When Indians and environmentalists rally to fight a big oil pipeline, Governor Kristi Noem portrays protest as riot and changes South Dakota law to throw protesters and their supporters in jail for using public roads to exercise their First Amendment rights. But when radicalized and astroturfy right-wing truckers clog the highways to sow discord and chaos, Governor Noem violates federal and state law to roll out a publicly-subsidized red carpet for the protesters and use their presence for her political campaign.
SDPB’s Arielle Zionts breaks the story on Noem’s abuse of the Highway Patrol and Department of Transportation warning signs to support the trucker convoy:
Gov. Kristi Noem’s office ordered state agencies to provide a border-to-border escort and supportive billboard messages for a convoy of truckers opposing COVID-19 restrictions.
“SD LOVES TRUCKERS” and “DRIVE SAFE,” truckers read as they traveled east on Interstate 90 with an escort from the Highway Patrol.
“The Noem Administration wanted to ensure that the trucker convoy felt welcome and respected in South Dakota, and that they could traverse the state safely without disrupting traffic,” said Ian Fury, Gov. Noem’s spokesman, in an email.
Fury said the governor’s office asked the Highway Patrol to provide three troopers for the escort, and the Department of Transportation to program messages on digital billboards owned and operated by the state along I-90 [Arielle Zionts, “Noem Orders Trooper Escort and DOT Welcome Signs for Anti-Mandate Trucker Convoy,” SDPB, 2022.03.11].
Noem made sure she got a video clip of her public-financed protest support and made it into a political fundraising video on her campaign Twitter:
SDCL 12-27-20 prohibits “the expenditure of public funds for the purpose of influencing the nomination or election of any candidate.” Federal guidance on changeable message signs on the highway does not allow using those signs for welcome messages:
The state DOT follows the 2009 Edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which addresses digital billboards.
The manual says, “Changeable message signs shall display only traffic, operational, regulatory, warning, and guidance information.”
The manual provides examples including warnings about the weather, lane closures, speeding and travel times. The guidelines do not list general friendly or welcome messages as an allowed type of message [Zionts, 2022.03.11].
Governor Noem’s rein has been marked with ineffectiveness, inconsistency, inattention, and illegal action. Legislature, when will you put all those I’s together go for the Big I, Impeachment?
Recall the John Birch Society billboards along I90 across South Dakota that urged voters to get US out of the United Nations, abortion is murder and how close travelers are to Wall Drug? Mrs. Noem will do and say anything to keep the cash flowing into her campaign coffers so why anybody is surprised she will stop with publicity stunts remains a mystery. Reservation border towns like Pierre have always been influenced by the Klan, John Birch Society, the TEA movement and now by the extreme white wing of the Republican Party.
I just got back from Albuquerque.
At an exit on I-25 in Colorado, we ran into
these as*holes.
Trucks plugging up the on and off ramps,
Highway Patrol trying to keep people off the roads with cel phone cameras, and
I know this is hard to believe…..
Useful Idiots flying Trump flags everywhere.
250 Neanderthals
14 brain cels total.
Trump should meet them at
Yo- Semite National Park for their
next stop.
White as*holes with trucks?
Come on in!
Lakota protesting on land that belongs to them ?
Lock ‘em up !
Good Lord, Pierre is a cesspool.
Guv Noem’s Rein? Play on words or an oopsie?
In South Dakota do “we” really believe in freedom? I never got that impression as a citizen of the state for a total of 45 years. In South Dakota you have the “freedom” to think as the leaders do. That’s about it. How much does that differ from Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China?
We probably all have our examples of this sort of South Dakota “freedom.” I’ve got oddles. What is quite clear to anyone who gets crosswise with most officeholders in South Dakota on any issue, no matter how small, is that those officeholders will try to crush you and your issue.
Noem’s little missive above is an example. If you happen to think, as I, that these truckers ought to get to work and stop whining and crying like toddlers because they have to be vaccinated as frontline workers, you are put on notice that you don’t love freedom. Well, I beg to differ. Part of being free is having good heath ain my way of thinking, and if that means truckers need to be vaccinated in order to protect me and others from infection then they better line up pronto at the nearest clinic.
