l3wis Pre-K education is part of the ‘socialist’ agenda?
Not only would PRE-K education save families millions in daycare it would also better prepare young students for K-12. One of the complaints I have heard from kindergarten and even 1st grade teachers in Sioux Falls is they spend half their time teaching life skills (like wiping kids behinds) that the parents ‘should have’ thought these kids before enrolling them in regular school. All the other arguments aside, I had to laugh about the ‘socialist’ agenda argument.
In case you haven’t noticed our fore fathers based our Republic on a socialist platform. Besides regular public education (K-12) being a socialist program, the US Military is one of the biggest socialist programs we have. Add to that the interstate highway system, the VA, Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, Public Libraries and even locally snow removal and our parks system, the list goes on. We all pay taxes to promote the social welfare of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority, I know that is hard to swallow, but that’s socialism folks.
I had to laugh when recently I heard a local radio host say he was shocked about openly Socialist lawmakers in Washington like Bernie Sanders. Those lawmakers get it, we have been a socialist democracy since almost day one. This is not something NEW that would be ‘snuck’ in on Pre-K education. Let’s admit it, most lawmakers in Pierre hate public education, that’s why they try to starve it every year. They believe only the wealthy deserve to be educated. These same lawmakers also don’t want an educated work force, because they will demand higher pay. We are only shooting ourselves in the foot when we refuse to fund these programs, it hurts the state economically. Who knew that our ‘socialism’ actually benefits our ‘capitalism’.
Mayor TenHaken apologizes for ‘Whipping the Vote’ comment
During Tuesday night’s city council meeting Mayor TenHaken asked councilor Brekke to ‘Whip the Vote’ (FF: 1:02). It didn’t go over well with Brekke. She made it clear to him that’s not how things work (in municipal government). The council has the right to bring legislation forward before the meeting or to ask for a reconsideration during the meeting. Brekke had already talked to her fellow councilors about the plurality ordinance in advance, when it failed she tried to amend it. This happens on the fly.
While it is a positive thing that PTH realized he was in the wrong and apologized to Brekke (I guess in a public setting) it still doesn’t change the fact that we have a very partisan City Administrator. City government doesn’t work like Washington, there are distinct differences. It is a non-partisan form of government set up to serve all involved, the taxpayers of our city. We don’t want them to vote on ‘party lines’ because there isn’t any, but seems for the last several years the councilors belong to either the Developer Class Party or the Citizen Party – a terrible divide.
This goes back to the mayor not knowing his roles and duties under charter. He is the city administrator in charge of making sure the city operates smoothly within the budget set forth. In other words, he is the employee manager. It is NOT his job to set policy. He should not even have voted on the ordinance. It should have just failed on a tie. I think if the mayor wants to get involved in policy votes he needs to explain his vote. He knew well in advance that he might have to break the tie, he also expressed to the media he would probably vote NO if the opportunity did arise. So tell us why? I don’t think he knew why, because it was just another vengeance vote with the other 4 councilors. A horrible way to set policy, I’m sorry to say.
UPDATE: Chickensh*t vote of the night; Sioux Falls City Council Chair Christine Erickson
There are two kinds of animals on the city council, Reindeers and Chickens.
With zero explanation or discussion, councilors Selberg, Kiley, Soehl, Erickson and Mayor TenHaken voted to leave the 50+1 idiotic election practice former councilors Rolfing and Erpenbach pulled from their butts. While I understand 4 of the votes (elitists who want to keep regular folk off of the council) Erickson changed her vote from two years ago WITH NO EXPLANATION TO THE PUBLIC! I also found it funny that Rolfing Jr. (Kiley) was Chatty Cathy all night about the Philosophy of Rick but said nothing about why we need to keep this silly ordinance in place. Sorry Rick, while some reindeer can fly, chickens cannot.
She receives the Chickensh*t Vote of the Night award. She can CHANGE her vote if she wants to, but when you do it without explanation you move quickly from ruling the roost to just another peckerwood in the farmyard.
Congratulations on your ignorance and obvious vengeance on fellow councilors, because really without an explanation, that is exactly what you were doing tonight. Maybe you can get a job with the Noem administration? Not sure though if she would let you yell out “Oh My God” during a public meeting in your hot microphone. Funny how you had to call out God’s name when your personal business was questioned by a fellow councilor but you had ZERO to say about switching your vote tonight.
BaWch! BaWch! BaWch! but NO Cockadoodle-Doo!
UPDATE: Here’s her grand excuse;
Following the vote, Councilor Christine Erickson, who opposed raising the election threshold in 2017, told the Argus Leader she voted against reverting back to the old standard because changing election rules so frequently would be a disservice to voters and office seekers.
“It’s confusing for voters and candidates to continue to change this year to year,” she said.
Christine, I think I would have said nothing instead. There has been only ONE election since the rule changed, and in case you didn’t notice, the rule change wasn’t even used (Soehl and DeBoer would have to still have a runoff under the old rules). Most voters would not even have noticed it changed back. But nice try. Let’s call a spade a spade, it was a vengeance vote.
Another snag with 5G, it’s all hype
Just when you think the 5G debacle couldn’t get much worse, the hits keep coming;
Wireless carriers are working hard to talk up 5G (Fifth Generation) wireless as the future of broadband. But don’t be fooled—they are only trying to focus our attention on 5G to try to distract us from their willful failure to invest in a proven ultrafast option for many Americans: fiber to the home, or FTTH.
A recent FCC report on competition found that the future of high-speed broadband for most Americans will be a cable monopoly. Without a plan to promote fiber to the home, that’s not likely to change. In fact, because the 5G upgrade relies on fiber infrastructure, even 5G will be possibly limited to areas that already have FTTH – meaning, they already have a competitive landscape and, therefore, better service. The rest of us get monopolistic slow lanes.
And what about all that rural service Ironic Johnny talks about;
Without a comprehensive plan for fiber infrastructure, 5G will not revolutionize Internet access or speeds for rural customers. So anytime the industry is asserting that 5G will revolutionize rural broadband access, they are more than just hyping it, they are just plainly misleading people.
In other words without the cable in the ground, they cannot put up the antennas in rural areas. And the speed? Laughable;
5G will also not be competitive with wireline Internet services. In the early Verizon home 5G broadband test cities, where the connections were marketed as faster than your cable broadband, it turned out that speeds average around 300 Mbps with some peaking to gigabit speeds. By comparison, cable networks had already deployed gigabit download networks earlier in 2018 and have plans to upgrade 10-gigabit networks (which they comically call 10G, because why not). In other words, 5G’s peak speeds match broadband speeds that are already in the process of being topped.
In other words, if you are hooked to the ethernet like I am, you are already getting the best internet speeds that 5G will never even come close to. Hopefully with all the lawsuits and congressional investigations this whole 5G scam will end before they roll over on us.