In Crisis, Everyone's a Socialist, Even Jon Hunter

Given his devoted attention to socialism and Madison, I'm surprised Mr. Sibson didn't catch this latest sign of the Red Menace in our fair city: socialist propaganda coming straight from the Madison Daily Leader, our own Republican "glory and praise pamphlet." Yes, our man Jon Hunter this week endorsed the possibility of a New New Deal from the Obama Administration.

Hunter notes with approval the great works performed by the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps between 1935 and 1943 and says today's rising unemployment and crumbling transportation infrastructure justify another big dip in the big government pool.

I agree wholeheartedly—I just find it funny to hear this from Lake County's conservative metropolitan press rather than our happy cabal of Lake Herman radicals.

Hunter does place five conditions on his support for socialist rev a new jobs program:

1. He wants the President, not Congress, to control it, since Congress would only pile on pork. (How's that for a vote of confidence for President-Elect Obama?)
2. He wants fat paychecks for the workers hired by the new WPA/CCC to take the place of wasteful "stimulus" checks that reward consumerism rather than hard work (sensible!)
   
3. He wants lasting infrastructure investments, not just make-work (foresightful!).
   
4. He wants the jobs program ended when the economy bounces back (fine with me!).
5. Hunter wants a moratorium on teasing remarks from Lake County's alternative press about his turning socialist.

(O.K., I made up #5.)

Kidding aside, our man Hunter is right on the money. Folks are losing jobs, and a brief drop in prices won't be enough to help those laid off keep up with their mortgages and health premia. Meanwhile, roads and bridges need fixing (well, maybe not the one to Red Owl). It's time to invest in people and in lasting projects that will allow the free market to get back on its feet.

As I've said, in a crisis, we are all socialists... even Jon Hunter.

SD Ag Dept Offers Grants for New Farmers Markets

South Dakota's Department of Agriculture isn't totally focused on helping the big players in the ag-industrial complex. An eager reader points to SDDA's announcement of some federal grant money it is administering to support the creation of new farmers' markets in South Dakota. The grants are dollar-for-dollar matching funds to help cover start-up costs, market research, buying lumber for your produce stands, whatever. Current farmers' markets can also apply for matching funds to support their operations.

It's not big money: grants are capped at $1000. This while Canistota industrial farmer Brian Randall pulls in over $200,000 a year in federal subsidies.

But hey, a thousand bucks is better than nothing! Farmers' marketeers, get those apps in by March 15. Be a yokel, buy local!

(See SDDA website for more info [PDF alert!]... or just call 'em: 605-626-3272.)

Calling Rounds/Thune's Bluff: Feds Pass Sweeping Credit Card Regs

You know those onerous credit card regulations that Governor Rounds and Senator Thune said would kill thousands of jobs in South Dakota? The feds approved them (the regs, not Rounds and Thune) today.

Expect pink slips at Premier Bankcard any day now... right, Governor Rounds?

Economics Slow Big Oil Projects -- Whither Hyperion?

A Monday NYTimes article notes that the precipitous drop in oil prices has put the brakes on numerous Big Oil projects. Domestic demand may be part of the picture, too: in a trend that began before this year's $4-per-gallon price spike and which appears to be continuing even as gasoline prices drop, Americans (even rural Americans!) are putting fewer miles on their cars. Throw in the fact that credit's tight, and you get lots of Big Oil developers saying, "Wait a minute":

• StatoilHydro, Shell, Nexen, and Petro-Canada have all backed off expansions in Alberta's tar sands, where some producers need oil at $90 a barrel to make money.
• Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have nixed new refinery projects.
• Oil companies aren't punching as many holes in North Dakota's Bakken Shale.
• Callon Petroleum has suspended a deepwater drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Raymond James says domestic drilling production could drop 41% next year [Jad Mouawad, "Big Oil Projects Put in Jeopardy by Fall in Prices," New York Times, 2008.12.15.]

So much for "Drill, baby, drill!"

What does Big Oil's curbing of enthusiasm for expansion mean for the two big petro-projects in South Dakota, the TransCanada Keystone pipelines and the Hyperion refinery in Union County?

TransCanada appears to be toodling along fine. A few rainy days (literally and economically) aren't delaying the overall Keystone schedule. TransCanada issued $1.16 billion in stock options last week and got $150 million more than that in offers to buy. Everybody loves infrastructure, says TransCanada CEO Hal Kvisle. Of course, TransCanada just inked a deal with Alaska to have the state cover $500 million in federal licensing costs for a big natural gas pipeline... this while competing companies are spending $600 million of their own money to advance a similar project.

