Tag: politics

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All I Want for Christmas

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

My exile continues. Work keeps my family away from the lake, the prairie, the river, the Hills, all those singular South Dakota places where we find our friends and relatives and neighbors living in just two degrees of separation.

As I hear from home of the temps dropping to two degrees, I still say I’d rather be in South Dakota on a cold winter day than anywhere else on a warm day.

In response to that statement, a couple of correspondents have questioned my veracity and sanity. But I mean it.

I like traveling. I like driving new roads, biking new trails, hiking new hills. But I’d still rather be in South Dakota.

I’d rather be attending a campaign debate in Rapid City to see which Mike Rounds shows up: the flesh-and-blood former governor or the cardboard cut-out that Annette Bosworth made. I’d also enjoy seeing if the audience could tell the difference.

I’d rather be judging a real high school debate at tournaments in Brookings and Watertown, where, among hundreds of smart South Dakota kids, I’d likely get to see the Senate candidates for 2044 sharpening their logic and speaking skills.

I’d rather be the embedded journalist on Rick Weiland’s tour of the state, watching him crunch across snowy driveways to win one vote at a time in Victor, LaBolt, Broadland, Philip, and Rowena.

I’d rather be in Sioux Falls, asking Steve Hickey how his change of heart on the death penalty is going over with his conservative friends and what other political surprises he may spring on us.

I’d rather be in Mitchell, interviewing a young Sudanese boy who was brought to America because he’s strong and tall and can play basketball, and ask him how he feels about being in South Dakota, far away from home, at Christmastime.

I’d rather be driving to Aberdeen and Huron, following the money trail of EB-5 money from Northern Beef Packers and Dakota Provisions to pockets as yet undiscovered.

I’d rather be in Lake Andes, talking face to face with friends who knew and now miss Richard Benda.

I’d rather be in Pierre watching politicians and in the Black Hills watching pine beetles (insert your clever analogies here).

I’d rather be in Butte County, listening to ranchers talk about rebuilding their herds and wondering if it would just be easier to trade their quiet ranches for the restless man camps of the Bakken and make their fortunes in oil.

My columns sometimes cast a cold critique of South Dakota. But really, I’d rather be in South Dakota on a cold Christmas day– or any other day — than anywhere else. Merry Christmas, neighbors!

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a right-wing 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.


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Manpower and Free Market Fundamentals

By Cory Allen Heidelberger


Our publisher invited me to write a column “From the Left.” So why do I feel like I keep coming around “To the Right” of South Dakota’s Republicans?

Governor Dennis Daugaard was willing to invest $5,000,000 in an exclusive contract with Manpower, an out-of-state recruiting company that promised to help Dennis bring 1,000 new workers to South Dakota. After burning up a million taxpayer dollars, they recruited just 95.

Governor Daugaard is wisely defunding that particular economic development initiative. But he’s still asking for tax dollars to continue our grants and loans and other recruitment efforts to coax businesses and workers to buck the market and come to South Dakota.

The failure of the Manpower initiative and the Governor’s persistence in other economic development spending raises a tough question: what is the proper role of government in economic development?

I propose a political experiment: let’s find a candidate for Governor — Republican, Democrat, Independent, I don’t care, though we might have to turn to the Constitution Party to find someone this crazy — who will advocate eliminating all state economic development programs. No more Governor’s Office of Economic Development, this candidate would cry from the hustings. No grants for beef-packing plants. No promotion of green-card buying to funnel foreign dollars into shaky local projects that can’t win traditional investment. No tax rebates for any business projects, big or small.

Instead (our candidate would declare in faithful Adam Smith fashion), let government fulfill its proper role of doing what the private sector cannot or will not. Build good roads and schools and sewers and parks. Build public services and policies that serve and protect all citizens equally. Create a reliable, uniform economic framework in which business and labor can make their own decisions about where to set up shop. But never step into the marketplace with a state decision or a state check that gives one business or one worker a benefit that is not available to every other actor in the South Dakota marketplace.

How would such a candidate fare in a South Dakota election? Do South Dakotans believe that business can grow and prosper without direct state intervention? Or do we think that South Dakota’s businesses and communities are so inherently disadvantaged that state government has to do their recruiting work for them? Could any candidate, left-wing or right-wing, lead that conversation… and win votes with it?

