Say Anything Blog

A transcript from a television news report about gas prices last night:

(Sen. Byron Dorgan/ D-ND) “We need to work to put downward pressure on gas prices. This is a ridiculous situation.” Senator Byron Dorgan says the plan announced last week by fellow Senator John McCain to have a holiday on the federal gas tax might have a short term benefit to you at the pump

(Sen. Byron Dorgan/ D- ND) “He wants to borrow money to have a gas tax holiday. What I would like to do is have a holiday for some of these major integrated oil company profits.” Dorgan says another problem is the amount of oil the nation puts in reserves

He says each day about seventy thousand barrels of oil is put underground in this country in case of an emergency

(Sen. Byron Dorgan/ D-ND) “That puts upward pressure on gas prices. We ought to do exactly the opposite and put downward pressure on the gas prices.” However, with no relief in site… you continue to stomach the pain

The number of outright lies and half-truths apparent in even these few short statements is astounding.

First, it’s worth noting that there are a lot more than three major oil companies.  There are about a dozen major, international oil companies operating around the globe with several dozen more smaller, more regional oil companies competing.  None of these companies are “integrated” any more than Ford and Honda are “integrated,” though certainly that bit of populist brow-beating plays into Dorgan’s other economically-illiterate rantings quite well.

Second, no tax on a business in the entire history of market-based economies has ever driven the price of goods or services offered by that business down.  New taxes on business always result in the price of goods and services offered by that business going up.  So while Byron Dorgan talks about putting “downward pressure” on gas prices out of one side of his mouth, he’s talking about a tax that would do nothing but drive up gas prices out of the other side.  That Dorgan expects to be able to engage in that sort of cognitive dissonance without being called out on it is both a commentary on his opinion of the average North Dakotan’s intelligence and a scathing indictment of North Dakota’s media outlets which let him get away with such nonsense.

Third, as I’ve already pointed out, the amount of oil the government is putting into reserves has little-to-no impact on the overall oil market:

First let’s keep in mind that oil flows out of the strategic oil reserve as fast as it flows in.  Unless the size of the reserve itself is being expanded, the daily purchases of oil are done to keep the supply up as older oil in it is shipped out.  Much as with any product, the reserves can only be stored for so long and need to be kept fresh.  Thus some of the older reserves are sold to be used in the market while new reserves are purchased to keep the supply at the level mandated by Congress and the President.

This means that the SPR’s impact on the market is essentially neutral.  The Department of Energy lets as much out as is put in unless the overall size of the reserve is being expanded.  But that isn’t happening right now.

Second, let’s also keep in mind that 70,000 barrels of oil is a drop compared to overall US oil consumption.  Our country uses approximately 20 million barrels of oil a day.  Even if that 70,000 barrels of purchased oil didn’t have a neutral impact on the market (as I just explained) it would still represent just 0.35% of overall oil purchases in a day.

The conclusion?  Byron Dorgan doesn’t really care about high gas prices.  If he did, he’d advocate for lowering federal gas taxes and easing restrictions on domestic oil exploration (he has been a staunch opponent to oil exploration in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge).  What Byron Dorgan really cares about is taxing the hell out of oil companies (as though they’re not already being taxed to death) so that he and his fellow tax-and-spend liberals have more of the people’s money to play with.

That’s right.  The “whistleblowers” North Dakota’s liberals have been actively defending for months now - who people like Joel Heitkamp have all but lionized as martyrs - were rightfully terminated according to Grand Forks County state’s attorney Peter Welte:

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) A prosecutor says criminal charges are not justified for the firings of two North Dakota workers compensation agency employees.

Grand Forks County State’s Attorney Peter Welte reviewed an investigation into the firings at the state Workforce Safety and Insurance Agency.

Former WSI chief of support services Jim Long and former fraud investigator Todd Flanagan said they were fired because they called attention to possible wrongdoing at the agency.

North Dakota law forbids a state agency to retaliate against a worker for reporting possible misuse of taxpayer resources.

Welte said it appears the firings can be traced to other reasons besides the whistleblower reports from Long and Flanagan.

