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Noem Accuses Meatpackers of Stealing, Hands out Butcher Bribes

Stop the steal! shouts Governor Kristi Noem at the criminal meatpacking industry as she announces $5 million in welfare checks for 99 small butchers:

“I don’t want any more packers,” Noem says. “I’m sick of packers. In fact, I think packers are stealing from our producers” [Lee Strubinger, “State Hands Out $5 Million in Covid Relief to Local Butchers,” SDPB, 2021.06.03].

And here I thought taxation and socialism and redistribution of wealth were theft, not capitalists operating at scale in a state that’s Open for Business™.

As we’ve seen with the 2020 election, when Republicans shout about stealing, they’re probably lying to distract us from their own planned theft. She didn’t shout about thieving packers when she was in Congress; in fact, she voted for a Farm Bill that blocked efforts to  challenge the anti-competitive practices of the packing oligopoly.

And of course, while Governor Noem will hand welfare checks to butchers to bolster her meaty image, she won’t advocate legislation to break up the big meatpackers. As we saw during the pandemic, she won’t even meet with the workers whom Smithfield and other big slaughterhouses exploit, and we’re unlikely to hear the Governor support the Sioux Falls Smithfield workers’ union as they fight for better working conditions. (Meatpackers do steal wages—where’s the $5M grant program for workers?) Like the last guy in White House, Noem is just padding her friends’ pockets and buying the votes of local ag producers who in normal times would have the rural acuity to see through a no-achievement poser like Kristi.

26 Comments

  1. leslie 2021-06-05 09:47

    She must be held accountable for her collaborative role with Trump in muzzling CDC and interfering with flow of medical information for political purpose during the pandemic. (March/April 2020 outbreaks among workers at JBC Greely and days later at Smithfield, Sx Falls)

  2. Donald Pay 2021-06-05 10:31

    Yeah, she’s just pandering to the producers after she and her party has does every thing it can to eliminate competition in meatpacking, Then wonders why they are stealing from producers. Because YOU let them, Kristi. Look in the goddamn mirror for the cause of the problem.

  3. LCJ 2021-06-05 10:42

    Why is it when everyone else gets stimulus money it’s good for economic growth, but when the people who kill and process live stock for a living it’s welfare? Have you ever butchered an animal so you can live? les, once again I see you hijack a thread to show your advanced TDS syndrome. 48 year D.C. insider, Joe is enabling. Inflation with every word he says. Why not cut out the middleman to make protein cheaper and more available ? Soon consumers will have to save every penny for fuel, electricity etc. And if you don’t think creepy Joe’s tax hikes won’t have a negative effect on the readers of this media sight, you will soon learn a hard lesson.

  4. jerry 2021-06-05 12:09

    LCJ The sky falling. Funny you should mention alacrity in your rant, you do know property taxes and electric rates are going up, correct? Direct result of republican malfeasance. Please proceed.

  5. Donald Pay 2021-06-05 14:18

    LCJ, I think many of us are fine if the small meat processors get some subsidies, particularly after the Republican bribe-taking from the big meat packers and factory farms over three decades nearly ran the small guys out of business. Are conservatives really such snowflakes that you can’t take it when Cory gives you a ribbing about your fake claims of “socialism?”

    Does cutting up fish count? I think we all know it takes some skill to do it right, which is why most hunters take their meat to a processor. I think, actually, Noem is doing the right thing, but why she has to BS about it is what I don’t understand. She says she doesn’t want any more meatpackers. What’s that about? She doesn’t want any more competition for the Big Four, one of which was just taken down by Trump’s friend Putin?

    Democrats and progressives have been complaining about the big meatpackers and factory farms for decades. Meanwhile Noem, Thune, and Rounds have been raking in dollars from them, and giving them all the subsidies and lack of regulations they want. Hey, it’s great Noem is coming around to The Next Little Thing. It’s about time.

  6. Mark Anderson 2021-06-05 16:57

    Gosh could it be the Boston Butt is going up in price? A tragedy, I’m sure that the protein in Cicada soup will do you LCJ. Thanks for the advice, I’m saving every penny for the lights I really need them to watch Sweet Tooth, one a night for the next week. Medvedev still in it too boys and girls. NBCs coverage is good this week. Sports and politics, its a a five thirty-eight America.

