We will get to that in a moment, but a little background;

Jackson County is spending one and a half million of your tax dollars (not their local dollars, but yours, South Dakotans!) to keep Lakota people in Wanblee and other Indian communities from enjoying similar access to early voting as white folks near Kadoka enjoy. Dennis Olson, chairman of the South Dakota Public Assurance Alliance that is footing the bill for Jackson County’s racist resistance, calls the Lakota lawsuit for a satellite early voting center “frivolous” and “just one of those things you have to put up with.”

Don’t tell O.J. Semans that fighting for Indian voting rights is frivolous. Semans, the executive director of Indian voting rights advocacy group Four Directions, takes issue with Olson’s seeming disdain for Indian voting rights

See, they are taking this lawsuit money from the Assurance Alliance (Sioux Falls taxpayers are the biggest contributors to their funds) to fight giving voters in Jackson County around $20K in HAVA funds that already are sitting in an account at the SOS office. Sounds pretty idiotic? Right? Unless of course you are someone who doesn’t like Native Americans and don’t think they should vote, you know like a lot of those West River Teabagging Republicans. So you ask ‘where does a good Democrat like Mayor Huether fit in to this picture?’ You would think as an upstanding member of his party he would put his foot down and tell the SD Public Assurance Alliance to drop the suit because Democrats across the state believe in voter equality. But I’m sure you are asking, why would the SDPAA listen to him? Gee, I don’t know, because he appointed two of the Board Members to the Alliance; Mike Hall, Director of Risk Management for the City of Sioux Falls and Secretary of the Alliance and Tracy Turbak, Director of Finance for the City of Sioux Falls. The mayor has a little (a lot) pull in these matters.

Some may say, “Well maybe the mayor has tried to intervene, or at least try to get his appointments to intervene.” I don’t know. Maybe he has, but it doesn’t seem he has been to successful if that was the case. Then there was a certain ‘incident’.

See, when this all started, O.J. Semans asked to have a meeting with the mayor to discuss the case and to see if the mayor would speak with the Alliance about dropping this silliness. After not being able to get an appointment, O.J. did what every good determined person does when dealing with government officials, he showed up in person to the mayor’s office asking to have a few minutes with the mayor, assuming of course he knew why O.J. was there. Seems like a pretty big deal? Right? Why wouldn’t the mayor just hear him out for at least 5 minutes? After a back and forth with the Mayor’s secretary, O.J. was still refused the meeting. So back to square one.

So apparently our good (Democratic) mayor thinks it is more ‘prudent’ to blow $1.5 million of tax dollars on a frivolous lawsuit they will lose then to give already set aside Federal dollars to a couple of satellite voting sites in Indian Country.

The West River Teabaggers are either elated or really confused.

I know I have wrote about the formation of the Tea Party in the past and their connection to the Koch Brothers, but this is a new revelation. Birds of a feather, I guess;

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Partymovement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry’s role in driving climate disruption.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health, traces the roots of the Tea Party’s anti-tax movement back to the early 1980s when tobacco companies began to invest in third party groups to fight excise taxes on cigarettes, as well as health studies finding a link between cancer and secondhand cigarette smoke.

I just attended their press conference, which consisted of about 5 minutes of gay bashing and about 10 minutes of Obamacare rants (I thought it was going to be about the Doogard endorsing candidates?) Oh, they eventually got to that.

Dunsmoor from KELO-TV stated, “Bob Mercer told me that Governor Rounds endorsed Doogard for senate.” (implying that it has gone on in the past).

I asked, “Don’t you think all of this infighting between Republicans was inevitable since there are so few Democrats in Pierre – since it is mostly Republicans you now have to fight each other.”

Hubbel’s response was, “Well, there is a lot of Democrats in the legislature that are registered Republican.”

Uh, okay, De Knudson.

Then I mentioned that Republicans have been the majority party in Pierre for over 30 years, why not change the rules when it comes to ethical behavior and open government? Democrats have tried unsuccessfully for years and have been shot down.

Hubbel did point out she supported Initiative 10 (I did also) and an audience member did mention that two Republican sponsored bills last year were about open government were shot down in committee.

Do I think this press conference will change anything in Pierre. Nope.

Back to bugging the mayor . . .

UPDATE: Here is a copy of Lora’s latest Anti-Energy efficient light bulb mailer (click on images to enlarge);