Rolling Homework: Web Buses!

I don't know if this project is a money-saver or not. But for all those kids around South Dakota with long rides to and from school, maybe we can maximize our educational impact by transforming all of our buses into rolling Web classrooms:

One school bus in Arkansas’ Pope County has been transformed into a mobile classroom equipped with computer screens mounted to the ceiling, earphone jacks, wireless Internet access and a separate scanning device to record bus activity.

The five 19-inch customized computer screens stream math and science content from PBS, NASA, the Discovery Channel, CBS News and the Smithsonian Institution for students to watch on their hour-long rides to and from school. The screens also include video-conferencing capabilities [Lauren Katims, "High-Tech School Bus Teachers Students on the Road," Government Technology, 2010.12.14].

I know DSU athletes get to travel on a Web-capable bus. Does the tour bus the MHS boosters bought for our athletes have that capability? Kids could travel to games during the day and still watch class via webcam!

Web buses could have application beyond giving the kids a chance to do homework and web-chat with teachers on the way home. Perhaps we should start up a Web bus service for commuters from Madison to Sioux Falls. Just hook up some satellite wireless and let all the adults enjoy a couple extra hours a day of laptop productivity while the bus driver keeps things between the ditches.

Five Narrow Lanes Cause No Uptick in Madison Highway 34 Accidents

Uncle! Uncle!

I raised a fuss when the city decided to restripe Highway 34 through Madison into four skinny driving lanes and a center left-turn lane. Madville Times readers gave the new stripes a hard thumbs-down when they changed the face of Madison traffic.

But initial traffic accident data suggest the five lanes are doing exactly what the state engineers promised: reducing accidents.

Between Jan. 1, 2010 and June 1, 2010, DPS officials logged one angle-intersection collision and one left-turn lane crash on SD-34 inside the city. In comparison, the city saw an annual average of about a dozen accidents from 2006 to 2008 that could have been influenced by the lack of a center-turn lane through town.

...The accident information for the first half of 2010 indicated that there were zero incidents of rear-end or sideswipe, same-direction collisions.

During 2008, DPS officials collected information on Madison SD-34 accidents that included two angle-intersection; four left-turn; three rear-end; and one sideswipe, same direction collisions. The total number of reported collision types was 10.

In 2007, they collected data on 10 angle-intersection; seven left-turn; one rear-end; and one sideswipe, same direction crashes for a total of 19.

During 2006, DPS staff members accumulated information on four angle-intersection; two left-turn; five rear-end; and two sideswipe, same-direction collisions for a total of 13 [Chuck Clement, "Accident Data Indicate Fewer SD-34 Collisions in Madison," Madison Daily Leader, 2010.12.09].

Now these data alone posit no causation yet, and state DOT engineer Scott Jansen would like to get a couple more years of post-restripe data to make some more reliable comparisons. But consider: current accident data show a nearly 7% increase in the number of crashes across South Dakota this year compared to last. Small towns may be rife with statistical anomalies, but so far, the five-lane restriping in Madison appears to be living up to its safety promise.

But I still think Jon Hunter had a better plan... and you'll still see me riding my bike right down the right-wheel track in that right lane. Make way!

Tar Sands Oil Kills Ducks; TransCanada Spoils Roads

If you still aren't mad at TransCanada for slurping up $10.5 million in tax refunds that South Dakota could have used to fund education and roads (see Rep. Mitch Fargen's duly indignant comments at the Madison Chamber forum last week), how about getting mad at them for poaching ducks?

