Bjorkman – Fewer people in prison, raising minimum wage, and medicaid expansion

Pat Powers

Bob mercer completes his trio of interviews with candidates for Congress and has a story on Democrat Tim Bjorkman who spent time at the State fair promoting an agenda of weaker punishment for criminals, artificially raising wages, and spending a lot more money on public assistance:

Bjorkman noted that South Dakota’s prison population grew nearly 10 times larger since 1978 and 30 times faster than South Dakota’s overall population.

He said South Dakota has double the number of people in prison that North Dakota does. “We should be asking ourselves why that is,” he said.

and..

Raising South Dakota’s minimum to $11 per hour from the current $8.65 would restore the wage to where it stood 50 years ago, he said.

Bjorkman said he has “no confidence” South Dakota’s elected leaders would adapt Medicaid expansion. A majority of states have, including North Dakota.

For North Dakota, that’s $270 million more annually than South Dakota. He said South Dakota is doing “an enormous disservice” to its citizens. “It’s big time money,” he said.

Read it all here.

Aren’t most of these state level issues? I’m not sure what running for Congress has to do with any of it, unless he’s promising to federalize prisons, mandate medicaid for all, and raise the federal minimum wage.

Moving on….

6 thoughts on “Bjorkman – Fewer people in prison, raising minimum wage, and medicaid expansion”

  1. Did anyone ask where SD would get the $100 million needed to receive Medicaid expands $270 million. How’s that working out for ND? If I hear right ND is in a budget crisis and cutting services but can’t back out of Medicaid expansion. Any politician that advocates SD needs to expand Medicaid is representing the special interest and not the citizens of SD.

  2. This Bjorkman sounds like a typical East coast Demo: don’t punish crime, tell private employers what they should pay, and take all the government money you can grab without any thought of where it comes from. If this guy was in California or New Yawk, he’d be just another private citizen with crappy ideas.

  3. Well he has Drey Samuelson as one of his key advisors, the same guy pushing some of these ballot measures that are awful last cycle and this cycle.

    Weak on crime and then wants to spend more…SHOCKER ( no not really)

  4. I realize this is a Republican Blog but would request that you see Tim Bjorkman in person, hear what he has to say and ask him questions for your own clarification. Then you can decide like any candidate whether he is the right choice for you. We are fortunate to have 3 good candidates running for US house.

    Again my observation is that Tim Bjorkman is the most or one of the most conservative Democrats I have run into in a long time. Last election cycle I volunteered for what many would consider an old school moderate DFL Dairy Farmer in greater Minnesota who was a prior MN legislator in the mid 90s and crossed party lines when Republican Arnie Carlson was governor. I also volunteered for a 19 year county commissioner who was a former Republican and became a fairly conservative/moderate DFL bread and butter state senate candidate again in Greater Minnesota which is fairly conservative and similar to South Dakota.

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