March 2017

Blue State Ball, 2017

Pretty excited, Cameraman Bruce and I will be attending our 4th Blue State Ball this weekend. It will be great catching up with our fellow Minnesota Progressives and talking Trump smack. We always come back with something new and tons of ideas for the blog. The one thing I love about this event is the FREE conversation and exchange of ideas. I find this is often lacking in SD supposed progressives. They seem scared to speak freely. I will say though with the recent movements like Indivisible 605 and the Women’s Rally Downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota progressives are opening up.

And why not?

With the recent disaster called our 2017 legislative session, it is time SD progressives speak up, heck, yell and scream. We need to take down the ‘House of Lords’ in Pierre.

Hypocrisy from Pierre Update & the Ghost of Janklow

I was going to do a couple of full-fledged posts on these two issues, but with the nice weather and all, I really don’t want to waste too much time farting around blogging.

Mark ‘Gigantic, Enormous, Forked Tongue, Hypocrite’ Mickelson

Last week, State Legislator and I think the head dude in Pierre, Mark Mickelson wrote a guest column in the AL decrying all the dark money coming in the state for initiatives. Call a whaaabulance Mark. He then began to chastise the groups and voters for not being aware of such darkness. Not once did he mention all the out-of-state donations the SD GOP has received over the years to fund state legislative candidates. Actually, just a few years ago when Jason Gant was tasked with those efforts, he dispersed over $90K to legislative candidates all over the state.

I’m sure Mark’s next letter will be about all the dark out-of-state money Kristi Noem received while serving in Congress that she has now swiftly moved to her governor’s campaign fund (over $1 million). Hypocrisy at it’s finest, and dark on both sides. Why shouldn’t we elect his wife to the SF School Board?

SB 176 the (Janklow) Protest Bill

Does anyone remember when Billy Bob Janks pulled this spade out of his ass?

Sept. 23 – South Dakota’s tactic of stopping Canadian trucks to protest what it sees as unfair trade practices with Canada is spreading to other states.
A week ago, South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow ordered state troopers to stop and inspect shipments of Canadian grain and livestock coming into the state. The action was intended to send a message urging U.S. officials to ensure fair trade between the two countries. Several trucks were turned away at the state’s borders for not having paperwork required by the state.

It seems Dennis not only has a short memory, but a tinge of hypocrisy when it comes to protest rules. Or maybe he is just taking a page from his dear old buddy Uncle Bill? Now that I think about it, it is too bad we didn’t block Janklow from driving on the roads in SD, probably be a lot more people alive today.

Building Collapse Video disappearing act

Friday afternoon I noticed that a new episode of Inside Town Hall appeared on the City of Sioux Falls You Tube page. It was the normal setup. City councilor Kiley had on the Director of 911, Matt Burns (SFPD) and the chief of the fire department to talk about their working relationships. The one thing I noticed when I started viewing the video was that it was 44 minutes long (most episodes are 30 minutes). While there was nothing revealing in the show itself, right at the 30 minute mark it went into a 14 minute (muted) video of the building collapse rescue efforts. There were several breaks in the video and it looked professionally shot, at one point it seemed also a drone was used (or shot from a fire truck ladder).

I gathered that this video was probably shot by City Link crew. While I commend them for doing this, it also got me thinking about a lot of other angles.

• What did it cost to have a city film crew on site for that long?

• While we won’t film parks board meetings, somehow the city found it necessary to film this event?

• Why would the city not do an investigation when they had this kind of crucial footage, which included them marking the cracks in PAVE’s wall, a crane holding up the wall, and pulling away the damaged car?

• Was the footage turned over to the insurance companies and OSHA?

• Why shoot this video (which included the rescue of the apartment dweller being pulled from the wreckage) when we don’t send a film crew to every fire rescue event?

• Were they planning on using this video as some kind of propaganda?

• And lastly, why was this posted to YouTube and now has disappeared from the site?

After watching the video, I talked openly about watching it to a group of friends at Drinking Liberally Friday night at the Taphouse. Did someone in the group (or near the table) report this back to the city?

It’s funny how transparency works in this town.

Fiscal Meeting NOT RECORDED again

There will be no camera’s, no audio and no Fancy Feast at this meeting.

Sioux Falls city council’s fiscal meeting, chaired by Councilor Erpenbach will not be recorded for a second time.

**This working session of the Fiscal Committee will be held in the Carnegie Town Hall Multipurpose Room adjacent to the Council Chambers. The working session will not be audio or video recorded.**

It really makes no sense, because they have the meeting right next to the main hall where it could be recorded. As you know from OUR recording of the last meeting, nothing ‘special’ took place in the meeting for it not be recorded and live streamed on CityLink.

I’m not sure what point Councilor Erpenbach is trying to make by not recording these meetings, but this anti-transparency movement by her, the mayor, Kiley and Rolfing is just starting to look like childish games.