Well, I suppose it's not poaching, and it's not TransCanada directly, but they are part of tar sands industry that is killing ducks without a hunting license, ducks that you and your law-abiding, South Dakota license-holding pals could joyfully and legally blast from the sky. Reports Plains Justice:

Just a week after paying a CAN$3 million fine for the deaths of 1600 ducks that landed on its tailing ponds in 2008, Canada tar sands extractor Syncrude had to euthanize 230 ducks that landed on its tar sands tailing ponds this week (there was good coverage of the story out of Calgary). To look at their website, you’d think Syncrude was an environmental organization, but they’ve been unable to resolve the lethal combination of highly toxic tailings ponds and a huge migratory waterfowl corridor. In spite of reassurances from industry and the Canadian government that the 2008 event was a mistake that would never happen again, here we are [Carrie La Seur, "230 More Ducks Dead in Tar Sands Tailing Ponds," Plains Justice Today, 2010.10.28].

TransCanada is more directly responsible for some road wreckage here on the Great Plains. Just as has been the case in South Dakota, Kansas officials and residents are struggling with road damage caused by construction last year of TransCanada's Keystone pipeline.

So thanks to our addiction to foreign oil, you'll have fewer ducks to shoot and you'll burn more gas trying to get to those ducks as you detour around wrecked roads on TransCanada's pipeline route.

Stimulus: Invest in Teachers, Tunnels...

Small stimulus note: If I'm reading the September Expenditure report correctly, the Madison Central School District has about $269,000 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars waiting to be pumped into the local Lake County economy in the form of salaries for regular employees, tutors, and aides. $269K is a lot of groceries at JubiShine....

Bigger stimulus note: like our Governor Rounds, New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie seems determined to sabotage the federal stimulus, not to mention make the daily commute for thousands of his constituents much worse. Governor Christie has canceled a new tunnel project from New Jersey to New York City. New infrastructure is exactly the kind of investment America needs right now. Building new tunnels and rail lines and other infrastructure creates jobs now and lays the foundation for long-term economic growth. But Tea Party thinking calls that investment taxes and socialism and takes America back... to economic decline.

Texting Bans Don't Improve Road Safety: Toss or Tighten?

I was wrong... sort of. Last month, I suggested there could be a connection between U.S. House candidate Kristi Noem's habitual lawbreaking and her votes against texting-while-driving bans in the South Dakota Legislature. I stand by my contention there that Noem's disregard for the law may incline her to vote against holding other drivers accountable for dangerous behavior.

However, my original argument did not anticipate this study, which finds texting-while-driving bans do not reduce the number of highway crashes. The study actually finds a slight uptick in insurance claims for vehicle damage in three of the four states surveyed. The researchers speculate that thumb-typing addicts are not only ignoring the bans but using their devices in their laps, out of view of the cops, thus taking their eyes that much more off the road.

So what's the proper response? It's clear that texting behind the wheel is dangerous. Even if we can't stop people from doing it, we should hold accountable the folks we catch doing it. If people respond to a law against bad behavior by behaving worse, do we abolish the law? Do we seek other ways to curtail the bad behavior? Or do we conclude that the law isn't tough enough and stiffen the penalty?
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Bonus Highway Mayhem: The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which was involved with the texting-ban study, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary last year by crashing a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air into a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. Good old American steel against modern plastic—that couldn't be pretty, could it? Well, it wasn't... for the dummy driving the tail fins. Both cars were totaled, but the passenger compartment in the Malibu remained almost wholly intact, while the passenger compartment in the Bel Air crumpled into the driver. See video with commentary here.

Republicans Worse Drivers Than Democrats?

The Daily Beast crunches some numbers to determine which states have the most dangerous drivers. A very odd result: nine out of the ten worst states (North Dakota, Montana, Kentucky, Louisiana...) voted for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Nine of of the ten best states (Connecticut, Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts...) voted for Barack Obama.

Daily Beast finds South Dakota has 11th worst drivers in the nation. We rank 5th worst for DUI and failure to obey traffic signs or signals.

No comment yet from Kristi Noem....

Bypass Dusty!

No, this isn't a PUC post. But now that I have your attention....

Mostly recovered from a mowing mishap Sunday, I hit the road with the Madville Times mobile unit this noon. Coming toward town, I saw what looked like a dust storm... which made no sense, since there's no wind to whip up the dust. What the...

cough cough cough!

