Thune Urges President to Abandon Veto Threat on Nation’s Troops
“The president must immediately abandon his radically irresponsible veto threat on this historically bipartisan bill.”  

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) issued the following statement after the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on a bipartisan basis:

“As conflict spreads throughout the Middle East, we need a military that is strong, ready, and well-equipped. The bipartisan defense bill the Senate passed today is critical to preserving our military’s technological edge and redirecting funds from the bloated Pentagon bureaucracy to focus precious defense dollars on our troops. The president must immediately abandon his radically irresponsible veto threat on this historically bipartisan bill. Congressional Democrats must also have the courage to stand up for our military men and women and override any veto the president may unwisely issue.”

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Thune, Casey Reintroduce Bill to Encourage Volunteer Opportunities
at Community Health Centers

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) today reintroduced the Family Health Care Accessibility Act, legislation to remove barriers currently preventing health care professionals from volunteering their services at cost-effective, high-quality primary and preventative health care facilities, known as Community Health Centers (CHCs). The Family Health Care Accessibility Act would amend the Public Health Service Act to provide Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) medical malpractice coverage to all qualified health care professionals who volunteer at CHCs.

“Millions of Americans rely on Community Health Centers to provide crucial medical care to underserved areas,” said Thune. “It’s especially true in states like South Dakota where patients – many who live in rural communities – must travel great distances for routine care. Our bill breaks down some of the barriers faced by medical professionals, including the excessive cost of medical malpractice coverage, which will make it easier for them to donate their time and services to these underserved areas. Doing so may increase access for some 60 million Americans who depend on these Community Health Centers for care.”

“Community Health Centers play a vital role in ensuring some of our most vulnerable citizens have access to care,” said Casey. “This bill will help remove barriers that physicians and other health care providers currently face when volunteering their time and services at Community Health Centers around their neighborhoods and cities.”

Currently, CHC employees, contractors, and board members receive medical malpractice coverage through the FTCA, but doctors, dentists, and other health care professionals seeking to volunteer their services at CHCs are required to provide their own medical malpractice coverage, which is extremely costly.

Thune and Casey’s bill would be paid for with existing funds under the health centers’ annual appropriations through the Department of Health and Human Services and would not require additional funding.

The Family Health Care Accessibility Act passed with overwhelming support (417-1) in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 112th Congress.

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I see by the comment section under some of the posts that you’re all awake and bickering this fine morning!

Try to keep it somewhat civil while I’m off the air – I’m winging my way to Boston, the cradle of liberty. It’s my intent to enjoy the city’s history, it’s epicurean offerings, and to take a couple of rare days away from my desk.

Didn’t I read somewhere that the Keystone XL project application just turned seven or something like that? Well, here we go again with more stalling tactics designed to make energy production more expensive in the country. Except this time, it’s the Dakota Access pipeline.

It’s as if they want to drag energy production to a standstill in the United States.

As state utility agencies begin holding hearings to look at the application of the Dakota Access Pipeline, it seems we have the same types of opposing groups that ground Keystone to a standstill that have resorted to even more stalling and delaying the process of reviewing the application.

Not more than two hours before South Dakota’s Public Utilities Commission began its hearing last week, our far left liberal friends at Dakota Rural Action and others filed a request for a third party environmental impact statement to be conducted before any decision was made.

Luckily in South Dakota, the timing of the request was described by PUC Chairman Chris Nelson as completely “out of line.” And a similar request filed by the Sierra Club was rejected by the Iowa Utilities Board days earlier this week with the Board stating that the “existing agency process has been sufficient to address environmental issues.” The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently dismissed another Sierra Club petition for a separate project on similar grounds.

There are good reasons to allow the review process to be conducted by state utility agencies rather than third parties. State agencies like the PUC already require environmental reviews with significant public input. Companies proposing to build projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline conduct environmental and civil surveys, identify sensitive areas to avoid, prepare mitigation and restoration plans (and so on and so on), in consultation with state and local officials.

Second, an additional third party review would only seek to delay vital energy projects, without resolving anything. Last minute requests designed to delay decisions is not in the spirit of environmental protection but rather a perfect example of tactics employed to deny projects that do not align with a group’s intended purpose.

