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Cory Heidelberger puts progressivism on hold to preserve freemasonry

Cory Heidelberger covers the destruction of Madison's Masonic lodge:

I thought I had dealt with my grief in anticipation of the demolition of the old Masonic Temple in Madison. Owners DeLon Mork and Randy Schaefer announced last September that they would take the wrecking ball to the derelict building.

Then Cory says something completely out of character for a self-proclaimed so-called progressive:

Mayor Roy Lindsay just had to say something stupid:

Mayor Roy Lindsay said that it was “history in the making,” adding that there was a time and a place for the structure, but today it was “time to move forward” [Jane Utecht, “Masons Comes Down,” Madison Daily Leader, 2015.04.27].

No, Roy, this was not history in the making. This was Madison unmaking history, smashing and burying history.

I suppose it does make sense that Cory would put his political mission on hold for a moment in order to honor his New Age religious foundation:

Masonry had a substantial influence on mainstream churches, especially in what  we call mainline denominations. But its impact was all the more obvious among  more marginal groups, and in new religious movements. When we look at America’s  esoteric and mystical movements, its New Agers and its experimental religions,  not much makes sense without those core Masonic ideas and structures.

And this explains Cory's infatuation with environmental radicalism:

This is a site where New Age meets the Ancients. Comte de Saint Germain was an 18th-century adventurer known as ‘Der Wundermann’ – ‘The Wonderman’. He went by the name of Comte St-Germain. He has a reputation of mystery and extravagancy. He pops up from time to time across the centuries. He claimed to be the originator of Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism;

and...

The New Age Movement is not really new for it goes back thousands of years. It’s actually called paganism/druidism. It is the worship of mother earth and Satan.

Can an atheist worship Satan? Perhaps not purposely. But then Cory doesn't know that his efforts to establish a New Age Theocracy is supporting the wealthy crony capitalists:

I recently ran across an evident intermixture of New Age/2012 scenario with Satanism/Masonry. This post is intended to keep our alertness and intuition alive when dealing with New Age “information” that is all around the blogosphere , YouTube and the web in general and I’m very curious how my readers comment on this.

New World Order Plans

Even if you think all this web-talk of Illuminati and Freemason has nothing to do with reality and is just pure conspiracy theory you have to acknowledge some facts that do sum up to a sea of evidence all heading in the same direction.

Bilderberg Group

Every year, 300 of the most wealthy and/or powerful people of this planet meet on the Bilderberg meetings. In contrast to other meetings like Davos, public or media is not allowed and the discussions are 100% secret. This is not conspiracy theory, but fact. See the official Bilderberg website and the list of the Bilderberg participants of 2010 in spain. You can do a quick search on persons from the lists of 2008-2010 like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Gates, and you find yourself in the deepest mud of war and economic criminals.

Of course trying to help Cory understand the error of his way will only get you kicked out of Madville. Right Roger?

Thune and Rounds participate in the war against the Constitution currently being led by President Obama

From National Review:

On Thursday morning, top Republican strategist Karl Rove proclaimed, “The dysfunctional Congress finally appears to be working again as the Founders intended.” Just hours later, the GOP-controlled Senate confirmed as attorney general — i.e., as the chief federal law-enforcement officer of the United States — a lawyer who quite openly supports the systematic non-enforcement of federal law. In fact, Ms. Lynch also supports President Obama’s blatantly unconstitutional usurpations of legislative authority, including most notoriously, of Congress’s power to set the terms of lawful presence by aliens in our country.

Now, I happen to like Karl Rove — if you’re looking for the Rove piñata at the end of the Tea Party, you will not find it in my columns. But can someone as smart as he is really think Congress under Republican control is working as the Founders intended? The Founders intended Congress to rein in a president who behaved like a monarch. Anyone who has read the 1787 constitutional-convention debates knows they would have impeached and removed a president for a bare fraction of the malfeasance carried out by President Obama.

The Founders, moreover, thought oaths of office were serious business — having pledged their own lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the cause of liberty against great odds and a great power that would have put them to death had the revolution failed. They therefore required (in Article II, Section 1) that the president take an oath to execute the laws faithfully, and to preserve, protect, and defend a Constitution that Mr. Obama takes less seriously than his NCAA brackets.

And now we learn the two Republican Senators from South Dakota supported Obama's crusade against the constitution:

So, in addition to the aforementioned ten Republicans who said “aye” on the final vote to make Lynch attorney general, there are ten others who conspired in the GOP’s now routine parliamentary deception: Vote in favor of ending debate, knowing that this will give Democrats ultimate victory, but cast a meaningless vote against the Democrats in the final tally in order to pose as staunch Obama opponents when schmoozing the saps back home. These ten — John Thune (S.D.), John Cornyn (Texas), Bob Corker (Tenn.), Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Cory Gardner (Col.), Mike Rounds (S.D.), and Thom Tillis (N.C.) — are just as willfully complicit in Lynch’s confirmation and her imminent execution of Obama’s lawlessness.

This is not a Senate back to regular order. It is a disgrace, one that leads to the farce’s final act: On Monday, Loretta Lynch will ceremoniously take the oath to uphold the Constitution she has already told us she will undermine.

