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A few minutes ago I was called by a polling outfit requesting voting intentions in the SD Senate Race. Their site says to check their client list, but I could not find such a list. I am wondering who hires this outfit for SD. Public Policy Polling
Anybody have information on this outfit?
Another link I found at the site after I posted the above suggests that they are polling for Rick Weiland. Public Policy Polling---South Dakota.
***Stay tuned...only 5 days until the election--- Doug Wiken
A commenter or two over at Madville Times discovered a Nation Magazine story on Mike Rounds titled "Revealed: A New Ethics Scandal Involving the GOP'S South Dakota Senate Candidate." Rancid Rounds Reeks in the article. His cohorts don't smell all that good either.
Read it here: Nation Magazine--Revealed--A new ethics scandal, etc.
South Dakota Plutocrats and Kleptocrats do not serve average South Dakotans well. Rounds certainly will not be a good representative of real South Dakota values if he sneaks into Washington under a dark cloud of allegations and facts.
***Stay tuned for more when I am just a bit more awake--- Doug Wiken
The Constant Commoner blog by John Tsitrian often has very good posts. I finally got around to adding a link in the "Read SD Blogs" list to the left. Recently he has added the gutting of Mike Rounds by Katie Zerr, and others displaying the duplicity that makes up much of the Mike Rounds sleazy campaign.
Take a regular look at the other blogs in the list as well. Right now Stan Adelstein however is in the Solid Republican for Rounds category. I obviously think he is grossly mistaken in his support of Rounds. His reasons omit too many salient facts to be taken seriously. Adelstein does have a good post going back to the Eisenhower days and a SD Republican National committee woman. That is interesting and says much about both Eisenhower and Sen. Karl Mundt.
And of course, look at Madville Times for the best summary of what is EB-5 and why it makes diced hash of GOP "Values" campaigns.
***Stay tuned to Dakota Today of course..always more to come--- Doug Wiken
Research and information on infection spread/prevention and national obesity by US and states posted at SD Science Junction.
Information from Science News October 15, 2014. An experiment on virus spread and obesity. Worth viewing whether or not you are a scientist or medical researcher, but should be interesting to them for sure.
*** Stay tuned, eat right, and push hospitals and similar institutions to establish protocols for better health--- Doug Wiken
My father-in-law, or was it my MIL talking about him?, used to talk about "selective memory". This seems to be one of Mike Rounds character flaws. Or perhaps he has some weird form of Alzheimer's disease which causes him to instantly forget his unsavory political behavior. Nearly every time Mike Rounds makes some attack on his foes claiming they are lying about him, in a few days somebody drops another political bomb on his campaign and shows he is lying or has a mental problem.
Denise Ross in a column in the Mitchell Daily Republic puts another nail in Mike Rounds partisan political coffin. Link--- Denise Rose on Chinese Investor and Rounds.
The link might work for only a few days. It is in the snail mail version of the paper. It keeps gettting thinner and thinner, but often worth subscribing to even if its editorial page is often a manure spreader for wingnut right mythology.
*** Stay tuned, these are interesting days--- Doug Wiken
The pro and con ads are just hitting South Dakota Television concerning Iniatiated Measure 17 relating to AWP--Any Willing Provider (of medical services). I frankly don't yet know which way to vote on this. There is information available however and it indicates actual supporters and opponents saying what the initiative really is and really isn't. What I have found so far is in links below and I am not sure if it is wise to trust any of them.
Cory Heidelberger writing on 3 initiatives at South Dakota Magazine
SD Patient Choice Yes on Initiative 17
No to Higher Medical Costs No on Initiative 17
Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce Position Reject Initiative 17
SD Patient Choice Yes on I17..Explanation of a medical cost study
SD Attorney General on Initiated Measure 17
This is a list of opponents to Initiated Measure 17 from No On Initiative 17 site: Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce, SD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, SD Association of HealthCare Providers, Regional Health, Sanford Health, Independent Insurance Agents, AHIP-American Health Insurance Plans, WellMark BlueCross BlueShield, Avera Health Plans, Sanford Health Plan.
