Congresswoman and Republican gubernatorial candidate Kristi Noem is criticizing Citigroup, one of South Dakota’s biggest employers, for its decision not to finance certain gun-related businesses. Noem let loose Friday with this anti-Citi tweet responding to a Politico story on Citi’s effort to put some free-market brakes on bump stocks, high-capacity magazines, and gun sales to young people:
Dang: I wish Rep. Noem were similarly troubled by Internet service providers that strong-arm clients with the net non-neutrality the Trump FEC is allowing and thus undermine the constitutional liberties of Internet users.
Citi’s application of financial clout against ammosexuality drives Noem to an anti-corporate frenzy on TV:
“This is a constitutionally protected right. The second amendment is incredibly important to the people of South Dakota and what Citibank did was to come out and infringe on that right,” South Dakota Republican Rep. Kristi Noem said.
…“I do not think it’s a business’s place to mandate to people, that they do business with, especially a bank, that they have to comply with their own set of rules and regulations,” Noem said [Michaela Feldmann, “South Dakota Officials* React to Citigroup’s Restriction on Firearms Policy,” KSFY, updated 2018.03.27].
Wait a minute—banks and other businesses can’t force people with whom they do business to comply with rules and regulations? Hot dog! Now Kristi is pitching for my vote! With her logic here, Noem knocks the legs out from a host of corporate policies that aggravate me:
- Mortgage insurance: Wells Fargo makes us pay an extra $1,500 a year, just because when we took out our loan, the housing allowance from the church wasn’t on the previous year’s tax return. Nuts to that! I want a refund!
- Non-compete clauses: a company contracts with me, then requires me not to work for any related business for two years? Nuts to that! I’ll work where I want!
- Non-disclosure agreements: a private business hires me, then infringes on my First Amendment right to tell people about the work I do? Nuts to that, right, Kristi?
- Mandatory arbitration: surely Citi can’t make us take any disputes about our credit card bills to arbitration. Jury trials for everyone!
- Software license agreements: don’t worry about all that fine print on your copy of Microsoft Office (not that you read any of it anyway)—Kristi says none of it matters!
- No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service: ha! I’ll be working on my tan on the Starbucks patio.
Noem’s suggestion that businesses can’t set their own rules governing with whom they do business is mostly ridiculous. But if she really wants to roll with it, I’m ready to roll with her. Barefoot at Starbucks—whoo-hoo!
*Headline error: KSFY says “officials” react, but the only official reacting in the story is Noem. I eagerly await comment from Senators Thune and Rounds, Governor Daugaard, Attorney General Jackley, Mayor Huether….
Ignorant lackey NOem still does not understand the Constitution and its content. NOem is blathering about the 2nd Amendment as if Citigroup’s decision has anything to do with it. NOem is not fit to be in anymore positions of trust for the people of South Dakota.
Regarding the 1st Amendment rights of a corporation like Citigroup to decide the direction of their lending institution is entirely up to them as they are covered under the 1st Amendment. NOem thought it was a good idea for Citizen’s United that made corporations people, so now then she needs to brush up on that Constitution thingy to see all the implications. Woof woof, that reality dog done bit her in the behind.
So NOem is saying the right to buy bump stocks, high capacity magazines and restricting gun sales for kids under 21 is restricting 2nd amendment? How?
Sounds like a start to reasonable gun control. Hmmmm
Retired Justice Stevens, a republican has an article in the New York Times today:
“Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society.
That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.
For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.
During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
NOem clearly is not much of a mother, as she seems like someone must have done that childcare for her. NOem is only in it for the blood money of the NRA and for the war machinery of automatic military weaponry that money has purchased from her. We can do much better, vote Democratic, vote Billie Sutton.
Plus I haven’t heard NOem comment at all on the marches all over this country last weekend.
NOem’s NRA also acknowledges foreign money transfers, why is that NOem? https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Senator%20Wyden%203-19-18%20Response%20Letter.pdf
So NOem is upset that an American banking operation has instituted its First Amendment rights while an organization that is a NOem operation, has ties to Russia. Clearly she is not understanding where the real dangers to democracy are. Why would we want a dud that does not know right from wrong as a governor?
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/nra-admits-moving-money-accounts-foreign-donations-us-campaign-accounts/
Yeah they did.
Does this mean that the logical extension that EVERY business has to provide access to UNLIMITED services provided under the Constitution? That is going to make Pro-Life abortion restrictions problematic. Applying her Citi philosophy: ALL hospitals and surgical centers MUST provide abortion services to everyone – no in-house restrictions.
Since when did Kristi Noem start not liking the Free Market?
