Say Anything Blog

Ed Schafer is on the front cover of the Washington Times today saying, in his roll as the US Sec. of Agriculture, that ethanol isn’t contributing to the global food problem:

I love Ed Schafer, but he’s flat-out wrong on this.

Food, like any other product, exists in a market and is susceptible to the forces of supply and demand.  By diverting food crops to energy production we’ve reduced the overall quantity of food crops available for human consumption and also reduced the amount of land available to produce food.

Now, we can argue about fuel crops coming from lands that weren’t used for food crops previously and about other things such as weather impact the global food market, but the simple truth is that diverting food crops to fuel production has a significant impact on the global food market.  Even if you could argue that the crops used for fuel were all new crops not taken away from existing food supplies so that the market impact was neutral (and I’m not convinced that such an argument can be made) the fact remains that fuel crops are taking up more land that could have been used to expand production to meet supply shortages.

For faithful supports of ethanol to deny this is for them to deny reality itself.

I think it would do the biofuel industry well to admit that, long term, trying to meet rising energy demand by converting the food we eat to fuel is a boondoggle and that future biofuel efforts should be focused on using raw materials that aren’t food.

According to things I’m hearing from people in the know it seems as though it might be.

Before launching a campaign against incumbent Democrat Representative Earl Pomeroy Duane Sand was the regional director for the North Dakota chapter of American’s for Prosperity.  In that capacity he began an initiated measure movement which would cut individual state income tax rates by 50% and corporate tax rates by 15%.  I was asked to be a member of the sponsoring committee on that measure and I agreed and have supported signature-collection efforts across the state.

After beginning this push, Sand decided that he also wanted to run for the House of Representatives.  I, personally, felt this decision was a mistake.  I felt Duane should have focused on guiding the initiated measure through the signature-collecting process and through the state-wide vote before moving on to bigger and better things.  After all, there was (and still is) no other serious challenge to Pomeroy on the horizon meaning that Sand would have more than likely been free to run against Earl in 2010. 

I expressed this concern to people involved with AFP and the initiated measure and they shared my concerns, though ultimately the decision laid with Duane and he was not to be deterred.  Now it appears as though I was right.  Duane’s decision to mount a campaign on the entrenched Pomeroy before completing the initiated measure process is turning out to be a mistake.

Since late 2007 Duane has lost four people who worked for him.  He lost a campaign manager in 2007, an employee at the ND chapter of Americans for Prosperity, and now he’s lost both a campaign communications director and a second campaign manager.  Steve Lautte and Greg Merkel, the director and manager respectively, resigned from Duane’s campaign last week though this news has yet to hit the pages and airwaves of the North Dakota media.

None of the people who stopped working for Duane will speak ill of him, choosing instead to maintain a professional silence, but I’m guessing that they left because Duane (who has a reputation for being something of a bull in a china closet) has become increasingly difficult to work for.  I’d also be willing to bet that they left because of concerns about the initiated measure failing.  Without the initiated measure Duane’s campaign is dead in the water.

Does the initiated measure still have a chance to be on the ballot?  I think it does, and I think North Dakotans are still thirsty for tax relief what with the state running massive budget surpluses and the resurgence of the oil industry (which is driving most of those tax revenues) being as bright and hopeful as ever.

Personally, I remain committed to seeing the initiated measure to cut income taxes on the ballot come election time.  If it makes it to the ballot, when it makes it to the ballot, it may be the most important measure for North Dakotans to decide on because this state is at a key junction, economically, and could be set on fire with a bit of meaningful tax relief.  I also remain committed to seeing the liberal Earl Pomeroy cast from office, but given the type leadership put on display by Sand over the last several months I’m not at all convinced he’s the man to do it.

Conservatives in North Dakota are in danger of seeing an ambitious measure to cut taxes go up in flames, as well as having the firmly-entrenched Democrat House incumbent facing a relative non-entity.  Which is something that would leave that incumbent free to dump his millions gained from out-of-state liberal interests into local campaigns.  Which, in turn, will make races across the state tough for Republicans.

All of that will be Duane Sand’s doing if he doesn’t get things back on track.

This is a glowing, if rather brief, analysis of Ed Schafer’s career from US News & World Report.

I’m happy to see one of North Dakota’s own go to Washington and find success.  And, unlike Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad who don’t even live in North Dakota any more in any meaningful sense, I have little doubt that once Schafer’s time as Ag. Secretary is through he’ll return to his home state once again.

Here’s some information on the developments in North Dakota’s Petroleum business.  I thought it was interesting, if somewhat hard to follow. 