We can expect TransCanada, an established player with shovels in the ground, to weather the storm. But what about dreamy-eyed Hyperion? They've never built a refinery, and this article in Sunday's Sioux City Journal suggests they never will:

Leading industry analysts such as Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, remain skeptical. Kloza said he doesn't believe a new facility will be built any time in the foreseeable future because no one will finance a new facility right now and the expansion of existing refineries will meet the domestic demand for oil products.

"There's no question that a year from now we will be refining probably more gasoline and more products in the United States than we would probably be comfortable with domestically," Kloza said. "The chances of that refinery (Hyperion) being built right now are somewhere between slim and none" [Meagan Sexton, "New Refineries Face Challenging Environment," Sioux City Journal, 2008.12.14].

This isn't some hippie talking. Sexton also cites a U.S. Energy Information Administration analyst saying that expansions of existing refineries will domestic needs for the next 20 to 25 years, thanks to increased efficiency (that would include inflating your tires) and renewable fuels.

Expanding existing refineries also is more cost-effective:

Cindy Schild, refining issues manager for the American Petroleum Institute, said she believes new refineries face challenges simply because it is more cost effective to modify existing refineries than to build a new one.

"You already have the facility, infrastructure and community support," Schild said. " You have the means to get the product in and out, which makes it more cost effective. On a per-barrel basis, it is more cost effective to expand than to build a new facility [Sexton].

So even if we buy Hyperion's assertion that they can ride out the current credit crunch and line up financing to start belching filth into our clean air and water by 2014, we have three sensible analysts saying we don't need it!

It won't be us tree-huggin', land-lovin' enviro-whackos who will keep Hyperion out of Union County (though I'll keep waving that banner... pass the granola!). It will be a gal in a suit and glasses who comes up from Accounting with her Blackberry and says to Al Huddleston and Preston Phillips, "Guys, the refinery's not a money-maker."

GF&P, County Consider New Public Use Area on Lake Madison

Yes! Yes yes yes!

For bad ideas, call the Department of Transportation. For good ideas, call Game Fish & Parks. At yesterday's Lake County Commission meeting, Conservation Officer Brandon Gust talked with commissioners about creating a public use area on Lake Madison on the site of the old county poor farm.

Hey, where'd we hear that idea before? Good thinking, Officer Gust and commissioners! Dwayne Mork would be pleased. Now think big—Bicentennial Park... or Semiquincentennial Park, here we come!

Regents Pick Ohioan Smith for NSU President

A press release from the Board of Regents says James M. Smith of Bowling Green State University has beaten Madison's own Mark Lee in the competition to become the next president of Northern State University.

To Dr. Smith, welcome to South Dakota! To Dr. Lee, don't sweat it! Where would you rather live: beautiful Lake Herman, or Aberdeen? Besides, why would anyone want to be Ken Blanchard's boss? ;-)

-----
To the good, Dr. Smith and his wife Connie Ruhl-Smith have produced research (cited in this punchy 2007 essay from the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration) showing that corporate-style reforms and for-profit schools endorsed by conservatives do not produce better education. Nice!

"Post-Abortion Syndrome"? No Such Thing

Let's hope the recession keeps our legislators' eyes on the real ball in Pierre. But just in case Roger Hunt or Russ Olson throws Leslee Unruh a bone with some abortion-related legislation...

Remember how the abortion ban advocates argued that they were just fighting to protect women from the emotional harm caused them by abortion? Johns Hopkins University just finished a meta-study of research on "post-abortion syndrome." Turns out "post-abortion syndrome" doesn't exist.

A team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reviewed 21 studies involving more than 150,000 women and found the high-quality studies showed no significant differences in long-term mental health between women who choose to abort a pregnancy and others.

"The best research does not support the existence of a 'post-abortion syndrome' similar to post-traumatic stress disorder," Dr. Robert Blum, who led the study published in the journal Contraception, said in a statement.

"Based on the best available evidence, emotional harm should not be a factor in abortion policy. If the goal is to help women, program and policy decisions should not distort science to advance political agendas," added Vignetta Charles, a researcher and doctoral student at Johns Hopkins who worked on the study [Maggie Fox, "Abortion Not Seen Linked with Depression," Reuters via Yahoo News, 2008.12.04].

