By Bill Harlan

RCJ city hall reporter Scott Aust working on “candidate profiles”

Negotiations have been under way for two years. More accurately, I’ve been begging RCJ city hall reporter Scott Aust for that long to climb the Mount with Kevin and I. At last, sick of listening to me, Scott has relented. He’ll be a new voice on the Mount, focusing on governments of Rapid City and Pennington County. Scott’s from Phillipsburg, Kan., which, for you conspiracy buffs, is in a county that borders Harlan County, Neb.

I urge Blogmorites to be gentle on Scott, though I expect him to begin carving the Mount soon. During the coming days of motorcycles I’ll be spending more time over at the Sturgis street blog.

More changes are in store for the Mount, but if I told you what they were I’d have to lock you in a room with Sibby and Bill Fleming and nobody wants that. (Just kidding. I eagerly await Scott getting Sibbycized and Fleminated.)

By Bill Harlan

From time to time we get beat by the rest of the blogosphere, for any number of reasons. Sometimes bloggers just plain beat us. (Ouch, that hurts.) Sometimes we’ve got stories stacked up in a holding pattern. Sometimes it takes us longer to check facts and context. I think all those factors were in play on this story. So here’s Kevin W.’s column on the situation brewing around Chad Schuldt, whose nom de blog is, or was, the Clean Cut Kid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/opinion/30pollack.html
By Bill Harlan

Ray suggests an NYT Op Ed piece by Michael E. O’Hanlon, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Kenneth M. Pollack, director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. In “A war we might just win,” they write, in part:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

They recommend following the current course at least until 2008. Blogmorites?

By Bill Harlan

An article in the NYT examines how doctors are paid in the U.S., compared to other countries. (We have the highest paid docs, by far. Message to MY docs: Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

In the United States, nearly all doctors are paid piecemeal, for each test or procedure they perform, rather than a flat salary. As a result, physicians have financial incentives to perform procedures that further drive up overall health care spending.
Doctors are paid little for routine examinations and very little for “cognitive services,” such as researching different treatment options or offering advice to help patients get better without treatment.
“I don’t have a view on whether doctors take home too much money or not enough money,” Dr. Bach said. “The problem is the way they earn their money. They have to do stuff. They have to do procedures.”

That idea seems to make sense. Michael Moore noted that docs in England now are getting paid in some unusual ways — bonuses, for example, for patients who quit smoking. In a discussion with a knowledgeable Blogmorite over the weekend I learned there are some glitches in that program. Still …

What does Blogmore think?

By Kevin Woster

Somewhere down below in the conversational foothills of Mount Blogmore, a former South Dakotan named Mike who now lives in Phoenix suggested that Rob Skjonsberg might be warming up for a political campaign.

Skjonsberg, of course, is chief of staff to Gov. Mike Rounds, and one of the more active COSes in my memory. He’s particularly noted lately for tangling with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the law-enforcement practices of agent Bob Prieksat.

That tussle demonstrated the authority and latitude Rounds gives Skjonsberg, as well as Skjonsberg’s mix-it-up style. Down in the foothills, Phoenix Mike calls it “Janklowesque,” a comparison with some legitimacy - and, I think, still some value to a political candidate in South Dakota.

Skjonsberg himself admired Janklow for his action-oriented style as governor. And as Phoenix Mike points out, Skjonsberg as a candidate would have the full support of Gov. Mike for just about any office except the next governor, where Rounds will back current LG Dennis Daugaard.

Of course, Skjonsberg might have to put any of his own political ambitions on hold if Rounds decides on a U.S. Senate race.

But if the governor rejects that challenge, Skjonsberg would make an interesting Senate candidate for the GOP.

By Kevin Woster

Let’s talk about percentages.

I say there’s a 75-percent chance Tim Johnson will run for reelection to the U.S. Senate.

If he decides not to run, I say it will simply be because he has an exceptionally high personal standard of performance - and a strong sense of pride - and doesn’t feel like he can match his expectations.

If Johnson doesn’t run, I think there’s a 75-percent chance that former Sen. Tom Daschle will. And if he does, I think there’s a 68-percent chance that Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin will opt to run for reelection to the House, rather than challenge the former Senate majority leader in a primary.

