Author: Pat Powers

Thune Statement on U.S. DOT Grant Funding for South Dakota Rail Projects

“I applaud Secretary Foxx’s decision to approve these important rail projects, which will help increase rail network capacity and fluidity across our region.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) released the following statement after Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has approved $6 million in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant funding for two South Dakota rail projects. Thune led the South Dakota congressional delegation in writing to Secretary Foxx in June and Thune followed up last month to underscore the impact that the federal funding would have when it comes to key upgrades to rail infrastructure in South Dakota.

The South Dakota Department of Transportation (SDDOT) and Rapid City, Pierre, and Eastern (RCP&E) Railroad partnered together in this joint project by committing $6.4 million in investments. Along with the state and private funding, the TIGER grant will provide for a total of $12.4 million that will be used for a new track siding near Philip, South Dakota, and much-needed track upgrades near Huron, South Dakota.

“I applaud Secretary Foxx’s decision to approve these important rail projects, which will help increase network capacity and fluidity across our region,” said Thune. “This funding, matched with the funds that SDDOT and RCP&E have already committed, will help ensure these important upgrades can begin without delay. These improvements will not only support job creation in the region, but they will attract future business development as well.”

Thune is the chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which has jurisdiction over the DOT and freight railroad matters. Thune also serves on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee. Both committees underscore the critical importance that the agriculture sector has in South Dakota’s economy, and in particular, how vital rail service is when it comes to getting raw goods and commodities to markets across the United States and all over the world.

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I’ve been spending some of my free time lately working on a personal project that has interested me on and off for some time. I’ve always been interested in the family’s genealogy and had been working on it at ancestry.com, but my subscription had ran out, so I left it alone for a while.

More recently, my wife had mentioned it to a couple of her relatives, as I’d found proof for some of the family lore about how township in Minnesota had been named after one of her predecessors who had lost his legs from frostbite, but went on to lead a successful life.

It got me looking again at it, so I renewed my subscription to reactivate my stored information, and put some more work into it.

While the Powers side of the family is tough to research, because apparently the Irish didn’t keep as good as civil records as others, I found that my mothers side has tremendous historic provenance.  So far, I’ve found relatives from the civil war, at least two or more who fought in the revolutionary war, and one who was hacked to death by Indians in Jamestown.

Wait, what?

Yes, apparently I have a direct ancestor who was killed in the Jamestown Massacre of 1622.  John Cordray was born in 1573 in England, and died on March 22, 1622 in when the Powhatan came to settlements in the area under the auspices of trading.

What it ended up being was a coordinated series of surprise attacks by the Powhatan Confederacy that killed 347 people, a quarter of the English population of Jamestown, including men, women and children of all ages. Jamestown itself was spared, but 31 settlements were attacked.

I related it to my daughter who had a thing for the Pocahontas Disney movie when she was a little girl, who found herself horrified at the prospect that our kin was hacked to death by Pocahontas’ tribe. (Sorry. Stuff happens.)

I also found an ancestor – the first from this branch of the family in America – had to come here because he was banished from his native Switzerland in 1731.  That left me thinking “How do you get kicked out of an entire country? And Switzerland of all places. How do you get kicked out of the land of neutrality?”

In researching, according to a book of the Waltz Family History:

“In the seventeenth century the rich and powerful, supported by the crowned heads of Austria, began to usurp authority, and chose for their councils only their friends and relatives. By degrees these families perpetuated their possession of the government: by degrees the council renewed itself annually, until the Sovereign power became exclusively hereditary in the families of the great council.”

“Murmurings against the hereditary power of a few families began to burst forth in open revolts, but the ruling power, supported by decrees from the Pope of Rome and Austrian bayonets, enforced silence. Conspiracies were formed, the prisons, the executioner’s block, and banishment followed.”

“To unmask and expose the hypocrisy of the priest craft, and treachery to the constitutional rights of the people by the ruling families, our patriotic, liberty-loving, and noble great ancestor. Frederick Reinhart Waltz. became a martyr to the cause of civil and religious liberty, for which he was banished from his native Swiss home, in the Alpine range, to the wilds of America, in the year 1731.

“On his arrival in the city of New York, another insult, even worse than banishment, was perpetrated on this noble advocate of the rights of his fellow-men. by the sale of his body into slavery, to pay his passage across the sea, and required to labor eighteen months to redeem himself. To the memory of this man. who suffered banishment from his home and family, and the persecution of enforced slavery for the cause of liberty and justice, the Waltz families of America, especially those of his lineal descendant, owe honor and respect through all ages to come.”

Yeah… no editorial license taken there by the author. But, it does sound like I have a genetic pre-disposition to muckraking.  Although, I only end up getting exiled from Pierre from time to time, and he got kicked out of the entire land of chocolate.

But, the research marches on, and I’m still stumbling across neat things. I believe I found a reference of one of the Waltz family member selling property on Beacon Hill in Boston to John Hancock. And I’ve got a lot more relatives to go.

I’m sure there are many more gems to find. Regardless of banishment, hacking, and other family member misfortune.

From today’s KCCR:

Former Attorney General Candidate and husband of Anette Bosworth, Chad Haber, will make his initial court appearance Monday morning in Pierre on charges of offering a false or forged instrument and perjury.

and..

Attorney General Marty Jackley’s office will not handle Haber’s case as Haber ran against him in 2014; instead Hughes County States Attorney Wendy Kloeppner is prosecuting this case.

It is unclear at this time if Haber has hired at attorney or will represent himself.

read it all here.

I have to admit, I’m a bit curious whether he has a fool for an attorney or not.

Of course, Haber’s defender weighed in on it this morning.

One has to wonder, where (if) this will end.  Will Jackley next go after those who have dared to defend Bosworth?  Her supporters?
Maybe her children.

Read that silliness here.

Good grief. Apparently using the same pornographer as Bosworth did has clouded Howie’s judgement.

A correspondent noted to me that both the 18% payday loan petition and the legal pot petition were being circulated last night on Hobo Day at Ray’s Corner in Brookings.  

Aside from that, the other day at the post office, I was accosted to sign a petition to “stop the bundling of political donations” by a slightly seedy looking guy who didn’t sound like he knew anything about the petition he was carrying. 

It seems like the petition activity is finally showing signs of life around here as people are getting down to the wire.

I notice today that Larry Kurtz (long banned from this and other websites for his profanity, hate speech, etc) who had been promoting his website “South Dakota Progressive” as the voice of the South Dakota Democrat party, complete with links to the party, it’s candidates, etc, has announced that it is shutting down.

It comes on the heels of several bizarre and easily disproven posts such as claiming that I have been diagnosed with cancer, Mike Rounds is resigning, and claims that Kurtz had been given scurrilous information on Kristi Noem by Shantel Krebs. (Shantel told me, btw, that she’s “absolutely never talked to the guy.”)

Yeah, this is the same idiot who claims all cops are wife abusers, and exposure to plastic is a cause of homosexuality.

Fast forward to today, and most of the bizarre claims have been taken down, along with any of the branding that connected him with the South Dakota Democrat party. And a post from August has been revised to make it look like he announced going off the internet back three months ago.

Served with legal papers? Or were the Democrats demanding that he remove any and all association with them?

  
Man, lots of Republicans, and nary a Democrat in sight!

Ag Secretary Lucas Lentsch is walking the parade and talking about ag to the crowd.

Practicing for a future campaign perhaps?

 

Man, there’s a pile of Republicans here.

   
Rep’s John Wiik & Mathew Wollmann were walking on my side of the street, and so was Jason Ravnsborg.

   

  

Senator Thune is in town today for the Hobo Day activities, and walked today’s parade route.