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.

...read more about South Dakota's future at the Madville Times!

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!

...read more about South Dakota journalism -- amateur and professional -- at the Madville Times!

The South Dakota Public Utility Commission begins its hearing today on the Keystone XL pipeline permit. A public input session tomorrow (Tuesday) evening at 6 p.m. will be part of a week-long process in Room 414 of the State Capitol Building in Pierre.

The state appears ready to propagate the illusion that another strip of sovereign Canadian territory across South Dakota is hunky-dory. SD Tar Sands Pipelines highlights a report submitted to the Keystone XL docket by economist Michael Madden on behalf of the state. Dr. Madden assesses the socioeconomic impacts of the Keystone I pipeline TransCanada is currently completing in eastern South Dakota. Somewhat maddeningly, Dr. Madden finds that among farmers he interviewed near the pipeline route he didn't get to have the project on their land, "it was sensed that there was feeling of lack of good fortune on their part." He finds "no major worry road rehabilitation would not be performed by the company" [p. 13].

Dr. Madden evidently avoided speaking to Mike and Sue Sibson—"pipeline shoved up my..." doesn't strike me as an expression of "good fortune." Dr. Madden also apparently didn't catch the KDLT story (now deleted—evidently KDLT can't afford the server space to archive a few kilobytes of text each week) about TransCanada tearing up roads and dragging its feet on repairs in Beadle County. (For more on road concerns, see the Beadle County Commission minutes from July 30.)

But let's back up. Where did that "lack of good fortune" comment come from? Dr. Madden appears to have discovered how much money it took to keep landowners quiet and perhaps make other neighbors wish they could have cashed in on black gold and perpetual environmental disruption. While landowners were bound to secrecy by confidentiality agreements with TransCanada, Dr. Madden appears to have wheedled from at least a few of his interviewees some numbers.

Although exact numbers were not easily acquired from those interviewed, it appears that in the area where these interviews were conducted a typical access easement involved a payment of approximately $40,000 per mile of land. In addition ample mitigation has been arranged for loss ofcrop or grassland production for the interruption in production caused by construction activity and post-construction restoration. No one interviewed indicated that the amounts involved were unfair. In talking to other farm operators who lived near the project, but had no land on the corridor, it was sensed that there was feeling of lack of good fortune on their part [Madden report to PUC, p. 13].

$40,000 per mile. Given a 150-foot construction easement, that's $2,200 per acre. Compare that to $1,863–$2,634 ag land values, depending on the neighborhood.

But here's the real kicker: $40K per mile, across about 220 miles through eastern South Dakota. Total TransCanada would be shelling out to our landowners by Dr. Madden's estimate: $8.8 million... the current price of the amount of oil that will shoot through the Keystone pipeline every four and a half hours.

Looks to me like TransCanada bought its way across our state with payments hardly bigger than rounding error on their final balance sheet.

Why am I not feeling good fortune?

...comments welcome at the PUC (Room 414, State Capitol, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 6 p.m.) and at the Madville Times!

Several days ago, Dr. Newquist's post on Aaron Huey's Pine Ridge photo essay in the New York Times sparked a fair amount of discussion (review also here and here) in the South Dakota blogosphere about the state of our Indian reservations.

More than tangential to that discussion, this good news: the Little Wound High School oral interp team won the Class A team championship at last weekend's Karl E. Mundt Dakota Invitational here at Dakota State University.


Mundt Dakota Invitational Class A Team Champs, 2009: Little Wound High School Mustangs. Pictured, left to right:

• Back: Coach Dan Snethen, Joe Bear Heels, Kyle Clifford, Wiyaka His Horse Is Thunder, Tressa Featherman, Elizabeth Charging Crow, Tyler One Horn, Chuck Good Voice Elk; DSU Foundation Development Officer for Endowments and Scholarships Beth Knuths.
• Middle: Melissa Hernandez, Harley Ferguson, Shyla White Lance, Tara Dull Knife, Fern Chase Alone, asst coach Crystal Apple, Tara One Horn, Kayla Hernandez
• Front: Liandra Young Bear, Halana Richards, Helene Stilson, Elaina Pourier

