I was curious as to whether the South Dakota Fusion Center (no, not the secret lab at Mines where the grad students brew moonshine with cold fusion) had gotten corporate-fascist briefings from TransCananda on potential Keystone XL protests. The Canadian company has told Nebraska law enforcement that folks taking pictures and asking questions are potential eco-terrorists; I'd like to know if TransCanada propagandists have said similar things to South Dakota officials about Bret Clanton, Phyllis Cole-Dai, Vi Waln, and other nice South Dakotans who've expressed misgivings about running another tar sands pipeline through our state.

Homeland Security probably already knows I'm curious thanks to NSA surveillance. But I wrote to the South Dakota Fusion Center anyway:

I'm curious: has the South Dakota Fusion Center received materials or briefings pertaining to possible protest activities against TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline? If so, can your office make those materials available for public review? [CAH, e-mail, 2013.06.17]

The South Dakota Department of Public Safety responds this morning:

Dear Sir, [again, formal letter: colon, not comma!]

Thank you for your request for information. We are unable to  respond to your request in any specific way due to provisions of SDCL 1-27-1.5 (5), 1-27-1.5 (8), 1-27-1.5 (27) and provisions of the South Dakota Fusion Center Privacy Policy. Our privacy policy is available on our website at:

http://www.dps.sd.gov/homeland_security/documents/SDFusionCenterPrivacyPolicy.pdf

[Jenna E. Howell, Director, Division of Legal and Regulatory Services, South Dakota Department of Public Safety, e-mail, 2013.06.19]

No soup for you, press! Here are the open records exceptions DPS cites:

(5)      Records developed or received by law enforcement agencies and other public bodies charged with duties of investigation or examination of persons, institutions, or businesses, if the records constitute a part of the examination, investigation, intelligence information, citizen complaints or inquiries, informant identification, or strategic or tactical information used in law enforcement training. However, this subdivision does not apply to records so developed or received relating to the presence of and amount or concentration of alcohol or drugs in any body fluid of any person, and this subdivision does not apply to a 911 recording or a transcript of a 911 recording, if the agency or a court determines that the public interest in disclosure outweighs the interest in nondisclosure. This law in no way abrogates or changes §§ 23-5-7 and 23-5-11 or testimonial privileges applying to the use of information from confidential informants;

...(8)      Information solely pertaining to protection of the security of public or private property and persons on or within public or private property, such as specific, unique vulnerability assessments or specific, unique response plans, either of which is intended to prevent or mitigate criminal acts, emergency management or response, or public safety, the public disclosure of which would create a substantial likelihood of endangering public safety or property; computer or communications network schema, passwords, and user identification names; guard schedules; lock combinations; or any blueprints, building plans, or infrastructure records regarding any building or facility that expose or create vulnerability through disclosure of the location, configuration, or security of critical systems;

...(27)      Any other record made closed or confidential by state or federal statute or rule or as necessary to participate in federal programs and benefits.

The South Dakota Fusion Center's privacy policy says that individuals may review information about them collected by the Fusion Center "for the purpose of challenging the accuracy or completeness of the information"; however, the Fusion Center can still deny that access if they determine disclosure would interfere with an ongoing investigation, endanger the safety of "an individual, organization, or community," or are otherwise deemed confidential or secret.

So if TransCanada is bad-mouthing South Dakotans to our law enforcement officials, we probably aren't going to find out about it, not without a lot of lawyering.

Our Governor Dennis Daugaard and Texas Governor Rick Perry both visited Connecticut this week to try luring gun manufacturers to relocate or expand their operations away from the tyranny and oppression of sensible and popular gun control laws. Knowing that portraying Connecticutters as effete East Coast anti-gun elites, Governor Daugaard dispatches Pat Costello to call Texans lazy:

"South Dakotans show up for work on time. They put in a good day's labor for fair wages. And have lower instances of absenteeism. So there's just a host of things. So if there's anything that would set us apart from Texas, I think it would be our workforce," Costello said [Sammi Bjelland, "Gov. Daugaard Visits Connecticut Gun Makers," KELOLand.com, 2013.06.18].

Get ready for a quick draw contest at the next Republican Governors' Association meeting.

I don't have stats to verify Costello's claim on absenteeism (and he's making the positive claim here, so I challenge to produce such stats, along with an itemization of his "host of things"). But here's some statistical speculation:

• Hispanics make up 38.1% of the Texas population.
• Hispanics make up 2.9% of the South Dakota population.
• Hispanics have slightly lower rates of absences and work time missed than white folks.