Those “other reasons,” at least as far as Democrat legislative candidate Jim Long and Billi Peltz are concerned, have to do with inappropriate conduct in the work place up to and including romantic touching on the job.  It’s too bad not one single media outlet in North Dakota has seen fit to publish this bit if exculpatory reality.

According to liberal Democrats in the state - as well as most of the state’s media - WSI is/was a den of corruption where worker claims were wrongfully terminated and the WSI employees who tried to expose the corruption were fired for speaking out.  Now not one but two independent audits by nationally-recognized firms have found no evidence of fraud or corruption at WSI, and a state prosecutor has found nothing illegal in the termination of the WSI “whistleblowers.”

Thus ending the ND Democrats’ #1 campaign issue for the 2008 election cycle.

This is what happens when politicians acting on behalf of lobbyists try to steer the economy instead of free people making free choices in a free economy:

April 21 (Bloomberg)—Sometimes, bad economic policies create small annoyances. Sometimes, they lead to catastrophes.

For years, the U.S. has heavily subsidized the production of corn-based ethanol. The global impact of that policy is beginning to lean toward the latter category.

There is no question that subsidies have had their desired effect: An enormous share of the grain crop is now devoted to energy production. How much? A new World Bank report states that ``almost all of the increase in global maize production from 2004 to 2007 (the period when grain prices rose sharply) went for biofuels production in the U.S.’’ Go back and read that sentence a second time. It is stunning.

With the world population growing, and incomes rising, increased food production is necessary to maintain an acceptable level of basic human welfare. Since 2004, corn production available to individual consumers hasn’t budged.

While corn isn’t the only foodstuff out there, it is an important one, and a shortage has led to soaring prices for just about every grain. Again according to the World Bank, from February 2005 to February 2008, overall global food prices increased 83 percent.

That’s causing significant distress in the U.S., especially among seniors with relatively fixed incomes. In the developing world, the risks are becoming extraordinary.

Read the whole thing.

Recently, while watching the eponymously-named HBO special John Adams, I was struck at the scene where Adams presents himself as Ambassador from the newly-formed America to the just-defeated King George III.  Before Adams meets with the King he is instructed on how to properly genuflect before the “royal presence.”

I thought to myself, “There is no way an American citizen would tolerate having to behave that way in front of a President.” And then I realized: Adams, in presenting himself before King George, probably wasn’t used to behaving himself as a citizen just yet.  The King himself undoubtedly expected Adams to continue acting as a subject.  But Adams was no longer the King’s subject, but rather an independent citizen.

That’s a distinction I think we’re starting to forget today.  After all, what makes a citizen?  Is the most basic definition not choice? In that, as citizens, we can choose to live where we want?  Eat what we want?  Say what we want?  Worship as we want?  Vote for who we want?  Read what we want?  And on and on?  This power to choose stands in stark contrast to life as a subject to a monarchy where people were forced to practice certain religions, prevented from reading certain books, prevented from criticizing the monarchy and nobility, prevented from living certain places and even eating certain foods.

So if the most basic definition of what it means to be a citizen - at least a free American citizen - is choice, what can we say of political movements policies that seek to deny us choice?  Movements such as the one that would deny us any choice in health care except government-run hospitals?  Movements that take away the choice private property owners have as to whether or not to allow smoking?  And how about policies that remove our choice when it comes to retirement money?  Social Security, for instance, confiscates large amounts of our paychecks every payday and forces us to put them in a national fund.  We are told that we have to do this for our own good.  Our own retirement.  But why don’t we have the choice to save for our retirements in our on way?  Using methods of our own choice?

This movement to deny us of our power to choose, also known as “liberalism,” is moving us closer and closer to being subjects to an elite ruling political class rather than independent citizens who, collectively, are the ruling class.

Unfortunately, though, far too many Americans are content to give up their power to choose in exchange for government services.  What they don’t understand is that by doing so they lose the right to call themselves citizens.  What’s worse, the put themselves so thoroughly under the government’s control that they must now spend the rest of their lives fearing change in political leadership which may rob them of the services they’ve become dependent on.

Thomas Jefferson once said: “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” So when farmers spend months fearing changes to key farm legislation, is that liberty or tyranny?  When a working class dad fears changes to the tax code that might impact his ability to make ends meet, is that tyranny or liberty?

