Governor Kristi Noem is really eager to brag about her being named the best governor for rigging the economy for our corporate overlords. But she’s not as eager to note that this award from conservative bill mill American Legislative Exchange Council was yet another excuse for her to skip work and fly across the country to butter up her 2024 Presidential primary base.
After stringing together a few words and ferret-skins to address the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association convention in Las Vegas last Wednesday morning, Noem hopped on a plane (the state plane? Mike Lindell’s plane? who knows?!), maybe came back to Pierre for a quick sweat in the sauna, changed into more subdued business attire, and popped in to address ALEC’s State & Nation Policy Summit in San Diego on Friday:
In San Diego on Friday, Noem told some folksy stories about her family and lessons learned from her father (“If we weren’t hunting, we were working.”).
She had some choice words for liberals and the media, but bemoaned the reality that people of different political persuasions often stop talking with one another. She urged the audience of legislators to try to change that and expressed optimism about the public being engaged.
“As you trust the people and you educate them and you put forth good policy,” she said, “just remember you will see a ripple effect of more happiness, more successful families.
“I also want to ask you to be happy,” she added. “People will be attracted to you by your optimism. Everything in this world is so dark right now. People are looking for some hope” [Michael Smolens, “Column: Far from the Madding Beltway, San Diego Conference Showcases Two GOP Rising Stars,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 2021.12.05].
Las Vegas last Wednesday, San Diego last Friday, Pennsylvania this week—Kristi Noem is certainly very busy.
Related Viewing: Feel free to put yourself to sleep listening to this video of Noem’s snoozy speech, in which she claims (timestamp 11:00) that “It wasn’t covid that crushed the economy; government crushed the economy”:
Update 19:54 CDT: Here’s the same speech, with a better view of Noem, as posted by ALEC to its YouTube channel:
NAZI sympathizers name Republican South Dakota Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem (KLAN) number 1: priceless.
Because you and the MAGA’s are the REAL victims, Governor?
#TediousRepetition
The pretense that freedom does not need to be paid for is a childish fallacy. To ignore the tragedy of those who lost their lives so that SD (and the US) could have “economic freedom” is to perpetuate a profits for the corporations over lives of consumers value system. ANYONE would choose the easy pathway of least resistance, ANYONE can choose “freedom”; the full argument also needs to explore and evaluate the costs of that expediency and freedom.
This radical GOP/Right/MAGA freedom goes beyond libertarianism into full-on survival of the fittest/richest anarchy. It is also the destructive thinking at the core of Second Amendment tunnel vision that seems to more and more advocate shootouts of the well armed as the ultimate freedom goal.
Motive, cost, and accountability cannot continue to be left out of freedom determinations.
I don’t know what happens in a 70-year-old mind, but I read your second paragraph and thought it said, “After stringing together a few words and foreskins….”
Noem may not know the history well, because, she’s so focused on collecting participation trophies, rather than working for the people of South Dakota. ALEC played a destructive part in the 1980s through 1990s South Dakota. The South Dakota legislative minions of ALEC’s corporate sponsors back then were seeking rural parts of South Dakota to dump the nation’s nuclear and hazardous wastes, not to mention proposing several large-scale dumps for the nation’s garbage. I worked with conservatives back then to make sure the plans of ALEC’s corporate sponsors never came to fruition. No thanks to ALEC, South Dakotans were able to chase them all out of South Dakota, except for the sewage ash to gold scam. That sewage ash still sits, supposedly buried and monitored, in unlined pits, where it could be leaking into South Dakota groundwater, a great reminder of what Noem called “good policy.”
ALEC is a part of the Koch machine.
“Koch Industries deepened its relationship with Kansas Sen. Bob Dole. Dole helped Koch Industries delegitimize the issue of oil theft.”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/22/kochland-excerpt-senate-investigation-oil-theft-native-american-tribes-227412
They all work for Putin, simple as that. https://crooksandliars.com/2021/12/reality-winner-60-minutes-interview-i-am
Most anti-Americans that have existed since Benedict Arnold. What a coinkydink, NOem is an Arnold.
