Poor Pat Powers, stuck on the road, unable to post his usual cycle of weekend press releases from our Dear Leaders. How South Dakota suffers without its holy dose of GOP pablum!
Because I live to serve the blogosphere and our great state, let me take the pressure off Pat so he can take the pressure off that accelerator. Here are links to all of the big weekly columns you’ve been dying to read from our Congressional delegation and our Governor:
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Graphic from Rep. Kristi Noem’s official website, 2015.07.26 Representative Kristi Noem says master diplomats Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama have struck a “disturbing deal” with Iran. She says it is in America’s and Israel’s best interest for the United States to renege on the nuclear pact (read the whole thing here). The graphic one of her aides whipped up for her current front page reads “A Bad Iran Deal < No Deal,” indicating she offers to alternative other than the status quo of sanctions, isolation, and no talks. Doing nothing certainly suits her political temperament and intellectual skills.
- Senator John Thune says pretty much the same thing about the Iran nuclear deal. Just reread Kristi’s column in a deeper voice.
- Senator Mike Rounds gets off the Iran horse and instead beats up on the now five-year-old Dodd-Frank financial reforms. He blames Dodd-Frank for “limiting American growth and productivity” by ‘bog[ging] down our job creators with overly burdensome federal mandates.” Ah, job creators, those mythical superheroes of the American economy. How about some crumbs for the job doers, Mike?
- Governor Dennis Daugaard brags up his fourth budget surplus in a row one more time, then says we can build a broad, stable tax base by extracting sales tax from out-state online vendors. The Governor thanks our Congressional delegation for their attention to this issue, but that attention evidently hasn’t turned into action. Absent action, the Governor is still offering the most exciting discussion material, because he is once again forgetting that Republicans stand for small government and advocating a policy that would greatly expand government powers to assess taxation without representation. Yummy yummy!
There—all four SDGOP weekly columns in one nice, neat blog post, complete with bonus commentary and a more open comment section for more South Dakotans to weigh in.
Relax, Pat. I’ve got things covered… as usual.
Thank you, Mr. H. I find the regurgitation of the entire press releases clutter some and like your links. Your summarization is more snark than journalism, however. I wonder if Mr. Mercer ever writes articles in the media attacking Mr. PP.
Daugaard says nothing about Capitol One?
You could have quoted the three bland mice before the deal even started. They were against it because…….black guy.
Thank you for being the voice of reason! I was absolutely appalled to read this in our newspaper today (Brian Jenson’s editorial). Talk about inciting hate and stirring the pot. I used to be a hard core conservative, by the way, until idiotic things like this made me swing the other way. I for one am extremely happy to have a much greater mix of races here in Aberdeen than there were when I moved here in ’89. This is life, and we are all people…and all the same. Ghastly, and very sad, that anyone would even think this.
Owen, I imagine the Governor will work in some mention of Capital One or, more likely, a list of GOED’s successes in an upcoming weekly column. His office posted this column on Friday, and I imagine it takes a week to have some aide pick a topic, whip up a draft, get feedback from the higher-ups, tweak the language for complete political safety and purity, and get final approval.
But maybe the Governor could surprise us with a follow-up, proposing that South Dakota’s Department of Revenue get federal authority to raid grocery stores from Luverne to Pipestone to Ortonville to collect sales tax on groceries sold to South Dakotans. After all, those grocers get an unfair advantage over our local grocers by selling food to South Dakotans without collecting sales tax. ;-)
Mr. H, that is actually a very good idea. It is like when you buy your computers on the Amazon and don’t pay your sales tax. Imagine how much more money the state would be able to give to good teachers!
Grudz, buying groceries from Minnesota vendors who don’t pay South Dakota sales tax is very much like buying computers from non-tax-paying Amazon.com. I look forward to Governor Daugaard’s request of our Congressional team to propose legislation granting South Dakota such authority.
You make a good point, Tynn: Aberdeen is counting on more people coming from Africa and other far places to fill our workforce gaps. Attitudes like Jenson’s in our local paper don’t support the city’s efforts to grow and thrive.
I kind of like buying things online and not paying sales tax. Maybe if enough people buy online our state will be forced to modernize its tax system.
I think the slug Pat Powers could learn a bit from your technique, Corey. This post alone has more comments than the last eight posts (eight comments total) on the fake blog.
I still think Israel is going to find a way to have Mossad sneak a portable nuclear bomb into Iran’s underground research facility and set it off – destroying the facility. Then Netanyahu is going to jump up and down pointing at President Obama saying, “See, I told you they were close to having a nuke.” Bibi will wait until just before the election to help give the GOP nominee a boost. Then the GOP will dutifully take America to war with Iran on Israel’s behalf and boost aid to Israel tenfold.
“Just reread Kristi’s column in a deeper voice.”
Hahahahahahahaha! Cory, that’s hilarious!
According to this paper my granddaughter’s boyfriend found on google, Mr. H, you do have to pay tax on computers you buy from the Amazon store. But not on groceries you buy in Minnesota no matter where you eat them. If you buy computers from the Amazon store you have to pay the tax.
http://dor.sd.gov/Taxes/Business_Taxes/Publications/PDFs/UseTax-Everyone's0713.pdf
It’s the law, just like Obamacare and the minimum wage. I’m just sayin…
Almost everything Noem has articulated as a Congressperson seems to be mere parroting of the Conservative powers that be. But I recently learned that she voted against cutting funding to legal services to the poor. That both surprised me and pleased me! I guess until we have viable alternatives to who the voters of this crazy state elect, we should encourage and appreciate the unusual situations in which our elected representatives do the morally right thing.
On the road myself, in Indiana now. Have been thinking about how The Donald has the GOP over a barrel like Larry Pressler had Weiland. Funny when the shoe in on the other prosthetic.