  7. Arlo Blundt 2021-06-05 17:05

    Well..if they had their way, the four or five giant, natonwide meatpackers and the four or five huge wholesalers would run the small local processor out of business and staff the slaughterhouses with illegal aliens at sub-minimum wage. The Governor is throwing some small town local businesses a bone. It costs her nothing. She can still collect from the giants of agri -business for her campaign.

  8. LCJ 2021-06-05 17:27

    As I asked before, have you had to butcher an animal because you HAD to eat?
    The growing trend among leftist “journalists” is to use the tongue in cheek defense when ever they are caught making dog whistle statements.

  9. mike from iowa 2021-06-05 17:47

    Sounds like a magat troll off his meds.

    You can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and still smell good, https://youtu.be/3N9K7eoVtm0

  10. LCJ 2021-06-05 17:55

    How are you doing protecting the college students from being raped and murdered by your illegal immigrants, Mike, Not from South Dakota?

  11. LCJ 2021-06-05 18:16

    A lot of you libs are celebrating the higher cost of energy in the name of higher taxes
    This is another tax that will hurt middle and lower brackets hardest
    Walk away and find your freedom

  12. Jake 2021-06-05 18:21

    LCJ-your smelly hole awaits you-crawl back in for the good of mankind!

  13. Porter Lansing 2021-06-05 18:27

    Let’s call a spade a spade.

    Governor Noem; if you choose to vilify an entity why not have the courage to name names?

    CARGILL – TYSON – JBS and NATIONAL BEEF

    Don’t want to campaign donations to cease, huh Governor?

  14. Porter Lansing 2021-06-05 18:30

    LCJ –
    Rush Limbaugh is dead.

    Who’s spoon feeding you your misinformation, these days?

    I count seven mistakes/lies in your post.

    C’mon, man.

  15. Mark Anderson 2021-06-05 18:50

    Come on Porter, you’ve got to feel sorry for LCG, he’s protecting all of South Dakotas female college students, those wonderful blondes from being raped by the very people he’s bringing in to work cheap. Its a tough life, saving pennies for the apocalypse. Its a great day, Sweet Tooth awaits, Nadal and even Federer won, its a great day.

  16. LCJ 2021-06-05 19:02

    I forgot, you also have no candidate with any morals and the people who would vote for that candidate would have no morals.
    Rush is more important as dead as if you lived 99 lives.

  17. LCJ 2021-06-05 19:19

    Please stop drinking or your meth so we can understand what you are talking about and check your spelling Anderson!
    So I get from your post you are pro rape and murder by illegal immigrants?
    You are a very sick man and someone should keep an eye on you.
    CAH, are going to let someone post pro-rape and murder advocations here?
    If I stop posting here I think your people will have to find another bitch and moan sight. Next stop,South Dakota Standard!!!!
    Does that Moron allow comments?

  18. LCJ 2021-06-05 19:54

    Also, Mark, the term Porter is a word
    Associated with Black Train employees
    from the time the Union Armies under Republican Grant and Republican president Lincoln defeated slave owning Democratics that later formed the KKK!
    Yeah!!!!!! Democrats!!!
    Makes Karen sound cool 😎

  19. Donald Pay 2021-06-05 21:14

    LCJ, It’s not really our thing to chase all the conservative rabbits round and round. We do it for Grudz because he’s sometimes funny. Unless you put some humor in your jibes you should try to stay on topic.

    There are important issues surrounding the concentration in meatpacking, which is what this thread is supposed to be about. Four corporations control most of the nation’s processed meat. That is asking for trouble from a food safety/health standpoint as well as from a national security standpoint. We’ve seen the trouble it causes when Covid knocked out some of these plants. We’ve seen the same sort of trouble when Putin’s crooks did the same. You get a big bump in meat prices and a disruption of the food chain, back to the ranches in South Dakota.

    Helping the little processors is good. Maybe some of them can become medium sized, which would start to eat away at monopoly meat. But I think there should be a concerted effort to break up the big guys at the same time as we subsidize the little guys.

