Secretary of State

Why is state senator Dan Lederman using official state letterhead to send out money from his PAC?

While Whopper Jr. cries about the Peter Norbeck PAC donating money to same candidates as the Rushmore PAC (which I heard the Norbeck PAC is giving individual candidates about 10x more money then Lederman’s PAC) I was wondering why Lederman was using ‘official’ state letterhead for his PAC?

Yes, he admits to this at the bottom;

But isn’t the official letterhead a bit deceptive? Is the money coming from Lederman or his PAC? These guys have no shame. If I received a check from the Rushmore PAC, I would wipe my ass with it and send it back to them.

Larry Long’s promotion

We’ve noticed this job advancement on David Montgomery’s blog:

Judge Long moves up

Former South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long, currently a South Dakota judge, is moving up a step to be the presiding judge for Minnehaha and Lincoln counties.

It reminds us of something we have been wondering about. When Larry Long was running for re-election to the SD Attorney General position in 2006 he received a very large contribution from a curious contributor (page 7 of PDF) Republican State Leadership Committee 2006 Oct 31 2006 3177 Larry Long.

Why would the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) give $25,000.00 to an already sitting SD Attorney General who could have been elected without it even dressed in a clown suit.

South Dacola highlighted the slimy Koch Brothers, John Birch Society, ALEC based RSLC recently and their money giving ways.  We know he accumulated thousands of dollars from other ALEC PACs to run for office so why the RLSC donation?

This is also the same AG Larry Long who ‘returned’ $1,950.00 to Sioux Falls used car salesman Dan Nelson in 2005, about the same time he offered his positive opinion of Nelson’s business operations.

In 2009 as a term limited AG and Republican, he curiously left / resigned the AG office to accept an appointment by Gov. Mike Rounds to a judgeship in the state’s Second Judicial District.  We now have Marty Jackley as our AG.

Most of us don’t usually worry about such mundane positions as Presiding Judge. This little job decides which Judge gets to preside or be your Judge, if you go to state circuit court for any reason.  If a local citizen or group of citizens do not like an action the city, county or state undertakes, we citizens can take them to court.  If we are harmed by a corporation or neighbor, we have the right to have our gripe heard in open court.  It is the Presiding Judge who determines which circuit courtroom / judge hears – decides the case.

Now he is being appointed to be ‘presiding’ judge for the state’s busiest circuit.

Food for thought.

 

E-Poll books, too much room for corruption

While SOS Gant and other state auditors are pushing for E-Poll books (purchased from the same companies that give money to their campaigns and PACs) I am a bit leary after reading stories like this;

State election officials plan to look at the histories of voters who participated in the Republican primary in Davidson County this month to help determine if voters were routinely given the GOP ballot by default.

Mark Goins, the state’s elections coordinator, said Tuesday that he wants to figure out if Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall’s experience was isolated or common. Advocacy group Tennessee Citizen Action announced publicly Monday what Goins had known for 11 days: that Hall, an elected Democrat, had voted in the Republican primary after poll officials failed to give him a choice.

While they go on to talk about how this may have been ‘operator error’ I say ‘hogwash’. If we implement E-Poll books you could see all kinds of wiggle room for election officials to manipulate the vote. You must also take into account that the very companies that sell this computer equipment and software give money to elected officials that run our elections. That in itself is scary as all-get-out.

H/T – B.J.

Freedom is Free, SPEAK OUT!

Guest Poster contributed;

The SOS story is the South Dakota version of a 37 state effort to control our elections. This linked national article is the crux of what we are trying to highlight in the ongoing Gant-Gate story. Jason Gant as SOS is the conduit to make the strategy happen. Moderate Republicans and the Democratic Party don’t want to understand or admit it is happening. Their cute Facebook and other social media games make it appear they are active. Their efforts are nothing more than busy work with no election day results. The GOP moderates and Dems in general will lose, because nothing beats the organized hard work of long-term finding of voters, getting out their vote and fighting every SOS rule proposed to be implemented.

The ownership of our person, property and our right to vote are at stake.  Keep in mind these 3 combined strategies the corporatists are using to dominate and own us.  Everything else done by the opponents of the GOP (Greedy Old People) is window dressing.

Strategies:

1. lie and make it appear that they support prosperity for all Americans

2. make appeals to racism and dividing the white working class (union vs. non-union)

3. suppressing the vote

As we have discussed, the efforts are so broad based everything must be challenged.  In the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Fight everything, every day, in every way with everything in the arsenal of legal methods.  The fight requires us the people to research everything, question everything, leave nothing to the better natures of ‘man’.  The average person will only win by banding together as a movement to put the masters back into their place out of our lives.

Open Government in SD? LOL! (Guest Poster)

Just got done rereading Randall Beck’s open government committee article under Ellis’ byline in the Argue Endorser and it made me chuckle. We at South Dacola have been real interested in the open.sd.gov website lately. Who wrote this? Under whose guidance? With the results we see, why bother? It kind of reminds us of putting lipstick on a pig.

Was it worth it?

The reporting / contracting agency is responsible for up-loading their contracts and expenditures when and if they want to.  Just go look for a company, law firm, or medical firm you know is doing business with the state.

Try to find the contract and the terms.

How do these outfits get paid? And how many of these companies (individual owners) are donating to the same old yahoos getting elected to run our state every year?

Look for contracts – payments the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, Governor or any other office out of Pierre. You will be hard pressed to find anything out there.  So much for the phoniness of ‘open’ SD government.  With all the legislative hearings without contract questions, no-bid contracts, hidden contracts, Governor’s club arrangements and other special deals reported out of Pierre we at South Dacola want to be able to trust something out of Pierre. But you know what they say, “You can only get the shit so shiny when you polish a turd (Pierre).”