Sometimes it seems like Kristi Noem’s comms team puts words in her mouth just to provoke us and distract us from the substance of her bad policies.
Noem was out of state again Friday pandering to the national gun nut crowd at the National Rifle Association annual meeting in Indianapolis. Among the headline grabbers in her speech was her proud declaration that her not-quite-two granddaughter “already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle“. It takes a special sort of cruelty to buy a child gifts with which she can’t responsibly play for another ten years… although that’s when Joel Koskan should be getting out of prison, so I guess “the girl is set up” to defend herself from Kristi’s good friend from Wood when he’s back on the streets.
Then Noem told the NRA crowd that “The media would have us believe that the NRA has only made up of old white guys…. But there’s a lot of other people, a lot of diversity within the NRA.” C-SPAN then cut to the audience camera showing a crowd of mostly older white male faces.
Then, as promised, Noem staged a cute little stunt, signing an executive order on stage in Indianapolis in front of the dutifully cheering NRA crowd. Now if an order is really meant to do good for South Dakotans, you’d think Noem would sign it in front of South Dakotans, here in South Dakota. Playing governor in Indianapolis has the same optics as if I went to a big mountain bike convention in Durango on my wedding anniversary but took a moment to livestream my logging in to Amazon to buy my wife some super-stylish pastor duds. “See? Even while I’m off having fun with my bike friends, I can still take a moment to show my wife I love her. Happy anniversary, sweetie!”
But all these distractions and the resulting easy potshots cover the doubly nefarious nature of Noem’s latest executive order.
The order, which copies laws in Texas and Montana, prohibits big financial institutions that contract with the state from “discriminating against” firearms-related entities. The order ties the hands of banks, insurers, credit unions, savings and loans, trusts, and similar firms with at least $100 billion in assets (Wikipedia lists 38 banks that big; Yahoo News from 2021 lists 22 U.S. insurers that big). The order applies to state contracts worth at least $100,000. The favored entities are the following:
- Manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, suppliers, and retailers of guns, gun accessories, or ammunition;
- Sport shooting ranges;
- Gun trade associations…like the NRA.
With this order, Noem is enacting a policy that she was unable to achieve through democratic means. Republican legislators last year proposed 2022 Senate Bill 182 to prohibit financial institutions from “discriminating against” the above-listed gun-related entities. Gun nuts lobbied for it, banks and chambers of commerce testified against it, and all but the dullest minds on Senate Commerce and Energy (Novstrup and Stalzer) realized SB 182 was a bad idea and killed it.
Noem is thus enacting by fiat a policy that couldn’t survive a single committee hearing. She is doing an end run around the will of the people and their elected representatives.
The executive order, like most of the words Noem parrots, also reeks of political hypocrisy.
First, the order does not, as Noem claims, protect Second Amendment rights. The Second Amendment does not include the right to make or sell guns. It certainly does not include a right to get a loan or an insurance policy. Not one word of this order does anything to affect your ability to keep your peashooter and carry it around.
Second, Noem’s order does not stop banks and insurers from “discriminating against” gunmakers, the NRA, and other firearms-related entities. Quite the opposite: Noem is ordering financial institutions to discriminate in favor of firearms-related entities, to extend credit or insurance or other financial products to entities that the institutions would not extend to other businesses or organizations in similar situations.
Suppose I walked into Wells Fargo and asked for a business loan for Dakota Free Press. The bank might look at my blog cash flow and business plan and say, “A blog dedicated to analyzing South Dakota politics? Your audience is too small to generate the revenue necessary to pay back the loan. Application denied.” That’s what I get for putting principle and passion above profit opportunities.
But then suppose Gooney McBuckshot of the Wakonda Rifle Wavers comes in applying for a business loan to start Dakota Gun Press, a blog dedicated to analyzing gun policy in South Dakota. Gooney’s business plan is similar to mine, and his audience is even smaller. The bank ought to decline his application, too, but Governor Noem is telling the bank they can’t decline to do business Gooney’s gun group. So Gooney’s loan application gets preferential treatment.
Banks can say no to any loan application that their analysis shows exposes them and their depositors to risk. If an applicant is proposing to manufacture something that can harm people—like tobacco, alcohol, or asbestos—banks should be able to say, “We’d rather not risk our depositors’ money on that risky business. There’s too much liability.” That’s a free market decision.
But as with her hollering about environmental, societal, and governance investment choices, Noem here is overriding the free market and demanding that financial institutions submit to her Communist commands. Banks must lend to and insurers must insure her favored businesses and her friends and donors in the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Federation.