It seems to me that it would be better to maintain our freedom, and our status as independent citizen, then to sell that freedom away to the politicians in exchange for ag subsidies and government-run health care.  For as Thomas Jefferson also said: “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

This column originally appeared in the Dakota Beacon.  If you’re not a subscriber, you should be.

You can listen to our weekly podcast live tonight by clicking here.  To call in to the show, call (347) 677-0693.

Here are tonight’s topics, or call in with your own:

Tonight we’ll be covering the following topics:

Are western evangelicals our last hope against Islamism?

Ethanol and wind power: Energy future or energy fads?

From Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers, is the real Barack Obama emerging?

McCain is collecting Social Security: Is the fact that he’s collecting it bad, or just more evidence of a social program that’s been a dinosaur since the 1950’s?

Again, you can listen live by clicking here.  There will also be a chat room available at that link which I’ll be monitoring during the show if you’d like to discuss with other listeners or ask questions.  Before you come into the chat room, be sure to register first so that not everyone in the room is named “Guest.”

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According to Google Trends, interest in North Dakota’s Bakken Formation is spiking.  At least on the internet.

North Dakota is sitting on a gold mine, I think, and we need wise political leadership to guide us through these times.  And by “wise” I don’t mean leadership that keeps taxes high and spends tax revenues as fast as they come in.

Anyone else suffering from a complete lack of shock over the fact that former aid to Byron Dorgan and Democrat Secretary of State candidate Kristin Hedger thinks earmarks are a “vital” function of government? 

Especially given that her family’s business (Killdeer Mountain Manufacturing) got a big, fat $8,000,000 earmark less than a year ago courtesy of her old boss Dorgan?

Of course Hedger loves her some pork.  She’s on the receiving end more than the paying end.  It’s always nice to get other people’s money.

I’d point out that Dorgan’s direction of public money to his political supporters is exactly the sort of mutual back scratching which gives earmark appropriations a bad name.

This is one of the headlines in the Bismarck Tribune’s “Top News” section this morning:

So what’s the big deal?  Why is it such a good thing that the arrival of Olive Garden is “Top News?” Well, it’s because there were no rapes or murders or other sensational types of crime to report.

Pretty cool, no?

Per a video announcement on Scott’s new website.

I’m not surprised to hear that Hannity is jumping ship from WDAY to Scott’s station given that Scott is a regular fill-in for Sean.  What’s more surprising is that Scott is also announcing the purchase of an FM station in the Fargo/Moorhead and the purchase of a new building in down-town Fargo.

The new building Scott is buying may have television capabilities too, I’m told, for further ventures down the road.  Word on the street is that Scott is taking aim at Forum Communications, which owns half of the media outlets in North Dakota.  If that is his goal, good on him.

North Dakota’s media, outside of a few bright spots, is woefully inadequate.

In Tuesday’s Grand Forks Herald (apparently not on their website) Tu Uyen Tran has a story about the recent North Dakota Supreme Court decision ruling that certain cities were charging higher traffic fines then they were legally allowed to do.  Here’s a copy of the court ruling.

Now I suppose the city councils and the like that were charging these exorbitant fines were operating in good faith and thought their actions were justified under the home rule charters they were granted by the state.  On the other hand suppose the phone company were charging people in our city hundreds of thousands of dollars they weren’t entitled to.  I’m sure that people would be outraged and demanding criminal charges to be filed.  The city attorney (who’s probably the most responsible for the illegal fines levied by the city) would be demanding refunds.

Why is it that they aren’t even talking about refunding the money to where it goes?  It seems to me that if they weren’t entitled to the money they need to pay it back, with sincere apologies.  Just to clear the air the only fine I’ve ever paid in Grand Forks city limits was a $13 fine for going 43 mph on North Washington.

But rather than being sheepish about levying fines they weren’t entitled to and collecting them with the full force of the law certain people in the city government think they’re entitled to keep collecting the money.  They want to lobby the state legislature to allow them to charge what they were charging.  How arrogant is that.  They were taking up to $200,000 a year illegally by force and when caught on the matter they want to just make it legal. 

If this was a private entity people would be talking investigation and fines. 

