A Progressive on the Prairie

South Dakota JAILer-in-chief Bill Stegmeier said my wish for more JAIL ads would come true with a full page ad in the Argus Leader today. It’s there but it won’t generate the hours of blog time BS predicted. Aside from it being so dense with type few people will read it, it simply trots out JAIL’s longtime poster child, convicted felon Gene Lodermeier.

I know Lodermeier hates it when I call him a convicted felon. In fact, he’s said it’s libelous. Yet even if you ignore the conviction the JAIL ad discusses, Lodermeier is a convicted felon. To conclude otherwise, you’d have to forget that he pleaded guilty to felony burglary in Brown County. You’d also have to ignore his conviction several years later in federal court for receiving, interstate transportation of stolen property. Those prior felony convictions make him a “habitual offender” under South Dakota law. Of course, you wouldn’t know that from reading the ad.

I’ve talked about Lodermeier before and, quite frankly, if he’s the core and crux of JAIL’s last minute ad, neither he nor it are worth much effort. Here’s just a handful of reasons the ad points out the very problems with Amendment E:

• The ad makes plain that Lodermeier wants to sue the judges, prosecutors and witnesses involved in his case. All are people entitled to judicial immunity and, thus, a “judge” as that term is defined in JAIL. In fact, how can BS claim he is not lying in saying JAIL only applies to the judiciary when the ad his BS committee purchased says the acts of the “judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, or parties who conspired with them” could be presented to JAIL’s special grand jury?
• The ad also demonstrates the dangers of the retroactivity provisions of JAIL. It would allow Lodermeier to sue the judges (one of whom has been deceased for several years), jurors, witnesses, prosecutors and defense attorneys even though the conviction he complains of was affirmed by the South Dakota Supreme Court nearly 15 years ago. Anyone alive today who has been convicted of a crime at any time in the past can go after the judge, jury and witnesses in their case, regardless of how long ago it occurred.
• The ad says Lodermeier’s sentence was too harsh. It doesn’t mention that he never raised that issue when he appealed to the South Dakota Supreme Court. But having already appealed that conviction, this shows how JAIL and the special grand jury can be used to attack judges for issues never presented to an appellate court. It’s simply an end-around a system governed by established rules, procedure and laws, the very things JAILers detest.
• The ad suggests Lodermeier was never able to sue any of the people it identifies. It doesn’t mention that Lodermeier brought a lawsuit in federal court against many of those people, including the prosecuting attorneys. Not only did the federal trial court dismiss the lawsuit, when the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision, it said virtually all of Lodermeier’s claims “are meritless.” Not only does JAIL want an end-around the state courts, it also wants to evade the rulings of federal courts.

So, once again, the BS committee ads do an excellent job showing the falsehoods and omissions upon which the JAILers rely. More important, it establishes that one of the main goals of Amendment E is to allow convicted felons to seek revenge against the judges, jurors and witnesses who participated in their trials.

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Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating: they can breathe it.

Jean Genet, The Thief’s Journal

While South Dakota J.A.I.L.er-in-chief Bill Stegmeier fixed the misstatement his BS committee made in an ad accusing the state of opposing Amendment E because it wants “prison slave labor,” he ain’t gonna let the argument go.

In a new ad headlined “Is Justice For Sale In South Dakota?”, BS now says South Dakota’s prison industry, which operates under the name Pheasantland Industries, is “one of South Dakota’s largest employers” instead of the state’s “largest employer.” At just under 300 employees if you include inmates who work for it, it isn’t within the top 50 employers in the state. I guess that’s a matter of how you define “one of the largest.”

But BS is really hung up on slaves. Here’s what the ad says:

Did you know that on a per capita basis South Dakota’s prison population is greater than each of our neighboring states?Is the South Dakota prison population higher because South Dakotans are such bad people compared to our neighbors?

Or is it higher because our judicial system has an incentive to provide slave employees for Pheasantland Industries?

Who benefits from this cheap prison slave labor? It’s certainly not our South Dakota small businesses.

Will you or one of your family members be the next inmate “hired” by Pheasantland Industries?

Yes, it appears that it really is… “All About the Money!”

(Emphasis in original).

I thought maybe the first ad was simply an aberration, the result of some sort of fever dream. But no. BS actually seems to believe the judicial system in South Dakota exists to “provide slave employees.” Of course, once again it’s not too hard to demonstrate just how bogus many of the claims in the ad are.

For example, the last annual report for Pheasantland Industries dispels any thought that it’s “all about the money.” In fiscal 2005, Pheasantland Industries had operating income of $171,390. I don’t think many of “South Dakota’s largest employers” would be quite happy with those “profits.” Moreover, while inmate wages generally are 25 cents an hour, some 22 percent of the inmates in the program work for what is termed private industry, where they are paid prevailing local market wages. Those inmates were paid $477,237. Of that, $28,634 went to compensate victims of their crimes, another $28,634 went for family support obligations while $43,576 was paid in federal taxes and another $36,532 in social security. Isn’t it horrible inmates are paid market wages and some of that money goes to compensate their victims and support their families?

Of course, that’s not the only thing that’s deceptive and misleading about the ad. It refers to “Prison Industries” as one of the “fastest growing companies in America today” and proclaims in bold type: “Prison Industries is soon to be the largest Manufacturing and Service Company in the United States.” Too bad the “Prison Industries” to which the ad refers is not South Dakota’s prison industries. Rather, it is Federal Prison Industries, Inc., also known as UNICOR. FPI is a wholly-owned federal government corporation that is part of the federal prison system, not the South Dakota corrections system.

Since the BS committee has never worried about letting the facts get in the way before, they certainly aren’t forthright in this ad. And, of course, what probably has the BS clan upset is the fact some of the private industry money from Pheasantland Industries went to pay federal taxes. After all, BS wants to destroy that system, too.

As I pointed out in a recent post, I wish the BS committee would buy more advertising. They often do the best in establishing that Amendment E truly is part and parcel of the lunatic fringe.

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Reason is not compatible with zeal run mad.

Robert South