Opinion

On July 1, 2023, two bills will become law that ensure everyone has the right to safe and healthy sexual relationship. The state legislature passed them, and the governor signed Senate Bill 90 and 91, which defined consent and made sex without consent a felony. As defined, consent is a person’s positive cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to the person’s exercise of free will. South Dakota was one of twenty-five states with no definition of consent in their state laws prior to the passage of these bills.

The Gregory County Farm Service Agency will be conducting a signup for the Emergency Conservation Program (ECP) to address damage caused to fences by the heavy snowfall of the 20222023 winter. The signup will begin June 20, 2023, and run until July 20, 2023.

DITOR Dear Editor, The landowners in Gregory and Charles Mix counties affected by the Gregory Co. Pumped Storage project received a letter dated May 23, 2023, stating that MidAmerican and MRES have decided not to pursue the project “at this time” and have applied to FERC to surrender their permit application which remained in effect until June 30, 2023. They stated the project was terminated due to financial reasons and market value fluctuations. They also stated “landowner opposition” had nothing to do with their decision. Of course, we would like to think we had something to do with the termination, but we’ll probably never know.

During Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address in 1981, he spoke of the significance of American values. He said, “It is time for us to realize that we’re too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams… Let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams.”

It all started with an ad in the Missouri Gazette & Public Advertiser of St. Louis on Wednesday mor n i n g , Feb. 13, 1822. The big news in St. Louis that week was an ad, signed by William H. Ashley, which had been gossip in the local taverns for the past five months. The ad read: “TO Enterprising Young Men. The subscriber wishes to engage ONE HUNDRED MEN to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years. -- For particulars, enquire of Major Andrew Henry, near the Lead Mines, in the County of Washington (who will ascend with, and command the party) or to the subscriber at St. Louis. William H. Ashley” Major Henry had gone to the mountains as early as 1808. During the next three years, he crossed the continental Divide to the Snake and Columbia rivers. Dissension within the small company and the War of 1812 stopped all trading and trapping in the northwest. If anyone was qualified to re-establish the American fur trade in 1822, it was Henry.

“South Dakota is hiring. As the first state to bounce back from the pandemic, we’ve got one of the nation’s strongest economies – and more jobs than we can fill.” That’s my own line from one of our new nationwide workforce recruitment ads, “Freedom Flows Here.” I’ve been talking about South Dakota’s “growing pains” for a while.

Ever feel like an underdog like your adversaries are so well funded, so well connected, and so powerful that no matter what you might do, you know darn well nothing will change? Well…get over it because we have work to do! So let me lay out this story: Over 100 years ago, Congress was concerned that monopolistic beef packers were forcing farmers and ranchers out of business and citizens were going to be faced with artificially high beef prices or perhaps even food shortages. So, they passed what was called the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921.

“Freedom Works Here” Governor Kristi Noem launched a nationwide workforce recruitment campaign. The focus of the campaign, entitled “Freedom Works Here,” is to recruit freedom- loving people from all over America to live and work in South Dakota.

The South Dakota Department of Corrections (DOC) created an Absconder Apprehension Unit (AAU) to lower the number of offenders on parole or suspended sentence who abscond or violate the rules of supervision following their release from prison. This unit will mitigate an increase in the number of parolees violating their supervision agreements over the last several years by evading supervision by their assigned parole agent and committing new crimes.

Nothing brings perspective to life like a newborn baby. Everything trivial and inconsequential fades into the background as you welcome a new tiny human into the world with a full heart and wide-open arms.