[Photo credit: Toby Uecker]

The Little Wound team distinguishes itself just by making it to the contest: their six-hour drive was the longest trip made by any of our contestants this year. For ten years, coach Dan Snethen has been rounding up busloads of speakers and student assistants to make the long trip to DSU. When he first brought kids to the contest, Snethen's interpers struggled just to place higher than fifth in preliminary rounds. In recent years, the team has gotten stronger, placing individuals and readers theater teams in finals against traditional interp powers like Sioux Falls Lincoln and Sioux Valley.

And this year, for the first time, they won the Class A team championship. Nice work, kids. And kudos to coach Dan Snethen for the time and effort he devotes to giving these kids some great opportunities.

...comments always on at the Madville Times...

One of the greatest merits of blogging is that it gets me into conversations that might never otherwise happen... often with people who vigorously disagree with me. Sometimes that conversation happens online, sometimes off.

Sometimes it's a two-and-a-half-hour conversation with a fellow Lake County resident whose language I have called "selfish, inconsistent, and at least unneighborly if not insulting."

David Pitts called Thursday evening.

From the top: Mr. Pitts called to ensure that at least two issues were straightened out:

1. Contrary to the characterization I gave in my original article on the bike trail the city wants to build across the land he farms on the southwest edge of Madison, David Pitts and his wife Gloria do not live in or by Ramona. They lived up in that neck of the woods for a long time, and Mrs. Pitts was postmaster in Ramona, but a year or so ago, they moved into Madison. David Pitts is a taxpaying resident of the city that wants a piece of his farm land.
2. Mr. Pitts also felt I dismissed his arguments against the bike trail and said he should have just said no. (I believe he may be referencing this passage from my Oct. 22 post: "I have deep sympathy for arguments in defense of personal property. If Mr. Pitts wishes to simply say, "It's my land, and I don't want to sell," that's fine.") Mr. Pitts emphasized that he had already told the powers that be "No" to this project five times—six, if you count the open house we both attended last week.

Mr. Pitts and I have lived in the same county for my whole life. He's my dad's age; his son Gary graduated from Madison HS a year before I did. It took this long for the two of us to end up in the same room last week, two feet apart over the same maps. But even there, David and I didn't talk. He had more important people at whom to direct his questions and concerns than a strange skinny guy with a backpack. I went to the meeting to listen, not argue. I checked my rebuttive urges until I had slept on what I'd heard a couple nights. Then I published a pretty stern critique that I knew wouldn't go down well with some readers.

Mr. Pitts said he was pretty steamed when a copy of the text reached him. When the phone rang and he introduced himself, I was ready for steam and checking my own valves. But we never got hot with each other. For two and a half hours, we had a perfectly neighborly and serious conversation about property rights, farming, bike trails, and local government.

Mr. Pitts and I still disagree on the value of a bike trail. I've given my reasons; let me give Mr. Pitts's view some air time so we all—including some of the folks who are more committed to building this bike trail than I am—can better understand where he's coming from.

Mr. Pitts has lived in this county all his life, just like me. His great-grandfather homesteaded here back in 1880, beating my forebears to this turf by a good 60+ years. He says he wants to see the land he has in this county remain in the family. He has at least as much reason for attachment to his patches of Lake County as I have to mine.

Mr. Pitts has honest concerns about the mingling of recreation and industrial agriculture. He sustains his land and productivity with heavy equipment and big chemicals. The big sprayer drivers and the crop dusters are as stingy as they can be with those expensive chemicals, but there will always be some drift. Right now, Mr. Pitts sees the fenceline, ditch, and raised roadway as a reasonable buffer to harm to passersby. Invite them onto the other side of that ditch on a ribbon of asphalt, and Mr. Pitts says his effective operating area will be reduced much more than the width of the trail and a flat strip of grass next to it.

(I did suggest going organic; Mr. Pitts said it would take too long to cycle the land into alternative production methods and turn a profit again.)