Most of us don’t need “mandates” to do the right thing. People who need mandates are the selfish bastards, the crooks and the self-entitled, all of whom Noem idolizes. She Idolizes these selfish bastards, crooks and entitled because she thinks she’s one of them. In other words, in all things, Noem puts herself first.
A leader like that cannot love freedom. She loves herself, and herself only. Everyone else, be damned. And that’s what her use of public funds to post political positions is about. She provides her viewpoint, and you had better agree or else.
It should be spelled “freedumb.”
All campaign, no governance.
Nothing but welfare truckers living off the Go Fund Me page. Kind of like Kristicon lining off political donations.
Prostitution–the unworthy or corrupt use of one’s talents for the sake of personal or financial gain
As long as state Democrats remain slack about winning elections, nothing will stop the leadership in Pierre from their negligent and lawless behavior. The truckers episode is entirely a misuse of taxes and public safety resources to help Noem’s silly presidential campaign. I can’t wait for the primaries to begin. She’ll crumple against better known candidates who actually have made accomplishments. What does Noem have to show for all those years in Congress and one term as Governor? Absolutely nothing of significance.
We have a thoroughly corrupt and useless governor and a more useless state legislature. The only mystery to me is why nothing of significance seems acceptable to a majority of South Dakota voters. That speaks volumes about the state’s people.
The woman is a miserable, good-time girl for trump. I’m sure that same dress she seems to always wear in trump’s presence is because he expressed his preference to see her in that one. Gag me with a spoon. Don’t ask how I know such things. But I do.
Anyways, she gives South Dakotan families the freedom to choose what they feel is best for the health of theirn.
•But then decides we don’t understand what is good for us and shouldn’t be using a plant. Evil slaggetry thinking there.
Then the tyrant wails about unprecedented closed-doors meetings state officials are conducting, leaving the public out of their clandestine cxck-handshake deals.
•She is the one on dope and forgetting her sneak-attack on Mz. Bren in a classic Meangirls lying in wait trap in her closed office.
She uses road safety tools to give little pissant crybaby deadbeats a Prince Ali fabulous he escort across our toxic state.
•Not a goddamn word or officer assigned to find all the missing children in the state. Not one billboard. Not one PSA. Not one utterance of the scores of missing babies and children unaccounted for in SD. (This is a blatant emergency. Someone is taking our kids. What are the chances of all the missing kids right now in our state, not a single homely dog-face? Every one of them is gorgeous) Run their names on those street signs! It is clearly up to us to organize because when the investigators get a tip and conduct a polygraph test, if the person of interest passes, they send him away and refuse to even make sure they questioned the correct man. In one missing child case I know of, the turnover is incredible. Everytime the family builds a rapport with a new investigator, the next time they call for an update, they no longer even have that person working in that office and it gets dumped onto a new, sworn-in, inept, disinterested, lazy, lousy schmuck. Pray you never go missing because the people paid to find you won’t even bother to learn your poor, tortured mother’s name.
Noem tells hungry school children on state reduced food program: “Nobody gets a free lunch”
•After hunting on a full belly, she steps onto her free $1000 rug and relaxes in her free sauna.
She taunts desperate, starving, scared, stateless Haitian refugees: “Call me when you get a green card”
•She welcomes loser, foreign bums to come spread their grody, deadly face spooge in our secluded state from end to end
It just goes on and on and on. It is giving my antie high blood pressure. She is in cahoots with the devil. Setting education, women, civil rights back by a century. Slap in the face to all the hard work many people have done for our people. All our people. What helps Natives, children, and women, helps ALL of us. She wants us sick, missing, and dead and the good earth outside her wall to be a toxic squalor. I’m half lival to print me off some legit enough sheep skins and go start kissing babies if I have to to get her evicted from her kush abode. I would set up a headquarters right in the governor’s mansion to have people who actually work going hard on finding our snatched kids. And grow a fragrant crop inside that fence to produce gourmet honey made from bees foraging off sativa and indica flower(: yum. And broke people can harvest what they need to ward off poverty. Our Lakota leaders would never have enjoyed a meal while knowing others were lacking. THAT is what our true state values and heritage should reflect.