Note how conservative Republicans are being deceived: "cast a meaningless vote against the Democrats in the final tally in order to pose as staunch Obama opponents when schmoozing the saps back home." Both political parties are working to destroy the Constitution. The political drama that portrays an ideological fight between Democrats and Republicans is fake. Just like the conservative shell of Senators Thune and Rounds.

Lesbian Canadian teacher says a safe classrom for 4-year olds includes promoting immoral sex

Looks like the New Age Theocrats truly are global. This comes from Canada:

A primary grade lesbian teacher from an Ontario public school revealed in a workshop at a homosexual activist conference for teachers earlier this month how she uses her classroom to convince children as young as four to accept homosexual relationships.

“And I started in Kindergarten. What a great place to start. It was where I was teaching. So, I was the most comfortable there,” Pam Strong said at the conference, attended by LifeSiteNews.

The conference, hosted by the homosexual activist organization Jer’s Vision, now called the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, focused on the implementation of Bill 13 in Ontario classrooms. Bill 13, called by critics the ‘homosexual bill of rights,’ passed in June 2012 and gave students the right to form pro-gay clubs in their school, including Catholic ones, using the name Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA).

Strong, who is in an open relationship with another woman and who has been a teacher for about five years, focused her workshop on what she called the “power of conversation” for promoting LGBTQ issues in an elementary classroom. She began her talk by relating how she reacted the first time one of her students called another student ‘gay’ as a putdown.

“With [the principal’s] encouragement, we decided that I would go from class to class and talk about what ‘gay’ means, what does ‘LGBTQ’ mean, what do ‘I’ mean,” she told about 40 attendees, all educators, at her workshop.

Strong related how she began with the junior kindergarten class.

“And I read a [pro-gay child’s] book [King and King], and I started to realize that conversations can be very difficult, and they can have the most power when they are the most difficult.”

“But difficult conversations are a part of what we do as teachers, right? And when these conversations are properly supported by teachers within the safety of the classroom, they provide a rich environment for our students as they unpack these complex social issues and they reflect on their own preconceptions, rights, of gender, sexuality, love, all these different things,” she said.

Strong related that as she was reading “King and King” in the junior kindergarten class as a springboard to discuss her sexuality with the kids, she got to the part where the two princes become ‘married’ when one of the boys suddenly shouted out: “They can’t do that! They can’t get married. They’re two boys.”

Recounted Strong: “And I said, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, they can. It’s right here on page 12.”

Safety of the classroom means kids are taught immoral acts? How much further does this have to go before we start talking child abuse?

Cory Heidelberger claims to understand conservative principles, but continues to block a true conservative voice

Cory Heidelberger claims to be an expert on conservative principles:

Permit me to develop that critique further, on politically and economically conservative principles.

First, let’s recall the details of the training wage. The training wage is one of several minimum wage exemptions provided by federal law. The federal government actually calls this exemption its own “youth minimum wage.” South Dakota embraces this exemption in SDCL 60-11-4.1. Under the training wage, employers may pay workers under the age of 20 may be paid as little as $4.25 an hour for the first 90 calendar days (not workdays) of their employment. From Day 91 on, if those young trainees prove themselves and get to keep the job, employers must pay them the standard minimum wage.

Conservative political principles dictate that we should not clutter the law books with unnecessary laws. Existing federal law and state law already provide employers with the opportunity to pay a youth minimum wage. 90 days should be long enough for any attentive employer to determine whether a young rookie can perform the basics of a job, add value to the company, and earn her keep. The training wage provides that trial period and the cost savings that Senator Novstrup uses to stiltedly justify his youth minimum wage law. Since existing law already contains a training wage that serves as a youth minimum wage (and actually covers more young workers, everyone 19 and under, than Novstrup’s law, which applies only to workers 17 and under), there is no need for Novstrup’s additional youth minimum wage law.

Economically, conservative businesspeople like to save money. Undeniably, following Novstrup’s new law and paying workers under the age of 18 $7.50 an hour is cheaper than paying them South Dakota’s standard minimum wage of $8.50 an hour. But taking advantage of current law—training wage of $4.25 for the first 90 days, then standard minimum wage of $8.50—saves employers even more through an entire year of employment.

Cory, a limited government conservative would remove all minimum wage laws off the books, and let private individuals what they want to pay someone to work. Novstrup is playing the dialectic game and is compromising conservative principles. That is what liberal Republicans do.

After setting up is con job, Heidelberger makes this arrogant statement:

Conservative principles say you don’t write unnecessary laws, because extra laws can have unintended consequences. Senate Bill 177 has the unintended consequence of discouraging financial conservatives from hiring our youngest workers, which is exactly the opposite of what Senator Novstrup said his bill would do.

Funny how if Republicans would remember to act like conservatives, they’d avoid a lot of problems. Even funnier that a liberal like me has to remind them of how to be conservative… and clean up their messes with a referendum.

I left a comment saying that if he wanted the real conservative analysis on minimum wage that he needs to stop blocking my comments. The comment went into moderation and is now gone. The liberal con artists can't handle the argument that $8.50 will not solve the poverty problem. If we wanted to solve poverty with a minimum wage, raise to $25. But then you will have this:

The efforts underway by the Service Employees International Union, and its political and media allies, to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour would, if successful, cause major unemployment among low-skilled workers, who are the supposed beneficiaries of those efforts.

