BuckeyeBlog

Earlier this week, from the Department of Development:

Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher today announced that more than $1.6 million in economic development and roadwork development grants have been awarded to aid in the growth of businesses and the creation and retention of jobs in Ohio. The grants, administered by the Ohio Department of Development, were approved today by the State Controlling Board and could create 324 positions and retain 1,514 jobs for Ohioans.
“Through strategic investments, we are helping to provide Ohio’s communities with the tools they need to compete for economic development, and businesses with the tools they need to invest and succeed in Ohio,” said Lt. Governor Fisher, who also serves as Director of the Ohio Department of Development. “Our robust partnerships with these businesses and communities are fostering the development that will grow Ohio’s economy.”

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This Thursday, 5:30 p.m. at the Athletic Club, the Buckeye Institute will host The Friedman Legacy in Ohio: How Far We Have Come and What Remains to Be Done.

Our featured speaker will be Education Policy Director Matt Carr. You’ve been reading his work, now come and speak with him about it, and help us celebrate the legacy of the great Milton Friedman.

The Warren Tribune Chronicle had a great editorial today that should be read by all policyamakers. Its title? Ohio Needs to Cut Burdensome Regulations:

This just in from the Enquirer—competition lowers prices! Say it ain’t so, Sherlock!

The more stations competing nearby for your business, the less you pay.

An Enquirer analysis of daily sales at 716 area gas stations in May and June found that regular, unleaded fuel was about a penny-a-gallon less at stations with at least one competitor within one mile, compared to stations with rivals farther away.

Competition lowers prices by a penny? Our super sleuths must have missed a few clues to come up with that analysis. One can hardly call a study comparing gas prices based on stations’ relative distance from one another an analysis of the effects of competition. I’ll crawl out on a limb here and suggest that prices would go up by more than a few pennies if competition were removed from our system. If you are looking for some more hard-hitting, in-depth analyses from the Enquirer, it’s your week—today, the sage advice is not to drive too far out of your way to save a few pennies, because…it uses up gas in your tank that you already purchased to get there.  (For the Enquirer crowd: That would mean it offsets your savings from the lower pump price.)  Look forward to the culmination of “gas analysis” week at the Enquirer in Sunday’s edition, which will contain a special report on the “rapidly changing gas market.” It promises to be equally enlightening.

Yikes. The apocalypse is upon us.

Strickland said the economic pressures the state is facing extend far beyond school funding. He said he doesn’t think the energy and foreclosure crises are just part of a normal cycle of ups and downs.

”Part of what’s happening with the economy is, I think, potentially cataclysmic,” Strickland said. ”Whether or not people will maintain confidence in our financial institutions, whether or not there will be some way to deal appropriately with the energy crisis we face, it’s affecting everything. It’s not only affecting schools. It’s affecting households, it’s affecting the ability of people to work and get to work and feed their families.”

Don’t forget global warming, AIDS and Dick Cheney.

During the 2006 gubernatorial race, a friend wondered during the Strickland-Blackwell debates, “Do you think Strickland is deliberately trying to emulate Ronald Reagan?”

No doubt about it. Apparently having checked that off the list, though, now the governor appears to be trying to emulate Jimmy Carter.

The United States Playing Card Company has decided to join DHL in the lifeboat leaving Ohio. Where is it going? To a location about 10 miles southwest of its current campus; the short distance makes a big difference due to a invisible, intangible line that lies between the two locations–Ohio’s border with Kentucky.

Phil Dolci, President of USPC, comments on the move:

We have a rich history of manufacturing in Cincinnati and Norwood. From the introduction of the Bicycle(R) and Bee(R) playing card brands in the late nineteenth century to the production of World War II escape decks that helped prisoners of war map their way out of Germany to the more recent Texas Hold’m Poker cards and sets, we have enjoyed a long and successful history. USPC is committed to growing our leadership position in the future and enhancing the appeal of our iconic playing card brands. To continue to compete in the global marketplace over the next 100 years, it was obvious we needed to modernize our equipment and facilities. Over the course of the last year, we conducted an exhaustive search in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky for a new location that would position us to retain our employees and provide the best platform to serve our global customer base in the most efficient manner.

Obviously, Ohio lost in this comparison of states. Why? Martin E. Franklin, Chairman and CEO of the Jarden Corporation (USPC’s parent company), offers insight:

We believe the technological and logistical advances that will be made from this move will provide excellent returns on our investment.