I haven't seen case law to justify Mr. Pitts's concerns about his liability for injuries on a trail crossing his land (and I'm reading up on SDCL 20-9 to see if it applies). But Mr. Pitts's concerns are reinforced by a grim experience on his land 22 years ago. His son went hunting with a couple other boys. Those other boys were walking the creek bed, one on each side, while Mr. Pitts's son waited at the end of the creek. A pheasant flew between the two walkers. One boy turned, shot from the hip.

There were 110 pellets in the shell that boy fired. The doctor took 97 pellets out of the other boy.

Mr. Pitts's liability insurance paid for the boy's medical bills. He was thankful worse didn't happen. But his insurer told him that, if he had charged a fee for the use of his land, his liability would have been much greater. So now, when the city asks him to accept payment for a recreational trail on his land, he puts two and two together and gets a concern informed by grim experience about having to pay for others' accidents.

Now as a businessman, Mr. Pitts could probably find out what the additional cost of liability insurance might be to cover the additional use his land would experience with a bike trail on it. He could add that to an estimate of the bushels of corn or beans lost to a 3-6 acre strip of pavement and grass. He would then have a good picture of what the city would have to offer to make the trail easement worth his while.

But interestingly, the city and other organizers have not once made a formal offer. No officials have told Mr. Pitts what the city will be willing to pay for the privilege of laying a trail on his land. In his dealings with the city, Mr. Pitts has gotten the distinct feeling that the city is more like a bully than a partner or the entity whose bills he pays with his taxes.

Cases in point: When the first proposal for a trail to Lake Herman started floating around a few years ago, Mr. Pitts says a trail organizer asked if they could sit down and discuss the plan over coffee. Mr. Pitts said he could do that some time... but he didn't hear anything else on the topic until a county commission meeting that considered applying for the grant to build the trail. Mr. Pitts says trail supporters considered circulating a petition seeking support to obtain land for the trail "by any means necessary" even before making any straightforward financial offers to landowners like him.

Mr. Pitts also notes that, as he understood it, the federal grant eventually obtained to trail up the neighborhood was designated for a trail along Highway 34. However (and this is all grapevine and no documentation, but I'm giving Mr. Pitts his say here), he heard that some of the bigger businesses along Highway 34 west of town didn't want the trail crossing their lots, and the city backed off that plan. So Mr. Pitts can't help getting the feeling that the city is just shopping around for little guys like him to push around.

His experience with the surveyors this spring didn't inspire any further confidence in our city leaders. With little warning, Mr. Pitts received a letter from Ulteig Engineering saying they would be coming onto his land to survey along the creek for a possible trail. Having just put in his wheat, Mr. Pitts was not eager to have surveyors tearing through his field on a four-wheeler. He called Ulteig, expressed his opposition, and apparently got them to call off the survey.

Soon afterward, however, he received another letter, this one from Madison's city attorney, Mr. Jencks, saying surveyors would be entering his land under statutory authority. Mr. Pitts couldn't remember the statute number in our conversation, but he says that when he showed his lawyer the letter, the lawyer looked up the law and found it dealt with abandoned mines and still required owner permission. Another phone call, another cancellation... but this time not before marking flags had been set in Mr. Pitts's field. Those flags are on wires. Leave one in the field, and it will run right through the combine and into the straw. Feed that straw to livestock, have a cow chaw down that wire, and that wire could kill the animal. Mr. Pitts thus spent some extra time in the field picking up flags to make sure what he sees as an unauthorized entry on his land didn't also result in the loss of a valuable critter.

Given what Mr. Pitts told me Thursday night, it's not hard to construct a narrative where, far from being the bad guy, Mr. Pitts is the average little guy, just trying to make a living and keep his land for himself and his kids while the powers that be—powers who wages he's paid for years with his sales tax and now property tax dollars—try to push him around.

So maybe we can understand a little better why Mr. Pitts might be inclined to offer some stiff resistance to a plan that could lead to the city taking his land. And in the face of such resistance, maybe we'll have to accept a compromise and live with widening the county road for a less-than-ideal but better-than-current bike route.

