One small procedural note: On Tuesday, Governor Kristi Noem’s crazy scheme to subject all agricultural land sales to governmental investigation and gubernatorial veto went down in flames in the Senate Tuesday on an 11–23 vote. Prime sponsor Senator Erin Tobin (R-21/Winner) immediately said she would move to reconsider Senate Bill 185 Wednesday, evidently hoping the Governor might send in some muscle to help flip seven votes and to keep South Dakota’s Blueprint to Fight Communist China alive.
But yesterday (SDPB video timestamp 26:40), when the Senate brought up Senator Tobin’s intent, Senate President/Lieutenant Governor Larry Rhoden said he understood that Senator Tobin did not wish to move to reconsider SB 185. He noted Joint Rule 5-12, which provides that if the original reconsideration signaler does not follow through, “the presiding officer shall immediately state that any member may move for reconsideration.” “So I’m just doing the formality of asking,” said LG Rhoden, “any member wish to reconsider the vote?”
Silence. “Hearing none,” LG Rhoden moved on to the next item on the Senate calendar.
Just last Friday, Governor Noem said that SB 185 “may be the most important” part of South Dakota’s grand strategy to fight the Chinese Communist Party. “The country is looking to South Dakota” for leadership in the fight against China, Noem wrote, “and if we fail here, it will have a negative effect across the nation.”
Tuesday’s vote and Wednesday’s silence in the South Dakota Senate indicate the majority of Senators in Noem’s own party don’t agree with Noem’s hyperbolic Fox News rhetoric. Farmers may thus breathe a sigh of relief that the Governor will not get a new committee “to review any purchases, leases, and transfers of ag land in the state.”
“Move to South Dakota, where we believe in small government and a Governor that controls every agricultural land sale..”
Can’t make this stuff up.
Why not just set up internment camps again Kristi?
We call them reservations, Mr. Anderson.
Well All Mammal, I lived next to a Rez and I love Reservation Dogs. I used to be able to talk Rez, but it wouldn’t be appropriate now. Anyways, the Feds set those up and I’m sure Kristi would love to get rid of them. Luckily for the reservations in So Dak. The native Americans who escaped to Minneapolis came back and bled new life into the Rez. They will never go back to the wanna be or subservient to the whitey’s that they used to be. Never again. I’m hoping to live long enough to see native Americans take back the hills. That will be something.
Yes, Mark, it will be something, though I doubt it will occur as a product of national policy. We’re a “winners and losers” society and the winners now own the Black Hills. They won’t give it up without bloodshed. I do see the tribes regaining control over some of their lands through dogged persistence and improvements in their economic standing and that will be something enough. Someday, I’d like to see them control the National Forest, Wind Cave and even a renamed ( How about Crazy Horse) Custer State Park. That would be something. They probably don’t want Rapid City or Sturgis, anyway.
There are many sacred sites about the Sturgis area, Mr. Blundt. I doubt the tribes would turn back an offer to own the limestone cliffs, bluffs, and ledges into which many sacred petroglyphs and graffities have been carved. These graffities are their claim to having been there, in the years of yore.