Love, marriage, and politics

By Lorraine Collins

Since we've been celebrating Valentine's Day, I've been in a sort of romantic mood, remembering the only poem my soon-to-be husband wrote me considerably more than half a century ago. He was a mining engineer, and I was a graduate student. I had a new typewriter, an Olivetti, and I wrote him singing its praises. Apparently, that's all I wrote about, because he responded with this verse:

"Lorraine now loves her Olivetti

And has forgotten me alretti."

I have never forgotten that charming bit of verse and he has never remembered writing it, which is kind of typical of many things about our long relationship. Our brief courtship was conducted mostly by air mail since he was in Canada and I in Colorado, so hardly anybody ever saw us together, which wasn't the only reason friends were surprised to discover we planned to marry.

Over the decades, I have come to realize that nobody ever really does understand the private relationship of other people---what attracted them to each other, why they decided to live together, what they see in each other that others may not see at all. So any law or social or religious edict that tries to make people fit one mold just isn't going to work, in the long run. It's no coincidence that a great many of the world's greatest tragedies are written about people who love each other but are denied the ability to be together because of family, religion, law, race or some sense of social standing. Not a whole lot of comedies are written about this.

In terms of law here in the United States, things are in a bit of a hodge podge. We no longer have laws prohibiting the marriage of people of different races, although these laws existed in some states until the 1960s. People who could be legally married in New York could not be legally married in North Carolina, for instance. Now we have another problem. Same sex marriages are legal in several states, whereas in 2006 South Dakotans amended the state Constitution specifically to prohibit this and also to deny recognition for civil unions and domestic partnerships. So if you are a gay couple legally married in Iowa, you are probably not going to want to come to South Dakota.           

Recently a court in California said that when voters overturned a law that enabled people of the same sex to marry, they violated the United States Constitution. The Constitution demands equal protection of the law, so California could not take away a right previously granted. No doubt this decision will be litigated for some time. Now we are witnessing a big brouhaha about whether Catholic institutions should have to be even remotely involved in health insurance plans that offer non-Catholic employees family planning, aka birth control pills. The church as an institution does not approve of such things, even though we are told that 98% of Catholic women have used them. Some call this controversy a public health issue while others frame it as a First Amendment issue. Whatever else it is, it seems to be part of somebody's political agenda.

So in this election season we suddenly stopped talking about jobs and the economy to dwell endlessly on matters of sex and marriage. To begin with, we just heard about the sex lives of some candidates, but then the topic expanded to include the private lives of people in general. Some think this is all a plot by the Democrats to distract us from very slowly improving economy, while others think it's a Republican plot to make the election about something other than the economy which is slowly improving.

 If voters concentrate on divisive issues such as who can marry and who can't, who can have birth control and who can't, and whether a woman can have an abortion, then more people might be stirred into action for one candidate or another. But as long as we are talking about people's private lives, we do not talk of the national debt, tax reform, our crumbling infrastructure, housing, poverty, and many other important issues. I hope soon we can get the national political conversation out of the bedroom.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish.  She may be contacted by e-mail at:  collins1@midco.net

Women and the law

by Lorraine Collins

Very occasionally I pen a few lines of verse and the other day I came across a couple of lines for a  poem I was going to title "Scandal".  I wrote the lines several weeks ago based on items in the news:

Women in Yemen are burning their veils.

Saudi women want to drive.

I never got any further with that idea but when I looked at a news item in the New York Times last weekend, I was reminded of this attempt at verse. The Times reported that beginning in June, clerks in lingerie shops in Saudi Arabia will be women. Until now, all the clerks were men---usually Asian men---because women have been prohibited from working outside the home. It was very embarrassing for heavily veiled women in their enveloping garments to go to the equivalent of Victoria's Secret and be waited on by a man.

The law was changed in 2006 when the government ordered that these jobs should be transferred to women, but there were so many objections that nothing changed. After all, women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and there is little public transportation, so men would have to drive them to work. And if sales women were in the shops, windows would have to be covered over so men couldn't see them. And of course, no women had been trained to work in retail. But it has only taken six years for the law to be enforced, which isn't bad, considering the history of womankind.

