishment of the Lakota Nation who claim the Black Hills under treaties broken by the U.S. Government [Jake Kreilick, "On the Verge of Ecological Collapse," Rapid City Journal, 2002.02.14].

So if the federal government is having trouble properly managing the Black Hills National Forest, it's because free-market fundamentalists like Noem have pushed roads and private development into all but two percent of the forest. All that expensive private property stands in the way of the good fire the Hills could use to restore the natural ecosystem. Keeping that development in check in places would have helped the federal government manage the land.

And keeping development in check is exactly what Senator Tim Johnson's S. 3310 would do: maintain the status quo, protect current grazing rights, but prevent further privatization and development from breaking up a national treasure, a unique grasslands wilderness.

Do you get that now, Kristi? (And have you gotten it yet, Stephanie? Time to get off the fence and endorse Tim's bill!)

Heidepriem Buys Half-Hour Blocks for TV Documentary

Democratic candidate for South Dakota governor Scott Heidepriem is going big on TV time. On Thursday, October 7, is buying 30 minutes on Sioux Falls television stations KELO, KSFY, and KDLT and Rapid City stations KOTA, KNBN, and KEVN to tell South Dakotans why Heidepriem should be governor. The show will run at 6:30 p.m. Central on the Sioux Falls stations, then 6:00 p.m. Mountain on the Rapid City channels.

Now when I first heard about the broadcast, I thought maybe we were in for a good old-fashioned Ross Perot-style presentation, 30 minutes of the candidate talking directly to us and flipcharting his way through what's wrong with the status quo and how he'll fix it.

We might get a little of that, but it sounds like we're in for more of an exercise in creative marketing. Here's the campaign's description:

On October 7, 2010, our Campaign will make modern South Dakota campaign history when we air a powerful half-hour documentary on Scott Heidepriem and this fall's crucial South Dakota gubernatorial campaign. The documentary will air statewide on local networks -- KELO (KDLO and KPLO), KSFY and KDLT television in Eastern South Dakota and KOTA, KNBN and KEVN television in Western South Dakota.

The documentary centers on a very personal conversation Scott Heidepriem had last March with a small group of friends and family in his living room. In this wonderfully candid, funny and sometimes painful stroll documenting his life, Scott introduces himself to this small group of friends like he has never done before. He discusses his South Dakota roots and values, his father's war experiences in World War II, his life growing up in small town South Dakota, his experiences writing his book, on the history of Hand County, his family and the painful death of his brother, and finally, he talks about why he feels so strongly about the need to change the direction of politics and policy in South Dakota.

The group filmed the conversation not knowing at the time exactly what, if anything, would ever become of it. When the video surfaced several months later and they saw what they had, they wanted to share it with all of South Dakota. So do we.

The rhetorical/artistic concept sounds like good storytelling. I like the literary feel of working from one conversation and tying together the strands of a lifetime that lead a man to where he is. Given GOP opponent Dennis Daugaard's heavy reliance on his nice-guy hard-scrabble-farm story, Heidepriem is certainly entitled to weave personal narrative into his campaign effort. And while I prefer the policy debates, the reality of campaigning requires reaching a lot of people with the warm fuzzies.

Alas, unless the leaves fall and let the digital signal through the shelterbelt to my house, I probably won't get to watch. Will anyone else? If you do, let me know if Heidepriem breaks out at least one flipchart.

Veblen Dairy's Korean Investors Keep Green Cards...

...but probably lose green.

I noted that those attending the bankruptcy auction of the Veblen East Dairy last week included Terry N. Prendergast, representing the Hanul Professional Law Corporation. Hanul is the Korean law outfit that handles EB-5 visa applications for foreign investors participating in South Dakota Regional Center programs. That's the program through which rich foreigners can buy their green cards simply by dumping a half-million dollars or more into American job creation projects. Veblen East Dairy is one of several projects in South Dakota that has benefited from this investment program.

So I got to wondering: could any of those Korean investors be losing their green cards due to the failure of Richard Millner's Veblen operation?

I contacted Joop Bollen, president of the SDRC, to find out what's up with our Korean investors. Mr. Bollen says the Korean may have a fight on their hands to recoup their investment, but their green cards are safe.

