Wow, what an amaz­ing idea!

Too bad it’s unconstitutional.

For­mer Direc­tor of National Intel­li­gence Den­nis Blair has a plan to enable expanded U.S. nat­ural gas exports and curb envi­ron­men­tal risks: Taxes.

Blair, in a U.S. News and World Report op-ed on energy pol­icy, argues for tax­ing exports to help improve over­sight of boom­ing U.S. nat­ural gas production.

“A tax on exported nat­ural gas can be used to fund both com­pe­tent reg­u­la­tory agen­cies and research on safer and cleaner tech­nolo­gies for nat­ural gas,” writes Blair, who was the nation’s top intel­li­gence offi­cial from Jan­u­ary 2009 until mid-2010.

Blair, a retired Navy admi­ral, is an adviser to this week’s Pacific Energy Sum­mit in Van­cou­ver and will also speak at the event.

While the con­cept of “export taxes” aren’t uncom­mon, or against WTO rules, they tend to be the monop­oly prop­erty of devel­op­ing nations with economies so weak, their gov­ern­ments are tax­ing every­thing that moves — both in and out of the country.

As for it ever hap­pen­ing in the United States, don’t bet on it bar­ring a con­sti­tu­tional amendment. 

Con­gress only has the power to tax imports; stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for any national econ­omy.  The Found­ing Fathers specif­i­cally out­lawed tax­ing exports — par­tic­u­larly exports between the states — in an effort to “form a more per­fect union” as well as avoid mas­sive con­fu­sion among traders who were pay­ing a “Vir­ginia Export Tax” or a “New York Export Tax” and so on.  In the effort to clean it up, they barred the prac­tice outright.

Today, only eco­nomic idiots and the con­sti­tu­tion­ally naive con­sider the idea.  Den­nis Blair fits in both categories.

(H/T Over-Lawyered)

This was a web ad from Sam­sung that didn’t make the game broad­cast — and you’ll under­stand once you see it — in it Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd get lec­tured by Bob Odenkirk on what you can and can­not say in an ad for the Super Bowl.

Such as “Super Bowl…”

Or the names of the teams play­ing in it…

Frankly, I’m shocked the site was run­ning for as long as it was.  While a respectable “pre­dic­tion” mar­ket (and by that, I mean wager book), the web­site was really noth­ing more than a place to put bets on elec­tions and mea­sure the ebb and flow of where the money was going.

While a com­mon prac­tice in the U.K — where Intrade is based and bet­ting on elec­tion out­comes is the norm — it is also highly ille­gal in the U.S.  This is only a nat­ural reac­tion to the even­tual crack­down.  It just took a while for the author­i­ties to catch up.

This is from a blog post by Daniel Iken­son, who runs the CATO Institute’s Cen­ter for Trade Pol­icy Stud­ies.  It high­lights once again why CATO is my favorite “Trade Shop” over Heritage’s “Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Trade and Eco­nom­ics (and I once worked at Her­itage and was told if they weren’t in a hir­ing freeze in 2009, I would have got­ten a job at CITE as an analyst).

First, they put out more stuff.  Sec­ondly, they aren’t afraid to say things like this.

The dif­fer­ence between the trade pol­icy we have today and the trade pol­icy we should have is like the dif­fer­ence between crony cap­i­tal­ism and free-market cap­i­tal­ism. The sausage grinder that is U.S. trade pol­icy serves politi­cians and rewards lob­by­ists and gate-keeper bureau­crats, who have the gall to pre­sume enti­tle­ment to lim­it­ing Amer­i­cans’ options and pick­ing win­ners and losers.

In a coun­try that exalts free­dom, the default trade pol­icy should be free trade. But it’s not. Why?

The pub­lic has been trained to accept that spe­cial interests—companies seek­ing exemp­tions from com­pe­ti­tion; unions demand­ing that cit­i­zens ”Buy Amer­i­can”; investors and intel­lec­tual prop­erty hold­ers demand­ing the U.S. pub­lic assume part of its busi­ness risks; envi­ros insist­ing on mea­sures that pun­ish devel­op­ing coun­tries for being poor—are rightly enti­tled to nego­ti­ate, abridge, impair, or sac­ri­fice those free­doms in the name of Team USA.

So how are we free if deci­sions about how, with whom, and how much we trans­act with for­eign­ers are decided by par­ties in Wash­ing­ton, who profit from deny­ing us that freedom?

Trade pol­icy should be about max­i­miz­ing the free­dom of Amer­i­cans to choose, and dis­tinctly not about bestow­ing cer­tain advan­tages on par­tic­u­lar com­pa­nies, indus­tries, or spe­cial inter­ests. Trade pol­icy should be about max­i­miz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for Amer­i­cans as con­sumers, work­ers, and investors, and not about imped­ing those opportunities.

