Opinion

On December 19, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released their new final 2023 Merger Guidelines. The guidelines are meant to promote fair, open and competitive markets by preventing mergers that would substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.

During the holiday season, we are surrounded by many gifts. I’m sure we can all remember growing up and not being able to sleep the night before Christmas. The anticipation and the excitement for the presents that would be underneath the tree the next morning was just too much to handle. Through all of that excitement, though, I hope we can all remember the greatest gift of them all: Jesus Christ.

A review of one day’s news of the circus in Congress promoted by Trump’s supplicants to direct the operation of the US government in support of dictator governments around the world would more than fill the bounds of this article. Putin has thanked the Republicans for blocking funding to the Ukraine forces in their war to repel the Russian invasion.

For most of us, we are reminded by the holiday season of an earlier time of memorable and exciting days gone by. Those “olden days” make for especially fond memories to one particular group – those farm kids who attended the one-room rural schools out on the Dakota prairie. This is when we harken back to what was one of the most unforgettable times during the school year.

Europe in the early 1800s was a place of great war, turmoil, and upheaval. The continent was reeling in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. Financial scarcity and insecurity abounded, further stoked by fires, floods, and famine.

Jewish people around the world are concluding their celebration of the miracle of Hanukkah. As they do so, I cannot help but think of them and the State of Israel.

From the very beginning, the rural school in South Dakota during the first half of the 1900’s served as a community center for the local area. The earliest schools were, in fact, the product of local community effort. It was the people who decided where to locate the school, how to build it, and selected a board of local citizens to manage it.

Commentary by Bill Bullard, CEO, R-CALF USA Go back just five years, to 2019. Remember what fed cattle prices were back then? The 5-Area steer price was $115 per cwt, which was the lowest annual steer price in eight years. Remember also, that in 2019 the volume in the fed cattle cash market had fallen to the lowest level in history, to less than 21%. And back then, during the first nine months of 2019, beef imports were 2.3 billion pounds.

I recently presented my budget to the South Dakota State Legislature. It’s a budget that prioritizes people, not programs.

Chevalier and Francois Verendrye were fur traders who built trading posts across Canada and into what was later to become the Dakota Territory. What little is known about their journey from Canada comes from a journal found in the French archives in 1851 and an inscribed lead plate which they buried at Fort Pierre two hundred and eighty years ago.