Madville Times

Ho Ho Ho! Madville Times Moves to New Domain!

2010-12-25T00:04:00.005-06:00

Merry Christmas! Enjoy your hot chocolate, pick up all the wrapping paper and boxes... then come see the new Madville Times!

New domain: MadvilleTimes.com
New RSS feed: http://madvilletimes.com/feed/rss/

I am moving all Madville Times blogging activity to the new site effective immediately. So change your bookmarks and feeds, and keep coming for good conversation. Happy new blog... and happy new year!

Madison Central Charges Admission to Vote?

2010-12-24T08:25:00.002-06:00

Madison Central School District held the first of its scheduled early-voting sessions this week. One local basketball fan reports that, contrary to the spirit of the 24th Amendment, to vote at Tuesday night's boys' basketball game, one had to buy a five-dollar ticket for admission to the game.

According to my correspondent, the polling station was located in the concession area in the middle school lunchroom. During games, the only way to access that area is through the northwest entrance to the middle school, where the ticket table for the game was located. There was no sign at the ticket table announcing that voting was being conducted on the premises, and my correspondent received no advice at the ticket table that one could enter to vote without buying a ticket. The only public notice of the active polling came at halftime, when the PA announcer, Mike Materese, told the crowd that they could go vote for the MHS renovation project in the lunchroom.

The polling station was managed by Monica Campbell, executive director of the Madison Central Education Foundation, which stands to gain new office space in the renovated high school if the bond issue passes.

Now I'm having trouble pinning this down in statute, since our district seems to be winging it on election law on this early-voting scheme. But if election day rules apply to early-voting sessions, publishing a schedule of early-voting sites online and in the newspaper isn't enough. Let us turn to SDCL 12-14-14:

On election day a sign, with a minimum size of eleven inches by seventeen inches, shall be conspicuously displayed outside of the entrance to any building in which a polling place is located to clearly identify the building as a polling place.

If election law allows early voting, election law should hold early voting places to the same standards to protect voter rights as regular election day voting. Individuals should not have to purchase tickets to access a polling place. The polling place should be conspicuously announced by a sign at the entrance of the building.

By the way, as we consider spending millions of dollars to build a 2500-seat gym, my correspondent reports there were plenty of open seats in the current 1200-seat gym.

Put Down the Smart Phone and Drive... the Helicopter!

2010-12-23T17:30:00.001-06:00

As a public service, the U.S. Navy demonstrates how distracted driving can put your vehicle in the lake. The vehicles: two MH-60R Seahawks. The lake: Tahoe. The damage: $506,000. The distraction: taking photos for Facebook.

Helicopter, semi, Prius: when you're in the pilot's seat, you have a job to do. Keep it out of the lake and the ditches: just drive!

[Sponsor Mary Kenyon did not pay for this post... but she won't mind if you visit her website!]

Governors-Elect Consider Cutting Drug Programs -- Why Not Legalize Pot

2010-12-23T12:44:00.000-06:00

Florida's Republican Governor-Elect Rick Scott is cutting jobs in the Office of Drug Control created by former Governor Jeb Bush. South Dakota's Republican Governor-Elect Dennis Daugaard inherits from his predecessor a proposal to cut meth treatment programs.

I'll invite Mr. Newland to expound further. For now I'll just note that we could probably save a lot more in law enforcement and incracertation costs by legalizing marijuana. At least that's what televangelist Pat Robertson thinks.

Web Spinning, Media in the Tank for MHS New Gym

2010-12-23T08:54:00.000-06:00

Some statistics of interest, Web and otherwise:

245: hits received by the Madison Central New Gym/Renovation Project website since launched earlier this month. Superintendent Vince Schaefer crows about this popularity on the front page of last night's Madison Daily Leader.
not mentioned: number of those hits coming from the Madville Times.
700: hits received by the Madville Times yesterday.
163: votes submitted to the Madville Times online poll on the school bond issue in one week.
109: views of MHS Tour Intro, the most popular of the 18 videos I shot and posted of the MHS facility tour last month.
60: views of MHS Locker Room Toilet, the second-most popular video of the MHS series.
17%: amount of $16.98-million bond issue projected for new gym.
75%: possible understatement of actual new gym cost.
0: individual components of plan that cost more than the new gym.
9: paragraphs you have to read through before encountering Chuck Clement's first use of the word gymnasium in last night's front-page 12-paragraph article on the project.
16: paragraphs you had to read through to find new gym in Clement's October 8 19-paragraph article on the project.
2: times Clement said "screw you" to me last March in response to my criticism of his journalism.

Ohio Loses Two Seats: Kucinich Unbound?

2010-12-23T07:51:00.001-06:00

The Congressional redistricting that will arise from the 2010 Census won't help Dems, but I figured that, since South Dakota's already as low as it can go in House representation, there's not much to get excited about.

Then one of my favorite Ohioan transplants sends me this depressing Christmas note: Ohio will lose two Representatives, and one may be my man Dennis Kucinich!

Ohio's population grew by 183,000 people over the last decade to 11.5 million, but it wasn't enough to keep up with fast-growing states in the South.

Ohio has 18 congressional districts that now will drop to 16.

...In November, Democrats lost five out of 10 U.S. House seats they currently hold in Ohio. The remaining five are tightly packed into an area that stretches from Toledo through Cleveland and into Youngstown.

...Among the Ohio Democrats in Congress who could face losing their districts are Cleveland's Dennis Kucinich and Betty Sutton, who represents Lorain and Elyria, plus suburban Cleveland and the Akron area.

Both are in areas that have lost population in the last decade ["Ohio Loses 2 Seats in Congress, Sutton and Kucinich May Go," AP via Morning Journal, 2010.12.21].

On the bright side, I'm pleased that the Republicans might consider Kucinich a sufficiently big thorn in their side to draw him off the Congressional map. But I'll bet some elephant in the map room is thinking, "Hey! If we redistrict Dennis out of a job, maybe he'll change his mind and run in the 2012 primary against Obama!"

----------------------
Bonus Ohio love: Bob Schwartz has been enjoying a solstice resurgence, cranking out lots of good blog posts on new START (passed!), ethanol, Thune hypocrisy, and other matters over the past week. Keep those keys clicking Bob!

Legislature Posts First Proposed Bills of 2011

2010-12-23T05:05:00.002-06:00

What's that under my tree? Christmas bills! Yahoo! Start your RSS engines: the first pieces of legislation to be proposed in the 2011 session of the South Dakota State Legislature are in the e-hopper.

First in from the State House: two bills on the agricultural productivity tax (you know, the quasi-income tax now imposed on farmers in place of plain old property tax). House Bill 1001 changes shall to may in a couple spots (ah ha! So shall and may do mean different things!) and allows the folks in charge of this tax to incorporate more data in the calculations. HB 1002 clarifies the need for documentation and the kinds of data the director of equalization can use to assess taxes on ag land.

HB 1003 empowers the Interim Rules Review Committee to revert rules that impose "unreasonable" costs on local governments and school districts. If I'm reading the law right, the interim committee already has the power to revert rules for other reasons. But I wonder if this change will resurrect debates over costs that are better settled during session by the full body.

The Senate is a bit slower out of the blocks, with a couple of style and form changes. Senate Bill 3 has a little more substance: it clamps down on the use of South Dakota's state seal. Section specifies that the state seal may not be used for the following:

On or in connection with any advertising or promotion for any product, business, organization, service, or article whether offered for sale for profit or offered without charge;
In a political campaign to assist or defeat any candidate for elective office; or
In a manner which may operate or be construed as an endorsement of any business, organization, product, service, or article.

In other words, if this passes, Senator Russell Olson (R-8/Madison) will have to get the Bulldog Media folks to whip up a new header for his website:

Small but deadly: Senate Bill 3 would ban use of the state seal in political campaign literature.

Senate Bill 3 would empower the Secretary of State to come up with rules to "assure tasteful and high-quality reproduction of the seal." I welcome readers to compose their own punchlines.

The Interim Bureau of Administration Agency Review Committee put this bill together. They even had the foresight to pre-empt complaints of censorship. Says Section 7:

Nothing in this Act prohibits the reproduction of the state seal for illustrative purposes by the news media if the reproduction by the news media is incidental to the publication or the broadcast. Nothing in this Act prohibits a characterization of the state seal from being used in political cartoons.

Hey, Ehrisman! You're still good to go! But now let's see if there's floor debate on whether blogs meet the Legislature's definition of "news media."

There's much more fun to come from our hearty 105 in Pierre. Stay tuned!

MHS Publishes Early Voting Schedule: No Tickets Required

2010-12-22T19:05:00.000-06:00

I see the Madison Central School District has posted a list of absentee voting opportunities. Permit me to post the schedule hear in clean and simple text to spare you the trouble of clicking on the school's needlessly bandwidthy PDF:

Date	Event	Location	Time
12/20	Middle School band/choir concert	High School Auditorium	7:00 p.m.
12/21	Boys basketball	Cafeteria	4:45 p.m.
1/7	Girls basketball	Cafeteria	4:45 p.m.
1/10	Boys basketball	DSU Fieldhouse	4:45 p.m.
1/12	Open voting	Elementary Commons	12:45 p.m.
1/13	Girls basketball	DSU Fieldhouse	5:00 p.m.
1/15	Gymnastics	Cafeteria	Noon
1/17	Forum	Cafeteria	7:00 p.m. after Forum
1/18	Open voting	Elementary Commons	3:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
1/20	Boys basketball	DSU Fieldhouse	5:00 p.m.
1/21	Wrestling (Madison Square Garden)	Cafeteria	6:00 p.m.
1/25	Forum	Cafeteria	7:00 p.m. after Forum

Dang—I already missed a couple!

A couple things occurred to me last night about the school district's early-voting scheme. First, the school can't conduct early voting at a basketball game... or at least not on the other side of the ticket table. Suppose concerned citizens want to observe the voting, as they are entitled by state law to do. Suppose they're on a tight budget and can't afford a ticket to the basketball game. If school business manager and election officer Cindy Callies sets up a voting table on paid side of the ticket booth, she creates a barrier to poll watchers, not to mention potential voters.

There can be no price of admission to access any polling place. That's why, in the above schedule, the polling during high school games is listed at the cafeteria or the auditorium. But there still had better not be any electioneering near that voting table!

Note also that it's a bit tough to make to observe the polls when the school district doesn't include a closing time for its early polls. Keeping democracy honest is hard work, but on January 20th, for instance, it would be nice to know if voting will run for just an hour or if I should pack a snadwich and expect to be there for four hours.

Absent from the school's new gym/renovation information site is a list of workplaces that have requested early voting sessions. If any such sessions are scheduled, we should expect similar public notification.

Note, business owners, that if you invite Mrs. Callies to hold early voting at your business, you'll need to open your doors to any person who wants to come in and watch or even vote. That's our right. You can't call Mrs. Callies and say, "I have five employees who want to vote; please bring five ballots down." If folks on the street hear that you're conducting an early vote at your office, and they want to drop in and vote at that time as well, you have to let them in, and Mrs. Callies has to bring enough ballots for such a contingency.

The school district has already lost one supporter with its gaming of the vote. I hope the school will compensate for its questionable vote-stacking by keeping the process as transparent as possible.

Poll: MHS New Gym/Renovation Bond Issue Well Short of 60%

2010-12-22T16:30:00.000-06:00

If Madville Times readers have anything to say about, the school will have a hard time passing its bond issue. In the latest Madville Times poll, I asked "How will you vote on Madison's $16.98 million new gym/high school renovation bond issue?" Your responses over the past week:

Yes	73 (44%)
No	74 (45%)
Still thinking	16 (9%)

Total Votes: 163

That's pretty tight, but given that it takes 60% to pass the bond issue, these numbers suggest the school district has some convincing to do.

Now of course, the margin of error for Madville Times polls is bigger than any gym MHS will ever have, so keep your grains of salt handy. For instance, back in September, my poll on the county commission race got the winners right, Pedersen and Wollmann, though in different order. On the other hand, my poll was way off on the local sheriff's race: the tie between Lurz and Wyatt wasn't too far off, but my vote totally underrepresented Sheriff Hartman's support.

But consider: I was off on the sheriff's race because I suspect my readership underrepresents the older crotchety crowd that likes the status quo. If my school bond poll underrepresents that crowd, then the bond issue is in real trouble.

Basin Electric Suspends NextGen Coal Plant; DoE Cancels EIS

2010-12-22T09:39:00.002-06:00

Last year Basin Electric said it was "re-evaluating the timeline" for its NextGen coal-fired power plant near Selby. Looks like the re-evaluating is over: NextGen is nixed.

From today's Federal Register:

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Western Area Power Administration

Notice of Cancellation of Environmental Impact Statement for the Proposed NextGen Project Near Selby, Walworth County, SD (DOE/EIS-0401)
AGENCY: Western Area Power Administration, DOE.
ACTION: Cancellation of Environmental Impact Statement.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Western Area Power Administration (Western) is issuing this notice to advise the public that it is cancelling the preparation of an environmental impact statement (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on an interconnection request by the Basin Electric Power Cooperative (BEPC). BEPC proposed to design, construct, operate, and maintain a 500- to 700-megawatt base load, coal-fired generation facility near Selby, Walworth County, South Dakota, and interconnect it with Western's transmission system, thus triggering a NEPA review of Western's action to allow the interconnection. BEPC has notified Western it is suspending further action on its proposed project [Timothy J. Meeks, Administrator, FR Doc. 2010-32121 Filed 12-21-10; 8:45 am, BILLING CODE 6450-01-P].

Basin Electric's webpage for the project is gone; you can still read up on NextGen's specs on the WAPA's site and in the South Dakota PUC docket. That's 700 more megawatts of coal-fired power the industry has decided we just don't need. That's also $2.5 billion in construction dollars, 1700 temporary construction jobs and 150 permanent jobs that won't be coming to Walworth County.

Not getting nixed: Basin Electric's Prairie Winds SD1 wind farm, scheduled to start pumping out 150 megawatts of clean wind power in 2011. Estimated cost: $350 million.

Again, check that math: $350 million gets 150 MW in wind power. That's $2.3 million per megawatt. NextGen would have cost $2.5 billion to get 700 MW in coal power. That's $3.6 million per megawatt. As I've said before, it's not envirowhackos driving the industry away from coal power. It's good old economics.

Update 10:31 CST: Plains Justice is also pleased.

Hunter: South Dakotans up to Eyeballs in Newspapers

2010-12-22T09:04:00.000-06:00

I may complain about the paucity of local media, but Madison Daily Leader publisher Jon Hunter contends South Dakota's newspaper market has more players than most places. In his Monday editorial, our man Hunter congratulates the Garretson Gazette and the Native Sun News on ascending to the noble ranks of "legal newspapers" (i.e., getting to publish legal notices from local government entitites, the convenient racket that the newspaper association uses to protect its market share from innovators who would save tax dollars by publishing meeting minutes and new ordinances online).

In the process, Hunter notes that "There are now 119 weekly and 11 daily newspapers in South Dakota, the most per capita of any state in the nation."

Given our new official population of 814,000, that's one daily for every 74,000 South Dakotans. Turn the number another way, that's 13.5 daily newspapers per million population. According to data from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, that gives us press coverage almost as good as Switzerland (which has 14.0 dailies per million). Of the 25 countries with higher daily-per-million ratings, most are pa-dinkally places like San Marino, Liechtenstein, Aruba, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Our Norsky forebears also outnews us (19.3 dailies per million), but South Dakota beats Sweden (11.0), Denmark (7.2), and the United States as a whole (6.0 dailies per million, or one paper per 167,000 people).

