Oh yeah, CAFOs: South Dakota continues to stink up the joint with county bribes for giant concentrated animal feeding operations.
As Bob Mercer reports, last week the South Dakota Board of Economic Development approved laundering up to $850,000 in sales tax bribes to Turner County for allowing Full Circle Dairy LLC to build a 7,000 head dairy. The board is sending up to $1,530,000 in sales-tax bribe money to Kingsbury County via Redstone Feeders LLC, which gets to build a 10,000-head dairy. Both CAFOs are promoted by and likely paying juicy consulting fees to A1 Development Solutions, the Sioux Falls firm former legislator G. Mark Mickelson and former Agriculture Department official Paul Kostboth now use to get rich off the CAFO policies they pushed while in office.
The South Dakota Legislature could just give all counties the authority to levy their own sales taxes to address their burgeoning fiscal needs. But as the Board of Economic Development’s CAFO actions last week show, the state doesn’t want counties exercising any kind of autonomy. The state would rather trap county governments in dire fiscal straits and dole out sales tax bribes only to coerce counties to give up environmental protections and local oversight to quisle (the verb that gives us quisling, right?) to the state’s noxious agenda of supporting giant corporate milk and meat factories and the cronies who profit therefrom.
The crooks run the show in South Dakota. If you’re honest you starve or leave. It’s that simple.
The stench of corruption even overrides the stench of the CAFO’s. More dirty BRIBE money to pollute our air and water. No wonder there is so much outside “donations” to the republican cabal in Pierre. On the bright side, the UK has refused chlorinated chicken. This is a positive step to make less CAFO’s that have to do with poultry.
Corollary to Donald’s statement: if you stand for the environment, you choke on manure fumes or leave.