South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

September 2013

Autos Sioux Falls

Extended vehicle ordinance

l3wis 22Comments

I’m not a big fan of extra laws and rules, but recently I have had several friends who work DT and customers comment on the imbeciles who think then need to park their air-craft carrier trucks on Phillips avenue.

Many have suggested there should be a city ordinance against it and a ticket issued. I think common sense would solve the problem, I guess if these people had some they wouldn’t park this way. They would choose a side street or a parking ramp. And why would someone use this as a personal form of transportation anyway? I have never seen a grubby contractor get out of one of these vehicles DT.

My biggest concern is if there was an emergency DT and a firetruck had to navigate around one of these monstrosities. I have almost hit the rear end of one these ‘trucks’.

Which poses another question. If you don’t see one of these trucks hanging out into the street and you hit it, whose fault is it?

Just some pondering.

But seriously, park somewhere else.

Sioux Falls

Municipal Ballot Issues (H/T – GP)

l3wis 64Comments

Let’s consider the (possible) four issues now heading to the spring 2014 ballot, because it now brings up a real point. All four issues are citizen driven. The sheeple are being awakened. It should scare the elected in South Dakota and Sioux Falls. This group of ballot issues are the tip of a big iceberg ready to sink a lot of ships:

  1. There will not be an organized effort against snowgates, even our current mayor has accepted they will be coming and is now blaming the snowgate proponents for slowing down the implementation. Snowgates have an 80% approval.
  2. Local tennis promoters are very unhappy with the indoor pool proposal even though the mayor and wife are members of the group. In speaking with a tennis club member recently, they are silently voting against the Spellerberg pool. Spellerberg park is one of a select location in the USA to receive a large USTA grant for youth tennis courts. This is actually a big deal. It is part of a national USTA outreach program to encourage the growth of tennis participation. There are also a few people in the organization who expressed angst in allowing ‘neighborhood’ kids playing there (I will let this rest there). So add this to the thought of putting a big box in a small area not meeting the needs or wants of a majority of residents, ruining what they already have. When people understand what is going to happen to a simple city park, they usually are not happy but thought they could not stop it until the Spellerberg neighbors showed a way to do it.
  3. Shape Places petition is a reaction to a perceived out of control city government running roughshod over people. Public (private) meetings to hammer out what can be done. There are probably points of contention on most areas and not, who knows anymore. The process has become so convoluted during the last two mayoral administrations. The 85th and Minnesota zoning change woke a sleeping giant called middle class voters. Many of these middle class home owners are building their futures on the values of these homes.
  4. 85th and Minnesota zoning change vote galvanized a broad cross section of Sioux Falls. There are so many issues to solve in this town and most have to do with special deals being cut across the board. There are upset people of all income levels who want a piece of city hall to be tar and feathered. Many of the middle class homeowners affected are also small business people who could never get the city to approve zoning changes for their businesses but let a multinational billion dollar corporation drop a 4.5 acre building with 1,000 parking spots into their neighborhood, it’s okay.  The city will bend over backwards to allow the billion dollar big box to abuse the town, take more money out of town, shift sales from businesses the very homeowners are now supposed to compete against. Sioux Falls will not earn another $ of tax revenue from the big box store.

So who is going to stop the momentum of educated, frustrated electorate? At some point the ‘politicals’ of Sioux Falls and South Dakota are going to be reminded the people actually own the government and not the special interests. So the special interests or elites of Sioux Falls must mount a mighty and expensive campaign to kill all four issues in order to maintain their special places in line in front of the mayor’s inner office.

DL: I have often felt the biggest failure of Shape Places was that the Planning Office did not break this ordinance up in sections when having it approved by the council. This simple move by them to approve a 279 pages document in one simple vote told me there were things in it the public would not be happy about. It was sneaky, and the council should have caught it, but hey, the rubber stamp sits in front of them, so why not use it? I asked Kermit the other day, “When you got elected to the council, did you have to pay for your rubberstamp, or did the city cover the expense?”

1st Amendment Dan Willard

Was Willard setup? (H/T – GP & David Montgomery)

l3wis 7Comments

Cleaning up some Willard reading, I just caught something David Montgomery wrote.

There was been something strange in the lead-up and trial of Willard.  It just does not seem plausible someone could be so stupid or inept. I will still hold judgment because it is SD GOP politics of self-destruction in play. There are some questions to ask which seemed to have been missed, we ask them now.

