Author: @SoDakCampaigns

Thune: Foreign Ownership of Farmland is a Matter of National Security

“Food security is a critical component of national security, and we need to make sure foreign countries do not hold an undue influence over our food supply.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), a longtime member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, today participated in a hearing to examine foreign ownership in U.S. agriculture. Thune discussed the importance of protecting South Dakota farmers and ranchers from foreign adversaries – like China, Russia, and Iran – that seek to purchase U.S. farmland and agriculture businesses, which threatens food security.

 Attorney General Jackley Announces Grand Jury Indicts Two Prison Inmates For Attack on Officers

PIERRE, S.D. — South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley announces that two state prison inmates have been indicted on charges, including Attempted First Degree Murder, for their attack on two state correctional officers Aug. 24, 2023 at the State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

A Minnehaha County Grand Jury Tuesday indicted inmates Lester M. Monroe, 48, and Kyle L. Jones, 30, for Attempted First Degree Murder of a Law Enforcement Officer and Aggravated Assault Against a Department of Corrections Employee. The Attempted First Degree Murder charge carries a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. The Aggravated Assault charges carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.

Jones also was indicted on a charge of Simple Assault Against a Department of Corrections Employee involving a second correctional officer. The charge carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison and a $4,000 fine.

The first correctional officer was assaulted by the two inmates in Unit D of the Jameson Annex. The second officer was attacked when they arrived to help their colleague. Both officers were taken to a local hospital where they were treated and released.

The State Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating the incident. The Attorney General’s Office is handling the prosecution.

Inmates Monroe and Jones are being held at the State Penitentiary. They are presumed innocent under the U. S. Constitution.

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The Argus Leader had a somewhat laughable update on their continued gutting by their parent company this week:

The article portrays how moving it’s print production (and selling off it’s building) over to Iowa was somehow progress. Of course, this comes after the axe landed on a significant part of it’s staff.

And now…. They’re just going to mail newspapers from Iowa instead of having them delivered to subscribers, cutting out their local circulation staff.  Which means the news from the state’s largest newspaper will be just that much older when it comes across the borders.

Should they just rename the paper the “Argus Bleeder” at this point? Not that they have much less to squeeze out.

Once again raising the question why it’s important to have legal notices printed in papers that are mailed to South Dakota from another state?

Hot off the press at Facebook:

State Representative Tyler Tordsen is moving from the staff of Senator Mike Rounds to the Sioux Metro Growth Alliance in October as the organizations new CEO.  Congratulations Tyler!

Gov. Noem Inspects Southern Border Warzone
with South Dakota National Guard Troops

EAGLE PASS, T.X. – Today, Governor Kristi Noem inspected the warzone at the Southern border and received a briefing from the South Dakota National Guard. Fifty South Dakota soldiers are deployed on state active duty as part of Texas’ Operation Lone Star.

“The situation at our Southern border continues to deteriorate. The Mexican drug cartels are taking advantage of the open border to proliferate their drugs and human trafficking. This criminal activity is making South Dakotans less safe,” said Governor Noem. “The Biden Administration won’t do their job, so South Dakota National Guard troops are serving alongside soldiers from Texas and several other states to bring some stability to this warzone.”

Governor Noem was joined at the border by South Dakota Adjutant General Mark Morrell and South Dakota Secretary of Public Safety Bob Perry.

Due to a recent surge in border crossings, September is expected to surpass previous monthly highs. Border encounters have remained at record high levels for three consecutive years.

Last week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott invoked Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, “enabling the State of Texas to protect its own territory against invasion by the Mexican drug cartels.”

Two years ago, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for help securing the Southern border, Governor Noem was the first governor to send National Guard. Earlier this summer, Governor Noem committed to sending at least 50 National Guard soldiers to Texas to help them secure the border.

Photos from Governor Noem’s inspection of the border and briefing with the South Dakota National Guard can be found here. Video of the Governor’s tour with the South Dakota National Guard can be found here

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Johnson: “We Must Get Our Fiscal House In Order” 

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Representative Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) spoke in support of historic federal spending cuts. House Republicans are voting on a series of individual appropriations bills ahead of the funding deadline on September 30^th. These bills return many non-defense, non-border security programs back to pre-Covid levels.

“We must get our fiscal house in order,” said Johnson. “The appropriations bills before us move us in that direction. They do so through real, robust, and significant cuts—billions of dollars in cuts.”

Good gosh. Sounds like the Minnehaha County Auditor’s office continues to circle the drain with election nuttery. From KELOland, today Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson was up in front of the Minnehaha County Commission requesting the renewal of ballot counting equipment:

Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson asked the commission to approve the contract, but pointed out numerous times she is not the governing board of elections in Minnehaha County when it comes to automatic tabulating systems.

