More on Oil Sand

A couple months back, Don had a post in which he proposed a method of funding methods of extracting oil from oil sand.

Today, there's a column up at TechCentralStation.com discussing how the price of oil per barrel is already driving more investment into oil sands.

I found this paragraph particularly interesting.

Oil sands in a single Venezuelan deposit contain an estimated 1.8 trillion barrels of petroleum, with 1.7 trillion in a single Canadian deposit. In all, about 70 countries (including the U.S.), have oil sand deposits although technology hasn't yet made them economical for exploitation. Of Canada's reserves alone, about 255 billion barrels (almost equal to the entire proved oil reserves of Saudi Arabia) is currently considered recoverable. And recovering it they are.

One point eight trillion barrels in Venezuela. One point seven trillion barrels in Canada. And that may be on the low end of the scale. This web page indicates that Canada's oil sands may total 2.5 trillion barrels.

Moreover, while the TechCentral column doesn't really discuss it, there may be as much as 1 trillion barrels of oil in oil shale in the western U.S. If I'm doing the math correclty, that same wikipedia entry points out that other non-hostile nations such as Australia (200+ billion barrels of oil), Germany (1 billion barrels of oil), Estonia 1.5 billion barrels, and Israle (5 billion barrels) have significant stores of oil held in oil shale.

What does it mean? Well, mostly it means that the world is not running out of oil. It's running out of $20 per barrel oil, but it isn't running out of oil. The increased price will drive increased efficiency and conservation in a far better manner than any type of government regulation or public service ad campaign. With the exception of Venezuela, the nations that possess great stores of oil sand and oil shale are fairly friendly democracies.

A New Orientation Center for the State Capitol?

Hmmmm...I guess having a state historical museum isn't quite good enough. There's proposal afoot to restore the old carriage house where state legislators may have parked their horse and buggies at the turn of the century.

State officials hope to move forward with a $5 million project to restore the Carriage House, located just north of the Statehouse, as a visitor center and transportation museum.

I'm sure that this will really jack up the number of tourists in Des Moines.

Tobacco Money "Windfall"

The state of Iowa expects to refinance the bonds it purchased with part of the tobacco settlement money. That action could increase the value of the settlement by as much as $144 million.

Though the exact amount to be received by the state isn't known, that hasn't stopped Governor Vilsack from promising to spend it on all types of infrastructure.

Still doesn't look like any of the money will be spent on funding what the tobacco money was suppose to fund--healthcare funds. You know, compensating the states for increased healthcare costs that result from tobacco products.

Here's an idea, replenish the rainy-day fund.

But, that's not sexy. It's boring. And it lacks the capability to buy votes or get on television cutting a ribbon at some new government funded boondoggle.

Willing to Negotiate

Okay, everyone else seems to be doing it, so I went and checked out the value of T'n'T.

Read 'em and weep people.

My blog is worth $70,567.50.
How much is your blog worth?

That's right, $70,567.50.

But, I don't want any potential purchases out there to be intimidated. I'm willing to negotiate.

Tusk Falls Short in Poland

Donald Tusk, candidate for President of Poland, conceded defeat to Lech Kaczynski a few hours ago. With 91% of the vote counted, Kaczynski had garnered a shade more than 55% of the vote in the runoff election.

A mildly disappointing outcome from the fiscal conservative standpoint. Tusk generally held the more limited government positions, favoring a flat tax and free-market economics.

Kaczynski is also considered a "conservative", but would be somewhat analogous to the paleo-conservative side of the spectrum here in the states--sort of Pat Buchanan-ish. Like Pat, he's a strong nationalist, Catholic, anti-abortion, and in mildly in favor of tax cuts. Also like Pat, he's a bit of a populist who isn't afraid to monkey around in the economy in the name of worker's rights, wage laws, pension protetion, and making the rich guys pay their fair share.

At the end of the day, it's hard for someone with a populist streak to avoid seaking the electorally popular position. There's a certain lack of principle in populists that frequently draws them them to move toward the authoritarian side of politics. For example, did Kaczynski give up some policy position in order to get the endorsement one of the more left candidates who was eliminated after the first round of voting?

However, for the time being, it's still interesting to note the slowly rising tide of more "conservative" candidates in Europe. All in all, there wasn't really a choice that was necessarily bad from the American point of view in the Polish Presidential runoff. Both of the two finalists were right of center. Both favor lower taxes. Both are fairly pro-America. Combined with the slim Merkel win in Germany, and there is a slight rightward trend in the center of Europe.

