Senator Corey Brown (R-23/Gettysburg) wants to spend $100,000 of your tax dollars on a submarine.
Senate Bill 114 seeks $100,000 to support the commissioning of the U.S. Navy’s next fast-attack submarine, which the Navy intends to christen the U.S.S. South Dakota. Senator Brown explained to the Joint Committee on Appropriations yesterday that this $100,000 is “seed money” for a private committee that will coordinate efforts to bring submarine crew members to South Dakota, stage “education” programs for the public, and “have a significant presence as part of that [christening] ceremony.” The committee anticipates receiving $100,000 from the sub’s defense contractor and raising another $100,000-plus from private donors. State Military Department chief Steve Harding says the committee plans to commission commemorative items—coin set, firearm, motorcycle—and even plan ahead to build a memorial for the submarine after its expected thirty-year lifespan. Among those plans is having that commemorative motorcycle in a garage, tuned up and ready for any USS South Dakota sailor to ride in the Black Hills.
In a sterling demonstration of the absurdity of legislative language, SB 114 declares this funding an “emergency”… because not having gifts and hors d’oeuvres for visiting Naval dignitaries and airplane tickets for Senator Brown to attend the christening is clearly an emergency.
Consider: The Navy is building a ship. It will be named for our state. We’re already paying for it with $2.6 billion of our federal taxes pouring into the military-industrial complex. Senator Brown wants to throw state money at this submarine in ways that have nothing to do with contributing to our national security (which is the only reason to spend money on a submarine) and everything to do with celebrating war, right down to bringing military propaganda disguised as STEM lessons (mentioned by fundraising committee finance chairman Tom Muenster in yesterday’s testimony) into our classrooms to tell our kids how they should study math and physics so they can help build more wonderful weapons of war.
Parties and tchotchkes for a submarine that will bear the name South Dakota may be nice, but they don’t constitute an “emergency” or a necessary public expense for the state that bears the name. The submarine committee asking for this funding can surely find more than enough money to give submariners motorcycle rides from private donations.
I prefer the Operation Petticoat version.
If this submarine is like the F-35 boondoggle or that ship that will tip over in tall waves and the engine quit 20 minutes from shore, forget it. We need the money for roads, bridges and other infrastructure worse.
Fiscal conservative my @$$! I’m a motorcycle guy, but there are plenty for rent west river if the USS SD sailors want to come to Sturgis.
Looks like there is a majority of the legislature as sponsors, but I’m glad to see that one from Huron had the good sense not to sign.
U S S NTR (Noem,Thune,Rounds) and call it Nutter for short. Maybe it could be built in Dakota and launched to destroy the dams along the mighty Misery River.
That Corey Brown, he’s a clown. He is a little whale like to be going down a hatch. Gonna have get some big cans of Crisco to grease that up and then toss some ballast, a lot of it. More tax and spend republican mantra. Bridges may fall, but Corey Brown will give us a submarine. He should call it the good ship Lollipop, because we will all be suckers if he gets his way.
So this is how we help balance the budget, here in SD!? Cool!
Why doesn’t Corey just ask for $$$ for scholarships for native Americans. Like Gear Up.
When is Sioux Falls going to get its own ship?… ;- ) …. :
http://siouxlandnews.com/news/local/hundreds-celebrate-uss-sioux-city-ceremonial-ship-launching-in-wisconsin
John, how about Senator Thune lobby for a U.S.S. Murdo? That sounds meaner than U.S.S. Sioux Falls or Sioux City. :-)
Other John, instead of scholarships for Indian kids, we’ll pay for sailors to come to the GEAR UP camp to tell the kids all about how their STEM classes might help them run nuclear submarines someday. Of course, we’ll also make sure we give some Board of Education directors a big per diem for driving those sailors from the airport to the camp and back. Big per diem. And we’ll need to spend extra on nice motorcycles for them all to ride when they’re here.
The Senator’s U.S.S. Murdo would be the perfect ship for the next “Philadelphia Experiment.” It would already be use to taking two different positions at the same time.
Wait we will have a problem will it be called Siouxfalls , or the Murdo ship .Maybe photo op can play a game of basketball on it, then tale a photo op.
Who hid the halibut on the poop deck?
Having a naval vessel named after the state is a truly a great honor. Using state money to lobby naming the new vessel to South Dakota diminishes that honor in ways I can’t even begin to describe.
Let’s use the money to reopen the prison farms to teach them vocational skill while growing food for our schools.
Naming mountains and counties after war criminals are truly great honors. But, laud Sen. Brown’s nutball caucus to run out the clock avoiding debate on Bendagate, the Westerhuis murders and the culture of corruption in Pierre.
MC, I appreciate that point. This spending frenzy makes the naming feel like something other than a simple honor.