  20. Arlo Blundt 2021-06-05 21:40

    Well…LCJ…I’m a Liberal, an old Liberal, and I’ve done my share of butchering…I’m not good at it (Pheasants, grouse, fish are in my wheelhouse…Hogs no but I “helped out”…I suppose I’m a better man for it as I appreciate the task and the people who perform it well. Grew up in a grocery store so I appreciate the art and science of a good butcher. I remember when every town had a butcher shop/meat processor, a creamery, a hatchery, and people hunted rabbits, even squirrels to put on the table. They hunted to fill out the larder. We didn’t hunt deer because there weren’t many of them in our part of the state and what there were, we believed, belonged to the farmers for their pleasure and disposal. In the store, the beef came in quarters, the hogs in halves and they hung in a walk in cooler. As I remember my Dad and Uncle bought beef and Pork from small town processors, either local or in the area, as long as they had the stamp. the butcher cut them up for sale, made sausage and balogna, and stripped bacon. Chickens were local. The hatcheries (there were three in town at one time) would run a poultry kill, hire the local women and the feathers would fly. Truckloads of live chickens would come down main street on their way to the kill. “Dressed chickens” were sold frozen and fresh. It was a simpler time, maybe not a better time. It was the pre Supermarket time when there was less selection , less packaging, and probably less sterility. Lots of people worked locally in preparing and selling food for the community. Now it comes from a factory.And I don’t know who butchered my steak.

  21. Jake 2021-06-05 22:30

    LCJ, as usual, has no clue!

  22. buckobear 2021-06-06 06:39

    Of course, kristie’s “degree” from SDSU was based on “work experience.” Shameful.

  23. leslie 2021-06-06 08:35

    Law Changing Janitor is the name you have identified yourself as on this blog.

    Welcome, I guess. I only noticed you when I pushed your buttons apparently, and you called me out last week. Touchy, eh? Just like grdz.

    Every thing about Trump is a lie.

    Law and order my ass. Are you the Lying Cheating Janitor (LCJ) modeling yerownself as the Limbaugh/Carlson janitors of the right? Ben Shapiro is certainly after that gravy train, too, as the “new” Limbaugh! Trump “awarded” Limbaugh America’s highest honor, the Medal of Freedom. Trump made EVERYTHING he touched a mockery. Horrifying. What an aspiration. Whew!

    Biden would say “have you no shame, man?” Of course not. That is the modus operandi of the Republican party. Head spinning topsy turvey outrage with no policy, save the mortal fear of paying taxes, paying your own way. Mike Pence is an embarrassment. He is proud of the last four years. ABC News.

    Rather, its Grift off the populace. Losers and suckers, right? Make fun of ANYONE that doesn’t toe the party line. Massacres. Insurrections. These are natural results of today’s Republican ideology. A failed political party. History has repeated itself.

    You are just another Lying Cheating Janitor scrambling to fill the main con artist-leadership role here on DFP that grdz labors daily to follow; that octogenarian Rupert “Rolling Stone” Murdoch, Newt “contract” Gingrich, John “Custer’s luck” Bolton, Mitch “personal favor” McConnell, drunken John Boehner, John “Moscow” Thune, Mike “EB5” Rounds, and even swayback Kristy “Joe McCarthy” Noem have all previously or currently scrambled to serve so well. I will never forget the hyperbole Noem mouthed from the amphitheater stage at the Shrine of Democracy (it is not called the shrine of the republic).

    Empty vacuous people, every one of them. Hamstringing obstructionists. Are you? You surely act like it here. I guess it works if you wanna be Syria. AR15s and civil war. You ever been in a war, man? Ask jerry.

    I don’t imagine you could cleanup anything like the essential workers at Smithfield were forced to do last spring, under force of death. Like my “neighbor” said, “Put your mask on”. I would add: “Idiot”. You are easily as intelligent as minority speaker Kevin “Trump-sucker” McCarthy.

    Happy Sunday.

  24. Francis Schaffer 2021-06-06 10:25

    I digress? I visited with a professional cattle hauler this morning, we talked about packing plants. He said his customers can sell to a packer in Grand Island and receive a larger check than if they would sell to Demkota in Aberdeen; and that is after the trucking is subtracted. Also what did Kristi do about the packers owning cattle, captive supply, when she was in congress?

  25. leslie 2021-06-06 11:42

    LSD: or is it LCJ, watch the last 10 minutes of NBC Meet the Press today and it will get you back on track.

    Pretty simple. No excuse for you ignorance.

  26. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2021-06-09 06:23

    LCJ, now you’re going off the rails. Cut it out, get on topic.

Comments are closed.