Ah, of course. Two days before the Steam Threshing Jamboree brings thousands of Cockshutt aficionados to Prairie Village, someone decides it's a good idea to lay fresh gravel on the Highway 34 bypass all along the south edge of Madison. Makes perfect sense: you lay gravel when you're expecting more cars to drive through and help you grind the rock into the road, right?

Cars and trucks kick up dust on the Highway 34 bypass
on the southwest edge of Madison.
(Note Madville Times mobile unit parked by stop sign.)

Now folks coming to Prairie Village are used to a little dust. But nobody likes rock chips in the windshield. So if you're coming to Madison this weekend and you're not hauling a big camper or trailer load of tractors, you might want to bypass the bypass and stay on the main 34 route through town. Besides, that route's more fun—you can stop at Dairy Queen and get some ice cream!

Man Rolls Truck on Highway 34, Walks Away with Scratches

Paramedics arrive at scene of vehicle rollover at
Highway 34–Territorial Road intersection,
Lake County, SD, 2010.08.24 ~10:30 CDT

Whew—that was close! As we Heidelbergers headed to town this morning, we saw a tan car in the turning lane on Highway 34, west of Prairie Village, that leads to Territorial Road and the country club. The car appeared ready to turn south, off the highway, but then appeared to move back into the westbound driving lane.

Behind that car, an orange and white pickup truck was westbound. Good thing he wasn't on his cell phone. The driver saw the car coming back into the main lane, slammed on the brakes and swerved north. Brakes and tires smoked, leaving tracks on the pavement. The truck missed the car. It hit the north curb several meters down from the Moonlite Inn's west entrance, went in the ditch, caught the dirt, and flipped and rolled sideways.

The cab got crunched a little. Windshield and back window popped out. The fabric cover on the bed tore off and tools and such spilled out of the back. The driver of the truck, the only man inside, opened the door and walked away with scratches. (Your assessments of classic Chevy engineering are welcome.)

Lake County law enforcement and paramedics tend to
rollover victim (seated in police cruiser). Driver of other
vehicle and grandson (right) wait to speak to officer.

This accident happened on the big highway curve right by Prairie Village. The highway will busy this weekend with everyone coming for the steam threshing jamboree. Come to Madison, have loads of fun, spend loads of money, but please, watch where the heck you're driving!
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Update 2010.08.25: MDL publishes the names of those involved: Dean McCool was driving the truck; Judy Conrad was driving the car in front. MDL omits the key detail that Conrad's car was straddling the turning lane and the driving lane.

Sioux Falls Bus Bargain: $3 a Day!

I've never ridden a Sioux Falls bus. I suspect very few of us out-of-towners have done so. We come down to the big city in our Personal Family Tanks, load up on provisions at Hy-Vee and Menards, and generally terrorize you big-city folks with our country driving.

That said, Joe Sneve's report yesterday on the new fare boxes on Sioux Falls buses makes me think mass transit in the Queen City is quite a bargain.

With the new system, riders will be able to buy one-day bus passes for $3, a seven-day card for $10, a 10-day card for $8.50, and a 30-day card for $25. Except for one-day cards bought on the bus, fare cards are not validated until the first time it is used in the fare box. Passengers can ride the bus unlimited during the validation period [Joe Sneve, "New Fare Boxes Board City Buses," that Sioux Falls paper, 2010.07.26].

$3 for a full day of urban adventure? Wowza! When I lived in Vancouver, B.C., six years ago, I paid $3 for a two-zone ticket that lasted just 90 minutes. (That's up to $3.75 now... $2.50 during non-peak hours.) A Vancouver day pass is $9; a monthly pass ranges from $81 to $151. So for the typical urban dweller trying to get along without a car, travel in Sioux Falls is remarkably cheaper than travel in Vancouver.

Of course, it's still not as cheap as going everywhere on your bicycle! Even there, Sioux Falls beats Vancouver, since it's not raining all the time.