In other words, management determined that the most successful business climate existed in Kentucky, not Ohio (or Indiana). Companies such as DHL and USPC that are leaving the state are only part of the picture. It is relatively easy to identify and quantify these companies. What can’t be easily quantified are the numerous companies that choose not to move to Ohio or establish themselves here in the first place. Were we able to identify and count these companies and determine the loss of their potential economic influence to our state, Ohio’s economic picture would look even worse. Northern Kentucky is the winner in this story; it landed a thirty-plus million dollar investment and what will be one of the top ten manufacturing employers in the region, and Ohio provided its sales pitch. Will Kentucky at least pay Governor Strickland a commission?

Governor Strickland’s Health Care Reform Initiative has finally released its recommendations. As I anticipated, they are pretty bad. In short, if these recommendations are adopted you will be paying more for health insurance and more in taxes. So hold onto your wallet. It’s not like you can opt out of taxes and, if this commission gets its way, you can’t opt out of health insurance, either — the government will force you to buy it.

Instead of looking for ways to make health insurance more affordable, the report says that policymakers should add even more regulations on insurance, driving up its costs. But to help people afford insurance, you need to pay more taxes to give them a subsidy. Oh, and Medicaid needs to be bigger.

The recommendations resemble the health care plan that’s being rolled out in Massachusetts. As the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner points out here, that plan isn’t really working out all that well for either the uninsured or taxpayers in Massachusetts. Hopefully something similar isn’t headed to Ohio.

Yesterday, the U.S. Geological Survey released the first public assessment of undiscovered, recoverable oil reserves north of the Arctic Circle. They estimate the region to contain about 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil, which by USGS calculations accounts for 13% of undiscovered oil in the world. The USGS leaves room for even more discoveries:

Exploration for petroleum has already resulted in the discovery of more than 400 oil and gas fields north of the Arctic Circle. These fields account for approximately 40 billion barrels of oil, more than 1,100 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 8.5 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. Nevertheless, the Arctic, especially offshore, is essentially unexplored with respect to petroleum.

This report shows yet again a trend of human knowledge not limited simply to oil exploration: the information available to us and our understanding of it is constantly increasing. While we have always been concerned by the fact that our supply of oil is limited (and indeed it is), we do not know the size of that limited supply. OPEC has released yearly data on our known world reserves and world consumption of oil since its creation in 1960, and it shows an important trend: as our consumption of oil increases, the amount of reserves we discover increases at an even greater rate. As the graph below demonstrates, the amount of oil we consumed in 1960 as a percentage of the reserves known in that same year was higher than it was in 2007. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Yes, we have a limited supply of oil, but as we discover year after year, we are not even close to reaching that limit. Settling for less efficient energy technologies to avert a crisis not in existence is a foolish policy and limits our growth and economic health. The market will provide the incentives for the most efficient avenues of change should the need to adopt different sources of energy ever arise.

Just when it looked like the Ohio Republicans were determined to become the Ohio Democrats of the 1990’s, they’ve pulled together a serious candidate for attorney general. The Buckeye Institute crowd walked over to listen to former U.S. Attorney Michael Crites (not pictured to the left) say he expects to raise $2 million and more to campaign.

There wasn’t much in the way of ideology discussed, but that’s fine in the context of the attorney general’s office. In fact, it’s good. The late, great communicator Marc “Culture of Corruption” Dann pushed his ideology to the max, wanting to become the Michael Moore/Eliot Spitzer wielder of the big government club (you get your mind out of the gutter) to push his political policies. The AG’s office could do with someone who has the more modest ambition of enforcing the law.

What is most heartening is that it’s a sign that finally, and perhaps only for a moment, that the Republicans pulled together a message. Governor Strickland and Richard Cordray are excellent communicators of their ideas, and the state will benefit if both its major parties are at least competent in doing so. Elections will still be decided on nitty gritty and nonsense–anybody know who Mark Foley is?–but at least there’s a hint of substance out there that will give voters a chance, if they choose to take it.

So I was talking to some government press folks yesterday about transparency and trying to round up a few quotes, and one of them asked my title.

“I am the director of the Center for Transparent and Accountable Government,” I said.

“We’ll have to get you a hat,” she said.

I think she should be blogging.