In a glob­al­ized world where busi­nesses are mobile and, ulti­mately, unteth­ered to a home­land, what is the point of pol­i­cy­mak­ers going to bat for U.S. pro­duc­ers? Usu­ally, poli­cies adopted to assist par­tic­u­lar com­pa­nies or indus­tries hand­i­cap or sub­vert com­pa­nies and indus­tries upstream or down­stream in the sup­ply chain, or in other sec­tors. What even defines a U.S. pro­ducer any­more? GM builds more vehi­cles in China than it does in the United States. Should Wash­ing­ton and Bei­jing both claim GM as national trea­sures and craft pol­icy to serve its needs?

To put it bluntly, we need a trade pol­icy that ben­e­fits the end con­sumer not the man­u­fac­tur­ers, not the politi­cians, not the unions, and not the cor­po­ra­tions.  It is about mak­ing sure the game is played evenly, fairly, and about “May the best prod­uct win.”

We seem to have for­got­ten that.

Huge news in both the world of ship­ping and the world of Mid­dle East peace.  With­out the world’s largest ship­ping com­pany hav­ing boats stop­ping at Iran­ian ports, that means the sim­plest route for Iran (and Rus­sia and China) to get their ille­gal arms to ter­ror­ists against Israel is the roads going west.

The U.S. Army still check those — through check­points in Iraq.

Maersk Line, the world’s biggest con­tainer ship­ping com­pany, has stopped port calls to Iran as West­ern sanc­tions pres­sure on the Islamic Repub­lic mounts, a spokes­woman said on Tuesday.

“Maersk Line has ceased to call in Iran,” a spokes­woman for the unit of Dan­ish group A.P. Moller-Maersk said.

“This is a prag­matic deci­sion based on an assess­ment of bal­anc­ing the ben­e­fits of doing lim­ited busi­ness in Iran against the risk of dam­ag­ing busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties else­where par­tic­u­larly the U.S.”

In 2011 the United States black­listed major Iran­ian port oper­a­tor Tide­wa­ter Mid­dle East Co, which oper­ates seven ter­mi­nals in Iran includ­ing the biggest con­tainer port Ban­dar Abbas. That led Maersk Line to sus­pended oper­a­tions at sev­eral ports.

“Maersk Line ceased its accep­tance to all other ports than Bushehr in 2011,” the spokes­woman said, refer­ring to Iran’s small north­ern con­tainer port. “The dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of ser­vices to and from Bushehr unfor­tu­nately reflects the dif­fi­cul­ties ser­vic­ing Iran as a whole.”

Inter­est­ing lit­tle thing I noticed at a trade blog I check out once in a while.

It appears to try to get around United Nations sanc­tions, the Iran­ian ship­ping lines were using other coun­tries to “flag” their ships.  “Flag­ging” means set­ting the ship as the coun­try of base.  It’s really just a prac­ti­cal mat­ter, since most ship­ping man­i­fests mat­ter where the ship just docked, not where it’s flagged.

How­ever, hav­ing a country’s flag usu­ally means they’re a friendly nation.

Iran appar­ently is run­ning low on coun­tries will­ing to let them bor­row their flag — even the land-locked countries.

The Islamic Repub­lic of Iran Ship­ping Lines (IRISL) is run­ning out of coun­tries to flag its ships in its increas­ingly futile efforts to avoid U.S. sanc­tions on the com­pany. Even Tuvalu, the fourth small­est coun­try in the world, dereg­is­tered44 IRISL oil tankers recently. (That’s rather like being ejected from an Olive Gar­den restau­rant in Dothan, Alabama.)

A Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle (sub­scrip­tion required) that appeared on Sep­tem­ber 28 details IRISL’s cur­rent woes in using the flags of con­ve­nience of two land-locked coun­tries, Mon­go­lia and Moldova, the lat­ter a coun­try most-renowned for its fre­quent util­ity as an obscure cross­word puz­zle entry. Moldova had begun to can­cel IRISL reg­is­tra­tions but those ships quickly obtained reg­is­tra­tions from Mon­go­lia. Now Mon­go­lia is announc­ing that it will dereg­is­ter the ships.

Of course, an IRISL ves­sel is sub­ject to sanc­tions no mat­ter what flag it is fly­ing, but IRISL is hop­ing to con­fuse peo­ple by using flags of con­ve­nience rather than an Iran­ian flag for the ships. An IRISL spokesman is quoted by the Jour­nal on the company’s rather quaint the­ory of reflag­ging its ships:

“When you push some­one from a room, he should find a door,” said Ali Ezzati, Irisl’s man­ager for strate­gic plan­ning and inter­na­tional affairs, on the side­lines of a ship­ping con­fer­ence in Xia­men, China. “If he can’t find a door then he should try to find a small hole.”

I sup­pose that his choice of metaphors here was unin­formed by the fact that small holes are the way that rats and cock­roaches get into a room. I think I would have gone for window.

No, it prob­a­bly was the right metaphor.

Thank the Fed for the blame.   The credit agency pretty much lays it out in their rea­son­ing why.

QE3 is already beyond awesome!

Rat­ings firm Egan-Jones cut its credit rat­ing on the U.S. gov­ern­ment to “AA-” from “AA,” cit­ing its opin­ion that quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing from the Fed­eral Reserve would hurt the U.S. econ­omy and the country’s credit quality. …

In its down­grade, the firm said that issu­ing more cur­rency and depress­ing inter­est rates through pur­chas­ing mortgage-backed secu­ri­ties does lit­tle to raise the U.S.’s real gross domes­tic prod­uct, but reduces the value of the dollar.