The reason is not only the fact that higher wages serve to raise costs of production and thus prices, which in turn serves to reduce physical sales volume and thus the number of workers needed. There is also another equally, if not more important reason in this case, and it is a reason which is only very inadequately described by reference to the substitution of machinery or automation for the direct labor of workers when wages are increased.

And the conservative principle of a competitive free market has proven to out perform the government's intrusion:

Wal-Mart has decided  to give 500,000 workers a $1 billion pay raise by boosting its basic rate to $9  an hour in April and to $10 by February. And imagine this: It didn't need  government to do it.

The retail giant should be Exhibit A in the argument against imposing a  one-size-fits-all minimum wage straitjacket on the U.S. economy.

It's raising wages for workers not because it wants to be nice, but because  the market for people who can do Wal-Mart jobs has tightened in recent years as  modest job growth has been restored to the economy.

The reason for this? In a word, competition.

Of course allowing a true conservative voice to the conservative would be too much competition for the myths Cory is trying to fabricate, and would be too much of a humbling experience for a "smart fool". Since $8.50 does not solve the poverty problem, the last thing a con-artist like Cory Heidelberger wants others to know is the real reason so-called progressives want a minimum wage...racism.

UPDATE: Here are some anti-conservatives attacks from Cory's indoctrinated New Age Theocrats:

Cory, great reasoning once again.

However, trying to reason with a South Dakota “conservative” is no easy task.  In fact, I would wager that trying to reason with almost anyone in South Dakota identifying themselves as “conservative” would probably be a total waste of time.  Unless you like seeing the veins in their necks stand out. (Sorry Pat Powers, yours probably won’t make it to the surface, even though they’re under high pressure)

“Never try to teach a pig to sing.  It wastes your time and annoys the pig.” – Robert Heinlein

...

Oxymoron of the day:  “conservative thinking”

Keep banging away, Cory!  You are making a difference.

More crony capitalism in Mitchell with TIF being used to subsidize the oligarchy

For those of us paying attention in Mitchell, we understand that the Mitchell Chamber and Development Corporation is running this city. I now call it the Mitchell Oligarchy. In February we hear about this transaction:

A Mitchell couple have purchased the former Happy Chef building and are planning some major changes at its site.

Kelly and Emily Hohn, of Mitchell, bought the building for $350,000, according to Mitchell Area Development Corporation Executive Director Bryan Hisel. That deal was closed on Thursday, after the 60-day finalization period ended.

The Hohns, who own Anytime Fitness in Mitchell, plan to knock down the building and construct a brand-new facility that will house their 24/7 fitness center.

The sale of the building included a provision that allows the Mitchell Convention and Visitors Bureau to have a visitors center in the new building, with a seven-year, no-rent lease.

Other potential businesses at the site are still being worked out, along with the design features of the building.

"We're still working a lot of things out with our contractors, but I think it's going to be a very appealing building," Kelly Hohn told The Daily Republic on Thursday. "It's going to be a good deal for the city of Mitchell."

Hohn said the opportunity to have a business located on the corner of Interstate 90 and Burr Street in Mitchell was a prime opportunity.

"It's a home run site as far as location goes," he said.

Similarly, the chance to have a visitors center on the site of his business was an easy choice.

"It's huge," Hohn said. "That's what economic development is all about. It's getting people to your business and without visitors, you have nothing. That's what we wanted to emphasize, and it's very important to us that we get people to stop in Mitchell and spend their money as opposed to Sioux Falls or Rapid City."

Today we hear that the "home run site as location goes" is described as a blighted area in order to justify a TIF:

A committee said Tuesday a proposed tax increment financing district at the site of the former Happy Chef in Mitchell would meet the city's guidelines.

The city of Mitchell's TIF Finance Committee unanimously recommended that the project plan be submitted to the city Planning Commission for review, which meets at noon Monday. That recommendation was made during a meeting Tuesday at Mitchell City Hall.

Plans for the property, which was purchased by Kelly and Emily Hohn in February for $350,000, call for a new, 14,000-square-foot facility to replace the 4,000-square-foot building, and the area would have a larger parking lot. The new building would include a visitors center for the Mitchell Area Chamber of Commerce and space for three businesses, including the Hohns' Anytime Fitness business.

The TIF would officially be known as city of Mitchell Tax Incremental District No. 21. A TIF is a development plan that uses revenue from future taxes on improved properties to pay for public improvements.

The TIF plan calls for $320,000 to be used to assist in demolishing the existing building and parking lot, grading the land, sewer improvements, professional fees and expanding the access road easement for the property. The TIF funds would also be used to reimburse the construction costs for the 700 square feet of the new building where the visitors center would be located, estimated to be worth $72,506. The entire building is estimated to cost $1.5 million.

Don Petersen, a Mitchell attorney, represented the Hohns Tuesday and presented their project plan to the board. He said the TIF would make the project more economically feasible for the owners and reiterated that the developers would finance the project, not the city.

