Looks like Terry LaFleur’s independent race for Governor in 2022 is getting off to a slow start, according to his filing with the Secretary of State:
Terry LaFleur Governor 2022 sdcfdisclosure by Pat Powers on Scribd
Zero raised. Zero Spent.
And we’ll leave it at that.
From Facebook:
On the same day that the South Dakota Board of Regents were posting about bringing the University mascots to Pierre to kiss some Republican booty…
… A study on intellectual diversity was being released which shows ideologically, that the faculty at the institutions are more likely kicking Republican booty while their administrators are putting on a show.
This past Friday, a study was released on the website for the National Association of Scholars, titled “Partisan Registration and Contributions of Faculty in Flagship Colleges,” by Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens, January 17, 2020 as they describe the ideological leanings of Universities across the country, including several located in South Dakota. As noted in the chart with the article (condensed for picking out the South Dakota institutions):
(As noted in the chart from Partisan Registration and Contributions of Faculty in Flagship Colleges by Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens, National Association of Scholars, January 17, 2020)
D:R Registration Ratio
Of the 12,372 professors sampled, 48.4 percent are registered Democrats and 5.7 percent are registered Republicans, a ratio of 8.5:1. In 2016 Gallup (Jones, 2016) finds that for the general population, 29 percent are Democrats and 26 percent are Republicans, a ratio of 1.1:1. The 8.5:1 ratio is lower than previous findings, such as Langbert, et al. (2016) and Langbert (2018), which found 10:1 to 12:1 because those studies looked at the highest-ranked institutions, in which partisan affiliation is the most skewed. The institutions in this study are the most elite in each state, but they are not in all cases the most elite nationally.
and..
Summary and Conclusion
The D:R donation ratio and the D:R registration ratio tell a story that is broadly consistent. The D:R donation ratio favors the Democratic Party in all nine disciplines sampled. Compared to the D:R registration ratio, the skewness in the D:R donation ratio for each discipline is more extreme than for registration. For six of the eight or nine disciplines, the D:R donation ratio exceeds 100:1. The D:R donation ratio among female professors is greater than among their male counterparts, and the ratios are lowest in the Midwest. It is also evident that assistant professors are less engaged in party politics as measured by the smaller percentage who register and who make political contributions.
According to the intellectual diversity study, nationally, voter registration records show a ratio of 8.4:1, for Democrats to Republicans. In South Dakota, it’s better.. but in varying degrees.
Dakota Wesleyan provides the smallest sample, but the closest margin at nearly a 1:1 basis between Republicans and Democrats. And it starts to sharply decline from there.
At South Dakota State University, for every Republican Professor you run across, three others are Democrat, with a 2.9 to 1 ratio.
And it’s worse at USD, with a 5.3 to 1 ratio. At the institution which claims itself to be our state’s flagship university (obviously their ad people don’t live there), for every 6 professors running around on campus, only 1 of them would be registered as a Republican, and the other 5 are Democrats.
Not a good defense when Universities start speaking against intellectual diversity laws.
After being amended, House Bill 1057, the bill that bans doctors from performing elective sex change procedures on minors has been passed out of House State Affairs Committee on a vote of 8-5 on an amended basis.
If I caught it correctly, during the committee, the bill was amended down from a felony to a Class 1 misdemeanor crime, among other changes.
Stay tuned for more on this bill – including how people voted – later today.
Rounds Votes in Favor of Fair, Impartial Impeachment Trial
Resolution closely follows the rules unanimously agreed to during Clinton impeachment trial
WASHINGTON – Early this morning, U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) voted in favor of the organizing resolution that will guide the first phase of the impeachment trial in the Senate. The resolution, which passed 53-47, follows the fair and impartial guidelines used during President Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999.
“I voted in favor of the organizing resolution outlining the next steps in the Senate impeachment trial, which closely follows past precedents and allows for a fair, impartial process.”
“The impeachment trial of a U.S. president – effectively determining whether to undo the will of the American electorate – is one of the most serious responsibilities of the United States Senate. Knowing the House of Representatives would be ‘impassioned’ and more likely to succumb to the whims of political theater, our Founding Fathers intended the Senate to be the ‘adults in the room.’ They trusted the Senate, requiring more solemn judgement, to have the final say on whether a House impeachment charge has the substantiality to rise to the level of removal from office.”
“Today, the House managers will begin their opening arguments. Then, the American people will have a chance to hear, for the first time throughout this process, the president’s side of the case. I take my responsibility during this period very seriously. I’m confident that the organizing resolution will allow us to do our due diligence, bring this process to a close in a timely manner, and get back to doing the work that the people of South Dakota sent me here to do.”