Councilman Kreun says that it’s not about the money.  He says that it’s about safety.  Well I remember at least one time when the fines were greatly increased by the city government and at that time it WAS about the money.  But if that’s really the case then they should offer to donate the money to charity rather than keeping it in the city coffers.  By the way Tu Uyen Tran who was the reporter of this story had an excellent blog post about how he doesn’t believe traffic fines slow down drivers. It’s worth a read.

Back on February 20th Senator Byron Dorgan announced, two years early, that he’d be seeking another term in the Senate.  At the time I said this:

I think Dorgan is probably getting ready for a Hoeven run at the Senate in 2010.  By putting things in motion early Dorgan will probably prompt the eventual Democrat nominee for Governor to ask Hoeven is he’s going to fulfill a full term in Bismarck or leave it to run against Dorgan.  They’ll want to get Hoeven to promise a full term as he did in 2004 when they pressured him into saying he wouldn’t run against Kent Conrad in 2006, but I’m guessing that Hoeven isn’t likely to do that again.

Now flash forward nearly two months, and guess who is in the media demanding to know if Hoeven will be finishing a full term in office?  Why the Democrat governor nominee of course.

BISMARCK - At a news conference today, Senator Tim Mathern said North Dakotans should know his future political plans and those of Governor John Hoeven to clear the air before the upcoming election.

“Since I began my campaign for Governor, people have been asking me if Governor Hoeven wants to be in office for 12 or more years, or if he wins will he resign and run for Senate or Congress in two years. I think these are legitimate questions for the highest state office in North Dakota.”

What’s interesting is that while Mathern wants Hoeven to clear the air on whether or not he’ll be completing a full term in office, Mathern himself is actually running for another office midway through his term as a State Senator from District 11.  This year all the legislators from even-numbered districts in North Dakota are up for re-election, meaning that Mathern’s seat isn’t up again until 2010.

Did Mathern “clear the air” with people from his district when running for re-election to the state Senate?  Did he tell them that he’d be running for another office halfway through his term in office?

Personally, I don’t care if he did or not.  Whether or not a politician will complete a full term is a non-issue as far as I’m concerned, but Mathern does come off as a bit of a hypocrite in holding John Hoeven to a standard he apparently doesn’t hold himself to.

So says Democrat candidate for Governor of North Dakota Tim Mathern:

We all know that people who do not have health insurance live in fear. They may have to go into debt to pay for health care or forgo medical care altogether.

But, what many people don’t realize is that a lack of health insurance can also result in premature death.

A new report by Families USA found that between 2000 and 2006, 200 people in North Dakota between the ages of 25 and 64 died prematurely because of a lack of health insurance.

I find it rather hard to believe that, with all the variables that make up an individuals health profile, that a simple lack of health insurance can be singled out as the cause of death for those 200 people.  But even if it’s true (and I doubt that it is) we’re talking about 33 people a year in a state of 635,000 people.

Certainly nobody likes death, but that’s a rather small number compared to the rest of the world.

Mathern suggests in his editorial that he will address the issue of insurance for the uninsured if he is elected Governor.  But I ask you this: Do we want a solution to this problem that is worse than the problem itself?

Liberals like Mathern are quite fond of government-mandated and/or government-run health care.  Yet we routinely hear of horror stories from people living in such systems from all over the world.  We hear of people in Canada who must come to America to get their brain tumors treated in a timely fashion.  We hear of people in Great Britain forced to travel to other countries to get orthopedic surgeries.  We hear of people in Sweden forced to wait years for procedures like gall bladder removals.

I’ll not argue that the health care system in America is perfect, but do we really want to drag the quality of care in America down to the lowest common denominator just to extend coverage to the scant minority that can’t afford it?  The vast majority of North Dakotans, and Americans in general, enjoy plentiful access to health care.  Why leverage that situation to solve a problem that isn’t much of a problem to begin with?  I think most Americans would rather take their chances in a free market health care system than be tied to a government-run system that, while universal in access, may be worse overall coverage than what we’re getting now.

As Thomas Jefferson once said, it is better to attend to the problems of too much freedom than the problems of too little.

Misusing government resources is a serious charge, but even to a limited government type of guy like me this seems rather ticky tacky.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) A prosecutor says he’s still considering criminal charges against the former chairman of North Dakota’s workers compensation agency.