"The importance of this TIF and why we're asking for it, is that itself, the location is the primary entrance into the city," Petersen said. "You never get a second chance to make a first impression, but this is it."

Regardless if the TIF were to be approved or not, Petersen said the Hohns are committed to the seven years of rent-free use for the Mitchell Area Chamber of Commerce.

Petersen said the plan not only reinforces economic development, but would rid the community of the blighted building.

So why didn't the city's Code Manager go after the Development Corporation for having a nuisance property, like they do to everybody else? Especially since it is the first thing you see when arriving at Mitchell? Instead they give the oligarchy a tax break, so they an have a visitor's center without paying rent.

Mitchell School District has history of rebidding projects that are over budget, so why did they not rebid the $15 million Fine Arts Center?

I previously posted on the Mitchell School District approving the Fine Arts Center at an amount that was 15% over budget. I also questioned the legality and why it was not rebid. Less than a year ago, Superintendent Joe Graves did promote rebidding an over budget project:

The bid to renovate the Mitchell Career and Technical Education Academy is almost as much as the budget for the project itself, meaning the school will likely need to re-bid the project.

That's the recommendation given to the Mitchell Board of Education, which will act on the agenda item tonight at 5 p.m., during a regular meeting at the MCTEA building.

Superintendent Joe Graves is recommending the school reject the lone bid and table all other bids.

The lone general construction bid came from Sunkota at a total price of $735,000. Graves said during a March meeting the budget for the project was $700,000 to $750,000, including architectural and construction management costs.

Graves said in the agenda item description that the bid exceeds the budget and he hopes to re-advertise the project and bring back new bids during the July 21 meeting.

The project will be funded from a $1,240,228 grant awarded to Mitchell in February from the Governor's Grants for Career and Technical Education.

Here are the details regarding the architectural and construction management costs:

The project includes around 750,000 dollars in facility renovations.  The contract with Puetz Corporation pays 7.5 percent of the total construction costs for architecture and 6 percent for construction management services.  Graves says the hope is for the project to be completed by the start of the next school year.

So the fees would have added $99,225 to the project, making it 11% over budget. So why didn't Superintendent Graves recommend rebidding the Fine Arts Center project that was $2.8 million, or 20% over budget? Here is how that played out:

The Mitchell School District faces some tough decisions regarding the next step for a proposed fine arts center at the school, after the lowest bid on the project was $2.8 million over budget Thursday.

Mitchell Superintendent Joe Graves said the proposed timeline on the project of starting construction this spring or summer and opening the facility in the fall of 2016 is now in jeopardy.

"If the bids were correct, we definitely would have gone ahead," he said. "Now, I'm not so sure what we're going to do. This is part of the bidding process. Sometimes you overshoot and sometimes you undershoot, and it's just part of the deal."

The district's architect on the project, MSH Architects, of Sioux Falls, held a bid opening meeting Thursday at the Mitchell Career and Technical Education Academy. In December, MSH Architects said the base costs for the building were budgeted for $11.75 million and the district hoped the whole cost of the project could be kept to $13.5 million or less.

But only two construction companies bid on the project, with Puetz Construction, of Mitchell, giving the lowest base bid of $14,590,000, or $2.84 million over the estimated base bid price.

The Mitchell Board of Education will likely discuss the issue at its next meeting and decide whether to accept or deny the bids, determining the next step in the process.

The other bid came from Peska Construction, of Sioux Falls, whose base bid came in $15,323,000. Both contractors included bids for additional alternates for the project, ranging from lighting and sound options, to features for the possible black box theater, curtains and landscaping options. Those total between $735,000 and $810,000, but are optional.

Graves said he was disappointed in the low number of bids and that the bids were over budget.

"We only had two bidders, and that was too bad, because we were expecting more," Graves said. "And frankly, the bids were too high, so we're going to have to sit down and look at this carefully and decide what to do next."

I was told that the reason Mitchell School District gets so few bids is that the construction industry in South Dakota believe that somehow Puetz Corporation will end up getting the project, so why bother bidding. Don't know if that is true, but that is what they decided:

Superintendent Joe Graves said the board has spent the last six to seven weeks negotiating with Puetz and MSH Architects, which designed the facility, to find cost-saving measures.

As part of the bid approval, the board accepted bid alternatives from Puetz on lighting ($49,308), audio ($107,642), theater equipment ($200,655), curtains ($58,311) and exterior uplights ($6,927); as well as cost reductions amounting to $867,721. The motion also included approval of an increase on the loan amount for the project by $450,000 to $13.95 million. Graves said there will be an additional $215,000 in loans through Qualified Zone Academy Bond funding, a federal program that provides loans with low or no interest rates. That makes the total loan amount $14.16 million. The school board voted during a meeting last year to approve the loan amount through lender Edward Jones.

The loans are offset by more than $500,000 in donations that have been raised for the project. On Monday, Graves said the school has raised $529,850 to put toward the project. The largest is a $350,000 donation from the Mitchell Area Development Corporation. Graves said the district is still seeking out some additional private donations. Additional donations beyond this point, Graves said, will be used to help pay off the project’s loans.

“It’s a very good feeling,” Graves said of the project’s approval after the meeting. “We’re going to provide an excellent facility to a bunch of our students, and I just love that.”

