Tag: politics

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

South Dakota Democrats scored one clear victory in the 2014 election, getting 55% of South Dakotans to approve Initiated Measure 18 to raise our minimum wage to $8.50 per hour with annual cost-of-living increase. The Governor and the South Dakota Retailers don’t like that vote, but both have said they won’t try to tinker with that new law in the next Legislative session.

However, given rumblings that some legislators in the new and even bigger Republican majority might try repealing at least the indexing if not the amount of the minimum wage, a few words and a plan in defense of the initiative process are in order.

Long-time readers here understand my small-d love of the initiative process. If I had my druthers, we citizens would be passing original legislation without the meddling of legislators all the time. I share initiative founder Father Robert Haire’s faith in the voters to act as an intelligent check against the plutocrats who can hold sway among our elected leaders in far-off Pierre.

Passing an initiative is no simple process. Just placing an initiative on the ballot requires about 14,000 signatures from registered voters. A legislator doesn’t even need a co-sponsor to put a bill in the hopper and send it to committee for consideration. Turning an initiative into law requires thousands and thousands of yes votes. A bill can pass the Legislature on 36 votes in the House, 18 in the Senate, and one signature on the second floor of the Capitol.

Allowing the Legislature to repeal a successful initiative violates respect for the will of the voters. Legislators don’t try to repeal votes for candidates; they wouldn’t dare overturn the will of voters of District 8, who just elected my friend Scott Parsley to the Senate, and instead recognize Chuck Jones as District 8 Senator. We count the ballots, declare the winners, and proclaim,”The voters have spoken!” How can legislators even think of overturning the popular will on another line of that same sacrosanct ballot and undoing a successful initiative?

If legislators do get nasty and repeal the new minimum wage law, voters should respond immediately with two measures. First, they should refer that repeal to a public vote. Second, they should start a new initiative, this time a constitutional amendment (that’ll take about 28,000 signatures), prohibiting the Legislature from repealing or amending laws passed by initiative. The amendment would specify that if voters pass it, only voters can change it. As a nod to the importance of checks and balances, we could allow the Legislature to refer a successful voter initiative to another public vote. But the ultimate decision must rest with the voters, immune to direct repeal from overzealous legislators who forget that their power originates with the people.

Does this discussion sound academic? I hope so. Let us hope it stays that way. Legislators, the voters have spoken. A minimum wage of $8.50 an hour, with annual indexing, is the law of the land. Leave it alone… unless you want us to come back and make that minimum wage your Legislative pay.

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a conservative perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard on this site.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and has taught math, English, speech, and French at high schools East and West River.

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

As of this writing, well over 30,000 South Dakotans have cast their ballots in the 2014 general election. So for 6 percent of our registered voters, this guide is moot. The rest of you may be so tired of campaign ads and speeches that you just want to vote and be done with it.

No problem: I’ll keep my guide short and sweet. Here are the tightest, mostly leftist reasons I can offer for marking the correct answers on your general election ballot.

Initiated Measure 17, requiring health insurers to include any willing and qualified provider in their networks: Opponents have characterized IM 17 as”another mandate with more government control over health care.” However, IM 17 doesn’t lay a mandate on anyone other than insurers, who have to accept any physician who meets their standards into their networks. You, Mr. and Ms. South Dakota, get more control over which doctor you see. IM 17 may save you money and a trip to Sioux Falls. Vote YES.

Initiated Measure 18, raising South Dakota’s minimum wage: The labor and liberty of even the lowest-skilled worker is worth more than $7.25 an hour. Be moral, help workers pay their bills, and stimulate the economy. Vote YES.

Amendment Q, allowing roulette, keno, and craps in Deadwood: No part of a noble constitution should include the word crap. Schoolkids will giggle. Besides, I hear the high-rollers from Asia want to play baccarat. Send this amendment back to the drafters and demand an amendment giving this picayune authority to the Legislature. Vote NO.