Congressional Fundraising

Interesting article in the Register today on fundraising by the candidates in each of Iowa's five federal congressional districts over the summer.

What I find interesting is that for all the bad press Steve King gets, there doesn't seem to be much of a groundswell for his opponents. Over the summer months, Joyce Shulte collected $509. Just $509. Another announced challenger, Bob Chambers, has not yet filed a report to the FEC, perhaps because he has not yet raised enough to trigger the reporting requirements.

In comparison, Steve King raised $51,000.

Moreover, if you start looking at the other districts in Iowa, you'll see that Rep. Leach's challenger in the 2nd District, David Loebsack, raised $48,000. In the 3rd District, Jeff Lamberti raised $94,000 in his bid to unseat Leonard Boswell. And in the 1st District, the various GOP contenders raised a combined $220,000 over the summer. The Democrat candidates in the 1st District totaled a combined $155,000.

So, you can tell that the Democrat challengers in the 5th District have a ways to go if they want to make Steve sweat even a little.

The reality of the situation is that Steve King is a guy with an 'R' by his name in a district where that little 'R' equals victory. If he grew horns and a tail, he might only win by 10 points. As it is, he'll probably win by twenty or more.

I suspect this is a good reason for why the Register has such a weird love-hate relationship with Steve. They endorse him because it just doesn't make any difference in the actual election. It's not like they could ever carry enough water to actualy make a contest out in western Iowa competitive. Mindful of the fact that they are constantly badgered as the "red star" by those of us on the right, they try to build themselves a little cover to the charges of being a monolithic left-wing shill by actually endorsing Steve King.

You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile

Now, it's never a good thing to be indicted. But, if you're going to be fingerprinted and have your mug shot taken, you might as well do it with style.

You know, I actually think that Tom's smile is probably a pretty good political tactic. First, it demonstrates a certain level of confidence that the prosecution isn't going anywhere. But, more importantly, it takes some of the edge off the news. It can't be nearly as much fun for the media to show a smiling, happy, picture as compared to one with a dejected, frowning, dishevelled face. If you put it on the front of a newspaper, someone would have to read the caption in order to know that the thing isn't a publicity shot put out by Delay's staff.

There's still a lot that could happen, but it increasingly looks like Delay will get out of this. And, if he does, I should think that he will become much more nearly bullet-proof from Democrat attacts. (He's still got some fence-mending to do on the right, not the least because of his assanine statement that there's no fat left to cut in the federal budget.)

Update: Cool. The Power Line pretty much agrees with me. Considering that I posted about four or five hours ahead of them, for my own personal ego trip, I'll assume that they cribbed from TnT. Ditto for these guys since I posted about three hours ahead of this. Advantage: (patting self on back) TnT.

Fauxscal Conservative Votes 'No'

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that supposed fiscal conservative, Iowa's very own Senator Charles Grassley, voted no on the Coburn Amendment. Thus rendering him a fauxscal conservative. (Thanks to State 29 for the terminology.)

For the uninitiated, the Coburn Amendment would cut the now infamous Alaska "bridge to nowhere" in order to fund the rebuilding of a bridge destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

I can only assume that our good Senator is concerned that if it becomes vogue to defend ridiculous projects that his precious Pork Forrest will be one of the first projects on the chopping block. (And good riddance if such was to be the case.)

Iowa Geek, are you sure you want to run for Iowa Senate? I think Chuck needs a primary challenge to remind him of what it means to be a fiscal conservative.

Tales from the "Duh" File

Some group has issued a report stating that attractive women are more successful at raising money for charity than others. Moreover, they are extra special successful if the target donar is male.

Wow! Will the wonders of modern research never end?!

The DM Register has nothing on us

The Register has started something called its “Young Adult Board of Contributors” and we recognize a good idea when we see one. They should not be the only ones to increase the diversity of their commentary by bringing in young people’s ideas, so we have agreed to let Lance, our TnT intern post here on occasion. Lance is nine years old and is in third grade. I helped him with the spelling and such, but he wrote every last word. We’ll gladly put him up against the Register’s young writers.