It is hard to imagine that Dakota Rural Action, which started a campaign called No Access, or a coalition called Bakken Pipeline Resistance would accept any conclusion other than the one they have been advocating for. A report attesting to the safe operation of a project such as Dakota Access would no doubt be rejected by these groups.

The simple fact remains that the Dakota Access Pipeline has the potential to make American energy significantly more competitive. It’s the simple law of supply and demand. More supply means cheaper prices.

By shaving off anywhere between $5 and $10 per barrel off transport costs, American manufacturers will be better able to fight against foreign oil prices set by regimes that are not exactly friendly to the United States. Whether these opposition groups acknowledge it or not, pushing for duplicative environmental reviews, which they are sure to reject if they do not go their way, does nothing more than hurt the American economy, hobble our domestic energy sector, and encourage dependence on foreign oil.

I was watching the KELOland news report last night on the SOS office, and allegedly missing documents, and I have to say that was one of the most confusing stories I’ve ever watched.

It seems there’s a bit of folderol and a lot of confusion about a few things.  A “hack,” “a server,” and some documents that were taken off-line.  I guess I’m confused about the hype, because at least for the parts I’m aware of, it seems there’s a lot of misinformation out there.

Speaking about the alleged “hack” that happened, if it’s the one I’m thinking of in April of 2012, if I recall, it was one of those annoying, but occasional things that happen from time to time.

Someone outside of state government was trying to grab copies of the business filings that resided on the state of SD’s Mainframe Server.  BIT – The Bureau of Information Technology – would have notified us that someone was eating up all our shared resources. And when I say they were eating up resources, they would have been trying to figure out how to download all the public documents placed on-line at once.

And that’s an important point. These were all public documents, just like campaign finance reports, lists of notaries, etc.  There’s no secret information stored there.  Same stuff any joe off the street could go in and ask for today. However, the system was designed to allow people to look up documents one at a time, as they are today. But try to take them all, which was not ever intended, and it creates a log jam.

So they (BIT) shut down that portion of our website until tech support could block them. That required us to put a notice on our web site that business filings were unavailable on-line, and people seeking it could call in for the information.  (And you still couldn’t get it all at once, either.)

As soon as the offending party was identified and blocked, or the solution found, click, they flip the switch back on.

And that leads me to the other point. The “server.”  At that point in 2012, any and all business filings would have still been in an old format, and residing on the state’s mainframe server, inside the state’s firewall. 

In fact, I’m not sure contracts had been signed yet on a project that was in it’s infancy – to move state election night reporting onto the Microsoft Azure cloud and off of state servers because BIT was screaming about the resources needed to serve up the results.

(And for those asking, that Microsoft Azure cloud server, as far as security went, it was backed by a global incident response and monitoring team 24/7.)

For the rest of it, it happened after I left, so I can’t speak to it with any authority. That, and business filings weren’t my area. I managed the staff who handled notaries, pistol permits, the office computer guy, and I wrote the blue book.

When you’ve got a story that talks about “hacks” and “servers,” most people’s eyes glaze over, and if someone wants to make something of it, it’s pretty easy to gin people up because most people don’t understand. And a “hacked system with thousands of documents being taken off-line” is much more exciting than blocking someone trying to download too much at once.

My vacation is almost upon me, and the itinerary is set.  In about 36 hours I should be in Boston, or very close to landing at the Boston airport.

I’ve been looking forward to this vacation for weeks, so I’m pretty pumped up. I believe we’re planning on walking the freedom trail as soon as we get our things to the hotel.

In the past couple of weeks, anticipation for walking the Freedom Trail has taken on more meaning after having spent some time working on my genealogy. I discovered I had an ancestor or two on my mother’s side who participated in the American Revolution. Peter Waltz served as a private in the Maryland Continental Troops from April 1775 to September 1780, and participated in 14 battles of the Revolution.

Unfortunately, I’m going to Massachusetts, not Maryland. But I did get in contact with a 2nd cousin on my father’s side who teaches at MIT, and who has also done extensive genealogical work on the other side of the family, where they all trace back to Ireland in the early 1800’s.

Otherwise, most of them lived in Rhode Island. I’m really going to have to take a better planned trip next time. But I digress.

Boston is full of American History, and I’m looking forward to soaking it all in as much as I can in the time allotted.  From there, we go to Salem, Massachusets.  Portland, Maine., and back to Boston for a final day in bean town.