Noem isn’t standing for freedom; she’s standing for Communism, state control of the economy to favor her cronies. She’s not standing for democracy; she’s standing for authoritarianism. And Noem isn’t standing for South Dakotans; she’s standing up on a stage in Indianapolis to get NRA members to give her standing ovation.
Let Noem give her grandkids irresponsible gifts. Let her say stupid things that are easily contradicted by a simple turn of the camera. But don’t let her keep enacting ridiculous and anti-American policies as political stunts. Bankers, insurers, call your lawyers and take this executive order to court.
lmao, who gives a 2 yr old kid a gun other than as a basis for a speech line?
Next birthday she can give little Addie a case of grenades and a silencer for her rifle to help her build her gun nut collection. Adam Lanza’s mother bought him guns too, Then he became the Sandy Hook killer. Are we going to be reading about little Addie fifteen years from now shooting up her school when somebody insults her granny as the worst governor (not to mention granny) in South Dakota history?
Noem is banking on all those millions from the NRA for her Presidential run. She is giving it her all.
Noem can have her granddaughter take her guns to her sweet sixteen birthday party, you never know what will happen.
https://kbhbradio.com/news/loaded-gun-found-in-carry-on-confiscated-at-rapid-city-airport
“This is the third firearm detected at Rapid City Regional Airport so far this year. Last year, a total of seven firearms were detected at RAP security checkpoints”
“Remember that a concealed carry permit or enrollment in the TSA PreCheck® program are not exemptions from this policy.”
In addition:
https://kbhbradio.com/news/how-many-south-dakota-residents-are-locked-up-and-where
We pack in SD. We also pack prisons, too. SD: Phreedumb. Pheasants. And phuckery.
The behavior of a grandmother who needs to tell people what a good grandmother she is is subconsciously due to several psychological factors. This is a manifestation of her need for validation and recognition. The grandmother may have invested so little effort and time in her role as a mother and grandmother that her delicate self esteem is tied to this characterization. Therefore, recognition and acknowledgement from others about her performance in this area are critical to improving her low self-esteem.
This behavior is also a result of the grandmother’s social comparison tendencies. She may use other grandmothers as benchmarks for her performance and may feel the need to prove that she is a better grandmother than them. This is similar to the concept of keeping up with the Joneses.
Your Governor’s behavior no doubt stems from the woman’s desire to create a positive legacy for herself. By telling people what a good grandmother she is, she is trying to create a positive image of herself that will outlast her. This desire to create a positive legacy may be due to her fear of mortality, fear of losing her beauty or an ingrained need to control how others see her.
As far as her legislation she’s doing nothing but riding the wave of the recent popular rhetorical outcry by gun nuts regarding Wells Fargo which latter is finally rectifying its own public image in response to negative press Wells received 5 years ago (see below link).
Can’t believe the festering paranoia that has come to the fore of gun idiots in western SD this week who are talking on local and national social media about moving their money out of Wells Fargo based on some imagined notion their collective rights are thereby under attack. They fall for anything in the news hook, line, and sinker, and their sheer numbers serve to reinforce their weak and pathetic notions.
Little do they and their ilk understand how Noem and others exploit them.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wells-fargo-guns-20180307-story.html
Mr. Aitch…thank you for your analysis of governor Noem’s personality, such as it is. I just think she is a very shallow, poorly educated, person.
You’re welcome, Mr. Blundt. Not to seem “contrary” but I analyzed her action of bragging about how buying a baby a gun portrays her as a good grandmother. Only a minute portion of her personality.
I came to Cory’s blog early in Obama’s first term to analyze why South Dakotans are the way they are and why they do what they do.
Psst, P. Aitch- Although we may not be published yet and have no doctorates to boast, I think we are capable of drawing accurate conclusions to the god awful values and standards here in SD- We are conditioned to do what we do out of fear of being different or outcast or having to take responsibility for our ways. We also have corrupt the truth in order to keep certain people in charge of deciding who gets what and how much.
For most, it is routine to do things we know don’t feel are right because it is easier to do it how it has always been done, compared to correcting our own behavior, even when the outcome of change would be much better and easier in the long run. Change is thought of as weak. Plus, fear of knowledge, especially knowledge of self, is standard ‘round here.
The powerful in SD are never put in check, never scrutinized, never called to contribute theirs. The powerful know in order to accumulate more power, the groundlings bet fear outsiders who, according to indoctrination, thirst to usurp what little they think they do possess.
