Friday Morning Links And News -- Organizing For America Not Yet Against The Keystone

Active rigs: 188 (steady, up one)

RBN Energy: natural gas pricing in the doldrums, April/May, between winter and summer

Local: $71 million in North Dakota grants to oil-patch cities for water and waste systems.

• Crosby: $5 million
• New Town: $10 million
• Ray: $5.7 million
• Watford City: $10 million
• Killdeer: $3.8 million
• South Heart: $2.1 million
• In addition: Williston, Dickinson, and Minot: $14 million
• Overall: the state will provide $240 million in energy impact grants during the 2013 - 15 biennium. 

WSJ Links

I will skip Section M (Mansion) which I generally do not read. Unfortunately, that is the first section my wife reads. Religiously. And yes, she is still praying for a mansion.

Yes, I had the same thought. In Section D (Arena), there is an essay about a white man playing a Native American. In this case we are talking about Johnny Depp in "The Lone Ranger." Sad commentary on Hollywood where talk is cheap, I guess, when it comes to such things.

Wow, this is interesting. Opening in Bentonville, Arkansas, a look at the emergence of tomboys and ingenues after the American Civil War: "19th Century Girl Power" at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. If you can't get to the exhibit, watch for the inevitable coffee-table book that will be forthcoming, no doubt. I have a shelf full of such books. Maybe more on that later.

There was nothing of interest in Section C (Money & Investing). So, on to Section C (Marketplace).  I won't provide the link because I won't even open the article, but there is an article on Peugeot Citroen -- which I guess is somehow connected to GM -- because the teaser says the French company is running out of ways to cope with a steep sales slide and red ink as a potential ally, General Motors, said it has no current plan to invest additional funds in the company.

So much for unemployed kids not having enough money (or access to money): Nike's profits jump 22%.

Hmmmm....did you know this? The Swedish founder of IKEA moved to Switzerland decades ago to avoid paying Swedish taxes. Now that he has turned the company over to his son, he is moving back to Sweden to be closer to his family.

The Journal starts to handicap successors to Ben. Four photos included: Roger Ferguson, chief of TIAA-CREFF; Lawrence Summers, Harvard professor; Tim Geithner, tax cheat; and Janet Yellin, female. 

It looks like Ecuador is having second thoughts about losing favored nation status with the US which is all-but-guaranteed if the country grants asylum to Mr Snowden. The question of the day: would Hunter S Thompson come down for/against Mr Snowden?

I don't get it; apparently the Supreme Court's ruling does not guarantee that social security benefits will be paid to spouses of same-sex marriages. It seems to be a no-brainer but, nothing is simply, when a government bureaucracy is involved. Speaking of which; I need to renew my US passport. I hope party affiliation has not been added to the new forms.

Okay, this is the story of the day: Egyptian activists plan major street protests because they are angry at .... the US. Not even worth linking.

In the Op-Ed section -- wow, this is nice. The lead op-ed by one of my favorite writers, Kimberley A. Strassel, "Obama's Keystone Debacle." I wonder what she has to say. Here's an excerpt:

President Obama had plenty of reasons to deliver his grandiose climate speech on Tuesday, among them a desire to change the subject. But the better motive was his urgent need to quell a growing revolt among his grass roots.

The backlash has centered on climate, and nowhere has it been more amusingly illustrated than in the recent tribulations of Mr. Obama's advocacy arm, Organizing for Action. That grass-roots outfit has been pounced upon by . . . the grass roots.

Organizing for America, the president's campaign machinery that mobilized millions of supporters for his election, converted in January into a money-raising 501(c)4 and rebranded as Organizing for Action. Democrats crowed that this new OFA would propel the president's agenda and recruit grass-roots volunteers to defeat Republicans in 2014.

OFA has instead become an object of derision for the president's environmental left. That group's priority is to kill the Keystone XL pipeline. Since Mr. Obama may yet approve that job-creating project, OFA has refused to join the campaign against it. "Organizing for Action's mission is to support President Obama's agenda," it keeps repeating, with growing desperation. 

Interesting....to say the least.  That's a huge eddy in the sea of tea leaves.

I guess someone else is reading my "Job Watch." Samuel Rines says government's monthly economic data reports are not reliable. Well, duh:

The Federal Reserve uses GDP and other data such as employment and hiring to determine if the economy is overheating or cooling off and to make policy based on this data. The uncertainty of the initial data makes Fed policy decisions all the more difficult. Large, unanticipated revisions of key numbers can dramatically change what should have been done, and the assessment of how well it worked.

The Fed's mantra is that it will continue easing or at least not raise rates until unemployment falls to 6.5%, assuming that inflation remains below 2.5%. Some members of the Federal Open Market Committee have made clear that they are in favor of continuing until there has been even more substantial improvement in labor markets. Unfortunately, the initial monthly jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Employment Survey is not much more accurate on the first go-round than GDP.

In February 2013, initial employment data pointed to a net growth of 236,000 new jobs. This was revised to 268,000 in March and then to 332,000 in April. From the first estimate to the last, the number shot up 41%.

Wow, I've been talking about that for two years.