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


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A Scandal Unfolds

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

On October 30, Governor Dennis Daugaard stopped the presses by announcing that state and federal investigators are looking into “financial misconduct” in the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.

The presses have fired up and churned out all sorts of background and discussion and speculation on GOED, EB-5 visas, Northern Beef Packers, and other angles of this very complicated story.

U.S. Marshals haven’t perp-walked any South Dakota suits down Phillips Avenue to the federal courthouse in Sioux Falls. But whether the ongoing investigations drag anyone before a judge, South Dakotans need to pay attention to the GOED/EB-5 scandal, on multiple levels:

Misguided Agricultural Economic Development. Throughout the Mike Rounds and Dennis Daugaard administrations, South Dakota has followed the Earl Butz ag philosophy of “Get big or get out.” South Dakota has favored mega-dairies, in part with EB-5 visa investments, at the expense of small local dairies. One of the largest dairies supported by EB-5 money, the Veblen mega-dairy, went bankrupt in 2009. The Rounds Administration ignored local investors interested in starting a manageably-sized beef packing plant in northeastern South Dakota and instead favored the gigantic Northern Beef Packers plant with $80 million of EB-5 visa money, plus millions more in other forms of assistance. That money all went poof: the plant never reached the production levels necessary to pay the bills and went bankrupt after less than a year.

A local entrepreneur responds to the investigation of the GOED’s EB-5 program and suggests we could get better bang for our economic development buck focusing on smaller local start-up businesses. South Dakotans should spend the coming legislative session discussing that redirection of economic development policy with lawmakers.

Accountability. In the Veblen and NBP bankruptcies, we perhaps see the pitfalls of recruiting investors who are more interested in buying their green cards than in keeping an eye on how the businesses in which they invest use their money. But we also see the state making it hard for us to keep an eye out for foxes in our henhouse. After a review by a legislative committee in 2008, the state contracted its EB-5 program to a private company created by program coordinator Joop Bollen. The Rounds and Daugaard administration exerted little oversight, and Bollen used his private status to resist inquiries about EB-5 recruitment and investment. The Daugaard Administration tightened the financial reins in 2012 and finally got fed up and cancelled Bollen’s contract in 2013, but for years, the state let this program fly without sufficient public accountability. The EB-5 program epitomizes the difficulty South Dakotans have in finding out what their government is doing.

Richard Benda. The former commissioner of Governor Rounds’s Office of Economic Development was found dead in a grove of trees last month near a brother-in-law’s home outside Lake Andes.

Governor Daugaard himself announced Benda’s death on October 22. The day after Benda’s funeral, the Governor announced the GOED investigation, which the Governor said he’d known about since spring. Three weeks later, the state has released no information on preliminary autopsy results. This official silence is deafening, especially when confirming one of the obvious explanations, suicide or hunting accident, would quash rampant speculation.

Anyone who thinks these events are not somehow connected has an unhealthy commitment to agnosticism.

Marion Michael Rounds. At the bottom of an already overwhelming newspile, we have the fact that Mike Rounds is running for U.S. Senate. Rounds was Governor when South Dakota’s EB-5 program really got going. Rounds promoted EB-5 beneficiary Northern Beef Packers as an integral part of his failed South Dakota Certified Beef initiative. Rounds hired Richard Benda and sent him and Joop Bollen and others to China to get more EB-5 investors.

And now the feds are investigating his office’s use of the EB-5 program.

There’s no way that comes out good for Team Rounds. The question for him, his challengers, his donors, and the voters is how bad it comes out, and how bad it still sounds on June 3, 2014, and maybe (a maybe distinctly louder than it was last month) on November 4.

The campaign implications may be the least of our concerns. But this is a big story with a lot of players and a lot of connections to a lot of issues in our state. South Dakotans, please, keep paying attention.

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

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes theā€ Madville Timesā€ 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.


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“Free Leonard Peltier,” Says SD Republican

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

I like pastor and Republican legislator Steve Hickey. Religiously, he’s tolerably orthodox. Politically, he’s a regular heretic.

Rep. Hickey’s long-standing desire to outlaw payday loans and his newfound opposition to the death penalty cause his free-market, tough-on-crime Republican friends heartburn. Now he’s saying we should celebrate the South Dakota quasquicentennial by calling on President Obama to release Leonard Peltier from federal prison.