According to the article by Thomas Lippman, who has written a book about Saudi Arabia, the employment of women in lingerie shops will probably lead to other changes in the next 30 years or so. It appears that because Saudi Arabia is such an expensive place to live, more men want their wives to work and more women are being educated. Even now the Ministry of Labor is compiling a list of other jobs women might be allowed to have.

Before we start feeling smug and self-satisfied about how far advanced we westerners are, we should remember a few things. When I graduated from college, it was legal for an employer to refuse to employ women for certain jobs. I was really lucky to get my first job in journalism working for Time Magazine in New York, but as a woman I would never be allowed to write for the magazine. I could be only an "editorial researcher", gathering all the data, interviewing people, sending cables to correspondents, but then when I had all the information, I had to give this file to a man, who would write the story. After he wrote it, I had to check the story to be sure he got the facts right. Luckily, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed all that. Gradually.

When I took some education courses at what is now Black Hills State University to be certified as a teacher, a fellow who was in some of my classes said that he favored a law saying women should be paid the same as men. At the time, this seemed to make him a very liberal chap, but he explained that if a school could hire me for less money than they'd offer him, I'd get the job. It was a case of enlightened self-interest.

Although women in the United States finally were granted the right to vote in 1920, it was not until 1943 that women in South Dakota were allowed to serve on juries. Something in our society seems to have always held that women are too delicate, or unable to understand complex issues, perhaps too morally flawed to be able to make good decisions for themselves and others.

This attitude still prevails among some in Congress and some of our Legislators. The Republican Party has recently been accused of waging a "war on women" because of proposed legislation that would restrict women's access to family planning, health care or even medically necessary abortion. In response, the Legislators say they are just promoting laws to protect women.

Sure they are. That's what they say in countries like Saudi Arabia, too.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at her  new e-mail address, which is:   collins1@midco.net

            

Adding up at year's end

by Lorraine Collins

Since this is the time of year when we start summing up things, writing Christmas letters, reflecting on how fast the year has gone by, I thought I'd get out the notebook in which I keep the stack of columns I've written in 2011 to see what they amount to.  There are fewer to review this year because in July I reduced my output to one column a month, inching toward retirement. There are just 16 columns instead of a couple of dozen but it still took a while to read through them as I tried to remember what I'd written about, and why. There were some lines I was quite pleased with when I read them again.

For instance, there's this one from the first column last January. In discussing expiration dates, I said, "How long is too long? That's the question, isn't it? Not only in food safety, but in life, love, professional football careers, reality TV shows, Royal Dynasties, and living in a hospital bed attached to tubes and a respirator." I think that covered quite a few issues, right there, but several months later I'd add Republican primary debates.

In an April column I started out discussing socks and ended up writing about the fact that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and that "the top one percent of the people have seen their income more than double in recent years while the bottom 90 percent have seen their share shrink." I don't suppose this was the first mention in the media of the infamous one percent, but I did suggest we should be paying attention to the situation. I suggested that again in October when I mentioned that there has been a big increase in needy families coming to our food banks and many people were beginning to gather in America's streets the way they had in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab Spring. You can't say I didn't warn you.

I think I was pretty early in recognizing Texas Governor Rick Perry as being a possible candidate in the Republican Primary as I mentioned him last June before his band wagon really got rolling. I pointed out that one difficulty with the governor was that he has said he wants to amend the Constitution to take away from the people the right to directly elect their U.S. Senators. He wants state Legislators to do this as they did in the old days before the 17th Amendment in 1913. I don't know why Governor Perry trusts state Legislators over the public, but I did point out that the first three words of our Constitution are "We the people," not "We the states."

From time to time I've enjoyed writing about adventures I've had, including spelunking in Jewel Cave and trying to get to Pierre in a small plane and landing on a highway, then hitchhiking to get to the Legislature. I wouldn't want to do either of those things today, but 30 or more years ago they didn't seem unreasonable or hazardous activities. I don't think it's caution so much as exhaustion that makes us think about not doing stuff as we get older.

I do tend to talk about issues that we should be thinking about, including how we treat, or fail to treat, the mentally ill and the number of South Dakota children whose fathers are failing to support them. And again this year, as every year, I have more than once pointed out that South Dakota ranks at or near the bottom in state support for public education.

