Beginning January 1, 2012, five South Dakota communities will implement new municipal taxes or update their current city taxes. These towns include Bruce, Camp Crook, Frankfort, Oldham and Irene. The South Dakota Department of Revenue has Municipal Tax Information Bulletins available listing all municipal sales and use tax rates statewide as well as information on tribal sales, use and excise taxes.

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley has announced that the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a January 2012 rehearing of the entire eleven-member Court with regard to abortion disclosure requirements adopted by the legislature in 2005. The full Court will address the validity of the legislative requirement that women considering an abortion be advised of the association of suicide in relation to abortion.

It’s bad enough that homosexual activists insist on broadcasting their sexual disorientation in public. It’s also bad enough that some homosexual activists expose their children shamelessly to their perverted lifestyle. But it is growing more and more common for some of these activists to use their children as instruments to strike out at people who refuse to accept their fantasy version of reality. Consider this incident at a book signing by Michele Bachmann in South Carolina where a homosexual activist prodded her child to make a statement to Bachmann in an attempt to make Bachmann look bad.

And we wonder why so many young people are growing up to be mindless drones of Marxist propaganda? It’s not surprising when we realize how much overt (and how much subtle) indoctrination they receive from elitists in the public education system. Watch this interview with the author of “Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism” to hear about some ongoing examples of how our children are being indoctrinated against our way of life.

Back in September, we saw a hero Marine receive the Medal of Honor for his amazing, life-saving performance during an ambush in Afghanistan. Marine Sergeant Dakota Meyer is one of the few living recipients of the Medal of Honor for the wars inIraq and Afghanistan. Now he’s fighting defamation after exposing the sale of high-tech military hardware to a foreign country whose dedication to U.S. interests is questionable.

According to U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) on Thursday the House will take up a bill sponsored by Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD) to prohibit any further regulation of rural dust by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The bipartisan bill, H.R. 1633, was approved by the House Energy & Commerce Committee last week.

The Christmas season is once again upon us and with it overwhelming encouragement from Madison Avenue to spend what we have not earned to buy what we cannot afford. This Christmas let us not be swept away by the illusory claims of consumerism; instead, let us revel in God’s gracious gifts, to drink deeply the wonder of relationships and life and every moment of this season—these will leave you truly satisfied and debt free!

This video pretty much sums up my thoughts on the GOP presidential candidates. So without further adieu… According to the video description, this video is by Jerry McGlothlin, CEO of Special Guests, Inc. Special Guests, established in 1986, is a leading supplier of expert guests to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and other popular talk shows.

Studies show that people think about money as a pyramid similar to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Our first priority at the base of the pyramid is hand to mouth, meeting our physiological needs. Next we seek safety and security with enough money to support our health and well-being against accidents or illness and to save for infirmity in our old age. Having the money to meet these basic needs really does bring a certain degree of happiness.

Lonis Wendt recently wrote an essay on the Vivian (S.D.) dance hall as published in my hometown newspaper. The article originally was submitted to the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on behalf of the hall’s induction slated for April 21, 2012, at the Ramkota in Sioux Falls. While this article just refers to the history of the Vivian dance hall, it should remind a lot of us about the dance halls in most of South Dakota’s small towns that are now just a memory.

These are the most read and talked-about articles from Dakota Voice last week, including: Fast, Furious and Lawless Obama Regime; SD GOP: The Voters Are Watching; ‘Occupy Indianapolis’ and the SEIU; Mountaineers do Half-Time Right; Victims of the Obama Corruption Machine; An Open Letter to Sean Hannity; Comrade Sam: Eat Your Broccoli or Else; and more!

Last year, a one-year cut in the payroll taxes that working Americans pay to finance Social Security was enacted in the name of so-called economic “stimulus.” But, like the rest of the economic stimuli that have come from Washington over the last three years, the only thing that has been stimulated is the growing hole of national debt into which we sink deeper and deeper. Now, unsurprisingly, our president and his Democratic colleagues want to continue, and possibly expand, this payroll tax holiday despite its obvious failure.

If you thought 2012 would bring change to government, think of it more as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The two leading candidates at the moment on the right are not champions of limited government. Sadly, it appears that those who consistently support limited government rarely seek high office.

Today, Secretary of State Jason Gant unveiled his upgrade to South Dakota’s campaign finance reporting system to all of South Dakota, taking the system live less than a year after taking office. “This is the most significant development in campaign finance for SD in over a decade,” said Gant.

Senior citizens should know something important about Medicare claims after they have a car accident. If claim forms are not properly filled out, Medicare will deny the claim. So, it is important for every senior citizen who is injured by a car accident to remind every medical service provider to mark on the claim form to Medicare that the service is not related to the car accident. This will save the senior citizen some grief and money.

There is a tremendous amount of controversy in our country today about “social justice.” This terms sounds like something that everyone should support, but it is in fact nothing but a socialist agenda. America was founded on the Biblical principle of equality before the law. “Social justice,” which is a Marxist concept, relies on the principle of equality of outcome. These two philosophies are at odds with one another, and produce very different results.

The EPA’s most recent announcement is all vehicles must meet an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025—a doubling of today’s average of about 27 mpg, according to the Wall Street Journal. The free enterprise system is once again interrupted by the edict of a rogue government agency, and the result will be higher costs to the consumer–whether the consumer wants them or not–and a reduction in vehicle safety in order meet these unrealistic standards.

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley releases further details on the U.S. Supreme Court’s oral argument in the Federal Health Care Reform Act case. The Court has allotted five-and-a-half hours for oral arguments expected to be heard by this February or March, with a decision potentially by late June 2012.

An open letter from a Sean Hannity fan who is fed up that Hannity continues to give air time to RINO mudslinger Karl Rove. “Moving on to this primary season, its clear to anyone that the GOP has promised Mitt Romney the nomination and they are doing everything they can to see that, systematically, each of his rivals are destroyed.”

We have heard of the horrors imposed on the people of China—women who have been forced to have abortions due to China’s demented and barbaric “one-child policy.” Amazingly enough, right here in the United States, sex-selection and race-based abortions are perfectly “legal,” except in Arizona, where, earlier this year, Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a ban on sex and raced-based abortions. Now, a tenacious congressman from Arizona has reintroduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would prohibit sex-selection and race-based abortions.