I think if history has shown anything it’s that as time goes on, the evil oil companies find ways to get more oil out of the ground than was thought when the fields were first opened.  That’s good because the evil oil companies produce stuff that’s good to heat my evil house and power the evil mini-van. 

I got this in an email from a North Dakota reader attending Williston State College who is taking a final test in a composition class which requires an essay about whether or not students agree with government-run health care:

I have to write a paper about whether or not I agree with government sponsored heath care. But the thing is that I have to support my argument with the sources supplied to me. And all of the information supplied to me is basically FOR government sponsored health care. Is it fair that I have to write a paper arguing something that I don’t agree with?

So far the only thing in the information given to me that is against it states “No literal reading of the US Constitution acknowledges any right to heath care.” I can’t support a personal opinion with out correct documentation. As I am not provided any documents that support that opinion, I can’t really buck the system and pass.

Nice how that works, no?  Students are told to formulate and express an opinion about an issue, but can only use the sources provided by the professor and all of those sources support a single point of view on the issue.

The dilemma this student faces is do you just come out in favor of universal health care to get a good grade from the professor?  Or do you put down how you really feel about universal health care and risk getting a poor grade on your final test?

Does anyone remember when universities used to promote independent thinking?

And, on a side note, what kind of a college-level course provides students with sources and then asks them to write a paper?  Shouldn’t students be finding their own sources?  Or would that be too dangerous?  I mean, heaven forbid they find some research which indicates that universal health care is a utopian pipe dream and then formulate an independent thought on the subject or something.

Here’s a story in the Washington Post talking about the North Dakota wheat crop.  This story makes out that farmers won’t be planting that much wheat this year.  From what I can tell at these prices they will be planting it for sure.

Last year a lot of farmers jumped into corn.  The ones that stayed in wheat wound up doing very well due to the shortages.  I think if the price stays up there will be growth in the acreage planted.

As an attempt in the House to cap farm subsidies goes down in flames we get news that the economics of farming have changed quite a bit since the justifications for farm subsidies were first laid out during the depression era.

The Agriculture Department forecasts that the average farm household will earn more than $89,000 in 2008, up 6.3% from 2007. That’s a third higher than the average U.S. household income, which is projected to be $67,000.

Despite that, farm-bill negotiators are fighting to keep $5.2 billion in direct payments, which go to farmers regardless of how much they earn or whether they are growing a crop.

Stephen Spruiell has more:

Let’s look closer at that average farm household income statistic. Ninety-two percent of farm-dwellers derive either all or most of their income from sources other than farming or subsidies. Average household incomes for this group have increased steadily since 2006. These farmers are expected to earn between $63,500 and $83,500 this year.

The other 8 percent — commercial farmers who derive most of their income from farming and subsidies — earned an average of $200,000 last year — an increase of 22 percent from 2006. This year, income for this group is projected to hit $230,000 — another 9.3-percent increase. The USDA, which calculated these estimates, reported last year that the windfall for commercial farmers is due in large part to “demand from the rapid expansion of ethanol production.”

According to the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database, the top 8 percent of farm-subsidy recipients received 57 percent of the payments in 2006, for an average payment of $65,613. (The top 20 percent of recipients get 80 percent of the payments.)

Given all this, to the taxpayers really need to be on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars every year in ag subsidies?

Thanks to North Dakota’s oil boom the economy in my home town is hopping.  Jobs are available all over the place, and as a result a lot of families are seeing both moms and dads going off to work.  The problem this has left people with, however, is what to do with the tykes while mom and dad are off at work?  There just isn’t enough daycare space in Minot to meet demand for childcare.

Admittedly, it’s a good problem to have (better than wondering how unemployed mom and dad are going to feed the kids), but the people who need childcare are looking to the city council to solve this problem.  I’m left wondering why this is the city council’s responsibility.

Seems to me that the city council’s response should be, if anything, to clear some of the red tape away from the childcare industry.  Make it easier for entrepreneurs to open daycares and more daycares will open to meet demand.  That’s the wonder of free markets.

But other than that solution, this is pretty much a “problem” that should be left to solve itself.

I was talking to The Whistler recently about my purchase of a new house (we close next week on Wed. and the wait is killing me) and he told me that when he bought his house the moment he was most excited about was the part where the old owner handed him the keys.  The funny thing was when his closing day arrived the old owner...didn’t have any keys for his house.  He hadn’t locked it up in years and didn’t know where they were at.

Upon hearing that something dawned on me: I don’t have any keys for my old house either.  I guess I’ve never really felt like I had to lock my house up.  The few times we have gone out of town for any significant amount of time we’d lock the front doors but left a back patio door open so we could get back in.

