South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

State Funding

Property Taxes State Funding State Legislature Taxes

A tax cut I can get behind!

l3wis 7Comments

Finally, the legislature is proposing a property tax cut this session;

“Because it would exempt the first $100,000 in valuation from taxing,” Ladner said. “Rather than a proportional cut, South Dakotans with smaller home value will get a bigger percentage tax cut from this mechanism.”

In Sioux Falls that would be about $1,500 a year tax break. Of course, I doubt this even gets out of committee considering towns, schools and counties will push back on it. It would help a lot of first time homebuyers getting into a starter home and the elderly on a fixed income.

Marijuana Medical Mary Jane Sioux Falls State Funding State Legislature

After the Failure of IM 27 lawmakers attempting to restrict Med MJ even more

l3wis 8Comments

Well, we should have seen this coming, a NEW drug war has emerged after right wingers killed IM 27 with a campaign littered with lies;

Lawmakers want to make it more difficult to expand the list of conditions that might qualify a citizen for a medical marijuana card.

Patients who want relief for conditions not explicitly listed in the law ought to ask their elected lawmaker to add the condition for them during the legislative session. 

Yeah, that sounds convenient and legitimate! NOT! As I have told people in the past, all Medical Cannabis is, is aspirin that gets you high. It’s a pain reliever, sleep aid and relaxant. It can and should be prescribed for ANY ailment. Isn’t it funny how a group of mostly white male business owners with NO medical, chemistry or biology degrees seem to know so much about reproductive health and chronic pain disorders.

I mean, I knew they were big group of smart fellers (or was it fart smellers?) but they constantly amaze me with all of their genius medical advice and recommendations 🙁

Elections Sioux Falls South Dakotans State Funding State Legislature

Go Vote!

l3wis 21Comments

Keeping track of all the noise leading up until Tuesday’s election has been overwhelming, so I am going to just concentrate on the big ones with my predictions.

Some of the issues are easy to predict;

• Slaughterhouse ordinance will pass with 60-70% of the vote (this of course doesn’t really matter since it ultimately will be decided in court).

• Medicare expansion will pass with 55-65% of the vote (I think it is a pretty big no brainer when the Feds are supplying 90% of the funding – a tax pool we pay into – that it makes sense to take them up on the offer.

The next two issues are a little sticky;

• IM 27 will pass with 58% of the STATEWIDE vote. I believe that once again the urban areas will carry the measure. (I have felt for awhile that this race would be a wider margin of victory than originally predicted. With the failure of Amendment C in June it showed me that when it comes to personal freedoms being voted on in the ballot box, South Dakotans will vote to protect them. I think the anger and frustration over Amendment C and the kangaroo court that overturned the original constitutional measure, voters are coming back in full force to show the governor, the supreme court and the legislature that yes, we are adult enough to know what recreational MJ is, and we want it).

• Kristi Noem will be re-elected to another term by at least 55% of the vote. (Trust me, I would love to be wrong, and I encourage everyone to vote for Jamie Smith, but the stars don’t align. Besides name recognition and the lack of funding, Smith needed these 3 things to happen tomorrow to win;

  1. Almost all of SD registered Indies need to vote for Smith, and ALL dems need to vote for him.
  2. Libertarian candidate Tracey Quint needs to garner at least 3-4% of the Republican vote
  3. A large percentage of Republicans need to ‘undervote’ in the governor’s race (not place a vote at all for governor.)

Those stars will probably not align.

I really cannot say much about the local races except in my very own District 10, I encourage you to vote for Erin Healy and send MAGA Sutton and her placeholder husband Tom packing. I also encourage everyone to NOT fill out the judgeship portion of the ballot. There is NO choice, just a confirmation. I left it blank to protest our very broken judicial system in South Dakota.

It is supposed to be 43 degrees tomorrow at 7 AM and 53 degrees at 7 PM with light rain after 11 AM. A perfect day to spend 10 minutes voting.

Developers Development State Funding State Legislature

HB1033 Amended to block Developer Welfare Cookie Jar

l3wis 2Comments


Not everything that happens in the legislature this year is a total toilet flush. HB1033 which provides $200 Million towards housing passed after being amended to leave the welfare developers hands out of the cookie jar.

Section 6. The executive director of the South Dakota Housing Development Authority shall approve vouchers and the state auditor shall draw warrants to pay expenditures authorized by this Act.

Originally the private contractors and developers wanted a portion of this fund to carte blanche build whatever they wanted  whether it was affordable housing or not. Now the SDHDA has the power to make sure the funding goes towards worthy accessible housing projects. The private developers still get a piece of the pie if they are willing to help build affordable housing.

South Dakotans State Funding State Legislature

Are South Dakota Trusts hiding Russian oligarchs money?

l3wis 12Comments

While Republicans in our state and DC want to whine about the Biden administration not doing enough to prevent war in Ukraine they say little about the possibility that some bad actors that could be hiding Russian oligarch money in SD;

Chuck Collins, the author of The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions and the director of the programme on inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, said the situation with regard to South Dakota was “an embarrassment” for the US.

“We are the weak link. And South Dakota is in a race to the bottom to be the weakest link on trusts,” said Collins. “We have seen the hidden wealth apparatus but it is always considered offshore. The more we understand that it’s onshore, the US is a weak link and we are now the magnet for kleptocratic capital the better for national understanding and the greater the potential for national legislation.”

Our super majority Republican legislature with the help of the governor could dig deep and enact legislation that prevents ANY ties to ANY oligarch from ANY country from hiding money in South Dakota. But while Ukrainians are dying all we get is silence and inaction.

It goes back to what I have often accused Republican lawmakers of (especially in our state), when it comes to THEIR personal wealth and livelihoods they could care less where the money is coming from as long as they can control it, this is why they refuse to take sales tax off of food even though 47 other states have done it successfully.

War, drought, poor healthcare, poverty, gambling, you name it, GREED is the only thing that controls them.

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