Now granted, you can go all over a lot more kingdom come in Vancouver than you can in Sioux Falls. There's more there there! Compare the metro areas of Sioux Falls and Vancouver (side-by-side maps courtesy of Yahoo Maps):

Sioux Falls and Vancouver metro areas—click to enlarge!

The transit system in Vancouver has a lot more penetration of the city than the Sioux Falls system. Consider the Sioux Area Metro map:

Sioux Falls bus routes—click to enlarge!

Check out that big transit dead zone in southeast Sioux Falls. Evidently the folks in the ritzy development from Tuthill Park outward don't feel the need for mass transit. But hey, your housekeepers have to get to work, don't they? Oh well—perhaps as commerce blooms on the East Side (cue Moby!), a bus route will punch through to Highway 11.

Someday I'll take a day for a mass transit excursion around Sioux Falls (we did that on our family trip to Winnipeg last year—loved it!). In the mean time, local riders, I welcome your comments. How's the bus treating you in Sioux Falls?
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p.s.: The fare boxes mean less freeloading and more driver attention on the road. This new, more fair and efficient electronic system comes to Sioux Falls courtesy of federal stimulus money. Thank you, Uncle Sam.

Madison Names Price for Bike Trail Land Acquisition

On the agenda for tonight's Madison City Commission meeting: discussion of the how much the city will pay landowners for allowing construction of the Lake Herman Recreation Trail on their land.

You have page through nineteen liquor license applications to get to it, but on page 45 of the agenda packet, you can find out how much the city plans to offer David Pitts and other landowners for the privilege of taking the right of way permanently out of their use.

If I'm understanding what's written in the city's "acquisition formulas," each landowner gets $500 up front. Then the city goes to Shirley Ebsen's office at the courthouse, gets the highest per-acre assessed value of the land in question, and multiplies by 2.

For temporary easements (the land the city will need to run the equipment up and down along the construction route), the city multiplies that land value by 20%. The city will add another 10% for crop damage.

For permanent easements, the city multiplies the land value by 140%.

Now I haven't taken the tape measure out to David Pitts's land, but I'm guessing the rec trail would slice about three acres off the east edge of his land. Let's wild-guess the value at $3000 an acre. By the above formula, the permanent easement for that strip of land would be the following:

• $3000 x 2 x 1.4 x 3 = $25,200.

What do you say, David (and fellow farmers): is that price enough to seal the deal?

And if it isn't, is the city willing to go higher? Is this bike trail worth paying the price the market will demand? And if not, will the city risk the political fallout of eminent domain?

A bike trail would be nice. It would draw tourists and boost economic development. But as I heard a wiser financial head than myself say this week, the bike trail is a want, not a need. The city tonight will make clear the price it wants to pay. If David Pitts doesn't want to accept that price, then so be it. Eminent domain should not follow.

By the way, I went for a couple of bike rides this weekend. Both days I rode the county road that parallels most of the proposed bike route, 234th Street, from Lake Herman State Park to Madison, just as I have for 21 years. Nice smooth road, traffic generally light and polite. Sure, I'd enjoy another path, but I can get where I want to go now just fine with the existing infrastructure. Of course, if the county would like to widen the shoulders, I wouldn't complain. David Pitts might not, either.

Harding County South Dakota's Car Capital

South Dakota's Motor Vehicle Division has some diverting statistics on motor vehicle registrations in our fair state. Naturally, our most populous counties have the most cars and trucks. But if you calculate vehicle registrations per 1000 people, you find that Harding County has the highest number of licensed vehicles proportionate to population. Harding County has 1952 licensed cars, trucks, SUVs, and vans for every 1000 people (and they don't have many more than 1000 people). Add in trailers, snowmobiles, and other road machines, and you get almost three registered sets of wheels for each Harding County resident.

