By Denise RossIf you’re growing weary of screaming about health care reform, there’s another song on the political season of discontent’s hit parade: climate legislation, known by various names depending on the political leanings of who’s talking.South Dakota’s congressional delegation has as diverse a set of views as possible, considering their tiny numbers. Johnson’s for it; Thune’s against it; Herseth Sandlin wants to be for it but isn’t just yet.

“Soon the Senate will consider climate change legislation that could finally help South Dakota to live up to its wind generating potential and capture the benefits of a cash crop that is just blowing across our landscape,” Johnson wrote in a recent op-ed.

Thune, on the other hand, has vowed to fight the bill “with every fiber of my being.” (Insert joke about windy politicians here.)There’s also Matt McGovern, of the Mitchell McGoverns, heading up the SoDak office of Repower America, that group Al Gore’s involved with. He showed up at a confab in Rapid City this week to tout the benefits of the bill to a group of hostiles. Kevin Woster covered the meeting. Read that here.

 ”This is a great bill for South Dakota,” McGovern said.

I learned all of this when I wrote a recent newspaper column about it. To read the full column, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise Ross

When Sen. Tim Johnson penned a column earlier this week touting the good things the “climate change legislation” would mean for South Dakota, one might have gotten the impression he was referring to what’s come to be known as the cap-and-trade bill that’s been passed by the US House and awaits action in the US Senate just as soon as everyone gets back to DC after the August recess.

Well, I heard from Johnson’s office after I posted his column. They want to avoid any confusion and say Johnson refers in his column not to the bill that has passed the House but to a future bill that will be rewritten in the Senate. The bill will “get a completely fresh start” in the Senate, said Johnson’s spokeswoman. (Sounds like a good old-fashioned hoghouse in the state Legislature. The folks in Pierre always knew they could teach Washington a thing or two.)

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By Denise Ross

From my e-mail box, this column by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., says that the cap-and-trade bill would mean more jobs in South Dakota. This after the Argus Leader reported a week or more ago that our electric bills would go up.  (Read his entire column on the jump.)

Writes Johnson:

Soon the Senate will consider climate change legislation that could finally help South Dakota to live up to its wind generating potential and capture the benefits of a cash crop that is just blowing across our landscape. 

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South Dakota’s growing clean energy economy has added good-paying jobs at an annual job growth rate of 7.9 percent over the past decade. 

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The question is: are we sending more of our hard earned money to Big Oil and oil rich countries or are we investing in our own backyards?

He goes on to predict the effort to kill the bill will reach the fevered pitch of an anti-health-care crowd at a town hall meeting. And he says doing nothing would be counterproductive.

These scare tactics just present a status quo approach that leaves us all vulnerable to oil spikes in a global market and high gas prices that crush family budgets like we saw last summer.

So, if we thought the season of discontent would end with the fate of health care reform, I suspect more likely we’ll look back on this summer like we look back on the much maligned predictions that war in Iraq could cost $50B.

To read Johnson’s column, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise Ross

From my e-mail box, a press release from Sen. Tim Johnson’s office about his work on the Senate Banking Committee, specifically ongoing work to try to infuse some sense of common courtesy into the Wall Street culture. (Read the entire release on the jump.)

Says Johnson:

The regulatory structure overseeing U.S. financial markets has proven unable to keep pace with innovative but risky financial products, and this has had disastrous consequences. We need a bipartisan proposal that creates an updated system of good, effective regulations that balance consumer protection and allow for sustainable economic growth.

The entire release is a bit cryptic, which is compounded by its brevity. For example, I can’t tell for sure, but I think in this part below he endorses President Obama’s plan.

As a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, Johnson has used his position to examine the Administration’s regulatory reform proposals, including the President’s plan to create the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The proposed agency would help stabilize the financial sector and modernize the regulatory system.

That is followed by another quotation that includes, “We cannot afford to get this wrong.”

So, a call for bipartisanship, a declarative sentence saying that Obama’s plan would “stabilize” and “modernize” the current system and a call for transparency, accountability and consumer protection.

Could real reform be at hand? It’s hard to tell, but what Johnson ought to do in the meantime is invite a few Wall Street high rollers out to DakotaFest and let them take the stage for a town hall meeting.

That would be far more satisfying than “transparency” and “accountability.”

To read today’s press release, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise Ross

Following closely behind open government on my short list of issues critical to the functioning of our democracy is the breath-taking way in which congressional district boundaries are drawn.  So when South Dakota’s own Tim Johnson introduced a bill to change the system, my heart skipped a little beat. And then I wrote about it in my newspaper column.

I agree with Johnson’s assessment that the way our country draws the boundaries of its congressional districts is not healthy.

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The current redistricting system is, quite literally, the fox guarding the hen house.

When I wrote the column, it was only Johnson and a congressman from another state on board. Soon, South Dakota’s own Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and a group of Blue Dogs joined the effort. (More details on that to come soon.)