 Just now, thinking about this, I looked in the collection of my columns I published last spring and found this, published in January 2007: "At a forum during the campaign for Legislature last fall, I asked the candidates whether South Dakota was always going to be so far behind in supporting education, in having the lowest paid teachers in the nation. Was there any hope? Amid laughter, I was assured that of course there was." That was five years ago. I hope nobody is still laughing.

Well, Happy New Year, everybody. Enjoy it while you can. The Legislature doesn't convene until January 10th.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com

Things to wonder about while standing in line

by Lorraine Collins

I was standing in line in the Post Office the other day and things were moving rather slowly as one of the computers had broken down. So I had lots of time to think about various things, including the post office. My relatives in Wyoming had recently told me that their post office is under threat to be closed and of course they were very unhappy about that. We've heard the same story here in South Dakota.

One thing I've never understood is why we should expect the post office to make a profit when we don't demand the same of the army or navy. Our founding fathers certainly thought it was just as important as those services and Benjamin Franklin, himself, was the first Postmaster General. Oh, I know the post office is now regarded as a business but isn't it really a service to the people? As such, isn't it as worthy of subsidies as airports, highways, railroads and other entities deemed important for holding together the fabric of the nation?  If we subsidize farms, energy companies, scientific research projects, schools, well, what's so different about the post office?

           

Before I'd gone much further with this rumination, my eye was caught by the stack of brochures for young men to register with the Selective Service System. I picked up a brochure and was advised that failure to register at age 18 is a felony. So of course I got to wondering about that. The draft was ended in 1973. So why do we still have mandatory Selective Service registration for young men? And why don't we require the same registration of young women, many of whom serve in all branches of the all-volunteer military? Has anyone recently been punished with fines or imprisonment for failing to register?

           

Those questions were sufficient to send me to my computer when I got home to look up some answers. Apparently the last time anyone was prosecuted for failing to register was 1986 because unless a fellow confesses, it's hard to prove that he "willingly and knowingly" failed to act. As for women, back in 1981 President Clinton did look into the matter of having women register, too, but the courts appear to have ruled that since women were not allowed in combat, they didn't have to register. I do believe that events in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that these days "combat" can be anywhere a suicide bomber or an IED can be found and many women soldiers have been wounded or killed. If we are going to keep the Selective Service, I'd say women should register, too.

           

I found out other interesting stuff, such as the fact that Selective Service registration was actually suspended in 1975 but reinstated in 1980 when Russia invaded Afghanistan. There's still a fellow who has the job of Director Of the Selective Service. He's the 12th to head it and his name is Lawrence G. Romo. I also discovered that even young men in this country illegally have to register and they don't need a Social Security number to do so. In 1973, President Jimmy Carter pardoned all the men who failed to register for the draft during the Viet Nam War. Theoretically, there are still local Selective Service Boards, but so far I haven't been able to discover whether there's one around here. I could apply online to become a member of such a board, but that seems a rather extreme way of finding out whether there is one hereabouts. Anyway, I could find out all sorts of things about the Selective Service, except why we still have  mandatory registration 38 years after the last draft. Do you suppose it's just the inertia of government? Why doesn't somebody do something about it?

           

There are many other things I think about while standing in line at the post office or the supermarket or at the polling place on election day but unfortunately I always come up with more questions than answers. Nevertheless, I do think it's important for me to think about things and ask questions instead of just dumbly standing there like a sheep waiting to be fleeced.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

Maybe we should pay attention

by Lorraine Collins 

When I read a recent news report that Black Hills Airport in Spearfish had been granted over $3 million by the Federal Aviation Administration to build a taxiway to make the airport safer, I was happy for the airport and for the taxpayers in Lawrence County. I don't know how much money the total airport improvement project has cost over the last few years, though I'm sure it is several million dollars. I haven't looked into the matter lately, but one eastern South Dakota newspaper indicated awhile ago that it was at least $7 million and also said that 95% of this was paid by the federal government. Another three percent is paid by the state, so we in Lawrence County have had to come up with only 2% of the money to provide an improved airport.

I'm certainly not against improving the Black Hills Airport because I know it has some recreational and commercial benefits to the county. I used to be co-owner of an airplane based there, my husband once served on the airport board, and he was also Commander of the Lookout Mountain Civil Air Patrol Squadron. I guess you could say we are pro-airplane.