A North Dakota jury convicted Peltier of murdering FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler in a shootout (prosecutors said it was an execution) at American Indian Movement headquarters at Oglala in 1975. Two other AIM members at the shootout were tried and acquitted by an Iowa jury. Peltier has said he fired at the agents, but debate has raged since the incident over whether Peltier really killed the agents. (And yes, both whites incensed by the murder of law enforcement agents on South Dakota soil and Indians who suffered at the hands of federal agents do rage on this question.)

Rep. Hickey says the killing of agents Williams and Coler took place in the context of something close to civil war, with tribal chairman Dick Wilson’s GOON squads terrorizing and killing his own people… and federal agents helping. Hickey looks at this ugly history and says pardoning Peltier is less about disproving Peltier’s guilt (about which he sees reasonable doubt) and more about acknowledging our own: “[T]he government,” says Hickey, “is ‘equally responsible’ for the death of its own agents.”

It’s one thing to say, “Peltier didn’t do it.” It’s quite another to say, ‘Even if he did, you and I helped pull the trigger.” One Native commenter on my blog says that statement would provoke more whiteā€šĆ„’Indian hostility rather than the reconciliation Hickey wants to promote. Peltier’s cause draws attention from numerous international figures and celebrities, but not from South Dakotans outside the reservation. Governor Bill Janklow and Senator Tom Daschle both urged President Bill Clinton not to pardon Peltier. Getting South Dakotans to accept some responsibility for the killing of agents Williams and Coler would be a hard sell.

Rep. Hickey isn’t afraid of the hard sell. I’d like to see him bring a resolution to the floor of the South Dakota House calling for Presidential clemency for Leonard Peltier. While some of his Republican colleagues (and a few Democrats, I’m sure) would accuse Hickey of heresy and worse, a free-Peltier resolution could promote an instructive conversation about the ugly history of race relations in South Dakota, as well as a gauge of our willingness to own all of our history, not just the parts that make for happy 125th annivesary events.

But my Native commenter reminds me that we should not discuss freeing Leonard Peltier as a gesture toward conversation or some other goal. Freeing Leonard Peltier should be first and foremost about justice. And if Hickey is right about Peltier, then the heretic is not the man calling for justice; the heretics are those who do not seek the justice our nation promises.

Read more:

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

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Noem and the Budget Crisis

By Ken Blanchard


The Aberdeen American News has lost patience with our lone representative in the U.S. House, Kristi Noem:

Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., has talked herself into a problem. She has caught herself between pleas for relief for West River ranchers who lost thousands of cattle and tea party conservatives who want to limit government no matter the cost — even at the expense of relief for ranchers, such as the ones Noem represents… When Noem could choose — voting for the best interests of South Dakota and the nation, or staying in the good graces of the fringe conservative movement — she voted with the latter.

That is a special kind of reasoning. If you refuse to vote for all the spending that everyone wants, you are voting against West River ranchers, the nation, mom and apple pie. If you believe, as Rep. Noem does, that we ought to be concerned about the nation’s $17 trillion dollar debt, that makes you a”fringe conservative.”

The Obama Administration, much of Congress, and just about all of the media have been working overtime to convince us that we can’t reduce federal spending by a single penny without triggering the apocalypse. One way to do that is to talk as if failing to raise the debt limit means that the U.S. Government will automatically default on its debt.

This is nonsense. If the spending bumps up against the debt limit, that means that the Treasury could not borrow any additional money. There is plenty of revenue flowing into federal coffers to cover interest on the national debt and that interest will be paid as the Constitution requires. What would happen is that we would quickly run out of money for new spending and then Congress and the Administration would have to make some tough choices. I am not saying that this is a good idea. A sudden contraction of federal spending would be a serious shock to the national and global economies. However, Democrats in Congress and luminaries on NPR are constantly telling us that those opposed to raising the debt limit are therefore in favor of defaulting the debt. That is a gross verbal inexactitude, otherwise known as a big, fat, lie.

For decades the federal government has been making promises it cannot possibly keep and spending money it does not have. Our fiscal situation is not sustainable over the long run, as anyone who pays attention will be forced to admit. Yet we are told over and over that only a wild-eyed extremist would be in favor of the smallest reduction in federal spending. Sooner or later we will find ourselves in the position that we really can’t pay the interest on our debt without borrowing more money. At that point the United States will have shrunk itself down all the way to Detroit.

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.

