Represent South Dakota explains with this vivid video why Al Novstrup and his Republican supper club are begging South Dakotans not to pass Amendment W:
South Dakota has some of the weakest lobbyist gift restrictions in the country. Amendment W is a step toward closing that door to corruption. I don’t mind a free lunch, but if you send me to Pierre, you’ll be paying me a per diem to make my own peanut butter sandwiches.
It’s a little over the top. It’s funny. I get that the public does think the social calendar during session drives corruption. Corruption is actually much more insidious and more subtle. It’s not food the lobbyists are stuffing down legislators throats. It’s bills they hand out to them to sponsor. It’s bills they want killed. It’s projects they want zero oversight over. It’s meetings with the Governor’s staff to pave the way for bills or regulations or non-enforcement of laws or ways that clear out citizen input or ignore citizen input, efforts to pull the wool over the eyes of legislators in caucus meetings. In short, it’s a corruption of the entire governance process. It is far, far deeper than eating at a restaurant. But the spot gets the point across.
Oysters on the half shell could be shoveled down the gullets of willing politicos without so much of a belch. Expensive taste too. Good video.
It’s certainly graphic and makes the point. The SDGOP regards the legislature as their own particular trough and the don’t want the citizens, whose money, rights, land, safety, etc they’re selling, to stop the flow.
Actually I found the video kind of revolting, just as I find what the SDGOP does to SD revolting.
Wow Don, we need to put that on a Placard. Or GOP’s headstone.
Cory-just a thought: BBC radio discusses Josh the Russian troll hunter this morning. We should stop feeding these trolls…er, hogs. :)