Madison Daily Leader, Aug. 13
Decide CARES funds before the last minute
South Dakota legislators and Gov. Kristi Noem are deciding whether to call a special legislative session to decide how to spend most of the coronavirus relief funds given to the state by the federal governments.
It’s a complicated issue. As part of its largest stimulus package, Congress and the president provided $150 billion to states, tribal governments and others. The money to states is based on population, with the minimum amount being $1.25 billion. That’s what South Dakota received.
The original restrictions included two big ones: the money needed to be spent on non-budgeted expenses related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it must be spent this year.
That still leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and clarification has been coming only in bits and pieces. So far, South Dakota has refilled the unemployment trust fund, and allocated money to local governments like cities and counties.
But plenty of money is left, and we need to spend it wisely. Some observers believe the end-of-the-year deadline will be extended, which would allow the legislature to make decisions during its regular session starting in January. Others believe we have only 140 days to spend it or lose it.
We’re leaning toward making decisions now. There is no assurance the deadline will be extended, and spending $1 billion under a last minute scenario would likely lead to errors, lack of public input and political pressure.
Here’s a reasonable compromise. Meet in special session now (the cost of which would probably qualify for reimbursement), get the discussion started and make decisions that will be executed by the end of the year. If the deadline is extended, allow the legislature to amend its special session decisions, based on new and clearer information.
___
Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan, Aug. 13
A letter to World War II veterans
This is an open letter that I’ve thought about and dreaded writing for a long, long time, because I knew this moment would arrive.
It’s a letter to all the World War II veterans I’ve ever known. A few of them are still around, but most of these people who shaped my life are gone now, and I think of them every day.
To those veterans …
I’m writing you today on a sobering anniversary. Seventy-five years ago, Japan surrendered to the allies to effectively end World War II, the greatest conflict in human history and a defining moment in our civilization. It also transformed this nation from what we were into what we are now.
And that was due to you, all of you, who fought that war in various capacities and then helped build the post-war world thereafter.
Where would we be without you? I shudder to think.
It’s also overwhelming to consider everything you went through as young men and women.
You marched into a war that altered your lives forever, and many of you did so at terribly young ages. At a time when you should have been going to college or helping out your parents or whatever else, you were instead confronting impossible realities - terrible things that resided beyond your imaginations - in places you probably never heard of in the prewar days. This demanded a resolve beyond your years, mixed, perhaps, with a youthful sense of invincibility. You had to grow up fast, but it carried you through.
Even before all that, though, many of you grew up in the 1930s during a devastating economic depression and a dust bowl. You endured those hardships, and THEN you were thrown into a hurricane of war.
But all this didn’t break your spirit; instead, it steeled it. You found the strength, the courage and the sheer will to fight through the fear and adversity, and you seized the day. (I suspect your relatives who fought in World War I taught you that lesson, just as you left your lesson for those who followed.) It was as if there was nothing you couldn’t do, or so it seemed to me.
After the war, you built a new kind of America: strong, assured, resourceful, unstoppable. I think this reflected what you yourselves had become during your incredible journey through strife and war and triumph and, finally, peace.
I’m part of the Baby Boomer generation, and for us, World War II was a daily reference point in our lives, even decades after it happened. What you accomplished, no matter how far removed it seemed from us, was always an essential piece of us.
Honestly, we didn’t really see you as heroes or warriors. Instead, we saw you as parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts. We saw you as teachers, farmers, policemen and merchants. We saw you as regular, everyday people - the kind of people perhaps some of you just wanted to be after all you had seen. You were the gears in our lives; you were our world.
You taught us a lot, but frankly, I really wish you could have told us more. One thing about you guys that could be so perplexing was that many of you wouldn’t, or couldn’t, really share your war experiences for a long time.
I had an uncle who was in the war, and during battle in Europe, he found himself pinned down in a foxhole for several days; his only company was his dead buddy, who had been killed as they arrived. My uncle only talked about this sometimes when he drank; it’s the only time he unleashed memories that haunted him otherwise in anguished silence.
He wasn’t alone. Many of you wouldn’t talk about your war years other than in general, stoic terms. It mostly stayed in your heads and, perhaps, in your nightmares. And I know some of you suffered because of it.
Decades later, when Tom Brokaw released his book “The Greatest Generation” in 1998, it seemed to throw open a mighty door. You finally began sharing more of those memories and paint for us a fuller picture of what you endured, once upon a time. (I still remember getting a phone call one day just after the book came out from a World War II veteran in Florida praising the book no end and thanking Yankton’s Brokaw for writing it.) I wish you would have shared this sooner, if only to let it out and let us learn and understand more about who you REALLY were.
In these later years, you’ve been remembered and honored - deservedly so. Part of the reason why, of course, is the grim fact that your generation is fading away. The many have become the few: Of the 16 million Americans who fought in World War II, it’s estimated that only about 300,000 of you are left. Five years ago, that number was about 930,000. This 75th anniversary essentially marks the last time the world can properly honor enough of those who are still here. After this, we’re mostly on our own.
So here we are. This moment stands as a last farewell, I suppose, and a chance to offer one final, heartfelt cry of thanks. The vast majority of you may be gone, and yet, you remain - for the world you won for us is still here and, despite its various crises, divisions, issues and other dramas, still stands strong. We are your testament to that.
You can sleep with that knowledge, as well as with this: You will always be part of us, and we will never forget you. I know I never will.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.