My wife wants to hit the oyster place, (that’s her thing). Me? I’d really love to find the Irish pub I visited the last time when I was there. It was authentic as they come.

If I find something interesting along the way, I’ll be sure to share.

 Thune Receives Important Update on Sanford Underground Research Facility

LBNF/DUNE Will Bring Scientists, Researchers, Educators, and Nearly $150 Million in Regional Economic Activity to South Dakota

Sen. Thune is pictured with Dr. Nigel Lockyer

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, today received an update from Dr. Nigel Lockyer, director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), based in Batavia, Illinois, on the progress of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) that will facilitate the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). The project will include facilities at Fermilab and the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota, and will advance our understanding of neutrinos and particle physics. LBNF/DUNE will bring leading scientists, researchers, educators, and during construction from 2017-2023, an estimated $150 million in regional economic activity to the Black Hills.

Today’s meeting follows a separate meeting Thune held recently with Dr. France Córdova, director of the National Science Foundation, which provides research funding for the DUNE collaboration. Dr. Córdova also highlighted the importance of the project and the research opportunity it presents for the United States.

“LBNF/DUNE is a cutting-edge scientific research project that puts South Dakota in a leading role in neutrino science,” said Thune. “It’s good to hear that this project, which will bring jobs and an estimated $150 million in economic activity to South Dakota, is on track and ready to proceed as planned. The advancement of this type of research will have a worldwide impact, and it’s exciting that South Dakota can be a part of that.”

As part of LBNF/DUNE, Fermilab will send an intense beam of neutrinos 800 miles through the Earth’s mantle to a detector at SURF. The U.S. particle physics community identified the project as the highest priority domestic construction project, which will help ensure U.S. dominance in neutrino physics over the next 20 to 30 years. SURF is an ideal detector site for the project, as its underground depth will shield the experiment from the influence of cosmic radiation.

Earlier today, the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Dr. Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Dr. Arthur McDonald of Canada for their work with neutrinos, specifically a breakthrough discovery that neutrinos contain mass.

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A few South Dakotans have resigned from their legislative seat to run for federal office. I’m not thinking Democratic Congressional Candidate Paula Hawks is going to be one of them.

Hawks, currently serving as a representative of District 9, has finally filed her financial disclosure forms with the clerk of the US House. And I’m not seeing the ability to put a lot of personal funds into the race. In fact, I’d wonder if she can afford to take the time off of work to campaign, except that her campaign will probably be paying her a salary as Stephanie Herseth’s did when she ran.

Paula Hawks Financial Disclosure

The “Rick Weiland Taxypayer funded political campaigns” measure is out being circulated as of at least yesterday. And in case you hadn’t seen it yet, try not to laugh at the petition form:

Taxpayer Funded Campaign Measure

Yes, it’s basically being circulated as part of a road map.  Which begs the question – would you sign something you’d have trouble reading in 10-15 minutes?

Of course not. So the group has a flyer they’re handing out to people to get them to sign (as provided to me by a SF resident who had it stuck under her nose):

Now wait a minute….   The petition has whole sections devoted to how they’re going to set up taxpayer funding for political campaigns.  But their li’l ol’ flyer has none of that information. How can it be?

Why, the flyer appears to be just a bunch of sloganeering, with no information whatsoever.  How can that be, considering nearly 25% of the pages – 1/4 of the act – is devoted to a scheme of having taxpayers pay for politician’s political campaigns?

If you go to the website, it equally avoids that question…

Yes, you have to start drilling deeper down into the web site before you even get a hint that they want taxpayers to pay for their campaigns. We don’t have enough for roads and education, but Rick Weiland wants you to pay for people like him to run for office?  AMAZING!

You have to wonder – is this coming as an initiated measure, because no one in their right mind, not even Democrats, would bring this ridiculous bullsh*t as a bill in the legislature in South Dakota?

Who out there as John Q. Citizen is asking that taypayers pay for politicians to campaign?

Well, let me see…… NO ONE!!  NO ONE AT ALL IS ASKING FOR TAXPAYERS TO GIVE THEM MONEY TO GO CAMPAIGN WITH!!

