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Coronavirus Matters to SDGOP Spin Blog Only as Opportunity to Attack Political Opponents

Published 2020-10-12 by Cory Allen Heidelberger

In galling hypocrisy, Pat Powers fabricates political outrage at South Dakota Democrats for supposedly voting against coronavirus relief:

Check this out. You’re not hearing it from the mainstream media, but in the middle of a pandemic, yesterday South Dakota Democrats block voted against the Senate Resolution laying out the spending of federal funds for COVID relief in yesterday’s special session.

…All of the Senate’s Democrats voted against disbursing millions in federal grants for long term care facilities, small business, funds for non-profits, etcetera and so on.

But it wasn’t just Senate Democrats. After they got done rejecting the expenditures for affected people and organizations, then House Democrats turned right around and voted against it as well.

…After all the amendments were proposed and voted on by the body as a whole, Democrats simply voted against anyone receiving COVID relief.

Which kind of tells you that they’re more interested in blocking than actually helping [Pat Powers, “Democrats Block Vote NO on Covid Relief Resolution During Special Session,” Dakota War College, 2020.10.06].

GOP mouthpiece Powers here attempts to sound like he cares about coronavirus when it sounds like a convenient hammer with which to pound Democrats in front of inattentive voters. Yet this feigned concern comes after spending the entire pandemic essentially ignoring coronavirus in his blog posts.

As of this morning, I’ve tagged 388 posts with coronavirus since March. (This post will be #389.) Search coronavirus on Pat’s blog, dig past the press releases from his sponsors, and you find the only time Pat mentions coronavirus is when he wants to praise his party leaders and their do-nothing approach to the pandemic or criticize politicians he doesn’t like. In April, he expressed shock that GOP Senator Phil Jensen would campaign door-to-door—”the opposite of social distancing“. Yet in September, he promoted irrational anti-mask protests in his town and disdained Brookings’s sensible mask mandate. This month he belittled Democratic House candidate Becky Holtquist for calling on local businesses to “take responsibility for masking” and shopping at safer out-of-town stores. Pat attacked a Sioux Falls councilman for not jumping on Trump’s hydroxychloroquine bandwagon in April, but he reported nothing about the lack of scientific evidence for the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine against covid-19 at the time, and he certainly never followed up to discuss the swiftly accumulating evidence that hydroxychloroquine was a bad bet or South Dakota’s abandonment of its embarrassing gun-jumping “study” of Trump’s quack pills.

I’ve read and written a lot about the science, the spread of the disease in South Dakota, the philosophical implications of this public health crisis, and the personal and public policy actions necessary to check the pandemic and its economic impacts, all in an effort to help myself and my neighbors understand and intelligently confront this grave and monumental challenge. I read the Legislature’s proposal for spending the remaining 48% of the CARES Act dollars that Governor Noem hadn’t already burned up, saw that it was a craven surrender to unchecked and misfocused executive priorities, and recommended a plan to spend that $597 million on far more direct relief to our schools and South Dakotans suffering from covid-19.

Governor Kristi Noem was going to spend all $1.25 billion of the federal coronavirus relief funds however she wanted, including on national cable TV ads for herself and her 2024 name recognition, no matter how the Legislature voted last week. Democrats didn’t vote against helping people who are suffering from coronavirus; they simply declined to be part of the feckless Republican rubber stamp of Noem’s self-promotion and misappropriation of funds.

And even if the Legislature had been considering a real bill to provide real coronavirus relief, and even if South Dakota Democrats had the power to block such a bill, Pat Powers wouldn’t give a real damn. Pat and his pitiful party don’t want people and governments taking real action to protect South Dakotans from coronavirus and its social and economic impacts, because such real action requires listening to science and experts, spending money to help working people, and investing in public institutions. For Pat and the Trumpists, the GDP and ideology are far more important than human life.

Last week’s Special Session coronavirus spending resolution was a sham. It was toothless, gutless Governor-petting that put not one useful dime in any coronavirus-sufferer’s pocket. Any legislators’ refusal to put their names on such horsehockey is not an abdication of duty or a sign they don’t care about the challenges this state faces amidst this pandemic. Quite the contrary: it’s a statement that we should be using federal coronavirus relief dollars for real, targeted coronavirus relief.

And we don’t have to put up with lectures to the contrary from a SDGOP spin blogger who ignores coronavirus until it offers a partisan opportunity for himself and his sponsors.

Published in South Dakota

16 Comments

  1. mike from iowa

    Attack this, PP…..