I prefer Iowa’s academic approach to redistricting, but Johnson’s idea would be a vast improvement over the methods currently used almost everywhere except in our neighboring state.

I hold no illusions that Johnson’s bill will be widely embraced, let alone passed. But I am thrilled that anybody with the power to do something about this is talking about it at all.

To read my full column, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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Here’s the (very brief) release:

Washington, DC —U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) released the following statement in regards to his meeting tomorrow with U.S. Supreme Court Nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has a distinguished career that spans three decades, and has worked at almost every level of our judicial system. Judge Sotomayor would bring extensive federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court.  I look forward to this face-to-face meeting with her tomorrow to personally learn more about her than can be drawn from a questionnaire.  I will continue to follow the nomination process as it progresses through the hearing phase scheduled for next month.
 

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By Denise Ross

Anyone who’s had to deal with a health insurance company for even the most routine doctor visits knows how frustrating all the numeric codes and lists of “preferred providers” (sometimes outdated? Nah.) and those “explanation of benefits” that come in the mail can be. I can hardly imagine dealing with all that on top of a debilitating disease.

But many do. In anticipation of the pending health care reform debate about to consume Capitol Hill, South Dakota’s own Tim Johnson has asked his constituents to share their stories. Some of those stories are posted on his website, and I culled through those for one of my recent newspaper columns.

If you have a story of your own, it’s not too late to tell Sen. Johnson about it. So far, doctors have weighed in alongside the parents who struggle to pay for their children’s health care and those thunderstruck by a disease that quickly consumes their lifetime maximum.

Coverage, one doc says, is already “universal,” just not “effective (or) efficient.”

Read the full column by clicking “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise Ross

There’s so much chatter about what SHS might do next year, and now some about the GOP gubernatorial primary that’s starting to show some real signs of life.

But there are other questions to ponder about the future of South Dakota’s pols. Why has John Thune hired a crack campaign staff when there’s very little chance he’ll face a serious challenge? I know, Herseth hasn’t ruled it out, but she doesn’t strike me as the damn-the-torpedoes type. Then again, I’ve been wrong before.

And did you know that Tim Johnson hasn’t decided whether he’ll retire after his 3rd Senate term? I swear it’s true.

The future plans of Gov. Mike Rounds could affect South Dakota’s political future even more. Speaking of having been wrong before, Rounds opted not to take on Sen. Tim Johnson last year. But I still can’t see him, at 54 and loving what he does, fading into the sunset. Will he pull a Janklow and run for South Dakota’s House seat when it opens up? Seems unlikely, but so did Janklow’s run in 2002.

Anyway, it’s all the subject of the column, which you can read in full by clicking “CLICK HERE” below. When you’ve finished reading, please share further speculations with a comment.

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By Denise Ross

South Dakota’s US senators have just said ‘no’ to the credit card reform bill, but they were among just 5 ‘no’ votes, so they hardly won the day.

The fact that both our Republican and Democrat voted against the bill didn’t stop the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from issuing a press release titled “SENATOR THUNE CHOOSES TO PROTECT CREDIT CARD COMPANIES OVER SOUTH DAKOTANS.”

Ah hem. DSCC, I think you forgot someone in your headline, there.

Anyway, I wrote a newspaper column last week about the fact that South Dakota’s entire congressional delegation wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the credit card reform legislation wending its way over Capitol Hill. (Read the full column on the jump.)

This month, Congress is answering President Obama’s call for a reform bill by Memorial Day.

But South Dakota’s congressional delegation is not on board. The trio is eying the jobs credit cards have produced for their constituents. Between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs of the 20,000 that now exist at operations like Citibank and Premiere Bankcard could go away, state officials estimate.

Looks like it could turn out that one man’s lower interest rate is another’s lay-off.

It’s important to note that South Dakota’s congressionals favored a reform plan designed by the Federal Reserve and scheduled to take effect in July 2010. This new legislation changes some of the rules and ramps up the timeline.

To read last week’s full column and quotes from our delegation, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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By Denise Ross

This topic was all the rage for a few days about a month ago, when I wrote this installment of my newspaper column. Under this president, however, hot topics are ever-changing.

But to the farmers of the Dakotas, there’s never a bad time to talk about expanding trade opportunities. (Read the full column on the jump.)

South Dakota’s three members of Congress all favor lifting the trade embargo that currently limits how much wheat, corn, beef and pork can be sold to our Caribbean Communist neighbors. … our delegation has long wanted to further open up Cuba’s agricultural markets to American farmers and ranchers.

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What members of Congress want to do matters because the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 requires the trade embargo to be lifted by an act of Congress rather than by decree of the president. …

If the trade embargo were lifted, however, U.S. exports would likely double, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Yeah, even though there’s an embargo, the U.S. is still Cuba’s largest supplier of food. Go figure.

To read more about that situation and the statements of SD’s 3 congressionals, click “CLICK HERE” below.

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