In turn, this increases the cost of com­modi­ties, which will pres­sure the prof­itabil­ity of busi­nesses and increase the costs of con­sumers thereby reduc­ing con­sumer pur­chas­ing power, the firm said.

In turn, this increases the cost of com­modi­ties, which will pres­sure the prof­itabil­ity of busi­nesses and increase the costs of con­sumers thereby reduc­ing con­sumer pur­chas­ing power, the firm said.

In April, Egan-Jones cuts the U.S. credit rat­ing to “AA” from “AA+” with a neg­a­tive watch, cit­ing a lack of progress in cut­ting the mount­ing fed­eral debt.

Yeah, we are really bet­ter off than we were four years ago.

This was expected by the way.

In April, Tom Ross, the pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina sys­tem, sent a let­ter to the university’s board of gov­er­nors announc­ing that stu­dents should brace for a hike in the cost of university-provided insur­ance plans.

Ross explained that at least 64,000 North Car­olina col­lege stu­dents — roughly a third of those enrolled in the state’s 17 pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties — should expect to see “sub­stan­tial” increases in health cov­er­age costs for the 2012–2013 aca­d­e­mic year.

“Based on more than three semes­ters of actual claims expe­ri­ence, as well as the new pro­vi­sions of the Afford­able Care Act, we are fac­ing large increases in pre­mi­ums for our stu­dents,” Ross wrote in the letter.

In North Car­olina, col­lege stu­dents are required to have proof of health insur­ance, either through their uni­ver­sity, their par­ents or a pri­vate provider.

Stu­dents who pur­chase insur­ance plans from North Car­olina pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties this fall will be shelling out $709 per semes­ter. That’s up sig­nif­i­cantly from a cost of $460 per semes­ter last year.

She’s a Cheese­head, was Google employee No. 20, and now head­ing over to Yahoo to run the place.

Not bad for a 37 year-old from Wausau.

Pub­lished reports say Yahoo is hir­ing Google exec­u­tive Marissa Mayer to be its next CEO.

Mayer has been involved with Google’s search, gmail and Google news features.

The New York Times says she’s start­ing at Yahoo Inc. on Tues­day. Mayer was one of Google’s ear­li­est employees.

Ross Levin­sohn, who joined Yahoo in late 2010, has been run­ning the com­pany on an interim basis and had been thought to be the lead can­di­date. Levin­sohn filled in after Scott Thomp­son lost his job in a flap over mis­in­for­ma­tion on his offi­cial biography.

Mayer is 1993 grad­u­ate of Wausau West High School.

It was the New York Times blog, “Deal­Book” which first broke the news.  Meyer also serves on Walmart’s Board of Directors.

Mayer also becomes pos­si­bly the most attrac­tive CEO in Sil­i­con Val­ley.  Here is a pic­ture from 2009 when she was named Glam­our Magazine’s Woman of the Year.

Hey, what’s a life­time between new facilities?

The Three Affil­i­ated Tribes received the final per­mit approval on Fri­day for its project to build a refin­ery on the Fort Berthold Reservation.

The refin­ery will be built west of Makoti near N.D. High­way 23.

With the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency’s deci­sion to approve the water dis­charge per­mit Fri­day, Tex Hall, chair­man of the Three Affil­i­ated Tribes, said they will be finally be able to move for­ward to build the Thun­der Butte Refinery.

“It is indeed his­toric, since this is the first refin­ery built in the lower 48 states in 41 years. The Man­dan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation has waited nine long years for this. We never gave up, although we expe­ri­enced a few bumps along the way. The switch from Cana­dian syn­thetic crude feed­stock to Bakken for­ma­tion crude oil slowed our progress for awhile,” Hall said.

“It only makes sense to have a refin­ery here. We are sit­ting right on top of the Bakken For­ma­tion and import­ing oil and fuel into the state. Thun­der Butte can now refine and make avail­able these prod­ucts at a much lower rate. The refin­ery will also max­i­mize the eco­nomic inter­ests of Indian min­eral own­ers as well as the tribes,” Hall said.

He said their next step for the refin­ery includes get­ting a pipeline that will pipe the oil and gas from the west side of the Mis­souri River to the east side and then to the refin­ery. The pipeline is a large project that will cre­ate even more jobs along with the refin­ery, Hall said.

“I com­mend our refin­ery staff for their will­ing­ness to keep going under some­times dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances and their dili­gence and hard work,” Hall added.

When com­pleted, the Thun­der Butte Refin­ery will refine Bakken crude for use on the reser­va­tion, in North Dakota and through­out the United States, and decrease the nation’s need for for­eign oil, Hall said.

Some­where, envi­ron­men­tal­ists must be won­der­ing how they lost the sup­port of North Dakota’s Native Amer­i­can tribes.

Abject poverty with­out the aid of casino money can do that.