Author: @SoDakCampaigns

Rounds, Colleagues Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Reauthorize Native Housing Funding

Bill would expand housing resources for Native veterans, students

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) recently introduced legislation with Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai’i) and 6 other members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, to reform and reauthorize the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act (NAHASDA).

Enacted in 1996, NAHASDA combined nine programs at the Department of Housing & Urban Development to establish the Indian Housing Block Grant (IHBG) program, which was specifically aimed at improving tribal housing. Today, the single block grant program is the foremost housing delivery vehicle to Indian Country, awarding funds to tribes and tribal organizations through a noncompetitive block grant.

The senators’ bill would reauthorize NAHASDA and reform components of the bill to reduce barriers for tribal housing development, allow IHBGs to be used to support Native students’ housing needs, create greater access to home loans for Native veterans and empower tribes to develop housing rental laws. NAHASDA was last reauthorized in 2008.

“The Indian Housing Block Grant program established by NAHASDA has played a critical role in improving tribal housing infrastructure in South Dakota and generating economic opportunity in our state through construction projects,” Rounds said. “Our bipartisan legislation will reauthorize NAHASDA and reform it so that these housing resources are more accessible to Native families and Native students attending college or other educational institutions.”

“Since it was first signed into law in 1996, NAHASDA has provided billions in federal dollars to Tribes and Native communities in Hawai‘i and across the country,” said Chairman Schatz. “Our bill continues this bipartisan tradition and extends NAHASDA for another decade, giving Native communities the resources they need to help more Native families find safe, affordable housing.”

This legislation is supported by the United Native Housing Association, whose membership includes all nine tribes in South Dakota.

The bill is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.).

The full bill text is available here.

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Oh good lord. State Senator Julie-Frye Craz… er, Mueller is apparently on a crusade to get parents not to sign or to click “accept” to school handbooks. Why? Because she thinks you’re inadvertently giving permission to vaccinate or give transgender surgery to your children.  But don’t take my word for it…

You know, many years ago, my mom was a school nurse back in Pierre. I heard she had to use an epi-pen for an allergic reaction on rare occasion. But I don’t recall her coming home remarking that she had to do sex-reassignment surgery that day.

Seriously. This is actually someone elected to represent a portion of our state’s population in the South Dakota State Legislature.

May God have mercy on our souls.

Dakota Free Press author Cory Heidelberger is being awfully quiet about it, but it sounds like he’s going back to being an out-of-state commentator, as his wife’s new employer makes an announcement:

Congratulations appear to be in order to his wife who was called to a ministry in Nebraska, where I’m sure Cory will join his comment section in ranting from several states away.

It has seen better days, but I’ve been looking to restore this pin to my collection for over 20 years.

This ribbon badge featuring President Teddy Roosevelt for the delegates to the Minnehaha Republican State Convention in 1904 has been on my want list for a long, long time.

A number of years ago when I was living in Pierre as an entry-level employee at the Division of Insurance, and starting to have a bunch of kids, I had acquired this ribbon to go along with it’s mate, a near identical ribbon badge for the Democrat convention that year.   And then life happened, as I found myself needing to pay some bills (replacing my minivan’s transmission if I recall) instead of occasionally admiring some pins stored in a cabinet. So I made a hot deal, selling it and my inaugural pin collection at the time.  At the end of the day, it’s just stuff.

In the intervening years, the inaugural pins were easy to replace when I got back into collecting, but this one has been extremely elusive. It was made in very limited numbers for a specific event, so the rarity comes as no surprise.

Now, it’s not as nice as the one I used to own, with some light fraying of the material, and some foxing on the picture (light rust stains) but it’s still an outstanding and rare political piece, especially for South Dakota.

(I’ll continue to see if I can find a better one, but this takes the pressure off)

So I guess if the South Dakota Bikers for Trump are to be believed, Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, is coming to Sioux Falls and nooooo one else will be able to have a hotel room in Sioux Falls unless they’re invited, because everything will be reserved for federal officials, press etc.

I’m not sure that I believe them when they say “all” the hotel rooms will be taken.  And after the event that was recently held in Mitchell, I’d be a little surprised if any elected federal officials are in attendance. But we’ll see.

In all reality, it does sound as if there will be an event taking place, and Lindell himself claims he’s reserved up to 1000 hotel rooms. But that’s about all the detail we have. Lindell had previously claimed that this symposium would reinstate President Trump after his loss in the November election, and recent reports do place the event in Sioux Falls, and taking place on those dates.

We’re not entirely sure on the location, as It’s not clear what venue this symposium is taking place at. But we’ll let you know when there’s more data on it.

Where’s the Beef?
By: Governor Kristi Noem
July 9, 2021

America’s meat supply is a matter of national security. If we don’t control our own food supply, then we don’t control our own destiny. South Dakota feeds the world, and we do it better than anybody else. We have more head of cattle per-person than any other state. But anticompetitive practices in the meatpacking industry are threatening that way of life. We need more competition, more transparency, and more options for our cattle producers to market their livestock.

