Homeless counts soar under Daugaard

Update, 8 July, 0900 MDT, Dakota Free Press brings affirmation: South Dakotans Spend Triple Nat’l Average Per Capita on Lottery.

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Video lootery, lousy wages, payday loan sharks, ecological devastation, STIs, racism, suicides, teen binge drinking, despair: these are the Daugaard years.

Officials have counted 1,036 homeless people in South Dakota, about 17 percent more than last year. The homeless count was conducted in January by the South Dakota Housing for the Homeless Consortium in collaboration with community agencies and homeless service providers. The count in 2014 found 885 homeless people. [KDLT teevee]

As South Dakota's GOP congressional delegation bangs the drums of war veterans are being ignored.

The most recent survey estimated that 467 veterans in South Dakota are homeless, defined as living on the streets, in a car, with friends and family or in a motel, says Chuck Albrecht, a Vietnam veteran who volunteers with the Sioux Falls Vet Center. [Sioux Falls Argus Leader]

So much for the sanctity of human life.

As GOP Governor Dennis Daugaard continues to fail key leadership tests South Dakota stumbles again on access to affordable medical care.

A new Gallup survey has found that the two states with the most dramatic drop in their respective rates of uninsured are Kentucky and Arkansas, both deeply red in presidential years. Red states that did not expand Medicaid or embrace a state-run exchange, however, continue to have brutally high rates of uninsured. All 10 of the states with the highest uninsured rates have refused to carry out those two key parts of Obamacare. "States that have implemented two of the law's core mechanisms -- Medicaid expansion and state health exchanges -- are seeing a substantially larger drop in the uninsured rate than states that did not take both of these actions," Gallup announced. "Consequently, the gap in uninsured rates that existed between these two groups in 2013 nearly doubled in 2014." [Ryan Grim]

In a surprise to no one South Dakota hates women's rights the most and where women seeking certain medical procedures face higher hurtles than in any other state.

A trustworthy or scrupulous At-large US Representative would set partisan politics aside, call out South Dakota's governor for putting the lives of the state's residents at risk and urge him to expand Medicaid coverage for the working class.