Larry, you are absolutely right that this bill counts as one of the great distractions. Let’s hoghouse Schoenbeck’s naming bill and ask the Navy to paint “Benda” on one side of the sub and “Westerhuis” on the other. They liked swimming with the sharks, out of sight.
Taxpayers already pay way too much for defense==50% + of national budget. This state has no need t spend educatin monies on this ‘fluff’ for the military/industrial complex grabbing our $$$$ and running ( with the help of our State GOP) –of course!
Run silent. Run Deep. Oh, well.
Their are retrograde conservatives, and their are nutcase conservatives. We in SD have more than our fair share of these fruitcakes.
lf we respond to the people asking for the money, we will get favors in return. 50% of us anyway. pay the money!!:)
bastards.
did wiken get excited there? wow :)
@Mike from Iowa
NTR has another meaning, a quite amusing one; I think.
NTR: acronym for netorare, a Japanese word for having one’s lover taken from them by another.
What will the typical South Dakotan get from this? Literally nothing.
Politicians and their friends will get a free trip(s) and some freebees.
How about we give the money to those veterans who have already served. So many of our veterans have mental and physical problems that are not being adequately being taken care of.
This seems harmless enough.
Pay Mr. Brown $100,000 for every bill he introduces instead of the millions he wants to do things with and the taxpayers will be far ahead. The South Dakota taxpayers. The rest of you don’t get a say in this. So sayeth grudznick.
Just think-the next wingnut Potus can let Thune and Rounds both pilot the South Dakota and they can ram and sink some Iranian University sponsored research vessel in Lake Oahe with attendant loss of lives. Dubya deja vu,all over again,too still yet.
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=us_military_tmln&us_military_specific_cases_and_issues=us_military_tmln_uss_greeneville_collision
The first in a long line of foreign policy disasters for the dumbass dubya.
I wonder if we did anything of the kind when the Battleship South Dakota, whose vestige lies in state in a park in Sioux Falls, was commissioned! The mental acumen and memory that sponsors this sort of thing is short and far to simple. Brown is one of the stalwarts of smaller, less expensive government and budgetary responsibility in typical hypocritical conservative fashion. Worse yet, the people who support and elect this sort of thinking are not laudable either.
Cory, I assume you know the procedural reason for declaring a piece of legislation an “emergency”.
Wayne, if it’s an emergency it can go into effect anytime before July 1. Otherwise it doesn’t go into effect until July 1. In order to pass as an emergency measure, it must pass by a two-thirds vote, the same requirement for any revenue measure. So, as long as it has to have a 2/3 vote anyway, making it any emergency doesn’t make the bar for passage
any higher.
Thanks Susan. I’m pretty sure Cory knew that (as do I), but I was quietly ribbing him for poking at the “emergency” clause when he shouldn’t be.
It’s not as though authorizing the construction of buildings at SDSU or USD is an “emergency” either, but the legislation has the provision attached.
I would deem it appropriate for Senator Brown to fire the first shot out of the new USS South Dakota using the blivet gun. This gun, mounted on the poop deck, fires 5 lbs of BS out of a 4 lb casing. Anyone standing upwind, downwind, or downrange of said projectile may become covered in BS thus letting everyone know that the day has well and truly begun!
You may fire when ready Senator Brown!
Fair, Wayne, but they still deserve the ribbing. Minting a commemorative coin set is not an emergency. And practically speaking, why can’t the commissioning commission (more linguistic absurdity!) wait until July 1 for its state handout?
Now that I’ve reviewed the constitutional language and a bit of court precedent on emergency clauses in the HB 1182 discussion, I wonder if a court would uphold a challenge and agree that SB 114 does not constitute an emergency in any way. Consider that the emergency clause declares “this Act is necessary for the support of the state government and its existing public institutions.” SB 114 does not fund state government. It does not fund any existing public institution, does it? I might not just be ribbing; SB 114 might honest to goodness not be a statutory emergency.
So our Republican legislators can hardly stand to fund higher pay for our teachers but spending $100K for souvenirs and fancy motorcycles for the sailors of this not yet commissioned ship is so important that it’s an emergency to fund it?? I’m just dumbstruck by the audacity, not to mention, the sheer stupidity of this scam! They haven’t found enough under the table ways to steal our tax dollars, ie, EB5, Gearup? Now they’re coming out in the open and “appropriating” money for their schemes? I guess we’re supposed to be impressed that it’s out in the open!
This is silliness on steroids.
Why stop there? Let’s go all out and sell advertising space on all our military equipment
I can see it now, This warship brought to you by Micro$oft or this tank is named THOR to promote the new Avengers movie. This missile is a puppymonkeybaby.
could be a fun way to pay for defense.