Noem should stay away from the border; how to stop election-deniers: Your letters

Your letters to the editor for Feb. 18, 2024:

CO2 pipelines are only in it for the 'mega bucks'

CO2 Pipelines are a SCAM. Pipelines are not needed. C02 can be safely converted and sold at manufacturing and ethanol sites. Soon green, renewable, sustainable, fuel that doesn’t rely on oil will be possible. C02 pipelines NEED TO ACT FAST before 45Q money runs out and new C02 uses and safety laws are in place.Now private, unnamed investors, want dangerous, Supercritical C02 piped, under high pressure, to sequestered sites near oil deposits. C02 could leak there, but C02 would provide mega bucks to investors if it were sold to reclaim oil. Oil reclamation would create more C02 than what is eliminated through ineffective, outdated, C02 pipeline technology.Pipelines are a SCHEME. (More want in on it.) They claim freedoms and land that belongs to landowners. Pay a pittance for it with taxpayers’ money and keep it for future sale. Threaten eminent domain. Skip testing, safety issues and liability. Sue to trespass. Tell counties they have no voice. Downplay risks, damage to land, environment, water, and tiling. Landowners experience permanent loss of ownership, limited construction rights, damaged fertile land, and land value loss.Pipelines use vague construction information and no mention of leaks, hazardous plume, or liability. A large majority of Iowans are objecting, but elected officials are mostly silent. There are big donors and powerful people connected with these lucrative projects. Iowans are providing the land, the money to construct, and will be forced to cover serious hazards and permanent damages into the future. Pipelines are a Win, Win.

− Rose Mather, Yankton

Now is the time to volunteer for veterans

This week we celebrate the 46^th annual observance of VA’s National Salute to Veteran Patients. VA facilities across the Nation are honoring all Veterans as we, entrusted with their care, reflect upon our obligation to serve those who have served us.

Each of us who are privileged to live in this Nation has a special place in our hearts for these defenders of freedom. That is why each year VA takes the week of Valentine’s Day to encourage our community and public to express affection and respect for those we admire.

During National Salute to Veterans Week, I encourage your readers to consider showing love to Veterans by volunteering, sending a card, or donating monetarily or by purchasing a requested item to support our Veterans. You can show your appreciation for the many sacrifices our Veterans have made and remind them their sacrifices are not forgotten.

This week, we have handed out hundreds of Valentines sent in from volunteer groups, held a gift passing for our inpatient and CBOC Veterans, handed out Salute Week pins, and held a Sweetheart Luncheon for our inpatient Veterans.

The love doesn’t have to end on Valentine’s Day. Many of our Veterans are coming to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with special needs and challenges that require the hearts and hands of a new generation of VA volunteers. The Sioux Falls VA invites all citizens, young and old, to join us in honoring our Veterans year-round by learning more about VA’s volunteer program.

Everyone can impact the life of a Veteran patient. Call our CDCE office at 605-333-6806 or visit http://www.va.gov/sioux-falls-health-care/work-with-us/volunteer-or-donate/ to learn how to join the VA’s National Salute to Veteran Patients.

− Sara S. Ackert, MHA, Executive Director/CEO Sioux Falls VA Health Care System

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I find it appalling that Senator Mike Round believes we need to "defend our NATO allies" as quoted on politico.com. I thought Rounds was elected to advance the causes of the citizens of South Dakota? The U.S. sent $210 Million in aid to NATO countries in 2023 alone. And NATO countries can't defend themselves? Putin has stated he has no interest in attacking NATO countries. Is Rounds this ignorant or does he approve of the arms manufactures lining their pockets on continued human suffering? The narrative is getting old and South Dakota deserves better.