Gas Prices Affect Everything
Gas prices are going down right now. If gas prices keep going down, a problem will be avoided. If not, businesses like UPS that need a lot of fuel will go up in price and if a business used UPS a lot it would have to raise its prices to keep using UPS and if that business was used a lot and even if it wasn’t used a lot it would have to raise its prices and so forth.

The food prices will go up not just because it must be shipped. It also needs to be grown and harvested that would take fuel so farmers would have to sell it at higher prices. It would cost more to keep a school warm. It will affect everything in the country.

Too bad we produce less then half the oil that we use. There’s more than one way to solve the problem. Some people think conservation is the key to stop gas prices from going up. Some people think using other fuels is the key. Other people think we need to get more oil from this country. I don’t have a solution. I know there is a solution and hoping they find it soon.

Lance,
Tusk and Talon intern

You may be wondering how we select our interns and how well they’re paid. For the former, there is some nepotism involved, and as to the latter, not well.

History in the Making

It's shouldn't be much more than another hour or so until the Iraqi people go to the polls to approve the draft constitution. Iraq the Model has this to say:

Only hours separate us from a major historic day for our nation (too many historic days for Iraq in these two years!). Tomorrow will draw a line that would mark the beginning of a new era in Iraq; a constitutional Iraq will become reality.
It’s only a beginning since there will be more steps to go but it’s the right beginning because it’s a transition from temporary laws to a permanent-though amendable-constitution on which the people will assume control through their elected representatives and through their own direct votes.

I wish the greatest of luck to the Iraqi people.

Happy Birthday to the Iron Lady

It's Margaret Thatcher's 80th Birthday today (October 13). For those of us on the conservative side of the spectrum, we really ought not let the day pass without pausing for a moment to thank Ms. Thatcher for being such a steadfast ally of ours throughout the 80's. Moreover, her election to Conservative party leader in 1975 and then to Prime Minister in 1979 were harbingers of America's move away from the statist policies of the 60's and 70's with the election of Reagan in 1980.

So, Happy Birthday Maggie.

And Speaking of a lack of education...

One of the things that, generally speaking, that we totally fail to teach in schools is basic economic theory.

Case in point, Governor Vilsack, apparently has absolutely no understanding of the idea of opportunity costs. Opportunity costs is the idea that it isn't just what you spend and what you get that matters. It's what you could have gotten had you made your choices differently.

For example, let's say that I make widgets for my employer from nine to five. I can earn some extra money by working overtime on Saturday. My buddies ask me to help them roof a house on Saturday. I can make $200 roofing and $100 on the widget line. By choosing to make widgets, my opportunity cost is the loss of the $200 roofing gig. My opportunity cost for roofing is losing the $100 from widgeting. In either case, there is an opportunity cost, it's just that if I chose to roof, I get $100 more than I otherwise could have. If I widget, I get $100 less than I would have. While I come away from either decision with more money than I went in, one decision is economically better than the other.

So, let's now look at what the governor said as he heaped praise on the Iowa Values Fund.

Vilsack said the program had helped create or retain about 20,000 jobs with an average annual salary of $37,000. State economic development officials said more than 300 projects had been awarded a total of more than $99 million since June 2003.

While I agree with Ed Fallon (a not too common event) that the numbers Vilsack provides are probably bogus, let's assume for the moment that they are absolutely correct. So operating under such an assumption, shouldn't I be saying, "Wow! This is the greates government program since the G.I. Bill." Well, maybe and maybe not.

The greatness of the program simply can't be measured by saying, "We spent $99 million and got 20,000 jobs out of it. You have to look at what we would have gotten had we spent that $99 million on something else. Or better yet, had the government never taxed that $99 million away from Iowa residents and businesses. For example, if we weren't taxing our large employers with one of the highest business tax rates in the country, we maybe wouldn't have had to spend dime one to bribe any of them to stay. If you and I each had a little more coin of the realm in our pocket, we would likely spend that at local businesses causing them to hire more people. Or, even better, some of us would have saved such money and maybe started our own business and created our own new jobs.

Maybe the Values Fund does make sense (though I highly, highly, doubt it). But you simply can't just say that we spent some money and got something that was of value in return. You have to take into account what opportunities we lost by going down this path. Governor Vilsack either doesn't know that, or doesn't want to talk about it.

Why Does Everyone Think Iowa is the Potato State?