All that matters to the EB-5 program is that the investors' money creates jobs within the first two years. Each investor's money needs to generate 10 jobs, direct or indirect. The EB-5 program calculates that one job on a dairy operation translates into 2.66 jobs in the local economy (hire one guy to shovel poop, and he goes to town to buy more beer and lumber, which generates enough economic activity for the bar and the lumberyard to hire 1.66 new people). Thus, if one Korean's $500,000 can be shown to create four actual dairy jobs, the EB-5 number crunchers apply that multiplier, declare 10.64 jobs created, and Uncle Sam erases the word "conditional" from the Korean's green card. Welcome to America!

The Veblen East Dairy satisfied the job creation criterion for all of its Korean investors before it declared bankruptcy. Most of the Korean investors have already received their permanent status. A few investors have applied for but not yet received approval of permanent status from the feds, but the bankruptcy proceedings and change of ownership have no impact on those remaining applications. It doesn't matter who owns the operation, as long as the jobs have been created. And as I understand Mr. Bollen's explanation, it wouldn't even matter if the new owners couldn't keep the dairy going and the whole operation collapsed. Once the EB-5 investors' money creates the necessary jobs (real and statistically assumed), their green cards are secure.

Not so secure are their greenbacks, which are what Mr. Prendergast was in the neighborhood last week to check on. Mr. Bollen's office isn't involved at all with the bankruptcy proceedings, but he says Hanul and the Korean investors are discussing how they might recoup their investment with the new owners' group organized by Richard Millner (that's Vista "Family" Dairies). The investors might well "have to take a haircut," says Bollen. I am encouraged, at least, to see that the Korean investors are still paying attention and trying to hold Millner and partners accountable for their cash.
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Bonus Business: Vista "Family" Dairies has 30 days to get together the $23.1 million it bid for Veblen East. If Millner's minions can't convince their remaining friends to chip in for this latest Millner shell game, VFD loses the bid, and backup bidder Whetstone Valley Dairy gets Veblen East. According to the articles of organization filed last week with the Secretary of State, Whetstone Valley Dairy, LLC, is managed by Steve Myers and Michael Crinion of Brookings.

GOP Costs South Dakota 5000-10,000 Clean Energy Jobs

The stimulus package is creating jobs, even against fundamental shifts in the nature of our economy. To tackle those fundamental shifts, we need to revamp our economy. That revamping includes revolutionizing the energy economy. Commiting America to a policy of clean, renewable energy would create loads of jobs, including 5000 to 10,000 right here in South Dakota.

But the oil industry's best friend, the Republican Party, has kicked, screamed, and mythologized to keep us from passing any sensible energy legislation this year. Thanks to Republican obstructionism (not to mention some Blue Dog collaboration), America is giving up 1.9 million new-energy jobs to foreign companies. Plus, the defenders of the energy status quo are also keeping an extra $208 million a day from being invested in the U.S. economy, as folks who want to build new-energy businesses say, "Heck, the U.S. won't get serious, but China and Europe will. Let's invest elsewhere!"

In kitchen-table terms, the denialism of Republicans like Senator John Thune and Congress-wannabe Kristi Noem means your household will miss out on as much as $1175 a year in income.

You can read the full report from the nice folks at the Small Business Majority, Main Street Alliance, American Businesses for Clean Energy, and We Can Lead. These are all business groups—business groups—telling the Republicans to get with the program on energy security.

Faint glimmer of hope: Senator Al Franken and some other good liberal Senators are signing on to a bipartisan bill from Senators Bingaman and Brownback to establish a national 15% Renewable Energy Standard. That proposal by itself wouldn't bring all of the above jobs and income back to South Dakota and the rest of the country, but it's an important step in the direction of the energy future that our competitors in the world economy are already embracing.

The Republicans seem determined to apply their "Invisible Hand" wishful thinking to everything. Don't just do something; stand there! The economy will sort itself out. Oil will magically bubble from new holes in the ground. We can keep doing things the way we always have, because we're Americans, and Americans are always right.

Look around, America. The world is changing. The economy is changing. We must change with it... and that means changing our energy policy. Listen to Senator Franken, and fix it now!
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Update 17:22 CDT: Of course, 15% RES is small potatoes for real forward thinkers. California is working on requiring investor-owned utilities to go 33% renewable.