Think of South Dakota as a single community that just happens to be spread out across 77,000 square miles: we have 11 daily newspapers serving a population about the same size as Indianapolis or San Francisco. Yahoo's directory pops up fifteen papers for San Francisco. Mondo Times lists four Indianapolis papers.

But does quantity mean quality? That depends on how you define quality in newspapers. If we're talking reach and impact, only two of those 130 publications, the Rapid City Journal and that Sioux Falls paper approach statewide status (though I get the feeling from the Web that the Mitchell Daily Republic is trying). Most of the rest do what they do reasonably well, covering their local events, but rarely reaching beyond their county borders.

If we're talking breadth of viewpoints, well, we're eating mostly white bread. Most of the newspapers Jon Hunter counts are of the same genre: community booster rags with lots of pics from the kids' basketball games and the local Tour of Gardens, spiced with the occasional contrarian letter to the editor. (Monday's Madison Daily Leader letters: advice from the Car Care Council in Maryland on keeping our cars ready for winter, and tips from a local nursing home manager on good Christmas gifts for old folks.) Most South Dakota newspapers operate in tiny media monopolies with no alternative voices on paper to challenge them. The closest thing to a regular alternative press may be the college weeklies (and note: after 108 years in print, DSU's student newspaper, The Trojan Times, is going all digital).

Compare that to San Francisco, where the mainstream San Francisco Chronicle dominates, but where dozens of alternative newspapers coexist and serve the same community with different ethnic and political viewpoints.

And as we love to point out, of those 11 South Dakota dailies, only the Madison Daily Leader is independently and locally owned. Local control matters, especially when it comes to news. When the money decisions are made elsewhere, you end up with the biggest papers in the state not maintaining bureaus in Pierre to cover state government.

Having lots of newspapers is great. South Dakota's newspapers tell stories that no one else is going to cover. But the lack of local ownership, diversity of voices, and breadth of coverage leave room for improvement. Keep printing, Jon!

Lange: SD Can Learn from Minn. Statesmanship, ND Criminal Justice

2010-12-22T07:28:00.005-06:00

Last week I noted the difference in fiscal politics between Minnesota and South Dakota. That essay arose from a conversation with my neighbor and outgoing state legislator Gerry Lange. In the following guest column, he exapnds the view to include North Dakota:

Recent headlines here in Madison and in Minnesota highlight our two states’ sharply contrasting value systems. Here in South Dakota, our leaders are telling us we’ll have to cut ecucation funding to balance the budget! There in Minnesota, the finally-elected new governor, a multi-millionaire heir of the Dayton fortune, is acting like a statesman with “noblesse oblige!”

Rather than slashing education and vital services, he’s calling on his own class of affluent “winners” to come up with more income tax to patch their budget holes. How could sister states be so different? Could be a matter of their preferring a number one quality of life where it’s worth the trade-offs: more taxes for better wages, better infrastructure, and no taxes on food, clothing, auctions, and building contracts.

National government publications are rich with “best practices” from other states. As legislators, we brought home numerous “success stories” from meetings all over the country. One of the best that could save us millions is as close as North Dakota! They’ve been doing “electronic monitoring” and intensive probation for quite a few years. Results? 1000 fewer in prison than here, and a ten percent recividism compared with some fifty percent in most states.

Most of our leaders in Pierre know this, so it’s puzzling as to why we don’t adopt this successful approach. Do South Dakotans really believe that converting colleges to prisons has been a better strategy? Do tax-fearing voters really prefer to balance the budget on the backs of our kids?

—Gerald Lange, December 2010

Qwest Fails to Fix Phantom Rings

2010-12-22T00:41:00.006-06:00

Yeah, Ed, I'm talking to you. If you're done destroying your employees' morale, fix my #*¢$!^& phone!

I thought we had this problem licked. Alas, no. Here's the e-mail I just sent to the good people at the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, who have tried in good faith to get Qwest to stop ringing my phone after midnight:

Dear Public Utilities Commission:

I regret that I must trouble you again. However, Qwest has failed to fulfill its statement that the problem of the phantom rings on my phone had been addressed by a repair test at the beginning of November. Ten minutes ago, at about 12:26 a.m. our corded phone emitted yet another phantom half-ring.

The problem now is not so much the annoyance as Qwest's consistent failure, over multiple years, to fulfill a simple request to remove the annoyance. I will contact the Qwest technician spoke with me and left a number on November 4. If there is any attention you can direct toward this matter (again), I will appreciate said assistance. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Cory Allen Heidelberger

Now, if anyone has the home phone number of Qwest CEO Edward A. Mueller, I'll be much obliged. The Muellers moved this summer, so don't send me the number their old multi-million-dollar country club mansion.

Vista Bid Falls Apart: AgStar Taking Both Veblen Dairies

2010-12-21T16:12:00.002-06:00

It looks as if AgStar Financial Services will wrest both of Veblen, South Dakota's bankrupt mega-dairies away from serial polluter Richard Millner and his fellow investors. Vista Family Dairies, a front group formed by Richard Millner and other Veblen West dairy partners to keep the dairies in their hands, has declared it will not follow through on the $21.3 million bid it made in September to buy Veblen East.

Veblen East Dairy

According to a motion filed yesterday (U.S. Bankruptcy Court of South Dakota, Case 10-10146, Document 259) by Chapter 11 bankruptcy trustee Lee Ann Pierce, Whetstone Valley Dairy withdrew its backup bid on October 28. That means the the only bidder left at the table is AgStar's Veblen East Dairy Acquisition LLC, which submitted a credit bid for the minimum $16 million for the facility and $800 per cow.

Pierce's motion gives creditors until December 30 to file objections to the sale to AgStar.

Pierce's motion notes that Vista Family Dairy's attempted acquisition was not hampered by regulators. Marshall County granted Vista its conditional use permit on October 19, and the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources granted the manure permit on December 3. The latter is particularly interesting, given that DENR had said on November 10 that it would grant no permit to Vista as long as Richard Millner had anything to do with permit-compliance decisions.

Taking DENR at its word, I assume that Vista Family Dairy had to tell Millner he was out of the power structure. And as I let my speculation run riot, I can imagine that, without Millner the dealmaker able to keep his hands in the pot, whatever investors he'd cobbled together to float Vista's bid fell apart.

Veblen West Dairy

Millner and his gang already lost Veblen West to AgStar after failing to raise enough money for a viable bid on Veblen West last month. Now AgStar appears on its way to closing on both mega-dairies.

If the DENR, the South Dakota economic development honchos, and area farmers are paying attention, we can hope AgStar's acquisitions will mean Rick Millner is done dirtying the South Dakota dairy industry for good.

------------------------
Bonus Evidence: In upholding its denial of a permit for the Dairy Dozen's Excel Dairy in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency reiterates Millner's lengthy record of environmental violations at every dairy he's run. For the record, here's what MPCA says about Millner's Veblen dairies:

102. Veblen East Dairy is an 8,176 head dairy facility that consists of six total confinement barns and eight manure storage basins. Veblen West Dairy, previously known as MCC Dairy, is a 5,500 head dairy facility that consists of five total confinement barns and five manure storage basins. Rick Millner is the managing partner for the entity that owns both facilities. On October 23, 2009, the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources (South Dakota DENR) issued a Notice of Violation, Order, and Settlement Agreement.

103. On July 10, 2008, the South Dakota DENR inspected both Veblen East and Veblen West Dairies. During the inspection, it was noted that the basins at Veblen West were at their maximum operating level, and the basins at Veblen East were below the maximum operating level. On July 18, 2008, the South Dakota DENR approved the transfer of ten million gallons of manure from Veblen West to Veblen East. This manure was to be land applied in the fall of 2008 prior to soil freeze, and the South Dakota DENR was to be notified when this was complete. A notification was not received.

104. In April 2009, the South Dakota DENR received notification from the facilities that the basins at both Veblen East and Veblen West Dairies were above the maximum operating level and into the freeboard of the basins. This was confirmed during a May 6, 2009, site inspection by the South Dakota DENR. On May 20, 2009, Rick Millner contacted the South Dakota DENR to inform them that high winds were causing manure spray to blow over the berms of the north basins and that a line of straw bales was erected to keep the spray from leaving the basins. Various correspondence and inspections in the months of June, July, and August indicated that the basins at both Veblen East and Veblen West were above the maximum operating levels and into the freeboard.

105. The Order, issued October 23, 2009, and amended in March 2010, required both dairies to complete a number of requirements, summarized below, to bring the facilities back into compliance:
As soon as possible, remove a sufficient amount of manure to return them to compliance with the freeboard requirements. The Order went on to require the removal of manure from all basins to have no more than one foot of residual material remaining by November 1, 2009. The lowering of the liquid levels in the basins at Veblen West did not happen until December 7, 2009. This lowering of the levels was not sufficient to comply with the October 23, 2009, Order (no more than one foot of manure) but was sufficient to bring the basins back into compliance with the freeboard requirements. Similarly, the lowering of the liquid levels in the basins at Veblen East did not happen until November 23, 2009. This lowering of the levels was not sufficient to comply with the October 23, 2009, Order (no more than one foot of manure) but was sufficient to bring the basins back into compliance with the freeboard requirements.
Submit calculations and schedules that demonstrated that the remaining storage capacity within the basins at each facility, after the fall of 2009 pump-down, was sufficient to provide 270 days worth of storage. Sufficient calculations and schedules were never received by the South Dakota DENR. Consequently, the South Dakota DENR concluded that the volume remaining after the fall of 2009 pump-down was not sufficient to provide 270 days of storage.
By November 1, 2009, submit an emergency response plan for each of the facilities to identify procedures to be followed in the event of a spill or release. The South Dakota DENR did receive a plan, but it was not sufficient to comply with the specific requirements of the Order. The South Dakota DENR has not yet received sufficient plans.
Submit a design report that uses actual water usage and system operation for each facility to assess if the manure management system capacity meets the requirements of the South Dakota General NPDES Permit (270 days of storage). The South Dakota DENR has not received an adequate report to address this issue.
106. On November 17, 2009, the South Dakota DENR performed inspections of Veblen East and Veblen West and also conducted water sampling within the Little Minnesota River (headwaters of the Minnesota River) at areas were there was evidence that discharges had occurred from both dairies. The discharge from Veblen East appeared to reach an unnamed wetland; water sampling confirmed that manure did indeed reach this wetland. Neither of the dairies reported the discharges to the South Dakota DENR as required.

107. Inspections on November 17, 2009, and January 8, 2010, at both facilities revealed that depth markers (designed to clearly identify the maximum operating levels of the ponds) were missing or were broken off.

108. Inspections on July 10, 2008, and January 12, 2010, at Veblen West and December 7, 2009, and January 8, 2010, at Veblen East noted stockpiles of used sand and manure solids in areas not authorized by the permits for the facilities.

109. Inspections on January 8, 2010, and January 12, 2010, at Veblen West and January 8, 2010, at Veblen East indicated that manure application had taken place to fields not identified within the approved manure management plans for the dairies. Also, both dairies had insufficient records of land application dating back to 2008 and including all of 2009.

110. The MPCA has also received complaints about and photos of these facilities, specifically regarding the lack of freeboard, potential for overflow, and pollution resulting from improper land application of manure. The MPCA has received these complaints as the facilities sit at the head of the watershed of Big Stone Lake, located at the border of Minnesota (Big Stone County) and South Dakota.

[Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, In the Matter of the Request for Denial of Contested Case Hearing Requests and Denial of Reissuance of NPDES/SDS Permit No. MN0068594 for The Dairy Dozen – Thief River Falls, LLP (Doing Business As: Excel Dairy) Concentrated Animal Feedlot Facility, Excel Township,Marshall County, Minnesota, Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order, 2010.12.14]

Madison School Early-Vote Stacking Fine by Secretary of State

2010-12-21T09:35:00.001-06:00

Vote now in the latest Madville Times poll:
How will you vote on Madison's $16.98 million new gym/high school renovation bond issue?
See right sidebar—poll closes Wed 8 a.m.!

Apparently my concerns about Madison Central School District's early-voting scheme are unfounded. Various Madville Times readers have contacted the Secretary of State's office to get the straight poop on whether our school district can...

deputize advocates of the school bond issue to hand out and collect absentee ballots,
conduct voting at basketball games and other school events, and
arrange early voting sites in workplaces at the request of employers.

According to Secretary of State Chris Nelson, all of the above are legit. One of my correspondents gets some more straight dope from Secretary Nelson's assistant, Kea Warne, whose responses to some specific questions about Madison's early-voting plans I summarize below:

Should Madison Central publish a list of early voting places and times? There is no statutory requirement for them to publish this document.
Will there be a voting booth to insure voter privacy? All voters (either voting in-person absentee or at the polling place on election day) must be provided a private area to vote (either voting booth or a table top voting booth).
What about folks wearing pro or con stickers/t-shirts at these school events? There cannot be any political material within 100 feet of any entrance to the location where absentee voting is being conducted.
How will poll watchers be arranged? Poll watchers have to be allowed to be present. A person who is wanting to be a poll watcher must identify themselves as such to the election board (on election day) or the business manager/staff conducting the absentee voting.

I still see problems here. Without a published list of early polling places, poll watchers can't find out where to go to observe the polling for irregularities. Whoever school business manager Cindy Callies deputizes to carry absentee ballots around town will need to carry a complete voter registration list and keep it synchronized with every other election deputy's roving list to ensure no one gets more than one ballot. We will also have a lot of ballots moving back and forth to different places in different pouches. The more moving parts to any system, the more chance there is for things to go wrong.

Workplace voting still strikes me as fertile ground for improper influence. When the boss waves a fistful of absentee ballots at employees on company time and says, "Hey! Who wants to vote for the school bond election right now?" there is bound to be some sense of pressure to vote.

And seriously: does anyone think it's fair to conduct a vote on a new gym in a gym while a basketball game is going on, while voters are surrounded by cheering fans clad in school colors? Madison High School is staging early voting at exactly those venues where they can implicitly say, "Look at the wonderful educational opportunities we provide for students. Can you really deny them a new gym and renovated classrooms?"

What's next? Should we allow Mike McDowell to invite the county auditor to ring absentee ballots to work for all of the Heartland employees the next time Senator Russell Olson runs for office? Should Scott Heidepriem get to arrange an early-voting site at his law office the next time he's on the ballot?

If that's just how the game is played, then so be it. But this early voting scheme is not about enfranchisement. It's about stacking the vote in the school's favor.

If incoming Secretary of State Jason Gant is worried about voter fraud, he should come to Madison to observe the most loosely conducted vote I've seen in this state.

Lake County Lags in Wages, Loses 6.6% in 2009

2010-12-21T08:41:00.000-06:00

The Bureau of Economic Analysis just released its report on county compensation by industry for 2009. Average compensation per job increased 1.2%, to just about $57,000. Unfortunately, fewer people had jobs, so the total amount of compensation went down 3.2%. Some smalll relief: inflation was only 0.2%.