Constitutional Offices: We Dems can only offer you candidates for three of the six. To check crony-corporatist excesses of one-party rule in Pierre, elect those three Democrats, Denny Pierson for Treasurer, David Allen for Public Utilities Commission, and Angelia Schultz for Secretary of State. Of the Libertarian alternatives for the other three offices, consider Kurt Evans for Auditor, in the hopes that he might show more interest in finding any missing EB-5 money or e-mails. John English quit the School and Public Lands race on Sept. 13, so you’re stuck with Ryan Brunner. For Attorney General, incumbent Marty Jackley has major flaws, but he is the only person on the ballot qualified to do the job.

Governor: Rep. Susan Wismer says public education needs a champion in Pierre. This week Gov. Daugaard made clear he’d rather cheer for private schools, making a blatantly specious comparison between academic achievement at O’Gorman and Sioux Falls’ public schools. Strong public education is crucial to democracy. Vote Wismer.

U.S. House: Corinna Robinson would raise the federal minimum wage, protect Head Start, and oppose the Keystone XL pipeline. Rep. Kristi Noem is essentially a GOP spokesmodel who advocates cuts to food stamps after her family enjoyed millions in farm subsidies. Such hypocrisy ought to have consequences. Vote Robinson.

U.S. Senate: The people running South Dakota’s EB-5 program broke laws, dodged taxes, and enriched themselves at public expense. Mike Rounds didn’t just fail to notice such corruption; he rewarded it as governor and defends it as a candidate today. The last person we need in Washington is another Senator prone to corruption. For a commitment to honest, smart government, vote Rick Weiland.

I could easily say another 600 words about each candidate and each issue. I’ll bet you can, too: I invite your 600 words (or 60, or six) in the comment section. Fire away, and vote Tuesday!

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a conservative perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard on this site.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and has taught math, English, speech, and French at high schools East and West River.

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

South Dakota’s four-man contest for Tim Johnson’s Senate seat exploded into the national media consciousness last week. A variety of factors have put Rick Weiland, Mike Rounds, Larry Pressler and even Gordon Howie on the pages of the New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg, MSNBC and other national outlets. I’m thrilled, because all that attention means more reporters coming to South Dakota, buying sandwiches and paying sales tax, which means a shot in the arm for our economy. Hooray for economic development!

Actually, our Senate race went national because of economic development, or more specifically, Mike Rounds’s promotion of economic development through the EB-5 visa investment program. The EB-5 story was drifting away this summer until State Sen. Larry Tidemann and fellow Republicans stifled State Rep. Susan Wismer’s motion to subpoena key EB-5 player Joop Bollen. That unconscionable stonewall drew statewide editorial fire. Democrats realized the EB-5 story had legs, started digging harder and discovered a raft of new documents and misdeeds that dragged Mike Rounds into spin, excuses and self-contradiction.

The public noticed, too. Published and internal polls have revealed enough voter dissatisfaction with the statements Rounds has made in response to the EB-5 scandal to motivate the Mayday PAC and even the long-Weiland-shy DSCC to throw millions of dollars into ads challenging Rounds on EB-5 and supporting Weiland. The press follows the money in scandals and campaigns, and that money told the D.C. press that South Dakota is on fire.

EB-5 lit that fire, but the Rounds campaign has been surprisingly bad at putting it out. Rounds seems to have coasted for too long on his own sense of entitlement and inevitability. When invited to respond to questions from legislators about EB-5, Rounds spent too much time writing a political screed and not enough time doing the homework necessary to provide direct, factual answers, as evidenced by his failure to check the records and report that the governor’s office was indeed served with a lawsuit related to EB-5 in 2009.

Team Rounds has seemed stuck in last November, talking about Richard Benda as the fall guy for all EB-5 ills. Many of the new accusations of shady EB-5 conduct have little to do with Benda. Yet after almost a year of knowing Democrats could raise questions about EB-5, Team Rounds seems never to have briefed out consistent or believable defenses.

Meanwhile, Team Weiland has earned national attention with a smart campaign on multiple fronts. They’ve incorporated EB-5 without obsessing over it. Weiland has released funny, pointed and catchy music videos that give the national media great hooks for South Dakota stories. And Weiland has earned his stripes with his non-stop every-town campaigning.