Choose a side and run them off like an insidious plague.
Truckers are a vital part of National Security. The other groups risk National Security.
I want to know who’s paying for these truckers’ gas, because it sure isn’t them.
Today’s oxymoron: national security.
Mercenaries and National Guard troops brutalized many of the thousands of demonstrators camped on federal land near Cannon Ball where some 761 people were arrested between early August, 2016 and late February, 2017. Trump apparatchiks even referred to the American Indians and their compatriots as jihadists and insurgents.
Indeed, Sam@2, truckers are essential to National Security. These ass clowns are not promoting trucking or national security. They are promoting a war against mandatory vaccinations for front line workers like truckers. Their intention is to vastly increase death and maiming of Americans from COVID-19 and to undermine any national strategy to control the pandemic. They tie up traffic on bridges and exits in very busy metro areas to grab attention to their treasonous cause.
The ass clown in the South Dakota Governor’s Mansion is using state taxes and resources to support their war against mandatory vaccinations for front line workers. She is a threat to our personal health and survival and to our national security. Killing off nearly 3,000 South Dakotans by turning her back on the worst pandemic in our lifetimes makes Kristi Noem a wanton killer. The fact that she turned her back and exploited the deaths and misery of her own constituents as a presidential campaign narrative on freedom defines Kristi Noem as a completely heartless, perverted menace to all Americans.
I know several truckers pretty well. All are vaccinated. None are snowflakes like this bunch of whiners. They work hard for a safe, stronger America. The snowflakes in the convoy only want to finish the job started Jan. 6, 2021, and tear down America.
Yes Sam, the vast majority of truckers who got vaccinated and delivered the nations goods without complaints are true Americans. The anti vaxxers, not so much.
These truckers are contributing to inflation. I guess Noem wants food and necessities to increase. Of course, most of the truckers are white men and we know how Noem loves them.
Inept inbred Republicans in South Dakota have turned into Putin loyalties.
Maybe once the U.S. self destructs with Putin in charge of the republicans and there is a forced realignment of who is running the Country all Tribal Nations can declared the treaties to be revoked and voided. We kick out the immigrants and start over with better screening laws and acceptance methods. The soon to be broken U.S. Constitution states, “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land”. Treaties with Tribal Nations are still in effect (don’t want to teach that in Noemie’s state) soon to be revoked.
A bunch of guys and gals truckers driving towards Washington to protest democracy and the rule of law seems un-American but very Putin like, now-a-days very inept inbred republican like. Strange. Of course, my relatives in the past witnessed white skinned Americans fighting each other over ownership of humans with darker skin pigmentation back a century or so ago. Cannot teach that in Noemie’s state.
Might be time to go back to pre 1492 days. Time for land back.
Our taters and side bacon gets hauled to Rapid City by trucks. Do not mess with these fellows, as they are the lifeline to your fancy cheeses and parsley springs for lunch, as well.
For the Governor there is no difference between the interests of Kristi Noem, the elected public official, and Kristi Noem, candidate for Governor and any federal post available in the next Republican administration.
If you got it- a truck brought it.
-spoken by the best there ever was: my pappy
I started to drive truck with my dad soon as I was out of diapers. He was a true road scholar. I always thought truckers were a cool breed. Cross between cowboy and outlaw with debonair style, worldly etiquette, and extremely capable.
The skid marked confederate flags and blowed out petulance show the convoy boys need to be told: ‘go pee. go bed.’
My pappy also recited poetry:
‘When I was short and small,
I always wanted to go up and be big and tall
and drive for Willie Shaw.
But I never grew. I stayed a little runt.
That’s why I now drive for J.B. Hunt.’
All Mammal, all my uncles were truckers out of Bell Fouche up until the 80’s when they got run out of independent trucking and the big guys took over. Fuel prices were so high, they all fled to other jobs out of state and dispersed all over the country. Most to better pastures.
