August 2008
ArchPundit
Get Yer Signs…
Money raised will go for our cell phone bank to contact voters across the state at various parties and events from volunteers. This program is all about engaging young professionals and college students in ways that have never been tried before. By purchasing a yard sign, you’ll make sure that Missouri not only goes blue for Obama but all Democrats!
Pre-orders will be accepted during the week of August 1st through August 7th, at the bargain rate of $5 per sign. After our pre-order period, signs will be $7 through the inaguration parties we’ll be throwing throughout the state in November!
For more details and mass quantitiy orders, e-mail ydstlouis@gmail.com.
SEE YOU ON AUGUST 1ST.
Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds
Marin’s takedown on Blagojevich’s hypocrisy regarding the ethics bill and his own fundraising.
Teh Taxes, Teh House, TEH MADIGAN!
… to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.
Dude, Madigan isn’t a white whale. Give it up.
Rich has the latest eruption from Governor Ahab.
“Here’s another thing that Mr. Madigan keeps killing every year, and that’s fundamental education funding reform. There are several ways to invest millions and millions of new dollars in or schools and solve the school funding issue without raising taxes on people. And we’ve tried for six years to get Mr. Madigan and the House Democrats to properly fund our schools.”
And as Rich says, Patterson nails it:
But that’s part of the point here. Blagojevich gets to champion his efforts to expand health care, even if few of them ever result in success. And if his plan is blocked by the House, even for legit reasons, he gets to bang on Madigan, his chief political rival.
All of this misses one important point: because of today’s actions, there’s the very real chance that next year a college student will be diagnosed with cancer, catastrophically injured in a car crash, or suffer some other ruinous medical condition, have to leave school and, as a result, lose insurance coverage that would have been guaranteed if the state’s Democrats could just get along for five minutes.
More to the point, and as Rich points out in comments over at his place, the Governor is running around amendatory vetoing bills after being absent during the session. If he was this concerned with the bills, he could have easily been in Springfield helping to shape legislation.
This is just another reason no one trusts him.
Jeebus
Carol Marin makes me even more cynical about the boy king:
“Rock the System” Rod in 2005 promised to pass sweeping ethics legislation that would be nothing short of a reform earthquake. But while he talked the ethics game, he kept raising cash the old-fashioned Illinois way and still does. It’s instructive to look at an NBC5/Unit 5 examination of just one Blagojevich fund-raising day this summer to see what that really means.
On June 17, Blagojevich held one of his many unpublicized money-raising events. That night he picked up $167,000, more than half of which, $102,000, came from 23 companies doing business with the state. In the last five years, those 23 companies have put a million bucks into Blagojevich’s campaign coffers but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the rewards they reaped.
State records show those companies have gotten half a billion dollars — repeat, half a BILLION — in state contracts.
Think of it. Businesses put a million in and get half a billion of our tax money out.
Why doesn’t he want to sign the ethics bills? Think about his lawyer bills.
My Favorite Piece of Illinois Education History
Kadner points out the historical problem going to 1994 when Jim Edgar lied about school funding
But the political hypocrisy over the school funding issue dates back much further than that.
In 1994, Dawn Clark Netsch, a Democrat, ran for governor, calling for an income tax hike to fund public education in Illinois and reduce property taxes.
Incumbent Gov. Jim Edgar, a Republican, denounced Netsch’s plan and said school funding reform wasn’t needed. Edgar trounced Netsch in the election. But two years later, Edgar asked the Legislature for an income tax increase to fund the public schools.
To really appreciate Edgar’s hypocrisy, you have to go back to 1992, when a constitutional amendment was on the state ballot that would have forced the state to adequately fund the schools. The weekend before the election, Edgar announced on a radio show that he would vote “no.” The measure, which needed to get 60 percent of the vote to become law, failed by two percentage points.