The unanimous approval came after lengthy discussion regarding, in particular, the latest cost-saving negotiations undertaken by those involved in the project. Board members heard input from parents, school faculty, prospective school board members and the architectural and construction professionals involved in the process.

So did Graves also work with Sunkota last year as he did this year with Puetz Corporation? According to a board member, they did not know the details of the so-called negotiations with Puetz until they were explained to board members by the superintendent one-on-one. That does not jive with the above report that says, " the board has spent the last six to seven weeks negotiating with Puetz". Looks like another case of crony capitalism running amok. Now we may understand how education taxes continue to rise, as teachers continuer to be under paid. That last solution for teacher pay is not raising taxes more than they are now. Somehow most of those monies will end up into the pockets of crony capitalists, not the teachers.

South Dakota Democrats leaving Party for independence, and what is Cory Heidelberger and Pat Powers fighting about?

Bob Mercer has the facts:

The Obama years also saw a disastrous erosion of Democratic voter registration in South Dakota.

For the 2006 general election, registration was 240,101 Republicans; 190,905 Democrats; and 74,608 independents.

For the 2008 general, registration was 241,528 Republicans; 204,413 Democrats; and 83,147 independents.

The Democratic surge didn't last, but a shift to independents did. By general election time in 2014, registration was 239,355 Republicans; 176,169 Democrats; and 100,547 independents.

The latest statewide numbers as of April 6 showed 242,163 Republicans; 175,514 Democrats; and 105,784 independents.

So since 2006, Republican member stay is flat, Democrats lose over 7%, and independents grew by over 40%. So will Obama's visit bring power to South Dakota Democrats? Not if they are paying attention to what is going on in DC:

Key congressional leaders agreed on Thursday on legislation to give President Obama special authority to finish negotiating one of the world’s largest trade accords, opening a rare battle that aligns the president with Republicans against a broad coalition of Democrats.

In what is sure to be one of the toughest fights of Mr. Obama’s last 19 months in office, the “fast track” bill allowing the White House to pursue its planned Pacific trade deal also heralds a divisive fight within the Democratic Party, one that could spill into the 2016 presidential campaign.

With committee votes planned next week, liberal senators such as Sherrod Brown of Ohio are demanding to know Hillary Rodham Clinton’s position on the bill to give the president so-called trade promotion authority, or T.P.A.

Here is a perspective from the revolutionary feministic socialists who say Obama is a phony:

Big business has run roughshod over the world’s working classes, public services, and the environment. You would think at some point its rapacious appetite would be sated, its global dominance secured. Leave that fantasy behind, it’s not how capitalists think. They want it all, and won’t stop until they get it.

The latest in their long string of crimes can be found in the form of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This is yet another free trade agreement, which if successfully negotiated will take global capital’s hegemony to an entirely new level.

...

Obama, phony to the core. Fast-track authority, which allows the president to negotiate trade pacts without congressional approval, expired in 2007. But the Obama administration is attempting fast-track anyway. In response, several congressmen have pushed for a slower, more transparent process. But this administration, as political and pro-capitalist as any other, wants a TPP feather in its cap for the mid-term elections.

Despite promises to protect jobs and the environment, Obama has passionately embraced an agreement that does everything but that. The TPP is about expanding profits and markets for the capitalist class, nothing more or less.

Ands Obama is simply pulling another Ford/Carter/Clinton/H Bush:

NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement – was sold with promises of jobs and prosperity on all sides of the border. What really happened was that an increased trade deficit sucked demand and jobs out of the U.S. economy; workers lost bargaining power, resulting in pay and benefit cuts; and income inequality rose as corporations pocketed the wage differential.

Now the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is being sold with literally the same promises. Here is why TPP is not going to work out better than NAFTA did.

Note the pitch used to sell NAFTA by President Clinton and former presidents Ford, Carter and George H. W. Bush as they were featured together in this September 14, 1993 news report.

From the transcript:

"I believe that NAFTA will create American jobs in the first two years of its effect. I believe if you look at the trends … over one-third of our economic growth, and in some years over one-half of our net new jobs came directly from exports. And on average, those export-related jobs paid much higher than jobs that had no connection to exports.

I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact. And I believe that that is many more jobs than will be lost, as inevitably some will be as always happens when you open up the mix to a new range of competition.

NAFTA will generate these jobs by fostering an export boom to Mexico."

"Many Americans are still worried that this agreement will move jobs south of the border because they've seen jobs move south of the border and because they know that there are still great differences in the wage rates. There have been 19 serious economic studies of NAFTA by liberals and conservatives alike; 18 of them have concluded that there will be no job loss."

Now here is President Bill Clinton at the NAFTA signing.

Clinton said NAFTA will "promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment and a greater possibility of world peace." He also said it will "pull down foreign trade barriers" and that it will create 200,000 more jobs in the U.S. by 1995.

Lori Wallach writes in "NAFTA at 20: One Million U.S. Jobs Lost, Higher Income Inequality":

Not only did promises made by NAFTA's proponents not materialize, but many results are exactly the opposite.

