At Saturday’s crackerbarrel, Sister Kathleen Bierne asked Representative Drew Dennert to use his influence to push the food tax cut that he helped Democrats hijack into being on Thursday. Sister Kathleen noted that lowering the food tax would lower costs for our struggling nursing homes. (Note that Senator Al Novstrup was too busy scribbling in a greeting card to pay attention to that astute point from the good Sister.)
Evidently Rep. Dennert’s influence doesn’t count for much on this issue. Majority Leader Lee Qualm saw to it that the food tax died a swift death in his House State Affairs Committee yesterday. He brought Senate Bill 86 to the front of the committee calendar, took an amendment to restore Senator Jeff Partridge’s intended toothless language to consider lower the sales tax based on revenue from out-of-state online vendors, rushed through an empty request for discussion, and deferred the amended bill to Wednesday.
You can listen to the two-minute railroading on the House State Affairs audio starting at the 2:00 timestamp. If anyone came to House State Affairs expecting a chance to speak to the food-tax reduction, Majority Leader Qualm made sure they remained silent.
Worth noting: contrary to the fighting spirit shown by Representatives Ray Ring and Linda Duba in hijacking the Partridge Backtrack to resurrect the food tax reduction last week, the Democrats on House State Affairs appear not to have been in the mood to resist the GOP leadership’s drive for keeping South Dakota’s taxes regressive. Democratic Representative Steven McCleerey even formally moved the amendment to quash the food-tax reduction and restore the toothless Partridge plan.
Evidently helping low-income families and nursing homes stretch their food budget a little more isn’t worth our Legislature’s time.
What’s with legislative dems helping Republican process cramming down our throats this shyte? Again?
I can understand Ring and Duba feeling worn down from beating their heads against an ignorant and heartless SDGOP brick wall, if that was the case. But why on earth would McCleery actively participate in maintaining the inhumane food tax? WTH?
I have no explanation, Debbo. I can only quote Peter Quincy Taggart: Never give up. Never surrender.
On a similar note, why does the web site for the legislatures get shut down on big nights like tonight? Is it the Speakers and the Whips ordering these maneuvers to protect their positions? Or did the Governor order the website shut down to prevent people from debating Mr. H on the merits of the Rioting Boostering bill, which we now cannot read.
Well I can see why our state wouldn’t want to sign on to that liberal, radical idea of not taxing groceries. Who would do that? … besides the 44 other states that do that….. including all six of our neighbor-states…
Grudz, I’ve noticed some slow repsonse from sdlegislature .gov this Session. Their server must be getting slammed… probably from George Soros and other out-of-staters checking in on their nutty bills. We need to go full Russia or China and build a giant firewall so we can have our own internal net all to ourselves. That’ll fix ’em… whoever “’em” are.
TAG, we’ve got distinguish ourselves somehow. By being uniquely regressive, we make sure we keep recruiting only the finest in antisocial businesspeople and retirees who care not one whit if the only other people left in the state are low-income workers who can’t afford to move and seek better wages than the pittances their rich South Dakota overlords pay.
Mr. H, you are probably righter than right. The legislatures web pages are slower than ever this year. If they put statistics out it would be transparent, or probably they just hide ineptness.