Yet, thinking of the money the federal government has spent on developing and improving this airport, I wonder whether folks who keep complaining about the federal deficit and government spending would be willing to say, "Okay, we'll get by without this modernized, improved, safer airport" or even, "We'll pay for it ourselves."

Considering this, I began to wonder what would happen if taxpayers had to pass a bond issue to build an airport as they often do to build a school. Would they "opt out" of property tax limits to build it? Would local taxpayers think that this airport is so important to them and to their children that they would willingly increase their taxes in order to pay for it?

I rather doubt that. But if the federal government is paying 95% of the cost, then we tend to say, "Hey, this is a good deal! Go for it!" This may help explain how government spending gets out of hand. We want and need highways, military bases, airports, bridges, water projects, and we particularly want them where they help the economy of our county and state.  We refer to these things as "infrastructure." But just now when President Obama has been trying to promote government spending on infrastructure and on schools in order to create jobs, this idea is being rejected and blocked by political leaders who say we can't afford it and it wouldn't work anyway.

Yet when I look around western South Dakota and see people working not only at the airport but on roads and bridges, I have to think that projects like these have good results and pump real money into the economy.  In July when Congress adjourned without funding the FAA, a couple of billion dollars of construction projects were put on hold, thousands of people were laid off and the government was unable to collect taxes on airline tickets so hundreds of millions of dollars were lost. At the time, that did not seem like a good economic plan to me.          

The fact is, this economy needs help and people need help. We can't ignore this much longer. The gap between rich and poor in this country is real, and getting bigger. In Spearfish, there has been a 33% increase in people coming to the food bank in the last nine months. In Sioux Falls and Rapid City there has been an increase of 60% in the last three years. But Congress wants to cut $800 million from nutrition programs. Does this make sense?

Last March there was a cartoon in the Pioneer in which a fellow with a microphone was standing in a city square. He was saying, "It's eerily quiet in the square, no demonstrations are planned. Despite an economy in shambles, high unemployment, huge disparity in wealth and a reviled ruling class, there's not even a hint of a popular uprising. Americans may not be ready for an Egyptian style democracy."

Well, we're seeing people gather in the streets now in many places, including South Dakota. Maybe we should pay attention.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com

Lessons learned underground

by Lorraine Collins

Last Saturday morning when I first woke up I lay in bed thinking, for some inexplicable reason, of a spelunking tour I'd taken in Jewel Cave back in 1973, guided by Herb and Jan Conn. Why was I suddenly remembering that? I most vividly recalled dangling from a rope at least 20 feet in the air as I tried to move up from a rather large cavern to a small hole high in the wall. We had already been in the cave several hours and I was exhausted.

Jan, who was encouraging me to swing my legs up and over a ledge, leaned down to say, "Now Lorraine, do you know what you want to do?"

I said, "Yes! I want to go home!" She laughed.

With my head still full of the memories of that long ago adventure, I went to the front door to get the Saturday paper and there on the front page of the Pioneer was a color photo of Jan and Herb Conn. Boy, talk about ESP! Somehow, the happy news that the Conns were being inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame must have penetrated my semi-conscious mind.

I read the story and then headed down to the basement to look in my file cabinet for the story I wrote about the Conns for Denver Post's Empire Magazine before that spelunking trip more than three decades  ago. And I thought about how much Herb and Jan had taught me, not only about caving, but about journalism and life.

For instance, when I first visited Jewel Cave's visitor center and saw some of the artifacts associated with the Conns' years of exploration of the cave, I thought they would be a good subject for a story. As a freelance writer I was always interested in good subjects. I wrote to them saying I wanted to come visit them and write about them. They said no. They were not interested in an article about them, only about the cave. So I learned there are people in the world who are not flattered by public attention.

 I wrote again, trying to persuade them to let me visit them, and I did something I had never done before or have done since. I promised I would let them read the article before I sent it anywhere. It was a good thing I did. After I interviewed them and sent them the article, Jan wrote back saying that when I wrote of "walking" in the cave, I obviously had no idea what caving was like. She said you do not walk in a cave. "You scramble, climb, spraddle, crawl and ooze." I used that line in the article.