In addition, I think there’s a 37.4-percent chance that Herseth will run for governor in 2010.

If Johnson doesn’t run next year, and Daschle doesn’t either, I think there’s a 98.6 percent chance that Herseth will take on the Senate challenge.

And the Republicans? They’ve got Sam Kephart and Joel Dykstra in the game already. So how about Gov. Mike Rounds?

Well, if Johnson runs, there’s a 3.7-percent chance that Rounds will enter the Senate race. If Herseth runs, it’s 50-50. If Daschle runs, it’s 98.7 percent that Rounds is in.

And while we’re talking percentages, on a slightly less political subject: I think there’s a 0.00006-percent chance that U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service agent Bob Prieksat will ever run for elective office of any kind in South Dakota, but a 99.9999-percent chance that he will do some field law-enforcement work this fall, whether Rounds and his chief of staff, Rob Skjonsberg, like it or not.

And I think there’s a slightly better chance that I’ll end up writing another story on that.

By Bill Harlan

Disturbing allegations are revealed in Roll Call today in the article “Hildebrand Deputy Fired Amid Embezzlement Allegations.”

The lede:

“Steve Hildebrand, founding partner of the Democratic consulting firm Hildebrand Tewes and key adviser to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) presidential campaign, confirmed Thursday that Chad Schuldt was fired from his firm for allegedly embezzling ‘over $100,000.’ “

Schuldt is known in the South Dakota blogosphere as “Clean Cut Kid,” but he hasn’t posted on the site since June. The rest of the blogosphere has been buzzing about this for awhile.

By Bill Harlan

Ward Churchill, who compared 9/11 victims to Nazis, is suing the University of Colorado for firing him (for other reasons, the university says). I couldn’t find online the RCJ AP story that was on A3 this morning, so here’s the NYT version. And just for grins here’s Churchill’s own site and Bill O’Reilly’s take on the issue.

Ah, free speech. Remember the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”* banner and the Rapid City high school student’s banned marijuana T-shirt? Remember Lawrence Summers, the now former Harvard president, who said maybe girls weren’t as good as boys in math because … well, you know, they’re girls?

In the original offending 9/11 essay — dated Sept. 12, 2001 — Churchill argued that U.S. bombing of water purification facilities in Iraq in 1991 led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children and that the “chickens had come home to roost.” The University of Colorado had decided Churchill couldn’t be fired for his 9/11 statements. Instead, they fired him for other transgressions, including a charge that should be of local interest — that Churchill fabricated evidence to argue the U.S. deliberately spread smallpox among Mandans in 1837.

The question: When should speech be subject to discipline? And remember, none of George Carlin’s seven deadly words allowed.

*And speaking of bong hits …

By Kevin Woster

January, 1966, the first date for Tim Johnson and that dark-haired Sioux Falls girl named Barbara who would one day become his wife.

They went to a production of “The Music Man” by the University of South Dakota theater department. And the rest is history, in the form of a 40-plus year relationship, including 38 years of marriage.

I wrote all that in my RCJ newspaper column this week. What I didn’t write was Graham Thatcher’s vital role in the first date, and the lasting love story.

“I was playing Mayor Shinn in ‘The Music Man” that famous night of their very first date,” Thatcher, a gifted performer now living in Rapid City, said in an e-mail response to my column. “Ah, the responsbility of it all. What if the show had stunk? Where would we all be now? Western Civilization Hung on those tenuous connections. OK, not quite.”

Apparently, the show worked for Tim and Barb, although we suspect here on Mount Blogmore that their first date could have a re-run of “The Nutty Professor” and the love story still would have blossomed.

But Thatcher’s role went well beyond the USD theater performance, and that first date.

“Tim used to hang out in our restaurant in Vermillion when he was in law school, and I always used that as a claim to fame,” Thatcher wrote.

Barb Johnson is a bit vague on Thatcher’s performane as Mayor Shinn. She was paying more attention to the kid with the blond crew cut at her side than the folks on the stage. But she remembers more vividly Thatcher’s skills in the hospitality area a few years later.