That's a discussion we as a community need to have. The best decisions will come from an open, above-board discussion where everyone, including David Pitts, gets a say.

...comments always welcome at the Madville Times!

Remember the story about Harney Peak trails being shut down for timber cutting? Rangers are trying to thin the trees and minimize the spread of those darn pine beetles.

Where did those pine beetles come from? Us. Climate change:

SARAH GARDNER: But wait a minute. Explain for us how this little beetle has anything to do with climate change? Because, I mean, my understanding is that the pine beetle is a native species, right? It's always been there. And a lot of westerners believe the only reason it's gotten out of hand is because we haven't been thinning out the forests enough, right?

SAM EATON: That hasn't helped. And you throw in fire suppression and the beetles basically have an all-you-can-eat buffet of lodge pole and Ponderosa pine. But the scientists I talked to -- like Jesse Logan, who's been studying the beetles for decades -- say the main thing driving this outbreak is human-caused global warming.

JESSE LOGAN: It's by the actions of people. It's directly our actions that are taking these forests out.

SAM: Let me connect the dots here. Logan says pine beetles have always been held in check by deep winter freezes. But that 2-degree increase in average temperatures you mentioned earlier, Sarah, has meant fewer cold snaps -- especially in the high elevations of the Rockies. Basically, the pine beetle couldn't have asked for better breeding conditions [Sarah Gardner and Sam Eaton, "Climate Change in Our Own Backyards," Marketplace, 2009.10.27].

Marketplace is running a big series on climate change; part 4 runs this evening (SDPB Radio, 19:00 CDT). Each piece is lengthy and worth the listen. The series webpage includes lots of resources on climate change science and economic impacts.

Climate change: despite what one Russian scientist and a Senate minority report want to believe, it's not the sun. Really. (Keep reading, if you're interested in actual science....)

...comments welcome at the Madville Times...

Where is George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism when we need it?

Governor Rounds says increased enrollment in Medicaid may set the state back another $40 million. Candidate Scott Munsterman's solution: kick people off Medicaid.

Munsterman said the state should scale back Medicaid eligibility and provide vouchers to purchase health insurance for catastrophic events.

He also called for more personal responsibility on the part of Medicaid recipients.

“We have a higher rate of medical care within our Medicaid system than other people do who have their own insurance,” he said. “We need to look at deductibles, we need to look at co-pays. We need to have a program that they can engage in, and become responsible, too” [David Montgomery, "Munsterman Says Medicaid Eligibility Must be Scaled Back in SD," Pierre Capitol Journal, 2009.10.27].

More personal responsibility—that's conservative code for not my problem.

Sure, we can probably find folks who take advantage of Medicaid (just like we can find insurance execs who take advantage of their clients... but I don't hear Munsterman calling for dropping the hammer on that system). But the problem the state faces in funding Medicaid is not a sudden surge of goldbrickers. The problem is thousands of responsible South Dakotans who have lost their jobs or/and their health insurance and have nowhere else to turn to get their families decent medical care. They don't want charity; they don't want to face the stigma of irresponsibility that conservatives like Munsterman keep piling onto folks who need help through no fault of their own. But the recession is hammering them, the flu is coming, and they just want to be healthy and not bankrupt.

The proper response from society is to say to these neighbors, "All right, we'll get you through." Candidate Munsterman's response is plain old class warfare—if folks need help, it must be their fault, and they should pay for their irresponsibility.

Practically, his proposal makes about as much sense as cutting unemployment benefits during a recession. It continues the long, sad history of Republican "leaders" unwilling to take the lead on getting South Dakota as a community to recognize our common obligations to each other in tough times. Blame the poor, demand nothing of the well-off: typical GOP.

