One more thread of South Dakota’s tawdry EB-5 story has reached an uninformative end, as the Tentexkota wheeler-dealers behind the Deadwood Mountain Grand casino and hotel have reached a confidential settlement with their Chinese cash-for-green-card investors:
Dale Morris, Tentexkota’s managing member, reached settlements with the Chinese investors as well as with seven other men who guaranteed the loan, according to Kasey Olivier, a Sioux Falls lawyer who represented Tentexkota.
Those seven included Kenneth “Big Kenny” Alphin, a member of the country music duo Big & Rich, as well as Timothy Conrad, Michael Gustafson, George Mitchell, Marc Oswald, Ronald Wheeler and Dwight Wiles.
“I can’t give you the terms of the settlement,” Olivier said. “I can tell you they have reached an agreement to settle. The parties have amicably resolved the agreement and were excited to move forward” [Tom Lawrence, “Deadwood Mountain Grand Lawsuits Settled,” Black Hills Pioneer, 2019.05.29].
Lawrence notes that, in addition to $32.5 million in EB-5 visa investment funds, the Deadwood Mountain Grand needed a $1.7-million grant from the Deadwood Historical Preservation Society and a subsidy of $550,000 a year for fifteen years from the city of Deadwood to get off the ground. Even after all that support made possible by government favors, Tentexkota tried skipping out on repaying the loans that EB-5 czar Joop Bollen said were guaranteed.
The EB 5 scandal with the packing plant in Aberdeen resulted in the Chinese being guaranteed absolutely nothing while the buyer got such a sweet deal that they can almost not go wrong. With our farmers so dependent on better relations with the Chinese, I hope this deal did not defraud the Chinese to much. So how much is to much to defraud if we want to ‘move forward’ rather than to just keep on cheating our trade partner? Being excited about moving forward sounds like a business deal gone bad and the wrongdoer wanting to not remember their mistake.
Roger, the Chinese have landed on their feet which is more than I can say for our economy here in the United States.
“Americans want to believe that their economy is doing well and that China’s economy is doing badly, as President Trump keeps saying. One shouldn’t blame Trump for this; underestimating competitors is America’s national pastime.
A recent embarrassing example was a report by Wells Fargo analyst Roger Read featured on CNBC, claiming that a fall in the growth rate in China’s diesel consumption “is most likely tied to economic factors and the effects of the tariff ‘war’ with the US”
As physicist Wolfgang Pauli once said, this isn’t even wrong. The fellow from Wells Fargo failed to observe that China’s rail traffic is growing 10%, year-on-year, which is also the rate of expansion of China’s rail network. The more China ships by rail, the less dependent it is on diesel trucks.” https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/article/washington-is-wrong-about-chinas-economy/
Fascinating read and shows how our media is leading us down the same kinds of pathway’s that got us into trouble with Rounds and Joop corruption. When lies and damn lies rule the day, it’s only a matter of time before the bottom falls out big time.
Who benefits most when matters such as this are hidden from public view?
Curt, to answer your question, here is from a town hall of Justin Amash, the Republican who is standing up to republicans on doing their damn jobs.
“The success of this Republican campaign, reflected in conservative media coverage, to protect Trump was best captured by Amash’s own constituent Cathy Garnaat, a Republican, who NBC reported was “surprised to hear there was anything negative in the Mueller report at all about President Trump.”
“I hadn’t heard that before,” she told NBC after the Tuesday town hall. “I’ve mainly listened to conservative news and I hadn’t heard anything negative about that report and President Trump has been exonerated.”
That comment alone cements that Amash, in becoming the first and only Republican to call for impeachment, is fighting against an entire machine — from the elected leaders to sympathetic media outlets.” https://www.vox.com/2019/5/30/18646048/republican-protect-trump-mueller-report-amash
We are in a time where state run, white wing propaganda is controlling the message to the people. The machine is well oiled with special interest money to keep the farmer controlled as well as the rest of the proletariat. Work for peanuts because they treat you like a caged monkey. Enslaved on your own mortgaged lands to work and toil like the serfs to masters.
How many green cards were given out? What was the ratio of genders?
Kathy, I believe all of the investors got their green cards. I don’t know the gender ratio, but EB-5 investors can bring their spouses and unmarried children under age 21.
Curt, the people who benefit most from secrecy are past and future scammers.