We have some of the plans above. I'm not sure if their opposition is a good reason to vote against or for the measure. The same however can probably be said for this list of Supporters of Initiative 17: SD Medical Association, SD Chiropractic Assoc, SD Academy of Physician Assistants, SD Orthopedic Assoc, SD Physical Therapy Assoc, SD Dental Association, Independent Healthcare Associates. If you check the link with this list, and scroll down, you can find their position papers on this issue.
I don't know if any of the above will help any of us make a rational decision on this initiative or not. What do you think about the issue and the TV ads, etc.?
I guess I am not the only one wondering about this. The link below indicates it is dividing the SD Republican Party.
Health care ballot measure divides SD Republicans
NOTE: Above link added on October 4, 2014.
***Stay Tuned even if the issues are foggy on a clear day--- Doug Wiken
Bill Moyers finds some interesting people. Below is a brief partial summary of a recent show. The full transcript is available at the site.
As world leaders converge for the UN’s global summit on climate and thousands gather in New York for the People’s Climate March, Bill talks to 18-year-old Oregonian Kelsey Juliana, who is walking across America to draw attention to global warming.
Kelsey Juliana comes by her activism naturally – her parents met in the 1990’s while fighting the logging industry’s destruction of old growth forests and she attended her first protest when she was two months old.
Now just out of high school, she’s co-plaintiff in a major lawsuit being spearheaded by Our Children’s Trust that could force the state of Oregon to take a more aggressive stance against the carbon emissions warming the earth and destroying the environment. She’s walking across America as part of the Great March for Climate Action, due to arrive in Washington, DC, on November 1.
More information and photos at Bill Moyers--Climate Change the Next Generation
I doubt there are many other 18-year-old girls (or boys for that matter) that convey such an articulate, informed stature. She makes a very good presentation and case for "climate justice". If you did not see it, take time to read the transcript or watch it online. I think you will be surprised.
We should all be glad that some parents and some educators can still turnout kids that help renew faith in the current younger generation.
And, sort of related to the urgency of the above related to climate change, this afternoon, SDPB-TV ran a show on the extinction of the passenger pigeon. In less than 28 years, millions (or billions) of passenger pigeons were gone. The movie is titled "From Billions to One." This is a cautionary tale. Bison approached such a near extinction, but were saved. Now, there is an attempt to regenerate passenger pigeons from their DNA.
Our continued use of fossil fuels and failure to develope solar and wind energy resources have the potential to make humans and all other mammal life extinct in the world. Some scientists, both theoretical and boots on the ground, are claiming that we might be in an irreversible decline if governments do not act very soon.
A few links follow: NASA-Funded study--Industrial society headed for irreversible collapse? Another link with comment on same study
The nub of the idea:
The report stressed, however, that the worst-case scenario of collapse is not inevitable, and called on action now from the so-called real world “Elites” to restore economic balance.
“Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion,” the scientists said.
It is time we all realized that it is not a fairy tale that the sky may really be falling. The climate change deniers and the fundamentalist religious assumption that only God influences climate are dangerous to our species very existence. Some of the US established religions are demonstrating concern however. Faith Groups and Climate A Pastoral Message on Climate Change.
***Stay tuned, but beware retrograde partisans ignorant of science and/or pandering to the fossil-fuels industries (Such as Thune, Rounds, & Noem-- Doug Wiken
The Bill Moyers show this week (June 22-29, 2014) featured an interview with Chuck Lewis who has written a book titled 935 Lies.... Here is Transcript etc of the show.
Found at the link for the transcript was a link to a database of the lies that led to the Iraq War. Search the database of liars by clicking on their photos:
For regular readers of Salon Online Magazine in those days and related comments in the now gone Table Talk Forum, the lies were obvious long before the war. Our congress critters refused to look at the evidence and source of the lies. Something in the area of 5000 US and other soldiers died, tens of thousands were injured, many will carry the emotional and psychiatric scars of that war for the rest of their lives.
