Letter: Thune, Rounds Ellsworth amendment already dead

Two Ellsworth-based B-1 bombers have already augured in just miles apart in southeastern Montana.

Headline news: "Base closure prohibition included in defense bill." It goes on to quote the two S.D. senators who brag how they attached amendments that would save Ellsworth. The only thing missing from this article was these same two senators knew weeks ago that this bill was going nowhere. It did give them and their fellow senators an opportunity to attach language that would both bloat the defense bill and allow them to say they were working for the folks back home. Sure enough, just minutes after the bill passed the Senate, a bill to fund it failed — an important fact missing from this article. So it begs the question: What was the Journal’s source for this article? A free an unbiased press should fact-check politicians. The Journal failed in this case. [LTE, John Walsh, Deadwood, links added]

Colonel Gentry Bosworth, the new commander of Ellsworth Air Force Base is getting heat from higher-ups as the Federal Aviation Administration reviews the final environmental impact of the expansion of a bomber range.

"I understand that there's still some contention about the Powder River Training Complex," he said. "And the bottom line at Ellsworth here is we're committed to being good neighbors and partners to the community as a whole, in South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming -- everybody that's affected." [KELO teevee]

The FAA is keeping the PRTC expansion grounded for now because of its collision with general aviation.

For all the talk of small government and local control South Dakota is driven by public sector employment. Conservation and forestry workers are the state's most distinctive jobs.