The biggest disappointment of today’s crackerbarrel was rookie Representative Tamara St. John (R-1/Sisseton). Introducing herself as a historian and tourism advocate, as she did at her first big Aberdeen candidates’ forum back in September, Rep. St. John teased that she could bring a perspective on legislation far different from that of the go-kart operator, two retirees, town farmer, stay-at-home dad, accountant, and baseball ump/substitute teacher with whom she shared the dais. Plus, as the first tribal member speaking at an Aberdeen crackerbarrel since… well… wince I don’t know when, Rep. St. John could have educated her mostly Anglo audience about Legislative initiatives to support Indian Country, like her own House Bill 1246 (only a measly hoghouse vehicle for tribal economic development, but surely she could tell us the general framework of what she has in mind), House Bill 1269 (extending the statute of limitations for sexual abuse victims to file civil actions), and Senate Bill 164 (co-primed with Senator Lynne DiSanto, R-35/Box Elder, to focus law enforcement attention on cases of missing and murdered indigenous women.
But nope. Rep. St. John delivered no such unique perspective. She said darn little of anything related to pending legislation that the several dozen voters in attendance could chew on and call their legislators to act on.
In her opening speech, Rep. St. John told us how wonderful everyone is Pierre, especially her Republican caucus leaders. She took a false dig at the media, saying that somehow we reporters blamed the Republicans for attacking the qualifications of Democratic Lakota legislators Red Dawn Foster and Peri Pourier:
…Sometimes media is telling a story that’s really not happening behind the scenes. As a tribal person, we were watching the issue with District 27 and the two Native representatives down there, and I’m very very proud of how our Republican leadership dealt with that, very quickly, efficiently. We looked at the details of it from a legal standpoint and from a personal standpoint and found that there was no challenge to their residency. And but yet when I left and turned on the news, here’s the media saying the GOP is challenging two Native legislators from District 27. So that was a real big lesson about the news, that it really isn’t—that sometimes what they’re saying isn’t really what’s happening [Rep. Tamara St. John, opening comments at crackerbarrel, Aberdeen, South Dakota, 2019.02.02].
Like most cries of “Fake News!™”, Rep. St. John’s don’t-trust-journalists dig has multiple errors:
- The media can’t be blamed for not telling stories that are happening behind the scenes. If Rep. St. John wants us to report what’s happening behind the scenes, she should come out and tell us what happens at the caucus meetings that her Republican leaders keep secret.
- “As a tribal person, we—” The Royal We doesn’t go over well.
- The headlines stating that Republican lawmakers were challenging Foster’s and Pourier’s qualifications were accurate: Shad Olson and Jordan Mason, the operatives who drove the challenge, are Republicans. The legislators who filed the formal complaints were Republicans. The five legislators who voted for the last push to investigate Pourier in the House on January were all Republicans.
- But the media—at least the true liberal media—made clear that it wasn’t just Republicans and wasn’t all Republicans pushing this bogus fuss. Dakota Free Press reported the involvement of sore-loser Democrats in peddling hearsay in support of the claims. This blog also reported the signals sent by Republican Senator Lee Schoenbeck and Senate Majority Leader Kris Langer before Session that the GOP leadership was giving the challenge no credence.
- So actually, Representative St. John, the media told the story a lot better than you did today.
Rep. St. John went on to say that meth is bad and suggested that environmental protestors would do better to direct their efforts at stopping meth instead of protecting water, a cheap conservative ploy to defuse and discredit anti-pipeline protests. I recommend Rep. St. John review my December 2016 commentary in which I discuss how effective activism on other issues may promote the sort of civic spirit that translates into solving other community problems.
Rep. St. John then blipped Chief Justice Gilbertson’s drug courts proposal and Rep. Taffy Howard’s breast cancer bill (HB 1124, which, typical of this Legislature, just tells doctors what to say to women in the doctor’s office).
And then we heard nothing from Rep. St. John—nothing—for over an hour. She remained silent through the entire citizen question period. Fellow rookie Representative Carl Perry (R-3/Aberdeen) took the mic three times (tying Al and beating Lana, who only bothered to squawk twice). Even the least mentally agile of the entire panel, rookie Representative Kaleb Weis (R-2/Aberdeen), managed to come to the mic once to chime in for making it harder to vote (more on that in a later post!). We had eight questions on ag land assessment, capital outlay, budget priorities, food tax, early voting, horseracing, nepotism, and the death penalty, and Representative St. John had nothing to say about any of those issues.
Representative St. John just sat there working on her closing statement… which didn’t even bring sound or fury, let alone signify anything:
Yes, yes, we expect you to listen. We all have your contact info via the LRC. You have a chance to tell us things we don’t know, and instead we get thirty seconds of nothing. Arrgghh!
