New South Dakota laws usually come into effect on July 1, in obvious celebration of Canada Day and our great polite, practical, quasi-socialist role model to the north.
Some reasonable new policies are taking effect today that will do practical good for various South Dakotans:
- House Bill 1001 expands the number of low-income old or disabled property-tax-payers who qualify for a freeze on their assessments by raising and annually indexing the maximum household income threshold.
- HB 1043 gives plumbers an extra five months each year to renew their licenses (hey, plumbers are busy people).
- HB 1062 allows property owners to do their own wiring on their own non-habitable property that isn’t their own residence or farmstead, without having to get an electrician’s license.
- HB 1063 makes it easier for state employees to get moving reimbursements by shifting the approval process from the Board of Finance to the State Auditor.
- HB 1120 adds carbon dioxide pipelines to the pipelines the state of South Dakota taxes.
- HB 1174 says only scrap metal dealers with valid state sales tax licenses may purchase, trade, or advertise their willingness to deal in detached catalytic converters and requires those buyers to keep records of any catalytic converter transactions, making it harder, we hope, for those darn catalytic converter thieves to pillage our automobiles.
- HB 1214 makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to transmit a fake or misleading name or number as caller ID.
- HB 1279 revises and clarifies child support requirements (Rep. Tom Pischke voted against it, so I conclude this bill must be good for mothers and children with deadbeat dads).
There are many more bills signed by the Governor taking effect today. But of all the bills a Governor could spotlight to show government working to practically improve the lives of its citizens, Book-Tour Kristi chooses to spotlight two new laws focused on her brand-boosting culture war:
- Senate Bill 46 bans transgender females from playing school sports with other females. Noem claims this new law protects girls and Title IX, but this bill targets only a handful of young South Dakota athletes who previously had created no problems for their school districts, The real purpose of SB 46 is to allow Governor Noem to slake her base’s thirst for bullying nonconformists.
- HB 1012 purports to “protect students and employees at institutions of higher education from divisive concepts.” Governor Noem claims it bans critical race theory from our college campuses. Noem doesn’t understand her own bill any better than she understands critical race theory. Noem’s bill never banned critical race theory, not in its original form or in the final approved form. The enacted law doesn’t mention “critical race theory.” Almost no one in South Dakota’s public universities has been teaching critical race theory, but if they decide to do so (and it would be helpful if they did), HB 1012 does not prohibit them from doing so in our college classrooms.
Noem does press release an expansion of the Bright Start program to provide nursing services for pregnant women and new moms. It is worth noting that she recommended $2.5 million in additional funding for that program compared to $35 million for more tourism advertising.
South Dakota does a lot of lawmaking. But if that lawmaking doesn’t put pictures of Kristi on her high horse on Fox News, Governor Buy-My-Book doesn’t have much to say about it.
With a lot of luck our part time Governor will find herself on the unemployment line come November.
Kristi Noem has no time for issues in this state unless it gives a boost to her national political profile and she gets national exposure on Fox News or those lunatic right podcasts. She just filed another lawsuit about fireworks… I have to wonder why she didn’t do that the day after her request for a permit was denied. Also, I’m curious about something… June was Pride month and we saw all kinds of posts on social media from all kinds of people. We saw Jamie Smith (fingers crossed he becomes our next governor) and Brian Bengs at the Pride event in SF. Did our part time governor…supposed leader of this state… mention anything about June being Pride month or anything about everyone being welcome, accepted and loved in SD?
Not a word from Noem on that count, Amy B, not a word.
Here’s a likely outcome of Noem’s dumpster fire executive order, the white washing of history.
This occurred in Wisconsin. Expect it will soon visit South Dakota in some form . . . Japanese-American incarceration, Indian removal acts, Indian boarding schools, slavery, Anne Frank – give us the “both-sidesism” for that.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/wisc-school-board-members-dismissed-182654034.html
From John’s link, about Wisconsin school board members opposed to adding a book about America’s internment of Japanese Americans during WW2:
Those Wisconsin racists disguise their Noem-style apartheid self-insulation in a distressing fake objectivity that abdicates simple moral judgment. The same thinking would lead us to decline to study the Holocaust without including Nazi flyers explaining why Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, the disabled, etc. ought to be exterminated for the greater good of the Reich. Dummheit macht frei.
Today Noem adds a press release on her falsely premised, unscientific ban on telemedicine for abortion, a measure that erodes rights and imperils women’s health and liberty. She also goes whoop-de-whoo over submitting an application to shoot fireworks at Mount Rushmore in 2023. Ah, priorities….
New proposal to Texass BOE teaches slavery as “involuntary relocation.” That oughta do it.
I hope the National Park Service’s DENIAL of Kristi’s 2022 Mount Rushmore Fireworks POLITICAL CAMPAIGN EVENT is an ominous sign of her political end…last rodeo in November.
Mind numbing ignorance on the part of our Governor and her minions…that she has an audience for her babbling says a good deal about the basic tribalism of South Dakotans…it is lunacy.
Just saw Noem’s first ad. Billie Sutton needs to know she stole his look. And producers of ‘1883’ and ‘Yellowstone’ should know she stole their production concepts. And she’s still manipulating the facts about her dad’s estate from 1994 and exploiting the sob story. Again. It’s the same tired one-trick pony she’s exploited since she ran Stephanie Herseth Sandlin waaaaaaaay back in 2006.
https://dakotafreepress.com/2017/12/13/noems-1994-estate-tax-84454-due-to-how-dad-wrote-will/
Noem’s culture war against the large majority of South Dakota citizens finds her needing an issue to run on. Ripping off the fundamental human rights of women is not progress. She’s managed to wake up women under 30 to hit the streets in protest by the hundreds. Rewriting accurate history to pander to racists is not progress. Your idiotic quest to shoot fireworks at Mt. Rushmore during a drought is nothing more than a fool’s errand. As Bob Dylan said, “you’re an idiot babe, and it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.”
Note to America’s Party Girl Kristi Noem: Your horse needs a new trick.
I’m not surprised that she hasn’t mentioned anything Cory. I think it’s painfully obvious where her priorities lie and who really matters in this state by what she chooses to stay quiet about and what she screams the loudest about and in both cases they are things that matter to the minority. I can only hope that Democrats go on the offensive in the upcoming elections…remind people of the things that have been said and done and force Republicans to defend them. And we all have to vote like our freedom, rights and lives depend on it… because in reality all three are at stake.
Come on, she’s got plans for those 10 year old pregnant girls.
Kristi Noem glibly says one tragedy shouldn’t be followed by another tragedy, which means her first term as governor of SD should not be followed by a second term.