    United States
    Coronavirus Cases:
    8,003,660
    Deaths:
    219,805

    That’s right, inattention and incompetency has brought us 8 million cases of covid and soon to be 220k deaths from. Bandy those numbers for your crowd of magats living in alternate reality.

    2020-10-12
  2. Buckobear

    Remember, the republican idea of bi-partisan compromise is, “do what we want>”

    2020-10-12
  3. ds

    “Grappling with a surge in new cases, North Dakota had only 22 intensive care unit beds available in the entire state, the Grand Forks Herald reported. “This is spreading so rampantly that we can’t keep up,” said DeeAnna Opstedahl, who supervises patient care at CHI St. Alexius Heath Dickinson hospital. She said the spike started after the Sturgis, South Dakota, motorcycle rally”
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-nears-8-million-covid-19-cases-with-3-weeks-to-the-election/ar-BB19WM5i?li=BBnb7Kz

    But of course Noem ignores the facts and directs the monies to her crony business buddies instead of providing help to the affected thousands of South Dakota un/under-employed, the permanently scarred ‘recovered’ covid-19 patients, and the health care, food service, and other public workers who are exposed to hundreds of mask-deniers on a daily basis.
    When we have South Dakota Veterinarians promoting herd immunity mentality (for humans but ironically not for animals) and State Representatives as mask-deniers, no wonder the public is remiss in precautions against this plague. We the public are sacrificial as long as the economy is buzzing…never mind that the hospitals, care givers, the pharmacies and the funeral homes are the ones getting all the new business.

    2020-10-12
  4. jerry

    ds, clear to see why South and North Dakota are neck and neck into the race to the bottom regarding the trump virus. The Sturgis city council is the perfect example of minority rules while disregarding the wishes of the majority. Sturgis could care less though as these guys, infected by their plague, are getting sick and croaking out of their city limits. No harm no foul.

    2020-10-12
  5. jerry

    No wonder (F) GNOem is fleeing the failed state she has caused.

    “After unveiling the Nurse Triage Line at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March when South Dakota saw its first cases, Monument Health has received more than 40,000 calls to the hotline.

    The call volume has doubled in recent weeks, creating bottlenecks for the ten nurses who respond to calls and longer wait times for the patients seeking COVID-19 care or testing on the other end.

    Spokesman Dan Daly said the hospital system has seen an increase of calls coming in, starting in mid-August following the rally and with school starting.” Rapid City Journal 10.12.2020

    Thanks Sturgis and thank you republicans for killing our economy and our people for a couple of blood money bucks.

    2020-10-12
  7. Mike Livingston

    If there could possibly be a sign of brightness in the midst of this pestilence it would be that we may emerge from it, God willing, with some semblance of sanity in our national leadership.
    It seems to me that the most effective way to deal with the situation is right in front of our faces, masking and aggressive testing and tracing.
    The Chinese new that right from the get-go, donald dumba-s was asleep at the wheel and instead of following their lead, he villainized them and blocked their travel causing our citizens to reroute through Europe and unknowingly spread the virus coast to coast once they arrived and spread out.
    But I digress simply put masking, testing and tracing should allow us as a nation to stabilize within 3 to 4 weeks .
    If partisan Powers would spend more of his time spreading fact based information instead of manure, who knows he might even save some of his hyper partisan pals.
    Stay safe stay calm and vote early.

    2020-10-12
  8. jerry

    Less than a month to go to get rid of the plague in the White House. I hope we rid ourselves of the pest senator EB5 Short Rounds here as well. He doesn’t care as he enriches himself at the hog trough.

    Vote early kiddos. Head on down to the courthouse and get’r done.

    2020-10-12
  10. David Newquist

    The Trump campaign took a video clip of Dr. Fauci commenting on the hard, intense work CDC staff members were doing on Covid-19 and made it look like he was praising Trump. Dr. Fauci called the campaign out for it. This is exactly the kind of thing that Pissle Patter has devoted his life to. It takes stupendous stupidity, dishonesty, and malice.
    And that is the brand it puts on the Republican Party. And makes bipartisan efforts something to be avoided by the decent.

    2020-10-12
  11. cibvet

    Trump campaign did the same hit job on Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley. Repubs have no shame.

    2020-10-12
  12. Debbo

    Looks awfully shaky for Cornyn in Texas. When Whitehouse shredded him, Cornyn looked kinda sick. Before him, my Sen. Amy Klobuchar added to Oozy Croozy’s orifices. Democrats may not be able to stop this GOP court packing, but by god they are making the hypocritical scumbags pay.

