Tea Party Not Perot Movement, Just Reinforcing GOP Status Quo

Ah, Ross Perot. Those were the days. I got all giddy when Perot talked about taking a shovel and scooping out the barn (the barn was Washington). I attended a political forum in Hansen Hall at SDSU and parroted all sorts of Perot platitudes insisting Perot would save our country from... well, I'm not sure what. My heart swelled with pride every time I drove under the bridge on I-29 south of Brookings where someone painted some hopeful Perot graffiti ("If you vote, Perot can win," I think it said... and no, I didn't do it).

Watching the Teabaggers get all hot and bothered this past year, listening to some familiar-sounding singing in the shower about taking Washington back, I thought maybe we could trace a cultural or historical connection between 1992's Perot voters and the folks bringing tricorner hats back into fashion today.

The Washington Post's Dan Balz analyzes possible connections between today's Teabaggers and the Ross Perot electorate of 1992. Are their connections? Balz finds the similarities balanced by important differences.

1. Teabaggers are mostly white (87%, by WaPo's survey), but less so than Perotistas (94%). (Of course, Dems are mostly white, too—65%.)
2. Teabaggers include more men than women, like Perot voters.
3. The two groups have identical educational backgrounds: one third with college degrees, two thirds without.
4. Teabaggers are older, with a majority over 45. 63% of Perot people were under 45. (Hmm... maybe they are the same voters, just 18 years older now!)
5. Teabaggers are richer than the folks who followed the Texas billionaire. Perot's voters matched the economic class distribution of the general population, while the Tea Party draws more from the wealthy folks.
6. The Teabaggers are undeniably a conservative movement; Perot voters did not clearly fit a party or ideological profile:
   
   

If anything, [the Tea Party] is simply an adjunct of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, even if many of its supporters say they hold no particular allegiance for the GOP and are critical of party leadership....

Despite the same strong anti-government sentiment and focus on the federal budget deficit as the tea party activists of today, the Perot voters were far less conservative.

In 1992, 53 percent of those who backed Perot for president described themselves as moderate, with 27 percent calling themselves conservative and 20 percent liberal, according to the exit polls. Among tea party activists, the Post poll and the CBS-New York Times poll found that nearly three-quarters called themselves conservative. David Winston, a Republican pollster, pegged the group's makeup as 65 percent conservative, 26 percent moderate [Dan Balz, "Don't Be Too Quick to Mistake Tea Party for Perot Movement," Washington Post, 2010.04.18].

Of course, my friend Joseph Thompson tells me that we get more conservative as we get older (so far, I'm headed the opposite direction, but I'm just one data point). Maybe that's what happened to the Perot voters. That, and they got worse at spelling. (But haven't we all, thanks to spellcheck?)

The big difference, says Balz, is that the Perot movement was a challenge to both parties. That's part of why I got excited about Perot in 1992. He really was the underdog, someone with the potential (however faint and fleeting) to start a third party. Practically speaking, the Perot movement was a genuine alternative, a genuine challenge to both parties. Dems and the GOP both had a reasonable shot at competing for Perot votes.

The folks in tricorner hats aren't an alternative; they're an extension of the two-party system. They like to say they're about throwing all the bums out in Washington, but show me one Republican Congressman they plan to replace with a non-Republican. The Teabaggers are all about beating Obama, beating Dems, and establishing a Grover Norquist hammerlock on the Republican Party. They're just slightly different packaging for what Republicans have been selling since 1994.

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Update 2010.04.22 07:24 CDT: Soldier of wisdom Thompson comes this close to meeting my challenge: he points out that the astroturfy Tea Party Express has endorsed incumbent Democratic Congressman Walt Minnick from Idaho. Minnick is a Bluer Dog than Herseth Sandlin, with a vote against the stimulus package along with opposition to cap and trade and health reform.

Obama Cuts Taxes for Small Business with Health Reform

Here's something else Gordon Howie and Marty Jackley want to repeal: tax breaks for 20,000 South Dakota employers. KJAM reports that President Obama's health insurance reform law provides tax credits to encourage small businesses and non-profits to cover at least half the cost of their employees' health insurance. The credit applies to small businesses that offer new coverage and firms that simply maintain qualifying coverage.

