Bjorkman wants to win election to U.S. House of Representatives

[TexasTowelie]

Statehouse reporter Bob Mercer spent some time talking with Tim Bjorkman and watching him greet people at the State Fair. The retired state judge from Canistota is the Democratic candidate for South Dakota’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. Here are some impressions.

Why he’s running: Tim Bjorkman talked at length about statistical trends in South Dakota’s criminal justice system. Eighty percent of felons in state prisons are serving sentences for nonviolent crimes, he said.

That is too many, and too often, for Bjorkman to accept.

“That’s at the very genesis of what led me to run,” he said.

The specific problem has many roots, from his perspective. Bjorkman listed:

A need for access to better healthcare; Underlying mental illnesses that show up as multiple addictions; Lack of general public funding for early-childhood education; Failure to hold parents accountable; High frequency of never-married parents, whose children in seven of 10 instances grow up in poverty; Low work ethic, or none at all; and The minimum wage didn’t keep pace with inflation.

Read more: http://www.capjournal.com/news/bjorkman-wants-to-win-election-to-u-s-house-of/article_20ea3cf2-91d7-11e7-8843-bb24653ac62a.html