If you think about it, Rick’s measure is a lot like Scientology. Where it all sounds good and noble on the surface. Except as you dig farther into it, you find out that it’s based on a theory that we’re possessed by million year old alien ghosts who were killed with hydrogen bombs by an overlord named Xenu.

Yes, it’s that ludicrous.

And with the length of this petition, and the silliness contained therein, let’s hope they can’t addle & confuse the 15 – 20 thousand or so people they’ll need to inflict this upon the ballot.

I had previously noted a story where the Flandreau City Council is getting crabby with news reporters who wanted to tape and broadcast public meetings:

I believe the South Dakota Newspaper Association got into it with them, and it’s currently being quibbled over. But I was given some of the information surrounding the city’s basis for refusing to allow it, some of which sounded downright bizarre:

The City’s position: any reporter’s recordings and notes, if just for their own use, are fine. But should someone choose to broadcast and/or live stream the recordings, The City Atty contends the newspaper is creating a public record, and in doing so the reporter would need to properly maintain those records in accordance with SDCL Ch 1-27.

WHAT!?! How on earth does a private citizen create a public record by taping a meeting? Or, how does government assert a copyright of a public meeting?  I have the feeling that any such assertion would be utterly, and embarrassingly shredded in a court of law.

Not to mention that if what the city of Flandreau was spouting was even remotely correct, state law provides open inspection and copying of public records, and puts nearly no limitation on their use, absent federal copyright laws.

With the controversy raging, I thought I’d ask our own State’s Attorney General, Marty Jackley about it.

I noted to Marty:  There’s an open meeting controversy raging in Flandreau right now where the Flandreau City Council and their attorney have threatened a city newspaper reporter with legal action for wanting to record and broadcast open, public meetings for the public to view in order to know what goes on in those meetings.

The meeting is open, but is the law definitive on the legality & allowance of recording devices in those situations?  Statutorily, does the city commission have a leg to stand on?    Do they have every right to block any video recording and/or live streaming? Or is that area murky in state law?

Attorney General Marty Jackley’s Reply?  “State statutes are silent on the right or limitations to audio and/or video recording of public body meetings.  In the first instance, it is up to the legislature to enact laws that either allow or prohibit the recording of public meetings by members of the public.  Absent controlling state statutes, the Court may through interpretation of the overall statutory scheme address and define such a right.  Until such time, it would appear the public body is responsible for the conduct of their meetings and for maintaining the decorum of their proceedings.”

Wow.  State law is absolutely silent?  And I’m no closer to any answer as to “Can you tape that public meeting?”

As I found, and you’ll note, the answer is a little more complicated than you think. South Dakota courts have so far been silent on it.   And as you can assume from the fact there are no laws on the books, there’s no legislative guidance on the topic, either.

However, in Florida, the issue did come up, and was taken to court.  According to the Digital Media Project:

At least one court has held that there is no federal constitutional right to make a video recording of an open meeting, at least not when other methods are available for compiling a record of the proceeding, such as written and stenographic notes or audiotaping. Whiteland Woods, LLP v. Township of W. Whiteland, 193 F.3d 177 (3rd Cir. 1999). Government bodies may therefore place reasonable restrictions on the use recording devices, including a ban on certain devices, in order to preserve the orderly conduct of its meetings.

and…

Even when no state open meetings law affirmatively gives you the right to record, many state statutes permit the recording of speeches and conversations that take place where the parties may reasonably expect to be recorded.

Read that here.

That’s not exactly comforting. In another state, there are “reasonable” restrictions. But, who decides what’s reasonable?

As I understand, in addition to Flandreau, there may be similar controversies in Hartford and Harrisburg surrounding parties wanting to record open meetings.

South Dakota is a conservative state. However, we always believe that our government should be as close to the people as possible.

When a city council believes that having their decisions recorded on video tape is problematic, it might be time to guarantee that the open meeting is fully open, and any possible restrictions to making a recorded record of what took place at the meeting are declared null and void.

As noted by the Attorney General, South Dakota has no legislative or judicial guidance on the topic.  As the 2016 Legislative session approaches, it might be time to memorialize what has been a long standing practice by most public boards, and put it into writing in our State’s law books: That private citizens have a right to record and rebroadcast the proceedings of public meetings.

And let no crabby city council members stand in their way.