Two-thirds of our 3113 counties saw compensation go down in 2009. The map shows a familiar pattern (click image to enlarge):

The center of the country does better than the coasts. The most populous counties generally saw larger decreases in compensation (3.7%) than medium and smaller counties (2.2%–2.3%)

South Dakota looks pretty healthy, with lots of counties in the blue upper quintiles (remember, blue is good on this map, while gold shows where there's less gold). But hey, zoom in: what's that gold spot in East River South Dakota?
Discover the Unexpected™: Lake County bucked the statewide trend and landed in the lowest national quintile for compensation growth. Statewide, average compensation per job increased 1.3%, from $32,702 to $33,136. Total compensation statewide went down 0.7%. But in Lake County, the average wage decreased 1.8%, from $28,993 to $28,466. Total compensation in Lake County dropped 6.6%.

Only four counties—McCook, Marshall, Union, and Harding—saw worse declines on total compensation. Harding lost the most compensation, dropping 15.7%, with average wages per job dropping $3200 in one year. Weep not for Union County, though: they have the highest average wage per job in the state, just over $39,000.

Investing in Higher Quality Teachers Yields Economic Returns

2010-12-21T07:53:00.000-06:00

Via Dr. Mankiw:

Eric Hanushek's work popped up earlier this month in our blog discussion of how the U.S. isn't producing enough smart kids and how spending more on teachers might boost our kids' math scores. Dr. Hanushek now offers a new paper that quantifies the economic good that may come from hiring better teachers.

According to Hanushek's research, an above-average teacher working with a class of twenty students creates $400,000 in additional student future earnings. Replacing the least effective teachers with just average teachers nationwide would add $100 trillion of value.

I welcome suggestions as to how we identify and recruit higher-quality teachers. But free market rules suggest that attracting quality is relatively straightforward: you get what you pay for. As I apply for jobs that pay $60K rather than $30K, I get the impression that I'm up against a tougher talent pool.

So just imagine: Suppose South Dakota raised its average teacher pay by $10,000 (which would vault us in our national ranking from dead last in teacher pay to 41st place). Suppose that pay boost drew and kept some better talent. If that increased incentive to enter the field replaced only one out of 40 average teachers with above-average teachers, we'd break even on our investment.

DWC Botches Facts on Reid Nay to 9/11 First Responder Bill

2010-12-20T17:08:00.005-06:00

Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, patriotic champion of 9/11 first responders... unlike Senator John Thune.

Or, Note to Cons — when attacking check your facts first.

Tyler Crissman steps to the conservative mic this afternoon and gets mom's spaghetti all over his sweater. In an attempt to deflect criticism from major Dakota War College ad-buyer and Senator John Thune for his unpatriotic obstruction of medical compensation for sick and dying 9/11 first responders, Crissman fumes that the Left blogo-hemisphere hasn't criticized Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his own nay on the Zadroga bill.

Why, oh why, wouldn't we liberals have issued such criticism of the Senate Majority Leader?

Fifty-seven Democrats voted for the bill and 41 Republicans opposed it. Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, switched his vote to 'no' at the last moment, a parliamentary move that allows him to bring the measure up again for a vote ["9/11 health 'Zadroga bill' fails in Senate test vote," AP via SILive.com, 2010.12.09].

I eagerly await Mr. Crissman's retraction. Or maybe they'll just delete that post and all the comments that follow. Revisionist deletion is the Dakota War College way.

Meanwhile, if you're from Nevada, call Senator Reid and tell him to keep fighting for H.R. 847. If you're from South Dakota, call Senator Thune and tell him to stop fighting H.R. 847.

-------------------
Update 19:04 CST: Dang it! How are we supposed to sustain a healthy blog snarkfest if we go issuing corrections and apologies and straightening out our facts? Mr. Crissman replies promptly with a mea culpa... and corrects my shoddy geography. Harry Reid is indeed senior Senator from Nevada, not New Mexico as I originally stated.

South Dakotans Worse Than Average at Money Management

2010-12-20T08:44:00.001-06:00

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has published results of its nationwide Financial Capability Study. KELO follows the order of the press release for South Dakota and puts the good news first: we South Dakotans are third best at "financial literacy." In this survey, "financial literacy" is determined by performance on a five-question financial quiz that you can take online to see how you score compared to your fellow South Dakotans. (Perfect 5 for me; South Dakota's average is 3.27; U.S. average is 2.99.)

In terms of what we actually do with our financial knowledge, South Dakotans are worse than national averages. 23% of South Dakotans spent more than they made... and that's not counting buyinh a house or car. 62% of us budget the way I play whist: living from paycheck to paycheck without much of a plan. 65% of us lack a three-month rainy day fund. 26% of South Dakotans have taken non-bank loans (e.g., predatory payday loans) in the past five years. 64% of us don't comparison-shop for credit cards (although on that score, does it really matter?).

It just goes to show that doing well on a quiz doesn't mean you'll do well in life.

Daugaard Visits Madison Middle School -- Kids! Ask Tougher Questions!

2010-12-20T07:57:00.003-06:00

Speaking of the budget, I learn from KJAM that the man making the state budget, Governor-Elect Dennis Daugaard, swung through Madison to address kids at Madison Middle School. They asked some tough questions, like what Daugaard is nervous about. Now if only some bright eighth-graders could have made him more nervous by asking which of their teachers Daugaard would fire to satisfy the 5% cut to K-12 education he is likely to support.

Regents Face Less Rosy Budget Picture

2010-12-20T07:55:00.000-06:00

I noted last week that my current employer, the South Dakota Board of Regents, is projected to receive $54 million more in federal funding in the coming budget year. Under that headline, one may also note that Governor Rounds's otherwise austere budget includes $3.8 million more in state funds.

However, as Bob Mercer reports, those numbers are deceptive. The public university system will likely be tightening its belt (or are we at the budget-cutting point where strait jacket is the more apt metaphor?) just like everyone else. According to Mercer, the governor's plan expects the Regents to take $10.6 million in stimulus dollars and sock it away for FY 2012. As was the case with Rounds's entire budget address, his proposal offers no vision of how or whether the state will make up that funding shortfall when those stimulus dollars finally run out.

Mercer also notes that Governor Rounds included in his budget proposal the 2% pay increase the Regents requested. Our university profs, grounds crews, and other staff would be the only state employees getting a raise. I can certainly make the case for giving our university staff the raises they have foregone for two years... but don't expect anyone in the Legislature's Republican majority to do so.

In their budget discussion last week, the Regents apparently got a timeline for our next governor's budget. Board president Terry Baloun tells Mercer we may see Dennis Daugaard's budget proposal around January 19. Set aside some blog time for that date!

Thune Blocking Compensation for 9/11 First Responders

2010-12-19T10:25:00.006-06:00

Mr. Feser alerts us to the guff Senator John Thune is rightfully catching for his opposition to the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010. What's this bill? Oh, just a little compensation for men and women who ran toward fire and sacrificed their health and lives to try saving their fellow Americans on September 11, 2001.

Senator Thune voted to block a vote on health care compensation for 9/11 first responders on December 9.

Now I can't tell whether Thune and his War College lackeys would call this bill pork or prosciutto. Since it would help New Yorkers and not South Dakotans, I suppose they'll bleat pork! I just call it fulfilling our obligation to our neighbors who risked their lives for us in the face of terrorism.

My friend Adam posts a couple of videos showing 9/11 first responders talk with Jon Stewart about the Zadroga bill. Below are some comments from OpenCongress.org's page on HR 847:

I'm a 40 year old retired cop from the First Pct. in lower manhattan. I was there the morning of 9/11 and worked over 2,100 hours in the pit the months that followed. My breathing ailments are too long to get into and I understand I will be heavily medicated for whatever time I have left. I'm writing this and urging passage of this bill for my kids sake. (Ages 8 & 6)What's done is done but at least give me the peace of mind of knowing they will be taken care of. Ret. PO Dave Smith.

I am one of the forgotten rescue workers who spent weeks and months in the "pit". I do not seek glory or a pat on the back for what I did. I live with the choices I made. I wouldn't change a thing except I hate to see my family watch me deteriorate. I can't do things I used to, I have no energy, I can't breathe, I can't sleep. I am waiting for the inevitable and it sucks. I never smoked and now I am on all kinds of respiratory meds and a machine at night. Please pass this bill, I am not the only one in this position. Passage will help the people and families of those who dedicated their time and for some, their lives, to help others in need. God Bless America!

John Thune has supported borrowing over a trillion dollars to kill people and break things in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he won't support spending $7.4 billion to treat the people who responded to the first shot of that war.

Senator Thune thought it was more urgent to rush tax cuts to his richest friends than to provide health care for dying patriots. Well, now that that baby's been put to bed, the junior senator from South Dakota should have no more reason to oppose Zadroga, right?

Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin joined Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House in passing this bill in September. Senator Thune, get on board. Make South Dakota proud and do right by these brave Americans by joining the Republican senators Kirsten Gillibrand says will support this bill.
----------------------
Update: Watch the Daily Show video, and you'll see Mike Huckabee tell the Republicans to pass this bill.

Update 2010.12.20 21:44 CST: The GOP is feeling the heat:

"I can tell you, whoever votes against 9/11 responders a couple of days before Christmas is truly un-American," said John Feal, a former New York Police Department supervisor who lost a foot when a steel beam fell on it during in recovery efforts at the World Trade Center and who launched the non-profit Feal Good Foundation to lobby on behalf of first responders [Laura Mascaro and Tina Susman, "GOP under Pressure for Opposition to 9-11 Responders Bill," Los Angeles Times, 2010.12.20].

LAIC Wants More Time to Pay Off Tech Center

2010-12-19T08:57:00.000-06:00

Included on Monday night's Madison City Commission agenda is a request from the Lake Area Improvement Corporation to give us taxpayers our money back more slowly. In a memo to the commission, the LAIC asks for an extension of the loan it got from the city to build the Hueners-cum-Heartland Technology Center on the north edge of town. The request reads thus:

Request to extend City Community Development loan on the Heartland Tech Center between the LAIC and the City of Madison.

Current Situation
3% interest only has been paid to City for 5 years
LAIC has paid the City approximately $41,700 in interest payments
Principal amount is $287,500 -- no payments on principal have been paid
Request of new terms
Would like to extend the loan for 15 year term w/10 year balloon
Principal amount would be for $280,000
4% interest
Monthly payments of approximately $2,100
New payment schedule to begin on January 15 2011 as a ACH into City account.
To date nearly 60 jobs have been created at the Heartland Technology Center. The initial intent was to build a spec building that would create jobs and bring a new company to the community utilizing DSU students.

The facility mission was reestablished and it became an incubator for new entrepreneurs and businesses. InfoTech, Logic Lizard, SBS, CAHIT, and the 2010 Research Center are a few of the businesses that have been housed at the facility.

In January of 2011 SBS will be graduating from the incubator and moving into a new facility, Washington Plaza II, and creating 40 new positions over the next several years. We are currently working on an expansion of one of the new tenants to take the existing space.

The mission of the incubator is to provide affordable space for a business to grow and mature. That has been accomplished and continues to work as designed.

The LAIC makes this request on behalf of job growth and job sustainability for Madison.

Note that this request appears to make $7500 in principal just disappear. Are we taking that out of the LAIC's annual tax subsidy? And while I'm thinking of it, did we ever get that budget Commissioner Abraham requested last summer? That budget would probably help us understand why the LAIC needs to change the conditions under which we loaned them the money for this project. But no: the LAIC likes to talk in vague inklings and passive voice and expect us to hand them more money at their whim.

I suppose I should be relieved to see that, if you want money from the LAIC, you at least won't be expected to write complete sentences in your proposal.

Senate Votes 65-31 to Let Gays Shoot Straight for America

2010-12-19T08:31:00.003-06:00

Dr. Blanchard said it was time to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the Senate listened. Our Senator John Thune lacked the courage to vote yes, but Senator Tim Johnson did not. Various fundagelicals are showing their lack of faith in the strength of our soldiers and the Republic they defend.

Dr. Blanchard encapsulates well my sense that the folks opposed to gays serving in the military don't have much in the way of good arguments. Unit cohesion? That's all you've got?

This strikes me as a very bad argument. There are all kinds of reasons why one solider might be disinclined to trust another. He's Irish, or a Democrat. She's a privileged White girl, or a Red Sox fan. It is one of the jobs of soldiers, sailors, marines, etc., to judge their fellows by their competence and loyalty and nothing else. We expect our armed forces to do their job in harm's way, which means in the face of a kind of fear that us civilians can scarcely imagine. Compared to that, nervousness about a fellow warrior's sexual orientation seems like pretty small potatoes [Ken Blanchard, "It's Time to Dump DADT," South Dakota Politics, 2010.12.18].

Well said, Ken. Now let's sign off on this issue and do what soldiers do: drop the bull and fight our real enemies, the terrorists who want to destroy America, not the good men and women who want to defend it with honor and integrity.

Update 21:30 CST: Equality South Dakota gives me a welcome shout and shares some optimism for more positive change. EqSD also points to this WaPo article that indicates the relief and disbelief current gay soldiers feel. One compelling passage:

For some, the news was bittersweet. That was the case for a 28-year-old West Point Army captain who resigned from active duty this spring after wrestling for years with deprivation, loneliness and half-truths. His boyfriend was sitting next to him.

"Oh God, oh God," the decorated captain, who served two tours in Iraq, said by phone from Dallas as the vote neared. "My heart was thumping."

Text messages began pouring in as soon as the tally was announced.

"So when are you back on active duty?" wrote a straight intelligence officer who served with him in Iraq in 2009.

"LOL. I dunno," the captain responded.

"Let me know so I can get stationed there," the intelligence officer wrote back. "I work with a lot of morons. It'd be nice to have a battle [buddy] with some common sense and discipline again" [Ernesto Londono, "Gay Troops Cautiously Optimistic Following 'Don't Ask' Repeal," Washington Post, 2010.12.19].

Noem Fails to Land Seat on Agriculture Committee

2010-12-18T06:46:00.000-06:00

Someone please unspin this for me: Kristi Noem, soon to be South Dakota's lone Representative in the U.S. House, for all her supposed pull with the new Republican majority, fails to land a seat on the House Agriculture Committee.

The Agriculture Committee is the one committee for which Noem has more experience than I do to serve as a useful member. She relentlessly touted her lifelong farm background on the campaign trail. Right after the election, Noem herself said landing a seat on the agriculture committee was among her top priorities:

Once in Washington, Noem says she hopes to serve on the agriculture committee.

"But then we'll go on from there. Maybe commerce; energy will be extremely important. We'll see what we can do and we'll be on the one that's best for South Dakota," Noem said [Shawn Neisteadt, "Noem Reflects on Campaign, Looks Forward," KELOLand.com, 2010.11.03].

Noem repeated later in November that she wanted an Ag seat, plus Energy and Commerce. She also mentioned Natural Resources.

Noem got little of what she wanted. She landed the Natural Resources Committee, which is apparently "less competitive to get a seat on" (i.e., Noem got the crap assignment), and the Labor and Education Committee, for which she as a non-college graduate from a union-busting state is singularly unqualified. And all Noem's spokesflunky Joshua Shields can whimper in response to a direct question about the failure to get the ag nod is "there are several good committees Kristi considered. She is pleased with her assignments."

My only hope is that she will use her position on Ed/Labor to put her Tea-Bag cred to work and kill No Child Left Behind. Why, oh why, do I keep hoping against hope that Republicans will display philosophical consistency?

Noem's assignments are one more sign that the GOP leadership sees her as more valuable as a trick pony for their fundraisers and press appearances than as a strong voice for South Dakota interests. Maybe they noticed that she never did get around to posting a coherent ag policy on her campaign website. Or maybe even the GOP leadership couldn't ignore Noem's clear conflict of interest over making a living off farm subsidies and subsidized crop insurance.