Well it is hard to imagine that the righter than rights at ALEC gave the governor award to Noem over DeSantis. It must be their feminism showing.
As ALEC has drifted to the loony right, it has lost many of its corporate donors. While it used to be mostly about supporting lax regulation, fiscal miserliness and “free markets,” a kind of Kochian libertarianism, it now is about restricting the free market of ideas (ie., their anti-Critical Race Theory campaign) and pushing anti-democratic voter restrictions. It thus is more in line with fascist movements than libertarian ones. Once proud of its corporate donor base, it now restricts access to its funders, which may include Putin and Russian oligarchs and their American fellow travelers. The new leader of ALEC is the Arizona legislator who ordered up the fake audit in Maracopa County, that wasted oodles of tax dollars to show that Biden won the state. Apparently, spending tax money in the hopeless task of resurrecting their savior and fake President is just fine. It’s been a fairly quick descent for ALEC into fascism, but that’s true for the Republican Party.
Here’s a nice take on ALEC’s meeting from a San Diego news site.
https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2021/12/03/as-speakers-urge-transparency-alec-chair-defends-keeping-donors-secret/
Isn’t that precious? An award from ALEC, and all she had to do was NOTHING! !@#$%^&*
Well…Governor Noem does two things well: travel long distances on aircraft. and stay as a guest in luxury hotels. She then urges people of a like mind to “be happy”.What a gig.!!
ALEC has filled part of the governance chasm caused by the election of all the campaign-only GOP/Right/MAGA leadership. ALEC will write all the legislation for these folks; that way they can keep their focus on campaigning 24/7. Legislating is hard – so just sit back and let ALEC do that for you.
Did I miss the part where she points out that SD is a net recipient of federal funds?
Letting ALEC write legislation is nothing new. Back when dumbass dubya roamed the WH and Hot Tub Tom Delay was SOH, Delay came right out and said he was having industry lobbyists write bills for congress because, according to Delay, they knew more about what their masters desired than Delay did.
Mr. Kurtz, that is one helluva link you posted. There is no capitalism as you point out, only make believe with a strong dose of corruption. No wonder republicans want to destroy the last bit of democracy so they can steal at will. They are a criminal enterprise with NOem as one of the made molls.
South Dakota’s Governor Noem and quaint low-paid country legislators have been an easy mark for ALEC and its model legislation.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=South_Dakota_ALEC_Politicians
How is it this promiscuous piece of trash can blatantly travel all over the nation, never masking with other never maskers or social distancing and NEVER contract Covid-19? I haven’t believed in God for decades, but, Jeezus, is there no Satan, either?
Well, not quite “nothing”, Loren. She did push that bill (HB 1079) to keep secret the dark-money donors funding ALEC and other non-profits. ALEC loves that legislation.
According to ALEC Noem never shut down SD due to Coronavirus. With only 55% fully vaccinated in the state we are learning how to die with the virus. Ironically 14 people died in SD the day Noem was declared the best governor by ALEC – 14 new deaths reported, bringing the total to 2,371. The new deaths include six men and eight women in the following age groups: 30-39 (1); 50-59 (4); 60-69 (2); 70-79 (2); 80+ (5). Deaths were reported in the following counties: Brookings (1); Brown (2); Buffalo (1); Codington (1); Dewey (1); Kingsbury (1); McCook (1); and Minnehaha (6).
This is a reminder that the government does not have to be the provider of propaganda; rather government achieves the same or worse propaganda effect by turning loose the capitalist system to control and limit thought, speech, and access to information.
The FCC is, again, about to loosen the rules for radio and broadcast ownership – so you can CLEARLY hear only Clear Channel’s versions of the news and culture. Truth and culture are getting “Dixie Chicked”.
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730323196/one-more-scoop-of-vanilla-a-new-proposal-looks-to-loosen-radio-ownership-rules
Bonnie, she’s the perfect Republican politician. She has all her shots, yet doesn’t continue to promote them. In away she’s like George Carlin, she’s killing her audience.