South Dakotans work hard. So do a lot of other Americans. Trying to convince gun manufacturers that South Dakotans work harder than Texans probably isn't adding any value to South Dakota's sales pitch.

From the Unfortunate Juxtaposition Department, Governor Dennis Daugaard is away in Connecticut trying to convince gun manufacturers that South Dakota is a great place for guns. Meanwhile, South Dakota law enforcement scrambles to deal with gunslingers whom we shouldn't trust with guns.

First, a guy with a history of domestic violence and alleged mental illness shoots two people and himself in Clear Lake:

Brett M. Pommer barricaded himself in his home after allegedly shooting two females before 9 p.m., according to the South Dakota Attorney General’s Office. SWAT teams from Codington County and Highway Patrol found Pommer’s body after no contact was made when they attempted to negotiate.

...Three women, including Pommer’s then-wife, have filed protection orders against him since 2003. Pommer and his wife divorced earlier this year with the wife citing adultery and irreconcilable differences, according to Deuel County court documents. The couple had married in 2005 and lived at 925 Third Ave., the same address where the shooting took place.

Last September, Pommer’s wife filed a protection order against him in Deuel County after he allegedly threw their son on a basement couch while the two were watching TV, according to court documents. His wife stated in the documents that they were in the process of getting a divorce and Pommer was bipolar and did not always take his medication [Dalton Walker, "Clear Lake Shooting Suspect Had History of Domestic Violence, Documents Show," that Sioux Falls paper, 2013.06.18].

And in West River, police have to shoot a rifle-toting two-time three-time DUI convict and parole jumper:

Travis Will Ross, 43, was shot after he brandished a rife at two Pennington County deputies and a South Dakota Highway Patrol trooper about three miles east of New Underwood on U.S. Highway 14/16.

...According to the South Dakota Department of Corrections, Ross was paroled from a third-offense felony DUI conviction on Nov. 30, 2012. He was paroled to Newell, but was listed as absconded from parole on March 27.

Ross had two third-offense DUIs in just over two years, according to court records.

Ross received a probationary sentence for a third-offense DUI arrest in Pennington County in June 2009, but violated his probation. As a result, he was sentenced to two years in prison in November 2009.

He was apparently on parole when he was again arrested for third-offense DUI in Jackson County in August 2011. That arrest earned him an 18-month sentence that was served consecutive to his parole violation [Andrea J. Cook, "Man Shot by Officers Wanted for Parole Violations," Rapid City Journal, 2013.06.19].

As far as I can tell, South Dakota law doesn't prohibit guys like Pommer and Ross from possessing firearms, because holy cow, you never know when you'll need bipolar child abusers and habitual drunks to join the militia and fight North Korean invaders. You've got to be convicted for a crime of violence or felony drug activity to lose your gun rights in South Dakota. Domestic violence will forfeit your gun rights for just one year.

So come on in, Colt, Stag, and friends! The shooting is fine in South Dakota!

Pat Powers predictably snarkificates on U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson's opening of a Twitter account:

...isn’t raising his profile though the use of social media a political move for someone viewed by many Democrats as the future savior of the South Dakota Democratic Party? And wouldn’t an increased profile keep his name in play…… say, if a current candidate for US Senate named Rick Weiland were to drop out of the race unexpectedly?

I’m just saying [Pat Powers, "Non-Political Brendan Johnson Now on Twitter @Brendan_SD. In a Non-Political Way," Dakota War College, 2013.06.18].

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Pat. You're just saying the same nonsense you've been peddling for months with your oxygen-wasting Brendan-bashing and thoroughly debunked placeholder hypothesis.

Google "Twitter U.S. Attorney." You'll find all sorts of U.S. Attorneys (Massachusetts, Connecticut, North Texas) doing the same thing Brendan Johnson is doing: using social media to connect with the public he serves. Heck, Pat's old boss, Secretary of State Jason Gant, does the same thing. Are we to dismiss the social media accounts Pat set up for Jason as blatant politicking on the public dime (an activity on which Pat and Jason are experts)?

Powers's criticism of U.S. Attorney Johnson's adoption of social media (hey! Brendan's on Facebook, too!) is hypocritical and inimical to open government. Instead of needlessly and baselessly impugning his motives (which will only drive more politicians away from social media), we should welcome Johnson and all other public officials to speak directly to the people they serve through the wonders of the Web.

The National Council on Teacher Quality has issued a report on teacher education programs nationwide. Unlike many of the teacher prep programs they surveyed, NCTQ did not inflate the grades. Out of 1,200 elementary and secondary teacher training programs surveyed, NCTQ gave only four a four-star rating (Furman, Lipscomb, Ohio State, and Vanderbilt universities).

