Replace Big Stone II Output with Home Wind Turbines

Senator John Thune is on the radio grousing that his friends at Heartland and the other utilities have killed thousands of jobs by cancelling Big Stone II. Surely this means Senator Thune will change his mind about fighting "with every fiber of my being" climate change legislation that could bring South Dakota 5000 sustainable energy jobs.

It sounds to me like Senator Thune needs to get back to what I said back in September when Russ Olson set out on his now-failed sales pitch: Quit whining, build wind! For today's wild scheme, check out this new-fangled home wind turbine from Honeywell:

This gearless wind turbine can crank out 2000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year in areas with Class 3 wind. Class 3 is about as low as the wind gets in South Dakota. These 6-foot, 170-pound turbines generate power in winds from 2 mph to 42 mph—that's about as close to power every day as you're going to get.

Instead of sinking $1.6 billion (and I've read that was a 2006 estimate; the cost may have been up to $2 billion) into a massive capital project that no one utility could finance on its own, Heartland and the other utilities could each fund their own programs to help small farms and businesses install small wind turbines like these (along with solar panels!) that would help the utilities meet local peak demand without building more expensive generating facilities. And instead of waiting six years or more for a big coal plant to start belching electricity and air pollution, Heartland and homeowners could have a big network of on-site turbines and solar panels up and running within months. Senator Thune could help out by supporting federal support for such investments, the same way the feds are helping Black Hills Power and my own Sioux Valley Electric install smart meters and other energy-saving smart-grid tech. Invest now in the energy tech of the future, and 30 years from now, as we sit warm and cozy in our energy-self-sufficient communities, we'll look back at BSII as a wisely avoided boondoggle.

Yes, Senator Thune, Otter Tail and market realities handed the BSII dreamers some lemons. Now let's make some lemonade.

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Climate Change Legislation: Green Jobs for SD, or Attack on (Corporate) Agriculture?

SDPB's Charles Michael Ray posts a Dakota Digest report on how wind power is boosting the Howard economy. Randy Perry of the forward-thinking Rural Learning Center says that green jobs and green energy have brought more than 230 jobs to Howard this decade. Unfortunately, Miner County as a whole has seen a decline in its workforce from 1500 to 1245 over this decade.

Perry believes, as I do, that climate change legislation would bring even more high-tech, high-pay jobs to Howard and all of South Dakota. But out stomps hog farmer, Clearwater Township chairman Larry Haak to tell us climate change legislation will raise farm input costs and give the EPA power to regulate large farms.

More EPA regulation? Haak evidently missed the point that the American Clean Energy and Security Act is actually a market-based solution that would forestall EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. Haak also evidently missed the point that climate change legislation will do less harm to farmers than unmitigated climate change itself.

But missing the point is to be expected of a vice-chair of the Miner County Farm Bureau. The Farm Bureau, a big corporate lobby founded by the New York Chamber of Commerce and Rockefeller money, is well known for its opposition to climate change legislation or anything else that might force the corporate ag-industrial complex to behave responsibly.

You'd think the average farmer, paragon of patriotism and self-sufficiency, would see the case business leaders and even a South Carolina conservative and former Marine can make for how climate change legislation is good for America's economy, energy independence, and national security (good work, Badlands Blue!). I guess the Farm Bureau is all about flying the flag... until we ask them to support environmental action and innovation that might actually bring small farmers and rural communities new income streams and greater independence from the big ag processors.

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PUC's Kolbeck Misplaces Negative Sign, Thinks Coal Makes Air Cleaner

PUC Commissioner Steve Kolbeck apparently does math with imaginary numbers:

Steve Kolbeck, vice chairman of South Dakota's Public Utilities Commission, said construction of Big Stone II and improvements to the nearby power plant would have cut total pollution from the site while greatly increasing its output.

"If we could have gotten it built ... we could have actually made the air cleaner up there," Kolbeck said" [Dale Wetzel, "Developers Abandon Plan for Big Stone II Power Plant," AP via Winona Daily News, 2009.11.03].

Help me out: building a coal-fired plant that would have pumped out four million tons of carbon dioxide a year, would have made the air cleaner? The two Minnesota administrative judges who ruled against building the power lines to Big Stone II (and whom the Minnesota PUC amazingly ignored) found the new coal plant would have emitted as much CO₂ as all of the cars and trucks in South Dakota. And CO₂ makes up only 10%–12% of the crap coming out of a coal plant smokestack (fly ash and mercury anyone?).

Yikes—next Commissioner Kolbeck will be telling farmers that the Keystone oil pipelines will make their groundwater safer.

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Take New Poll: What Killed Big Stone II?

Hey, sharp readers! Demonstrate your ecocapitalist acuity: weigh in with your verdict on what killed Big Stone II. The latest Madville Times poll is available right here in the left sidebar. Your options:

• Recession (demand for goods and energy down, investors skittish, credit tight)
  
• President Obama (darned climate change legislation!)
  
• Treehuggers (recognizable by the bark on their shirts)
  
• Good business sense (i.e., the inability of Heartland's Russell Olson and other project backers to compose a business case that could outweigh the judgment of the market that coal is not the way to go)

Multiple answers are welcome! And if you think I've left out options, pitch your explanations here in the comment section.

Poll is open through Monday, November 9. Vote now!

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American Health Care: Pay More, Get Less

For the free market to work, you need rational actors, buyers and sellers who can evaluate how much utility goods and services provide and agree on reasonable prices.

When it comes to health care, we Americans are far from rational. We are idiots. We get less utility from health care than folks in other countries, yet we pay more. Way more. Absurdly, stupidly, indefensibly more.

There's a sucker born every minute. In health care, the suckers are right here in the capitalist U.S. of A.

