Insider Report
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. EPA Threatens North Dakota Oil Boom
2. Israeli-Saudi Cyberwar Heats Up
3. The Obamas Feast on $81 Steaks
4. Report: Government Workers' Pay Is 'Inflated'
5. Sen. Inhofe Rips 'Reckless' Obama Over Pipeline
6. We Heard: Online Ads, Tea Party, Mexican Drug Wars
1. EPA Threatens North Dakota Oil Boom
Oil production in North Dakota has boomed to the point that the state now produces nearly as much oil each day as OPEC member Ecuador.
But a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could bring a halt to the boom that has virtually eliminated unemployment in North Dakota.
The state now has 200 rigs pumping 440,000 barrels of oil daily in the Bakken shale formation, according to the Heartland Institute. The state's unemployment rate is holding at just 3.5 percent, with many oil industry jobs paying more than $100,000 a year, and "we have 18,000 jobs looking for people," North Dakota Republican Rep. Rick Berg told The Hill.
"If our country's GDP grew at 7 percent, as it does in [my] state, most of our problems would be over in two years."
The North Dakota legislature is using some of the state's oil revenue to fund $1.2 billion in infrastructure improvements, including roads and schools. Public schools will receive $340 million in oil-related revenues over the next two years, and oil money will pay for a disaster relief fund and a reduction in property taxes.
Also, the legislature has ordered that 30 percent of the funds from the state's 6.5 percent oil extraction tax be sent to the state's Legacy Fund, which cannot be touched until 2017, when accrued interest will become available for spending.
One reason for the boom: "The regulatory environment was already low in North Dakota, certainly better than California's and some other oil-producing states," said Brett Narloch, executive director of the North Dakota Policy Council.
"As we move forward with oil production, I expect the business environment to get better."
Most of the Bakken shale production is occurring on private land, but analysts and state legislators fear the EPA may still seek to shut it down, the Institute reported.
The federal agency is currently investigating hydraulic fracturing (fracking) production techniques, which are used in shale oil production.
Narloch said: "If the EPA decides to ban fracking, that shuts down the entire industry since so many of the wells operate by that procedure. It would kill this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
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2. Israeli-Saudi Cyberwar Heats Up
Last week the Insider Report disclosed that an Israeli teenager identified only as "OxOmer" launched a cyberwar counterattack against Saudi hackers who divulged tens of thousands of Israeli credit card numbers on the Internet.
Now the Saudi hackers have struck again, attacking the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al Israel Airlines.
And once again OxOmer has retaliated, bringing down the official websites of Saudi Arabia's Monetary Agency and Abu Dhabi's Securities Exchange on Tuesday.
In the new attacks on Israel, "what was hacked was our main website, which provides information," Idit Yaaron, a Tel Aviv Stock Exchange spokeswoman, said on Monday. "The trading computer was not hacked and trading is going on as usual."
El Al issued a statement saying it was taking measures to protect its website and warned there may be more disruptions.
OxOmer claims he is 17 years old and belongs to a four-member team of hackers who call themselves Israel Defenders. In the earlier counterattack, they published hundreds of Saudi credit card numbers. They told the Jerusalem Post they were also behind the new attacks on the Saudi and Abu Dhabi sites.
They said in a message on a forum that their actions came "because lame hackers from Saudi Arabia decided to launch an attack against Israeli sites."
The cyberwar shows no signs of ending. The Saudi hacker who calls himself OxOmar told the Post he would continue to organize attacks on Israeli sites until the government apologized for what he called "genocide against Palestine."
And Israeli hacker OxOmer warned: "If the lame attacks from Saudi Arabia will continue, we will move to the next level, which will disable these sites longer term."
Also on Monday, a pro-Israeli hacker named Hannibal opened up another front in the cyberwar, publishing the details of 30,000 Facebook account holders from Arab countries, and threatening to publish information about bank accounts and credit cards belonging to Arab citizens if the attacks on Israeli sites continue.
Then on Wednesday, Arab hackers broke into the server of Israel's Anti-Drug Authority and redirected visitors to a website showing images of Palestinian gunmen and the words "death to Israel" and "Gaza hackers were here."
A group of Israeli hackers calling themselves the "IDF Team" retaliated on Thursday by disabling the websites of the Arab Bank of Palestine and the UAE's central bank, the Post reported.
The Israeli hackers threatened to "disable stock market sites, government sites, and sites related to economy and even security."
The cyberwar continues.
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3. The Obamas Feast on $81 Steaks
President Barack Obama and wife Michelle celebrated the first lady's 48th birthday Tuesday night by dining at a Washington, D.C., restaurant featuring a hamburger named "The Obama."
But they passed on the burger and instead both enjoyed a 10-ounce American Wagyu steak with an $81 price tag.
"The Obama" is one of five burgers on BLT Steak's "Political Burger Board." It's an 8-ounce American Kobe burger with bacon, cheddar cheese, burnt tomato ketchup, and scallion mustard. American Kobe beef is from a line of Japanese Wagyu cattle prized for its fat marbling. The burger sells for $28.
The "Bi Partisan" burger, $32, is an 8-ounce burger with Maine lobster, white cheddar cheese, and black truffle buttermilk dressing.