Update 2009.10.29 07:10 CDT: A reader forwards this breakdown of South Dakota's Medicaid enrollment and spending. The data come from 2006 through 2008, so they don't capture the recession-related surge in Medicaid enrollment. But in FY2006, here's who was on Medicaid in South Dakota:

Medicaid Enrollment	SD	US	SD	US
Total Enrollment, FY2006	118,500	58,714,800	-	-	% of total residents
Children	70,100	29,182,400	59.2	49.7	% of Medicaid enrollees
Adults	20,100	14,879,700	17.0	25.3	% of Medicaid enrollees
Elderly	12,400	6,116,200	10.5	10.4	% of Medicaid enrollees
Disabled	15,900	8,536,500	13.4	14.5	% of Medicaid enrollees

source: State Medicaid Fact Sheet, StateHealthFacts.org, Kaiser Family Foundation, downloaded 2009.10.29

83% of the people Dr. Munsterman thinks need to take more personal responsibility for their health care are children, disabled, or elderly. Evidently the Republican philosophy is to balance the state budget on the backs of those who can't fight back.

...comments and prescriptions for humane public policy welcome at the Madville Times!

Brookings can produce some spectacular citizen journalism: Amy Dunkle graces the pages of The Post with a wide-ranging assessment of the cost of higher education in South Dakota.

There are lots of important lessons in Dunkle's report. South Dakota students and voters should pay particular attention to these numbers: while our governor and Legislature (and candidates for those jobs) may claim South Dakota has increased its funding for higher education, the truth is we citizens have been derelict in our duty.

Since 1999, the state's contribution (read: we taxpayer's contribution) to higher education has increased from $112 million to $174 million. That's about a 4.5% annual rate of increase. Not bad, right? Well, Board of Regents data (page 33 of this PDF) indicate that over the past decade, higher education's share of the state's general fund appropriations has stayed almost flat, actually slipping just a tick from 15.89% in 1998 to 15.33% in 2008. Sure, more tax dollars are going toward our universities, but the increase barely keeps up with the general inflation of the state budget.

In other words, when it comes to putting our money where our mouth is, South Dakota has not given higher education any higher priority than it did ten years ago.

Our universities are spending more and doing more, but the cost is increasingly borne by students and faculty. Tuition and fees are going up faster than the taxpayers' share. AsDunkle points out from BoR data, " the state’s support level was about 58 percent in 1999, leaving 42 percent for the student body. Today, that margin has shifted to about 52 percent for the students and 48 percent for the state."SDSU President David Chicoine calls that a "dramatic reversal" in higher ed funding in our state. Faculty are also bearing a greater share of the funding burden, as they face greater pressure to hustle research grants for their campuses.

Lacking the responsibility to pay our own way, we the taxpayers of South Dakota continue to believe we can rely on someone else—our students and the feds—to pay for the public good of education. Former SDSU president Peggy Miller calls us out on that irresponsibility:

“We have got to make the investment. You do not reap what you do not sow,” Miller said. “If we continue to fail to sow, we aren’t going to get the future we deserve.”

Simply put, Miller said, “We grownups are going to have to step up to the plate and pay our fair share” [Amy Dunkle, "State Universities’ Enrollments Rising Without Much Financial Help from the State," ThePostSD.com, 2009.10.27].

I hope every gubernatorial candidate will read Dunkle's full report and weigh in on whether they think the status quo is acceptable, or whether they are willing to call South Dakotans back to their common responsibility to invest in higher education.

...comments and proposals for responsible funding mechanisms welcome at the Madville Times!

I learn from Amanda Nolz that President Obama just signed into law more stimulus... for farmers! HR 2997 is actually the appropriations act for agriculture, rural development, the Food and Drug Administration, and other federal programs. It includes some increases that one would think will be good for South Dakota farmers...

• $4 billion more for food stamps
• $1.9 billion more for school lunches (and breakfasts, I imagine)
• $290 million to keep struggling dairy farmers afloat (maybe Rick Millner can pay his bills)
• $60 million to buy up dairy products for public food programs

And Senator John Thune, champion of ending federal bailouts, voted aye on this federal bailout of dairy farmers.
Let the free market rule, right?

...comments always welcome at the Madville Times!