Such outcomes include a staggering $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada and the related loss of 1 million net U.S. jobs under NAFTA, growing income inequality, displacement of more than one million Mexicancampesino farmers and a doubling of desperate immigration from Mexico, and more than $360 million paid to corporations after "investor-state" tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies.

So no wonder more and more people are saying both parties are wrong and are now going independent. We are suppose to think the Democrats are socialists and the Republicans are capitalists. Both parties end up being the same thing...wrong. Both parties are behind the hegemony of the globalists. So what is Cory Heidelberger and Pat Powers really fighting about? The 2016 presidential race is lining up as Jed vs Hillary, which would be a fight between two who are working for the global ruling elites.

This tells me that conservatives need to distance themselves from the GOP Establishment and line up with the independents. The only chance for South Dakota Democrats to regain power is to reject the revolutionary feministic socialists, like Cory Heidelberger and his gang of New Age Theocrats, and embrace true conservatives. If those two things happen, then perhaps we can do something about the hegemony in Pierre. There we have a chance, but DC is a lost cause.

And that explains why covering the actions of Cory Heidelberger is important. He is leading South Dakota Democrats down the wrong path. If conservatives can get the Democrats to understand that, perhaps things can be different politically in South Dakota. But that is a big if. A bigger if is the premise that conservatives can take back the SDGOP all by ourselves. The hegemony in Pierre is very powerful. It will take a three prong coalition (Democrats, conservatives, and independents) to end it.

Mitchell Fine Arts Center, part of the crony capitalist agenda

I was busy last week dealing with the Mitchell Fine Arts issue that was approved by the Mitchell School board on Monday. I found a problem with that approval:

Mitchell Superintendent Joe Graves said the school district abided by the law in its steps to approving the bid for the fine arts center project.

Mitchell resident Steve Sibson, who is running for a seat on the Board of Education, wrote an email to the Mitchell School District on Wednesday morning and attached the letter to The Daily Republic. He alleged the school district had violated a law in negotiating down the costs of the fine arts project with the low bidder, Puetz Corp., of Mitchell.

" ... the actions went beyond negotiation and into engineering the specifications in order to reduce cost," Sibson wrote.

He later wrote, "I suggest the Mitchell School District not proceed with implementation until this legal question is settled."

Some of the confusion seemed to rest on a phrase, "value engineering," which was used at Monday night's meeting.

"Value engineering," Graves said, is an accepted term for finding cost reductions.

" ... it neither denotes nor implies that thereby Puetz is the engineer on the project," he said. "They are not and so no law has been violated on this project."

Graves said the engineering firm working on the project is Farris Engineering, of Omaha, Neb., and the school has separated the general contractor role from the engineering.

"The entire process involved in this project was reviewed by the school attorney and found to be in compliance with law in all respects," he said.

The law in question, SDCL 5-18B-15, says "no person, firm or corporation may act as architect or engineer and also contractor on any public improvement project if the amount to be expended exceeds one hundred thousand dollars."

The school board voted to approve the project at a cost of $14.16 million on Monday, which was a cost reduction of $867,721 from the initial bid price.

I responded with a letter to the editor:

Your Our View that used a derogatory label directed at those of us who opposed the fine arts center, and then rubbed our noses into the fact that the school board approved it, demonstrates this paper cannot be trusted to fairly report on the issue.

The very next day, this paper proved that point by taking my quotes out of context from an email I sent to the Mitchell School District and published a misleading report. For some reason, this paper did not want the readers to know it was from this paper's coverage that I discovered that Puetz Corporation representatives acted as engineers.

In context I said, "So if the reporting is correct, Puetz acted as engineer and the School Board could not legally approve them as contractor on the same project per 5-18B -15." That state statute does not make an exception for "value engineering," a misconception this paper helped Superintendent Joe Graves promote.

The only exceptions are when the state needs a "public improvement of an emergency nature which affects the public health and safety" and "any full-service firm which specialize in the design, fabrication and installation of cultural and educational exhibits."

After the bids came in 20-plus percent over budget, the architect should have (and still can if the school board reverses its decision) utilized "value engineering," have the proposed changes approved by the school board, and then repeated the bidding process. The goal should be to get back to budget, and not to reward Puetz Corporation with a multi-million dollar contract that is approximately 15 percent over budget.

Ever since the Mitchell School District partnered with Dakota Wesleyan University to ignore the will of the voters by building L.B. Williams Elementary, the school board seems to have forgotten its role as representatives of the people. I believe instead it is controlled by the Mitchell oligarchy that is headquartered across the street from the Corn Palace. And both the publisher of this paper and Graves are currently members of the Mitchell Area Chamber of Commerce Board. No disrespect intended; just the truthsayer in me speaking.

Here is the ending of the Our View column I referred to:

We're also glad to hear of the public support the project has garnered.

More than $500,000 in donations have been raised for the project from members and businesses around the community.

MHS vocal director and show choir director Chris Miller and MHS band director Ryan Stahle spoke in favor of the fine arts center Monday night. They agreed the plan has all their wants and needs for a new facility.

So while there is clearly a group of fine arts center naysayers who have written to our newspaper and shown up at meetings, we feel the support for the project has overshadowed those people.

Sure, a new $14-plus million fine arts center is a big project to approve without going to a community vote. Most anyone would agree with that.