− Douglas Heeren, Spink Township

The Need for a Designated “Holy Space” in New Penitentiary Construction

Will South Dakota DOC include a designated place for faith-based programs, like there currently is in the 1881 SD Penitentiary building, in the design plans for the new construction? What are the costs and benefits of this decision?Tax dollars, prisoner rehabilitation, recidivism costs:Efficient and effective use of tax dollars requires that inmates receive rehabilitation in a holistic way while serving their sentences. The goal should be inmates who return to society in a healthier and more productive status than when they entered the system. Without impactful educational and counseling programing within the prison walls, our communities suffer these consequences. Our towns and counties bear the burden of increased need for policing, mental health counseling and facilities. Tax dollars are consumed by chasing down repeat offenders, while court officials and their time are eaten up in endless cycles of recidivism.Social costs in human terms:More important than money, the human toll on repeat offenders themselves, their families, and especially their children, greatly impacts society. Probably most of us know on a personal level how family structures can be destroyed when the criminal justice system and mental health supports fail. The negative effects extend to future generations in patterns of anti-social behavior and cycles of addiction.Community safety:Border protection seems to be a priority in many people’s minds. Yet, releasing prisoners into our communities without having provided them the best opportunities for rehabilitation prior to re-entry endangers lives every day in SD. Just read the headlines. Where is the outrage over this missed opportunity?Hope behind the walls:Fortunately, we have solutions that are effective. We know that faith-based rehabilitation programs within prison walls work.We also know from our prison chaplains that a designated, respected space for worship within prison walls is more effective than relegating worship communities to a generic activity center – one that can be rescheduled for other purposes on a whim. Within such a “holy space,” possibilities are imagined, and hope is renewed.No doubt, many of us can also relate to this experience. When we recognize who we are, and Whose we are, our identities, and thus our behaviors change. (See Identity Behavior Theory in the source above.)Governor Noem, DOC Secretary Wasko, and legislators: Let’s do what is right -- to protect our communities, rehabilitate our inmates, and use tax dollars in the most efficient manner. Include designated worship spaces, reserved as they are now in the old penitentiary, for faith-based rehabilitation.

−Mary Moeller, Brookings

All politics and no governing

Oglala Sioux Tribal President Frank Star Comes Out should be commended for his position in banning SD Governor Kristi Noem from the Pine Ridge Reservation. Noem is showing an amazing lack of respect for our institutions when she is willing to send razor wire to the border when the U S Supreme Court has allowed the Biden administration to remove Texas' razor wire.A bi-partisan Senate bill speaks to many of the immigrant issues that Republicans want solved, yet, the Republican House is refusing to vote on it. All politics and no governing.

− Marv Looby, Sioux Falls

Summit Carbon should cooperate with farmers, landowners

“No eminent domain for private gain” is a message that over 80% of SD residents and landowners support. Landowners and farmers with farming backgrounds and pedigrees second to none are fighting to protect their constitutional rights. They are fighting back against a pipeline that will carry CO2, an asphyxiant, that will kill. They are wanting to protect their rural assets from a corporation with foreign investments. Summit Carbon Solutions (SCS) is seeking to bury a pipeline on private property crossing fields, acreages, streams, roads, pastures, feedlots, and tree groves. These same landowners and farmers have organized public forums and meetings, attended PUC and legislative hearings, and formed a legal team to protect their rights as SD residents. They have done so donating their own time, money, and travel expense.

SCS has no real concern for the environment. In fact, they have no real endeavor to help ethanol other than using ethanol plants as a means to pirate onto private land holdings to build their project. Their only end goal is to obtain lucrative tax credits, a program of tax spending, that causes you to pay more taxes and future generations to carry larger debt.

In the last few months, SCS has tried to rebrand itself as pro SD, pro Ag. But it is still the same out- of -state LLC that dragged over 160 landowners into condemnation court in 2023. It is the same company that continues to do away with local control and sue counties. It is the same company that has hired dozens of lobbyists to sabotage the law-making process for their own greed. In the meantime, landowners and farmers are torn between trying to being present in Pierre while balancing the need to care for their own families and livestock. Sadly, SCS has convinced several legislators to carry propaganda much like paid employees or agents. The amount of expensive advertising that allies of SCS are spending is in direct proportion to the greed and chaos that SCS carries as public garbage.

The real answer to carbon capture is the land itself. Healthy soil and plants are the true carbon sink. The ethanol industry can take two paths. Either carry the carpet bagging of SCS to grab expensive tax credits thus continuing more chaos as they seek to do now. Or build cooperative actions among farmers and community residents as they have done in past. We all know that the right answer lies with our own farmers not an out of state corporation. The South Dakota way is building within while respecting neighbors, friends, and fellow residents.