It's important for journalists to be aware of their own ignorance, and if I hadn't thoroughly understood that before, I did after Jan enlightened me. You really shouldn't write about something you know nothing about. Unfortunately, I think there are quite a few people in the media who still need to learn that.

But one of the most interesting things we can learn from Jan and Herb Conn doesn't involve caves or journalism. It's how we can live our lives doing what we want to do without waiting for retirement to do it. Jan said it's simple. "The biggest thing is not to want anything expensive!" At the time, that included electricity and running water.

Just don't want anything expensive, and you can liberate yourself from a lot of problems of our consumer society, including debt. You can spend your life pursuing a hobby that becomes a challenge, a cause, a contribution to knowledge and history that could not be gained any other way. You can end up in the South Dakota Hall of Fame, whether or not you're kind of embarrassed about it. Not many of us have the grit to do what Herb and Jan Conn have done, but we can certainly learn lessons from them.

When the Conns invited my husband and me and another couple to go spelunking in Jewel Cave, they wanted us to see a spectacular array of crystals, which we could see only if we climbed that rope and squeezed through that hole. They decided we were capable of that, so they took us there. That's something else to learn. You never know what you can do if you don't try.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

Free public education

by Lorraine Collins

My daughter and family just moved from Norfolk, VA to Topeka, KS and though they seem to like it there, several things have been a bit of a surprise, including some fees charged by their school district. At a social gathering shortly after they arrived, a fellow remarked that he wondered how much free public education was going to cost him this year. Last year, he said, it was $500.

It soon became apparent that the school district has a fee for "textbook rental" and "technology" and other things. For my two grandchildren in second and fourth grades, the fees added up to $200. I went to the school district's website to learn more and was amazed to see the number of fees charged to students. Fees for a 7th grade class in "living skills" amount to $11.00 but 7th grade science is only $3.00. It costs $35 to participate in middle school sports. High school sports cost $45 and fees for science, art, music, business, debate, journalism, cooking, physical education, foreign languages and numerous other courses range from $11.00 to $33.00. As one who once supervised a high school newspaper and yearbook, I was really shocked to realize that to be on the staff of either publication in that high school, a student would have to pay $33 per semester.

 Although over many years I was involved in education one way or another---student, teacher, school board member---it's been a while since I've paid much attention to the current situation, except to scold the South Dakota Legislature every year about its anemic support of public schools. (Yes, we still rank last in state per-pupil funding.) But spending just a few minutes on line asking about student fees in public schools was an education in itself.

Last year a lawsuit in California complained that 35 school districts were charging students fees to attend classes in what is supposed to be a free public education. In Illinois a woman complained that her daughter would not be allowed to register for her junior year in high school if she didn't pay $290 in fees. This woman is suffering from cancer and her husband has lost his job. Fees in one New Orleans school averaged over $1,000 and a school in Georgia charged $152 to enroll in Advanced Placement chemistry.

Several schools charge fees for activities if not for classes, including in one case $1,833 for cheerleading and $400 for wrestling. Although there has been grumbling in some South Dakota school districts about the cost of co-curricular activities and the expense of bussing sports teams across the state to play a game, so far the idea of expecting students to pay to play volleyball or football doesn't seem to be something people are ready to accept.

There are some expenses for kids and their parents in attending public schools in many districts in South Dakota, including insurance for laptop computers the school provides students or the cost of taking an Advanced Placement or ACT test. Fees are often forgiven for low-income families who meet income guidelines for free or reduced price lunches. And of course every parents knows there are numerous expenses in sending a child to school, as indicated by the lists in discount stores of school supplies for each grade. Yet the idea remains--public education should be free.

In fact, free public education has been considered so important that it is enshrined in our American history and in many state constitutions, including that of South Dakota. Article VIII says it very well: "The stability of a republican form of government depending on the morality and intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature to establish and maintain a general and uniform system of public schools wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all; and to adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education."

Even though we rank last in state support of education, at least it's still free. But one school administrator told me, "The way things are going, it's hard to say how long that will last."           