Either way, South Dakota has just lost its only voice on the House Agriculture Committee, which shapes legislation on all manner of ag issues as well as on the rural electric systems and rural development.

Obesity Stable Among South Dakota Kids

2010-12-17T16:48:00.000-06:00

Governor Mike Rounds is holding legacy-pressers to take credit for increasing South Dakota jobs, GDP, and university enrollment. Does he also want to take credit for maintaining the percentage of heavy kids?

The South Dakota Department of Health reports lots of our kids are still fat. "For the 2009-2010 school year, 32.7% of students were either overweight (16.7%) or obese (16%)." We've seen a little slimming from last year, but the numbers have hardly budged from in academic year 2003–2004, when 15.8% of South Dakota kids were obese and another 16.1% overweight.

Now note if you read the DoH reports that they changed terminology in the AY 2006–2007 report. Before that, kids in the 85th to 94th percentile for body-mass index (BMI) were labeled "at risk of overweight," while kids at or above the 95th percentile were labeled "overweight." In '06&ndash'07, "overweight" became "obese" and "at risk" became "overweight."

Confusing, I know. Just drink less pop and ride more bike, would ya?

Early in the Rounds Administration, the Department of Health set a goal to "reduce the percent of school-age children and adolescents who are overweight or obese from 17% in 2003 to 15% by 2010.” With the wording change, that goal became "reduce the percent of school-age children and adolescents who are at or above the 95th percentile BMI for age (obese) from 17 percent in 2003 to 15 percent by 2010.” No such luck.

Interestingly, the number of underweight kids has increased, too. In AY 2003–04, 2.8% of students (27,245) were below the fifth percentile for body mass index. I can't find the 2009–10 report yet, but the 2008–09 report shows 3.9% of students (40,202) underweight.

I guess that's one more example of the middle class getting smaller.

2010 Initiative Job Growth Concentrated in Big Towns

2010-12-17T08:05:00.001-06:00

Gotta beat Montgomery to the Pivot Tables!

Among the milk and honey Governor Rounds says flowed from his 2010 Initiative are job gains in South Dakota. Some folks say government can't create jobs, but I'll let Governor Rounds sort that out with his fellow Republicans. Let's just look at the numbers.

If I'm generous and look at the statewide seasonal numbers from the state Department of Labor, I find that from October 2002 to October 2010, South Dakota added 18,220 jobs, an increase of 4.5%. Over the same period, the size of our workforce increased by 24,480, a 5.8% rise.

But those job gains were not shared by every area of the state. 32 counties gained jobs. 33 counties lost jobs (Clark County broke even.) Minnehaha County led the pack, adding 5655 jobs. That's almost a third of the state's growth. Lincoln County added another 4780 jobs (a state-leading 29.7% job boom). The Sioux Falls metroplex, two counties, thus accounted for over 57% of the job growth of the last eight years.

The biggest losers by raw number? Meade County lost 570 jobs over the last eight years. Turner County lost 550. My home county of Lake lost 395. McCook lost 345. Hmm... all counties within commuting distance of a big metro county.

The full data is below. The data follow a pattern similar to the population growth numbers we discussed here back in March: South Dakota is growing, but the growth is happening mostly in a few urban centers at the expense of rural communities.

If I were the governor of the state trying to create jobs, I might try to spread that employment growth a little more broadly.

South Dakota Labor Stats, 2002-2010
Area	Jobs Gained	Job Gain %	Workers Gained	Worker Gain %
Statewide	17470	4.3%	24315	5.8%
Statewide Seasonal	18220	4.5%	24480	5.8%
Aberdeen MiSA	1080	5.0%	1215	5.5%
Brookings MiSA	1495	8.8%	1735	10.0%
Dewey-Ziebach LMA	45	1.4%	160	4.6%
Huron MiSA	600	6.8%	630	7.0%
Mitchell MiSA	265	2.1%	405	3.2%
Pierre MiSA	820	7.2%	930	8.0%
Rapid City MSA	2220	3.6%	3415	5.4%
Sioux Falls MSA	9540	8.4%	12115	10.5%
Spearfish MiSA	1115	9.3%	1300	10.5%
Vermillion MiSA	470	6.8%	530	7.4%
Watertown MiSA	220	1.2%	420	2.3%
Yankton MiSA	-85	-0.8%	75	0.6%
Counties
Aurora	95	6.6%	120	8.1%
Beadle	600	6.8%	630	7.0%
Bennett	-35	-2.6%	-15	-1.1%
Bon Homme	-335	-10.2%	-300	-8.9%
Brookings	1495	8.8%	1735	10.0%
Brown	1095	5.6%	1225	6.1%
Brule	-15	-0.5%	15	0.5%
Buffalo	-50	-10.1%	-20	-3.7%
Butte	310	6.3%	385	7.6%
Campbell	-85	-9.2%	-90	-9.4%
Charles Mix	-200	-4.7%	-135	-3.1%
Clark	0	0.0%	-20	-1.1%
Clay	470	6.8%	530	7.4%
Codington	205	1.4%	370	2.4%
Corson	-10	-0.7%	10	0.7%
Custer	390	8.9%	460	10.2%
Davison	140	1.3%	270	2.5%
Day	-245	-8.3%	-200	-6.6%
Deuel	-20	-0.8%	25	1.0%
Dewey	30	1.2%	155	6.1%
Douglas	75	4.5%	90	5.2%
Edmunds	-15	-0.7%	-15	-0.7%
Fall River	70	2.0%	125	3.4%
Faulk	-30	-2.6%	-25	-2.1%
Grant	-85	-2.0%	-25	-0.6%
Gregory	-125	-5.1%	-110	-4.3%
Haakon	-90	-7.3%	-85	-6.8%
Hamlin	15	0.5%	50	1.8%
Hand	-55	-2.9%	-60	-3.0%
Hanson	130	7.4%	135	7.5%
Harding	45	5.9%	55	7.1%
Hughes	725	7.6%	800	8.2%
Hutchinson	-25	-0.7%	0	0.0%
Hyde	-35	-4.5%	-30	-3.8%
Jackson	-5	-0.4%	25	2.1%
Jerauld	200	16.5%	205	16.5%
Jones	-40	-5.4%	-40	-5.3%
Kingsbury	-185	-6.1%	-140	-4.5%
Lake	-395	-5.9%	-255	-3.7%
Lawrence	1115	9.3%	1300	10.5%
Lincoln	4780	29.7%	5265	32.0%
Lyman	-40	-2.0%	0	0.0%
Marshall	130	6.8%	155	7.9%
McCook	-345	-11.9%	-295	-9.9%
McPherson	-150	-11.9%	-140	-10.8%
Meade	-570	-4.6%	-370	-2.9%
Mellette	-20	-2.2%	-5	-0.5%
Miner	50	4.4%	70	5.9%
Minnehaha	5655	6.3%	7650	8.4%
Moody	5	0.1%	110	2.9%
Pennington	2790	5.6%	3785	7.5%
Perkins	-170	-9.8%	-155	-8.7%
Potter	-65	-4.7%	-55	-3.9%
Roberts	335	7.5%	405	8.7%
Sanborn	-185	-12.2%	-170	-10.9%
Shannon	-100	-2.8%	125	3.3%
Spink	160	4.9%	170	5.1%
Stanley	95	5.3%	120	6.5%
Sully	45	4.6%	55	5.6%
Todd	245	7.6%	350	10.3%
Tripp	-200	-6.4%	-210	-6.5%
Turner	-550	-12.1%	-505	-10.8%
Union	505	7.1%	645	8.8%
Walworth	10	0.4%	55	2.0%
Yankton	-85	-0.8%	75	0.6%
Ziebach	15	1.8%	0	0.0%

p.s.: Yesterday Dakota War College urged us liberals to do more fact-checking. Dakota War College then ran a post parroting the state press release in praise of the 2010 Initiative. DWC, I say with all due respect: I check more facts before breakfast than you check all week. Pass the raisin bran.

Madison Fireman Guilty of DUI; Sentencing January

2010-12-17T07:58:00.001-06:00

Remember Scott Johnson, the Madison fireman arrested in September for driving the firetruck drunk? His case provoked all sorts of awkward conversation and exposed some ugly attitudes about alcohol in our fair community.

But Johnson's case appears not to have provoked much controversy with the jury. Twelve of Scott Johnson's peers spent 40 minutes Wednesday deciding he was indeed guilty of DUI. Blood alcohol level of 0.098, putting public property at risk, violating public trust... not really any excuses, are there?

Judge Tim Tucker will decide how much of the book to throw at Johnson for drunkenness on duty on January 3.

So are you folks done being snotty to the Madison police yet?

Reich Reviles Rotten Reaganomics Rehash -- Congress Passes Stimulus II

2010-12-17T06:15:00.002-06:00

Senator Tim Johnson was on SDPB Dakota Midday Tuesday insisting that he had no choice but to vote for the $858 billion Stimulus II that the Republican leadership and President Obama worked out. Funny: Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa thought he had a choice. So did twelve other Senate Democrats, six Senate Republicans, and one Senate Indy-Socialist (roll call vote #276 here).

South Dakota's last Democrat in Washington needs to read more Robert Reich. America's best darn former Secretary of Labor critiques exactly this false "have no choice" excuse. Reich says we ought to have the courage to choose something other than a rehash of failed Reaganomics:

Supply siders are also fond of claiming that Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts caused the 1980s economic boom. There is no evidence to support this claim. In fact, that boom followed Reagan’s 1982 tax increase. The 1990s boom likewise was not the result of a tax cut; most of it followed Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase.

Nor did George W. Bush’s tax cuts trickle down. Between 2002 and 2007 the median wage actually dropped. And Bush’s record of job creation was pathetic relative to Bill Clinton’s, when taxes were higher. Under Clinton, America added 22 million net new jobs. Under Bush, barely 8 million [Robert Reich, "The New Tax Deal: Reaganomics Redux," blog, 2010.12.16].

Holy cow: our gal Stephanie and my man Dennis both voted aye! Michele Bachmann and Anthony Weiner voted nay. We should have more votes with alignments like that.

Wow: two empirical examples of significant tax increases followed by better economic growth than we got after the Bush tax cuts... ineffective cuts that we are now extending.

I know, it's all over but the shouting. But there are economic lessons we aren't learning... and I intend to keep shouting them.

Dairy Dozen Converts to Chapter 7; MPCA Nixes Dairy Permit Appeal

2010-12-17T05:47:00.000-06:00

The Bernie Madoff of dairy feedlots, serial polluter Rick Millner, is having a very bad week. Millner's Veblen, South Dakota-based dairy management company the Dairy Dozen has been ging through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. On Wednesday, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Charles L. Nail, Jr., granted a trustee's motion to convert that bankruptcy from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7.

Chapter 11 is where you get a shot at reorganizing. Chapter 7 is where you throw in the towel and liquidate to pay off your creditors. As I read it, that means the Dairy Dozen is toast.

Then on Thursday, across the border in Minnesota, our friends at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency officially said no flippin' way (o.k., I'm paraphrasing) to Millner's attempt to reopen his Excel Dairy in Thief River Falls. MPCA shut down that Millner monstrosity in 2009 and denied it a permit in April of this year for hundreds—hundreds—of air quality violations. Millner and fellow Dairy Dozen owners of Excel appealed. MPCA documented Millner's trail of environmental destruction at every dairy he's been involved with, took public comment, and yesterday said no more.

Grand Forks Herald reporter Kevin Bonham says no one answered his calls to the Dairy Dozen's Veblen office Thursday. Maybe they've already sold the phones.

It's a shame that the Dairy Dozen has done so much economic and environmental harm to so many communities. But perhaps South Dakotans and Minnesotans can breathe a little easier with these two big steps toward putting the dirty Dairy Dozen out of business for good.

Online Poll: Vote Now: MHS New Gym/Renovation!

2010-12-16T16:08:00.000-06:00

Hey! Click through Twitter or your RSS reader and vote in the latest Madville Times poll. I'd like to know "How will you vote on Madison's $16.98 million new gym/high school renovation bond issue?"

As always, the Madville Times encourages educated voting. Learn more...

...by taking the video tour filmed by yours truly on November 22;
...by reading Madison High School's Renovation Project page;
...by checking out the MHS Facility Project Facebook page;
...and by browsing the best (and only!) local blog coverage of the project, including counterproposals from concerned citizens who are just as interested in boosting the quality of Madison education as anyone else.

Poll runs until Dec. 22, Wednesday morning breakfast time. Share the link with your fellow Madison Central School District registered voters and click now!

Hyperion Can't Count, Lowballs Pollution by Half

2010-12-16T12:11:00.000-06:00

I hear on SDPB and read on KELO this morning that Hyperion was a little off in its pollution estimates on its proposed Elk Point refinery when it applied for a South Dakota air quality permit. By half:

Hyperion Resources has informed the state that a proposed oil refinery in southeast South Dakota would release almost double the amount of greenhouse gases previously estimated.

Documents from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources show that previous estimates omitted a step in the refining process ["Proposed SD Refinery's Emissions Revised," AP via KELO, 2010.12.16].

Emissions revised?!?! I'd ask what you guys are smoking, but you'd probably miss that by half as well.

But I guess when you've never built, let alone run, an oil refinery before, it's easy to miss a step in the process, right? But golly gee, what steps would you omit when you actually start building the thing? What safety steps would you omit when you fire that sucker up and start belching pollution into our clean prairie air and fresh water supply?

Department of Environment and Natural Resources, tell me you aren't taking these Hyperion incompetents seriously any more. Please. Hyperion can't even report its own projected pollution correctly, let alone build and operate a safe and clean refinery. Throw their permit out.

Adelstein: Powers Not Fit for Sec. State Flunky

2010-12-16T08:40:00.001-06:00

Senator Adelstein gets double attention this morning. On Mount Blogmore, the Rapid City Republican raises some grave concerns about the patronage that has killed Dakota War College and elevated Pat Powers to director of operations for the Secretary of State.

The employment of a patently dishonest person in an office requiring absolute objective fairness is outrageous. One example, that comes to mind—that I copied before he tried erasing his multiple calumnies—is the false charge against my company—not just me personally—of giving “80,000 to Democratic candidates.” This on it's [sic] face was untrue, since he knew, or should have known that this would be illegal. The CORPORATE dollars were given on a BALLOT issue—else they would have been illegal. They were used successfully to defeat the “no exception” abortion on the ballot.

There are a number of other cases of total untruthfulness. This was not just the case with me, but others as well. Ragging on me for years, month after month—even when I was out of office—indicates a public hatred that renders Mr Powers unfit to occupy an office that requires impartial treatment of citizens. Treatment that we have come to regard as only natural in that office with the last three occupants, all whom I knew well both politically and as an active operator of a large complex corporation, many “not for profits”, numerous LLCs and Rapid City Enterprise funds [State Senator Stan Adelstein, blog comment, submitted 2010.12.14, under Kevin Woster's "From War College to SOS, in a cloud of nuked archives," Mount Blogmore, 2010.12.13].

Such is the risk we bloggers run. Mr. Powers has made a number of enemies with his political blogging. Now elevated by political chum Jason Gant to a particularly sensitive public office, Powers himself will now face harsh scrutiny to see if he can go beyond stepping away from the blog mic and develop the reputation for strict adherence to the law and fairness that were the hallmark of outgoing Secretary Chris Nelson and his staff (far too many of whom are clearing the decks to make way for Gant's appointees).