And then there’s Larry Pressler. Completely contradicting some personal attacks about his mental acuity, Pressler has come to interviews and debates sounding every bit the Rhodes Scholar and veteran lawmaker. He has parlayed name recognition and his opportunistic sense of public discontent with partisanship into 20 percent-plus poll numbers that even his closest friends didn’t predict. Pressler’s presence creates what physicists would call a three-body problem, introducing chaos in poll predictions by upsetting the much simpler math of a two-man,”If Rounds is down, Weiland is up” campaign.

Scandal, a flopping frontrunner, a smart challenger, and crazy math–that’s why South Dakota’s Senate race is in the national news. Now, how about another sandwich, Mr. New York Times?

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a conservative perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard on this site.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and has taught math, English, speech, and French at high schools East and West River.

By Ken Blanchard

File this one under,”Someone had to say it; I just didn’t think it would be him.” In the New York Times Nicholas Kristof raises the alarm about”the Ebola fiasco.” The fiasco he complains about is the slow response of the developed world to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The Ebola virus is a little bit of biological mischief with a terrible footprint and a high fatality rate. We know how to stop the spread of such a disease, Kristof tells us, and we know from past experience (see AIDS) how important it is to stop the spread of infectious diseases earlier rather than later. Later is more expensive both in lives and treasure. Later gives the disease more opportunities to mutate into a more virulent form. Right now Ebola is transmitted only by contact with bodily fluids, but what if it should become airborne? Cue the ominous music.

Yet the world’s governments have been tardy in using their resources to deal with the problem. Kristof expresses his exasperation:

“We would never tolerate such shortsightedness in private behavior. If a roof leaks, we fix it before a home is ruined. If we buy a car, we add oil to keep the engine going. Yet in public policy — from education to global health — we routinely refuse to invest at the front end and have to pay far more at the back end.”

Well, yes. What conservatives believe as a matter of principle Kristof (no conservative) finds himself compelled to blurt out: private decision making is much more efficient than public policy.

This is not a lesson he is likely to apply to other issues, such as Obamacare. Only last November he earnestly told us why we needed to transfer management of the American health care system to unelected bureaucrats. That was before the Veterans Administration scandal, so maybe he’s rethinking. I doubt it.

It may be that Obamacare is working, in the sense that it hasn’t yet collapsed. About 7 million people seem to have enrolled, though the details about that are fuzzy. We don’t really know how much the program has cost so far, because it is so very complex. Bloomberg estimates $73 billion. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Administration is cagy about how many people they expect to sign up in 2015. They also point out that, even if 10 million sign up this year, it will leave 30 million uninsured.

Obamacare was passed by a Congress controlled by Democrats, and signed into law by President Obama, despite the fact that the project was deeply unpopular. It was so unpopular, in fact, that it cost Democrats a Senate seat in Massachusetts. They had convinced themselves that pulling back would do them even more damage. Maybe they are right, in the long term. Perhaps the program will flourish and become as entrenched as other entitlements.

It isn’t working yet. Election analyst Jay Cost identifies 12 Democratic Senators, from states that Mitt Romney carried, who voted for Obamacare. Two of them won re-election. One of them, Blanche Lincoln from my home state of Arkansas, was defeated. Five of them resigned or did not seek re-election and Harry Bird of West Virginia passed away. Cost does not mention South Dakota. Almost everyone expects that the seat vacated by Sen. Tim Johnson, who voted for Obamacare, will be filled by Republican Mike Rounds.

Of the remaining Obamacare votes, all three (Alaska, Arkansas, and Louisiana) are struggling for reelection this year. If the Republicans do take control of the Senate in January, Obamacare will be the biggest part of the reason. And that is as it should be.

Government cannot be as efficient as the private sector but it can be responsible to private individuals. In a republic, where ordinary folks stepping into makeshift booths in libraries, schools and city halls select the office holders, it is perilous for one to ignore the other. For better or worse, confidence in government in the United States is at a very low ebb. One reason may be that our Congress and our President have been all too contemptuous of the people that put them into office. Another reason, as Mr. Kristof suggests, is that they aren’t doing their damn job.

