(Selectively) Fiscal conservatives never want to cut the defence budget.
I do. (Actually it’s far more than a defence budget. America is on the offense more than not.)
Time to close Ellsworth Air Force Base and shudder half our overseas bases.
A politician in South Dakota who wants to close Ellsworth commits political suicide by saying so. When I was in elected office my private commitment to myself was to be willing to commit political suicide once a year to support the right thing.
Many of my Republican colleagues in the legislature were “fiscal conservatives” and would get loud and vocal about Washington DC’s inability to balance the budget. Yet we seemed so oblivious to the depths of cuts it would take to balance the national budget and what that would mean to a little dependant state like South Dakota, and of course an income tax would never be considered. Never was there talk of cutting Defence spending in DC, ever. And never would anyone support closing a base in our state that brought MONEY and JOBS and PEOPLE into our state – like it’s the Federal Government’s role to provide us any of those things.
Say goodbye to Ellsworth if you are truly a fiscal conservative and figure out how to wean South Dakota off Federal Dollars. It was established in 1941 in the ramp up to a World War and is no longer a spending priority.
Fifteen years after 9/11 and we are still bombing seven countries and only the oligarchy really knows why. How many Americans have died, and for what? Do we even know who we’ve killed, or the real reasons why? Is there anyone on the right side of the political aisle in South Dakota who is confident our Commander in Chief is even on our team? Why aren’t we impeaching the Nobel Peace prize President for all these unauthorised drone wars?
All this spending and all this war in the last couple decades and the world isn’t safer and there aren’t fewer people who hate us mobilising to harm us. In fact, there are more, far more. Maybe a total shift in foreign policy is in order because what we are doing is making all our problems much worse.
UPDATE #1: A Facebook friend points out how having the drone and bomber base makes our state a target for terrorism… “But you know what scares me? Someone from Yemen, Afghanistan or somewhere rolling a truck bomb into Rapid City Central High School or the School of Mines after an Ellsworth-based drone pilot targets a wedding party or religious service.
UPDATE #2. This, made me think to pen this:
Ways & Means 
The goal should be they leave saying prison was the best thing that happened to me, not the worst. Our present failed philosophy of retributive justice in our criminal justice system is not working and it’s making people madder and meaner and worse for society than before. Instead of bombing people from there we could build people right there.