I’ll either have to get some new ones made or have a similar moment with the people who eventually buy the house from me.  But the larger reality - that North Dakotans generally live in communities so safe that a lot of them don’t even feel like they need to lock up their homes - is a comforting one.

Here’s another interesting tid-bit from the newly-launched Sunshine on Schools website: North Dakota public schools aren’t spending all of their money.

In 2007 the schools took in $893,478,692 in revenues but only spent $876,469,559.  That leaves a surplus of revenue at $17,009,133.  Given that enrollment in the schools was 94,587 that works out to about $180 per student, or about $3,600 per classroom of 20 students.

So if North Dakota schools are underfunded, how do we explain a $17 million state-wide surplus on the school budgets?  Do we really need to increase school funding, and thus taxes (like the already too-high property taxes), to send extra revenues to schools that aren’t even using all of it?

I had to chuckle when I read this from fellow North Dakota blogger “Jay” over at The Rural Bus Route in response to John McCain’s assertion that the Minneapolis bridge collapse wasn’t caused by a lack of taxation:

Again, people, the GOP thinks you’re stupid. They will continue to harp about the “entitlement” program spending and champion limited government spending domestically. What about that giant sucking sound you hear from the middle east? Pay no attention, they say. Don’t worry about the trillions spent and trillions yet to be spent. The real problem is all the lazy poor people sucking on the government boob. Also pay no attention to the fact that before the neocons came to office, there was a healthy surplus. It’s liberal spending...dontchaknow.

To put Jay’s fiscally illiterate rant into perspective in 2007 entitlement spending in America cost us approximately $1.4 trillion dollars.  In over five years, the war in Iraq has cost a total so-far of $583.6 billion, or approximately $116 billion per year.  Here’s a comparison of per year entitlement spending vs. per year Iraq spending:

More perspective: The entire world spent $1.2 trillion on military and wars in 2006.  That’s about $200 billion less than we spent on entitlements in 2007 alone.

Do we spend too much on military and war?  That’s debatable, but clearly the larger spending problem lays with entitlement spending even if certain factions on the left don’t want to admit it.

Carter Wood (a North Dakota ex-patriat) at the National Association of Manufacturers sent me this picture of a Grand Forks Herald newspaper vending machine in Washington DC last week and I forgot to post it.

Kind of neat to see a local newspaper out in DC, but kind of weird too.  Given the advent of the internet you’d think North Dakotans in DC interested in some news from home would go online instead of tracking down a paper copy.

Or just have a paper copy mailed out via subscription.

My good friend Brett Narloch at the North Dakota Policy Council is announcing the NDPC’s new transparency website for state schools.  It’s called Sunshine On Schools.

From the press release:

BISMARCK, ND – The North Dakota Policy Council announced the launch of their Sunshine on Schools website today. Sunshine on Schools is an online interactive storehouse for financial information on every North Dakota K-12 school district. The data can be accessed by visiting http://www.SunshineonSchools.org.

“This website will be an invaluable tool for administrators, policy makers, parents, and taxpayers in North Dakota,” said Brett Narloch, Executive Director of the North Dakota Policy Council. “We have collected the Department of Public Instruction’s financial data in one place and made it easy for normal people to read and interact with. This is something the DPI should have already done years ago. The data on our site is also on DPI’s website, but in an extremely unreadable form.”

The data includes revenues and expenditures statements, debt information, and personnel compensation data for all North Dakota school districts. It is presented in a simple, easy-to-understand format and access to the website is free and open to the public. All data used to build the website is public data obtained from the Department of Public Instruction.

Here’s the website.  The amount of information in the website is amazing.  It’s going to be terribly inconvenient for those factions in the state who are calling for endless increases in school funding and teacher pay.

For instance, check out this chart showing teacher pay for my hometown school district (Minot Public Schools):

The average compensation for teachers in this one school district in North Dakota, salary plus benefits, is over $50,000/year.  According to the US Census the median household income for North Dakota is just under $40,000/year.  Meaning that the average teacher in Minot is making more per year than the average North Dakota household.

Teacher pay clearly isn’t a problem in the state.

Education spending is a hot issue in the state.  Property taxes (the chief source of in-state revenue for schools) are sky-high, and spending on education has increased 30% since 1999 while student enrollment has declined by approximately 16,000 students.  Clearly there is something fishing going on with education spending in the state, and this website can help us get to the bottom of it.

Kudos to the NDPC for getting this done.  If you like what you see, head on over to their website and donate a few bucks to help them keep this up and running.