Citigroup has a right to do what they are doing and their customers have a right to stop giving them money. Noem also has a right to speak out against them.
Cory,
What evidence do you have that getting rid of the net neutrality law will hurt South Dakotans?
NOem blathers: “This is a constitutionally protected right. The second amendment is incredibly important to the people of South Dakota and what Citibank did was to come out and infringe on that right,” South Dakota Republican Rep. Kristi Noem said”
Show me where and how Citigroup infringes on the 2nd Amendment. NOem is a fool and those who think she is anything but that, are equal fools. Citigroup is a business that can do as it sees fit under the 1st Amendment, as long as it abides by the rule of law…
Does this mean that Noem supports the rights of gays and that bakeries have to bake them wedding cakes without running to the Supreme Court?
Good point Roger. NOem will now have to get the confectioners sugar and get to dusting. Opps, forgot, she is against dust..that is until she is for it. NOem is like a landed carp on the boat bottom, flopping about and making noise.
I had been looking for the correct cite for this: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-saw-treating-the-victims-from-parkland-should-change-the-debate-on-guns/553937/
“…the trauma surgeons opened a young [Parkland FL]victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, … a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. Nothing was left to repair—and utterly, devastatingly, nothing could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.”
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/364417-eliminating-net-neutrality-would-hurt-rural-america
As governor, Noem will probably punish Citi just like Georgia punished Delta by canceling their tax break. Citi can do like Wells Fargo just did in Aberdeen and close down and move their jobs to Minnesota. If South Dakota’s low taxes, and low wages, and low work comp rates, and cheap land, and lack of worker protections can’t keep jobs from moving to Minnesota then there really is no downside to a governor candidate getting nasty with one of South Dakota’s largest employers. Citi was probably leaving anyway, so Noem can plausibly deny that she had anything to do with it.
Actually, Citi announced last fall it will build new headquarters in Sioux Falls: http://www.keloland.com/news/article/your-money-matters/citibank-to-build-new-headquarters-in-sioux-falls
Daugaard wanted to promote jobs in South Dakota by hanging around the Mall of America, hawking reasons to move to South Dakota for work. NOem wants to send those Citigroup jobs to Minnesota so those workers can shop at the Mall of America. Billie Sutton wants to put economic development at the top of what is best for South Dakota. NOem is still looking at her belly button and picking NRA lint from their money out of it. Jobs and growth?, who needs them if you are like NOem, on the NRA bandwagon and only in it for herself.
While NOem is going full throttle banging on the NRA drum, the NRA answered a very important question today on their involvement with Russia with undisclosed funding. They took it. So does NOem stand for South Dakota or does she stand with Russia? Looks like from her stance, she is a Putin kind of gal.
Jerry, I think all the GOP in DC and great swaths of the USA are Putie’s good little girls and boys.
👫
Indeed, then NOem should just cut to the chase and embrace the smirk on Putin’s pursed lips. Oh the humanity. NOem has sure gone all in on the guy with her comments.
The ammosexuals can just go do their business elsewhere if they feel threatened by Citibank. Do I feel a sense of nervousness with ammos these days?
Brick and mortar means very little to a huge bank like Citi, Rich, as you must know. In fact, the reason they are building new is because they are downsizing. It’s just a matter of time before they abandon South Dakota entirely. Citi has already shipped many of the executive and high-paying jobs out of state, and it is just milking South Dakota for tax breaks and low wages anymore. I estimate that within 10 years Citi will vacate South Dakota entirely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened in the next 4 years – under the next governor. Whoever is elected governor will be called upon to put up tens of millions in additional tax breaks to keep Citi from moving to someplace else offering greater tax breaks – ala Amazon.
It’s no big deal, if you don’t like the heavily subsidized Citibanks policy you can just cut your card in half. Oh no, I wouldn’t get to go to Costco then, no big loss for either. Plenty places to get a new card.
When all this went down; I can just visualize Noem running across Hiway 81 to Kone’s Korner and instigating a Citi group bashing, sliming session among all the camo seed corn hat wearers on the premises….. She demonstrates absolutely no intelligence when it comes to the 2nd Amendment or business ethics……….. Just like everything else she aspires to, if she can’t control it, she tries to use somebody or something else to do it.. Her propensity to cling to irrational and poorly reasoned fallacy is not representative of good leadership material……….
“If South Dakota’s low taxes, and low wages, and low work comp rates, and cheap land, and lack of worker protections can’t keep jobs from moving to Minnesota”
Perhaps Noem and Jackley could explain why businesses that are here, leave here.