The only solid correlation the researchers did find was in the nature of the studies themselves:

"The best quality studies indicate no significant differences in long-term mental health between women in the United States who choose to terminate a pregnancy and those who do not," they wrote.

"...studies with the most flawed methodology consistently found negative mental health consequences of abortion," they added. "Scientists are still conducting research to answer politically motivated questions" [Fox].

Here's to a new administration that will make laws based on solid science, not the figments of Leslee Unruh's imagination. (And one more cheer for an administration that may eliminate Unruh's place at the federal funding trough.)

Regents Meet at DSU Thursday and Friday

My bosses, the Board of Regents, are coming to Madison Thursday and Friday. That means no parking in the Mundt Library lot, even if you have a permit. That also means you can come watch education policy being made (mmm, sausage...). The parts (just parts?) of the meetings open to the public:

• Thursday 10 a.m. to noon
• Thursday 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
• Friday 9:30 a.m. to noon

There's also a campus forum Thursday at 3:30 p.m. for DSU staff and students. The pay date switching scheme and the system-wide laptop initiative are on hold for a year, but there should still be plenty to ask the Regents about.

Also on the Regents' agenda, a reception at Dr. Knowlton's new house on 1022 NE 9th Thursday evening (that was fast!), and a Friday 7:30 breakfast with local legislators at the Trojan Center (give 'em heck, Gerry!).

Clearing History Speeds Firefox Browser Performance?

...or, Read Much?

A quick tech note: I use Firefox's address bar autocomplete feature a lot—start typing a URL, and Firefox presents a list of previously visited sites whose URLs contain that text. I like it better than Bookmarks. But I noticed that feature's response time was slowing down, as was the general speed of the browser. In an effort to speed performance, I cleared out my Firefox browser history yesterday. It appears to have helped, although I might just be suffering the same bias as when I was little and thought new shoes made me run faster.

I last cleared my browsing history in August. Yesterday my history contained over 26,000 unique URLs. That's almost 220 URLs a day, not counting repeat visits (NY Times, KELO, Mundt Library, South Dakota Legislature, YouTube, BarackObama.com,...). If each URL were a page in a book, I've been reading (or at least browsing) a book a day. Uff da!

Minorities Root of Mortgage Collapse? Blame Bush

That crashing sound you heard in the middle of the night was the good Professor Blanchard going off the rails again. He begins with a reasonable bemoaning of our economic peril and the absence of trust. He rightly cites as an example the greed of Bernard Madoff and the negligence of President Bush and his federal watchdogs.

But then Blanchard sails right past that real problem and decides to blame those darn minorities and their enablers in the Democratic Party and the liberal press for originating the subprime lending crisis.

Feel free to review why minority lenders and the Community Reinvestment Act are not to blame. That should be enough to put your attention back on the real problem: deregulation, free-market fundamentalism, and gambling on Wall Street. As Bernard Madoff proves, one bad rich guy can do much more damage to your life savings and the economy as a whole than a couple dozen lazy Mexican families (though the Mexican fellas I see are all busting their humps building our houses and roads for us).

But just in case you can't resist dabbling in the Rush-Limbaugh infused multiculturalismophobia that drives victims to blame all of the country's woes on poor non-white people, try out this argument from a raging anti-immigrationist who pins the blame for minority subprime lending on the political machinations of Geroge W. Bush and Karl Rove:

And the primary political goal of President George W. Bush's political strategist: to bring Hispanics into the Republican Party.

As you'll recall, Rove's best-known tactic to appeal to Latino voters was repeatedly pushing "comprehensive immigration reform" (i.e., an amnesty for illegal immigrants).

Rove, though, had other arrows in his quiver. One was a plan to turn Hispanics into Republicans by providing them with loose credit so they could become homeowners.

... As part of this plan, George W. Bush made several speeches rallying enthusiasm for his October 15, 2002 White House Conference on Increasing Minority Homeownership. For instance, there was his classic Bushian effort on June 18, 2002:

"The goal is, everybody who wants to own a home has got a shot at doing so. The problem is we have what we call a homeownership gap in America. Three-quarters of Anglos own their homes, and yet less than 50 percent of African Americans and Hispanics own homes. … So I've set this goal for the country. We want 5.5 million more homeowners by 2010—million more minority homeowners by 2010. (Applause.) … "

...Bush and Rove didn't have a plan for helping minorities earn more. Instead, they had a plan for helping minorities borrow more.