Editor’s Note: Ken Blanchard is our political columnist from the right. For a left-wing perspective on politics, please look for columns by Cory Heidelberger every other Wednesday on this site.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

Ten months ago, I offered a brief summary of the breaking scandal involving the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, Northern Beef Packers, and the EB-5 visa investment program. At the time, I listed the four most important issues in the scandal for South Dakotans to watch:

1. the suspicious death of former GOED chief and EB-5 figure Richard Benda;
2. the misguided focus of state economic development policy on big boondoggle projects like the bankrupt Northern Beef Packers;
3. the impact this scandal would have on Mike Rounds’s chances of winning Tim Johnson’s Senate seat; and,
4. the lack of accountability in GOED’s execution of the EB-5 visa investment program.

After that November 13, 2013, article, a coroner ruled Benda’s death suicide. No hard evidence has emerged to prove otherwise. Attorney General Marty Jackley has revealed that he was prepared to arrest Benda for diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars from a state grant to his pocket. Governor Dennis Daugaard has said he is”sure” Benda killed himself”because of the stress of this situation.”

The policy angle of the scandal seems lost on our leaders and our voters. The state has avoided any public promotion of further EB-5 activities, but Mike Rounds continues to assert that Northern Beef Packers was a good investment that will pay off.

The electoral angle of the scandal did not materialize during the primary. New revelations dried up as the spring primary approached. Mike Rounds took a few shots from his primary opponents about GOED, NBP, and EB-5, but he still cruised to a 55 percent victory in June. The candidate who asked Rounds the toughest questions about NBP and EB-5, Rep. Stace Nelson, finished third, behind State Sen. Larry Rhoden, who”refrained from making any judgment calls” about the scandal.

Republican voters dismissed the scandal in June, but Republican legislators reawakened the press and voters to the GOED/NBP/EB-5 affair at the end of July, when they refused to even discuss calling Joop Bollen, the director of the state’s EB-5 program, to testify before a Legislative committee. Bollen seems to have quite a bit to account for:

1. Bollen privatized his own state job in 2008, signing a contract between his state agency and his own new private company.
2. That contract probably violated South Dakota’s conflict of interest law.
3. Bollen’s privatization of his EB-5 activities may have denied the state general fund well over a hundred million dollars.
4. That privatization probably violated Board of Regents policy (Bollen worked for Northern State University).
5. When a California company sued the state agency Bollen directed in 2008, Bollen concealed the lawsuit from his superiors and wrote his own legal response to the court.
6. Pretending to represent the state in that court case violated more state law and good sense.
7. Bollen’s private company functioned like a bank, but did not obtain a lending license or pay bank franchise tax.

Gov. Rounds says he was briefed several times in 2007 on the EB-5 privatization plan. The violations Bollen appears to have committed while carrying out that plan could be grounds for firing a state employee. But Gov. Rounds rewarded state employee Bollen with a lucrative no-bid contract to continue running EB-5.

Therein lies the core question of accountability that has risen from this scandal. If Bollen did wrong, why didn’t Rounds hold him accountable? And whatever Rounds’s reasons — inattention? error? complicity? — to what extent should voters hold Rounds accountable as he seeks their reward of a Senate seat?

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a conservative perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard on this site.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and has taught math, English, speech, and French at high schools East and West River.

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

My temporary visit to Spokane is almost done. To clear our heads of all this leftist agitation and right-wing rebuttal, permit me to share some of the sights that catch my eye and my thoughts as I ride around town.

I cross Hoffman almost every day. Every time I do, I think of crossing Charlie Hoffman, archconservative legislator from Eureka. I’ve got to go visit that guy.

No grizzlies in this urban forest. But Milton — that’s my Grandpa’s name. He vacillated between Minnesota and South Dakota but eventually settled on the Rushmore State. How fortunate for Charlie and his fellow Republicans!

No mall on this street, just Slurpees and tai chi.

Back in Madison, my friend and fellow cyclist Scott Parsley lives on Liberty. He also fights for liberty as a legislator. When I was little, I lived at the intersection of Division and Center. Metaphor alert: Division in Madison is pushed to the far edge of town.

I don’t cross this street nearly as often as I’d like. Too bad Madison doesn’t have a hill like that; Scott and I could build more bike muscle!

Nevada! I lived on that street in Spearfish! Follow it east, and you get to the tunnel under I-90 that leads to Lookout Mountain, the nicest little town mountain in South Dakota.