− Charlie Johnson, Madison

Don't use state resources to help Texas

This letter is in response to Gov. Noem's speech to the joint session of the Legislature regarding her decision to send South Dakota Nat. Guard troops to Texas. As an 81 year old resident of South Dakota, I am very disappointed and disgusted to hear her discuss the Guard as if they were her personal army that she can send to Texas to help them fight the Federal Government and the Biden Administration. She must be reminded, the S.D. Guard is as much mine and yours as it is hers, even though she is the "Commander in Chief". The fact she is using our Guard (and S.D. funds) to assist Texas in their fight against a U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding the Border is in reality aiding Texas in their fight against the US Constitution. She is not only sending Guard troops but also threatens to send more razor wire to assist in Texas's fight. I firmly believe that a great percentage of our SD citizens are not willing to be a part of that fight. If the Gov. wants to continue her politically driven partnership with Texas in this fight, she should do it using her personal resources, not our State resources.

− Tom Scheinost, Fort Pierre

An open letter to Lincoln county residents

I'm writing on behalf of my fellow prisoners. We see what's happening to you and the familiarity is too blatant to ignore. We have a motto around here when it comes to the state and what they allow themselves to do, "they can do whatever they want". That's real, ask any prisoner. The lack of communication is universal, its the reason a lot of our guards have quit in the last couple years. Your fears about living next to prisoners are causing a couple different lines of thoughts in my mind. The first is, look at Springfield and the families that live around the mike durphy state pen. I don't have google to check my facts, but I don't believe anything wild has happened to the good folks down there. The second thought though is this: 90% of prisoners are going to go home someday and may very well be your neighbor, so what kind of neighbor do you want? I've lived in prison for 14 years and watched my prison release people who had no job skills, no people skills, no drug treatment, no continued education, no sense of community, poor communication skills, no sense of purpose, and no plan for their future. This correctional facility that takes your tax dollars and promised to keep South Dakotans safe has failed its mandate time and time again with every tragedy you've seen in the news committed by a person on parole. The legislature stopped funding the prison education department twenty years ago.We don't have nearly enough teachers to do the work of helping men transform their lives so they can go home and stay there as the good father, neighbor, and community member that we all want them to be. We do, however, have volunteer run programs that are essential to any success story you've heard about this place. The reality is that people like you are the ones who come in here with this simple understanding; that helping people grow in here saves lives out there. The last few years has been tough though and quite a lot of our best volunteers simply aged out of being able to come in. So here I am, reaching out to my community to solve a problem that deeply affects our community if it's left unchanged. Will you, dear reader, consider volunteering in my prison so we can keep making sure we are sending out good neighbors? If you are fearful of who your neighbors are, it’s good practice to get to know them.− Samuel Lint, inmate, South Dakota State Penitentiary, Sioux Falls

To stop election deniers, hand count elections and run audits

In answer to Jeri Reed's recent letter to the editor, I too took part in counting absentee ballots after the 2022 election. It seemed to me that the process was fairly administered, although a bit chaotic which perhaps is to be expected whenever you have that many people attempting to accomplish a task of that magnitude in a day. However, Reed is missing the whole point. Hand verification is not the point of contention. The integrity and transparency of the electronic tabulators and voting machines is the point at issue.Recent revelations regarding the cast vote records (CVR) and ballot imaging should be of concern to everyone. If the majority of the ballots in the county are cast on election day at polling places and those votes are tabulated electronically, then it would stand to reason that any citizen of the county or state should be able to have access to the results (CVR and ballot images for any legitimate reason for the 22 months after the election as required by federal law. In Minnehaha, and throughout South Dakota that does not appear to be the case.Until our current auditor, Leah Anderson, and her staff were trained on the ES&S electronic system recently it was claimed that ballot images were not collected and stored in the machine and that CVR were not available without software that would allow them to be produced in spreadsheet form. One would think that a discerning auditor would want to be able to retrieve both CVR's and ballot images as a means to "audit", which to my understanding and "auditor" does, hand entered polling information with electronically produced tabulations. That is elementary auditing.The world of electronic tabulation is confusing to most, me included. Wouldn't it be prudent to be able to run CVR reports and check ballot images to insure numbers match, especially in close races?My question is, "What is stopping the county commission from the pursuit of the safeguard? Is it the money required to purchase this software, is it that the commissioners just don't think it is necessary, or is it the fact that they have labeled Ms. Anderson a Trump loving election denier?" Whatever the reason, why not do the right thing, shut the election deniers up once and for all and do some hand counting, run CVR spreadsheets and actually "audit" the election? That is the only way that the "noise" that has arisen regarding election integrity will be quelled. Everyone has a right to trust our elections are free and fair. There are a noisy group at present who believes they are not. Let's prove them wrong. That is the duty of the county in this matter. It is the only way the noise will stop.If it doesn't happen the noise will only get louder.