Bush went on in his June 18th speech:

"Well, probably the single barrier to first-time homeownership is high down payments. "

... CNN reported after Bush's June 17 speech at the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Atlanta:

"Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the federal Home Loan Banks—the government-sponsored corporations that handle home mortgages—will increase their commitment to minority markets by more than $440 billion, Bush said."

[Steve Sailer, "Karl Rove—Architect of the Minority Mortgage Meltdown," VDare.com, 2008.09.28]

I by no means endorse this foul-tasting stuff, this raving anti-immigrant baloney. My point is simply that even scaping that bogus goat doesn't clear the Republicans.

Y'all have fun blaming minorities for your problems. It doesn't seem very Sarah Palin/Main Street/Real America to blame the small-potatoes working man for the economic mess.... but that's exactly what the rich white guys behind the Wall Street curtain want you to do.

Obama Quote du Jour: "Valuing Intellectual Achievement"

Call the new Obama White House "Revenge of the Nerds":

• Obama appoints Nobel laureate physicist Steven Chu as Energy Secretary.
• He surrounds himself with eggheads on his economic team.
• He plans to appoint the first national Chief Technology Officer—i.e., the most powerful computer geek in the world.

And then there's this gem from Obama's announcement of his appointment of Arne Duncan to the Department of Education:

If we can get young people focused on education, if we can change our culture so we are once again valuing intellectual achievement, if we pull together in making our schools better, that is going to be the single biggest determinant in how our economy does long-term. [emphasis mine; President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama, press conference, Chicago, 2008.12.16]

Anti-intellectuals, sit down. Kids, hit the books! It's time to value brain power!

Five Lanes for Madison's 34? Wrong Lane, DOT....

Someone at Four for the Future is thinking, "Can't anyone in Pierre read a memo?"

Local boosters have been pushing to expand Highway 34 east of Madison from two to four lanes all the way to I-29. Now Scott Jansen from the South Dakota Department of Transportation has come through for us, saying that state officials want to make Highway 34 a five-lane road... through Madison.

Don't worry, DeLon (and fellow Blizzard lovers): SDDoT isn't planning to bulldoze Dairy Queen. The engineers just want to repaint 2^nd Street and Washington Avenue: erase the stripes, draw a fat yellow turning lane down the middle, and draw skinny little lanes on either side.

According to MDL's Chuck Clement, Jansen told the Madison City Commission Monday that SDDot came to Madison and Discovered the Unexpected™: 18 left-turn related accidents from 2004 to 2006.

Jansen says center turn lanes in other towns have reduced accidents 10% to 30%. Jansen says he also expects to get phone calls and complaints if the changes are made.

Gee, why wait that long?

• Scott Jansen, Mitchell Region Traffic Engineer: 605-995-8136
• Mitchell Region SDDoT Office: 605-995-8129

Squeeze five lanes into four? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Anyone remember how narrow the lanes felt on 6^th Street in Brookings? Those of us who prefer to ride bicycle do. Cars come close enough as it is to us cyclists; we don't need those side mirrors coming any closer.

Engineer Jansen says narrower lanes won't be a problem, since newer cars are typically smaller. Engineer Jansen must not have noticed all the pickup trucks, trailers, tractors, and whatever giant SUVs may have rolled off Prostrollo's lot lately that can use all the room on Madison's streets that they can get.

Does Engineer Jansen remember what happened last time the state blessed us with a center turn lane? When the state redid Highway 34 (help me out here: was it 1991?), the engineers slapped a big turning lane right down the middle. Lake County drivers didn't know what the heck to do with it. It seemed like a waste of concrete to have that big center strip lying empty 99% of the time. Within a year, the state relaid the stripes (that's why the concrete seams run down the middle of the driving lanes west of town).

That change increased the West 34 from three lanes to four, but we had shoulder to spare out by Nicky's and the F&M. In town, we don't have that wiggle room. A center turn lane in town on 34 is just overkill. It will make driving through town more dangerous, not less, for motorists and cyclists alike. The only was a center turn lane would work is if we physically widened the highway... and I'm thinking my property-owning friends along 34 would have a few words to say about that.*

We don't need to rejigger Highway 34 in town. Neighbors, just start using your left blinker sooner, and keep your eyes peeled. Engineer Jansen, pick up your slide rule and your extra lane and take 'em out east of town, where the nice folks on Lake Madison want 'em.

*Besides, adding a lane would mean Dollar General would have to move its sign, and we can't have that.