The top ten counties for registered passenger vehicles per 1000 population:

County	Population (est. 2009)	Car/Truck Regis./1000 people
Harding	1123	1952
Potter	2053	1887
Campbell	1344	1789
Sully	1348	1690
Jones	1037	1661
Haakon	1777	1638
Perkins	2869	1563
Gregory	4003	1551
Hand	3238	1541
Hanson	3553	1537

Those high-vehicle counties are all relatively small counties. The ten counties with the lowest vehicles per population are an interesting mix:

County	Population (est. 2009)	Car/Truck Regis./1000 people
Mellette	2042	926
Bennett	3348	898
Clay	13490	897
Ziebach	2552	853
Brookings	30,056	840
Minnehaha	183,048	824
Dewey	5969	740
Buffalo	2067	597
Todd	10,095	530
Shannon	13,727	448

Our largest county, Minnehaha, has the fifth-lowest number of registered vehicles proportional to population. (Keep bringing that ratio down, Minus Car and friends!) Of course, the concentration by geographical area still makes Sioux Falls a zoo. Beyond Minnehaha, the low registration numbers split between some of South Dakota's poorest counties and our two big campus counties, Clay and Brookings.

A few more interesting numbers from SDMVD:

• Harding County also has the highest hauling capacity by population, with 672 trailers registered per 1000 people.
  
• Custer County has the most motorcycle, moped, and ATV registrations: 162 per 1000 people.
• Kingsbury County is South Dakota's snowmobile champ, with one snowmobile registered for every 20 people. (Todd and Buffalo counties report zero snowmobiles licensed.)
• Hanson County has the most RVs registered per population, with more than one RV for every five people (218 per thousand). Lake County comes in second on that count, with about 1 for every 25 people (43 per thousand). Of course, a lot of those RVs and their drivers aren't actually here: Hanson and Lake both have businesses specializing in providing registration and mailboxes for tax dodgers. (But can we call them for jury duty?)
• You'll find the most boats per people in Stanley, Day, and Marshall counties.

Check out the spreadsheet yourself!

Rankings Roadtrip: South Dakota Worst, Best, Etc.

KELO reports South Dakota teenage drivers are the worst in the nation. Buckle up: this report sends me careening down a freeway of state rankings:

• South Dakota also ranks last for traffic safety laws.
• We don't let those things get us down: South Dakota has the lowest occurrence of depression.
• South Dakota also posted the biggest increase in Gallup's "Well-Being Index" in 2009.
• Helping my sense of well-being: South Dakota is not the most Republican state in the Union. Ten states have a larger percentage of Republicans. Seventeen states have fewer Democrats by percentage (there's hope, Dems! Stand and fight!).
• Still, only 15.8% of South Dakotans identify themselves as liberals (must... blog... harder!)
  
• We're all optimists, sort of: South Dakotans' economic confidence was less negative than any other state in 2009.
• Only North Dakota beat us in 2009 on percentages of folks who were satisfied with their standard of living and whose employers were not cutting jobs.

Now, breakfast!

Madison Supt. Schaefer Testifies on HB 1150, Shows Big-School Irritation at Small-School Success

If you were looking for Vince Schaefer at his office at MHS Tuesday morning, you were out of luck. The Madison superintendent was in Pierre to testify before Senate Education in favor of HB 1150, the bill seeking to whack small schools on the nose with a newspaper (and a funding cut) for luring students away from big schools. Schaefer's trip didn't go well: his own senator Russ Olson voted against him, as did the majority of the committee.

I listened to the audio of Schaefer's testimony. Schaefer opened by saying it was his first trip to testify to a bill in Pierre, a sign of how important he considers HB 1150. Education advocates might find it troubling that, after decades in education, Schaefer's first legislative testimony comes in support of a bill that cuts funding for education.

Schaefer made the claim that not just he but Madison taxpayers believe there is great inequity in the school funding formula and that changes like HB 1150 need to be made. Really? The Madison taxpayers—at least a hundred—who open enroll their kids in smaller schools probably don't think so. I must have missed the public poll the school district conducted to authorize the superintendent to speak for all of us taxpayers.