It goes back further than that though with Edgar being on the right side in 1990 wanting to make permanent the temporary income tax increase to support education. He ran against Neil Hartigan who wanted to scrap the temporary income tax increase. So Hartigan lied about it in 1990, Edgar lied about it in 1994, Ryan lied abou it in 1998 and Rod didn’t lie, he just lives in fantasyland.
One of the plans being mentioned by Meeks and the black caucus is an attempt to sunset local education property taxes as happened in Michigan the early 1990s. Kadner’s column points out something interesting:
The National Center for Education Statistics says Iowa funds 45.6 percent of the cost of public education, Indiana 49.1 percent, Michigan 57.3 percent and Wisconsin 44.1 percent – compared to Illinois’ paltry 29 percent.
When Michigan opted for a new system, the state government paid 37% of the of the cost for public education.
Do We Have to Go Over the Oil Production Numbers Again?
Update: Read the comments for some more information on the estimates which give a different context on the specific claim. Also, check out Politifact for apparently a GAO estimate by DOE that estimates a much higher rate of savings, but doesn’t include how the DOE estimated the numbers so I’ll leave it with Craig’s last comment below as the final word.
Apparently so. The problem the GOP doesn’t get is that Obama’s suggestion to inflate your tires properly actually would do more to reduce our reliance on foreign oil than would opening the Gulf of Mexico and ANWR. I know math is hard, but let’s review the ANWR numbers:
EIA postulates two development rates for each of the three USPS probability estimates without specifying the effect of various levels of oil prices and technology advancements, ranging from 250 to 800 million barrels developed per year. EIA projects peak production rates from 600,000 to 1.9 million barrels per day over the six cases, with peak production estimated to occur 20 – 30 years after the onset of production.
Seven to 12 years are estimated to be required from an approval to explore and develop to first production from the ANWR Area. This study uses 9 years, to 2010. The time to first production could vary significantly based on time required for leasing after approval to develop is given. Environmental considerations and the possibility of drilling restrictions would directly impact the time interval to reach first production.
The USGS economic analysis of the ANWR 1002 Area calculates that once oil has been discovered, more than 80 percent of the technically recoverable oil is commercially developable at an oil price of $25 per barrel. The imported refiner acquisition cost in 2020 is projected in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2000 reference case at $22.04 (1998 dollars). At this price, the potential ANWR oil recovered would have a value between $125 and $350 billion (in 1998 dollars.)
How does that fit into world oil consumption:
The world oil price cases in this report are the same as
those in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2007. In the reference
case, world oil prices decline from $68 per barrel in
2006 to $49 per barrel in 2014, then rise to $59 per barrel
in 2030 ($95 per barrel on a nominal basis). Total world
liquids consumption rises to 118 million barrels per day
in 2030 in the reference case. The low and high price
cases are included to illustrate uncertainties in the reference
case projections (Figure 35). In the low price case,
world oil prices are projected to be $36 per barrel in 2030
($58 per barrel on a nominal basis). In the high price case,
oil prices are projected to be $100 per barrel in 2030 ($157
per barrel on a nominal basis). The projections for total
liquids consumption in 2030 range from 103 million barrels
per day in the high price case to 134 million barrels
per day in the low price case, indicating the substantial
range of uncertainty in the world’s future oil markets.
So the US might be able to add 1 million barrels per day from ANWR at the peak of production.
Look at the projected increase in usage between now and 2030:
Increase drilling doesn’t even cover the increase in demand through 2010. But look at the estimates for increased efficiency measures including, yes, keeping your tires inflated
By 2030, 6.5 million barrels a day consumption in the United States could be reduced. That just keeps us even with the expected increase above.
Our reserves are simply too small to make much of a difference in the price of crude oil.
The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.
Essentially, even though there is more oil than in ANWR, the difficulties of recovering it make the net expected increase for ANWR and OCS is 1.2 million barrels a day out of an estimated 118 million barrels per day consumption–and at the same time estimates of overall US production dropping from 8.5 millions barrels per day to 5.6 million barrels per day. Even in the case of the full peak production being in 2030 (not at all assured), US production drops by 2 million barrels per day.