----------------------
Bonus Blog Snark: Mr. Kurtz says the delete-fest continues at Dakota War College, as he says a comment he submitted linking to Adelstein's charges was deleted by DWC committee-blogger Tyler Crissman. Mr. Crissman replies that "Forces beyond our control made it necessary for us to take that story down." Evading responsibility, hiding behind vague, unnamed forces—sounds like dark Powers at work. (I also can't link to Crissman's response directly, since their new new theme omits comment permalinks. Sigh.)

Adelstein on Balancing Budget: Raise Sales Tax

2010-12-16T08:15:00.000-06:00

Good grief: if Dakota War College keeps slacking off, will I have to start getting my news from Gordon Howie's wingnut blog? That's scary... but it's the case this morning.

In a public discussion attended by hardcore Black Hills Tea-o-crat (rhymes with theocrat) Ed Randazzo, State Senator Stan Adelstein said Saturday he plans to float a bill in the 2011 session raising the state sales tax by one penny. Adelstein would impose this emergency tax for just three months of the year for three years. The temporary extra penny would raise $50 million a year to help erase South Dakota's looming budget shortfall.

Adelstein notes this plan has the added benefit of getting 26% of its money from tourists.

Mr. Randazzo hyperventilates over the plan with his usual Glenn Beck bromides. Randazzo opposes tax increases that allow the growth of government. He misses the point, however, that Adelstein's tax increase would only allow the reduction in cuts of state government.

Randazzo then opens his rich trove of wingnut contradiction by saying "We must cease the dependence on the 'trainload of money' from Washington to balance the budget." In Ed's fantasy-land, South Dakota is entirely self-sufficient and doesn't depend on Uncle Sam to meet its statewide needs for roads, farm aid, Social Security, Medicaid, Indian education and other reservation services.

At least Senator Adelstein is willing to look at South Dakota's fiscal situation with honesty and guts. Tune out the wingnuts, Pierre, and pay the bills!

Madison Central Violating State Election Law?

2010-12-16T06:12:00.004-06:00

The more I think about Madison Central School District's proposed early voting scheme, the more uneasy I get. Beyond creating the awkwardness of voting on a new gym while surrounded by maroon-clad Bulldog basketball fans, the school district may be arranging early-voting that violated state election law.

The school district is offering four means of early voting in the upcoming bond election (I quote verbatim from their PDF):

By mail
At the business manager’s office in the high school at 800 NE 9th St.
At many events and community locations prior to the election.
Anyone who wishes to have early voting conducted at their business for their employees can contact the business office at 256-7710 for more information.

Vote by mail? No problem.

Vote at the school business office? Probably not a problem.

Voting at a school event? Problem.

Voting arranged by bosses for employees at workplaces? Big problem.

First, the school offers no reliable list of early-voting polling places. When and where exactly are the school events where voting will be possible? Will Cindy Callies have ballots on hand at every public event at the school? Or will the school district only break out the ballots at sporting events when they see lots of backers of the 2007 new gym project? Will the school avoid setting up a voting booth at, say, the public one-act performance in January, where they might encounter a number of arts supporters who feel the current $16.98 million plan still puts too much emphasis on athletics over academics?

Same with community events: when and where? Given South Dakota's overwhelming concern with protecting the secret ballot, perhaps a concerned citizen would want to observe the balloting to ensure voters' rights are protected. How can a poll watcher keep track of the voting if the school is doing it in undisclosed locations?

Arranging voting sessions at employers' requests at workplaces smells bad, if not worse. State law entitles employees to two hours off work to vote. Letting bosses arrange in-house voting skirts that requirement (mark your circles, then back to work, slaves!). Worse, it opens the door for all sorts of workplace intimidation: Imagine the boss walking in, saying, "O.K., who wants a ballot to vote on the school bond issue?" and then conspicuously noting with a scowl those who don't take a ballot, presuming to exercise their right to vote in private.

And imagine, just imagine, that employer were Madison Central School District. Principal calls a staff meeting, says, "Hey everyone! Cindy's here so you can all vote!" and hands out ballots.

I don't think principals Knowlton, Koch, or Walsh would do such a foolish thing. I hope every boss in town is that prudent. If employees want to vote, employees can request their absentee ballots individually or come to the polls on their own, on official leave as permitted by state law. Their bosses should have no involvement in their voting.

I support early voting and absentee voting. I support government efforts to get more people to vote.

But I also support following the spirit and letter of election law to protect voter rights and ensure complete fairness. The Madison Central School District needs to clarify and likely scale back its early voting plan to ensure its compliance with election law.

And remember, fellow voters: no Bulldog jackets at the polls.

Statute relevant to early voting in the school bond election:

SDCL 12-18-1 requires that "All voting at the polling place shall be in private voting booths or compartments and, except as provided in § 12-18-25, shall be screened from observation."
SDCL 12-18-3 says that, at a polling place, no one may "display campaign posters, signs, or other campaign materials or by any like means solicit any votes for or against any person or political party or position on a question submitted or which may be submitted."
SDCL 12-18-9.2 authorizes and requires election officials and the cops to remove any materials violating SDCL 12-18-3 and arrest anyone committing such violations.
SDCL 12-18-9 dictates that "Any person, except a candidate who is on the ballot being voted on at that polling place, may be present at any polling place for the purpose of observing the voting process." Rather difficult to do unless the school publishes a complete list of places, dates, and times where the voting process is taking place.
SDCL 12-19-2.1 has a couple of goodies on absentee ballots:

To get an absentee ballot, you "may apply in person to the person in charge of the election." That means one person, Cindy Callies, can legally hand you an absentee ballot. KJAM is reporting Monica Campbell will have ballots; I'm still looking for the statute that authorizes an "election assistant" to distribute absentee ballots.
A third party can deliver an absentee ballot is if the voter (a) is confined "because of sickness or disability," (b) applies in writing, and (c) designates an authorized messenger to carry the ballot.

SDCL 12-19-7.2 makes it a Class 2 misdemeanor for any authorized messenger to, "in the presence of the voter at or before the time of voting, display campaign posters, signs, or other campaign materials or by any like means solicit any votes for or against any person, political party, or position on a question submitted."
SDCL 12-1-2 says that all of these Title 12 provisions "apply to township, municipal, school, and other subdivision elections unless otherwise provided by the statutes specifically governing their elections or this title." I haven't found any exceptions for school bond elections in Title 13.
SDCL 13-7-14 says "Absentee voting shall be permitted in school district elections, including school district bond elections. The school board, with the approval of the county auditor and board of county commissioners, may permit absentee ballots to be voted at the county auditor's office in the county of jurisdiction."

MHS Bond Issue Early Voting Open! But Don't Wear Your Bulldog Jacket....

2010-12-15T15:47:00.004-06:00

KJAM reports that early voting has begun in the $16.98-million new gym and high school renovation bond issue placed before us by the Madison Central School District. (Worth noting: one of KJAM's main media personalities, Matt Groce, is also leading a committee advocating passage of the Madison Central school bond issue.) The early voting information is also available (in annoyingly unnecessary PDF format) on the Madison K-12 website. (Who at MHS seriously thinks it's easier to publish a simple text notice as a PDF? What are you teaching those kids?)

The school is going to great lengths to make voting as convenient as possible. You can vote by mail or by dropping in to business manager Cindy Callies's office at the high school. Callies and Madison Education Foundation exec Monica Campbell will also have ballots handy "at many events and community locations prior to the election." Callies will even arrange to bring ballots to your place of employment so you can get all of your employees to vote.

Wait a minute. I'm all for universal enfranchisement. I'm all for absentee ballots. But voting at "school events" and other "community locations"? How do we arrange poll-watchers for this kind of everywhere, anytime voting?

This activity falls safely within the rules for absentee voting. I know in 2008 when I was out walking for Obama and other Dems, we could offer to deliver absentee ballots for interested voters.... Update: but as I review the Secretary of State's guidelines on absentee balloting, I am reminded that the only time we did that was in case of voters who were homebound by sickness or disability who would authorize a messenger in writing to convey their ballots.

But if the school district is organizing voting at events and workplaces, the school might want to take a look at SDCL 12-18-3, which governs electioneering and other conduct at polling places:

12-18-3. Electioneering, offices, distracting communications devices, and signature gathering prohibited near polling place--Violation as misdemeanor. Except for sample ballots and materials and supplies necessary for the conduct of the election, no person may, in any polling place or within or on any building in which a polling place is located or within one hundred feet from any entrance leading into a polling place, maintain an office or public address system, or use any communication or photographic device in a manner which repeatedly distracts, interrupts, or intimidates any voter or election worker, or display campaign posters, signs, or other campaign materials or by any like means solicit any votes for or against any person or political party or position on a question submitted or which may be submitted. No person may engage in any practice which interferes with the voter's free access to the polls or disrupts the administration of the polling place, or conduct any petition signature gathering, on the day of an election within one hundred feet of a polling place. A violation of this section is a Class 2 misdemeanor.

Read more relevant statute and cause for concern about Madison Central's early-voting scheme in my follow-up post on this topic.

I know the county courthouse takes the sanctity of the polling place seriously. I walked into the auditor's office once with a campaign t-shirt on. Absentee voting was going on in the office next door. The gals in the auditor's office immediately told me I had to cover up that shirt.

If the school district intends to establish polling places at concerts, ball games, and various workplaces around town, they had better ensure the integrity of the vote. If the school district is handing out ballots for people to mark at basketball games, they had better be on the P.A. system before the game alerting everyone that state law prohibits any discussion of the school bond election, pro or con.

Arguably, the school may have to ban Bulldog jackets, buttons, and signs at school events where voting is offered. If the "Vote Yes for MHS Committee" adopts any MHS logos or slogan for its campaign, if they adopt school colors maroon and gold for their advertising, then the presence of such school paraphernalia at polling places could well qualify as electioneering that could sway votes.

Open voting is great, but the school will need to work to assure the public its rolling polling places satisfy South Dakota election law.

------------------------------
Possibly related: I learn from Monica Campbell that Jon Hunter is getting into webcasting with live streaming video from Madison Bulldog home basketball games on the MDL website, starting Thursday night. No word yet on whether the school district has designed an accompanying Web widget that will let listeners vote on the bond issue electronically.

Former Clinton Honcho Now Key TransCanada Lobbyist

2010-12-15T10:35:00.000-06:00

Speaking of lobbyists, Hillary Clinton isn't to be trusted, either.

Via Great Plains Tar Sands Pipelines, I learn that Friends of the Earth is alarmed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton isn't one of them. Apparently, one Paul Elliott was national deputy director and chief of staff for delegate selection for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Paul Elliott is now a chief lobbyist for TransCanada in Washington, D.C. TransCanada needs Secretary Clinton to approve construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

“TransCanada clearly sees an opportunity to get this dangerous pipeline approved through Secretary Clinton's relationship with Paul Elliott,” said Alex Moore, dirty fuels campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “Mr. Elliott’s influence in the State Department’s consideration of the pipeline is yet another reason we believe that the White House should reassign review of this project. The stakes for the public are too high to have anything but rigorous and fair scrutiny of the environmental risks of this controversial pipeline and tar sands oil” [Friends of the Earth, press release, 2010.12.13].

Friends of the Earth says Clinton should recuse herself from the Keystone XL decision-making process. Clinton has already caught heck from Nebraska's leaders for saying she's inclined to approve the pipeline. Is there any chance our current South Dakota Congressional delegation, or maybe our lobby-favorite Congresswoman-elect, will join in turning up the heat on Clinton for her Big-Oil-lobbyist connections?

Rolling Homework: Web Buses!

2010-12-15T09:15:00.001-06:00

I don't know if this project is a money-saver or not. But for all those kids around South Dakota with long rides to and from school, maybe we can maximize our educational impact by transforming all of our buses into rolling Web classrooms:

One school bus in Arkansas’ Pope County has been transformed into a mobile classroom equipped with computer screens mounted to the ceiling, earphone jacks, wireless Internet access and a separate scanning device to record bus activity.

The five 19-inch customized computer screens stream math and science content from PBS, NASA, the Discovery Channel, CBS News and the Smithsonian Institution for students to watch on their hour-long rides to and from school. The screens also include video-conferencing capabilities [Lauren Katims, "High-Tech School Bus Teachers Students on the Road," Government Technology, 2010.12.14].

I know DSU athletes get to travel on a Web-capable bus. Does the tour bus the MHS boosters bought for our athletes have that capability? Kids could travel to games during the day and still watch class via webcam!

Web buses could have application beyond giving the kids a chance to do homework and web-chat with teachers on the way home. Perhaps we should start up a Web bus service for commuters from Madison to Sioux Falls. Just hook up some satellite wireless and let all the adults enjoy a couple extra hours a day of laptop productivity while the bus driver keeps things between the ditches.

Noem Opposes DREAM Act; Pentagon Disagrees

2010-12-15T08:28:00.002-06:00

Matt Hildreth of The Independent Local takes Kristi Noem to task for her opposition to the DREAM Act:

You call the DREAM Act “amnesty,” you even say it "rewards those who have broken the law.”

Representative elect, to say that the DREAM Act is amnesty is to say that your children are fugitives. Maybe we should have detained your kids for the +27 times you broken the law.

According to you, it would be “amnesty” not to [Matt Hildreth, "Were Noem's Children Granted Amnesty?" The Independent Local, 2010.12.10].

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act wouldn't exactly let children of illegal immigrants off scot free. The only crime these kids have committed lies in not running away from their parents to avoid coming to or staying in America. The DREAM Act would give these kids a conditional path to citizenship: i.e., they have to work to become citizens, either by going to college or by serving in the military for two years.

Dang, that's not much different from the "advice" the judge gave Bill Janklow back when he was a rowdy teenager raising real trouble.

The Pentagon thinks the DREAM Act is a great idea, since it would get thousands more fresh recruits each year. But Noem and the Republicans see a chance to holler about those others who are threatening our American way of life. Keep fear alive, Kristi....

-----------------
Bonus Fiscal Conservatism: CBO says the DREAM Act cuts the deficit $1.4 billion and raises federal revenues $2.3 billion over ten years. Wow! Pass 52 more bills like that, and we'll cover the cost of the tax breaks for the rich we're passing this week!

Washington Insiders Making Kristi Noem One of Them

2010-12-15T08:10:00.004-06:00

Screen cap, Washington Post front page, 2010.12.15. Dang: I usually love it when South Dakota makes the papers.

Hat tip to Dr. Newquist!

Monday I noted some out-state bloggers seeing through Kristi Noem's Tea Party image. Now a more prominent reporter confirms what I argued two weeks ago: the "Tea Party" (if they still exist) has been had by a bunch of budding GOP Washington insiders.

When the good people of South Dakota voted last month to send Republican Kristi Noem to Congress, they probably believed that she would give no quarter to the lobbyists and special interest groups who enjoyed, as she put it, "throwing money at the feet of a member of Congress."

But since she defeated Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (in part by making an issue of Herseth Sandlin's marriage to a lobbyist), Noem has hired her new chief of staff from . . . a lobbying firm! And on Tuesday afternoon, she was the guest of honor at a "Meet & Greet" with Washington high-rollers at the powerhouse lobbying firm Barbour Griffiths Rogers. Once these boys start throwing money at Noem's feet, she'll soon be chin deep in lobbyist greenbacks [Dana Milbank, "Forget Tea Party Rhetoric—Pork Barrel Politics Is Back," Washington Post, 2010.12.15].

