Category: Uncategorized

After several days, State Dems are sort of shunning Reynold Nesiba after his arrest for unwanted sexual contact, dropping the news late Friday, when they hope no one is paying attention. 

At least, they’re going to pretend to sort-of shun him, hoping he’ll get off on the charges:

In a statement Friday, party leaders said Augustana University Professor and Sen. Reynold Nesiba, D-Sioux Falls, would not be allowed to participate in caucus activities pending the outcome of the charges.

And

Party officials said they would reconsider allowing Nesiba to caucus with Democrats following the conclusion of his legal proceedings.

Nesiba was arrested Monday on one count of sexual contact without consent for allegedly making unwanted sexual advances on a woman in September.

Read it all here.

From the Argus Leader:

A pair of state Transportation Commission members resigned this week following the enactment of Initiated Measure 22.

Tim Dougherty, a Sioux Falls lawyer and the commission’s chair, and Kathy Zander, executive director of the South Dakota Agri-Business Association, stepped down from their positions on the board because provisions in the new law bar elected and appointed officials from accepting more than $100 in contributions from lobbyists annually.

and…

“IM22 is very badly drafted and it could have all sorts of bizarre unintended consequences,” Venhuizen said.

Read it all here.

This is just the start…

From my mailbox:

From: “Wilcox, James C”
Date: November 18, 2016 at 9:11:14 AM PST
Subject: SD Electric Utility Company annual dinner slated for Dec 8 at the Holiday Inn is cancelled.

The South Dakota Electric Utility Companies has traditionally held an annual Christmas legislative social in December at the Sioux Falls Holiday Inn. We have been holding this event every December since before World War 2. It has been well attended and I believe folks really look forward to the gathering. 

I regret to write to inform you that because of the uncertainty that Initiated Measure 22, recently passed by a vote of the people, has caused, we have decided to cancel this year’s event.

I was told by my mentor Angus C. Anson many years ago that if you think you are going to buy a vote with a meal both you and the legislator involved are in the wrong business. I believe that the folks who devote their lives to public service in South Dakota are of the highest character and in a state like South Dakota where we don’t have enough public funds to support staff for legislators that events like this provide a service to the state as we seek to communicate issues of importance to legislators. In the past the lack of statutory limits on these kinds of events has given lobbyists the knowledge that we have a special obligation to never lie and as importantly never speculate as if you speculate and are wrong it may appear as if you are lying. A lobbyist will get to tell one lie to a legislator and that will be it.

As I do not have email addresses for the newly elected legislators, you will likely also receive a paper letter from me with this same message. 

So, we are cancelling this year’s event. I hope to see you again somewhere. My best to you and your family for the holidays. Thank you so much for your service to South Dakota and best wishes for a productive legislative session in 2017. 

Sincerely,

Jim Wilcox, Principal Manager
Xcel Energy, South Dakota

Here’s one more you can blame Weiland and Frankenfeld for.

Between this weeks’ political announcements as as well as the ongoing coverage on IM22, traffic is way up, even past that of election week.

Clearly, like me, you’re all excited by elections. As well as confused and concerned as to how IM22 is going to affect you.

That’s contributed to traffic anywhere from 6500-8500 viewers daily. Not hits, but sustained views. That’s over twice how it has typically been running.

Thanks for reading. (And don’t forget we have advertising slots available.)

A reader pointed this out to me this AM. And he made a good point.

So Rick Weiland sponsors a ballot measure that renders it criminally illegal for a state legislator to be married to a lobbyist that earns over $100 in salary from their employer?

If he feels so strongly about it, when he was back working for Tom Daschle, where was his outrage over his boss committing the same type of conduct by being married to lobbyist Linda Daschle who earned a significant salary by lobbying?

Taking a break from our continuing coverage of the problems with Initiated Measure 22, the House Caucus is scheduled to be held this weekend (if the snow doesn’t keep them away).

Here’s how I’m hearing things are shaping up at the moment for the caucus races. This could change on a dime, so don’t hold me to it.

• Speaker of the House – Mark Mickelson
• Speaker Pro Temp – Don Haggar, Mike Stevens, Mary Duvall
• Majority Leader – David Lust, Lee Qualm.
• Assistant Majority Leader – Kent Peterson, Tom Brunner
• Whips – Mathew Wollmann, Larry Rhoden, Arch Beal & others

Your thoughts?

As I’m lying in bed, not displeased I get a few extra minutes of downtime from today’s snow day in Brookings, I just had a sickening thought. The whacked-out provisions written by out-of-staters in Initiated Measure 22 may affect me directly. Why?

As part of a loose affiliation of parents who have lobbied for insurance coverage for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), we formed a PAC as the easiest type of collective organization to have a lobbyist speak for us collectively.

You can go to the Secretary of State’s website, and we’re all there. A PAC that has no funds, with our only expense an in-kind donation from the parent who volunteers her time as a lobbyist for her lobbyist registration fees.