“It was a great little restaurant where you throw peanut shells on the floor, and the food was excellent,” she said.

It was also another example of the small-state syndrome in South Dakota, and the many enduring relationships and recollections.

“One more time, (it shows that) if it happens in South Dakota, you just never know where the connections end,” Thatcher wrote.

By Bill Harlan

I eagerly await Mount Blogmore’s take on Heidi Bell Gease’s story about “stop loss” tour extensions in Iraq. RapidReply comments range from sympathy to “cowboy up.” Clearly when you sign up for the new, all-volunteer armed forces you sign up for the duration. Or do you?

By Bill Harlan

I saw “Sicko” on Sunday afternoon, along with a few dozen other moviegoers escaping the heat. They included at least one state legislator and at least one Blogmorite. I know from an inside source a bunch of local docs saw the movie over the weekend. Surely other Blogmorites and other local health-care professionals have seen the movie by now.

Some brief thoughts:

-Donna and Larry Smith, formerly of Lead, were a bigger part of the movie than I expected. (I got to know Donna covering the Homestake lab, when she was a reporter for the Lead paper.) Medical expenses helped drive them into bankruptcy, despite their health insurance coverage. They figure prominently in “Sicko.”

-As a journalist, I am driven a little crazy by Michael Moore’s tactics. Like Rush Limbaugh, Moore is a commentator, not a reporter. OK, fine. But a little more balance and a little less propaganda would make “Sicko”more persuasive, at least with me.

-As a propagandist/entertainer/choir director, Moore is a master.

-”Sicko” makes some telling points. Opponents of government-run universal health-care cite problems with such systems in Canada, England and France. The bottom line is, the majority — the vast majority — of voters in those countries would not swap systems with the U.S.

-Why does it cost $60,000 to re-attach a middle finger and only $12,000 to re-attach a ring finger? Is this because of the linquistic expressiveness of the middle finger?

Now it’s Blogmore’s turn. Especially if you’ve seen the movie.

A PS added later: I neglected to mention that at the end of “Sicko” the audience applauded. It wasn’t a big crowd, but it wasn’t tiny, either. I think applauding an empty movie screen is somewhat unusual.

By Kevin Woster

Somewhere down in the foothills of Mount Blogmore, Don Pay said something to the effect of “real leaders are willing to admit they messed up.”

I think he’s right. Great leaders are great enough to admit they’re human.

So, uh, who are the great leaders?

I thought about that, pondering which politician in my recollection made the most admirable admission of a personal failure.

I thought some more. I took a break and went for a workout at the Y. I thought some more. I sat on the deck and sipped an iced tea. I thought some more. And, uh, I thought some more.

Finally, I remembered that former Sen. Tom Daschle admitted that he made the wrong vote on authorizing the Iraq invasion. Daschle was a couple years out of office at the time. But still, he said he messed up.

That’s a rare thing in politics, where CYA almost always seems to trump speak from the heart. You guys have any examples of strong-hearted admissions from political leaders?

Harlan chimes in: Great topic. Can anything compare to Jimmy Swaggart’s confession?

By Bill Harlan
,
An item on the Huffington Post was a topic of conversation at my Old Guys Saturday Morning Breakfast group, after we dispensed with routine business items such as “our latest surgeries,” “anemic 401k performance,” “a short prayer for the scientist who invented Viagra,” etc. If you don’t know the OGSMB drill, you can imagine it. (Yes, that’s my life now. I turned 60 last week.) Anyway, where was I? (”Hurry up, Norman! The loons! The loons!”) Oh yeah, the Huffington Post. Joseph Palermo was writing about “My first trip to Mount Rushmore.” An excerpt:

The Danish-American sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, who designed and carved the monument, developed a strong kinship with the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the modern Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, which was quite active in the Black Hills at the time Borglum began his work in the mid-1920s, fronted much-needed cash for the project. Borglum was a nativist sympathizer who was associated with one of the more virulent and violent factions of the racist terror group.

Now there’s an interesting theory: the Klan finances a Lincoln carving.