Schaefer and other proponents appear particularly piqued by small schools sending their buses onto our territory to pick up open enrollees. Schaefer claimed in his testimony that Madison will have to install a special streetlight to regulate busing with three other school districts sending their buses to pick up kids in Madison.

Again, really? Three buses coming to town throw our community into confusion? I thought buses helped cut down traffic and keep kids safer.

But that big yellow reminder of the success of small schools in attracting students must be an especial annoyance for administrators, so much so that Senator Knudson offered a placatory hoghouse amendment to ban receiving school districts from sending their buses into the district of residence of an open enrollee without the permission of the resident school district. Wow—talk about a turf battle! That amendment failed on a 3–4 vote (again, Russ Olson did the right thing and voted nay).

Schaefer insisted, as did other proponents, that they are not against school choice or competition; Schaefer said that we "relish" the opportunity to compete. But the whole of the proponents' testimony Tuesday suggests they don't like small schools winning that competition.

HB 1150 may be dead, but its spirit lives on. As the budget gets hammered out, expect more efforts to alter the education funding formula and take a few more pennies out of small schools' hides. Stay tuned!

Time to Reflect: Bike-Passing Bill Gets Complicated

Michael Christensen of the Minus Car Project alerts us that SB 70 is bouncing toward an unpleasant amendment today. The bill would require motorists move over at least three feet to pass cyclists. (never mind that that's impossible on Madison's new tight five-laner.)

Minus Car reports that primary sponsor Senator Sandy Jerstad plans to introduce an amendment today requiring cyclists to wear reflective clothing. If I'm reading the language right, it won't be enough to have reflectors on the bicycle; you'll hae to wear shiny stuff as well.

Now I already have enough fancy bike clothes and reflecto-straps and winky-blinky lights to make me look like flying saucer cruising Lake Herman at night (at 18 miles an hour... not quite advanced alien technology). This amendment wouldn't keep me off my two wheels.

What worries me is that this amendment would criminalize casual bicycle use for 99% of the potential pedaling population. I want to promote bicycle use in South Dakota. I want people to be able to just hop on their bikes and ride the few blocks down to the park or the grocery store to run everyday errands. A sure way to stifle growth in bicycle use is to say to those casual riders that, before they hop on the pedals, they have to put on special clothes.

The way to promote bicycle riding in South Dakota is not to make life harder for cyclists. The way to promote bicycle riding is to enforce the existing pecking order—pedestrians get right-of-way first, then non-motorized vehicles, then motorized vehicles, everywhere. We also need to train drivers to watch the heck out.

Cyclists are on a 30-pound machine. Motorists are piloting a couple thousand pounds with 130 times the momentum. The more damage you can do, the more responsibility you have. Watch for bikes. Move over. And for pete's sake, don't make it any more expensive for folks to get out of their cars and travel under their own power.

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Update 2010.02.18 15:15 CST: Mike McDowell and the State Senate roll with me on this one. SB 70 and amendments go down a floor vote.

Turn School Buses into Libraries with Wi-Fi!

Hey, bus driver! Want to keep those kids quiet? Install Wi-Fi:

Students endure hundreds of hours on yellow buses each year getting to and from school in this desert exurb of Tucson, and stir-crazy teenagers break the monotony by teasing, texting, flirting, shouting, climbing (over seats) and sometimes punching (seats or seatmates).

But on this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops.

Morning routines have been like this since the fall, when school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92’s sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. The students call it the Internet Bus, and what began as a high-tech experiment has had an old-fashioned — and unexpected — result. Wi-Fi access has transformed what was often a boisterous bus ride into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared.

“It’s made a big difference,” said J. J. Johnson, the bus’s driver. “Boys aren’t hitting each other, girls are busy, and there’s not so much jumping around” [Sam Dillon, "Wi-Fi Turns Rowdy Bus into Rolling Study Hall," New York Times, 2010.02.11].