− Randy Amundson, Sioux Falls

Gov. Kristi Noem to the southern border again

If this trip is paid for by S.Dak taxpayers on a S.Dak. plane, something is wrong. This just a political stunt of no real value except publicity for her. If she really wants to do something about illegal immigrants develop a foreign worker registry like Niki Haley did in S. Carolina. Where they have to be registered and possess a green card ion order to work. A violation of this should result in a $5000.00 fine and 7 days in jail without work release for the owner/president of the company. Also perform no knock raids on employers who might be employing illegal immigrants such as dairies, construction companies, landscapers, roofers and etc. This would be completed by members of the following groups: DCI, sheriffs, police, game wardens, highway patrol and national guard. No notice, just show up and check for green cards. Illegal immigrants will then be deported.

− Jerry M LeClair, Sioux Falls

Noem poem

Governor Noem,Stay Home

− Jim Pickner, Hawarden, IA

Get government out of the time-change business

On these cold, dark winter mornings, do you long for daylight to arrive? Think what it would be like if daylight saving time (DST) were in effect all year long. The sun wouldn't be up until 9 a.m. Our children would be heading to school in darkness. And we'd be commuting in the dark, navigating the coldest days of winter without the warmth of sunlight.

Every November, when we set our clocks back, surveys abound as to whether people prefer the semi-annual time change or year-round DST. The third choice is seldom offered in surveys: Stay on standard time all year. Most Americans are weary of the time changes, but there is no consensus on whether standard time or daylight time is the better solution. So we continue the twice-a-year routine. I propose returning to standard time and doing away with the wasteful and disruptive process of changing our clocks.

Numerous studies have been conducted on health issues, crime, traffic accidents, energy consumption, economics, etc., as to whether standard or daylight time is more beneficial. Without definitive results, people promote the studies that match their personal preferences. What is known is the disruption we experience twice a year as we adjust to the time change.

According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, sunlight is the most powerful synchronizer of our circadian rhythms—the internally generated clocks our bodies follow. Exposure to light in the morning makes us feel more alert and helps us maintain a strong circadian rhythm. The setting sun tells the body to release melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. Exposure to more light closer to bedtime makes it harder to fall asleep. We function best when our sleep-wake cycle follows the sun.

Many people don’t know that standard time relates to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which has been the world’s standardized time system since the 1800s. The earth’s circumference is measured with 360 degrees of longitude and divided into 24 fifteen-degree segments, each representing one hour of the day. The prime meridian, marked as zero degrees longitude, passes near the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. Anywhere in the world, the sun shines directly overhead at noon in the center of each time zone. DST throws both the world’s time system (external clock) and the body’s system (internal clock) off-kilter.

Having the sun shining until bedtime deprives us of summer evenings sitting under the stars and watching our children chase fireflies. It deprives us of the joy of waking in the morning to the warm summer sunshine.

In 1974, the federal Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act enacted a two-year experiment of permanent DST. It lasted only one winter, before complaints from the public caused Congress to repeal the law in October, largely due to safety concerns about children getting to school on dark winter mornings. Outdoor workers also objected to the extra hour of working in the dark. For the past several years, Congress has again been attempting to place the nation on permanent daylight time through the Sunshine Protection Act. In 2021, the Senate passed the bill, but it failed in the House. How ridiculous to talk about “protecting” or “saving” daylight. Stealing an hour of daylight from the morning is not protecting or saving anything.

South Dakota’s legislature has also attempted and failed to pass such a law. I asked a state legislator to introduce a bill to keep South Dakota on standard time and was told other legislators would vote it down because the surrounding states use DST. In our great pioneer tradition of rugged individualism, can’t South Dakota be a leader instead of a follower?

I urge citizens and lawmakers to get the government out of the time-change business and allow the system to operate according to natural science.

As we look forward to spring, let’s enjoy the increasing daylight hours in both morning and afternoon and stop messing with our clocks.

− Diane Diekman, a retired U.S. Navy captain who lives in Sioux Falls and is the author of three country music biographies

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This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Noem should stay away from the border; how to stop election-deniers: Your letters