Other burgers include the "Pork Barrel," "Cuban Missile," and "BLT Monument."
The Obamas enjoyed their meal in a private dining room, CNS News reported.
The restaurant's assistant general manager told the Foodorama blog that Michelle Obama "dines with us quite regularly."
Other items on the menu include a dozen oysters for $34, a bone-in rib eye steak ($47), sautéed Dover sole ($49), or french fries on the side for $8.
No word if the Obamas washed down the birthday night dinner with a bottle of Chateau Petrus 1984 Pomerol, at $1,200.
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4. Report: Government Workers' Pay Is 'Inflated'
The average federal employee earns 57 percent more in salary and 85 percent more in total compensation, including benefits, than the average private-sector worker.
Controlling for "skills and characteristics" to develop an apples-to-apples comparison shows that the average federal worker still earns 22 percent more in salary than the average private sector employee and from 30 percent to 40 percent more in total compensation, according to a new report from The Heritage Foundation, "Why Government Pay Is Inflated."
The report by James Sherk, senior policy analyst in Labor Economics in the Center for Data Analysis at the Foundation, includes these points:
- Federal workers receive automatic seniority-based raises regardless of performance, and it is nearly impossible to fire an underperforming federal worker.
- Their total compensation in addition to pay includes generous health benefits, a pension plan, full retirement at age 56, and retiree health benefits.
- Workers with three years on the job receive 10 holidays, 20 paid vacation days, and 13 sick leave days per year.
- Federal employees quit their jobs at one-third the rate of private sector workers.
- Many federal employees retire with their pension and health benefits and take a second job in the private sector, "leaving taxpayers to subsidize this double-dipping," Sherk observes.
- Since the recession began, the number of federal employees — excluding the Postal Service — has risen by 230,000.
- Reducing federal pay to market rates would save taxpayers about $47 billion a year, without reducing public services.
Sherk concludes: "Taxpayers should not sacrifice so that federal employees can enjoy better pay and benefits than they could hope to receive in the private sector."
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5. Sen. Inhofe Rips 'Reckless' Obama Over Pipeline
Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has blasted President Barack Obama for siding with "radical" environmentalists and shelving plans for the Keystone XL pipeline.
The 1,700-mile pipeline would have brought oil from Canada to refineries in Texas, created thousands of jobs, and lessened America's reliance on Middle East oil. Environmentalists claimed it posed the threat of an oil leak.
House Republicans gave Obama 60 days to approve or reject the $7 billion project, but Obama said the deadline did not allow time to assess the environmental and health impacts and squelched the pipeline plan, at least for the immediate future.
Inhofe released the following statement: "President Obama sided with his radical environmental friends and their job-killing global warming agenda instead of a majority of the American people who would have welcomed the tens of thousands of jobs the Keystone pipeline would have created.
"President Obama's decision shows his unwavering commitment to his global warming agenda which seeks to eliminate oil, gas, and coal, and raise energy and gas prices on every American.
"President Obama has now squandered one of the best job-creating opportunities he has ever had.
"Given the current tensions with Iran over its nuclear program and their threats to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, the president's decision was reckless — with little regard to the threat America faces from its dependence on Middle East oil.
"Global warming alarmist Bill McKibben said that the president's decision was 'brave.' Well, he is taking a big risk: By killing jobs today he could very well lose his own job come November."
Inhofe told Newsmax in an interview last year that the Obama administration is "trying to kill oil and gas" by refusing to allow the United States to exploit its abundant natural resources in an effort to drive the country toward green energy.
Inhofe is a steadfast critic of manmade global warming alarmists. His new book "The Hoax," due out in August, focuses on what he calls the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people — that catastrophic global warming is the result of manmade gases.
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6. We Heard . . .
THAT online advertising spending will surpass print media spending for the first time this year, according to a new forecast from eMarketer.
Online ad spending in the U.S. grew 23 percent to $32 billion in 2011 and will grow another 23 percent to more than $39 billion this year, eMarketer reports. Magazine and newspaper ad spending will dip 6.1 percent to $36 billion in 2012.
Online advertising's eclipse of print, Advertising Age observes, represents "a watershed in the media business."
THAT the tea party has a higher favorability rating among voters in key swing states than the Occupy Wall Street movement, a new poll reveals.
The survey by pollsters GS Strategy Group found that the tea party's rating tops OWS's by at least 10 percentage points in Florida, Ohio, Nevada, and Virginia, by 8.6 points in Wisconsin, and 5.7 points in New Mexico.
Respondents in those states also said by an overwhelming margin that government is "the bigger source of America's problems" than banks on Wall Street.
THAT deaths related to organized crime in one Mexican border state during the first nine months of last year exceeded the number of civilians killed in roughly the same period in all of war-torn Afghanistan.
From January through September 2011, 2,276 people were killed in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico, according to the Mexican government.
Over nearly the same period — January through October 2011 — 2,177 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, the Congressional Research Service reported.
The drug-related murder rate was about 67 for every 100,000 inhabitants in Chihuahua last year, compared to seven for every 100,000 people in Afghanistan.
Chihuahua includes Ciudad Juarez, a border city located across from El Paso, Texas, that is the deadliest city in Mexico.
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