Wow! For a $200 router and a $60 monthly fee, we can turn our buses into effective extensions of the classroom. I know some debaters (and coaches!) who would go absolutely ape for an innovation like this. Think of all the disads you could write on the drive from Aberdeen to Yankton....

Legislature: Roads, Farmers Markets, Pipeline Tax, and Corporate Democracy

Some legislative notes to sprinkle on your Wheaties:

****
The State Senate Transportation Committee has unanimously killed SB1, the road tax increases. What was that Senator Mike Vehle from Mitchell said in October?

Everyone in this committee.. has a feeling that we need to do something... We'd all like to do probably a lot more than we feel in a recession we can do. But we need to take a hard look and be ready to explain to our colleagues the need that our highways have.... [A]ny society that lets its infrastructure fail or start to fail is also going down a wrong road and putting our society in jeopardy [Senator Mike Vehle, 2009.10.14].

Senator Vehle yesterday abandoned the bill, deciding he didn't want to fight to convince his colleagues to pay for the roads that get them to Pierre and back. Oh well. Maybe we all can just stop driving and do all our business online.

****
If we can still get to the farmers markets over our new gravel roads, we might find more local sellers. Democrat Pam Merchant from Brookings is proposing House Bill 1222 to exempt farmers market vendors from licensing requirements. The bill does add some labeling requirements—basically a sticker to say this food's homegrown; if you have allergies, you take your chances. But essentially, HB 1222 is Democrats promoting deregulation for small local businesspeople. I bet the Republican-controlled Legislature kills this one. Please, Russ, prove me wrong!

****
Republicans and Democrats are working together to try again to get a pipeline tax. Senate Bill 161 imposes a two-cent-per-barrel tax on oil pumping through big pipelines (i.e., TransCanada's) in South Dakota. Two cents per barrel: at today's crude oil prices, that's a 0.027% tax—less than three cents on every hundred dollars TransCanada will make. And like previous measures, SB 161 caps the tax at $30 million and dedicates it to a fund to clean up oil spills and other messes TransCanada will make.

****
Senator Heidepriem says if corporations really are persons qualified to participate in democratic processes, then they should behave democratically. His Senate Bill 165 tells corporations, "Go ahead! Contribute to politicians and campaigns. But you have to get the approval of a majority of your stockholders first." Ah, democracy!

Another Opponent of the Cadillac Tax...

...or maybe the cow-methane tax?

Seen around town, some truckular humor from Kvernevig Trucking of Webster (click pix to enlarge):


And then, on the back of the sleeper, a note for the oxymoron file:

...with a touch of class? That might be about as logically coherent as Gordon Howie's campaign slogan.

SD-DOT Surveys South Dakotans on Transportation Needs

Holy cow! Pierre asks for your advice!

KELO reports that the South Dakota Department of Transportation is hosting an online survey to get our input on what we should set as our long-term transportation priorities in South Dakota. Expect John Goeman and Russ Olson to call all their friends and flood the server with entries from Madison saying the most important change South Dakota needs is four lanes on Highway 34 west from I-29!

The survey includes one of my favorite participatory exercises, the mock budget, where you have to divide a hundred dollars into actual categories of spending. Of course, such an exercise needs a little more context: for real participatory budgeting, folks need some idea of the current spending benchmarks before they can offer numbers that offer guidance for future spending. The survey takes comments; the survey would be even better if it published those comments and and allowed respondents to see and discuss each other's answers. (The state's web dudes should also program the "Total" field to automatically add the responses to make it easier to keep track of that $100.)

As you would expect, I went online and told them to make more room for bicyclists, walkers, horses, and other alternative transportation. I also told them to look for ways to restore the good old passenger rail system. South Dakotans used to ride trains back and forth all over the place. Commuters, think how much more productive you'd be if you could spend that hour each day sitting on a train concentrating on your laptop instead of the highway.