    2020-10-13
  13. leslie

    BCB, MFI ETC: While SD Republican legislators service a $$300-400 Billion tax avoidance tax haven trust industry (not offshore but IN SX FALLS), Feeding SD has had to activate all over the state. SD GOP is at fault. Republican greed is at the core of climate change AND economic inequality—the two major election issues that are bringing down this nation and the world’s democracies. At ACB’s constitutional Senate Confirmation hearing yesterday (THAT SEN MCCONNELL AND THUNE DENIED Merrick Garland 8 months before the 2016 presidential election that Putin interfered with) Republicans made sure they call it a Republic, not a Democracy.

    “ Involving prominent figures as varied as Queen Elizabeth II and Trump’s secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross….Both leaks [Panama/Paradise Papers] showed that the offshore economy had produced something dangerous to the rest of us: a noblesse without the oblige. They also showed that the phenomenon was global.
    As part of my research, I interviewed 65 wealth managers in 18 tax havens. Their clients used offshore tools to facilitate a way of life not only luxurious but libertine —one that exempted them from what most average people would regard as basic obligations to society, and gave them the freedom to do what might get other people in trouble. In other words, they aspire to the same lifestyle Trump has exemplified for decades, including his tax dodging and the gold-plated bathroom fixtures on his private jet. Although he is undeniably different from his recent predecessors in the Oval Office—particularly in his swaggering defiance of laws he swore to uphold and protect on Inauguration Day—Trump is the ideal representative of the elite insurgency. His offhand remark while filming Access Hollywood 15 years ago could serve as the unofficial motto for the whole offshore world…. [A] Geneva-based wealth manager I interviewed; she spoke of her clients as “people above nationality and laws.” Another in the Cayman Islands described his offshore clientele as “a pretty global bunch, with a lot more in common with each other than with the people of their own countries.” To study the offshore world, I needed to enter it fully, so I spent two years training to become a wealth manager myself. The job, I learned, consists of law avoidance—helping clients dodge creditors and legal judgments, along with the claims of ex-spouses and disgruntled heirs, is as much a part of the wealth manager’s role as facilitating tax evasion. The result was, as I wrote in The Atlantic in 2015, a “libertarian fantasy made real.””

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/trumps-very…o&utm_term=2020-10-10T10%3A30%3A02&utm_medium=social 10/13/20, 7E26 AM Page 3 of 9

    2020-10-13
  16. leslie

    BCB-“The point of money and power is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake…but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.” Money itself does not make this freedom attainable, but the application of financial-legal expertise does. This is why the ultra-rich need wealth managers—to create the asset-protection trusts and offshore corporations for dodging debts and taxes, and the inheritance plans for making sure that wealth stays in the family, generation after generation.
    Perhaps most importantly, the professionals ensure privacy for their clients. They keep the wealthy out of the newspapers and off the radar of regulatory authorities as much as possible. In keeping with this, wealth managers themselves keep an extremely low profile. Imagine the opposite of investment bankers and their well- appointed offices. Most of the wealth-management firms I saw were clean and tidy, but hardly impressive. Particularly in the offshore locales, wealth managers sat in shabby rooms that looked for all the world like something out of a Somerset Maugham tale, desks piled high with dusty files sporting labels such as “Rainy Day Trust.” Onshore, in the European and North American wealth-management centers, what passed for flash might be a signet ring or a pocket watch worn instead of a wristwatch: bat signals to members of a hereditary upper crust, but easily overlooked by others.
    What these professionals most emphatically did not look like is people with control over millions in global capital flows. And yet that is exactly what they were. Call it the “banality of professional power”—the cultivation of a useful obscurity, which allows the very wealthy to exist in a realm of freedom verging on lawlessness. To the extent that this remains unknown and virtually unimaginable to everyone else, the realm will persist undisturbed. Public dialogue about inequality will remain stalled on the old tropes of “class war” and “envy” of the “wealth creators.” It may be more productive to turn the spotlight away from the rich themselves, and instead focus on the professionals who—in their quiet, discreet, and extremely effective way—make it possible for the wealthiest people in the world to gain all the benefits of society, while flouting its laws. Rather than asking whether the distribution of economic resources is fair, perhaps the more compelling question lies upstream, in the way that distribution is created in the first place: by a kind of shell game played with international law. Most people have little tolerance for such shenanigans on the street corner. What about on a global scale? The Atlantic, Brooke Harrington, 10.26.15 (link above)

    This may be the next big thing Noem searches for and Dave Lust found?

    Quoting Corey: For Pat and the Trumpists, the GOP (sic) and ideology are far more important than human life.

    Greed.

    Economic inequality. Climate change. The real 2020 election issues.

    2020-10-13

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