Open Government

South Dakota closed government, ripe with corruption

Our AG recently said that state government needs to be more transparent in the wake of all the rats stealing from the citizen coffers. If you think this is just a handful of bad actors, I can guarantee there are probably hundreds of state employees stealing from us. Why? Because, first off, it is RICH coming from a guy who helped cover up a DCI sexual harassment case, EB-5 and Gear-up. This is the guy promoting open government? LMFAO!

With one-party rule basically controlling most of the offices in South Dakota who is going to investigate wrong doings or lack of open government? Good question.

I keep telling people that OPEN government saves taxpayers money because it roots out unethical, fraudulent and corrupt actors. Open government is also more efficient because you don’t have to play the hiding secrets game so things get done much more quickly.

I don’t have much confidence in our AG telling us he is working towards a more open government, coming from a guy who has a Cummins Diesel engine attached to his paper shredder.

Our fight for Open Local Government just got harder

It was no surprise to me that DJT won the presidential election. If you looked at the math, Harris had no clear path since she announced, the numbers got progressively worse as it got closer to the election. On top of that, let’s pretend for a moment she did win the popular vote and it was a tied electoral college, DJT had a majority of the US state houses on his side, he had Congress and the Supreme Court. Even if a tie came to fruition, DJT would have won. All the liberal tears aside, this shouldn’t surprise anyone.

When the DNC gave a parting gift to Howard Dean as chair of the Democratic Party, Dean proposed this age old idea;

Howard Dean pursued an explicit “fifty-state strategy” as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, putting resources into building a Democratic Party presence even where Democrats had been thought unlikely to win federal positions, in hopes that getting Democrats elected to local and state positions, and increasing awareness of Democrats in previously conceded areas, would result in growing successes in future elections. Democrats who supported the strategy have said that abandoning “red states” as lost causes only allowed the Republican Party to grow even stronger in areas where it was unchallenged, resulting in lopsided losses for Democrats in even more races.

Ironically, the Republicans have had this strategy for decades and it finally paid off on Tuesday night. I have been warning the state Dems that if you keep hanging your hat on where people can go to the bathroom and who can wear a dress instead of better commodity prices for farmers and worker rights you will be abandoned by the working class. Guess what happened?

Don’t get me wrong, queer rights and diversity should ALWAYS be a ladder wrung on the progressive agenda, but not at top. Sorry, childcare, affordable food and housing, living wages, a good education, healthcare, and the list goes on, WHY DID WE STOP TALKING ABOUT THESE THINGS!!!!!!!

The GOP has been busy across the nation filling school boards, county commissions, judgeships, city councils and dog catcher positions. I have even contributed to this by helping 4 Republicans get elected to the city council (My Bad) and then they were too ‘social’ for the local Repugs so they got booted. This has created a system of one party rule which never benefits the public. I suppose I could write a very scathing post about how ignorant and selfish the American electorate is, but we all knew this coming into the election. Nothing changed on Wednesday it just was an answer to what we already knew; poor white people are mad and they need to blame someone, so they blame colored folks. Things are expensive and people vote with their pocket books.

I really don’t want to make this about Republicans and Trump, this is about something even more troubling. If you watch the playbook played by the GOP over the past 20 years they want a total shutdown of government transparency. Not that we have had much in South Dakota anyway, and Sioux Falls city hall is darker then an opium den, but, a drunk, drugged up reporter can’t even get the state to turn over hair and nail salon receipts. As if knowing what the gov paid for an asshole bleaching is of importance 🙁 While transparency in government is something that doesn’t exist on a state or local level anyway, the fight to get this information out there has just gotten 10 times harder.

I expect the National GOP will have a directive going all the way down to Dogcatcher candidates that open government is a thing of the past and give up NO information.

Now with extremists, they know they only have a small window to wreck sh!t and be on their way, this is why it is more important then ever to shine a light on these TRAITORS . . . NOW! Anybody who would wipe their ass with the Constitution in order to gain power has NO interest in telling you the truth.

Real Patriots use loud speakers, cowards use lies and violence. Now more then ever we need to ask our government to be open, because if they are not, they are just screwing us.

Ben Franks, the greatest founding Father, said it best;

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” 

He also warned his future countrymen;

“A republic, if you can keep it”

If Ben was alive today, I think he would be extremely nervous, and probably headed for France.

In Accordance with Robert Rules? LOL!