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Stick Around, Uncle Sam

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

In response to the partial shutdown of the federal government, Governor Dennis Daugaard is offering to keep Mount Rushmore open with state workers. Governor Daugaard’s gesture is a silly distraction.

Imagine what would happen if Governor Daugaard had to respond to a real federal government shutdown. Here are ten reasons South Dakota doesn’t want Uncle Sam to really disappear:

  1. Social Security. In December 2012, 159,349 South Dakotans received $175 million in Social Security benefits. Multiply that by 12 months, and you see Social Security pumping over $2 billion into South Dakota’s $42-billion economy.
  2. Farm Subsidies. Uncle Sam handed out another $566 million to some of South Dakota’s 31,000 farms. (Unlike Social Security, those payments are concentrated among the corpulent corporate: 20% of farm subsidy recipients received 82% of those payments.)
  3. Ellsworth Air Force Base. In 2011, Ellsworth graced the Black Hills economy with $201 million in payroll, $50 million in procurement, $40 million in construction spending, and $58 million in indirect job creation. (Yesterday Ellsworth furloughed three-quarters of its civilian workers.)
  4. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Uncle Sam provides $70 million of the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s $80-million budget… and that’s just one of our nine tribes. The current shutdown has already forced the Bureau of Indian Affairs to halt payments for tribal operations, assistance to needy residents, and foster parents. (Funny: I haven’t heard Governor Daugaard offer to spend state resources to take up federal slack on the reservations….)
  5. Federal Courts. The U.S. District Court of South Dakota handles tax evasion, sex trafficking, bankruptcy, and other important cases. It has ten days of operating cash left before it faces a complete shutdown.
  6. Federal Jobs. According to South Dakota’s Department of Labor, the federal government employed 11,000 people to provide a lot of services in South Dakota in August. If the average federal wage of $78,500 holds in South Dakota, that’s $864 million that thousands of our neighbors get to spend at Nick’s and Roma’s and Charlie’s Pizza.
  7. Highway Funds. According to the current state budget, Uncle Sam will send South Dakota $347 million for highway construction contracts. That’s more than four bucks out of every five that we will put in hard hats’ pockets to build our roads and bridges.
  8. Education. Uncle Sam puts another $182 million into our schools. That federal assistance spares every South Dakotan (including kids!) $219 a year in taxes.
  9. State Government. Including the above road and school figures, Pierre plans to spend $4.1 billion this fiscal year. $1.7 billion of that comes from Uncle Sam. Shut down the federal government, and 41% of what South Dakota state government does stops.
  10. Congress. Tim Johnson’s retiring, so no tears for him. But if the federal government really shut down, John Thune and Kristi Noem would be out of work. Thune couldn’t fall back on lobbying… because with D.C. gone, whom would he lobby? And with farm and crop insurance subsidies gone, I’m not sure what job prospects Noem would have left.

South Dakota can replace Johnson, Thune, and Noem (and should, given this week’s fiasco). But if the federal government really shut down, we would struggle so hard to fill the gaps in essential services and economic activity that we wouldn’t have time to visit Governor Daugaard and his staff selling ice cream at Mount Rushmore.

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


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River Conservation — Where’s the Downside?

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service have a pretty good idea. (No, not closing down the D.C. Booth Fish Hatchery in Spearfish; that’s a dumb idea.) The feds would like to create the Niobrara Confluence and Ponca Bluffs Conservation Area along the Missouri River between Pickstown and Sioux City. They’d like to purchase land and conservation easements from willing landowners in South Dakota and Nebraska to “conserve important wildlife habitats, increase quality recreational opportunities, preserve sensitive cultural sites, and maintain sustainable farming and ranching operations in the region.”

Let’s see: landowners get paid, critters get cover, hunters and kayakers get better scenery…where’s the downside?

Senator Dan Lederman (R-16/Dakota Dunes) must see a downside. He’s hollering that the Niobrara/Ponca conservation plan is a nefarious “federal land grab” that “threatens private property rights.” Lederman’s conservative henchblog is promulgating accusations that the feds haven’t given affected landowners enough notice or enough time to comment on the plan.

I can only assume that Lederman’s attacks are motivated by political considerations. They certainly aren’t motivated by facts or a consistent commitment to conservation or property rights.

The Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service have been gathering public input on the Niobrara/Ponca project since winter 2012. The current comment period, which ends September 30, is actually an extension (announced last June) of the original comment period, which was opened on April 2. The feds have more than doubled the comment period to give citizens six months to study and weigh in on the project’s draft environmental impact statement.