Background:
The resolution is broken down into three parts:
o Opening arguments: Each side will be given up to 24 hours to present their case;
o Q&A period: Senators will have the opportunity to ask questions, through the Chief Justice (up to 16 hours allotted);
o Deciding on Next Steps: Following the Q&A period, the Senate will “consider whether…any additional evidence or witnesses are necessary to evaluate whether the House case has cleared, or failed to clear, the high bar for overcoming the presumption of innocence and undoing a democratic election.”[Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Floor, 1/21/2020]
###
Noem Marks 47th Anniversary of Roe v Wade Ruling, Proclaims January Sanctity of Human Life Month
PIERRE, S.D. – To mark the 47th anniversary since the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v Wade, Governor Kristi Noem has proclaimed January as Sanctity of Human Life Month.
“Every life – born and unborn – has worth and dignity,” said Noem. “Without life, there is no liberty. Without liberty, there is no freedom to pursue happiness. I am absolutely committed to defending life, and I’m proud to proclaim January as Sanctity of Human Life Month.”
Noem’s proclamation encourages South Dakotans “to care for women with unexpected or unwanted pregnancies, to encourage responsible fatherhood, to affirm our state’s pro-life pregnancy centers, to support adoption and foster care, and to ensure that every child can be raised to live and to have the liberty to pursue their own happiness.”
###
Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg has a message for the members of the US Senate when it comes to impeachment – “It cannot be a legitimate basis to impeach a President for acting in a legal manner.”
State AG letter to Senate o… by Fox News on Scribd
According to FOX News:
“If not expressly repudiated by the Senate, the theories animating both Articles will set a precedent that is entirely contrary to the Framers’ design and ruinous to the most important governmental structure protections contained in our Constitution: the separation of powers,” they wrote.
The letter accuses House Democrats of impeaching Trump as a politically motivated response to the 2016 election and warned that it poses a threat to the 2020 election as well.
What do you think?
After Sioux Falls City Councilwoman Theresa Stehly wanted the city of Sioux Falls to handle all tornado cleanup so residents could sit at home and wait for government to be their savior, she’s back at the taxpayer trough again, wanting the City of Sioux Falls to trim all the boulevard trees in South Dakota’s largest city.
Despite the fact that Sioux Falls city staff have put a $2 million price tag on it for residents, just for starters:
Sioux Falls park operation manager Kelby Mieras said with about 12,000 properties in the yearly Project T.R.I.M. coverage area, the city would expect an annual cost of about $688,527 if property owners no longer had to do the work themselves.
And that doesn’t account for the additional equipment costs and staffing increases that would come with making the pilot project permanent, he said.
“It’d be about $1.2 million in upfront capital expenses,” he said. “This would include the equipment necessary to outfit two different crews and also a location to store the equipment because this is a year-round and something we’d have to do 12 months a year.”
Interesting. Having lived in cities with and without an arbor department, let me explain the difference for residents.
When I lived in Pierre (without an Arbor department), a storm came through and knocked down the big pine tree on my boulevard, I got the chainsaw out of my shed, cut it up and took it to the dump. I paid the local guy (a Highway patrolman in his day job) to come grind the stump.. I think that was $40-50. And then when I felt like it, I paid a local tree guy $40-50 to pull a new tree of my choosing in from his orchard, which I had to water and maintain to get it established.
Now living in Brookings, The city rolls through once every few years and trims my boulevard tree up to their specifications, darn near matching every single other tree of up and down my street. And I sold my old chainsaw.
What’s the difference between the two systems? Not much. The trees in your yard are a maintenance item that go along with home ownership. Either way, you pay government for it, or you have to pay for it yourself. But most of us would believe that paying government for it ultimately isn’t a great solution.
Why do we continually demand more government for things that should be our own responsibility?
Back in Pierre, you’ll note that you can find darn near any kind of tree under the sun on boulevards, adding character to properties, because at one time, that’s what the homeowner wanted to put up. Here in Brookings, if you look down a street, a tree is a tree, is a tree… all uniformly groomed, with the only difference being when they were planted, because that’s what the local government wanted to do.
I guess if you want turn over another freedom, and enjoy government telling you what to do and how to be, down to the tree you put on your boulevard, “Stehly solutions” are the way to go for Sioux Falls residents.
And they should keep that in mind when they get the tax bill for the privilege.
As I’d written about on the 15th, the new legislative information system from the Legislative Research council is receiving a lot of unhappiness from Legislators and lobbyists.
The Argus Leader gets around to writing about it today, with examples of a committee meeting that was a broken down mess because no one could do anything, or even see who was proposing amendments to a measure:
“Are we working against people now, or are we working with people?” questioned Sen. Deb Soholt, R-Sioux Falls.
Soholt said she wasn’t comfortable passing an amendment that the bill sponsor couldn’t see. Sen. Jordan Youngberg, R-Madison, suggested they pass SB 22 without the amendments and then add the amendments when they consider the bill on the Senate floor to give the Department of Agriculture time to review the amendments. Soholt replied that that would be worse because then there would 35 confused senators instead of the nine senators on the committee.
Should the Legislative Research Council have worked these bugs out before session, as opposed to on the spot? What a disaster.
I’d expect they’re a couple of more failed meetings away from having to switch back to a paper system.
