Feud-schmeud! (I think that's a farm supply company in Hecla.)

Getting the consultants he hired to put an article about his progressive cred in the Huffington Post is no big deal for the Rick Weiland Senate campaign. Getting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to draw daylight between Washington Democrats and Weiland is:

In a brief interview last week, Reid didn’t hide his frustration with the way the South Dakota race is shaping up.

“We’re going to have a candidate there; we don’t have it yet,” Reid told POLITICO.

When asked whether he would ever back Weiland, Reid was emphatic in his opposition.

“He’s not my choice,” Reid said [John Bresnahan and Manu Raju, "Harry Reid, Tom Daschle Feud over S.D. Senate Seat," Politico, 2013.05.20].

Imagine Weiland lining up the best of both worlds. He tacks left to win the support of the truer blue anti-Blue Dog South Dakota Dems. Yet he gets the power elite in D.C. to poo-poo him, allowing him to tout his independent streak and let less partisan South Dakota voters know that he's their guy, not the creature of some Washington machine. He defuses the predictable GOP attacks that will put his face next to cardboard cut-outs of their national level Tea-Party bogeyDems.

Senator Reid's crankiness is no big deal. If it's real, it's a sign that he's letting some Washington power-game snarkiness cloud his view of the facts on the ground and of any real understanding of what's happening in South Dakota. Weiland may not be Reid's choice, but even if Pat O'Brien goes nuts and enters the race, Weiland is South Dakota Democrats' choice.

Well, heck: if I'm going to be on some South Dakota emergency management terrorist watch list, I might as well be at the top of that list!

No one needs to send a bomb threat to make this point: booming domestic oil production and decreasing supply (we talked about this on Sunday!) make the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline unnecessary to national security:

Given the American petroleum boom, it is now harder to make the case that the oil the line would carry is vitally needed to quench the nation's thirst for fuel.

Instead, analysts say that in this era of plenty the Keystone’s main function isn't meeting U.S. needs, but getting oil from the land-locked province of Alberta to overseas markets via U.S. refineries on the Texas coast. Two pipeline projects from Alberta to the Canadian coast face such stiff opposition that some analysts say they're unlikely to be built.

..."With this outlook, why would the United States need the controversial Keystone XL pipeline?" asked Earle Gray, the former editor of Oilweek magazine and author of several books about Canadian oil, in the Toronto Star.

"We do not really need the oil," said an editorial entitled "Pipeline to Nowhere" by Jerald L. Schnoor, editor in chief of Environmental Science & Technology, published this month by the American Chemical Society. Schnoor said the real key to securing energy independence is to use less oil [John H. Cushman, Jr., "With U.S. Awash in Oil, Nat'l Interest Argument for Keystone Weakens," Inside Climate News, 2013.05.21].

The boom threatening the Keystone XL pipeline isn't some eco-terrorists dreamed up by corporate fascists. It's Americans producing more oil and using less. That's what really terrifies the oil profiteers.

And now I think I'll walk to work.

Phillip Abernathy, Custer banker and president of the Custer Area Economic Development Corporation, says on the Custer Chamber of Commerce website that that his organization will host an informational meeting on Powertech's proposed uranium mining project in the southern Black Hills tonight in Custer:

An informational meeting about the proposed Dewey-Murdock [sic] uranium project will be held at 6:00pm on Wednesday May 22nd at the Fire Hall meeting room. Raymond Johnson from the United States Geological Survey, Dr. James Munro PE, PHD, and Ben Snow Director of Rapid City Economic Development Corporation will all give a presentation on various aspects of the project. This meeting is being put on by the Custer Area Economic Development Corporation [Phillip Abernathy, Custer Chamber Buffalo Bytes, 2013.05.16].

(That's Dewey-Burdock, for those of you Googling at home.)

Johnson and Snow have done a Powertech dog-and-pony show like this before. Munro gets draws a paycheck from Powertech (assuming the company still has the cash to issue paychecks).

Evidently Custer's economic developers aren't interested in including in their program speakers who could address the impact that depleted and degraded water supplies and the release of radioactive material could have on the agriculture and tourism aspects of their economic development. I guess decent folks who see serious risks in permitting in situ uranium mining in the Black Hills and the Cheyenne River watershed will have to raise their concerns with questions from the audience at tonight's Custer meeting.

But be careful: speak up too loudly, and the Custer Emergency Response Office may put you on a terrorist watch list.

Has your government ever labelled you a potential terrorist? My state government may have just done that to me.

Last Tuesday, May 14, five Black Hills school districts—Rapid City, Sturgis, Deadwood, Custer, and Hot Springs—participated in a terrorism response drill. County and state emergency response personnel also participated. Here's how Curt Nettinga describes the scripted events in Hot Springs:

While the drill actually commenced at 12:30 p.m., things began early when a bus driver reported a suspicious SUV with several people following during his morning route. Next, a letter handed to a student at the Elementary School over the lunch hour is turned in to Principal. The letter threatens that “things dear to everyone will be destroyed unless continuation of the Keystone pipeline and uranium mining is stopped immediately.”