Borglum, however, did have Klan ties in Georgia, where he worked on Stone Mountain. Klan money certainly was involved in that project. But Borglum left Stone Mountain in a dispute with his patrons. I’ve never seen any evidence the Klan “fronted” cash for Mount Rushmore. That’s not to say Borglum wasn’t a “nativist sympathizer.” The most complete account I’ve found of on Borglum’s Klan ties, his racism and his anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-immigrantism is in Great White Fathers by John Taliaferro.* Taliaferro (he pronounces it “Tolliver”) begins Chapter 8:

“An old axiom of journalism stipulates that when cannibals crop up in a story, however incidentally, they deserve a front-row seat. … A similar protocol applies to the Ku Klux Klan. A person who consorts with the Klan, even for a short while, can never expect to rub it from his resume, regardless of what else is accomplished in his life.”

Borglum denied taking he Klan oath and there’s no evidence he did, Taliaferro reports, but Borglum attended Klan rallies and served on Klan committees. And the Klan was active in western South Dakota. There was a big national Klan rally in Belle Fourche during the 1920s — I want to say 1925. Maybe a Blogmorite can nail that down.

*Disclosure: Taliaferro’s a friend.

By Bill Harlan

To follow up on the drought post below upon which almost no one commented (take that Winston Churchill), see Andrea Cook’s excellent RCJ article further clarifying the drought situation in our region. She’s also got related links.

The political question remains: when does a “drought” stop being a “drought” and turn into “the climate where we live”?

By Bill Harlan

KW’s story about Tim Johnson day reminds us how the 781,919 people of South Dakota, with their two senators (390,960 pps*), wield a national influence. See also the San Francisco Chronical story today by Edward Epstein headlined “Dems wield war debate to weaken GOP in 2008.” The lede:

Washington — Democratic Senate leaders knew going into Wednesday’s procedural roll call on their proposal to withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq that they didn’t have the votes to win, but victory wasn’t their goal.
Instead, the Democrats forced the Senate into a marathon 19-hour debate as a way of putting pressure on Republicans for their continued support of President Bush’s Iraq policy, which polls show is opposed by large majorities of the American public.

Epstein’s story is about Republican vulnerabilities, but he also reports:

Among the dozen Democrats up for re-election next year, the Republicans’ top hopes are the seat of Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., who has yet to return to the Senate after months spent recovering from a brain hemorrhage, and Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.

So pay attention Blogmorites. The fate of the world depends on it.

*People per senator, or a whopping 0.00000255781 sps**
**Senators per capita

Congress cot in the act. (Photo: Dennis Cook, AP; horrible cutline, BH)

By Bill Harlan

South Dakota’s Republican Sen. John Thune spoke during the Senate all-nighter on Iraq. No word whether he used a cot. See the RCJ and in the WP, the Capitol Briefing by Paul Kane, who reported:

As the debate rolled on deep into the early morning hours of the round-the-clock consideration of a Democratic amendment to halt the Iraq war, speeches were still impassioned as ever. Just past 1 a.m., Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) took the floor pleading for a simple majority vote on the Levin-Reed amendment. “The American people are sick of seeing our brave men and women killed,” said Harkin.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), 22 years Harkin’s junior at the age of 45, followed the Iowan on the floor declaring that the enemy U.S. troops are fighting in Iraq is the same as the battlefields of Afghanistan. “My support for this war is not open ended,” Thune said, adding that he wants to see how the U.S. generals determine the effectiveness of the surge of tens of thousands of additional troops into Baghdad this year. “This debate should not be about how quickly we can withdraw from Iraq.”

South Dakota’s Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson, still recovering at home from brain surgery, rejected the idea that the debate was a stunt. Johnson said in a written statement:

“It is about doing the right thing for our country, our service members and the people of Iraq,” Johnson said. “As a father of a soldier who fought in Iraq, I understand the concerns of parents and family members across this country.”

Is this any way to hold a drought? (Click to enlarge.)

By Bill Harlan

Was anyone else struck by the precipitation box on page 1 of yesterday’s RCJ? It showed that South Dakota was at “normal” or “wetter than normal” for precipitation for every year since 2000 except 2003. Huh? What happened to this drought we’ve been hearing so much about?