“It puts you as the governing board in authority of deciding how we’re going to conduct our elections in the county,” Anderson said. “While I do love technology and moving into future centuries, with things like the public surplus auction, I also like to be cautious with technology when it comes to something like our elections. As we introduce more technology, I feel like we take away some of the electoral process from the people.”

Anderson said she’d be in favor of Minnehaha County becoming a county with random hand counts at the precinct level along with using tabulators.

Read that here.

As related further in the KELO story, and from the Dakota Scout.. it was about then things went off the rails, as members of the public were there to fan the flames of election conspiracies.

After wondering where all of this came from in the first place, County Commissioners had harsh words for the Auditor, as Commissioner Joe Kippley unloaded on the county auditor, comparing her to Pontius Pilate:

Commissioner Joe Kippley had the harshest criticism for Anderson and her supporters, saying he didn’t appreciate “the smuggling in” of other issues to a routine service agreement.

“I just don’t get this Pontius Pilate, washing my hands, I’m just a tribune to the people, and I will let the public commentors come up and smuggle in all of these issues that have frankly been litigated in court,” Kippley said

Read that here.

It’s going to be a long election..

There’s a story in the Dakota Scout today noting that the Secretary of State isn’t saying much about their approval of a ballot measure for circulation that would not appear to follow guidelines, including state law for the language required on petitions:

The Secretary of State’s Office recently approved petitions for circulation for a proposed ballot measure aimed at abolishing South Dakota’s medical marijuana program and repealing a law passed by voters in 2020 that legalized cannabis for medically-qualifying patients.

However, the petitions do not list the 90-plus sections of statutes that the petitioner hopes to get removed from the state’s books.

and..

Schweich’s letter references South Dakota Codified Law 2-1-2.1, which states, “The petition filing must… (c)ontain the full text of the initiated measure in fourteen-point font.”

Read the entire story here.

The petition just refers to “Exhibit A” for the 95 sections that must be repealed.  One of the things that might have tipped it off is that the legislative research council pointed this out back in May. As linked to on the Secretary of State Website.

That part on the Legislative Research Council Comments (LRC Comments 05/11/23 LRC Comments 05/31/23) on the Secretary of State’s own website might have been a great place to start as to whether there were any problems with the style and form of the petitions.

Oops.

In my years of involvement with the South Dakota GOP, I’ve been to a LOT of Lincoln Day dinners, and I’ve even been part of putting a few on. The purpose of a Lincoln Day Dinner is to serve as an annual celebration of the Republican Party, as well as a fundraising event for the GOP and Republican Party affiliated organizations at the county level, such as Teenage Republicans, Republican Women, Young Republicans, etc.

Sometimes the events can be as dry as hotel chicken, other times they can be raucous and lively affairs, where everyone leaves pumping their fists.

I bring this up, as I just caught that the Yankton County Republican Party just held their dinner this last weekend. And I did an absolute double-take when I caught wind of the program for their event.

Someone thought it would be a great way to thank volunteers and raise money for the Republican Party by force-feeding them a fully 45-minute power-point presentation on election conspiracies, complete with slide after slide of paranoia from the SD Canvassing Group. Which is definitely NOT a Republican organization.

Oh. My. God.

I’d ask whether they understand that the goal of a political party organization is to get their candidates elected. But, I think I can answer my own question myself.

Because it seems their goals are more aligned with doing everything but winning elections. As evidenced by what the Yankton County GOP is spending their money on.

For example, remember the complaints that the incoming Yankton County Republican group had where the outgoing Yankton GOP leadership group had about $12,000 they used to form an independent Political Action Committee to support candidates?  Considering that the new group’s idea of getting people elected is pillow-guy paranoia, I tend to think the outgoing group was very prescient in moving to make sure the funds are going to be used to support candidates, because it looks like the new group is busy spending money on a fool’s errand:

On Dec. 7, Butch Becker, the outgoing treasurer, used these assets to write a check for $12,000 to the District 18 Republican Political Action Committee, an organization formed one week earlier by three now-former members of the Yankton County GOP’s executive board: Becker, Vice Chair Roger Meyer and State Committeeman Greg Adamson.

and..

Meyer further added that the legally defined scope of the PAC is to support Republican candidates, meaning the money will not be used to “go on vacation” or other superfluous activities.

Read that story here.

And as I dig into the story.. it gets a little goofier.

YanktonGOP1_1 by Pat Powers on Scribd

Here is the initial small claims filing for the lawsuit, where they attempted to represent themselves in their demand for the $12k spent by the previous board. Where they go into a LOT of whining about holding an improper meeting, and found themselves unrecognized at the Central Committee after they held an improper meeting. And then they complained about the previous board’s expenditure.