Consider if you were an attorney or part of the defense team involved in this case and this was something you could pounce on. The use of the Internet. The Internet may sound complicated but it is actually very simple. The Intertubes has a very simple design and Tornow and Willard just may have allowed Mike Marion Rounds’ campaign to roll them.

If we are reading the reports correctly, Rounds’ aide Rob Skjonsberg ‘leased’ an IP address from Midco. This ‘lease’ is important. It may sound complicated but it is actually very simple and foolproof.

Here is a basic Internet 101 lesson, get ready for a geek overload:

  • When connecting to the internet with a cellphone, home computer, business or government office, the provider issues an IP address through a ‘lease’ so traffic can be routed properly. This lets the world know how to get data to the user.  This address is stamped on all the packets of data to perform proper delivery.
  • We all have a series of these IP addresses to make sure our stuff gets to us and back to them.  Think of it as a USPS ZIP+4 zip code or your telephone number. We all have digital footprints.
  • To keep track of this information movement, the Internet provider (Midco in this case) issues the IP address through a device called a neighborhood ‘gateway’ giving a 24 hour ‘lease’ to use the IP address.
  • The issued lease allows you to use the IP address for the set period with automatic renewals. A modem keeps the modem IP address until its forced to change. This IP release happens very rarely.
  • Each neighborhood gateway issues only 254 addresses for each short periods of time.
  • Two Internet modems cannot have the same IP address at the same time. If this ever happens, the router is broken and as a result, the entire subnet or neighborhood gets shutdown until it is fixed.
  • What are the chances of Willard having the same IP address? Willard’s modem would have to be utilizing the same Midco neighborhood gateway and what are the chances both modems are in the same neighborhood? What are the chances both modems need to be released at the same time and then trade IP addresses?
  • Now consider this just happens, by chance, by fate of all the gods on high or some other means Willard’s modem just happens to take Rounds’ aide Rob Skjonsberg IP address. What are the chances two ‘competing’ political camps are assigned the same IP addresses for a series of messages to David Montgomery. The odds of this happening are astronomical, it would be like winning the $540 million Powerball multiple times.

If I were presenting the question to the Midco exec, I would have asked what are the addresses used by Rounds’ aide Rob Skjonsberg during the period in question and now. What was the address used by Willard’s modem during the period and currently being used. IP addresses do not just change back and forth.

This reminds me of the rumors floating around during the first Rounds’ governor race. So the story goes, in 2002 Rounds and friends ran a subtle / quiet disinformation campaign to destroy his two opponents. Is Rounds’ aide Rob Skjonsberg pulling strings for his boss? It would be interesting to see if SouthDacola.com has any posting from the same Skjonsberg IP addresses. Internet – Intertubes ignorance shows again just to confuse?

Now consider the phone’s anonymous  jeffstanley19701@aol.com being so similar to jeffstanley@yahoo.com email address. The address is coming from the IP address leased to RoundsforSenate.com aide, Rob Skjonsberg? Who is Jeff Stanley in Rob Skjonsberg’s life? In Willard’s life?

Now consider Lederman, Denny DoGood, Russ Olson, Jason Gant, Pat Powers, Marty Jackley, Click Rain, Joel Arends (of Texas Swift Boat veterans fame) and the “let’s have fun with the Internet” crew games they were doing in 2012. What was their involvement or lack of? A Hollywood movie in the works to help us make sense of it all?

Could Willard have been setup by a Rounds’ protégé?  What is the felony criminal offense of setting up a naïve politico like Willard to take the fall? If these questions get brought up during the appeal process, what happens? Once again our ethically challenged state government (remember we are rated #2 behind Alabama) opens up the criminal conspiracy questions. The power players of state GOP politics are getting sloppy. Do we have any appropriate state or federal Grand Jury to look into these games?

Once again, we learn more from Argus reporters writing their blogs than we could ever get from their columns.

(BTW, there is a Jeff Stanley in Vermillion, a graphic artist who has connection with Dakota Dunes…. Don’t know anything else yet.)

Detroit’s 2-Cents; I find it interesting that the IP is connected to Rounds’ campaign manager. Was this a setup? It reminds of when AG Jackboots had a DCI agent interview Stan Adelstein about Pat Powers, only to come back and investigate Powers and Gant of things they already knew they were innocent of. Oh the games they play in Pierre, and so sloppy.

 

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