However, now days, trucking is just a job. When you take it too seriously and think you’re more special and deserve more, it’s just plain wrong. They work for private companies, get paid good money ($80,000 ain’t chump change), and obviously can go a long time without working, unlike the rest of us. So, what is their beef? Mandates are old news, we’re on to inflation and gas prices rising. Aren’t they wasting a great deal of diesel? Who is taking care of their kids while their wives work? They have no sympathy from me. Get back to work and help with the economy and democracy instead of fighting against it.
Yes RTS, I’d like to start over again, before European colonization. I prefer tribal government over corporate feudalism.
A ‘Freedom Convoy’ we can all support: Send the truckers to Russia!
https://www.rawstory.com/trucker-2656938753/
To use the local vernacular: these big-rig snowflakes are “TINOs” — truckers in name only.
If SoDak DOT was serious about safety, it would post warning signs when the AG is driving in an area.
I believe truckers can be valuable, but why bow down to this political crap. They are wasting gas and making fools of themselves esp. With KN greeting them, egging them on. So silly and dumb.
What a misfit.
From all I can garner about this “freedom whatever” convoy is that they are wasting fuel, hence driving up prices for all of us. These are not truckers, they are grifters in the tradition of the Jan 6 crud now cowering and lawyering up to keep their decrepit carcasses from becoming a girlfriend for their favorite inmate.
I see that every time Desantis does something to grab media attention, Noem does the same. Perhaps she could pull a lady Godiva and lead them from border to border. Seems to me that that the less time she spends in Pierre, the better for the citizens.
This should be a good lesson to voter in SD. You cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. Noem was a loser before she even ran for Congress, but it gave her enough creds with the far right to get the money funnel flowing in her direction.
Democrats need to start getting behind intelligent candidates for ever office in the state, starting with school boards and other boards. The right wing is beating your asses off at this game, and they are goint to keep building off their successes as long as the Dems eaable them.
M- I feel you 100%. My dad would be scoffing at the punk-made convoy boys. He would call them bums and tell them, “go pee, go bed. And get the heck out of the way.” No doubt they would have listened too. He definitely had zero in common with the sloppy drivers nowadays who can’t read a map or pull every single vehicle out of the ditch and still make it home in impossible time to get us out of bed to go outside of town at 2 am to see some comet go by in total darkness. He always said, “Ain’t nothin’ but a step to a stepper, eh, Day?” He wouldn’t let me drive truck like my aspirations explained in a paper I wrote in the 5th grade. He told me he worked so I could get my education and he would shoot me in the leg so I’d never drive truck like him. Glad my dads not around to see trucks sitting still, folks whining and fighting and treating others so pissy. He said we have to learn to get along because can’t have a party unless EVERYONE is there. Everyone; Norskies, Banana boat stowaways, Hunkpapas, libbies, and, hell, even the talibanners are all invited!
A trucker with The People’s Convoy gets out of their truck and punches the window of a Beltway commuter.
https://twitter.com/ZTPetrizzo/status/1503457992599027715
Truckers have every right to peacefully protest. Even truckers that are fully vaccinated are part of the protest. It’s about the government, once again taking away our freedom of choice by mandating a vaccine if you want to keep your job and support your family. The government does not willing give back anything once they have control over it. Biden now has it so every transaction over $600.00 is reported. This is more government abuse.
The link below has raw statistics from the UK showing how well or not the jab has done. A lot of tax payer funded wealth has been moved around and greatly enriched the medical field as a whole. Just made us all a lot poorer with the inflation it caused.
https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4e52fbc-f539-410e-bafd-e5cd738e0b8d_1170x1297.jpeg
Contrary to NS’s misrepresented and uncontexted stats, her data source, the UK’s National Health Service, says, “The COVID-19 vaccines are the best way to protect yourself and others. Research has shown the vaccines help reduce your risk of getting seriously ill or dying from COVID-19, reduce your risk of catching or spreading COVID-19, [and] protect against COVID-19 variants.”
As Chris noted, angry convoy truckers appear to pose more risk to my health than the three covid shots I’ve had. In general, those convoy truckers appear to have been far less effective at their stated goals than the covid vaccines at theirs.
What does “uncontexted” mean. Could not find it in the dictionary