The box accompanied a story about whether federal drought aid should get a thumbs up or a thumbs down. The box was based on the “standardized precipitation index” (above). Precipitation, however, is not the only measure of drought. The U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook forecasts drought. The U.S. Drought Monitor considers a number of factors, such as soil and plant moisture. The Palmer Index uses temperature and precipitation to assess long-term trends. The Robert Palmer Index uses proximity of elections to gauge agriculture’s “addiction to aid.”

How about it Blogmore? More drought aid? Lest we get to cynical, here’s how the U.S. Drought Monitor sees us:

Click to enlarge.

Woster chimes in: We blew it by using a story and data based on a statewide look, and a graphic that reflected that year by year. The drought has largely been in the western half of the state. During most of the last seven years, much of East River has been good. In some areas, better than that. West River got reasonable relief this year. But some areas - especially the southwest - are still parched.K.W.

And Harlan re-chimes in: See also Kevin W’s story about a bumper wheat crop. I’m slightly suprised a topic about farm policy has drawn so few responses on the Mount. Isn’t this a national policy issue that directly affects South Dakota?

Original spectacular photo by RCJ photographer Seth McConnell. Defacement by BH.

By Bill Harlan

At the risk of irrelevant, self-congratulatory introspection — and when has that ever stopped us before? — we take this moment to mark this, Mount Blogmore’s 2,000th topic since the opening of the Mount on Sept. 7, 2004. In response to those posts, we have received 42,841 comments.

What does it all mean? Only you, the Blogmorites, know.

By Bill Harlan

Maybe I overstate the case — the difference between “Black” and “Beverly” being clear, Hills-wise — but you have to admit this is a weird statistic. The Federal Election Commission’s campaign finance report for presidential candidates from Jan. 1 through June 30, 2007, breaks down contributions by candidate, by party, by state and by region. Here’s the breakdown for the ZIP code “577xx” — i.e. the Black Hills region:

Contributions to all GOP prez hopefuls from 577xx: $6,750
Contributions to all Dems from 577xx: $20,304

Does Blogmore detect Democratic sugar daddies lurking among the ponderosas or prowling the plains?

Here’s the statewide breakdown:

Contributions from South Dakota to all candidates: $150,698
To all Republicans: $108,654
To all Democrats: $42,044

Here’s the candidate breakdowns, statewide:

Romney [R]: $56,500
McCain [R]: $20,950
Obama (D): $15,305
Clinton (D) : $12,610
Giuliani [R]: $11,400
Richardson (D): $8,350
Tancredo [R]: $5,850
Edwards (D): $5,779
Thompson [R]: $5,629
Huckabee [R]: $5,500
Paul [R]: $2,100
Brownback [R]: $500
Cox [R]: $225

Some observations from the Mount:

-Romney outraised all Democrats.
-McCain, freefalling elsewhere, a respectable second here.
-Obama and Clinton each outraise Giuliani in South Dakota: a fluke, a trend or the end times?
-Doesn’t anybody like “Law and Order” here?
-Huckabee’s “Governor’s Choice” award doesn’t go far.
-Ron Paul’s “Stegmeier’s Choice” award, ditto.
-Brownback edges Bob Newland.
-Who’s Cox?

By Kevin Woster

Was anybody else struck by the fact that Elijah Page didn’t get to hug his friends or family members before he was put to death?

All his personal visits were behind glass. That’s the way it is for death-row inmates in South Dakota, right up until the time they die.

I found it difficult to work up too much grief for Elijah Page in the final days of his life. In the days leading up to the Page execution, I wrote about the death of 16-year-old Colton Stensaas, who fell while scrambling around on the rocks in Custer State Park, and Special Forces Sgt. Robb Rolfing, who died in a gunfight in Iraq.

Those tragedies left me with little emotional energy to spend on Page.

But still, not even one hug? Not a few minutes along with his dad, or sister, or friends from Spearfish, for a handshake, a shoulder squeeze, the feel of another human being who cared for him?

If there was anything cruel in the Page execution, I think that was it.