Pierce County State’s Attorney Galen Mack says he’s reviewing a state auditor’s report. It says Robert Indvik improperly used a Bottineau County cell phone and pickup for Workforce Safety and Insurance agency business.

Indvik resigned as chairman of the WSI board, and he’s quitting his job as Bottineau County’s road superintendent.

The report says Indvik used $2,717 worth of county cell phone time over two years doing WSI business. It says he pocketed $225 in mileage money from Workforce Safety that should have gone back to the county.

That works out to about $113/month in cell phone charges, plus the gas.  But did the cell phone time really cost Bottineau County any money?  Was his cell phone usage within the allowable minutes on the cell phone plan, meaning it didn’t cost the county any extra, or is the state’s attorney basing this accounting on a per-minute charge?  Seems like an important distinction to me.  If he didn’t cost the county any additional money, where’s the violation?  Perhaps he violated policy, but that seems rather minor.

As for the mileage money, that small of an amount could be an accounting error.  It’s a long way from Bottineau County down to Bismarck.  Maybe he forgot to reimburse one trip.  Big deal.  This certainly doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that’s worth the time of a state’s attorney.  In fact, this case seems so flimsy it’s little wonder that Mr. Mack is only considering the charges instead of actually filing them.

If he had something, he’d file.  As it is, he’s just spreading innuendo.  Which in and of itself seems like a rather irresponsible thing to do.  Criminal charges are a serious matter, and impugning someone’s reputation with innuendo like this is not an appropriate action for a state’s attorney.

Which, to be frank, rather smacks of a desperate attempt by Democrats in the state to keep the WSI issue in the news in the wake of twin audit reports which completely exonerated the agency.

Which has me wondering what Mr. Galen Mack’s political affiliation is.

I also wonder why this sort of small-time nonsense is newsworthy, but revelations concerning inappropriate workplace activity by the endlessly-covered (and now fired) WSI whistleblowers isn’t.

A major development in the push for nuclear energy.

For North Dakota readers, I think nuclear energy (much more so than wind energy) is a place the state should be heading.  Unlike wind energy, nuclear energy has a proven track record as a sustainable and constant source of energy.  And it wouldn’t need to be subsidized by the government in order to be marketable.

With North Dakota’s wide-open spaces, and the availability of water sources like the Missouri River and Lake Sakajawea for cooling purposes, the state is a prime spot for nuclear development.

That’s right, the liberals at the Forum are crediting Byron “Windfall Profits Tax On Big Oil” Dorgan, the man who has spent the last several years opposing the expansion of domestic oil exploration in places like Alaska, with discovering the massive oil reserves in North Dakota’s Bakken formation.

PRAIRIE ROSES: To Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and other state and federal officials who pushed for a comprehensive scientific assessment of the oil reserve potential of the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana. The study by the U.S. Geological Survey was released last week, and its findings are amazing. It looks like the formation holds an estimated 3.65 billion barrels of oil, 1.85 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids. It’s nothing short of a world-class reserve of energy, right under North Dakota. New exploration and recovery technologies make tapping the formation economically viable. While there is plenty of drilling and pumping activity under way in parts of the Bakken, last week’s news could spur much more. And because the reserves are so large, oil and natural gas activity could be sustained for many years. It’s good news for North Dakota and good news for the nation’s energy security.

The thing is, will Dorgan let the oil in the Bakken be exploited?  He’s opposed the exploitation of other oil reserves in America, why his sudden change of heart on oil reserves in his home state?  Is it because this particular oil deposit stands to benefit a significant number of his constituents?  Which means that he’s basing his stance on oil issues more on political expediency than anything else?

If oil in North Dakota is good for the country’s energy security, what about oil in Alaska?  Or off the gulf coast?

And what about Dorgan’s history of wanting to gouge oil companies with massive new taxes on the very proceeds those companies would use to develop oil deposits like the Bakken?

I fail to see how Dorgan can make a career out of fight the oil industry only to turn around and become an oil hero the minute a big deposit is found in his home state.  Dorgan deserves criticism for his inconsistency and rank opportunism, not praise.