RIP Chris Cornell
l3wis Always loved this Duet with Vedder. Chris had one of the most powerful voices in Rock & Roll, he will be missed.
May 2017
Sioux Falls Education Association is rumored to endorse Mickelson
In one of the most bizarre moves I have ever seen a teacher union association pull, they are rumored to have endorsed a well known Republican for school board. It’s not like she is just some regular old house wife Republican, she is married to a staunch Republican lawmaker who is anti-union and anti-organized labor.
When teachers stand around with their fingers in their butts wondering why they can’t get raises, all they need to do is look at the 50 year chokehold Cynthia and Mark’s party has had on Pierre and their anti-public education stances on funding. It’s almost an insult to teachers that this person is running, than they endorse her? Baffling! The half-penny sales tax only passed because the chicken-shit Democrats voted for it also.
I’m sure this stems from the higher ups in the organization making this perplexing decision based on who they think will win, and who Cynthia sleeps with. But don’t expect Mark to wake up the day after the school board election and suddenly become PRO-UNION, the party would burn him at the stake.
Also, I think the SFEA should have stayed neutral in the race to begin with, voter turnout will probably be a record low, and it could only take a couple of votes for any of the 4 candidates to prevail, even though it seems Mickelson is spending several thousand on her campaign (rumor has it that Mark is donating his legislative campaign funds to Cynthia’s, which is totally legal) I guess we will find out after May 30 when financial reports are due. It’s your typical Republican strategy, outspend your opponent 5-10 fold instead of actually running on your credentials.
As a person who has worked in printing and the sign business, if I had to make an educated guess, Mickelson has probably spent well over $10K on signs alone. I also saw a bumper sticker today, and would expect billboards closer to the election.
Pretty sad really when you are only trying to get a majority of the predicted 2,000 votes that will be cast.
UPDATE: Also, teachers typically are not big on voting, and take into account that a large percentage of them can’t vote because they live outside district.
Patrick Lalley to host new KSOO show
The show will fill the 3 to 5 p.m. time slot on weekdays beginning June 19. My hope is to engage KSOO listeners with a variety of news, information and analysis.
Like the End of the Roman Empire, is government distracting us in Sioux Falls?
How ironic that a new restaurant in Sioux Falls is opening soon Downtown called Bread and Circus, the term is synonymous with the down fall of Rome;
The expression “bread and circuses“ captures a certain cynical political view that the masses can be kept happy with fast food (think Cartman’s “Cheesy Poofs†on South Park) and faster entertainment (NASCAR races, NFL games, and the like). In the Roman Empire, it was bread and chariot races and gladiatorial games that filled the belly and distracted the mind, allowing emperors to rule as they saw fit.
Don’t laugh (maybe cry) but Sioux Falls has many similarities to Rome before it fell.
We have an emperor with complete power afforded to him by the city charter. If he doesn’t like what the city council does, he simply vetoes them.
We have accumulated much debt building play palaces to distract the real issues going on in Sioux Falls (increased crime, corrupt city administrators, gap between rich and poor, a housing glut, decreased tax revenue and disappearing open government).
Like Rome, we rode the high horse for a long time, but in order for the elites to play their games behind closed or even open doors, the public had to be distracted, but will those distractions be enough or will citizens start opening their eyes?
In a little under a year we will be having a municipal election that coronates a new mayor and up to 2-4 new city councilors, can we save this little empire before it is too late?
I think we can, but we are going to have to start paying attention, we are going to have to encourage people of integrity to run for office, we are going to have to do a complete audit of the past administration and we are going to hold those accountable who put us down this path.
It’s going to be messy and very bloody, but at the end of the day, I think Sioux Falls can prevail and most importantly learn from our greed and gluttony we have enjoyed for the past 20 years.
And lastly, remember to laugh, because if you can’t laugh at politicians you only end up hating them, and I think we have enough of that going on DC, we don’t need it here.
Did Darrin Smith lose a power struggle at the Pavilion?
As we know, the Pavilion made some leadership changes this week;
Smith this month created and filled two new executive positions – a chief operating officer and a chief financial officer. Longtime Pavilion staffers John Seitz and Jane Hathaway, formerly the director of patron services and finance, respectively, started in their new roles May 11.
Smith said much of his first year focused on evaluating the Washington Pavilion’s operations while looking for ways to improve efficiency. Giving the pair of established staffers more authority to make decisions in his absence will streamline operations and allow Smith to spend more of his time fundraising, which should result in more revenues to support patron offerings.
What is even more glaring is that long time Operations VP, Jon Loos got to keep his job, now he is called ‘Director of Facility Services‘. So does he get to keep his current salary while doing less since Seitz is taking over those duties? Why keep Loos?
Remember Loos and Hathaway have been there since the inception of the Pavilion. Was there some disagreements with Smith’s leadership? Did the Board of Trustees step in? Many may not know, but the Board of Trustees are really who are in charge at the Pavilion. Are these changes in affect to let Smith to stick around until Huether leaves office?
It just seems very peculiar that in the short period of time Smith has been CEO he is already getting his leadership duties cut. Knowing Smith as long as I have, I can only speculate it wasn’t his idea. So what really happened?