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Your Opinion: Eminent Domain for Madison Bike Trail No Go

Madville Times readers are apparently passionate defenders of property rights. Our latest poll asked "Do you support using eminent domain to extend Madison's recreational trail to Lake Herman?" The results:

• Yes: 21 (27%)
• No: 56 (73%)

If I were a Madison City Commissioner, I might well say, "That's that" for eminent domain on the bike trail. After all, if anyone is going to draw the sort of hippie socialist crowd that would favor seizing private property for the collective pedaling good, it's this blog. Yet even readers here appear to be saying a bike trail is not worth violating private property rights.

I'm still open to the argument that the social benefits of a bike trail outweigh private property rights in this case. But the city and trail supporters will have to work really hard to make that argument. In the meantime, let's offer all the landowners a more-than-fair price for the privilege of using their land. Let's give them ironclad assurances that state law protects them from liability (and that if state law doesn't, the city and county will).

And if the landowners turn down our offer, then we'll have to be content to find an alternative route.

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Not Enough H1N1 Vaccine? Why Isn't Free Market Solving?

GOP House candidate Thad Wasson tickles my logical-fallacy bone this morning with a dollop of "blame government" paranoia. He sees detainees at Guantanamo slated to receive H1N1 vaccine as a sign that the federal government's "total control of health" leads to rationing and prioritizing.

I prefer to look at the treatment of prisoners throughout the country as part of the moral argument that we have a moral obligation to take care of each other and that government ought to be the single provider at least of health insurance. If it's good enough for prisoners, soldiers, veterans, public employees, and retirees, it's good enough for me.

But specifically on swine flu shots: if everyone is so darned eager to get shots, why isn't the free market solving? Medicine comes from private companies running private factories. If I were a pharmaceutical giant, and I knew there were a bunch of scared folks eager to pay top dollar to avoid the pandemic they hear about in the news every day, I'd be running my factories overtime... unless, of course, someone demonstrated that the profit such basic, essential medicine wouldn't outweigh what I make on luxury drugs like Botox and Viagra.

The Obama Administration has said that they've made their predictions on vaccine avvailability based on numbers provided by industry. And really, if you want more vaccine, what solution do you want? Would you prefer the government nationalize the pharmaceutical industry and direct all production toward H1N1 vaccine and Tamiflu? Would you prefer the CDC do even less science, less testing before sending the vaccine to market?

Blaming the government for H1N1 vaccine shortage, not to mention the conclusions that "government can't do anything right," is just a smokescreen of political spin. I could suggest a free market solution: if you want more vaccine, you should make it yourself. But that's about as realistic as Steve Sibson's suggestion that the solution to underinsurance is for you and me to start our own insurance companies.

For all the griping, I still haven't heard an effective free market solution for the H1N1 vaccine situation. If you want more shots, it seems to me your only option is more radical government intervention in health care, not less.

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Wyoming Taxes Major Industry, State and Biz Roll Along

Former patrolman turned Wyoming restaurant magnate Mark O'Loughlen sends me a PDF copy of a 2003 Wyoming property tax guide. I note with interest (and perhaps loyal reader and prospective Wyoming land baron Mr. Gibilisco can add some perspective) that historically, Wyoming has drawn half of its property tax revenue from assessed value of mineral production. Funny: I thought the conservative argument was that taxes kill big business... yet Wyoming's mineral production industry keeps rolling right along, as do Wyoming's teacher salaries ($5K more for starting pay, $8.5K more for average pay than in South Dakota).

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Citi Chief Stiffs KELO's Kennecke

I've ridden KELO rather hard the last couple months for occasionally seeming to favor Senator John Thune (by the way, they did re-admit my post, following the requested revision), big-town convenience over small-town basic services, wealthy big-name candidates, Big Stone II, and Senator Thune (again!). Such seeming servility to power gets my goat. Where are the hard questions, the pricking of conscience good journalists should do?

I note with some small renewed sense of journalistic solidarity that even the corporate-owned professionals at KELO will dare to question the powers that be... and get the cold shoulder from those powers for such audacity.

Angela Kennecke recounts in a KELO blog post (and this was last Monday—I regret not finding it sooner!) her unsuccessful attempt to get Citi CEO Vikram Pandit to answer a few questions:

...I was promised by the public relations people who were handling Pandit’s visit to Sioux Falls that I would have a chance to talk to him before or after the event. But once I arrived, I was told by his assistants there was no time. I asked if I could just ask a question or two and they wanted to know what those questions would be about. I told them I wanted to know about student loan jobs, the current controversy and government action over top executive pay, as well as Citibank’s third quarter losses and how the bank would repay the government $45 billion in taxpayer money it owes from the TARP. At the end of the roundtable Pandit was taking part in, his assistant informed me I couldn’t ask the question about executive pay. I said OK just so I could get any questions in at all. It wasn’t looking good. Then he turned around and told me I couldn’t ask any questions at all. However, I tried to get one question in and walked up to Pandit to ask about the student loan jobs at Citibank and he turned away from me and refused to answer anything at all [Angela Kennecke, "Since You Own a Share of Citigroup, Do You Deserve Answers?" KELOLand.com, 2009.10.26].

Ouch! Stone cold shoulder! Not cool.

Kennecke doesn't take it personally—she and other reporters have been treated worse by better. But she nails better than I can the fundamental problem with CEO Pandit's arrogance:

...the problem I have with Citigroup’s and Pandit’s actions today is that this is no longer a “private” company. You, the taxpayers, own a third of Citigroup Inc. And while they were taking your money and losing $3.2 billion in the third quarter, the top 21 Citigroup executives were taking $390.2 million in pay [Kennecke, 2009.10.26].

Good call, Ms. Kennecke. And she says it well: trying to get answers to such questions for all of us citizens from the powers that be is exactly her job. Keep at it!

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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.

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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!

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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....

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