I second Todd Epp's comment on Professor Newquist's post on the DM&E railroad loan. That post is interesting and informative. But I can't help comparing this issue to the Ellsworth Air force Base crisis. That was not a "Republican" Air force base, it was a South Dakota Air force base. Our Congressional delegation, all three of them, pulled together to save Ellsworth, though of course only Thune would have got the blame if we had lost it.
Just as one could make an argument that the national interest was not served by maintaining the Ellsworth Air force site, so one can argue that the national interest outweighs benefits to South Dakota from a new coal line from "the Powder River Basin of Wyoming to . . . to electrical generating plants in the east." Professor Newquist makes such an argument. But why the difference? Is it because former South Dakotan Tom Daschle was on the anti-DM&E side? Apparently, a railroad expansion that benefits South Dakota is a "Republican railroad" and not a South Dakota railroad, if Tom is against it.
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