But it is an exciting project, and we need to accept it will be built.

What the column did not point out is that $350,000 of $500,000 came from the Mitchell Area Economic Development Corporation, which received $139,502 from the South Dakota's Economic Development board. What needs to be understood is that the taxpayers are going to fork over 14.8 million for the project, not counting the interest on the 14 million in loans. That means banks, who contributed $100,000 to the project, and will benefit financially from the project along with Puetz Corporation. A $450,000 investment to gain a $14 million contract and the banks to issue $14 in bonds was a small price to pay.

I also pointed out that the teachers will also be a loser:

Steve Sibson, of Mitchell, who is running for a one-year term on the school board, said he supports fine arts, but thinks this project is moving too fast. He suggested waiting until the school board election on June 2 to allow voters an “indirect vote” on the project, since it can’t go to a public vote.

“The people I’ve been talking to are saying it’s too much,” he said. “This particular project is a nice one, but not a needed one.”

He thinks teacher pay, a hot-button topic in South Dakota right now, is where the board should focus its attention and dollars.

This is a textbook example of how government, including its role in education, fosters crony capitalism. It also shows the role of corporate media as it too fosters crony capitalism. The result is the enslavement of not only taxpayers, but also wage earners  including teachers.

Did Cory Heidelberger just disqualify himself from running for Aberdeen City Council?

As I have already reported, Cory Heidelberger is running for Aberdeen City Council. This morning he put up a post regarding the Democratic crony capitalist Mayor of Sioux Falls, Michael Huether. I was surprised that Cory would not automatically support any candidate who has a D:

Some of my Democratic friends wonder why I’m not enthusiastic about putting up Sioux Falls Mayor Mike Huether as a statewide candidate for our party.

Here is Cory's reason:

Dumb and arrogant are not on my checklist for Democratic candidates or for any kind of candidate who wants to run my community or my state.

Certainly has to be the quote of the day. If Cory would smarten up and swallow his pride, he would understand that he is, by his own definition, not qualified to run for Aberdeen City Council. But I don't see the hard headed totalitarian changing his mind or his attitudes. I think my being banned from his website is permanent too, because he believes my opinion is meaningless. The truth is not welcomed by those who are dumb and arrogant. Yes, Cory is very intelligent and smart, but there is a huge difference between intelligence and wisdom. Time to understand what is called a "smart fool":

I’d describe these self-proclaimed nerds as “smart fools.”

I don’t doubt their intelligence. I spent enough time around my generation’s version of smart fools during my two stints in the Ivy League (first as a student, then a teacher) to recognize the symptoms — which include the ability to assimilate vast amounts of information and the ability to glibly and rapidly communicate this new-found “knowledge” all while enjoying a seeming immunity to humility and self-reflection. The smart fool reads piles of books, attends panel discussions until their ears bleed, and believes that makes them experts in complex human problems. The smart fool attends a speech in Cambridge and a speech in Geneva and thinks they’re well-traveled. The smart fool knows more facts than you and believes his superior grasp of facts makes your opinion meaningless.

Much to my shame, I used to be a smart fool. It’s a stage that quite a few young people pass through, but I’m still guilty of my own brand of youthful arrogance. As I’ve said in other contexts, I used to think I knew about war — until I went to war. I used to think I knew about helping the poor — until I tried to help the poor. I used to think I knew about what it meant to be a husband and father — until I became a husband and father. The list can go on, of course, but whatever intelligence I possessed didn’t make me wise, nor did it prepare me for life’s truly meaningful challenges. For a time, I fear it just made me insufferable.

Intelligence, by itself, is not even a necessary component of wisdom. I like the Oxford definition. Wisdom is the “quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment.” Biblically, the fear of God is the very beginning of wisdom (liberal “nerds” no doubt snort with laughter at this concept). Intelligence can help in the accumulation of knowledge, but intelligence does not automatically create knowledge. Furthermore, intelligence is irrelevant to experience and has only a marginal relationship to good judgment. Why do so many leading public figures do such crazy, self-destructive things? Not because they’re stupid, but because they’re foolish.

That is why Cory is such a useful tool for the crony capitalist oligarchy that he so much hates. He can be easily fooled into implementing their agenda. 

So the real reason so-called Progressives want a Minimum Wage is based on eugenics and racism

Cory Heidelberger's latest rant in support of minimum wage responds to ALEC's opposition to minimum wage:

ALEC is lying again: increasing the minimum wage has no discernible effect on employment (not in Great Britain, either). More workers with more wages will buy more stuff, meaning somebody’s business is going to expand.

First we need to understand that liars use statistics. Cory's governmental source is suspect because:

RECENT falls in the officially reported US unemployment rate are an optimistic sign. 

That said, it is worth remembering that the official US unemployment rate (currently around 9.1%) systematically understates the “real” unemployment rate. This is not a new phenomenon, and occurs because of the particular way in which the US Bureau of Labor Statistics chooses to define a person as either “employed” or “unemployed”.

And this is how statistics are used to create the myth that minimum wage does not casue unemployment:

The second criteria potentially excludes a large number of people from the definition of “unemployed person” because, in order to be considered unemployed, a person needs to have actively looked for work in the 4 weeks prior to the survey date.

