Senator Julie Frye-Mueller’s (R-30/Rapid City) suspension may have kept her from working on more wingnut legislation, but on the day Senate President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck orchestrated her summary three-day booting from the Senate floor, Frye-Mueller managed to file six bills and one joint resolution:
- Senate Bill 122 would have government playing doctor again, telling physicians how to prescribe opioids. In a curious multi-subject digression, SB 122 also repeals the severability clause from SDCL Chapter 34-20B, on drugs and substances control, meaning either that Frye-Mueller is trying to create a legal avenue by which drug-freedom activists could torpedo South Dakota’s entire war on drugs by proving just one little statute unconstitutional… or that a severability clause is irrelevant to an evolving, hodgepodge chapter.
- Senate Bill 123 would require the Secretary of State to check the voter registration list every month for dead people and alert county auditors to strike such dead registrations. It also requires clerks of court to forward to county auditors information on anybody who gets out of jury duty due to death, moving, felony conviction, or non-citizenship and requires auditors to investigate whether those individuals are on the voter roll.
- Senate Bill 124 most gravely imposes Frye-Mueller’s voter-paranoia and disenfranchisement craving on election officials. SB 124 seeks to root out RV voters by directing county auditors to check the county tax records to make sure addresses on voter registration applications are actual residences and not businesses, empty lots, or government property. SB 124 does not say what auditors are supposed to do if they find such non-residential addresses in registrations. SB 124 also allows auditors to purge individuals from the voter roll if the individuals go four years without voting and don’t update their registration or respond to an auditor’s confirmation mailing. SB 124 directs the Secretary of State, Secretary of Human Services, Secretary of Social Services, and Secretary of Public Safety to cooperate on monthly comparisons of databases to find any voters who have changed addresses or revealed hinky citizenship status. SB 124 requires the Secretary of State to check postal records at least every three months to make sure no South Dakota voter is registered to vote in other states. Finally, SB 124 authorizes the Secretary of State to pay commercial data companies, including credit reporting agencies, to check registered voters’ information.
- Senate Bill 125 strips the Department of Health of its authority to change the list of immunizations students have to get to attend school or early childhood programs and prevents the imposition of any immunization requirements beyond polio, diphtheria, ruboela, mumps, tetanus, meningitis, and varicella (because no new, contagious, life-threatening diseases will ever evolve and break out before the Legislature has time to amend the immunization law).
- Senate Bill 126 expands government by requiring Game Fish and parks to provide round-the-clock emergency services in state parks from May 15 through September 30. It also authorizes game wardens (I know, conservation officers) to investigate vehicle accidents on GF&P property.
- Senate Bill 128 repeals the option for people who do not have a South Dakota driver license, nondriver ID number, or Social Security number to register to vote by signing a statement.
- Senate Joint Resolution 503 would submit to voters a constitutional amendment that would prohibit counties from increasing the assessed value of property by more than 2% each year. Counties and school districts currently may adjust assessments upward by CPI (3.0% this year) plus growth. SJR 503 would cap all ad valorem tax on real property at 1% of assessed value. According to state data, Frye-Mueller’s home county of Pennington imposed $173.7 million in property tax in 2021 on $10.099 billion in assessed property value, meaning 2021 property taxes were 1.72% of assessed value. Pennington County school districts levied another $88.3 million in property taxes, or about 0.92% of assessed value. Capping all ad valorem property taxes at 1% of assessed value would wipe out all Pennington County schools’ budgets and 42% of the county’s revenue.
Frye-Mueller’s legislative priorities are thus to sow voter-registration paranoia, expand government interference with health care in opioid prescriptions but shrink government authority in public health measures, send more cops to state parks, and bankrupt the counties and public schools.
Frye-Mueller is not a sponsor of House Bill 1031, which would add a million dollars to the $7.5 million already appropriated for the dairy research and extension farm at South Dakota State University. That’s odd—Senator Frye-Mueller seems to be keenly interested in milk production.
It is rather a twist of the wingnut nipple, rather than a massage.
I heard she has signed on as Spokestit for Surge…milk production in Dakota has skyrocketed…she has sore nipples, though…sad
She reminds me of the name of my brother’s boat, the Soggy Cracker and I regret praising her two articles ago.
Meth…….She’s on it.
I will admit I apparently haven’t been paying enough attention over the years about health related legislation because I didn’t think they got this deeply into regulations they have no business regulating.
But now I’m concerned that bills are being introduced and voted for by cra-cra people without a clue.
I mean, not letting the dept of health control vaccinations is just idiotic.
Thanks for providing details on her booby wingnuttery. Additional thoughts:
– first, it appears in the swollen mind of JFM that government is free. JFM fails funding any of proposed nuttery.