Normandie! I took 28 Spearfish kids there and saw the D-Day beaches and the graves of thousands of American soldiers. Shannon County men and other Oglala Lakota warriors fought alongside those soldiers, fighting for freedom and democracy for all. (How’s that for a historical intersection?)

Big city all around, and all I think crossing this street is that I need to get home and read that Sioux Falls paper to find out what’s going on.

But 98∞ outside? Uff da! I’d better get some water …

No one handing out free ice water here … and not nearly as many interesting billboards.

Stevens … I judged a debate tournament there on a gloriously sunny February day, one of those great winter-defying days when warm breezes come down the Hills and kids can walk outside in the Stevens courtyard in their shirtsleeves, talking politics and philosophy. I hope Coach Vargo will invite me to judge again. Go Raider Debate!

Wait, what’s that bare pole about? It’s the intersection of Desmet and Dakota, currently consumed with construction.

Father Pierre-Jean De Smet gave his name to that nice little town on the prairie. He traveled the Rocky Mountains and the Columbia River, but he, too, came back to the Plains.

Much to Spokane’s discredit, there is no South Dakota Street, only North. But an absence like that — or my own physical absence from the land I love — won’t stop my mission to write about my home and maybe, with the right words, make it better. I look forward to seeing you again, South Dakota!

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a conservative perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard on this site.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and has taught math, English, speech, and French at high schools East and West River.

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

In my last column, I explained how South Dakota petition law makes it harder for Independents to get on the ballot. This week, we see South Dakota won’t give Independent candidates a fair shake even when they don’t need to petition their way to the ballot.

Last winter, Independent gubernatorial candidate Mike Myers filed a document naming Vermillion lawyer Caitlin Collier as his running mate. State law requires that Independent gubernatorial candidates certify their running mates before circulating their own nominating petitions. Independent petitions are due the last Tuesday of April, so the practical Independent will name a lieutenant governor candidate by January. Partisan candidates face no such early requirement: their party committees don’t need to certify their running mates until the second Tuesday of August.

A lot can happen between January and August. Collier has run into family issues (nothing nefarious, but none of our business) that prevent her from campaigning effectively. She filed a formal withdrawal of her candidacy on June 12, two weeks before the Democratic gubernatorial nominee even had a running mate. On July 8, Myers announced his replacement for Collier, former Sioux Falls legislator and GOP gubernatorial candidate Lora Hubbel.

Myers’s choice is fascinating politically, given the swing from Democrat Collier to Tea Partier Hubbel. His choice is also illegal, according to Secretary of State Jason Gant, who refuses to recognize Hubbel’s candidacy or Collier’s withdrawal. In a July 18 letter to Hubbel, Secretary Gant says South Dakota law provides a mechanism only for partisan candidates to withdraw and be replaced on the ballot. Gant says the absence of statute ties his hands; Hubbel can become South Dakota’s second in command only if Myers wins the election, appoints Hubbel, and wins a majority confirmation vote from both chambers of the Legislature.

Gant’s decision smells of punishment, not public interest. No ballots have been printed yet, no votes cast. Recognizing Collier’s withdrawal and Myers’s good-faith effort to replace her overturns no vote or petition. Placing Hubbel’s name on the ballot does not directly violate any state law; it simply would do what state law allows every partisan candidate to do this year until August 12.

Gant’s decision actually takes away voters’ rights with a false ballot. Those wishing to vote for Myers will have to vote for a woman who is not really running. Worse, attentive voters who know who’s who and crave the chance to call Lora Lieutenant lose their right to vote: Gant’s decision subjects their vote to approval of the Legislature, a discounting of voters’ wishes that happens nowhere else on the ballot.

Secretary Gant can avoid this absurd situation. He can give the voters an accurate ballot without harming any constitutional rights or compelling state interest. He can solve this problem now by taking action that statute does not explicitly prohibit but which legislators haven’t yet addressed. He can solve this problem long-term by telling 2015 Legislature to write new statutes that make clear that Independent gubernatorial candidates have the same freedom to choose and replace their running mates that partisan candidates have.

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a conservative perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard on this site.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and has taught math, English, speech, and French at high schools East and West River.