Over time, the beef processing industry has consolidated into 4 mega-packers who control 85% of America’s beef supply. That’s bad for competition, and it leads to higher prices at the grocery store for the American people. Two of these companies are based out of Brazil. And these companies have such a tight control over the marketplace that beef producers are lucky if they make $100 per head of cattle.

Recently, one of these Brazilian companies, JBS, was hacked, and 20% of America’s beef supply went offline overnight. That shouldn’t happen in this country. We need more options to ensure that America’s food can’t be held hostage by bad actors targeting foreign-based companies.

Last year, the US Department of Justice sent civil investigative demands to the 4 mega-packers, but we haven’t heard any updates on this investigation since then. I recently wrote a letter to the DOJ that was co-signed by 5 other governors, and we urged them to continue this investigation so that we can root out anticompetitive practices in our beef supply chain.

In the meantime, South Dakota is taking action to help our cattle producers. My administration recently awarded $5 million in grants to 99 small meat processors across the state of South Dakota. These grants will allow them to expand their operations or start new ones, which will give producers more options when it comes time to sell their livestock.

South Dakota also recently announced that we’ve signed a Competitive Interstate Shipping agreement with the US Department of Agriculture. This agreement will allow our producers to sell state-inspected beef across state lines, opening up even more avenues for increased competition.

I recently discussed next steps with our producers at the Governor’s Ag Summit. The solutions are simple but will be tough to achieve: more competition and more price transparency. Frankly, it will take the support of the entire ag industry to get this done. These solutions will give producers more options to sell their livestock and negotiate better prices. They also will keep costs lower for consumers because the 4 mega-packers won’t be able to completely control the price of beef at the grocery store.

Our food supply is a national security issue. Foreign adversaries shouldn’t be able to take down entire supply chains by hacking a few overly large meatpackers. I pledge to keep working to increase competition in this industry so that we can protect the way of life for our farmers and ranchers while also keeping prices lower for the American people.

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KOTA news is reporting tonight that in the misdemeanor case filed against Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, all is not as his detractors have portrayed as his defense drops a huge bombshell in the court action:

In the paperwork that was filed on July 9. Ravnsborg’s attorneys say that Boever had told friends that his preferred method of suicide would be to “throw himself in front of a car”.

And..

The defense also cited medication that had been filled the day before, but only 12 of the 90 pills remained. The medication in question can cause suicidal ideations.

Read it here!

WOW! It seems that there will be a lot of previously unknown information that will come to light.

In 2018 as part of a package of bills to make South Dakota’s initiated process better and in hopes of decluttering the ballot, Amendment Z was brought to establish “that a proposed constitutional amendment may embrace only one subject” and required that “proposed amendments to be presented and voted on separately.”

The Constitutional Amendment passed in a landslide with over 62% of the vote.

But now, the backers of measures to legalize recreational pot are threatening to undo this law after their measure ran afoul of the single subject requirements of measures, despite prior warnings that their measure was a mish-mash.

According to an Associated Press Story, in the run up to the court making a decision on the legality of a recreational pot measure which failed a court challenge because of the requirements of amendment Z, the group behind Amendment A is threatening a repeal challenge to that amendment if the Supreme court does not rule in their favor:

Over the July Fourth weekend, South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws announced they’d sent five new ballot measures — all related to defanging criminal laws and civil penalties for marijuana possession — to a legislative research team in Pierre.

But the team behind the push, who also have proposed removing a single-subject test for constitutional amendments, say they won’t bring the measures forward if the five justices in Pierre uphold Amendment A, which legalizes recreational cannabis in the state and voters approved with 54% majority last November.

Read that here.

Interestingly, the single subject problem the recreational pot measure had and which may have ultimately broken the ballot measure’s back in court should not have come as a shock to the measure’s sponsors. Because they were given a warning from the onset before they collected signature 1 by the State Legislative Research Council pointing out that “The Constitution is not a compilation of policy statutes and as such, should not be amended to incorporate what ought to be statutory material.”

They went ahead and did it anyway. Which also earned them this note on the ballot by the attorney general about the measure’s problems:

Judicial clarification of the amendment may be necessary. The amendment legalizes some substances that are considered felony controlled substances under current State law. Marijuana remains illegal under Federal law.

Read that here.

One thing the measure’s sponsors may wish to consider is that while a majority of South Dakotans did pass the recreational marijuana measure with a 54% majority last year, as noted over 62% of state residents were tired of confusing omnibus measures being dumped on voters in the immediately preceding election.

If recreational pot proponents want to bring back the bad old days of ballot measures after they were warned their own measure was a mess, they might not find themselves as successful as they were in 2020.