Update: Above I use the median household income for North Dakotans to compare to the teacher compensation numbers.  While I think it’s significant to note that individual teachers in the Minot Public School System are making significantly more than entire households, it’s also worth nothing that the per-capita average income for North Dakotans is around $31,000/year.

Meaning these teachers are compensated at a much higher rate than the average citizen.  And teachers get approximately 2 - 3 months off for summer every year too (in addition to vacation and sick leave), which the average citizen doesn’t get.

On June 10th there will be a crucial election in Grand Forks concerning Grand Forks County’s desire to attain more power through a home rule charter.  It’s my belief that we need to do everything we can to stop this from happening.  To my knowledge the county hasn’t implemented any spending cuts to make up for their jail fiasco.  Instead they want to stick that and more on the taxpayer.

Grand Forks County could be the most dysfunctional political entity in North Dakota.

The worst example of that is the jail that they built without taxapayer approval.  The County Commission said at the time that they needn’t bother the voters about it because according to them it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a cent.  Well they were wrong, dead wrong.  They used made up numbers to project that.  When it came out how badly they had figured it they made the jail administrator a scapegoat and fired him.  I’m sure he was partly to blame but it’s the responsibility of the commission to investigate before they take action.

They’ve had other problems as well.  Last summer they tried to sneak a new tax on the voters with an unpublicized election with very few open voting sites.

Commission members also had a well publicized feud with the Sheriff in which they only managed to look silly.

To me, a taxpayer the biggest thing is that according to American’s for Prosperity’s report they’ve increased spending by 50%, inflation adjusted, since 1997.  During this time the population went down and services are not up.  I believe that 50% increase in spending is before they jacked up property taxes to pay for their jail fiasco.  Why don’t they roll back some of those spending increases to pay for the jail and other needs?

Clearly the county commission cannot be trusted with the power that they have, let alone more power.  According to Citizens for Responsible Government which is fighting this Home Rule power grab the county would gain a number of powers to get more money from the beleaguered taxpayers:

If this passes, here is a list of some of the taxes that could be imposed:

sales and use tax
gross receipt tax
motor vehicle fuels
special fuels tax
motor vehicle registration fees

There is also a provision where the state limit on property tax for counties could be voided, thereby creating a massive property tax increase. 

I don’t know who all is active in this group but Terry Bjerke, City Council Candidate is one of them.  If you want to help you can contact them at:

Citizens for Responsible Government
PO Box 12296
Grand Forks, ND 58208-2296

The Whistler is sending them $100, today.

In related news CT Marhula who is running for the County Commission had a letter to the Herald yesterday. CT’s a flaming Democrat, but he’s got this paleo-conservatives unreserved support in the coming election.  Go get ‘em CT!

You can see the actual Home Rule Charter up on the county’s website.  Also here’s a link to the last post I did on the subject.  I’ve got other links on the bottom of the page in case you want to catch up. 

I found it interesting that when I Googled “Grand Forks County Home Rule” the first two entries were posts that I’ve done on the subject.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Say Anything isn’t the best place to get information on this subject as we come up on the election. 

If you have any information about the issue

David Drovdal, a Republican state representative from District 39 (Arnegard), has an op/ed in the Bismarck Tribune today blasting the North Dakota chapter of Americans for Prosperity over its proposed cut in taxes.

That a Republican would issue such a nasty, accusatory aspersion at a conservative group seeking tax cuts in a time of massive state budget surpluses is simply amazing.  And an indication that the NDGOP has some serious internal problems.

Drovdal’s main line of criticism lays with quoting Tax Foundation figures which he claims shows that North Dakotans aren’t taxed that much compared to other states.  And that is true.  Looking at a percentage of income, North Dakota is pretty “middle of the pack” when it comes to state and local tax burdens.

By my question to Drovdal is: Why should we care what the tax burden is in other states?  And in light of massive state budget surpluses, what justifications do we have to keep taxes high?

I think we can all agree that North Dakota, as a state, is constantly on the look out for new citizens and new businesses.  Given that we do have big budget surpluses right now, why wouldn’t we lower taxes right now while we can afford it so that we have a friendlier tax environment for both businesses and individuals?

The question for North Dakota is not “What does our tax situation look like compared to other states?” The question for North Dakota is “Do we need to keep taxes high or should we lower them to help attract businesses and citizens?”

Given that I see little reason to keep state taxes as high as they are now, I think the answer to the question is “lower taxes.” And the best proposal to do that, which doesn’t add additional paperwork and administrative expense as Governor Hoeven’s property tax rebate has done, is AFP’s initiated measure to cut income taxes by 50% and corporate taxes by 15%.