But now, IM22 has put a doubly whammy on us for being a PAC, but more importantly for utilizing a lobbyist to speak for our parent group. Because like everyone else, we’re going to be “Section 31’d”:

So, it clearly infringes upon our parent-lobbyist’s right to donate to political campaigns, as well as her husband’s. But if I’m part of the parent group, which raises and spends no money collectively, there’s a question as to whether that applies to me as well. And if it does, I know I’ve donated more than $100 in cash or services to candidates over an election.

And if it’s a collective, aggregated thing for an “employer of a lobbyist,” there’s a question of whether it may have just made our entire group of parents of kids with ASD a pack of outlaws. 

Those are the questions little groups like ours have to face as a result of this poorly written and tangled up mess that Initiated Measure 22 is. At the least, we may have to cease using a lobbyist. 

It won’t affect the big insurers we have to argue against; they’ll still have lobbyists there. But IM22 will remove our ability. The big guys win, and the small parent groups suffer. Courtesy of Slick Rick Weiland and Don Frankenfeld. 

Thanks guys. Thanks for nothing.

That’s great. Keep it all coming!

Try not to throw up when you read Rick Weiland’s victory lap, as he quotes Machiavelli in his self-congratulatory manner for manipulating voters.

It might be hard to settle your innards. Especially in full knowledge that they promoted a measure they’d been warned was unconstitutional.

 Dear [name]

Change is hard…very hard.

In fact, Nicolo Machiavelli had it right when he wrote:

“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it.”

So, when it happens, we must celebrate it!!!!!!!!

And it just happened in South Dakota, thanks to you, [name]. We at TakeItBack.Org — along with our national strategic partner, Represent.us (and over 180,000 South Dakotans) — just passed the South Dakota Anti-Corruption Act (Initiated Measure 22), which included the most progressive public campaign financing law in the country!

Here’s what Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Hedrick Smith, said on his Reclaim the American Dream website: “The surprising victory was an uphill battle, David versus Goliath. A new citizens group called TakeitBack.Org pitted grass roots volunteers against a business-conservative coalition led by Americans for Prosperity, the richly financed political organ of Kansas billionaires Charles and David Koch, as well as taking on the most powerful Republican leaders in South Dakota.”

If you want to read Hedrick’s entire article, which is both excellent and inspiring, click here: http://reclaimtheamericandream.org/2016/11/how-reformers-beat-koch-in-south-dakota/

But the fight, even in South Dakota, isn’t over. Not even close.

In fact, only a day after the election, Ben Lee, the South Dakota head of the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, ominously said that “We will look for ways to overturn this measure and protect taxpayers from this costly new law.  Never mind that a majority of South Dakotans had just voted it into law — Americans for Prosperity paternalistically pledged to “protect” South Dakotans from ourselves!

Here’s what we expect:

South Dakota Republicans now control only 89 seats in the South Dakota Legislature (Democrats hold just 16, a net loss of 4 as a result of the election), and word is on the street that the plan is to try to gut IM-22, per the Koch brothers’ local minion’s pledge.

But, fortunately for us, it’s not that simple — because we now have the high ground.

If they succeed in gutting IM-22 — and we are going to stop them — then we will lead a referendum petition drive to freeze their law from taking effect, leaving our initiative in place until the voters can, once again, express their wishes.  We helped to pass a increase in the minimum wage with a cost of living adjustment in 2014 which the SD legislature tried to repeal for young adults.  We referred the law and won overwhelming last week (71%) — so we can do it again with your help.

And once South Dakota voters experience how empowering IM-22 is — every registered voter is going to get two $50 state “Democracy Credit” vouchers in the mail, which they can then donate to the state candidate of their choice.  We think they are going to like it!

And if it comes to another vote, we predict they’re going to reject the Koch brothers’ falsehoods and half-truths once again, just as they did a week ago.

But nothing is inevitable — as we found out in the presidential election. After all, the Kochs have a bottomless pit of money — passage of IM-22 shocked the hell out them and they’re definitely not used to losing.

So if you’re upset about what is happening nationally — just as we are — then help us fight back in South Dakota now, and in other states to follow, later.

We’ll leave you with two quotes, both from TakeItBack.Org co-founder, Rick Weiland. In answer to Hedrick Smith’s comment that “you’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest, Weiland said: “You’ve got to stir the pot and whack the hornet’s nest. That’s how you can make change when the political establishment and the status quo is refusing to do so.”

And finally, in answer to Smith’s question, “Is there a ripple effect?” Weiland answered: “Absolutely. I believe that this victory sends a message to the rest of the country that they don’t have to put up with the business-as-usual crowd. They can take matters into their own hands. We have a real opportunity to take what we’ve done here and show it to other states — putting these ideas on your ballot in 2018, 2020 and ’22.”

Please help us protect IM-22 from the predatory Koch brothers. Help us continue to stirring the pot and whacking that ‘business as usual’ hornets nest.

Sincerely,