While the entire scenario was scripted, the use of pertinent and timely issues seemed to make it more realistic. Similar letters were scripted to have been sent to the other respective schools, each of which had slightly different scenarios presented to them [Curt Nettinga, "Mock Drill Has Positive Results," Hot Springs Star, 2013.05.21].

Wait a minute: Canadian companies threaten South Dakotans' land rights, water quality, and safety, and public officials in South Dakota tell kids to be afraid of citizens who have the audacity to stand against that foreign corporate agenda? Good grief! If our public officials can weave that kind of propaganda into their emergency exercises, I think they've just given me license to label them, TransCanada, and Powertech as corporate fascists.

Let me be clear: blowing up schools has never entered my head as a moral or effective response to TransCanada's or Powertech's predations. But I want to know whoever's head it did enter.

Whose cockamamie idea was it that scripting an imagined eco-terrorist agenda into an emergency readiness exercise would help teachers lock their doors faster, would help kids be quieter, or would help bomb squads find the fake bombs faster? Seriously, I want a name. I want an agency. Whose idea was it to label the political opponents of South Dakota's Canadian energy sell-out—people like me—as likely terrorist threats?

Here's good reason for Mayor Dana Boke to declare Wednesday a "Show up an Hour Late for Work" day in Spearfish: folks should all get a break to drive out and look at Bridal Veil Falls.

Usually the wispy Spearfish Canyon cascade looks like this:

Bridal Veil Falls, Spearfish Canyon, Sunday, August 28, 2011

This evening, after five days of heavy rain and drizzle, Bridal Veil Falls looks and sounds like this:

Spearfish Creek is raging through the whole canyon. The water is spilling over the dam four miles up from town, where the creek usually seeps down into the rocky ground and does not re-emerge until the hydro plant on the south edge of the City Park. Now muddy water is churning through the usually dry creek bad all the way to Spearfish. Awesome!

John Hult offers a good thorough discussion of the ins and outs of the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendation that states lower the blood-alcohol threshold for DUI charges to 0.05%. The policy and enforcement folks Hult talks to don't sound enthusiastic. But Judge Larry Long tells Hult that back in the 1970s, he had trouble getting juries to convict drunk drivers for exceeding the then-BAC limit of 0.15.

I like this summary of the question from Hult:

We all know people who think they’re okay after a few drinks. We all know people who have a higher tolerance and seem unaffected after drinking enough to lay another person out. Some of us have heard stories about Uncle Joe So-And-So who drank 12 beers a night at Yakadee Smack’s Downtown Pub for 20 years and drove home all the time but never hurt anyone.

Setting the bar at a certain level is society’s way of saying it doesn’t matter how lucky Mr. So-And-So has been. Once a person gets X amount of alcohol in their system, the science says it’s too risky for that person to get behind the wheel.

Let’s put it this way: It’s conceivable that there are people out there who, under the right circumstances, could drive away from a place at midnight with no headlights on and still make it home without a wreck. That doesn’t mean the person gets a pass on a law that says you need to drive with your headlights on after hours.

So that’s what the debate is about on a broader level, but changes to the legal limit have serious, real-world consequences in court [John Hult, "Is a .05 blood alcohol limit a possibility in South Dakota?" Amicus Lector, 2013.05.17].

As a teetotaler, I'm not the guy you want making the rules. I would suggest that if you're driving, you're not drinking. Period. There is no compelling reason to have any alcohol in your system when you're operating the deadliest household equipment in the country. When alcohol is the third-leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. and traffic collisions are seventh, we're justified in drawing a pretty strict line between alcohol and driving.

David Newquist hopes his one-year-old grandson can find his way out of Aberdeen and South Dakota. Dr. Newquist deems South Dakota hopeless for Democrats of ambition and good conscience. As usual, his full essay is worth reading, as it ties many issues together. Here are some key passages:

...South Dakota is mired down by prejudicial, bigoted attitudes, and people who want productive and contributory lives come to the realization that they must either move or resign themselves to hoping that they can make changes that make such lives possible.

...Accomplishments in academics and professional life outside of South Dakota are lethal, particularly if those places carry the aura of prestige. Many South Dakotans hate accomplishment and performance that exceed anything that might raise the level of expectations in South Dakota.  The GOP has been successful in fanning that resentful sense of inferiority into a political rage that wins elections.  If you hold degrees from institutions that demonstrate excellence and you manage to accomplish things in high places, you have committed the unforgivable sin against South Dakota.  Unless the state needs someone of such attainment and accomplishment to go to Washington to bolster the federal subsidies on which the state depends for its existence, it will not elect such a person to Congress.