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

            

The gumbo effect

By Lorraine Collins

Anyone who grew up on the prairie or in the Badlands knows about gumbo. I don't mean the kind they eat in Louisiana. I mean the kind that sticks to your feet after a rain in South Dakota. In the old days before there were a lot of paved roads around here, driving on a dirt road and encountering a rain storm meant you were more likely than not to get stuck in the slick, muddy clay. We used to say that when you were walking in gumbo you'd take one step forward and slide back two. My father would laugh and claim that when he had to go somewhere, he'd turn around and walk backwards so he could get where he was going.

I've been thinking about the gumbo effect as a pretty good metaphor for what's been happening in South Dakota in recent years. That is, the more we strive to go forward, the farther back we seem to slide, at least in some important areas. For years and years we have claimed that we want to increase state aid to education but we haven't even managed to maintain the same level of support as in the past and this year schools have received even more cuts in funding.

Somehow, the idea seems to be that if we fire enough teachers and administrators, enlarge some class sizes and cut out various courses, we will improve education. And in terms of achieving an educated and competitive work force, the concept appears to be that we should raise tuition, making it more difficult for young people and their parents to afford a university education. If there's one thing we like to talk about in South Dakota it's the importance of education. We just don't want to pay for it.

 Of course, it's not only education that we don't want to pay for. We're kind of tough on roads and bridges, too. A recent report by the Road Information Program noted that only four states have a higher percentage of structurally deficient bridges than we do, but it is kind of comforting to know there's at least something in which we didn't come in last. South Dakota's AAA says that the poor condition of our roads costs motorists an average of $319 a year in extra vehicle operating costs, although I have no idea how they figured that out. The condition of our roads and bridges affects our ability to spur economic growth, which we claim we want, although we just don't want to pay taxes to fix them.

The U.S. Census Bureau just released a report that places South Dakota dead last in tax collections in the nation. In fact, our per capita tax rate declined $40 from 2009 to 2010, so in terms of providing more money for government, we're going backwards. This is hardly a surprise because our idea of enticing business and industry to our state seems to be to brag about having the lowest taxes and the lowest paid work force in the country. The fact that wages are low may help account for the fact that twice as many workers in South Dakota hold two jobs as the national average.

We in South Dakota seem to prefer taxes to be paid by somebody else, which is why we like to tax tourists and why the federal government provides $730 million more for our general appropriations budget than we do. It's nice of the people in the other 49 states to help us with our budget. I just hope they don't start thinking of us as a bunch of freeloaders.

I do realize that speaking in favor of taxes is like speaking in favor of death, that other inevitable thing. It's just something we don't want to think about and generally feel it's something that happens to somebody else and not us. But if we don't do something about making our income take care of our needs, maybe we'll have to start walking backwards. We might get ahead. And anyway we can see where we've been, even if we have no idea where we're going.

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Black Hills Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."

Not worth a darn

By Lorraine Collins

Every now and then I hear an amazing factoid uttered by a television pundit but he then moves on to discuss something else and I have to scribble it down on whatever piece of paper is handy, lest I lose track of it. A recent one was that one third of all the socks in the world are made in one factory in China. Workers there earn $14 a day and send most of that home to their families in rural communities.

I think the point of mentioning this was that we Americans should not try to compete with China in making socks. We have to find other, more expensive and complicated things to make. That's probably true. But still---one third of all the socks in the world? Made in one factory? I wondered how big the factory is and where all the socks go. I decided that the destination for millions of pairs of socks had to be countries where people have enough money to buy socks as well as shoes. That would be in Europe, North America, the richer countries in South America, and elsewhere. Recently Sports Illustrated had photos of children in Bangladesh playing cricket on stony ground. They were barefoot like millions of other people in impoverished areas of the world. So just hearing one fact about socks got me to thinking about worldwide economies and populations.

This sort of fact can make me think of history, too, at least my personal history. By now there's been quite a lot of that. I remember that my mother had a "darning egg." It was made of wood and was egg-shaped with a handle to hang onto as one thrust it into the sole of a sock to mend a heel or toe. About the only place one would find such a thing these days, I imagine, is in an antique store.

I bet I'm safe in saying that nobody darns socks anymore, but if you do, let me know. I buy quite a lot of socks in a year but I'm always surprised to discover a hole in the heel of a sock, or a toe poking through after only a few weeks. I'm pretty sure that the quality of socks today is less than that of the 20th Century, and that socks today are not worth a darn. Like so much else in society, we don't try to repair them, but just throw them away.