Gee, Kristi, what South Dakota constituency does Barbour Griffiths Rogers represent? The GOP central committee is already trotting Noem as its newest, cutest show pony, and the Snow Queen is more than happy to smile and wave and do what she's told for the big boys.

That may sound harsh, but as a literary exercise, imagine an alternative universe where Stephanie Herseth Sandlin won the election and did exactly the things cited by Mr. Milbank. Imagine you are a conservative blogger in said alternative universe. What would you have written about alt-universe-SHS lobbyist party girl?

Milbank's column supports the thesis that, if the "Tea Party" wasn't GOP astroturf from the start, the Republican National Committee effectively co-opted it, used it for its own electoral ends, and is now happily discarding it... at least unitl 2012, when Republicans will need to distill more outrage (and find better candidates) to beat President Obama.

----------------
Update 10:25 CST: Joe O'Sullivan is on Noem's case, too.

Update 11:03 CST: Let the spin begin: now the Tea Party line is to cloak lobbying in the Constitution. Gaack! Gaaaaacckkk! (sound of hypocrisy hairballs)

Five Narrow Lanes Cause No Uptick in Madison Highway 34 Accidents

2010-12-14T16:01:00.000-06:00

Uncle! Uncle!

I raised a fuss when the city decided to restripe Highway 34 through Madison into four skinny driving lanes and a center left-turn lane. Madville Times readers gave the new stripes a hard thumbs-down when they changed the face of Madison traffic.

But initial traffic accident data suggest the five lanes are doing exactly what the state engineers promised: reducing accidents.

Between Jan. 1, 2010 and June 1, 2010, DPS officials logged one angle-intersection collision and one left-turn lane crash on SD-34 inside the city. In comparison, the city saw an annual average of about a dozen accidents from 2006 to 2008 that could have been influenced by the lack of a center-turn lane through town.

...The accident information for the first half of 2010 indicated that there were zero incidents of rear-end or sideswipe, same-direction collisions.

During 2008, DPS officials collected information on Madison SD-34 accidents that included two angle-intersection; four left-turn; three rear-end; and one sideswipe, same direction collisions. The total number of reported collision types was 10.

In 2007, they collected data on 10 angle-intersection; seven left-turn; one rear-end; and one sideswipe, same direction crashes for a total of 19.

During 2006, DPS staff members accumulated information on four angle-intersection; two left-turn; five rear-end; and two sideswipe, same-direction collisions for a total of 13 [Chuck Clement, "Accident Data Indicate Fewer SD-34 Collisions in Madison," Madison Daily Leader, 2010.12.09].

Now these data alone posit no causation yet, and state DOT engineer Scott Jansen would like to get a couple more years of post-restripe data to make some more reliable comparisons. But consider: current accident data show a nearly 7% increase in the number of crashes across South Dakota this year compared to last. Small towns may be rife with statistical anomalies, but so far, the five-lane restriping in Madison appears to be living up to its safety promise.

But I still think Jon Hunter had a better plan... and you'll still see me riding my bike right down the right-wheel track in that right lane. Make way!

Snowgates Demonstrate Practical Wisdom of Public Services

2010-12-14T09:55:00.002-06:00

Mr. Ehrisman's passionate advocacy of snowgates and our weekend winter wonderland got me wondering why Madison's public works department doesn't use snowgates. My dad, a font of local wisdom, tells me that Madison once upon a time did install snowgates. The innovation came at the urging of Harvey Rhoden, who worked for the city.

Personal digression: I knew Harvey as "Grampa Rhoden," not because he was kin, but because he and his wife babysat me when my mom worked at the college. Grampa Rhoden was a big, round man whom I remember as deeply tanned from being outdoors running heavy equipment all the time. His cigar habit may have imprinted on me a fondness for the aroma.

Harvey's snowgates worked great, Dad says. But the city didn't like them, because they slowed down the work. The snowplow drivers were on the streets longer, and the city had to pay them more. So, says Dad, the snowgates didn't last.

Dad and I had this conversation as we towed his skidsteer from one of his rental units to another to clear the snow ridges from the driveways. We saw plenty of other people applying their own shovels and snowblowers to the hard, chunky walls of snow sculpted across their driveways by the city plows. Madison only had three inches of fluffy snow, so clearing steps and sidewalks was a breeze. The skidsteer made clearing the driveway a snap as well... if you consider gassing up, loading and unloading, and maintaining personal heavy equipment all year long a snap. Without the skidsteer, I guesstimate clearing a typical snowplow driveway ridge might take ten minutes with a good metal scoop shovel. And that's a light snow.

Now multiply that effort by a couple thousand households. Calculate a GDP equivalent. Say a couple thousand people expend that effort. 2000 people × 10 minutes × $10/hour (your time is worth at least that much, isn't it?) = $3333. Add in a few dozen broken plastic shovels, gas for snowblowers, the investment in skidsteers and trailers made by a few wildmen like my dad....

Compare that with the cost of centralizing that snow removal as a function of local government. I'm totally speculating here, but suppose six snowplow operators have to spend three more hours lifting and lowering snowgates to keep our driveways and sidewalk egresses clear. Suppose we pay them twenty—heck, thirty bucks an hour (that's cold, crappy work). That's $540 above current costs. Add equipment and maintenance....

Snowgates remind me of the discussion we had last year about closing drivers license stations last year. When government spends less on certain services, it often shifts costs to individuals. We pay less in taxes but more in personal resources, and more folks are left out. Dad has a skidsteer and truck and trailer to haul, but the old lady down the block has felt boots and a plastic shovel. I suppose if we had some Christmas spirit, we'd have just run the skidsteer dry clearing every driveway we could for free... but what kind of socialism is that?

Even Dakota War College agrees: we'd be snowed without good government services. Government can provide some centralized services more efficiently than private efforts can.

Now, about that single-payer health care system....

New Gyms Sprout in Smaller Schools

2010-12-14T08:45:00.002-06:00

The Madison Central School District may face some challenges justifying building a new gym when it is faced with the prospect of making up a 5% cut in state aid to education. Asking local voters to make up another $275K in the annual budget might require giving up the $2.9 million the district says the new gym will cost.

Then again, if we're being quoted $2.9 million for a 40,000-square-foot facility with a 2500-seat gym, we might want to run with that bargain. Shopping around the neighborhood, I learn Wolsey-Wessington just built a new gym that cost $2.2 million. As a Class B gym, I would expect it is markedly smaller seat-wise than Madison's proposed arena. Highmore-Harrold just built a new gym, too. Superintendent Frank Palleria says that facility has just 300 seats. (Palleria, a former Madison super, also tells me a new gym for Madison is "long overdue.").

So $2.7 million gets Highmore-Harrold 300 seats, but $2.9 million will get Madison 2500 seats? I remain skeptical of the numbers we're getting locally.

Update 15:49 CST: I learn from MDL that my friends Matt and Penni Groce are holding an organizational meeting for the new "Vote Yes for MHS Committee" tonight at 7 at the MHS lunchroom.

Raising Taxes "Nuclear Option" in SD, Path to Governor's Mansion in MN

2010-12-14T08:30:00.000-06:00

South Dakota faces a projected budget deficit of $74.8 million, about 6% of our projected FY2010 general fund expenditures. But asking South Dakotans to pay, say, a half-penny sales tax increase to cover our expenses is deemed "the nuclear option."

How does paying for the services we need become more unthinkable that cutting state aid to K-12 education 5%?

Maybe we could osmose some political courage by spending more time at the Mall of America. That thriving commercial establishment is in Minnesota, which faces deficits of $3 billion this year and next. That's 16% of Minnesota's state budget. How do they propose to close that fiscal gap?

Wealthy businessman Mark Dayton campaigned for governor on a platform of taxing himself and his rich compatriots more. He advocates creating a new income tax bracket for individuals making more than $130K and couples making $150K (yeah, that's rich around here). He advocates a new property tax bracket for homes worth over $1 million. He'd also tax predatory credit card companies.

Dayton would also make a whole whack of spending cuts, but he puts the tax increases at the top of the page, and additional revenue outpaces savings four to one, acknowledging, perhaps, that it's better to pay the piper for services citizens need than cut government services and inefficiently shift costs to local governments and individuals.

The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce finds such proposals abominable, but Dayton campaigned openly on these tax increases and won the governor's chair. Not by much, but he won.

Are Minnesota and South Dakota really that different? We were both settled by the same hardy, taciturn German and Scandinavian stock. We both deal with harsh winters and the disappointment of the Minnesota Vikings (or out in the Hills, the Broncos). How can we be so different in politics?

Governor-Elect Mark Dayton shows us that a prairie state doesn't have to fight deficits with one fiscal hand tied behind its back. Governor-Elect Dennis Daugaard should pay attention.

Judge Hudson Reminds Me: We Need Single-Payer!

2010-12-13T18:35:00.006-06:00

I am not fond of the health insurance mandate included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I agree with Michael Moore that people aren't cars. If health insurance is so important that it warrants a government intervention in the free market as drastic as the insurance mandate introduced to us by Republican Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, then we should skip the middle man and move straight to a universal single-payer system that would guarantee coverage for every American.

Slaughter and 211th Comrades on SDPB Now

2010-12-13T12:09:00.004-06:00

Right now: South Dakota Public Broadcasting is hosting a really interesting conversation with three soldiers from the 211th Engineer Company from Madison and DeSmet. Included in the conversation is Madison's own Austin Slaughter. The men are talking about their experience clearing roads of explosives for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Every man in the 211th came home alive to South Dakota, where clearing roads of snow surely seems like child's play.

Conservatives Already Seeing Through Kristi Noem Facade

2010-12-13T09:16:00.001-06:00

All conservatives got with Kristi Noem was looks. Observers outside South Dakota are already seeing that, far from a true Tea Party crusader, Noem is just another pork-seeking farm-state politico. Take her comments on subsidies for ethanol:

Speaking on the Scott Hennen Show Noem says “Ethanol has been very good to South Dakota.” She said that this is not the time to repeal the subsidy “when you look at taking away that subsidy it is the wrong decision.”

She says that supporting the ethanol industry with subsidy promotes investment and continued hiring “In the long run it will get the economy back on track faster” [Kurtis Workman, "New South Dakota Congresswoman Say Ethanol Subsidy Good For Recovery," PlainsDaily.com, 2010.12.09]

Wait a minute: isn't Noem the same lady who spent a lot of time this year blasting federal stimulus efforts?

Let's tour the blogosphere. Rob Port at Say Anything:

How are ethanol subsidies any different than Obama’s economic stimulus spending? The fiscal conservative argument against the stimulus spending spree was that government cannot create jobs because government cannot spend anything without taking away from someone else.

Given that, if Obama’s stimulus spending hasn’t resulted in job growth (and we know it hasn’t) then how is spending on ethanol subsidies any different? [Rob Port, "South Dakota Rep. Kristi Noem: Ethanol Subsidies Are Economic Stimulus," SayAnythingBlog.com, 2010.12.09]

Rand Simberg:

This is depressing. Kristi Noem hasn’t even taken office yet, and she’s already defending home-grown pork as “stimulus"... [Rand Simberg, "And So It Begins," Transterrestrial Musings, 2010.12.11].

The Lonely Conservative from New York:

Kristi Noem is conservative only when it suits her.... I'm glad I didn't waste my time blogging about this woman ["Just When I Was about to Praise Kristi Noem," The Lonely Conservative, 2010.12.12].

Ah, but we shouldn't be too hard on our Mrs. Noem. She's just following the lead of John Boehner and the other big Washington Republicans who are engaged in the same hypocrisy on the pending $855 billion tax-rate and stimulus deal. Stimulus packages and deficit spending are bad, bad, bad when Democrats will get the credit and we need to rile up the voters. But when stimulus packages and deficit spending send money to our favored special interests, be they the ethanol industry or the richest 1% of Americans who pay for our campaign ads, then spending money we don't have becomes our patriotic duty.

Dakota Ethanol Pays $75K Penalty for Environmental Violations

2010-12-13T08:32:00.000-06:00

Dr. Blanchard has been hammering on the inefficiency and immorality of our federally subsidized ethanol industry. Now the EPA adds some black marks to the local ethanol industry.

Joe O'Sullivan at ThePostSD.com reports that back in October, Dakota Ethanol in Wentworth paid a $75,000 penalty to the Environmental Protection Agency for violations of the Clean Air Act. According to the EPA, Lake County's big ethanol plant emitted more volatile organic compounds than allowed, didn't do the right testing, and "failed to maintain the internal floating roof on the liquid inside several storage vessels at the plant."

The same settlement extracted $150,000 from ethanol producers Poet, James Valley, and Northern Lights for similar Clean Air Act at the Groton and Big Stone ethanol plants. Think of it as a rebate on our federal subsidies for the industry.

Now I know Dakota Ethanol was disappointed with the EPA for delaying adoption of the E-15 standard. But really, fellas, do you think breaking other EPA rules is going to encourage them to vote your way? Maybe this is why Kristi Noem was so intent on demanding the EPA administrator's resignation.

The Department of Justice has the full details of the Dakota Ethanol violations and Poet-James Valley-Northern Lights violations online.

Madville Times Tech Changes -- Suggestions?

2010-12-13T05:15:00.000-06:00

In the coming weeks, I plan some significant technological changes on the Madville Times. I'd like your input.

I may be liberal in politics, but I can be darned conservative when it comes to information technology. I'm still using Windows XP. I still set my Start menu to the Classic settings so it looks like the customizations I made on my NEC Ready 120LT when I got it eleven years and two laptops ago.

When it comes to blogging, I've stuck with Blogger for over five years and with the same basic three-column template ("Thisaway Blue" by Dan Rubin with three-column modification by Ashwini Khare, blogger beta templates) for over three years.

I approach I.T. change with trepidation... but I'm ready to do it. Here's what I will change:

The Big Change: I'm going to move from Blogger to Wordpress. I still believe Blogger is superior to Wordpress.com for free blogs. However, as I look at Wordpress.org, the paid Wordpress platform, I am finding enough plugins, coding options, and keyboard shortcuts (yes, the ability to use the keyboard and keep my hand off the mouse is that big of a deal to me) to be comfortable with switching. Doing what I want to do with Blogger would also cost me a couple bucks more a month... and I'm darned cheap.
Layout: I will keep the three-column layout, but I am going to move the main content to the left and put both sidebars on the right (see drawing). That layout lets the main content load before all the links and graphics in the sidebars. That allows you and search engines alike to get the main info first. If you're on a skinny screen, you're less likely to have to scroll to read the main content.
More Layout: The template will change. Fonts, colors, and sizes may switch here and there.

Now let me be clear about what I'm not changing:

I'm still writing. My blog, my voice, my responsibility.
I'm deleting nothing. You'll still be able to read over 4400 posts and over 18,000 comments right here. I'm also attempting to import the full content of the Madville Times into the new platform.
I will still include South Dakota blogrolls and RSS feeds in the sidebars, as well as recent comment feeds, graphics, ads, the tip jar... probably more stuff than a good Web designer would advise. But I think of my sidebars as bookshelves, a South Dakota library for anyone interested. Maybe I'll clear some clutter by creating separate pages, but I still want to feature as much of the South Dakota blogosphere on the front page as I can.