...And there is the matter of opportunity in South Dakota.  The Governor actually went to the Mall of America to try to recruit young people to the state.   There are number of groups touting life in South Dakota and attempting to lure young people to return.  I spent the past week with  a large number of young people who have left South Dakota.  When telling them of the efforts to lure young people, the inevitable reply is, "To do what?"  One of the emigrants said it was her intention to return, but after the elections of 2004 and 2010, she said the state showed an aspect of life that is simply too discouraging.  She is among those who started her education in the state, but finished out-of-state.  She said there is no opportunity in the state to use her degree, and the fact that she earned hers out-of-state would always be a demerit.  She will build her life where she has opportunity to do so [David Newquist, "Where Are All the Young Democrats?" Northern Valley Beacon, 2013.05.20].

I sometimes feel like we South Dakota Democrats are bowling alone. Can we Dems get a league together when culture and demographics and crony-corporate political money keep busting our balls?

I invite my readers to submit their signs of hope for building a state where Dr. Newquist would not be afraid to see his grandson live and work.

Various South Dakota Tea Party folks (bothersomely anonymous on their website and Facebook page, so I can only assume they are South Dakotans) are raising fuss and feathers over the Common Core standards. I wouldn't mind if they got some traction: the Common Core standards do more to distract my teaching colleagues and my administrators from making your kids smarter than to help us improve our daily practical public service.

But when the opponents' complaints include the fact that the South Dakota Department of Education has changed its Common Core logo from a sort of Howard Johnson's blue-orange spirograph to a snappy red flame with eye-catching text, I can only shake my head.

If the Tea Partiers really want to challenge Common Core, they should focus on analyzing and refuting the propaganda offered by Common Core backers like Pam Haukaas, president of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota. Her May 8 column (part of an increasing flow of Common Core explications and defenses I'm seeing from South Dakota education officials, an apparent effort to counter the surging Glenn Beck karaoke against the standards) cloaks the Common Core standards in all sorts of glowing statements that are really backhanded insults to the work we teachers work hard to do independently of whatever bureaucratic distractions the powers in Pierre impose upon us.

Students won’t just memorize facts, but will be able to master increasingly difficult problems and text [Pam Haukaas, "What Is Common Core?" ASBSD: Open Forum, 2013.05.08].

This statement fails on three levels:

1. It implies that we teachers are just making students memorize facts right now. That implication is wrong.
2. In addition to the problem-solving and critical thinking that we teach regularly without Common Core, we do teach a fair amount of memorizing facts. What's wrong with memorizing some facts? For instance, on page 60 of my French 2 textbook, I give my students a list of sixteen French verbs that use être instead of avoir has their past tense helping verb. I don't need them to think critically about that; I need them to memorize that list so they can get on with building sentences, telling stories, and engaging in conversations.
3. The Common Core standards don't magically make fact-memorization go away or make kids better at reading tougher texts. Good teachers will keep doing that, as we have been since before Common Core was born to recodify our professional practices.

As districts begin to implement these standards, professional development time will be required for teachers to become familiar with the standards and to collaborate with peers to design district appropriate curricula [Haukaas, 2013.05.08].

Translation for Tea Partiers: Your school district will spend time and your money pulling teachers away from your kids and your classrooms to spend time reinventing the pretty good curriculum wheels they already have.

The Common Core will focus on the student as learners with teachers teaching for understanding and mastery of core areas [Haukaas, 2013.05.08].

Focus on the student as learners—not only does that sentence lack number agreement (one student is multiple learners?), but it doesn't say anything new. Did we not focus on students as learners pre-Common Core? Hasn't learning always been our main enterprise? Don't we always teach for understanding? Haven't we already built our curricula around mastery of core areas? This isn't a brave new world forged by Common Core; this is the kind of fluff folks in education (including, sometimes, we teachers) start saying to ourselves when we have to make the latest, greatest education reform sound like some new and useful revolution.

No longer will a text be followed from page one simply plodding through until the end; teachers will use multiple resources so that students will experience a curriculum which has meaning as well as depth and rigor. Students will develop the ability to apply learned knowledge to solve new problems and think critically [Haukaas, 2013.05.08].

Again, the insulting implication is that teachers right now plod through their textbooks, and that Common Core standards will save your children from such dull incompetence. Au contraire: I get the distinct impression that the whole point of Common Core is to make curriculum more uniform across the state and across the country. Common Core is supposed to make it easier for children to move from school district to school district without discontinuities in their learning. That advantage accrues only if different school districts align the scope and sequence of their classes more closely to standards. Publishers will provide textbooks closely aligned to the standards, complete with recommendations for and links to multimedia resources to satisfy Common Core. To thus prove their fidelity to Common Core, teachers and administrators will stick even more closely to their new textbooks with the little tabs on each page proving exactly which standards we are teaching in each lesson.

See, Tea Partiers? That's how you tackle Common Core. Forget the logo; attack the logos.