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Breitbart Says Noem’s Anti-China Land-Buy Bill Has Prominent Sponsors and Special-Interest Opponents, But No Such Bill Exists Yet

Kristi Noem is campaigning via Breitbart again, now insisting that she’s going to follow through on her Communist proposal to ban property sales to disfavored buyers. In typical clunky Noemspeak, our sloganeer-in-chief tells the right-wing propaganda outlet that she will restrict the freedom to buy land in order to protect freedom:

“I think all of us can agree as Americans that China shouldn’t be buying up land in the United States. They are an enemy,” Noem said. “They are an evil government built on Communism and taking away freedom. That isn’t something we should allow to have a presence here in our great country” [Matthew Boyle, “Kristi Noem on Push to Restrict Chinese Land Purchases: ‘This Is a National Security Issue’,” Breitbart, 2023.01.23].

Breitbart reports that South Dakota’s real ag-capitalists, branded “special interests” by Boyle, are not so keen on Noem’s anti-Communist Communism:

But in South Dakota, special interest groups are racing to slow Noem’s rollout in South Dakota, with a consortium of special interests expressing concerns with her proposed legislation. An email sent by Brenda Forman of the South Dakota Association of Cooperatives to Noem’s legal team in mid-January, obtained by Breitbart News, notes that “agricultural groups” have reviewed an updated version of Noem’s bill and “are deeply concerned about the legality and constitutionality of the proposal.”

“We remain interested in identifying what is not working with our current law,” Forman adds, without providing any specifics about any legal or constitutional concerns these groups her organization represents have.

Forman has not replied to a request for comment for details on any specific concerns, and has also not answered if any of the organizations her umbrella group is representing have any pending or possible looming sales of land to Chinese or other foreign interests.

But the email ends with a list of the groups Forman says are concerned about the Noem proposal,  including SD Farm Bureau, SD Farmer Union, SD AgriBusiness Association, SD Cattlemen’s Association, SD Corn Grower Association, SD Dairy Producers, SD Pork Producers, SD Soybean Association, SD Stockgrowers Association, SD Wheat Growers Association, and the SD Association of Conservation Districts, in addition to her SD Association of Cooperatives [Matthew Boyle, “Special Interests Intervene in South Dakota in Attempt to Slow Noem’s Proposal Restricting Chinese Land Purchases,” Bretibart, 2023.01.20].

Boyle claims that “Noem’s bill is currently being considered by the South Dakota state legislature and has prominent sponsors in both the State House and State Senate.” However, the Legislature is not considering any such bill. The only bill dealing with foreign land acquisitions was House Bill 1069, filed by Representative Carl Perry (R-3/Aberdeen) on January 17 but withdrawn at his request on January 19. As of 6 a.m. Central today, there is no other bill relating to foreign land acquisitions in the hopper. HB 1069 did not include the Governor’s proposal to expand government with a new Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States–South Dakota, and no such bill is online yet proposing this new tyrannical government land-control bureau. One thus cannot say that Noem’s bill “has prominent sponsors”, not just because in the grand scheme of things, no South Dakota legislator is “prominent”, but because there is no bill for them to sponsor.

And for their part, the South Dakota Association of Cooperatives doesn’t say boo about any anti-China land-buy bill on its website.

A property-ownership-control bill could still pop up for the coops and Big Ag to publicly oppose. Today is the last day for unlimited bill introduction; individual legislators can submit bills through next Wednesday February 1; committees may introduce bills on behalf of Her Majesty and others through Thursday, February 2. Maybe the Governor needs the extra week to square her campaign hackery with the reality of the free market in agricultural land and the desires of the very powerful and practical ag land owners and users of South Dakota.

21 Comments

  1. Donald Pay 2023-01-26 08:26

    No foreign government or any corporation with controlling interest held by foreign nationals should be holding any significant amount US land or mineral rights. It’s stupid to single out China, for one. For another Brenda Forman is probably correct on the current interpretation of law regarding who can and can’t own farmland.

  2. sx123 2023-01-26 08:55

    Noem says: “They are an evil government built on Communism and taking away freedom.”
    Did she type this on an iPhone?

  3. TimA 2023-01-26 09:13

    What happens if a Chinese born resident attempts to purchase 40 acres to build a home and keep some horses. Will they be denied and ownership under this proposed law?

  4. All Mammal 2023-01-26 10:04

    I love my Chinese and Kazakhstani friends. They are good. Period. Governor Noem can get lost.

  5. O 2023-01-26 11:25

    She later added that we will still welcome any and all of their trusts.

  6. Donald Pay 2023-01-26 12:04

    O opens up the issue of how China or Russia or Saudi Arabia could take advantage of the US using South Dakota’s brain dead pro-evil trust laws. What if a trust is fronting for someone in the Chinese politburo? What if that trust invests in SD farmland?

    What is this China fixation? Ten years ago the Republicans were fixated on Russia, and how Russia-owned Uranium One got special access to Wyoming uranium because of Hillary Clinton. Well, the first to bring that up was the environmental community, and Republicans were all for it until it could be manufactured into a campaign issue. They used that in the 2016 campaign against Hillary Then when Trump stole that election with Russian help, all that caterwauling didn’t result in Uranium One being stripped of Russian ownership. It all went away because Putin did what Trump wanted during that election cycle.