Now I recognize that changing the format of the blog can make folks like grudznick really cranky. I thus welcome your suggestions. What would you like to see me do? Design preferences, widgets you find useful on other blogs, things you want me to keep, things you'd like me to do more or less of (photos? videos? on-site reporting? weather?)... I'll listen to pretty much any suggestion short of "STFU". If I like your ideas, I'll add them to the blog-migration to-do list.

Design, content, you name it—the comment section is open for your thoughts. Or you can send me a private note. Fire away... and stay tuned!

Keep Fighting, Dems: Obama-GOP Tax Deal Entrenches Plutocracy

2010-12-12T12:02:00.000-06:00

Dennis Kucinich is not planning to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012. Maybe we can draft Robert Reich, who justifies efforts Kucinich and other rowdy Dems may make to beat the Obama-GOP tax-rate deal into better shape:

If the Democratic Party has stood for anything over the years it is to maintain and restore upward mobility for the majority of working Americans, ensure that the playing field isn’t tilted in the direction of the privileged, and limit the power of the richest among us to entrench themselves and their heirs into a semi-permanent plutocracy.

Continuing the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, including a sharp cut in the estate tax, violates these core principles. Doing so in the midst of an economic emergency that demands bold measures to rescue America’s vast middle and working class adds further insult. For President Obama and former President Clinton to tell America there’s “no other choice” or that “this is the best we can do” — when Democrats remain putatively in control of the House, Senate, and the presidency — is misleading [Robert Reich, "Why Democrats Should Disregard Bill Clinton's Endorsement of Obama's Tax Deal," blog, 2010.12.11].

Among the things I appreciate about Reich's call to principle is that he acknowledges that he admires his former boss and the current Commander-in-Chief as "good men." Yet he disagrees with them, civilly and passionately... just as we could in a good healthy primary. Hmmm... Reich-Kucinich 2012? Weiner-Paul?

Spend Less on Test Prep, More on Great Books and Teachers

2010-12-12T08:57:00.000-06:00

Governor Mike Rounds is asking for a 5% cut in state aid to K-12 education, and Governor-Elect Dennis Daugaard says he is likely to support most of the cuts in Rounds's plan. The proposed $353.6 million in state aid to K-12 education represents 29.6% of proposed FY2012 state general fund expenditures. Pre-Rounds, K-12 state aid made up 39% of general fund expenditures.

Daugaard and I and everyone else agree that what matters most is not how much we spend on education but the results our kids and teachers achieve. (There is some minimum cost of doing business, and Rounds has pushed local districts too close to that line, but we can argue that elsewhere.) So whatever amount the Legislature has the courage and foresight to invest in our children, we need to figure out how best to spend that money.

One place to start: ask the kids. A huge study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation finds school kids really do have a pretty good sense of which teachers are doing the job right.

Teachers whose students described them as skillful at maintaining classroom order, at focusing their instruction and at helping their charges learn from their mistakes are often the same teachers whose students learn the most in the course of a year, as measured by gains on standardized test scores, according to a progress report on the research [Sam Dillon, "What Works in the Classroom? Ask the Kids," New York Times, 2010.12.10].

One result that really stands out to me: kids who report that their teachers drill them a lot on standardized test exercises ended up not gaining as much on their state tests as other kids. That doesn't say that teaching to the test won't improve kids scores, but it does say that you can raise your kids scores even more by simply focusing on "the key concepts of literacy and mathematics."

So whatever money we get for our schools, this study suggests that we should spend less on test-prep books and special courses and more on great books and teachers.

Metrodome Joins Vikings in Collapse

2010-12-12T08:04:00.006-06:00

Holy cow! The Metrodome collapsed!

Hubert H. Humphrey Metrobowl, Minneapolis. The inflatable roof collapsed due to the weight of snow from this weekend's blizzard, which had dumped 17 inches on Minneapolis by Saturday evening. Image from KARE TV via CNN.

I say get out the utility knives, remove that roof, and play real football ball in the snow! Or just leave the roof where it is, rig up some ski-lifts, and let the kids sled in the Hubert H. Humphrey Snow Bowl all winter.

Democracy Invaded: Corporations = Borg!

2010-12-11T16:01:00.001-06:00

I agree with Mr. Gebhart that blizzards have their merits. I also see merit in his link to an article that declares (in counsel's words) "We are politically powerless because of an alien life form"—i.e., the lifeless, soulless, hive-mind collectives known as corporations, which America granted personhood in the 19th century:

We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities (you can live very nicely as a CEO or a politician, as long as you don't bite the feeding hand) or steamrollered if they try to resist.

In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion [Charlie Stross, "Invaders from Mars," Charlie's Diary, 2010.12.10].

Tea Party, if you really are the resistance, it's corporations who have co-opted the Constitution and established totalitarianism. Fight the real power!

Rounds Budget Ignores $29 Million Funding Gap for Homestake

2010-12-11T09:25:00.003-06:00

This week, reporter Bob Mercer declared that Governor Mike Rounds's effort to realize Bill Janklow's vision of converting the Homestake mine into a world-class research facility would be recognized as the greatest achievement of the Rounds administration. In a November 12 blog post, blogger Pat Powers pointed to the Sanford Underground Laboratory in Lead as "Mike Rounds' one crowning achievement."

The biggest jewel in Rounds's legacy crown may have just fallen out. Last week the National Science Board decided to ax a $29-million grant that the National Science Foundation it oversees had authorized for the Sanford Lab last year. The National Science Board had lots of good things to say about the lab when they visited in September, But now board member Mark Abbott says the Department of Energy, other agencies, and perhaps international sources should fund the project instead of NSF.

The Governor has spent "countless hours on the phone" with Washington trying to fix this funding flop. Losing those funds would be bad for the lab, even in the short-term. Governor Rounds says at the very least, the scientists at the lab need steady funding for job security. Ron Wheeler, director of the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority that runs the lab, told legislators last month "We’re not looking for the (South Dakota) taxpayers to cover any more expenses for the authority."

Comparison: Governor Rounds has asked for a $39 million reduction in state aid to K-12 education.

The Governor already had to cajole the Legislature to approve $5.4 million in additional funding last winter to keep the lab afloat until the NSF funding was anticipated to arrive in May 2011. The disappearance of that NSF funding could create an ugly political situation in a legislature already being asked to cut K-12 education 5%.

Significant as this decision is, it is thus surprising that Governor Rounds made no mention of it during is budget address on Tuesday. His budget proposal includes a $10.6M reduction in the Science and Tech Authority in anticipation of the NSF grant:

The total recommended FY2012 budget for the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority is $8,960,000 in other fund expenditure authority and 5.0 FTE. A decrease of $10,639,023 in other fund expenditure authority and 65.0 FTE is being recommended because the National Science Foundation (NSF) is expected to take over the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) operations in the spring of 2011 [State of South Dakota Governor's Budget: Fiscal Year 2012, p. 47].

The National Science Board met December 1–2. Governor Rounds presented his budget December 7. It seems odd that the Governor would not address a significant budget setback for a project so important to South Dakota's educational and economic development, not to mention the Governor's "legacy."

I share the Governor's desire to see this project go forward. I sincerely hope that this governor's greatest legacy may be a facility for the eggheads and intellectuals who too often get short-shrift in South Dakota culture.

But if the Legislature and South Dakota taxpayers aren't going to be asked to cover the gap again, who's left? We could hit T. Denny Sanford up again... but I have a feeling we're going to enjoy the splendid irony of Republicans John Thune, Kristi Noem, Mike Rounds, and Dennis Daugaard working hard to win more money from Washington, D.C.

-----------------------------
possibly related:

While stopping all the tax hikes would be a good first step, this alone won’t eliminate the job-killing uncertainty hanging over our employers and entrepreneurs.

That’s why we need to focus on cutting spending and reducing the size of government. The American people want us to stop spending dollars we don’t have.

To do that, we need to start taking a long, hard look at the size and scope of government and find new ways to resist Washington’s urge to grow and to grow. Let’s do a better job of following the money and evaluating the effectiveness of government agencies [Kristi Noem, GOP radio address, 2010.12.11].

Update 2010.12.13 10:06 CST—Definitely related: Dr. Newquist's discussion of the Homestake Lab. He notes that the NSF may not have been authorized to make the $29-million "commitment" we thought we had for the lab.

Update 2010.12.14 11:30 CST—Mr. Kurtz was an interested party in the mine once.

South Dakota Shows Extremes in Poverty, Income

2010-12-11T05:15:00.001-06:00

I suppose I shouldn't get too excited about South Dakota's supposedly growing wealth. GDP growth be darned, South Dakota is still home to the most impoverished county in the United States. Take a look at the data from the U.S. Census Small Area Poverty and Income Estimates for 2009, and you'll learn that Ziebach County on the Cheyenne River Reservation has a 62.0% poverty rate. Buffalo County, home of the Crow Creek tribe on the Missouri River, has the lowest median hosuehold income in the country, just $18,860. (Remember, median means it's the halfway mark: half the households in Fort Thompson are living on less than that.)

South Dakota has seven counties among the 30 with the highest overall poverty rates. However, greater suburban Sioux Falls in Lincoln County has the ninth-lowest poverty rate in the nation, a mere 4.2%. Median household income in Lincoln County is $72,894, almost four times the median in Buffalo County.

Child poverty in Lincoln County is a mere 5.4%, compared with 76.7% in Ziebach County. As this PDF map of South Dakota school districts shows, we have a concentration of white districts (o.k., pale green) around Sioux Falls with exceptionally low child poverty rates, below 9%.

Add those extremes, and South Dakota comes out right in the middle, with a 14.2% poverty rate among all ages, just below the national average of 14.3%. We rank 27th among the states and D.C. New Hampshire, Alaska, Maryland, Connecticut, and New Jersey are best off, with poverty below 10%. West Virginia, New Mexico, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Mississippi have the most poverty, with Mississippi the only state cracking 20% (21.8%, to be exact).

We are similarly middling in child poverty: our state rate of 18.9% of all kids (i.e., under 18) in poverty ranks us 26th nationally, under the national average of 20.0%. But being a little above average still means nearly 111,000 of our neighbors, including 37,000 of our kids, are in poverty.

Table 1: Poverty and Income in the United States Source: U.S. Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, 2009
State and County	People in Poverty	% in Poverty	Kids (Under 18) in Poverty	% Under 18 in Poverty	Median Income
United States	42,868,163	14.3	14,656,962	20	50,221
Alabama	805,223	17.5	274,243	24.6	40,547
Alaska	61,949	9.1	22,221	12.3	66,712
Arizona	1,065,728	16.5	396,006	23.3	48,711
Arkansas	519,026	18.5	185,268	26.6	37,888
California	5,132,640	14.2	1,846,994	19.9	58,925
Colorado	618,676	12.6	201,208	16.6	55,735
Connecticut	318,008	9.3	95,570	12	66,906
Delaware	96,409	11.2	33,851	16.7	56,985
Dist. Columbia	100,489	17.6	32,621	29	58,906
Florida	2,712,692	15	857,326	21.5	44,755
Georgia	1,585,116	16.6	575,429	22.7	47,469
Hawaii	131,896	10.4	39,214	13.7	63,741
Idaho	217,528	14.4	76,630	18.5	44,644
Illinois	1,671,343	13.3	586,040	18.7	53,974
Indiana	895,619	14.4	310,140	19.9	45,427
Iowa	342,309	11.8	109,384	15.6	48,065
Kansas	359,692	13.2	118,187	17.1	47,709
Kentucky	771,876	18.4	251,684	25.3	40,061
Louisiana	769,001	17.6	274,805	24.8	42,460
Maine	161,504	12.6	46,349	17.5	45,708
Maryland	509,141	9.2	157,164	11.8	69,193
Massachusetts	658,497	10.3	187,931	13.3	64,057
Michigan	1,565,559	16.1	513,550	22.2	45,254
Minnesota	558,118	10.9	172,134	13.9	55,621
Mississippi	620,446	21.8	230,409	30.7	36,764
Missouri	850,316	14.6	291,359	20.7	45,149
Montana	142,257	15	44,840	20.9	42,222
Nebraska	212,312	12.2	67,346	15.3	47,470
Nevada	323,738	12.4	117,742	17.6	53,310
New Hampshire	110,769	8.6	31,278	11	60,734
New Jersey	798,258	9.4	269,659	13.3	68,444
New Mexico	359,030	18.2	129,552	25.8	42,830
New York	2,708,119	14.2	878,114	20.2	54,554
North Carolina	1,475,063	16.2	503,713	22.5	43,754
North Dakota	72,911	11.7	20,022	14.1	47,898
Ohio	1,699,288	15.1	577,026	21.6	45,467
Oklahoma	575,711	16.1	199,277	22.1	41,716
Oregon	536,813	14.3	166,073	19.4	48,325
Pennsylvania	1,517,347	12.5	466,423	17.1	49,501
Rhode Island	122,379	12	39,988	17.9	53,243
South Carolina	753,286	17.1	258,848	24.4	42,580
South Dakota	110,863	14.2	36,884	18.9	45,048
Tennessee	1,055,635	17.2	352,943	24	41,715
Texas	4,143,077	17.1	1,655,085	24.3	48,286
Utah	321,441	11.7	110,852	12.9	55,183
Vermont	69,137	11.5	17,371	14	51,219
Virginia	805,555	10.6	255,156	14	59,372
Washington	803,266	12.3	249,767	16.2	56,479
West Virginia	316,155	17.8	91,059	24.1	37,423
Wisconsin	682,973	12.4	215,052	16.7	49,994
Wyoming	53,974	10.2	17,176	13.2	54,400

Breaking it down by county, my home county of Lake comes out 18th for median household income at $45,322, not quite $300 above the statewide median, and a few thousand above my own. Lake County's poverty rates for all residents and for kids are about the same, a tick or two above 12%.

1074 counties in the United States have higher median household incomes than our fair Lake County. 2101 counties have lower median household incomes than we do. Not bad!