As was powerfully indicated in the Moyers Show, the future of our system as a real democracy depends on determining truth and falsity in government propaganda. That requires determined digging and prodding journalists who need our support when even a "liberal" President Obama goes after whistle blowers and truth tellers with the kind of bureacratic vengeance not even seen by the morally rotten Bush, Jr. Administration.
And, we still need explanations from our own Senator Tim Johnson on why he suckered for the lies or went along with them when he had been provided ample evidence that the Bush War Card was a nearly complete and total fraud. We have let all of our congress critters in those days get off without an explanation for their incompetence or willing intelligence failure in the runup to the Iraq war.
And, in recent news is a bunch of partisan crap about how the IRS scrutinized right wing money-making schemes and propaganda devices when they went after tax exemptions. Several hundred e-mails apparently disappeared when hard drives failed BEFORE the GOP demand which produced something like 70,000 e-mails despite the computer crashes. In the Moyers show, is a note that the Bush-Cheney administration used corporate e-mail to avoid scrutiny inevitable with government e-mail systems and that 10,000,000 of those e-mails related to the Iraq war and presumably to the money-making schemes of the industrial war machine were destroyed.
*** Stay tuned...and never trust without proof and always verify--- Doug Wiken
One way or another we all pay for excessive drinking by absorbing social and economic costs associated with the deadbeat irresponsible liquor industry and sychophants in legislatures and the US Congress. The Center for Disease Control has released new information on the costs of excessive drinking. Excessive drinking is the consequence of any drinking by those genetically predisposed to alcoholism or those who care only about their own perverted pleasure without regard to social costs.
The full extent of those costs may be underestimated by the CDC, but their current estimate are social costs of just the excessive drinkers (let alone those who think they can drink responsibly) is in the neighborhood of $240 Billion per year. We all pay those costs whether we ever touch a drop of alcohol because we pay taxes and we buy car insurance and we pay health insurance.
Excessive drinkers also pay one cost disproportionate to the rest of us however. They are 1 in 10 of the extra deaths between 24 and 60. That is not even grim satisfaction however since in the process they can make life hell for their families and co-workers. Note added link as of June30,2014: Northern Plains news on SD as Microcosm of National Alcohol-related Deaths from CDC Data.
You can read the transcript of the PBS Newshour interview with Dr. Robert Brewer of the CDC at PBS NEWS HOUR-Why We're all paying the costs of excessive drinking.
Increased taxes on alcohol and individual licenses to purchase beverage alcohol should cover the whole $240 Billion in losses and costs. If those of us who are responsible can't get a reduction in vehicle insurance, we should at least use the tax mechanisms to dump those taxes into the social good instead of not having them and thus providing a huge subsidy to the deadbeat irresponsible beverage alcohol industry.
The failure to tax the liquor business sufficiently is an outrage. It is like having warlords stealing from all of us and murdering thousands each year in alcohol-related highway crashes and gun deaths and violence on families fueled by alcohol sales and inevitable abuse from the inevitable addiction and drug dependency. Yes, alcohol is a drug. It is an anesthetic. The failure to tax alcoholic beverages to cover unnecessary costs also makes them less expensive. Increasing taxes would also reduce consumption.
It is time for responsible citizens and legislators to get off their and our asses and make the boozers and booze peddlers pay their fair share of all the unnecessary costs their greed shifts to the rest of society. Time to raise hell.
*** Stay tuned and drive sober-- Doug Wiken
One of my highschool and college friends has accumulated a lot of links. Many relate to South Dakota even though he has spent most of his adult life outside South Dakota.
Take a look at his Notebook of Links. You may find some related to software and South Dakota places and people that you might not find elsewhere. Every now and then, my blog data shows a hit from his notebook. Dozens of times I have thought I should add that page to links here and never remember to do it. This time I remembered.
*** Stay tuned, you never know who will turn up in South Dakota..President Obama, Tom Brokaw -- Doug Wiken
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