Look at at this change to policies, (page 13) they are trying to find cover from their Constitutional duties;

Robert’s is a guideline on how to run a meeting, but those RULES do not supersede the 1st Amendment or US Constitution. Like I told the council last Tuesday (FF: 1:10) these are consideration rules that the public AND the council should use as a guideline to the meetings, but when it comes to PUBLIC INPUT anything besides violent threats is allowable and limiting speakers is blatant censorship and little else.

Instead of spending so much time trying to silence the public, why don’t you talk to us? The only time I see councilors is at Carnegie, makes you wonder if some of them are playing Marshall Selberg Musical Districts on us? Speaking of that crooked fella, still wondering why all the councilors and mayor shirked their responsibility of managing their own? Selberg should have been booted from the council and he should have been charged, but not these guys, circle the f’ing wagons.

Sioux Falls City Council Public Input on Fire Tonight!

Maybe I was the setup? I spoke at the informational meeting* today during public input. Since there was nothing on the agenda except more executive sessions I chose to speak about item #4 on the agenda, which was PUBLIC COMMENT. I basically informed them that council meeting rules don’t supersede the US Constitution’s 1st Amendment and they need to stop cutting people off. I directed my comments at the entire council, not just chair Soehl. I told them they need to STOP the chair if they are wrongfully cutting people off. I think the council needs a crash course in the 1st Amendment and Public Input, and would even be willing to give my taxdollars to school them. They don’t seem to understand who controls the government, it’s not them, it’s us.

Well the mayor must be off at a jumping jacks convention because Curtis decided to chair the next regular meeting (FF: 41:00) and he got another earful about how they fail to listen to constituents and when they have no discussion on unanimous votes it tells the public you are making decisions before the meeting in private conversations (heck, the school board has been doing that for decades!)

Though some of the people who spoke tonight have shady pasts (that was an interesting google search 🙁 they made valuable points about our 1st Amendment rights and how ineffective and thin skinned our current council is, and the longer termed members are the worst of the lot!

This council better buck up fast and take control of the public’s meetings, because it is turning into a real circus and the dancing bears are the council.

*The meeting hasn’t posted yet because they were having ‘technical’ issues. These same issues pop up every couple of weeks for the past decade or more. You would think the city IT department would have figured this out already?! I am pretty damn sure they are censoring certain things and that is why it happens so often. I mean, someone can’t f’up that much unless it is on purpose.

One of the public inputers, Bruce Head told us he is suing the city over civil rights. Here is a link to the filing.

Lunch with Sioux Falls Police Chief Jon Thum

I actually didn’t have lunch with the chief, but he was addressing the Breakfast Club today at NOON at the City’s admin building where I was the only citizen in attendance at the beginning (it’s mostly elected officials from the region that show up to these monthly get togethers). I go for the free lunch 🙂

Thum said that officers with more experience dealing with people and managing situations are better officers then those with degrees in criminal justice. While I believe him, I asked him this question, “I want officers to have at least a 2 year degree in criminal justice because I want officers to know the LAW when they are responding to a situation. Thum did confess he would like officers with experience in both areas, but prefers officers with people skills over law knowledge. His excuse was different laws in different jurisdictions. Well guess what? Officers should know the laws they are enforcing. I think the Chief should be focusing on hiring people with both skill sets and not just settling for mediocre. I got the feeling from his response that Thum is trying to fill a quota, and he doesn’t seem to care how he fills that quota, bodies on the street scenario.

The above picture is an officer hiding behind a utility box on private property of a local manufacturer I took a few days ago. Wondering if this is one of his ‘people person’ officers? I don’t have a problem with officers taking breaks, but they should be in a public parking lot or at the precinct.

I also presented this question to Thum, “I want to address shutting off the scanners. I researched the Federal regulations and it is well within your right to turn the scanners completely off (Thum nods) but the suggestion from the Feds is to only turn them off for sensitive situations like wellness checks, overdoses, domestic, etc. So I want to set up a scenario for you. We had a train derailment downtown a few years ago. Luckily it was just corn and it didn’t knock over the viaduct, but these same trains carry tons of chemicals thru downtown every day. What if it derails again and there is a massive chemical spill and you have to evacuate thousands of people from downtown. How will you get that info to the public in a timely manner if the scanners are shutoff?”

He did say the Fire Department has a notification system (not sure what that is) and that they TEXT people. I can tell you that downtown is full of older homes with poorer elderly people living in them, they likely don’t have cell phones. I wasn’t really satisfied with his answer. I often tell folks, once we have open government a lot of these issues disappear in the night, but I don’t think Thum gets it.