Representative Tamara St. John could be a really interesting legislator. Instead, at her first Aberdeen crackerbarrel, she spoke up only to butter up her party leadership, take a false dig at journalists, and leave us no better educated than we were before the Chamber served donuts at today’s crackerbarrel. Maybe she’ll step up and represent better in other venues, but today in Aberdeen she didn’t seem to be representing a fresh and enlightening take on policy.
I’ve got full video and more commentary from today’s Aberdeen crackerbarrel coming up; stay tuned!
Did you say “apple barrel”?
Ms. St. John seems a very wise young woman, and pretty too. She might be one in the legislatures to keep your eye on as she seems to be sharper than most.
Isn’t either distracted listening or failure to speak coherently about relevant topics characteristics of most all of those people……. With practice, Ms St. John might become more adept at deafness and irrelevant double speak. I sent her a well researched and documented letter in opposition to Senate Bill 47….. I now understand why I never got the courtesy of a reply…… I”m going to have to learn to communicate at the playground level.
Well done Cory. The water protectors dig reminded me of daugaard’s infamous blurb that he wished the tribes “would take care of grams”. (We’ve now had 3 stupid governors in a row. Our Sara Palin is someone who has shown no vision. Just GOP bullsheit. Perhaps she will benefit the tribes as she likes us to believe. I truly hope so but having pride in disqualifying Foster and Pourier together with Sara and St. John’s shots at further anti-pipeline efforts in light of the desperate climate change environment necessitating IMMEDIATE pivot from fossil fuels, leaves me deeply suspicious.
Funny with personal charm and warmth of course you’re gonna hate her maybe she was listening rather than talking down to people.
“characteristics of most all those people”, precisely what “people” are you referring to?
(I see what you did there, Porter.)
While it’s very true that a representative needs to listen to her constituents, it’s also true that constituents want to know what their representative thinks. It’s not all one or the other.
For 2 years I had the great misfortune of living in a Congressional district in which the Republican who barely won a close election disdained ever meeting with us. He did come back to the district for secret meetings at expensive restaurants at the behest of wealthy donors, but never did he meet openly with constituents. When asked by the media why he had been avoiding us, he said meeting with us wasn’t necessary. “They know what I think.” He’s no longer our representative and the woman who defeated him and was sworn in last month has already met with us once.
Rep. St. John would be wise to find a balance between listening to her constituents and talking to them about what she thinks. It appears that all of one or the other may not be a recipe for properly representing her district to the satisfaction of the voters.
JW, I’m curious about who you’re referring to as well. Please enlighten.
Chauncey Devega writes about politicians more dangerous than other in SALON,1.31.19, from a psychiayrist’s point of view. The lack of ethics in Trump, Thune, McConnell or Stace, DiSanto, Jensen and others of the SDGOPand the right wing is shame based and pathologic. This clear concise article leaves no doubt what we have been dealing with
Funny, personal, charm, and warmth are fine for friends, relatives, and actors. I want legislators who educate.
There a plenty of examples of fake news on DFP.
There are numerous headlines that are false. I have tried to point out the ones I see.
The most recent large fake headline by DFP would be the Covington thread.
Just this week the DFP did not report on the Democrats National abortion agenda.
On Wednesday, in a shocking revelation about the nature of the pro-abortion Democratic Party, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a supposed moderate, endorsed the notion that a woman should be able to let an infant, born alive, die on the table if she decided she did not want the child.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/42839/watch-democratic-va-governor-endorses-murder-born-ben-shapiro
https://wtop.com/local-politics-elections-news/2019/01/va-gov-northam-draws-outrage-from-gop-for-defending-abortion-bill/
DFP also did not report on the NY abortion law that passed.
I wonder how South Dakotan’s feel about the NY and the proposed Virginia bill?
In the next election, it’s going to be easy to point out that SD Democrats are OK with the NY abortion law and the Virginia bill.
As Debbo notes, we need a balance between listening and speaking, just as teachers do in the classroom.
The crackerbarrel is specifically structured to be more about hearing from the legislators than about “listening” to the public. The moderator admonishes citizens to ask questions, not make speeches. Yesterday the moderator said questions were limited to one minute each, then gave no time limit to responses. So clearly, the format invites one-way Q&A: questions from citizens, answers from legislators.
St. John gave no answers in program designed to provide answers.
St. John has e-mail, phone, and the whole rest of the week to listen. This crackerbarrel is one of four brief chances voters get to here legislators speak accountably in public. We justifiably expect legislators to use this time to give answers, not sit mutely and “listen” mostly to each other.
Jason, if our trustworthiness is damned by not talking about everything under the sun, then we are all liars.
