Drain the tribal swamp
By Jeffrey Whalen
Native Sun News Today Columnist
nativesunnews.today
The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) recently came out with some data for each county in America which identifies a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figure. GDP is defined as being a “monetary measure of the value of all final goods and services produced in a period (quarterly or yearly).” This article is going to address those findings for Oglala Lakota County.
The data can be found
on the web at BEA.gov, and allows the reader to see the methodology as to how the government came up with their figures. It has a spread sheet labeled
“Real Gross Domestic Product” in which it shows numbers in the thousandths from the years 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.
After looking at this, you will find that the
Oglala Lakota County slid back in 2012 by -7.5% from $250 million dollars, and it is recovering slightly in very, very minor increments thru 2015.
These numbers are important to the Oglala Sioux Tribe and to folks in office who understand how to decipher them. The numbers basically show how our economy is doing and can be used to look into history, develop bar charts, graphs or histograms which provide a visual presentation of where we are and can be used to develop plans to increase GDP. An important piece of this addresses how much money is coming into a county from “all industries” and separately identifies money coming in from “government enterprises.”
Recall that in some of my past articles, I suggest that we are living in a socialist society meaning that the government owns most enterprises and we are being predominantly supported by those industries. Merriam-Webster defines Socialism as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”
After looking at this, it seems apparent that the Bureau of Economic Analysis data supports my position. In Oglala Lakota County, 74% of the money generated here comes in the form of government enterprises. (This is the highest in the State of South Dakota). Compare that with the remaining amount of 26% which obviously comes from “other” industries.
To be clear, “other industries” are those sources that do not come from the government rather they come from the Private Sector. Pennington County only has 17% of GDP coming from Government Enterprises, the rest comes from the Private Sector.
Why should we care about this data concerning the Oglala Lakota County? Well, for one, most of the people reading this opinion article has some sort of connection with this county and a lot others who are reading this…actually live in Oglala Lakota County.
We hear over and over again, that Oglala Lakota County is the poorest in the nation. We see the news media consistently identifying this county as poverty stricken, loaded with drugs, crime, alcoholism and a whole host of other negative claims. We should care about the BEA data because it provides us with a tool the eliminate all those negative claims connected to this county.
We have some newly elected political officials on Pine Ridge. One such official is the new Oglala Sioux Tribal President Mr. Julian Bear Runner. Julian ran on a platform of spirituality and a claim that he is a common man with a plan. The Oglala members overwhelmingly elected Mr. Bear Runner over his competitor who is extremely educated and experienced, holding two (2) Master Degree’s and a PhD.
Julian seemed like an unlikely Presidential candidate because of his lack of education and experience but in his campaign platform, his spirituality and “common man with a plan” slogan pulled him through. Congratulations for the win Mr. Bear Runner, you beat a man who is highly intelligent and highly experienced.
As the newly elected President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, would you please unveil your plan? That plan was only referenced during the election, but it was never produced. I would suggest that utilizing the data that was collected and officially published by the BEA would be a good addition to your existing plan.
Use the BEA data as a bench mark and create a paper trail to see which direction we are going as a tribe in terms of our economy. As mentioned above concerning the year 2012, we took a big hit backward and are slowly inching our way forward again. But why did we take a hit? Your team should find out what happened during 2012 and improve on it to insure it doesn’t happen again.
Historically, the Tribal President already has data at the tribal level which identifies who the decision makers have been throughout the years. All committees are important, but this opinion piece will hone in on the Economic and Business Development (E&BD) Committee of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
We have had the same chairman of that committee administration after administration. Mr. James Cross is a good man who doesn’t seem to have the support he needs from his fellow council representatives of which if he did have that support, this would potentially enable Mr. Cross to move the economy forward.
Contact Jeffrey Whalen at Jeffrey.whalen2@gmail.com
Copyright permission Native Sun News Today
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