And while some of the good parts of health insurance reform don't kick in until 2013, these tax credits are in effect now: you offer coverage to your employees this year, you get to claim the credit on your 2010 taxes. The credit kicks in now at 35% of premium costs; in 2014, it bumps up to 50%.

So keep this in mind: in opposing health insurance reform (which, I emphasize again, is now law), the Tea Party is fighting a tax cut for small business.

Learn more at the IRS website (and thank you, KJAM, for the hyperlinks!).

Sunshine Sign Will Fall on Your Car Before Amerts' Wind Turbines

This afternoon's Madison Daily Leader covers the Madison City Commission's first reading of its proposed wind turbine ordinances. The online version of the story omits what was surely the sharpest comment of last night's commission meeting.

Don Amert attended last night's meeting. He and his brother would like to put up a couple wind turbines out by their Ready-Mix cement plant on the southeast edge of Madison (where those turbines would look fantabulous to all the wayfaring travelers on Highway 34... if only they wouldn't distract from our beautiful Madison sign and artificial waterfall). Don questioned the setback ordinances, which require turbines be placed at least 1.1 times their hieght back from property lines, utility lines, electrical substations, roads and homes.

My friend Don suggested such setbacks seem a bit "onerous," especially when you consider that Madison retailers are allowed to situate their tall signs well within toppling distance of roads, property lines, public roads, your parked car, and my bike.

An interesting point! Anyone care to mark off the fall zone of, say, the big Sunshine sign in the middle of town? Or the big flag pole? Or all the lightpoles in the parking lot?

The paper reports city engineer Chad Comes responded by saying such setbacks are standard for wind turbine regulations. In other words, everyone else does it, so don't ask the city complicated questions.

Wind turbines do occasionally tip over... just like signs, cranes, trees, and people. If the city is really worried about tall things falling into the road, we're going to be clearing a long, ugly swath through the center of Madison.

But I'll say this: if Amerts build a wind turbine, it will not, not, NOT fall over. Ever.

Web Matters: All Three Lake County Auditor Candidates Online

You know the Internet has arrived as the new normal when all three candidates for Lake County Auditor have campaign websites. Shelli Gust, Nicole Schlueter, and now Bobbi Janke: all online. I hope this is a sign that, whoever wins the popular blessing to assume the reins from Kay Schmidt at the end of the year, the new County Auditor will prioritize making the Lake County website useful for all residents.

On that account, which candidate's website shows the most promise? Take a look at the three campaign sites, then come vote in the latest Madville Times poll: Which Lake County Auditor candidate has the best website? Notice that I'm not asking which candidate is best for the job... although one could argue that in a local race like this, skill in providing information online may be as valid a criterion for distinguishing candidates as anything else.

Information, design, potential for interaction... all fair game! Cast you vote in the poll in the right sidebar, then leave your comments here. Voting ends Friday night, so click now!

Daugaard Clear Favorite Among Liberal Blog Readers

GOP friends, is that a good thing?

The latest Madville Times poll asked readers "Which Republican is best qualified to be South Dakota's next governor?"

Dennis Daugaard	58% (105 votes)
Dave Knudson	17% (31)
Scott Munsterman	12% (23)
Gordon Howie	7% (13)
Ken Knuppe	3% (6)

Granting a margin of error for online polls slightly larger than the Jim River Valley, what alternative hypotheses might we frame from these results?

1. The sensible read: The GOP primary will go the way the conventional wisdom expects, with Dennis Daugaard's three-year fundraising campaign swamping all comers.
2. The whisker read: Republicans think more like my wife than I about handlebar mustaches. (Or maybe Knuppe just needs to big mutton chops!)
3. The skeptical read: The fine young folks working in the Daugaard campaign office are spending too much time on the Internet.
4. The right-wing read: The liberal readers of the Madville Times clearly prefer Progressive Republicans-in-Name-Only to brave and pure conservatives like Gordon Howie who know that nothing is more important than fighting the culture war.

I'm willing to speculate at this point that South Dakota's gubernatorial candidates will come out in the primary in the same order as this poll... with the possible exception that Munsterman and Howie might swap places, given Howie's potential to coalesce the wingnut vote. The most interesting question may be whether Daugaard can get the mainstream of the party to close ranks and give him a clear majority on June 8.