New York and VIrginia are not my mission. The Mobridge City Council might fall sooner under my attention, but I haven’t covered their doings either. Such omissions render false not one word of what I’ve said here or anywhere else in this blog. Such omissions only make you mad, because, as usual, you want us to talk about your preferred Breitbartiana, which you rehearse constantly in your shower-karaoke, instead of the parts of reality that challenge your worldview.
Every time you have tried to brand a DFP headline as a lie, you have been playing word games, twisting truth and meaning the way Al Novstrup does, because neither of you can win on the facts.
St. John misrepresents media coverage and ignores facts of the Foster/Pourier challenge. St. John doesn’t get to blanket-slam the media just to insulate her political virtue from media scrutiny.
Cory wrote:
Plus, as the first tribal member speaking at an Aberdeen crackerbarrel since… well… wince I don’t know when, Rep. St. John could have educated her mostly Anglo audience about Legislative initiatives to support Indian Country.
Here is an example of Democrat racism.
She represents South Dakotan’s, not Native Americans.
Every South Dakotan already knows about the problems on the Reservations.
The only people that can solve the problems on the reservations are Native Americans.
It’s called personal responsibility.
Abortion is a concern for South Dakotan’s Cory.
Like Al Novstrup, when faced with an uncomfortable issue, Jason tries to turn the conversation to abortion absolutism. Rep. St. John offered no responses to the questions posed by citizens yesterday.
And strangely, not one citizen asked a question about abortion yesterday, and the only legislator who brought it up was Al Novstrup. Jason is thus calling every other legislator, including St. John, and every citizen attending yesterday’s crackerbarrel a liar.
Jason, if you’re going to call so many people liars, you should start using your full name, so you can be held accountable for your false accusations.
I pointed out fake news and Democrat racism.
When did I mention anybody at the meeting was lying?
No you didn’t, Jason. You took us off the topic of Rep. St. John’s failure to represent yesterday. You said that not talking about abortion in full means an individual can’t be trusted. Nobody but Al Novstrup talked about abortion at yesterday’s crackerbarrel. Thus, by your own logic, no one but Al, not even Rep. St. John, can be trusted.
But enough about you and me, Jason. Rep. St. John didn’t respond to audience questions yesterday, Jason. Do you find that silence commendable?
Jason the Devega article is referenced for your benefit to understand how St. John’s subtle attacks are likely a result of your mind set faster since 1960s GOP propaganda insidious ness.
Faster is autocorrect sillliness
Tip o’ the hat to Jason and Drumpf- Transparency International publishes an annual Corruption Index that ranks the world’s governments on their honesty. The United States didn’t do so well.
The U.S. has plummetedin an annual corruption index, falling out of the top 20 countries for the first time since 2011, watchdog Transparency International said in a new report that links the global erosion of democracy and tidal wave of autocrats to an uptick in graft.
“Corruption chips away at democracy to produce a vicious cycle, where corruption undermines democratic institutions and, in turn, weak institutions are less able to control corruption,” said Patricia Moreira, managing director of Transparency International (TI).
The Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks 180 countries by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, found overall that the failure to control corruption is contributing to a “crisis of democracy around the world.”
It will probably not shock you to learn that the U.S. slipped four points since the election of Donald Trump. That’s the lowest score we have registered in seven years.
Above comment from Sheila Kennedy’s blog.
Jason has two choices, he can either take conservative/republican bloggers (Dakota War College, The Right Side Blog) to the wood shed for not promoting his hobby horses, or he can start his own blog.
I read the other blogs but am banned from commenting on most of them, one thing I have noticed when I read them there are few if any comments and I have never seen the name Jason as a commenter unless he is operating under another alias.
When anyone logs in to DFP you know what you’ll get news with a liberal slant.
Jason, Pat Powers is waiting for you.
“Every South Dakotan already knows about the problems on the Reservations.”
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time, and I read a lot of humor! Every SDan doesn’t even know about the problems in their own county! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Most South Dakotan’s don’t even know how many reservations there are in SD, let alone name them and know their problems.
Debbo and cibvet rightly point out Jason’s self-serving/GOP-serving lies that South Dakotans already know enough about reservation issues and can ignore those issues by blaming the Indians for the impacts of white colonialism and racism.
No matter how much South Dakotans know about problems on the reservations, they clearly don’t know enough to take those problems seriously and do something about them. When’s the last time, for instance, that the Governor’s Office of Economic Development funded a project in Indian Country? Indians make up 9% of South Dakota’s population; does 9% of GOED go to Indian Country?
One truth has become self evident for South Dakotans, taking Indian children from their families for whitey to raise is not in the child’s best interests. Actually, I see no good policies for reservations coming from corrupt South Dakota pols.