2014

Council fixes problem mayor created

I don’t whether to applaud the council, or just ask them what took so damn long? After watching the Mayor’s press conference about Van Eps park, and all the back patting he received last night at the council meeting for being ‘engaged’ in the Van Eps process, I just have to remind people of a few things.

1) Mayor Huether is the one who put more picnic tables and porta-potties at Van Eps, in an essence, attracting the bees.

2) Instead of removing the benches and bathrooms when he saw problems arise down there, he left them.

3) Instead of issuing an emergency executive order to ban alcohol temporarily, until the council had time to look at the issue he sat on his hands and waited for the Parks Board and City Council to fumble through the ordinance process, which took a couple of months.

4) Even now that the alcohol is banned, the SFPD and the administration have no plan when the drinkers move.

I have said all along the implementation of a drinking park had nothing to do with the safety or care of the attendees, this had to do with Downtown developers complaining about the homeless drunks around their businesses.

EB-5 isn’t Rounds’ first Scandalous Rodeo

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He was lying 8 years ago, and he keeps lying today.

While things in the EB-5 world are heating up for Rounds (signing off on SDRC’s contract and now the Brown County Commission asking for a banking commission investigation) the stonewalling at Dakota Wuss College continues, and of course the lying (Wadhams claiming Kathy Tyler had a secret meeting with Brendan Johnson when all she said is that she talked to him, kind of like when I waited on him a couple of months ago and I asked him what he would like to drink, does our beverage conversation count as a secret conversation? I think he said something like, “I’ll take a merlot, and did you know, Rounds is guilty as Hell.” (snarc)

The lies get more ridiculous by the day, I hope they are paying BK Jr. good to purport all those lies on his ‘blog’. Pat really should have taken some lessons from the original fake political blogger, Jon Lauck.

But enough of those yahoos.

I wanted to remind everyone of all the other scandals Rounds was involved with while serving as governor, some of you have short memories;

Using his gigantic fleet of state owned airplanes for personal use, then paying the fuel bill from the Governor’s club fund ‘after’ he was busted. It was so scandalous at the time, Professor Reynold Nesiba got it on the ballot to limit Rounds’ travels, and the good people of SD agreed.

Increased the FTE’s by over a thousand during his short tenure, giving many jobs to family members and family members of campaign contributors.

No bid contracts to campaign contributors. Just call Scott Lawrence over at Lawrence and Schiller, he will explain it all to you, or maybe his dad can, you know, Craig Lawrence, the guy running the State GOP now.

Elkpoint / Hyperion fiasco. That has so many layers, don’t even know where to begin. How is that project going by the way? And how much state tax dollars were wasted?

Millions in subsidies to TransCanada, that they didn’t need or ask for.

Taking public education funding in SD back to the stone age (remember, one of Rounds’ objectives is to get rid of the Federal Department of Education as senator).

I could go on, but you get the gist. Why on earth any South Dakotan would want to send this crook to Washington is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have 100% confidence in Weiland or even Pressler as our next Senator, but I will say this about the two gentlemen, one was honored for his integrity and the other wants to fix healthcare by offering a public Medicare option, which is what the ACA should have offered from the freaking beginning.

All we will get with Marion Mike Rounds is more scandals, afterall, this is a guy who doesn’t even use his first name. Even Alice Cooper has more integrity then that.

 

Pavilion encourages single people to get friends

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Maybe you can get a friendship bracelet with your membership.

When I first found out the Pavilion wasn’t offering individual memberships anymore, I felt it was discrimination, but some wise person in the marketing department that formed a focus group decided to eliminate them. My first thought was because maybe there wasn’t a lot of individual memberships, not the case at all;

He said single memberships accounted for about 10 percent of the Pavilion’s 3,300 memberships.

Which, if you like to do simple math comes to 330 memberships or $13,200 in revenue. Something I would hardly bat an eye at. I’m sure most of these memberships were purchased by single elderly people.

I was glad to see this though;

The change doesn’t apply to season ticket sales. People still can buy a season ticket for one.

So if it doesn’t change buying an individual ticket for shows, why change the membership to dual memberships only? Because like charging admission to the VAC, the Pavilion is seeing dollar signs by squeezing an extra $20 out of those single people and disguising it as encouraging them to bring friends.

The city council and mayor really need to end the contract with the WP Management and hire a new company, that #1 is interested in making money #2 Customer service and most of all #3 transparency and equality.

They have had 14 years to get their poop in a group, and all we see is one dumb idea after another. A publicly subsidized arts center that charges to see poorly hung art and now discriminates against single people.