The feds have invited public scrutiny in many ways. In addition to the usual notices in the Federal Register, they have sent landowners postcards with information on the conservation easement plan. They have held two rounds of public meetings throughout the project area. When the April meetings got snowed out, FWS and NPS rescheduled. They’re not exactly keeping the Niobrara/Ponca project secret.

As for the threat to private property rights, I can’t figure out what Senator Lederman is talking about. Everything the feds say about the Niobrara/Ponca plan speaks of working with willing, voluntary landowners. FWS and NPS can’t use eminent domain to force landowners to sell… unlike TransCanada, which uses eminent domain to build its Keystone pipeline system, a project Lederman and friends wholeheartedly support.

If you don’t like the Niobrara/Ponca conservation plan, if you still want to be able to drain and plant crops and build industrial feedlots on your land, go ahead: the feds can’t make you sell them your land or grant you a conservation easement for this project.

But if you own land near the Missouri or Niobrara, and if you’ve been sparing some prairie grass and wetlands the plow, and if you’d like some compensation for taking a pass on six-dollar corn, the feds have a good deal for you, for river critters, and for the rest of us… if, and only if, you are willing.

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


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Three Initiatives on Tap

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

We’re over a year away from the 2014 election. But South Dakota law requires anyone who wants to place an initiated measure on the ballot to do their work over a year ahead of time. 2014 initiators must get the attorney general’s approval, file their papers with the secretary of state, and gather and submit the necessary signatures (15,855 this election cycle) by November 4, 2013.

With two months until that deadline, two initiative petition drives have launched, and a third could materialize. Let’s see what workers have at stake in these measures.

The most publicized initiative so far is the South Dakota Democratic Party’s push to raise South Dakota’s minimum wage. That initiative would raise South Dakota’s minimum wage from the federally mandated $7.25 an hour to $8.50 an hour. That’s still short of the $16.75 an hour needed to meet the basic needs of a family of four in South Dakota. It’s even shorter of the $21.72 our lowest paid workers would get if the minimum wage had kept up with productivity gains. But that 17% raise for fewer than 5% of South Dakota workers, plus cost-of-living adjustments starting in 2016, would be a step toward pairing South Dakota’s “right to work” with an obligation to pay people what they deserve for their time and sweat.

The second petition certified and street-ready comes from a group of doctors who want to change South Dakota’s health insurance law. The doctors’ petition would crack health insurance networks open with an “any willing provider” law. Basically, you could go to any doctor in the state, and if that doctor’s willing to take your insurance, your insurer has to make that doctor part of your network and cover your care.

South Dakota’s major hospital organization says “any willing provider” raises costs. The specialty hospitals and others say it won’t. AWP increases consumer choice, but only by taking away the choice insurers (including Medicaid!) have to do business with the hospitals they think provide the best, most cost-effective care. But in South Dakota, where the big insurers are also big hospitals, AWP may bust up some monopoly power, which may benefit working folks.

(Remember, we could avoid this whole complicated debate by replacing the entire system with a universal single-payer health system.)

The third initiative remains a twinkle in organizers’ eyes. Representative Reverend Steve Hickey (R-9/Sioux Falls) has talked about capping payday loan interest rates at 36%. A similar measure that Montana voters passed overwhelmingly in 2010 shut down payday loan centers fast. Given the usurious harm these predatory lenders wreak on the working poor and military families, Rep. Rev. Hickey and I would be fine with that. However, according to the Secretary of State’s election website, Rep. Rev. Hickey hasn’t moved this anti-usury initiative past the LRC review stage.

If it reaches petition stage, the interest-rate cap would join the minimum-wage hike as clear protection for workers against capitalist exploitation. The insurance initiative is trickier: “any willing provider” promotes consumer choice and checks monopoly, but it’s not clear whether it would make health care more affordable for workers.

But all three initiatives are significant issues with implications for South Dakota’s workers. All three are worth discussing in an election. And we do love democracy. When folks come knocking this month and next, give them a listen, give them some questions, and give them your signature.