When I started reading this article, Vilsack scoffs at Values Fund opposition, I really thought that the first thing I'd come to that would set me off would be some tripe about the efficacy of extorting money from our current businesses in order to give a leg-up to their competition. That turned out not to be the case.

Instead, since I had started with the sidebar on the web page, it was there that I first became annoyed. In the sidebar, Vilsack expresses his disappointment with the fact that many Americans don't know much about Iowa. He blames this ignorance on a lack of "community" in the nation.

Wrong.

The cause is a loss of standards in our school and a refusal to make kids simply memorize facts about the states. You can't "community" your way to knowledge. You have to have information taught to you and then be drilled on such material until you can demonstrate that you do, in fact, know and understand the material.

How hard is that?

Great Idea

Today, the Register's Dick Doak suggested that John Kerry sue the Swift Vets for libel as a way to...wait for it..."civilize the attacks" found in political discourse.

Ah yes, I'm sure that lawsuits would really ratchet up the civility meter.

This passage is particularly laughable:

Kerry also probably could prove that the Swift Boat campaign cost him votes and possibly the election, bolstering the case for stiff punitive damages.

Uh, I'm not an expert in remedies, but I don't think that, even if Kerry did win, that something as speculative as why any particular individual out of the 60 million who voted against Kerry would support the awarding of punitive damages.

So, on first blush, let's just say that I found this suggestion to be devoid of any redeeming feature.

But then Don pointed out to me that if Kerry actually filed a libel suit, it would force him to actually demonstrate that the charges were false. He'd have to open up the entirety of his military file and show exactly the extent of the injuries for which he obtained his Purple Hearts. He'd have to actually show that he was, in fact, in Cambodia on Christmas Eve.

So, hey neo-JFK, file away buddy.


Update: State 29 adds his thoughts on the idea.

Update 2: Royce has maybe the definitive take.

1000th Post

Nothing fancy about this one. I'm just making a quick announcement that this is Tusk and Talon's One-Thousandth Post.

I invite people to let us know what have been our Greatest Hits over the past two-plus years.

World Round-Up

There were several pretty interesting stories out of Europe today.

Everyone probably read something about the two top vote-getters from the recent German elections finally agreeing to a power-sharing arrangement. The deal clears the way for Angela Merkel to become German's first woman chancellor. However, in order to get Gerhard Schroeder to step aside, Ms. Merkel's party had to grant eight cabinet posts to Schroeder's party (two more than Merkel's party kept). That's a steep price to pay for the chancellorship.

In other news, Poland is headed to a runoff election because neither of the two leading candidates for its presidency received at least 50% of the vote. What's really interesting is that the both of the leading candiates are considered fairly conservative. The guy with the most votes, Donald Tusk, is a free-market guy who ran on a platform of going to a flat tax and deregulating the Polish economy. The guy who came in second, Lech Kaczynski, is considered to be a social conservative who is stressing traditional values with a dash of free-market rehtoric.

I'm somewhat torn in who I would like to see win. Both are more pro-U.S. than the outgoing president. Both are considered men of the right. Tusk appears to be the more economically-minded of the bunch. Moreover, it's hard for me to forego endorsing the guy named "Tusk". But, he's in favor of further integrating Poland with the EU. Booooo. Kaczynski isn't all over the flat tax and deregulation like Tusk is. However, it's not like he's against them, he's just more concerned with cleaning up the corruption of the outgoing, and "former" Communist, Aleksander Kwasniewski. Ah, to heck with it. Either of these guys looks like they'll be good. I'm stoked that something like 70% of the Polish voters pulled the lever for center-right candidates.

And then, in the most bizarre thing I've seen in a while, there's this from UNICEF. Go check it out. No comment other than, "What the....?" should be necessary.

Newton Race Track Financing

Just saw on Channel 13 news this evening that the City of Newton suspended spending more money for improvements to roads around the location of the proposed speedway because:

...U.S. Motorsports still hasn't secured financing for their $57 million commitment to the project. It's the same concern that the city and city officials had about U.S. Motorsports back in July. Councilman Ron Foreman says U.S. Motorsports claims to have its funding in place but as of Monday had no evidence of that.

Outstanding. They've been moving dirt out there for weeks now. They've alreagy got the tunnel and the hills upon which the stands will rest partially formed up. They've already scheduled a race for next October. Now the city comes through with some common sense?

Our friend Dave Hogberg has authored a piece on Health Savings Accounts.

It's good stuff. Go check it out.