This week brought me two great items for my political collection. One was sent by a friend, and I found the other on eBay.

The first one made me laugh, and I almost wanted to put this bumper sticker on my car because it was so funny. And I reiterate, Almost wanted to.

“Ridin’ with Biden.”  That’s a pretty good one in reference to the Draft Joe Biden movement.  The second is more serious, and more related to South Dakota politics:

It’s far from being in perfect shape, but this is an original litho (screen printed on metal) pin for Herseth for Governor. Not sure if it’s for Ralph (campaigns in ’58, ’60 & ’62) or Lars (’86), but it’s one I didn’t have in my collection. I suspect it was for Lars.

 

Concerns over School Lunch Rules Continue to Grow, Says Noem 

New GAO report shows participation in National School Lunch Program declines by 1.4 million in last four school year

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representative Kristi Noem today expressed continued concern after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an updated study showing National School Lunch Program participation declined by 1.4 million children – or 4.5 percent – between the 2010-11 school year and the 2013-14 school year. The non-partisan agency also reported that “new federal nutrition requirements contributed to the decrease.”

“My husband and I work hard to make sure healthy food goes on our kids’ plates at home, but we understand that if it doesn’t taste good, our kids aren’t going to eat it. I think that’s something most parents have experienced,” said Noem. “This report once again shows that if families can afford it, more and more are sending their kids to school with a sack lunch, but if finances are tight, kids are forced to stay in the program. I remain very concerned that the new regulations scheduled to take effect in the coming years will only make this phenomena worse.”

The new GAO report, which was an update to a study requested by Noem and Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, shows a continued decline in school meal program participation since the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act took effect in 2010. Prior to the 2010-11 school year, participation in the program had been increasing steadily for many years. Click here to view a copy of the full report.

Noem has been vocal about her opposition to the new regulations. While she agrees we must do all we can to make sure kids are healthy, Noem opposes the one-size-fits-all solution that can leave kids feeling hungry and impose increased costs on local school districts.

In March 2015, Noem introduced the Reducing Federal Mandates on School Lunch Act, which would:

· Allow schools to maintain the previous whole grain requirements. Without this change, 100 percent of the grains that schools are required to serve students would be whole-grain rich, pushing items like tortillas and pasta largely off the menu. Noem’s bill would restore the requirement back to 50 percent, meaning at least half of the grains served would be required to be whole-grain rich.

· Maintain Target 1 sodium requirements. Absent a change, schools would have a difficult time serving healthy foods that include milk, cheese, meat and other foods with naturally occurring sodium.

· Give administrators flexibility on some of the rules that have increased costs for school districts, including the school breakfast program, a la carte options, and school lunch price increases.

· Make the USDA’s easing of the meat and grain requirements permanent through law, rather than regulations. This would give certainty to schools that they’ll be allowed more flexibility in serving meats and grains while still staying within calorie maximums.

Noem introduced similar legislation in the 113th Congress as well. The bill has been endorsed by the National School Board Association and the School Superintendents Association.

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There’s a tour of the pot facility in Flandreau today, and Dana Ferguson at the Argus noted who showed up from the Legislature to take the tour.

4 of them.

Wollman and Parsley from District 8, which includes Flandreau, are there. Elizabeth May came from across the state, and Spencer Hawley from Brookings took the 20 minute drive to tour the facility.

Obviously, the District 8 reps will be facing constituent questions on it. Hawley will as well, given the pot growers have announced their intention to bus people from surrounding communities such as Brookings.

But all in all, it’s probably a good indicator that they aren’t going to find a lot of friends in the South Dakota Legislature, as they use lax federal law enforcement of drug laws to try to circumvent South Dakota State Laws.

(Update – Dana notes via Twitter that Paula Hawks is there, but didn’t sign in.)

From Keloland:

Fort Pierre elementary school teacher Sarah Lutz has been named South Dakota’s 2016 Teacher of the Year.

Lutz is a third-grade teacher at Stanley County Elementary and a member of the school’s leadership team. She also serves as a volunteer coach for the Girls on the Run program, and is credited with developing family nights to promote parent involvement.

Read it all here.

And for our Republican readers, yes, you’ve heard that name before. Sara is married to Deputy State Auditor Jason Lutz.

(Jason’s a great guy, but Teacher of the Year is a pretty big deal. And I’m sure he’d agree!)

Congratulations, Sarah.

Paula Hawks 2015 q3 FEC

Paula Hawks’ FEC report is available on-line now, and it shows a few interesting things.

Out of that 63k she’s noting she raised, Hawks is in for $950. Tim Johnson’s South Dakota First Leadership PAC is in for 5k. Tom Daschle is in for $1000, and so is Herseth. Brendan Johnson is in for $500, Dale Larson of Brookings is in for $1000, SDDP Chair Ann Tornbers ig in for $700, and big spender Rick Weiland sent $250. There’s an exceedingly high proportion of unitemized contributions. Which is unusual. You also see itemized contributions from “Petty Cash” for $175, $708, and $125.