Here's how South Dakota's public teacher education programs rated:

Dakota State, Northern, and the U made the honor roll with their three-star secondary education programs. That honor roll included 9% of the school surveyed nationwide. None of our public universities made the elementary prep honor roll. SDSU and BHSU almost made the NCTQ "consumer alert" list with their one-star ratings in elementary teacher prep.

NCTQ based its ratings on eighteen standards, which they say are based on eight years of development and ten pilot studies. Under those standards, here are NCTQ's biggest beefs:

• It is far too easy to get into a teacher preparation program. Just over a quarter of programs restrict admissions to students in the top half of their class, compared with the highest-performing countries, which limit entry to the top third.
• Fewer than one in nine elementary programs and just over one-third of high school programs are preparing candidates in content at the level necessary to teach the new Common Core State Standards now being implemented in classrooms in 45 states and the District of Columbia.
• The “reading wars” are far from over. Three out of four elementary teacher preparation programs still are not teaching the methods of reading instruction that could substantially lower the number of children who never become proficient readers, from 30 percent to under 10 percent. Instead, the teacher candidate is all too often told to develop his or her “own unique approach” to teaching reading.
• Just 7 percent of programs ensure that their student teachers will have uniformly strong experiences, such as only allowing them to be placed in classrooms taught by teachers who are themselves effective, not just willing volunteers [Julie Greenberg, Arthur McKee and Kate Walsh, "Teacher Prep Review," National Council on Teacher Quality, June 2013].

The complaint about lax admission standards may apply to South Dakota. Josh Verges reported earlier this month that students in our public university teaching programs have a slightly lower average ACT score than the general student population. His breakdown of teacher candidate ACT scores by campus finds an interesting though imperfect alignment with the NCTQ ratings. Higher-rated USD has the highest teacher candidate ACT average, 0.1 points higher than its general student ACT average. Lower-rated SDSU has the lowest teacher candidate ACT average, 1.6 points lower than its general student ACT average. But note that DSU's teacher candidates have a slightly lower ACT score than their general campus population without managing to drag DSU's rating down to SDSU or BHSU levels.

So what do we do to improve teacher training? NCTQ makes these recommendations:

1. Get prospective teachers to apply to the school NCTQ rates highly. To South Dakota's benefit, NCTQ recommends the USD, NSU, and DSU secondary ed programs not just for their quality but as bargains!
2. Get school districts to include NCTQ ratings in evaluating candidates (heck: there go my chances, thanks to my SDSU degree!).
3. Place more student teachers with highly qualified teachers, not just willing volunteers.
4. Increase teacher program admission standards: take only students in the top half of their class, and require teacher programs to have average student GPA of 3.2 and ACT of 24 (that would put all South Dakota programs on alert!).
5. Impose tougher tests for teacher licensure (like the teacher bar exam we discussed here in January).
6. Base state funding of teacher prep programs on performance rather than enrollment (and NCTQ notes that South Dakota is moving in this direction).
7. Cap the number of teaching certificates issued each year (since apparently, we're graduating more teacher candidates than we need).

Making teacher preparation more rigorous should be more politically viable in South Dakota than policies targeting our public schools directly. It doesn't cost as much to tighten admission and licensure requirements as imposing more standardized tests or other "reforms" on 152 school districts. Getting less qualified teachers out of the system at the front end, before they even get into a classroom, would solve a lot of the problems that Governor Daugaard's ill-starred pile of school-wrecking 2012 reforms purported to address.

The only problem tougher teacher training would bring is a smaller, even more talented pool of South Dakota teachers who would be even tougher to keep on the job with our last-in-the-nation wages. How about it, South Dakota: if our universities train better teachers, are we willing to pay them the wages they'll demand and deserve?

Last week the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that South Dakota had the lowest positive real GDP growth in the country in 2012. The BEA also reported that South Dakota's real per capita GDP dropped slightly, compared to slight growth nationwide.

But as further proof that there are numbers and then there are numbers, the BEA's new numbers on real personal income show that when you factor in the local cost of living, South Dakotans enjoyed the fastest growth in purchasing power in the nation, 10.4% between 2010 and 2011. (Watch those years: last week's data was 2012; this week's is 2011.) Every state enjoyed growth on this metric: Mississippi had the lowest, 1.3%, while the national average was 2.7%.

Break that purchasing power down per capita, and South Dakota still looks great, growing 9.4% in 2011. The only places with better purchasing power in 2011 were Connecticut and Washington, D.C.