Confronting this attitude would start with a physical, mental, and institutional remodel/demolition of the white Christian churches. Once that is punted out the window along with the world’s history of misogyny and bigotry and fear of our own mortality, we might start to shine like a beacon of truth, hope and justice for all. Or at least we will then know it is wrong to waller in our own pitiful miasmatic ignorance.
In short, we don’t get out much and the only time we spread ideas is when we’re getting sh!t-faced.
* I forgot to mention DFP is a far-out, perhaps even the grooviest place to spread ideas.
Arlo
I opt for your analysis, not one full of psychobabble born from armchair analysis however much time one has spent in one’s personal therapy—which latter alone does not a therapist make.
Psychoanalysts if worth their salt rely on material coming directly from the unconscious of the analysand in analytic sessions and do not impose generic conclusions they read in textbooks. Freud’s analysis of Leonardo daVinci teaches us much regarding the pitfalls of such armchair analysis.
DaveFYOU – You’re senseless…
It doesn’t take a Cosmo Magazine quiz expert to conclude DaveFN has a certain fixation. This is proven by his use of ANAL in his above writing. I counted 7x. Freud happens to have a theory about that….
All Mammal
If you knew more about Freud you’d know that the one who’s counting is the one who’s fixated.
DaveFN- nice one. I do know enough about salty, sour, bitter and grizzled to not try to sweeten ya up and to just let ya be. You have already endeared yourself to me. Like it or not, my scruffy friend!
TAKEN VERBATIM FROM KRISTI NOEM’S SPEACH TO THE NRA AT THEIR CONVENTION IN INDIANAPOLIS.
“My dad taught us life lessons and common sense during our hunting trips. As soon as we were old enough to ride a horse, he would take us hunting and pack us by horseback 20 miles in the Big Horns to hunt elk.”
“I didn’t always know it then, but those hunting trips gave me the confidence to be a problem solver. For instance, I remember being around 10 years old and miles from camp in the high country when dad turned to me and said, “Hunt your way back to camp” as he disappeared over the ridge.”
“Now, to a ten-year-old girl, this was terrifying. As strange noises and darkness fell, I had to rely on my instincts and horse to find my way back to our tent. Years later, mom shared with me that dad followed me at a distance to make sure I was safe.”
“Now, before you go and get all soft and tender-hearted on me, I want you to know he was also the one making the bear noise which just about scared me to death. But it made me stronger. It made me realize I could conquer challenges. It made me who I am today, the first female Governor of the state of South Dakota.”
Let’s examine this story.
Kristi Noem was born on November 30, 1971 and she is currently 51 years old. (chronologically not emotionally IMO) By her own description, she was “around” 10 years old when her dad allegedly took her elk hunting in the Big Horns of Wyoming. They allegedly packed in 20 miles on horseback. She says, in her embellishing style, that her dad told her to hunt her way back to camp; riding off over the ridge leaving her, and her horse, to hunt and find their way back to the tent. By her description, this event occurred in 1982 before she turned 11 or possibly 1983 before she turned 12. Wyoming elk seasons fall in the months of September and October.
In her own words, she admits to violating Wyoming law!!! The State of Wyoming, like the State of South Dakota at the time, had and still has a statute on the books that establishes a minimum age of 12 years to hunt big game in Wyoming. In addition, the child must have successfully completed a certified Hunter Safety Course that can’t be taken until the child is actually 12 years old; in order to qualify for a license. Additionally, Wyoming law establishes that any child under the age of 14 may not hunt big game unless a qualifying adult accompanies them at all times.
Follow this out; At 10 years old, she was not old enough to hunt elk in Wyoming, she was not old enough to be eligible for a license which both she and her non-resident companions would have had to apply for through the mail, and she wasn’t old enough to have completed the necessary Hunter Safety Course to qualify to buy a license. If she did hunt with a license, she obtained it fraudulently and those that assisted her in obtaining the license committed fraud against the State of Wyoming. Since she was left to hunt by herself as a 10 year old, both she and her dad violated Wyoming law by virtue of the 14 year age requirement to hunt alone. In some jurisdictions, that circumstance is called “contributing to the delinquency of a minor”
In conclusion; Kristi Noem is either a juvenile wildlife law offender or she’s a first rate liar. In either case, her parental instruction was negligent and irresponsible.
Good one JW
JW:
I wondered about the voracity of her story…It seems I was right.
It’s the new political norm. Lies are gone and now it is called misremembering and totally acceptable to the magat following.
https://crooksandliars.com/2023/10/judge-alex-jones-bankruptcy-cant-wipe-out
Judge orders Alex Jones to pay 1 billion dollars to Sandy Hook victims families despite Jones filing bankruptcy.