Absentee voting started today at the Minnehaha County Administration building during regular business hours. Get out and vote early. If you live in the central district, vote for Zach DeBoer for city council and the obvious choice for Mayor is Loetscher, someone who will bring transparency, honesty and integrity back to city hall.
UPDATE: Thought I would revisit this post today;
So chew on this ‘nothing burger’. Do you remember Pat Powers and why he left his blog, Dakotawarcollege.com, back in 2010 only to return to it in 2012? Let’s rev up the wayback machine and look.
We at SouthDacola were a bit busy back then, helping a disgraced Secretary of State to NOT run for reelection, his aide to run back to Brookings with his tail between his legs and attempt to break a curious conspiracy to conceal unethical behavior.
On July 22, 2012 Powers made an announcement he was back at the blog…
We at SouthDacola will fill you in.
It is election season 2018 in Sioux Falls and South Dakota with some names and events hauntingly familiar from those halcyon days. Why? Keep in mind names like Pat Powers, Dakota War College (DWC), Jason Gant, Bill Clay, Rick Astley, Marty Jackley, Sen. Stan Adelstein, DCI, Click Rain, Paul TenHanken and more to mull over.
SOS Jason Gant hired his friend and confidant, DWC Pat Powers, to be a high-level employee in charge of the sensitive data systems in the SOS office as Deputy. You know the kind of data a government office can hold in a “trust� As in, you trust no one will do anything wrong with it? An unknown by the mystery name, Bill Clay, became the voice of DWC. To this day no one knows who this Bill Clay was (we assumed is was a fake screen name).
Back to our story, while doing a bit of research using the SD Secretary of State’s corporate database, a curious thing happened. A website previously unknown to the researcher called Dakota Campaign Store appeared when clicking a link trying to sell political postcards.
Why would the SOS office be selling campaign supplies? We started to look into the IP addresses of the SOS databases, the campaign store and DWC to see how they could be linked. Funny thing is, they appeared to be connected. As we exposed the links, these website IP addresses seem to move around the country together which I coined the case of the ‘musical servers’, how could this be? We started asking questions. Powers began to move websites around and created fake links.
The more we researched, followed the IP addresses as they traveled the nation, our questions were answered by Rick Astley. What became apparent was some shady type things were going on. Sen Stan Adelstein from Rapid City also started asking questions. He asked Attorney General Marty Jackley (2018 GOP candidate for Governor) and the Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI) to look into the issues being brought up.
Instead of finding potential issues with the loss of the state’s confidential corporate database during the documented 4 moves, employee conflict of interest in running a political campaign consulting / sales business while managing the voter database and more, the Attorney General only said, no money was stolen so no harm done. In other words, go away and leave us alone while we bury this mess (Entire DOC: Jackley-Gant ).
When Powers announced his return to the blog Dakota War College writing “for the new owners†who were the new owners? It was announced at the time, the final resting spot was in an up and coming web services company, Clickrain owned by Paul TeHaken.
Well, Clickrain in Sioux Falls became a proud owner but at some time since we last reported, TenHaken must have turned DWC back to Powers:
Click to enlarge graphic
Remember Rushmore PAC owned by the SD Republican Party Chairman and former SD State Senator from Dakota Dunes who was (might still be) a longtime person registered in two states at the same time (Iowa and South Dakota) while being a SD State Senator? This is another story with interesting answers.
Who will ask these people what these people were doing hiding government information on web servers around the country and why? When will these people come clean with where the data is? With all the expense of rebuilding the lost SOS databases due to the apparent cross country moving, why didn’t the Attorney General prosecute or at least slap the Whopper Juniors out of the offender’s hands?
Maybe TenHaken should be included in this 2014 graphic;Â 2014 Scandal Republican-graphic
Still confused? It’s simple, basically we suspected under Gant & Powers watch at the SOS’s office they were using private servers owned by Clickrain who was owned by TenHaken to not only hide Powers involvement with his blog and campaign store, which was a clear conflict of interest as a state employee (we suspect why he was pressured to quit) but possibly hiding/holding government data. Which isn’t technically illegal if you have a state contract to do so. We have no clue if TenHaken had such a contract. We will never know because Jackley decided to bury that part of the investigation and basically tell us that Gant & Powers weren’t stealing money from the petty cash box.