Table 2: Poverty and income in South Dakota, by County. Source: U.S. Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, 2009
Place	People in Poverty	% in Poverty	Kids (under 18) in Poverty	% Kids in Poverty	Median Income
South Dakota	110,863	14.2	36,884	18.9	45,048
Aurora	348	13	127	19.7	40,900
Beadle	2,138	13.5	719	19	42,348
Bennett	1,242	37.8	530	49	32,137
Bon Homme	864	15.5	196	15.9	39,485
Brookings	3,942	14.7	574	10.3	46,733
Brown	3,455	10.2	944	12.1	47,378
Brule	739	14.6	256	20	40,113
Buffalo	893	43.6	405	51.5	18,860
Butte	1,343	14.2	488	20.6	38,015
Campbell	162	12	31	12.9	39,048
Charles Mix	2,137	24.3	954	36.2	33,135
Clark	428	12.7	141	18.6	40,806
Clay	2,573	23.1	441	19.5	38,421
Codington	2,952	11.4	856	13.3	44,548
Corson	1,578	39	691	52.6	26,426
Custer	830	10.9	271	18.6	46,441
Davison	2,384	13.1	670	15.4	41,441
Day	848	15.9	275	22.2	36,702
Deuel	403	9.6	132	13.3	43,678
Dewey	1,834	31.2	849	40.9	29,804
Douglas	355	12.6	108	16.8	41,049
Edmunds	463	12.2	127	13.7	46,490
Fall River	1,264	18.6	367	27.8	34,464
Faulk	282	13	72	15.1	43,600
Grant	744	10.7	192	12.2	42,559
Gregory	796	20.3	252	30	31,580
Haakon	233	13.5	72	18.3	40,447
Hamlin	623	10.9	241	14.3	46,444
Hand	377	11.9	109	15.7	42,791
Hanson	287	8.1	124	12.4	53,377
Harding	169	15.6	46	20.5	39,496
Hughes	1,835	11.4	562	14.4	56,239
Hutchinson	851	12.5	270	16.4	39,880
Hyde	186	13.7	59	18.8	40,674
Jackson	947	36.1	447	52.7	30,375
Jerauld	305	16	79	20.4	39,786
Jones	170	16.4	71	28.6	38,843
Kingsbury	573	11.2	140	12.6	41,629
Lake	1,390	12.2	294	12.1	45,322
Lawrence	3,355	15	800	17.6	41,227
Lincoln	1,704	4.2	641	5.4	72,894
Lyman	921	23.8	383	32.8	34,318
McCook	533	9.8	167	11.6	45,730
McPherson	430	18.1	107	22.1	31,945
Marshall	547	13.5	178	18.3	39,303
Meade	3,001	12.9	921	16.6	44,568
Mellette	757	38.2	332	52.7	27,455
Miner	295	12.5	87	15.5	38,370
Minnehaha	18,519	10.5	5,642	13.1	48,443
Moody	609	9.7	204	13	47,045
Pennington	13,863	14.1	5,013	20.4	46,972
Perkins	490	17.4	139	22.9	33,755
Potter	259	13	75	19.4	43,348
Roberts	2,008	20.6	795	29	36,718
Sanborn	333	13.9	103	18.6	41,364
Shannon	6,977	51.6	3,090	57.2	25,048
Spink	743	12.3	214	14.3	43,905
Stanley	270	9.7	107	15.5	51,185
Sully	146	10.9	39	11.3	48,816
Todd	4,491	45.3	2,191	57.1	24,742
Tripp	1,107	20.4	400	30.1	38,887
Turner	739	9.2	203	10.9	47,749
Union	889	6.2	290	8.1	58,785
Walworth	867	17.2	275	24.2	36,704
Yankton	2,484	12.3	711	14.5	46,028
Ziebach	1,582	62	593	76.7	25,084

Referral Petitions Circulating on Lake County Zoning Ordinance

2010-12-10T14:26:00.001-06:00

The Lake County Commission passed its lengthy zoning ordinance update on Tuesday. Already, county residents are circulating petitions to put the revisions to a vote. An eager reader says my friend and Madison resident Paul Nordaune just came by asking for signatures.

Nordaune and fellow petitioneers (expect a strong Winfred contingent) need to collect and submit 457 registered voter signatures (that's 5% of the total counted at general election last month) within 20 days of the ordinance's publication to put the matter to a public vote.

Now I generally say "Yahoo, democracy!" to referral drives. However, let me put this zoning ordinance into perspective. I sit on the new Lake County Water Quality Committee. We spent some of our meeting time reviewing the zoning ordinance, discussing impacts on water issues, and making some style and form recommendations (this grammar teacher loves that stuff). In a series of hour-long discussions over maybe six meetings, we barely got through the first fifth of the ordinances, and that was just the definitions.

The zoning ordinance is a big, complicated piece of local legislation. It has to be, to anticipate all possible legal challenges and complications that new development and cranky lawyers could raise. It does not lend itself easily to popular discussion. Every voter will be able to identify one small provision or another that he or she finds objectionable... and the only option at the ballot box will be to discard the whole thing.

But so be it. I will not stand in the way of neighbors calling for participation in the local political process. I'm betting my neighbors will almost certainly reject the zoning ordinance changes. The county commission will then have to get input, find out which provisions torqued off the most voters, and then write up a new version that addresses enough of those issues to pass muster with the public.

And in the process, we'll have learned a lot more about our local zoning rules. Keep on circulating, Paul!

Say here's a thought: if the petitioneers get the job done quickly enough, could Lake County save some tax dollars by scheduling the election on February 1, the same day as the school district's bond election for the new gym and high school renovations? And if they did, could coupling the two votes impact the turnout for the school election?

Quack If You Like Prairie Potholes: USFWS Wants to Preserve 1.94M Acres

2010-12-10T10:56:00.002-06:00

If you think the 48,000 acres proposed for the Tony Dean Cheyenne River National Grassland Wilderness is a big deal, check this out: Mr. Kurtz reads about an ambitious conservation project proposed by our friends at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. USFWS wants to create a Dakota Grassland Conservation Area that would preserve 240,000 acres of wetlands and 1.7 million acres of grassland in the Prairie Pothole region.

That isn't Florida! It's the Dakota Grassland Conservation Area
proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It's bigger than Florida.

Don't worry: USFWS isn't kicking us all out of East River. They plan to pay landowners not to tear up native prairie. USFWS estimates that over half of this untilled ground will be developed for farming or housing or some other use over the next 34 years. Such development would seriously degrade what USFWS calls "the backbone of North America’s 'duck factory' and critical habitat for many wetland- and grassland-dependent migratory birds."

To protect this habitat, Fish & Wildlife would buy conservation easements. Landowners keep their property rights and control over public access. Farmers can still farm the wetlands during naturally dry years and graze and hay the grasslands. The land stays on the tax rolls, so local governments don't lose out on revenue. On the budget side, this federal spending appears deficit-neutral: the money comes primarily "from oil and gas leases on the outer continental shelf, excess motorboat fuel tax revenues, and sale of surplus Federal property."

USFWS is hosting three public meetings next week across the Prairie Pothole Region to talk about the plan and gets folks' input:

December 14, 2010: Minot, ND, 7 p.m.–9 p.m. Sleep Inn–Inn and Suites, 2400 10th Street SW
December 15, 2010: Jamestown, ND, 7 p.m.–9 p.m. Gladstone Inn and Suites, 111 2nd Street NE
December 16, 2010: Huron, SD, 7 p.m.–9 p.m. Crossroads Hotel, 100 4th Street SW

This grassland proposal looks like a good deal for all parties concerned, from budget hawks to ducks and geese. But Uncle Sam welcomes your two-cents' worth. If you can't make the meetings, you can submit comments by e-mail to planning team leader Nick Kaczor.

Lobbyist to Manage Noem

2010-12-10T09:43:00.005-06:00

Hat tip to South DaCola and to commenter Dr. Weiland, who pointed this out in my comment section yesterday: Think Progress lists 13 GOP Congressional freshmen who have picked lobbyists to handle them in Washington. Among them, South Dakota's own Representative-Elect Kristi Noem.

Rep.-elect Krisi Noem (R-SD) selected Jordon Stoick as her chief of staff. Stoick is a vice president at the lobbying firm Direct Impact. Direct Impact also specializes in building public support for corporate causes, boasting on its website that it once generated hundreds of letters to the FCC on behalf of the telecom industry [Lee Fang, "At Least 13 New Republican Members Of Congress Hire Corporate Lobbyists To Manage Their Office," Think Progress, 2010.12.09].

Lobbyists?!? Noooooooo(em)!
Mr. Ehrisman, I am so glad you saved this picture.

So that's how Stoick paid for that million-dollar mansion.

During the campaign, Noem said that we couldn't trust a Congresswoman who was married to one of those dirty-bird lobbyists. "“Legislating and lobbying simply should not mix in the same household,” Noem said. “It is a recipe for conflicts of interest and possibly even corruption.” But mixing legislating and lobbying in the office we pay for is apparently fine. And Noem is already meeting with lobbyists to help her set her corporate agenda.

I knew Kristi would be great for blogging. The headlines almost write themselves.

Uncle Sam Promises $54 Million Boost for SD Universities FY2012

2010-12-10T09:05:00.002-06:00

Please tell me Kristi Noem and John Thune won't send this money back: Governor Rounds's budget proposal has Uncle Sam giving $54 million more to South Dakota's public university system in Fiscal Year 2012. That increase is part of $248 million in total anticipated federal funding for Board of Regents programs. Essentially, Uncle Sam picks up 31% of the total $797 million Regental budget.

Some universities come out better than others under the proposed budget. Here's a chart of the net changes proposed from this year's budget to next year's:

	Proposed Changes from FY 2011 to FY2012
Location	State Fund	Federal Fund	Other Fund	Total	FTE
Total	$3,818,909	$53,823,221	$19,902,254	$77,544,384	227.5
Central Office	($6,026)	$0	$1,650,845	$1,644,819	0.0
Scholarships	$31,642	$0	$0	$31,642	0.0
Employee Compensation and Health Insurance	$3,051,208	$1,113,729	$3,181,609	$7,346,546	0.0
USD	$178,715	($2,737,138)	$0	($2,558,423)	0.0
USD Med	$106,310	($1,628,199)	$0	($1,521,889)	0.0
SDSU	$247,604	$4,807,787	$11,412,400	$16,467,791	136.5
SDSM&T	$80,969	$56,579,910	$1,930,000	$58,590,879	40.0
NSU	$48,780	($747,103)	$0	($698,323)	5.0
BHSU	$40,173	($5,710,280)	$477,400	($5,192,707)	11.0
DSU	$39,534	$2,144,515	$1,250,000	$3,434,049	35.0

The biggest chunk of new federal dollars goes to the School of Mines (Tony's probably building an even bigger laser to pop popcorn at the dean's house). The biggest jump in jobs, though, comes at SDSU, which gets 60% of the new full-time equivalents.

Dakota State University comes out o.k., with nearly three and a half million more in funding and 35 new jobs. That would make up nicely for the seven teachers the Madison Central School District would have to fire to make up for the $275K Governor Rounds wants to cut from their budget. Maybe we just need to graduate some kids early and send them to DSU.

TransCanada Digging Up Keystone Pipeline, Checking for "Anomalies"

2010-12-09T16:27:00.007-06:00

That Sioux Falls paper reports that TransCanada is digging up six 120-foot stretches of the Keystone I pipeline here in South Dakota, three sites in Nebraska, and one in Missouri. TransCanada reports "anomalies" in the pipeline:

During a November inspection of the 1,087-mile pipeline, the company found some places where the pipe may have expanded. Exploratory digs are required whenever an inspection shows that a pipe may have expanded beyond allowable limits [Cody Winchester, "TransCanada Inspecting Portions of Keystone Pipeline in South Dakota," that Sioux Falls paper, 2010.12.09].

Expansion anomalies? Where have I heard that term before?

The documents provided show that PHMSA investigated a total of seven pipelines, four constructed by Boardwalk Partners, LP (Boardwalk), and three by Kinder Morgan, Inc. (Kinder Morgan). PHMSA confirmed that five of these pipelines contained significant amounts of defective pipe. Specifically, the documents show that the pipe stretched under pressure, creating “expansion anomalies” that indicate use of low-strength steel. To repair their pipelines, the affected companies removed and replaced hundreds of pipe joints.

A number of companies are implicated in producing defective pipe, but it appears that Welspun Corp. Ltd (Welspun), an Indian steel pipe manufacturer, produced most of it. For example, according to released documents, Welspun was responsible for 88% of pipe with expansion anomalies provided to Boardwalk ["Use of Substandard Steel by U.S. Pipeline Industry 2007 to 2009," Plains Justice, 2010.06.28].

Expansion anomalies. Defective pipe joints. Welspun. TransCanada. Remember this story? Plains Justice sounded the alarm about defective steel from Indian pipemaker Welspun back in June. Welspun supplied 47% of the steel for the Keystone I pipeline during the same period that it supplied defective steel other U.S. pipelines.

Correction! 2010.12.10 12:20 CST: The original documents Plains Justice analyzed to alert us to the Welspun defects did not indicate that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had taken any action on the issue with respect to TransCanada. However, PHMSA has indeed ordered these tests and digs in response to the discovery of the Welspun defects in other pipelines. However, as Phillip O'Connor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes, TransCanada would be digging up a lot more pipe if the Obama Administration hadn't eased pipeline regulations in October 2009.

How did the South Dakota media respond to these concerns? Mostly with silence.

How did TransCanada respond?

TransCanada officials said they had not reviewed the Plains Justice report but offered assurances the pipeline was safe. They noted that TransCanada's contracts with mills outline specifications above industry standards, and the company reviews manufacturing processes and quality control tests conducted by the suppliers. In addition, the company performs its own quality assurance checks after manufacturing.

"Our pipeline has been fully tested, and it is safe," spokesman Terry Cunha said [Phillip O'Connor, "Group Fears Leaks in New Oil Pipeline," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2010.07.03].

...fully tested and it is safe. Then what the heck are the backhoes doing at ten sites digging it up?

Do I get to say, "I told you so" yet?

TransCanada, find the problem, fix it, and tell us exactly what you find and what you do to make sure you've solved the problem. PHMSA, impose a litle oversight here. Secretary Clinton, look inot this and think long and hard before you approve that Keystone XL permit.

And South Dakota media: pay the heck attention! If you'd have hopped on the Welspun-TransCanada-Keystone story back when I told you about it, if you had done your watchdog job and turned up the heat on Big Foreign Oil, maybe the nice fellas on the backhoe crews could have done their work on a nice sunny day in July instead of having to freeze their cans busting frozen sod in December.

-----------------------
Update 17:18 CST: TransCanada has found anomalies at 12 sites in South Dakota, 14 in Nebraska, 12 in Kansas, and 9 in Missouri. Someone get me a map! The evaluation of the tests from the ten dig sites may take several weeks, but TransCanada fearlessly continues to pump 250,000 barrels a day through the Keystone pipeline. TransCanada is also filling the pipeline's Cushing extension, which branches from Keystone I at Steele City, Neberaska, and runs to Cushing, Oklahoma.

The three sites being dug up in Nebraska are all in Cedar County, near the site of the fourth documented TransCanada Keystone pump station leak, which came to light Tuesday.

Proposed Education Cuts Bad for South Dakota: Who Should Pay?

2010-12-09T09:01:00.004-06:00

What's wrong with Governor Rounds's proposed budget for education? Aside from the usual GOP view of education as expense rather than investment and a determination to cheat our kids of educational opportunities, plenty:

While kids get a 5% cut, administration in the state Department of Education gets a 3.3% boost, $342K more than this year.
The FY2012 per-student allocation is $100 less than it was in FY2009. Rounds would set schools back three years.
The budget anticipates a 20% drop in students taking Advanced Placement courses. If we want competitive graduates, we should be pushing more kids to take AP, and backing that push with bucks.
The number of school districts offering post-secondary dual-credit courses drops from 20 to 6. If that's a local decision, that's bad. If that's a state budget cut, that's worse. And yes, the governor is proposing a quarter-million-dollar cut to dual-credit support.

While doing dishes last night, my wife posited two ways out of this budget mess. We can make our kids pay for it, by permanently hamstringing education funding and denying them the educational opportunities they need to compete for admission to the best colleges, scholarships, and jobs. Or we can make Wal-Mart pay for it by imposing a corporate income tax.

Our kids or our corporations: who should pay?

---------------------------
p.s.: New Dept. Ed. data show fall 2010 K-12 enrollment at 123,629. Multiply those kids by the $240 per student by which Rounds would reduce the funding formula, and that's $29.7 million in cuts.

pp.s.: If you think a 5% cut from Pierre would save you money, think again: the SD Budget and Policy Project reminds us that your local school district (and health care providers) will come a-shifting those costs to you one way or another.