It looks to me as if she went to the Democrats’ well for start-up money, and fared worse than Matt Varilek did. The small group of Democrat loyalists dug deep, but there’s not a lot of breadth. And there’s no indication that she can continue to tap many of these same people indefinitely.

Anything you notice?

From KSFY, the Hawks campaign is claiming they’ve raised about 1/4 of what the Noem campaign managed to bring in during the same period:

Democratic state Rep. Paula Hawks has raised about $63,400 since launching her campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem.

Federal reports released by Hawks’ campaign Thursday show the representative from Hartford had about $45,600 on hand at the end of this fundraising quarter, which ran from July through September.

and…

Campaign manager Zach Nistler says the campaign is pleased and will build on the numbers.

Read it here.

We don’t have the filing in hand yet, so there’s still a lot of questions. Arguably, it’s better than Corinna Robinson managed during her campaign, but it’s still less than 2/3 of what Matt Varilek was able to raise against Noem in his first quarter during Noem’s first contest as an incumbent.

What do you think?

As the Associated Press catches up with my reporting yesterday on this, from KELO:

Federal reports released by Noem’s campaign show the three-term Republican congresswoman raised more than $260,000 in the third fundraising quarter, which ran from July through September.

and..

Hawks is a two-term state representative from Hartford. So far she’s the only Democrat running. Her campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read it here.

“didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment”  is kind of the campaign equivalent of “mumble.. mumble…”   For someone who needs free press as much as Hawks does, I’m surprised she isn’t returning phone calls on this one.

That is, unless her fundraising is as disastrous as we expect it to be.

(Remember – “Corinna Light.”  We yet may be using that term.)

As I’d noted earlier, I’m speaking with the campaigns about their FEC Reports due today.

While Senator Thune is gearing up for 2016, Senator Rounds is spending more time establishing himself and building ties than staying in campaign mode.  I spoke with Rob Skjonsberg of the Senator’s staff, also who doubles as Senator Rounds’ assistant campaign treasurer. And Rob offered that they’re not being aggressive at this point, as they frankly needed a bit of a break:

Between the campaign and new leadership PAC – revenue was about $60,000 and we paid off the remaining campaign debt.  We’re thankful because we’ve been able to do that without being real aggressive.

We actually talked about this at the beginning of the summer – the constant political pressure to raise campaign contributions despite just getting hired and the critical work that needs to get done in the senate.

We’ve been in campaign mode for almost three years. I think all of us, including those who have been so generous to Mike over the years, appreciate the break.

Regardless of the office, we have the history and the network to be well funded when the time comes. Between now and then, he’s focused on this job not necessarily the next.

And there you have it.

Stay tuned. Still coming up, we’re still wondering if Paula Hawks has what it takes to be a real candidate.

Apparently there’s a war over Hospitals – specifically community Hospitals being waged in Congress right now.  H.R. 976 and H.R. 2513 are currently being floated, which would significantly modify current law with respect to self-referrals to physician-owned hospitals.

Under most laws and regulations in our health care system, physician self-referral is banned, but physician owners were using an exception (known commonly as the “whole hospital” exception), to get around these conflict of interest rules. The issue of self-referral to physician-owned hospitals, and the inherent conflict of interest it presents, is not a new issue.

These arrangements have been the subject of numerous bipartisan congressional hearings and analyses by independent and government researchers. In fact, the issue was first addressed by a statutory moratorium passed by Republican majorities, and enacted by President Bush, first in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 and then in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

The data gathered over the last decade clearly showed that self-referral was creating an unlevel playing field, and threatened patient safety, as well as the health care safety net provided by full-service community hospitals, such as those found in many communities across the state.

These measures could potentially put hospitals in towns like Vermillion, Gettysburg, or Mobridge out of business, simply because it could break the back of the larger hospitals that own them.

In 2010, Congress passed a permanent but prospective ban on self-referral to physician-owned hospitals, providing grandfathered status for those existing hospitals with physician ownership or investment and a Medicare provider agreement in place as of December 31, 2010. Current law represents a compromise, which protects current physician ownership of hospital arrangements and allows these arrangements to grow where needed.

But now, opponents of this provision are seeking to repeal or amend this policy, despite the US Chamber of Commerce taking a strong position against the bills:

US Chamber 141121 Self-Referral Reid McConnell Boehner Pelosi

What do you think? Should physician owned hospitals be able to self-refer and cherry-pick patients? Or does that create an un-level playing field?

I’ve been pinging the campaigns over the FEC Reports that are due today. And while they’re still figuring up the rest, they were able to tell me that Senator Thune currently has 11.2 Million cash on hand for his upcoming election battle.

That’s an increase of $300,000 cash on hand over his last report of 10.9 million COH, but Thune is also running a campaign office at this point, so there is a slight drain on his finances as he’s accruing cash for a battle which increasingly looks as if it may never happen.