Paul TenHaken has NEVER publicly talked about the Powers dismissal from state government. Gee, I wonder why?
While watching the online interview today between Sioux Falls Central District Council Candidates DeBoer and Soehl, Argus Leader Metro Guru Joe Sneve asked them what they thought about developer impact fees and specifically Sanford tearing out affordable housing in the core of our city.
Sanford has mentioned in the past that they would like to expand the 18th and Grange campus all the way towards Minnesota avenue. In that process they have bought several properties in that swath, which includes some of the most affordable housing in our city.
Soehl answered the question first and pretty much towed the tired old line that Sanford has done so many things for our city including employment opportunities (South Dakota has some of the lowest healthcare salaries in the nation) that we should be careful about stopping such expansion.
DeBoer had a different twist on the topic. Besides pointing out that Avera has decided to expand in an area that doesn’t require tearing down affordable housing, he says the Sanford expansion has been detrimental to affordable housing in the core of our city. He reminded listeners that these are some of the most affordable housing options in the city that help first time homebuyer pull themselves out of poverty and rental living. He also pointed out all the blacktop Sanford is putting down in these neighborhoods in the form of parking lots. While he admitted to the economic impact of Sanford, he also said they could expand elsewhere in our city without tearing down these houses.
Zach is right. Instead of Sanford giving several acres to the school district, they could use that land for expansion.
But Zach brings up a bigger point, why does the city, and particular the council and city hall always bow to the altar of Sanford. The Planning Department, the Planning Commission and the City Council could easily say NO to Sanford when they want to tear up more affordable housing in the core of our city, or impose heavy impact fee penalties to dissuade them from doing so.
We need more councilors like Zach, who are looking out for the best interest of the citizenry and not the bottom line of Sanford.
I just about fell out of my office chair when I heard Jolene say this today to TenHaken at the DT Rotary debate at noon.
It is something I bring up ALL THE TIME on this blog. Being truthful is the OPPOSITE of negativity. Honesty means you have integrity. Loetscher showed that integrity today.
The incident occurred towards the end of the debate when the two candidates were allowed to ask each other questions. Jolene looked straight at Paul and asked him why he continues to spread the lie that the PD is not interested in precincts. She informed Paul that she had a very long discussion about the lack of space at the law enforcement center with McManus and Burns and researched the idea before going public with it. She also accused him of fear mongering by claiming Jo’s plan would have jail cells at the precincts (not a part of the plan). TenHaken got very nervous, waived his hands around than complained he was questioned by DCI because Loetscher filed a criminal complaint on Friday over her website and campaign bank accounts being hacked. He never responded to her question.
Actually Paul went into a diatribe about how he vowed to never go ‘negative’ in his campaign. That is when Loetscher made the above comment. She has never accused Paul of the hacking, though it makes you wonder if he knows who is behind it. My guess is that it is someone in the nefarious Republican hack job underbelly of the SD GOP working alone to destroy her campaign. They have so many weasels it would be hard to dig one of them up.
But what was more revealing during the exchange was when Paul said, “I have dirt on all seven of the mayoral candidates, but I’m not going to go there, it’s not my style.”
Then why do you have this ‘dirt’?
As I have told people in the past, I get tons of tips about the candidates running for office, and I have been very impressed that I have not heard ONE negative thing about Jo, except the fact that she is a strong outspoken woman, and IMO that is an asset. All we have to look towards is other local female politicians with strong personalities that have done superb jobs like Loila Hunking, Anne Hajek, Pam Nelson, Karen Soli, Theresa Stehly and soon to be councilor Janet Brekke. We expect this from a leader, and today Jolene showed just what kind of leader she would be. Bravo.
I was disappointed in moderator Jack Marsh after the exchange for warning the candidates to keep it civil moving forward with more questions. Really Jack? Does the ‘truth’ make you uncomfortable also?
l3wis 
