Killer Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg received comments from five parties concerning his official explanation of Amendment C, but he acted on one only, from Rapid…
Posts tagged as “David Owen”
I don’t like David Owen quite as much as I like Grandpa Joe, but South Dakota’s Chamber chief said something really interesting on public radio…
On Thursday, the precious and prescient South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry David Owen told attendees of his pre-legislative talk that someone might challenge…
The Chamber of Commerce says it failed to stop the enshrinement of doobage in the South Dakota State Constitution because outside interests outspent them: David…
Senate Bill 180, the revised registry and badging scheme for paid ballot question petition circulators, passed House Local Government on Tuesday with one significant amendment.…
Senator Art Rusch (R-17/Vermillion) is another Republican trying to raise taxes. He proposed Senate Bill 85 in another attempt to make electric vehicle owners pay…
South Dakota News Watch has a story about concerns that the Legislative Research Council’s new electronic bill management system “has made the legislative process less…
South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO David Owen takes a potshot at the two marijuana initiatives currently circulating in South Dakota: T –…
I went to court yesterday, said nothing dumb, didn’t torque off the judge (not noticeably, at least), and sat next to Marty Jackley without starting a fistfight. That felt like four wins right there.
In my first visit to a federal courtroom, suing to overturn an unconstitutional ban on out-of-state contributions to South Dakota ballot question committees, I sat in front of the bar with the following cast (as seated from right to left, as viewed by Judge Charles Kornmann):
- my lawyer, Jim Leach, who came to Rapid City over forty years ago to work for the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee, and now is representing my ballot question committee and myself in SD Voice and Cory Heidelberger v. Kristi Noem, Jason Ravnsborg, and Steve Barnett;
- myself, political blogger, educational technologist (happily burning a personal day from work for this legal excursion), ballot question activist;
- Marty Jackley, establishment Republican, former Attorney General, and frequent target of criticism on this blog, representing a host of mostly money-driven plaintiffs in a separate but equal lawsuit, South Dakota Newspaper Association, South Dakota Retailers Association, South Dakota Broadcasters Association, South Dakota Chamber Ballot Action Committee, Thomas Barnett, Jr., and Americans for Prosperity v. Steve Barnett and Jason Ravnsborg;
- Ryan Morrison, a Kentucky attorney from a Washington, D.C., conservative non-profit who said nothing during the proceedings save some eager whisperings to his co-counsel Jackley;
- Stacy Hegge, Assistant Attorney General, fellow proud SDSU grad, saddled with defending the state against my counsel and against the man who was her boss just five months ago;
- Kea Warne, director of the Division of Elections for the Secretary of State, dragged from Pierre to miss her high-school-senior son’s tennis matches (Ryan won all three of his singles and two of his three doubles).
Here’s what I saw and heard and thought.
But wait! David Owen of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce is telling folks that South Dakota doesn’t lack people; it just lacks skills: It’s…