As I recall, darned socks weren't always comfortable but we wore them because we couldn't afford new ones. We had patches in our jeans, too, but today I see expensive new jeans with rips in them for sale in department stores. It's a fashion, I guess, though I don't know why. But it's probably just as well, because we now can't tell whether the person in tattered jeans is rich enough to buy a popular fashion, or is too poor to afford new pants. That may be beneficial in terms of hiding how much poverty exists in America.

I've heard it said that people are falling out of the middle class in record numbers. Any number of  Internet websites can offer us statistics that demonstrate that the top 1% of the people have seen their income more than double in recent years while the bottom 90% have seen their share shrink. Personal savings have plummeted and one source says that half of all Americans will experience poverty sometime before age 65. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider and wider. Just about anybody who looks at economics is aware of this, but we don't seem to pay much attention to it when establishing tax rates or when we decide to cut programs that help the poor.

Surely we should be paying attention to the situation, not only for compassionate reasons, but in the interest of developing a stable and productive society. Any plan for economic recovery  that doesn't take these facts into consideration really isn't worth a darn. 

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Black Hills Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."

How to dig a hole

By Lorraine Collins

The Black Hills Pioneer is the only newspaper in western South Dakota that benefits from a fulltime, year around reporter in Pierre. This is Bob Mercer, who works for the Aberdeen American News and also provides reports to independent newspapers in Mitchell, Watertown, and Pierre in addition to the Pioneer. Mercer has been covering the Legislature since 1985 though he took a few years off when he was Gov. Janklow's press secretary. By now he must be the most knowledgeable journalist in the state when it comes to knowing what goes on in the capitol.

Mercer's report published in the April 18 Pioneer offered an insight as to one cause of our state's deep budget hole. It's not all that different from the federal government, actually. Just keep adding new programs without figuring out new revenue sources to pay for them. Folks in South Dakota keep complaining that Washington does this, but they could look a lot closer to home. Mercer pointed to four programs that have added millions to the budget in the last 15 years with no new funding sources named.

Two of the programs that Mercer says are now "politically untouchable" are subsidies for ethanol plants and financial paybacks to big business projects. He points out that Republican governors and legislators were big promoters of these programs which have both grown rapidly over the years, including more and more beneficiaries and spending more and more millions of dollars.

 The ethanol program started in 1995, providing $1 million annually per producer for up to 10 years. It was supposed to expire in 2005 but it's still with us. The amount budgeted has grown from $4 million in 2003 to $7 million currently, although this amount will drop down again in fiscal years 2012 to 2016 before bouncing up again. There is a new deal providing $3.5 million over five years for ethanol distribution and retail systems. All this is so complicated that it's hard for the average citizen to keep track of and there is considerable disagreement about whether the program was ever a good idea in the first place.

The same could be said of the construction tax refunds for big business. In 2006, refunds totaled $1.9 million but the amount grew rapidly and by 2009 was $18 million. The criteria was so broad that projects could qualify whether they needed incentives or not. The program is supposed to expire in January, 2013 but Mercer points out that Gov. Daugaard and the Legislature replaced it with a new program to start on that date that is expected to cost $15 million a year.

 These two budget items demonstrate how easy it is for a program to start out modestly, with limited duration, and then grow and grow. They exist because those supporting them said they would benefit our state's economy. But to pay for them we are cutting support to our schools and to social programs that provide care and services to the elderly, the sick, the impoverished. Everyone talks about the cost of social programs, but few mention the cost of economic programs which may be of dubious benefit to our citizens.

The other two programs on Mercer's list could be said to benefit at least some South Dakotans. The Opportunity scholarship program was promoted by the Board of Regents to encourage high achieving high school kids to go to our state universities. In the Rounds administration, the criteria was changed to allow students to go to private colleges in the state as well and now one-seventh of the state funds are spent in private schools. This would seem to defeat the original purpose of the fund.

In 2003 the South Dakota Retirement System raised the mandatory contribution of employees and employers from 5 percent to 6 percent. Mercer says that extra penny per salary dollar has added millions of dollars of costs to the state, and to the hundreds of counties, cities, and school districts that are members of the state retirement system.

It's good to have subjects like this discussed outside of the feverish legislative session so I'm glad we have our man in Pierre.

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."