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

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The State of South Dakota Journalism

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

The Woster critique got my wife and me discussing the state and fate of journalism in South Dakota. While razzing our reporters is as popular (clichƈ?) as dissing school lunch, our newspapers are far from hopeless. Bob Mercer has convinced seven newspapers to run his Pierre coverage. Scott Waltman and his Aberdeen colleagues are doing good work laying out many of the facts of the Northern Beef Packers debacle. Messrs. Walker, Harriman, Montgomery, Verges, Hult, and Ellis and Ms. Wischmeyer give me plenty to read and blog.

Our broadcast journalism is thin stew saved mostly by chunks of good South Dakota Public Broadcasting. SDPB goes great guns with Statehouse during the Legislative session. SDPB Radio offers decent news coverage throughout the year, although one has to hunt on their home page to find the link to their South Dakota news. SDPB TV offers no regular South Dakota news programming. The rest of the airwaves are the tasteless gruel of dog/sick kid/crime/Sanford good deed of the week.

If South Dakota journalism has problems, they likely stem (as the Woster critique suggests) from the corporate devotion to maximizing revenue rather than knowledge. But I suggest a corollary: One-party politics weakens journalism.

Conventional journalists seek fairness and objectivity. They don’t want to be seen as beating up on just one party. They want to show their willingness to investigate the monkeyshines of all parties, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise.

But in South Dakota, there are few Democrats in power to commit monkeyshines worthy of investigation. If you’re investigating corruption in government in South Dakota, you are by definition investigating Republicans. Watchdog journalism will be seen by many as Democratic journalism. When Republicans dominate the offices that can provide reporters with information for stories and provide advertisers with contracts and corporate welfare, journalists (or the publishers calling their shots) can’t help balking a little at waging what may look like a war on just one party.

Elect more Democrats, and Jonathan Ellis could say, “Sure, I beat up Secretary Gant the other day. But look at my investigation of our Democratic governor’s crony capitalism, or the mistakes the Democrats are making running the state’s foster care program. I’m an equal-opportunity watchdog!”

Good journalism takes guts in any culture. But it takes more guts than some corporate models can muster in a one-party system like South Dakota.

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


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Common Cause on Common Core

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

A Canadian friend visited my family at Lake Herman this weekend. Wanting to pack as much South Dakota into one weekend as we could, we toured Madison, spent one afternoon at the Laura Ingalls Wilder homestead in De Smet, and spent another afternoon at the Sioux Empire Fair. (I love playing tour guide.)

At the fair, we found the South Dakota Tea Party booth. My Canadian friend picked up a flyer titled “Common Core Standards” and skimmed through the propaganda branding this education reform a federal power grab, United Nations indoctrination, and Soviet-style teaching.

Then she found this quote:

Common Core is just the latest flavor of business and government busybodies getting in the way of teachers teaching and students learning.

The source of that quote?

Cory Allen Heidelberger, Veteran South Dakota Teacher

“Cory!” my Canadian friend exclaimed, mirthfully aghast. “You’re on a Tea Party flyer!”

Yup, I am. I know South Dakota Tea Partiers. On practical policy, they are mostly wrong. Their John Birch paranoia about the United Nations is as irrelevant to South Dakota education as it is to environmental policy and economic development.

But on Common Core, I’m lined up trepidatiously with my Tea Party friends (“Friends?!” frets my Canadian friend). Common Core is fuss and feathers that won’t improve South Dakota’s schools.

Common Core won’t make good teachers better. Common Core simply writes down what good teachers already know and do. After spending an in-service day talking about Common Core standards and aligning them with existing lessons (been there!), a good teacher won’t be any better prepared to teach your kids the next day or write engaging curriculum for next year.

Common Core won’t make bad teachers better. Suppose you have a teacher who knows how to teach but is lacking on what to teach. Figuring out what to teach requires a teacher to study more than will ever fit into one school year, then critically evaluate what to teach and what to skip. That hard decision-making process makes a more thoughtful professional. Common Core standards short-circuit that professionalizing process and leave novice teachers on cognitive crutches.

Common Core wastes resources and distracts teachers from helping kids learn. Common Core may also give Wellstone Democrats and Tea Party conservatives a chance to find common cause and cooperate to improve our public schools… assuming, of course, that Tea Partiers want to improve our public schools.

My Canadian friend found the rest of literature in the Tea Party booth alarming. Her alarm makes me wonder if we hopeful liberals can collaborate with such fearful conservatives.

But overall, my Canadian friend enjoyed her tour of South Dakota, especially of that funny twist in the road that led to my name on a Tea Party flyer.

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