Best part was Roger Meyer’s reply: “Please submit future threats to the former Yankton County GOP executive committee as a group. Thank you.”

But it gets better. After they attempted to move the action forward in small claims court, the former Yankton County GOP executive committee threw a curveball back at them.

The defendants hired Joel Arends, and petitioned for the matter to be moved to Circuit Court.  So now this former small claims action that they spent $56.28 on filing was set to get much more expensive.

However, they tried to keep costs down at first, by just handling things themselves, things like scheduling hearings, and demanding a judge’s recusal. Which didn’t get by the defendants, as they filed another motion in the matter.

YanktonGOP1_2 by Pat Powers on Scribd

A “Motion to require plaintiff to obtain counsel or in the alternative to prohibit members of the organization from representing plaintiff in these proseedings and brief in support of said motion” was filed. Which laid out that Laura Kotiliak of the new Yankton County GOP group was apparently being accused of representing the group in court.  That was filed at the end of August.

Since then, it appears that the Yankton County GOP group has gone out and hired an attorney. Daniel Glinert.   … er, no, I hadn’t heard of him either, certainly not when it comes to South Dakota campaign finance and election law.  According to Glinert’s website, his practice areas are focused on “Estate Planning, Florida Probate Law, & Tax Planning and Compliance.”

In the most recent filing in this case, which comes from Glinert..

YanktonGOP1_3 by Pat Powers on Scribd

The response to the prior filing notes that they want to change their name in the suit. Yes, they now have an attorney. And they want to add more people to the lawsuit, whether those people are known or not, as they want to add “John Doe” and “Jane Doe.”

The next status hearing in this case is set for a week from Friday on October 6th at 01:00 PM.

So, the Yankton County GOP group (the new one, not the old one), so far has hired an attorney with no visible experience in South Dakota election/campaign finance law who in all likelihood is charging them by the hour to fight a battle which most political observers who have been around a while believe is going nowhere, since political parties in South Dakota forming a PAC and funding it is not uncommon, nor illegal.  

Just because the new group didn’t like it, until they held the reins of the party, it wasn’t their call. But as it sits now, it looks like they’re ready to spend quite a bit to prove their point.

We’ll see how much they spend on winning elections in comparison.

No End in Sight for the Biden Border Crisis
By Sen. John Thune

For two and a half years, a crisis has raged at the southern border. Recently, in less than one week, more than 35,000 illegal immigrants were caught trying to cross the border. That’s more than the population of Aberdeen, South Dakota, crossing the border in just four days. This crisis continues to strain resources at the border, but there appears to be no end in sight as the Biden administration fails to take simple steps to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.

Approximately 6 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended at the border since the start of the Biden administration, which doesn’t include 1.5 million known “gotaways” who entered the country after evading Border Patrol. The sheer number of illegal immigrants coming into the country is concerning on its own, but equally concerning is that very few are being removed from the United States when they are caught. According to one report, only about one in seven migrants was removed in July of this year. Those who aren’t removed sometimes receive court dates years in the future. This is exactly the sort of policy that keeps fueling this crisis, not to mention the fact that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lost track of 177,000 individuals the agency released into the country pending a court date.

This crisis is the predictable outcome of decisions made early in – and throughout – the Biden administration. The president’s team was warned of the possibility of a migrant surge, yet the president wasted no time dismantling the immigration policies of his predecessor and weakening our nation’s border security. And it wasn’t long before the border was overwhelmed.

The few proactive measures the Biden administration has taken have been too little, too late, with recent data demonstrating that its efforts have been ineffective. The fact that both border communities and places far from the southern border like New York, Chicago, and Massachusetts are being strained by the influx of illegal immigrants indicates the administration’s actions are just not working.

I’m also deeply concerned about some of the new policies the administration is considering. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is reported to be considering requiring some illegal immigrants to remain in Texas while they await asylum screening. Forcing border communities to shoulder even more of the burden of this crisis is a terrible idea. The White House has also requested additional funding for ICE, not to be used for law enforcement or other security measures, but instead for shelters and migrant services. The White House appears to be focused on anything other than border security.

The situation at the border remains high on Americans’ list of concerns, and, unsurprisingly, most Americans don’t approve of how the Biden administration is handling the issue. The American people can tell that our borders are open, our laws aren’t being enforced, and that the security and humanitarian crises are not getting better.

The current situation is unsustainable. Ultimately, the solution is simple: The president has the power to end this crisis – he just needs to enforce the law. I’ll continue working to ensure Border Patrol has the resources it needs to keep the border secure, but absent presidential leadership, I’m afraid there will continue to be no end in sight for the crisis at the southern border.

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