North Carolina Demands Customer Info; Amazon.com Sues

Reasonable tax policy or Big Brother? That's what a federal judge in Seattle will have to decide. North Carolina has ordered Amazon.com to turn over 50-million-plus purchase records so state tax agents can determine which South Carolinians bought what and perhaps did not pay the required 5.75% use tax. Amazon.com finds the idea of government looking through records of what you buy and read objectionable.

CNET's Declan McCullagh cites some relevant case law and federal statute:

In a 2002 decision, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects "an individual's fundamental right to purchase books anonymously, free from governmental interference." The justices tossed out a subpoena from police to the Tattered Cover Bookstore asking for information about what books a certain customer had purchased.

And in a 2007 case, federal prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to force Amazon to identify thousands of innocent customers who bought books online, but abandoned the idea after a judge rebuked them. Judge Stephen Crocker in Wisconsin ruled that "the subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their prior knowledge or permission."

In addition, a federal law called the Video Privacy Protection Act makes it illegal for anyone selling movies to disclose customer information to anyone, including state tax collectors. The 1988 law specifically covers "prerecorded video cassette tapes," and also sweeps in "similar audio visual material" such as DVDs and Blu-ray discs [Declan McCullagh, "Amazon Fights Demand for Customer Records," CNET News, 2010.04.19].

The current Republican administration in South Dakota has often trumpted the idea of increasing the taxes you pay by applying sales tax to your online purchases. Complications like this have kept the state from making any real progress on that front.

But given our attorney general's penchant for advocating lost causes in court, perhaps he'll submit an amicus curiae brief for the North Carolina Department of Revenue.

Green Notes: Amerts, Army, Urban Agriculture!

As we enjoy what feels like one of the nicest, calmest springs (oh, to run track again in an April like this!), here are some notes on good green news:

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Amert Construction of Madison is doing some good green work in Sioux Falls. They donated some time and effort to pour the slab for the straw bale shed that will be built as part of the Plain Green Conference next week. (The City of Madison still hasn't gotten back to Amerts on their plan to build wind turbines to greet folks coming to Madison on Highway 34. The city's answer should be heck yeah! But the city is discussing its new wind ordinances tonight... which include a proposed prohibition on small wind producers selling their clean electricity to anyone and cutting into the city's monopoly. Hey, what kind of communism is that?)

* * *

Operation Free veterans aren't the only military folks gung ho about green. The United States Armed Forces are recognizing the connection between resource conservation and national security. The Army has cut water use at permanent bases worldwide by 31% since 2004 and energy use per square foot by 10%. They've spent $100 million on spray foam insulation to reduce losses from air conditioning on tents in Iraq and Afghanistan (wait a minute: air conditioning... in tents?). That insulation investment pays for itself in 90 days. The Pentagon is spending $2.7 billion this year on energy efficiency. And before you shout solar panels are for sissies, not Marines, consider: using less fuel means fewer trips for military fuel trucks, which means fewer targets for insurgents and roadside bombs... which means more soldiers making it home with two good legs on which to run to their kids. (Go ahead, Bob: tell me the whole United States military is a bunch of gullible socialist dupes. Better yet, tell the soldiers you know.)

* * *

This editorial notes how a push for urban agriculture could solve a wealth of environmental woes. Consider that 40% of the energy used in agriculture goes to making fertilizers and pesticides. Sure, those chemicals help you get larger yields, but at the expense of flavor and nutrition. Urban organic farmer K. Rashid Nuri notes with pride the growing number of city folks getting away from that addiction to chemicals and quantity by "growing crops on vacant lots, in abandoned fields, in greenhouses, on balconies, by schools, in prison yards, in nursing homes and in countless other creative and engaging places." He notes numerous benefits to urban agriculture: "economic savings, environmental improvement, lifestyle enhancement, increased exercise and family and community bonding." City folks growing rooftop rutabagas may not look quite like Jefferson's yeoman farmer, but when 4 out of 5 Americans live in town, urban farming is a practical way to, as Nuri urges us, "reclaim our agricultural heritage."

Flag at Half Staff Too Often?

It seems like we get an awful lot of orders from Governor Rounds to fly the flag at half staff. Today's grief: remembering the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Search KELO, and you'll find a dozen half-staff orders in South Dakota in the past year. That's in addition to the five official days of remembrance when everyone should fly the flag at half staff. Once every three weeks is either an awful lot of time to spend grieving... or not enough, considering American soldiers die defending their country each week (though more killed themselves than were killed by Afghani bad guys last year).