So if the unemployed caused by minimum wage are not counted because they stopped looking for work, then we have "no discernible effect on employment". That is how governmental statistics are used to deceive the masses.

Progressives do understand that raising the minimum wage does cause unemployment:

During the second half of the Progressive Era, beginning roughly in 1908, progressive economists and their reform allies achieved many statutory victories, including state laws that regulated working conditions, banned child labor, instituted “mothers’ pensions,” capped working hours and, the sine qua non, fixed minimum wages.

...

Progressive economists, like their neoclassical critics, believed that binding minimum wages would cause job losses. However, the progressive economists also believed that the job loss induced by minimum wages was a social benefit, as it performed the eugenic service ridding the labor force of the “unemployable.” Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1897 [1920], p. 785) put it plainly: “With regard to certain sections of the population [the “unemployable”], this unemployment is not a mark of social disease, but actually of social health.” “[O]f all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites,” Sidney Webb (1912, p. 992) opined in the Journal of Political Economy, “the most ruinous to the community is to allow them to unrestrainedly compete as wage earners.” A minimum wage was seen to operate eugenically through two channels: by deterring prospective immigrants (Henderson, 1900) and also by removing from employment the “unemployable,” who, thus identified, could be, for example, segregated in rural communities or sterilized.

Note this source was published by the Journal of Economic Perspectives of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Not exactly a right-wing entity. It was written by Thomas C. Leonard of Princeton.

The Webbs were a big part of the British Fabian Society. As I have already covered in my previous post, a competitive free market is not acceptable to these socialists. So we should not be surprised that competition among wage earners is also unacceptable. The Fabian also support the welfare state, so as the minimum wage creates unemployment, the welfare state has more participates.

Here is the tie to eugenics:

For progressives, a legal minimum wage had the useful property of sorting the unfit, who would lose their jobs, from the deserving workers, who would retain their jobs. Royal Meeker, a Princeton economist who served as Woodrow Wilson’s U.S. Commissioner of Labor, opposed a proposal to subsidize the wages of poor workers for this reason. Meeker preferred a wage floor because it would disemploy unfit workers and thereby enable their culling from the work force. “It is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work,” argued Meeker (1910, p. 554). “Better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.” A. B. Wolfe (1917, p. 278), an American progressive economist who would later become president of the AEA in 1943, also argued for the eugenic virtues of removing from employment those who “are a burden on society.”

Now for the racist part:

In his Races and Immigrants, the University of Wisconsin economist and social reformer John R. Commons argued that wage competition not only lowers wages, it also selects for the unfit races. “The competition has no respect for the superior races,” said Commons (1907, p. 151), “the race with lowest necessities displaces others.” Because race rather than productivity determined living standards, Commons could populate his low-wage-races category with the industrious and lazy alike. African Americans were, for Commons (p. 136), “indolent and fickle,” which explained why, Commons argued, slavery was required: “The negro could not possibly have found a place in American industry had he come as a free man . . .

Harvard’s Arthur Holcombe (1912, p. 21), a member of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission, referred approvingly to the intent of Australia’s minimum wage law to “protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese.” Florence Kelley (1911, p. 304), perhaps the most influential U.S. labor reformer of the day, also endorsed the Australian minimum-wage law as “redeeming the sweated trades” by preventing the “unbridled competition” of the unemployable, the “women, children, and Chinese [who] were reducing all the employees to starvation . . .”

For these progressives, race determined the standard of living, and the standard of living determined the wage. Thus were immigration restriction and labor legislation, especially minimum wages, justified for their eugenic effects.

So the white hating racist Cory Heidelberger, who promotes modern day Progressivism, is promoting a white supremacist policy brought to America by the Anglo-Saxon British imperialist Fabian Society. (Go back to the top of this thread to see that Cory did refer to the British. I covered the ties between the Fabians and American Progressives in my previous post.) What is interesting is that the minimum wage would actually prevent immigrants from competing with for jobs and forcing them onto the welfare roles. And that is compounded when the immigrants are illegal.

And Cory seems to agree with the Progressive premise that "the job loss induced by minimum wages was a social benefit" with this admission:

How any town in South Dakota, where unemployment is a meager 3.4%, attracts young workers by paying them less escapes me.

Yes, an understated 3.4% unemployment is meager according to Cory. He sees no problem with unemployment, unless it is used as a political weapon against the Democrats. Then he is forced to deny and deceive. I don't think he does this on purpose. He has been deceived by the education system, so that the truth is unbelievable. And when I continue to bring the truth to his web site, he gets mad and now I am banned. This is very sad, not for me, but for Cory and his gang of indoctrinated New Age Theocrats. There are working for the very people they hate...the Anglo-Saxon Imperialists. They are very useful tools for the One Percenters. Isn't those the ones they think ALEC represent. Have the ever thought that perhaps both sides of the dialectic are controlled by the oligarchy? 

More unemployment puts people into the welfare system provides voters for Democrats. That is the purpose behind is drive to refer SB177 to a vote...to safe "democracy" and destroy the Constitutional republican form of government. Exactly what the wealthy ruling international oligarchy wants.