But hey, don't let us blog-hippies get all the votes—take the survey yourself, tell Pierre what sort of transportation we need to work on!

Blizzard Boosts Nanny State

Mr. Epp raises an issue that our conservative friends haven't touched yet. He notes that Pierre's five-alarm response to our Christmas snowstorm was nanny-statism par excellence.

Fellow members of Gov. Rounds own party–the Republican Party–often complain about all the restrictions and safety consciousness that the Nanny Staters place or wish to place on the rest of us right thinking citizens.

Here, Gov. Rounds took away every citizens’ right to go out in to the teeth of a blizzard, get stuck, and freeze to death like people did in Nebraska and other states where far wiser governors allowed their Interstates to be open before and during the recent blizzard. Nanny Stater Mike had no one die on his watch in South Dakota because he wouldn’t let them go out and exercise their right to be stupid [Todd Epp, "Dang That Nanny Stater Gov. Rounds! He Saved Lives in the Blizzard!" Middle Border Sun via KELO, 2009.12.27].

As the storm hardly raged over Lake Herman, I had to wonder how Republicans remained so unperturbed at what felt like an over-reaction. Closing the Interstates for three days? Some friends made a trip to Brookings during the closure and found old Highway 77 up to Medary packed with motorists. Close the safest roads in the state, drive folks to the skinny backroads—not the best outcome.

Dad and I have cleared the driveway and shoveled some walks in town. Sure, it snowed a lot, but it didn't strike us as "historic" snowfall. We've moved more snow than this. We've driven to town through bigger drifts.

Travel restrictions are about as Stalinist a government restriction as you get, yet I haven't heard one conservative protest. Fascinating.

I've heard an interesting conspiracy theory: Maybe the extended Interstate closing was really a calculated budget move: work to keep the Interstate open over Christmas day, and we'd have to pay triple overtime. Why not just tell everyone to stay home?

I'll admit, if that was the real thinking behind closing the Interstates, it wasn't a bad idea. And if the Governor had just made that case—"Come on, folks: the state's short on cash, it's Christmas, businesses aren't going to be open anyway... just stay home and save money"—a lot of folks might have bought that line.

Instead, the Governor went for full-tilt fear-mongering (how many live press-conferences do we need about the weather?). Sound that alarm too often, and folks stop listening.

Last week's blizzard was half snow, half hype. At the very least, Republicans need to get honest about their views on government protecting us from our own bad decisions.

Trobec: "Crotch Bomber" Means More Futile Airport Security

We have spent eight years constantly tightening airport security, and one loon can still manage to sneak exploding pants onto a plane. Now we take away blankets, don't let passengers move, and increase body searches. Can you say diminishing returns?

Frequent flyer Jay Trobec can: he agrees that more layers of airport security are futile "knee-jerk reactions" to the "crotch bomber":

The TSA announced the irritating, meaningless measures because it feels it has to do something - even when it is powerless to do anything meaningful. There will now be calls for those full-body scanners, the same ones that were criticized by civil rights and women’s groups because they allow screeners to see beneath clothing. A better idea would be to do what other countries do: profile. Take everyone whose passport isn’t attached to a documented, long-time history of law abiding behavior, and run them through additional screening including highly-invasive pat-downs. After all, 80 grams of explosive hidden in underpants is pretty hard to detect.

As I see it, we have three choices: full-body scanning that violates people’s privacy, profiling that violates people’s rights, or new TSA regulations that irritate everyone without providing one bit of actual protection [Jay Trobec, "Crotch Bomber Ignites TSA Lunacy," Jaystream, 2009.12.27].

If I were a terrrorist, I would view Friday's botched bombing as a smashing success. Instead of just killing a couple hundred people, I've used 80 grams of chemicals and one bumbling patsy to create ongoing daily inconvenience and invasion of privacy for over a million people, not to mention one more drag on the American economy. The terrorists are getting us to do their work for them. That's a real return on investment.

Meanwhile, prepare to fly naked... or in airport-issued spandex.