I would like someone with a longer memory to help us out: did we fly flags at half staff this frequently in the 1980s? Or during Vietnam? Or World War II?

I do not seek to denigrate the memory of any fellow citizen killed by bad dudes. But on days like today and September 11, when we remember the slaughter of innocents on our own soil, I wonder if the proper response to psychopaths like McVeigh and Atta would be to add an extra foot to the flagpole and fly the flag a little higher, just to say, "See? We're still here. Your plot didn't work."

Derivatives Reform: You Want This!

With health insurance reform now in the win column, Congress and the President are turning to financial reform. There will be a lot of moving parts to this legislation—you just can't govern the world's biggest economy on slogans and one-page bills. Among the essential moving parts: derivatives reform.

President Obama is vowing to veto any financial reform legislation that does not include regulation on deriviatives. His chief economic advisor, Christina Romer, backs him up:

What is needed is a new set of rules of the road for our financial system, greater accountability for Wall Street, and increased protections for consumers. Those rules include a comprehensive regulatory framework where capital and liquidity requirements control excessive risk-taking and where regulators consider risks to the system as a whole and not just to individual institutions. They involve putting complicated financial products such as derivatives onto exchanges and into clearinghouses so that risks are known and values are clear [Christina D. Romer, "Back to a Better Normal: Unemployment and Growth in the Wake of the Great Recession," address to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, 2010.04.17].

Now before my conservative friends buy into the Senate Republicans' political line that regulation is bad, consider why derivatives matter. The collapse of credit default swaps, one flavor of derivatives, forced us to bail out AIG to the tune of $180 billion. That was arguably a greater intrusion on the free market than any specific regulation.

Five banks, including our friends at Citicorp, constitute "a kind of cartel that controls all the trading and information" on derivatives. That's not a free market when a handful of players with vested interests monopolize information.

Regulation of derivatives doesn't put anyone out of business. It simply puts this particular financial "product" on the same footing as stocks, which are traded quite happily and successfully on open, regulated exchanges. Regulation hasn't killed the stock market; it has made the market healthier and safer. Regulation would do the same for derivatives. Secretary Geithner explains:

Transparency will lower costs for users of derivatives, such as industrial or agriculture companies, allowing them to more effectively manage their risk. It will enable regulators to more effectively monitor risks of all significant derivatives players and financial institutions, and prevent fraud, manipulation and abuse. And by bringing standardized derivatives into central clearing houses and trading facilities, the Senate bill would reduce the risk that the derivatives market will again threaten the entire financial system [Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, "How to Prevent America's Next Financial Crisis," Washington Post, 2010.04.13].

Regulating derivatives shifts risk back to where it belongs in the market: on informed investors who can cover their bets.

If you don't like bailouts, if you don't like recessions, if you don't like losing your job because Wall Street fat cats crashed the global economy, then you do like derivatives regulation and the full financial reform package working through Congress.

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To understand derivatives, try this explanation from Prof. Michael Greenberger. The professor notes that when AIG went bust, it had over 20 divisions. On September 16, 2008, AIG's regulated divisions were humming along nicely with $20 billion in reserves. AIG's one derivatives subdivision was not regulated, held no reserves, issued insurance policies worth double the company's value, and sunk the company.

Incoming! Space Shuttle over South Dakota Monday 7:25-7:35 a.m. CDT!

Update 2010.04.19 06:18 CDT: Nuts! NASA has waved off the Orbit 222 landing attempt, due to precip and clouds in Florida. No shuttle view for us this morning. Back to the raisin bran....

---------original article (which I had far too much fun composing------------
Space Shuttle alert! Discovery is scheduled to land tomorrow (Monday) morning in Florida at 7:48 Central Daylight Time. An unusual flight path will bring the shuttle right across South Dakota! So just after 7 a.m. (6 a.m. Mountain), get outside and look!

Current forecast for Madison, SD: partly cloudy. Come on, clear skies for breakfast! One mapthis map says the shuttle kittywampiflies NW to SE right across South Dakota:

shows the shuttle crossing our state's southwest corner, but

NASA Map: Cities with good view of Discovery
on approach to landing (click to enlarge!)