– SB123, monthly voter registration checking . . . a colossal waste of time that is absent any indications of voting fraud. We should be more interested in the “votes” from folks in memory care units, those with Alzheimers, and dementia. JFM doesn’t fund an FTE to run the checking.
– SB124, rooting out RV voters . . . JFM doesn’t think through the economic impact the RV voters bring to the SD Dept of Revenue via their vehicle and other registrations. An allegation that a PO Box is not a legal address will disenfranchise tens of thousands. JFM proposes a big brother government on a scale heretofore unseen in the western world. JFM fails funding her scheme.
– SB126, seasonal 24/7 park police & traffic control . . . JFM leaves the funding up to GFP . . . which cut its budget this year due to lower permit and license sales. GFP doesn’t have traffic jurisdiction, other than for driving imparted (BUI is a subset of DUI). GFP would have to send wardens (COs) to traffic accident investigation school . . . . which is unfunded. GFP would likely fill the 24/7 void with seasonals having minimal training other to summon the sleeping warden or deputy.
– SJR503, to unfund government, while, the above nonsense demands more from government . . . booby wishful thinking.
– HB1031, dumping (the correct term) $1mil more into dairy research . . . is udder nonsense. Milk is mostly water . . . water and proteins and fermentation. No four chamber stomach needed. No need for feed. No need for fertilizers. No need for pesticides. No need for nitrogen. No need for CAFOs. About 70% of milk is sold and processed business to business for protein shakes, candy, etc., so there is no “consumer acceptance” that limits its adoption. Lab fermented milk is here, being sold, scaling up via multiple companies. The livestock dairy industry is going the way of the horse and buggy as the fermented milk industry disrupts it and grows exponentially.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133470-900-real-milk-no-cows-needed-lab-made-dairy-products-are-now-a-reality/
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jul/31/lab-grown-dairy-is-the-future-of-milk-researchers-say
Apparently Senator FM wants to keep the Secretary of State busy 24/7 rooting out any and all voter registration “violations”. Last I heard, it’s not mandatory to vote, and not voting in one election doesn’t disqualify you from voting in another one. Nor does moving.
Meanwhile, I still want a simple answer to the question of WTF was Senator FM’s husband doing accompanying her to official meetings, and being on the floor during sessions? Is this a perk given to other spouses? Or is he just “I’m the man of the family, I’m here to make sure everything is done the way I want”?
Foe me, 123 and 124 are ok. Since evidence has shown that pretty much “conservatives” are the only folks committing voter fraud, those bills would have a high likelihood of reducing votes cast for Rs. John makes mistake of conflating a business address with a PO Box address. The language of the bill makes no mention of PO Boxes. Rather, it refers to the zoning (permitted use) of a physical property.
The other bills are just garbage.
503 is the same nonsense that California’ Prop 13 from the Cali governorship era of the worst US President ever (Ronnie Rat Gun) imposed on that state. The homelessness (high housing costs), lack of funding for social services, gang growth, and so on, the aspects of what could be characterized as the blemishes on the fruit of that state can all be directly linked to the impact of Prop 13. Worse to garbage – it is like a bacterial infection.
I agree that SB 123 and S124 could be acceptable. I’m not sure the SOS is the best office to handle this, however. It might be better to have a more local approach since county officials are more likely to already keep tabs on this. Monthly checks aren’t that critical, but I’d say yearly at least. Someone should check to see how this has been done in the recent past. On the other hand, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The lady Ms. Monae is insaner than most. That’s why.
It ain’t broke.
Meanwhile, and back to reality—
SALON: Ultimately, today’s Republican Party does not believe in democracy. It is a criminal insurrectionist neofascist white supremacist “Christian” theocratic authoritarian political cult organization. As seen on Jan. 6 and the country’s ongoing democracy crisis, today’s Republican fascists and the larger white right and “conservative” movement are holding a (literal) dagger at the heart of American democracy – and Biden’s presidency as well.
Across the country, the Republican Party is suppressing free speech and free thought by enacting thought crime laws. As part of that anti-democracy campaign, the Republicans and the larger white right are feverishly working to enact a new American apartheid that limits the voting and other civil rights of Black and brown people. McCarthy and the other Republicans in Congress support legislation that will further take away women’s reproductive rights and freedoms and turn them into the chattel and property of their husbands and other men. The Republican Party is in thrall to Christofascists and other White right-wing Christian extremists who want superior “rights” for people like them as they take away the human rights of LGBTQ people and other targeted groups.
McCarthy and the Republicans in Congress are holding the country’s financial well-being hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling as part of a plan to further gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and the social safety net more generally. If enacted these policies will kill millions of Americans. Yet they want to give more money to the plutocrats and other gangster capitalists by imposing a national sales tax that will disproportionately impact poor and working class people.
https://www.salon.com/2023/02/03/sorry-joe-biden-kevin-mccarthy-is-not-a-good-man-todays-are-fascists-not-your-friends/