UPDATED: As I suspected, Powers resigns

l3wis July 7, 2012 53Comments

I still hope the investigation continues in the SOS’s office, as many people have pointed out, these are mostly Gant’s mishaps, not Pat’s. If this is some game to stop the investigation, I hope the AG isn’t tricked so easily;

Embattled Secretary of State employee Pat Powers has resigned.

Powers, who worked on online and technological innovations for Secretary of State Jason Gant, had been criticized for allegedly continuing private, election-related business activities at the same time as he was employed by Gant.

At the request of state Sen. Stan Adelstein, R-Rapid City, Attorney General Marty Jackley is investigating accusations that Powers behaved improperly in the Secretary of State’s office, as well as other accusations against Gant.

Before working for Gant, Powers ran a popular conservative blog, the South Dakota War College.

In a statement, Gant thanked Powers for “his efforts in helping modernize this office and advancing the common goal of making it more transparent.”

Gant said Powers was resigning to “spend more time with his children and pursue business opportunities in the private sector.”

UPDATED: It seems the spin doctors are already hard at work;

Joel Rosenthal, a former head of the South Dakota Republican Party who also blogs about politics, said Powers’ time on that feisty, combative blog might be behind some of the criticism he received working for Gant.

“It seems that Sen. Adelstein has other motives that allegedly go back to what he feels the War College blog (attacked) him some years ago,” Rosenthal said. “This is maybe some kind of payback, vendetta.”

Adelstein insisted that his complaints aren’t about vengeance.

Last I checked Joel, vengeance is about spite and being intentionally hurtful to others. This sometimes includes saying things about people that are not truthful. Stan simply pointed out the truth about Powers. Pat WAS running a campaign consulting business while working for Gant and Pat DID sell campaign materials to a candidate that Gant endorsed in the primaries. How is pointing something out like this being ‘intentionally spiteful’?

Joel obviously comes from the ‘When you point out the truth, and it is ugly, you are being negative’ crowd. I get so sick of that boloney. Lying and lacking integrity is NEVER positive. Stan pointed out the truth, and it stung.

Get ready for the numbing effects of data overload

l3wis July 2, 2012 24Comments

Pat Powers is still in charge of Jason Gant’s campaign website . . . As a state employee? For your boss? Look at the website. This is part of building a narrative from Whois records and why laymen’s eyes glaze over into a dead man’s stare. When this data is compared to the data posted on May 9, 2012, the bigger story unfolds.

The last updates shown below to jasongant.com was June 27, 2012.  Take note of the change dates.  All during the time Bill Clay was on ‘vacation’.

Dakota War College is now located on servers controlled by rackspace.com. The last domain update occurred to dakotawarcollege.com was June 26, 2012.  Pat is using a proxy service to hide the ownership and management contact for dakotawarcollege.com as of July 2, 2012.

Dakotacampaignstore.com domain information was last changed on June 24, 2012.

Patpowers.com domain information was last changed on June 27, 2012.  Pat is using his dakotawarcollege.com email address as technical consultant for this site.

It keeps getting better…  Ownership and management of the website, jasongant.com, at 10:12am July 2, 2012 from www.whois.com:

jasongant.com Registry Whois

Technical Contact: Powers, Pat  @yahoo.com

(SEE THE FULL DOCUMENT: GANT-GATE)

UPDATED:Things are beginning to snowball for the SOS’s office

l3wis July 1, 2012 16Comments

Ellis writes his column today about the SOS’s office and their recent stumblings;

Jason Gant, the South Dakota secretary of state, hasn’t been living a care-free, happy-go-lucky summer.

Gant is the subject of much talk these days in political circles and the Internet, mostly of the undesirable kind. His latest problem came to light after Scott Ehrisman, a local blogger who runs Southdacola.com, found that Gant’s deputy, Pat Powers, was moonlighting on the side by operating a political merchandising firm, doing mailings and printing on behalf of candidates.

To some, it’s not a big deal. So what if a guy — Powers — has a second business?

To tell you the truth, when I first posted about it, I didn’t think much of it either. I knew when Pat was running DWC that he had the business, so, I just assumed he stopped doing it when he started working for the SOS, even if the site was still up. I assumed wrong. It wasn’t like this site was just ‘floating’ out there. Powers was selling campaign material to a candidate his boss endorsed. (he lost BTW). But that was only half of an evolving story. The Senator that filed the complaint against Gant’s office added this tidbit recently over on Madville Times;

What is this new discussion of the “Gant Group,?” What is meant by changing the address and rewriting the “documentary timeline for Jason Gant’s private consulting business, the Gant Group.”

Since when does the Secretary of State or for that matter any Constitutional Officer have a “PRIVATE” consulting business? Explain how a full time State employee could be shameless enough to discuss adjusting his own private business from a State Constitutional office!!