I hope Discovery isn't taking bearings from the apparent position of Sioux City on this map. This PDF from NASA insists Discovery will pass directly over Pierre and Sioux City.

Check out those speeds: Mach 20 over Pierre! Mach 20! Discovery can cover that diagonal route across South Dakota in less than two minutes. On I-90, Mach 20 gets you across South Dakota in 90 seconds. That gets you from Lincoln High School to the Empire Mall in one second.

If Discovery gets a go for landing on its first good window tomorrow, it'll flip, fire engines, and drop into the atmosphere over the Pacific at 7:17 a.m. Central Daylight Time. Montana (Larry! That's you!) will get a good look shortly thereafter. If the sun's not up yet out west, you'll get to see the big plasma trail! Whoosh!

Here in South Dakota, the sun will be up, but we may still get some glow... and sonic booms! So after 7:15 a.m., turn down your snap-crackle-pop and look and listen out the window. Space shuttle a-comin'!

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Update 22:50 CDT: Shuttle visibility from Madison, SD: 7:28 to 7:33 a.m.!

• As viewed from an open field, Discovery will pop over our horizon toward the WNW at 7:28. Of course, at that point it will be 575 miles away.
  
• At its nearest point to Madison, 88 miles away at 7:30:38, the shuttle will be close to straight SW, about 26 degrees up frmo the horizon.
  
• Discovery drops below Madison's horizon close to straight SE at 7:33.
  

Get your own detailed sighting data from NASA's spaceflight sightings tracker (and darn good use of tax dollars if ever I saw one!).

Here's the chart for Madison:

Local Time	Azimuth	Elevation	Range
HH:MM:SS	Deg E of N	Deg	Miles
07:28:20	300.2	0.2	575
07:28:20	299.5	1.1	513
07:28:51	298.7	2.2	452
07:29:06	297.5	3.4	391
07:29:22	295.7	4.9	331
07:29:37	293	6.9	273
07:29:52	288.8	9.5	217
07:30:08	281.5	13.5	163
07:30:23	267.1	19.6	117
07:30:38	237	26.8	88
07:30:54	196.1	25.2	92
07:31:09	171	17.7	125
07:31:24	159.1	12.2	171
07:31:40	152.8	8.7	220
07:31:55	149.2	6.3	270
07:32:11	147	4.6	321
07:32:26	145.6	3.2	372
07:32:41	144.7	2.1	421
07:32:57	144.1	1.1	470
07:33:12	143.8	0.3	518

Also at 07:30:38, the shuttle will fly almost directly over Corsica, SD. No need to duck: Discovery's altitude will be about 40 miles. (I checked that with the Pythagorean theorem—sounds about right!)

Last Call for SD Gov GOP Poll! Vote Now!

Reminder to you loyal RSS feed readers and occasional visitors: you have about 12 hours left to vote in the latest Madville Times poll on which Republican you think is best qualified to serve as South Dakota's next governor. Howie, Knuppe, Daugaard, Munsterman, Knudson—click on your favorite GOP gubernatorial candidate here in the right sidebar, then check out the final results tomorrow morning.

We've gotten a good crop of votes so far, so add your voice! Hooray for polls! Nothing more fun than sticking a thermometer in the turkey of public opinion online! :-)

Veblen West Dairy Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Richard Millner's dairy empire continues to crumble. In March, his giant, polluting Veblen East Dairy was placed in receivership under Agstar. Now its sister CAFO, Veblen West Dairy, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The papers hit the court the same week that Mayor Lavonne Jacobson claimed that the Veblen Dairy is one of the community's biggest assets.

When your biggest asset is a bankrupt dairy that violates state environmental regulations, you've got trouble. (Mayor Jacobson nonetheless won another two-year term, beating challenger Ralph Parsons 35 votes to 30.)

Of course, Chapter 11 doesn't mean the end of business (that's Chapter 7). Chapter 11 allows the debtor to reorganize and keep control of the business. It may also allow the debtor to dodge litigation... and that concerns me, since action by the courts and government seem to be the only way to make Millner fulfill his obligations to his neighbors and business partners.

I wonder: what if we had not subsidized Millner's Veblen operations by funneling to it money from Korean investors jumping the green card queue? Might domestic shareholders with a sincere market interest in the operation have held the dairy more accountable for operating honestly and legally and turning a profit?