Now that's the data Governor Daugaard needs to put on his Dakota Roots kiosk. Of course, the BEA data for 2011 still doesn't square with the Bureau of Labor Statistics data on average wages and MIT data on living wage, which shows that there are a lot of places (like Minnesota, California, and New York) where the local average wage goes further in feeding a family than it does in South Dakota. So I've got to wonder: is our wealth being concentrated at the top in a way that would make our average real income per capita look great while still leaving a majority of folks struggling?

One oddity from the data: BEA breaks that data down by metro and non-metro areas. In the Sioux Falls and Rapid City metro areas, real per capita personal income grew 4.7% in 2011. In South Dakota's non-metro areas, it grew 13.3%. South Dakota was one of just seven states where real per capita personal income grew faster in non-metro areas than metro areas (the others: Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, and North Dakota). Part of that difference is explained by the fact that the regional price parity in South Dakota's non-metro areas is 8.8 percentage points lower than that in Sioux Falls and Rapid City. (Metros are more costly than non-metros everywhere, with the average disparity 8.8 percentage points.) But the growth disparity also suggests South Dakota's high growth numbers aren't just a result of cash concentrating in the hands of big Sioux Falls bankers.

This fish agrees: Larry would look even better with a mustache.

My offer to endorse State Senator Larry Rhoden in the GOP Senate primary if he grows back his butt-kicking mustache stands. Senator Rhoden tells reporter Woster nothing of his whisker plans, but says he will decide on challenging M. Michael Rounds next month:

"Now that Kristi has announced and we're getting closer to July, I'll have to make a decision, probably sometime next month," he said. "There are issues we're working on right now, as far as trying to put a team together" [Kevin Woster, "Rhoden Considering Run for Republican Senate Primary," Rapid City Journal, 2013.06.14].

Rhoden says he can out-conservative M. Michael Rounds. (News flash: I can out-conservative Mike Rounds.) He may be right:

1. Rhoden will get plenty of local conservative cred with his pro-gun votes on our school gunslinger bill and easing concealed weapon laws.
2. His willingness to pass bad education policy without evidence should endear him to the conservative enemies of science and public education.
3. His pressure for infringement of property rights via limits on conservation limits should rankle conservatives, but they'll take that measure as healthy green-bashing.
4. He's received much less in farm subsidies than Kristi Noem, so he won't have to worry about  some consistent conservative hanging the "corporate welfare queen" label on his neck.
5. Maybe best of all for the misbegotten Howie-Otten activists to whom any Rounds challenger must appeal, Senator Rhoden can blurt that we are a Republic, not a Democracy, to justify his policy positions. The line is elitist and meaningless, but hard-right GOP primary voters love it.

Note also that Rhoden has not yet invoked God's will, ordered an intern to post fake news reports online, or left pictures of his Che Guevara t-shirt on his Facebook profile. (Actually, Larry's Facebook page is pretty boring... but isn't that true for all of us?) He's just doing what real candidates do: floating the trial balloon and talking nuts and bolts about what it will take to beat the frontrunner.

Bill Clinton, Indians, wind turbines—that's got to give South Dakota Republicans heartburn.

The Clinton Global Initiative has announced that six South Dakota tribes are working together to build America's biggest wind farm:

Six South Dakota Sioux Tribes – the Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, Oglala, Rosebud, Sisseton Wahpeton, and Yankton Tribes – have decided to pool their considerable wind power resources to create the largest utility-grade wind installation in the country – a Project funded by $1.75-3 Billion in bonds issued through a multi-Tribal power authority.

...This will be a “first” in many respects: the first use of public power bonds in a project of this type; the first time multiple Tribes have cooperated in an economic development project of this size and scope; the first new joint municipal power authority formed in the U.S. in decades. And it will be a market driven initiative – start-up costs will be funded by private grants and investments, and the Project development costs will be fully funded by Power Authority bonds. The Project will not rely on federal tax credits.

...Together, our Tribes cover 16% of the total land area of South Dakota, and have the capacity to develop as much as 58 Gigawatts of power while producing zero emissions. By producing at least 1-2 Gigawatts, our Project will more than double the installed wind-power capacity in South Dakota (currently only 784 megawatts) and add 2-3% to the total amount of wind-power generated in the United States [Byron Dorgan et al., "Unleashing the Powers of the Wind and the Great Sioux Nation," Clinton Global Initiative, 2013.06.14].

Here's the project video explaining the motivation and funding for the project:

Plan boosters say the Sioux Wind project could inject $3 billion into South Dakota's economy.