4/24/24

South Dakota still addicted to gambling

According to WalletHub, gambling has become a leading source of anguish and despair in my home state with a high suicide rate and few avenues for treatment. The state is tied for first in the number of casinos and machines and second in overall addiction to the poison.
It also has a high prevalence of gambling through lottery tickets, with the 10th highest lottery sales per resident age 18+. South Dakota has legalized betting on fantasy sports, regular sports and horse races, and it allows gambling machines to be put in stores. With so many different legal ways to gamble, it makes sense that many residents have a problem. The grip that gambling has on the Mount Rushmore State is evident in the fact that it has a high number of Gamblers Anonymous meetings per capita. [Most Gambling-Addicted States (2024)]
The reasoning is hardly mysterious. It’s all about the money video lootery, a too big to jail banking racket, a medical industry triopoly, prostitution, the Sturgis Rally, policing for profit, sex trafficking, hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the SDGOP destroying lives, depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule.
Gamers visiting Deadwood in March dropped $127.2 million in machines, on tables, and sports betting for just over an eight percent increase compared to March 2023. Thus far this year, the collective handle in Deadwood is $358.3 million, up less than half a percent, compared to the same period in 2023. [Black Hills Pioneer]
When i was still playing Ricky Jacobsen, Chuck Baumann and Jeanette Fraser took their own lives after losing everything in Deadwood's poker games. No doubt there have been others.
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4/23/24

Brookings listened: rainwater harvest encouraged

Yes, the Big Sioux River is a sewer of biblical proportions. 

For every 1” of rain and 1,000 square feet of surface (roof, driveway, etc), about 620 gallons of fresh water are generated. The graphic on the right is of snow water equivalent.

Not that those twenty gallon barrels are going to slow much stormwater but it's a start.
Starting Monday, April 22, 2024, City residents can register for and pick up a voucher at the Engineering Division office in Suite 140 of the Brookings City & County Government Center at 520 Third St. Vouchers are limited to one per residential property and are for City of Brookings residents only. A total of 40 vouchers will be available on a first-come, first-served basis until they are gone. [2024 Stormwater Incentive Program]
Let's see: Brookings owns a research park, the hospital, the liquor store, the water, the phone company, the power company, an entertainment venue, the golf course, it's home to South Dakota's largest public university and a federally subsidized cheese and dairy industry.
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4/22/24

Expect a contested Republican convention

My working hypothesis means a floor fight at the Republican convention in Milwaukee between Nikki Haley and the other candidates since she has the second most delegates and Trump is toast. 

Kristi Noem knows it, too and is doing her utmost to trump Haley and win the nomination at a contested convention by winning a majority of the 2,284 delegates and keep an unaffiliated Liz Cheney out of the race as a spoiler.

So who’s the best Veep choice? My guess is Andy Biggs, a rabid Trumper and a Mormon from swing state, Arizona who could also bring Nevada with him. 

Devastating as it sounds there is gossip that Mrs. Noem could become Interior Secretary in a Haley cabinet.

What do y’all think?
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4/21/24

Another mountain town turns to ice farming

In 1999 we were listening to an NPR story about an ice climbing park in Ouray, Colorado, a former mining town that has remade itself by farming ice when my daughters' mother turned to me and said, "wow, they should do that in the Open Cut."
Lake City is an old silver-mining town — population 432 — tucked in a valley in the San Juan Mountains. The Lake City Ice Park was created by a motley crew of carpenters and raft guides who shared a passion for the sport. They began “farming,” or creating their own ice in the Lake City area in the late 1990s — a scheme fueled by a mischievous curiosity and thousands of feet of hose. In Ouray, the climbers can scale more than 150 named routes along the Uncompahgre River Gorge at what has become the world’s largest man-made ice-climbing park. During the winter of 2021-’22, the Ouray Ice Park pumped $18 million into Ouray County. [Can ice climbing bring life to an isolated Colorado town in the dead of winter?]
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