I will have some interesting data and questions to submit to the Attorney General in connection with my requested investigation next week.

State Senator Stanford Adelstein

As another commenter added, it is time to go National with this story. NPR, are you listening?

UPDATE: I found Gant as chair to this PAC an interesting conflict of interest. I guess the Dems tried to make hay about this last year but nobody was listening. Maybe now is the time to get out the bailer twine. (I took a screenshot just in case the link plays musical chairs on us.)

RCJ Editorial board slams the SOS’s office (HT- Guest Poster)

l3wis June 30, 2012 11Comments

“OH, SHIT!” (SOS, Jason Gant, KDLT image)

It is about time a legitimate newspaper in SD call a spade, a spade;

Gant said he asked Powers to close down the Dakota Campaign Store because it had become a distraction.

It’s more than a distraction; it’s a conflict of interest.

Yeah, no kidding!? I love how the MSM media in SD besides the RCJ, Mercer, and an Argus ‘mandated’ Blog have’nt touched this with a 10-Foot Pole. I’m not trying to get ‘cool points’ on this issue. The blatant conflicts and corruption is so obvious, you would think any, and every media source in SD would be terrorizing the AG’s office for a decision from a speedy investigation.

Nope. Not how it works in SD. We must be polite. And ignorant. And subservient.

I will say this, if nothing happens from the AG’s investigation, that won’t be the last of it. There are many national news organizations salivating at the chance to expose the ‘good old boy’ system in SD. I would prefer we stay modest and handle this internally, but, yah never know.

The plot thickens over the SOS scandal

l3wis June 27, 2012 7Comments

There is so many angles to this story, I could have never imagined this many termites coming out of the woodwork.

Apparently this all started in 2010 when Gant was running for office, with the help of BK Jr;

In light of the recent developments regarding Secretary of State Jason Gant and his possible impeachment, I would like to bring forth additional information that shows this inappropriate commingling of business and public service between the duo goes back at least as far as his run for the current office he now holds.

Back in my run for office in 2010 against Jason Gant and Ben Nesselhuf, I wanted to order signs from a South Dakotabusiness. The only one that I could find online just so happened to be Pat Powers’ business. The reason I completely ruled it out was that Gant had basically taken over part of his website stating that using this business would be like contributing to his campaign for Secretary of State. He implied in writing that proceeds from Powers’ sign business would help him to get elected.

There were 3 things that had immediately jumped out at me regarding this situation:

1. Any contributions made through doing business with Dakota Campaign Store would be in essence unreported and undisclosed political contributions that could be hidden from the public under the disguise of sales by a business rather than political contributions subject to reporting requirements and the maximum donation limit by an individual of $4,000.

2. In Sioux Falls alone, Jason Gant’s signs blanketed the area. If these signs were in a round about way donated to Jason Gant’s campaign through Pat Powers’ business, the value should have been in the thousands of dollars and should have been reported as “in kind” contributions on Gant’s campaign finance report. I never found anything on his reports that could have taken into account the potentially large dollar amount of the value of these signs.

3. Any candidate that had a potentially unlimited supply of campaign materials would certainly hold an unfair advantage over his 2 opponents.

Oh, but Stacey’s story is just the tip of the iceberg (a IT specialist who just happens to be a loyal foot soldier sent me this information this morning);

DWC was down so they could move their server to a private server routed through an Albany NY service from a public Utah service.  In this process they can attempt to lose the archives to send investigators into blank servers.  The data posted as #50 testor15 on 05.11.12 at 4:21 pm was the old server where the offending data was located.

dakotawarcollege.com, dakotacampaignstore.com, patpowers.com all have the same hidden webserver 66.152.109.31.

The last known link to each is through an IP, Tech Valley Communications, Albany NY.  Tracing route to each is  [66.152.109.31] you will notice in the document below 16 jumps labeled “ *        *        *     Request timed out.”  This means the IP translation service is attempting to find the actual server but is now hidden.  It could be located in a garage in Pierre or Timbuktu.  This is very likely someone playing a game they should not be.  Someone in Pierre with Brookings connections may have been working very hard on his ‘vacation’ from the web to cover his tracks.

PP is trying to keep the site private.  “Bill Clay” was on ‘vacation’ during the time it was ‘down’. His post telling us so:

Stop jumping to conclusions

Jun25
2012 4 Comments Written by Bill Clay

I went on a family vacation for a week and when I got back to town I was told told a certain respectable legislator wants to put my face on a milk carton for a missing persons report.

(I suppose I should have given notice before going out of town)

Lots has happened over the past week and I’m looking forward to posting about it.

IP trace document; trace