Rapid City fails in referendum on race relations; Corps funding was nixed by House Republicans

A squalid 32% of registered voters turned out to affirm Mayor Alan Hanks' leadership on the continued racial profiling being perpetrated by white members of the Rapid City Police Department. The results lead this blogger to conclude that the other 68% believe that entrenched race hatred is acceptable and popular.

After smoking out a respected progressive member of the Rapid City intelligentsia at Madville Times yesterday in an effort to get a sense of the crippled Democrats' role in the status quo, this messenger came away with little hope that Native Americans living in Rapid City will ever enjoy equal civil rights.

The Buffalo Post feed alerted ip to this Indian Country Today story:

Obtaining internal documents under Canada’s Access to Information Act, Russell Diabo and Shiri Pasternak found a concerted, complex effort to gather information about what the government termed “hot spots” in the aboriginal community, as well as coordinate enforcement efforts with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), they reported in the current edition of the newsletter First Nations Strategic Bulletin. As the authors point out, besides perhaps expecting some opposition to his initial Conservative agenda from First Nations opposition, Harper “was also clearly taking a hard line on aboriginal & treaty rights and moving toward a security paradigm familiar since the War on Terror was launched in 2001.”

Rapid City is a failed community. It's reliance on nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base and on Republican-owned Rapid City Regional Hospital System of Carelessness forces complicity in historic hatred of non-whites.

As the mayoral election heads for a June 28 runoff that will likely put radical christian Sam Kooiker at the helm, voters will mull the responsibility for stemming further police oppression as it falls on Democrats Ritchie Nordstrom, after a runoff with Deb Hadcock, and Jerry Wright to lead from the City Council.

The Lincoln, Nebraska JournalStar ran this fascinating letter dated February 4. Here's a snip:

Earmarks of federal funds for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control studies and projects have a different approval process from many other earmarks. In fact, historically and currently, the only way federal funds are provided for corps projects is a line-item appropriation for a previously authorized project. Congressional members during the appropriations process may request funding for specific corps projects, but only if the projects have been authorized previously by congressional action. These are known as "congressional adds." So, to label all federal earmarks as pet projects or pork is woefully inaccurate because of the planning and analysis process used by the corps and required by Congress.

South Dakota's Republican governor warned us today on Bill Janklow's idea of public radio that it is not yet time to assign blame for flooding. That statement alone makes him a "person of interest" in the crime.