    My daughter was able to bust Trump’s efforts involved in recruiting workers for his proposed Beijing hotel in 2016, although that was probably handled by a middle man. So, the recent disclosures of Trump’s taxes indicate taxes paid to China 2013-2015, when he paid little or no taxes in the US, may be faulty for 2016. He definitely paid someone who was paying taxes in China.

  7. CK 2023-01-26 12:39

    Does anyone else realize how many foreign entities own land in the US, or even how much land they own?

    Kristi needs to take a chill pill.

  8. e platypus onion 2023-01-26 13:03

    Canadian investors own the largest share of foreign-held land in the U.S., 12.4 million acres, making up 32% of all foreign investments, followed by the Netherlands with 13%, Italy with 7% and the U.K with 6%.Oct 25, 2022

    China owns under 200k acres of US land.

  9. Mark Anderson 2023-01-26 13:32

    Jeez, Bill Gates better keep his nose clean.

  10. Arlo Blundt 2023-01-26 15:36

    Not too long ago, we were raging about the Japanese taking over America’s business, industry, and agriculture. That faded away, and then it was the Columbians owning Florida and the Russkies secretly buying up various strategic metals mining claims. Now the Chinese are buying up Grampa’s farm. Nobody’s worried about the Canadians, who like to grow wheat down here, or the Socialist Dutch who are “Europe’s Dairyland” milking cows in the US. It is a “Global Economy” after all, though we, in South Dakota, like to think we can pick our neighbors.

  11. O 2023-01-26 16:08

    Should we also ensure these villains do not buy our t-bills and bonds? Heaven forbid they help pay to mortgage our debts.

  12. Jad 2023-01-26 16:43

    I remember a governor with approval of the legislators selling the cement plant and associated land to a Mexican firm. Over time the state has lost a great deal of money. Bush wanted to sell some seaport to a foreign government but was blocked by Democrats. State wants to take away individual property rights (eminent domain use also) but gain political donations by selling out the land owner.

  13. P. Aitch 2023-01-26 18:48

    Your state elected a leader that begins a statement with, “I think …” and then, “we can all agree…”?
    C’mon, babe. You can hire a better writer than this.

  14. leslie 2023-01-26 19:50

    excellent piece on SD’s political and social hypocrisy:

    …the governor and some legislators, as well as officials in some other states, are working on bills that require our schools to teach how wonderful America is. Kids are told what a great nation we are between the drills that teach them to take cover when the shooters come. Those officials seem to think that making hypocrisy official is what makes America great.

    What greatness America can claim came when it confronted evil and corrected it. It came when we fought a war over a Constitution that declared that an Afro-American was only three-fifths of a person and put in place the Thirteenth Amendment that freed the slaves and acknowledged their full personhood. Then it realized that women were denied a voice in the republic and gave them the right to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment. But many states had laws that still denied the rights to women of color and to Native Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 addressed those issues.

    The governor and other members of the South Dakota imbecile caucus are in a tizzy about the Critical Race Theory. It posits that “racism is inherent in the law and legal institutions of the United States insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites” The governor has issued an order prohibiting its teaching. http://northernbeacon.blogspot.com/2023/01/america-home-of-grave-for-victims-of.html

  15. All Mammal 2023-01-27 02:15

    Anti Kristi says about China, “They are an enemy,”
    Why do Gov. Noem and her Florida Fondler clam-grabbing yam hate SD soybean farmers so? They are largely to blame for the singing (sinjing) of the good Earth’s lungs. When the properly outfitted SD soybean farmers are unable to export their crop for the enormous Chinese market, Brazil clambers to be next in line to supply the imperative staple to China. It makes sense for SD to produce this crop for China; we have the land area and the producers chomping at the bit to get er done, whereas Brazil has to clear the last of the Amazon Rainforest using fire to establish enough acreage to fill China’s order. Why, this is plainly an inbred way to do things.

    Noem said, “They are an evil government built on ….. taking away freedom….”
    Nnnnokay. What is America built on, again? I recall from my marshmallow-coated first grade Social Studies research that America was built on the wealth accumulated a la kidnapped, enslaved people on fertile land that was ill gotten.

    Real proud Americans love truth and embrace honest history. It should make us proud what our country is capable of. It should make a good American feel awful when we are mature enough to understand Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States. It is a good thing to reflect. It is healthy to have feelings of shock, horror and even shame the first time we learn about Manifest Destiny and even the Holocaust. I’m no governor, but I fancy myself a damn proud American with rusty red Spearfish Formation dirt in my blood, and accepting the past is the best thing we can do for the future by correcting our perverted ways. Kristi Noem wants to ultimately conceal the past so she can continue to benefit from the evil her ancestors transgressed on stolen blood-land. America, in every single state, has so many prolific families like Noem’s that continue the hate-breed legacy to this day. We should break their cycle of greed, racism, and destruction by declaring a homestead land-grab two point oh. Sort of like an actualized 40 acres and a mule thing. Citizens willing and able should be allowed to claim open land for our own farms and American dreams. It happened before when the playing field was stacked in favor of the most evil white guys. Nullify and void the concentration of private landownership of seasons passed, as past Americans have done to previous land treaties. Terra Nullius. Ready, set, go grab!

  16. e platypus onion 2023-01-27 15:02

    Bet drumpf still believes China is paying those tariffs to America.and the three stooges (four if you toss in Noem Nothing) likely swallowed drumpf’s BS with a satisfied smile.

  17. larry kurtz 2023-01-27 19:01

    Tara! Mrs. Noem has seen some schock and mounted some schlock since that photo bomb!

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