Of course, US production matters little in a world oil market and all evidence indicates that demand will be increasing over this time so producing 1 million barrels a day is a drop in the bucket and, in fact, the way to reduce exposure to increasing oil prices is to reduce demand by increasing efficiency and changing to other sources of energy.
Drilling doesn’t do squat. The US does not have the reserves to continue an economy based on oil and do anything other than become more dependent upon foreign oil. The only way to move away from foreign oil dependence is to move away from oil.
Consider which scenario does the United States better. When Obama points ridicules McCain for suggesting drilling, he’s right both to ridicule McCain and right that inflating your tires will do the most good for you. Over time, the best solution is to make cars and trucks more efficient. It’s not a matter of it being a personal virtue to conserve, it’s better for the environment and your pocketbook.
Kadner on Meeks
Our politicians take the high ground, hoping nobody notices they’re standing on the bodies of schoolchildren whose lives have been sacrificed to boost their careers.
Some people will accuse Meeks of grandstanding.
I don’t think he’s going far enough.
In order to launch a protest that would really have an impact, children from every poor school district would probably have to block the entrances to the school houses in every wealthy school district in the state – not for a day but for weeks.
I believe the education crisis in this nation is worse than the terrorist threat.
Money won’t solve the problem, but it’s the only way to start.
The current system works for children who come from good communities and have good parents.
It does not work for those who don’t.
You can keep on punishing them for their misfortune, generation after generation, or improve the schools in an effort to make life better for everyone.
Reduce class sizes. Make the schools safe. Update technology. Invest in the future.
Declare war on ignorance.
You don’t need to fly an airplane loaded with explosive into a tower to destroy thousands of lives.
We’ve been doing it here in Illinois for 20 years.
We’ll hear plenty from people claiming vouchers will solve this problem, but the thing is, they won’t propose a voucher system that matches the funding.
Or even more dishonestly, people will claim that the CPS already has more money than districts doing better than it….which is true, but assumes the same inputs which we know is not the case. Chicago has higher rates of mobility than the vast majority of districts and that alone hinders the ability of schools to provide consistent education to students. The numbers mask the problem as well because it doesn’t capture the year to year mobility. Nearly 85 percent of students are from low-income families while the District has over 18 percent of the total public school student population in the state. Statewide, the rate of low-income students is 41 percent. If you take out Chicago from that number, you get a Statewide minus Chicago with a low income rate of 31 percent. For limited English Proficiency students, Chicago has a rate of 14.4 percent while the state not including Chicago has a rate of 5.5 percent.
That’s a Good Thing?
The Governor is one smart cookie. He is finally using all the power the Illinois Constitution gives him to create and administer the programs he wants for this state. Rewrite to Do Right is a stroke of genius. The Governor knows that the Senate President has got his back and he knows the judicial process is so excrutiatingly slow that whatever he does has little consequence for him.
This is about the level of Rod’s understanding of the Illinois Constitution. The Amendatory Veto doesn’t give the Governor the sole power to create a program and administer it, it allows a Governor to initiate legislative changes and have the Lege concur with a majority vote, override with a 3/5 vote or let the bill die.
In a strict sense it’s not a typical Executive power, but it’s far from a unilateral power. The Governor’s campaign (and what the hell else does he do,but campaign) is an effort to try and blame the Legislature for poison pills he inserts into bills and tries to blame them for not passing his changes. It’s transparent, juvenile, and will only exacerbate the problems.
Furthermore, the quote illustrates the same kind of irresponsible behavior we see in DC where the Executive does something regardless of the legality and then assumes the courts will take too long to fix it. The problem is the Lege here and in DC seem to think impeachment is too hard….
The Biggest Celebrities Rick?
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/n85LY3OWbbU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
