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Hansen Blames “Left’s Climate Agenda” for Threat to Land Rights, Ignores Republican Profiteers Pushing for Eminent Domain for Carbon Dioxide Pipeline

In the weekend funnies, Representative Jon Hansen (R-25/Dell Rapids) goes on Mike Lindell’s theocratic video channel and claims that “the left’s climate agenda” is subordinating South Dakotans’ property rights to Summit Carbon Solutions’ private profit:

Rep. Jon Hansen, tweet, 2023.05.13.
Rep. Jon Hansen, tweet, 2023.05.13.

I sincerely appreciate Representative Hansen’s opposition to the use of eminent domain for private profit. I just wish he’d stop framing the debate in his kneejerk partisan terms and level at his own party the criticism they deserve for supporting the theft of property rights to build their rich friends’ cash cow. To the extent that South Dakota Democrats may be called “Left”—and I’ll argue that nationally and globally, South Dakota Democrats stand mostly in the Center, though still well left of Hansen’s and Lindell’s far-right radicalism—South Dakota’s “Leftspoke out regularly during the 2022 campaign against the use of eminent domain to build carbon dioxide pipelines while Hansen’s Republican Party leaders resisted such resistance and said eminent domain is necessary for the collective good. The former chairman of Hansen’s Republican Party, Dan Lederman, has lobbied county commissions to support the land-seizing pipeline. Lederman’s rich Republican friend Bruce Rastetter is the prime mover of Summit Carbon Solutions.

The “Left’s climate agenda” is certainly involved, in the form of the tax credits the Biden Administration is offering for carbon sequestration projects. But Lederman and Rastetter are the ones taking South Dakotans’ land rights away in order to fold those tax credits into their profit margins, and Republicans, including Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, fought to keep those tax credits off the chopping block of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt-ceiling kamikaze act.

Representative Hansen, I welcome your continued efforts to defend South Dakota landowners from the predations of out-of-state profiteers. But don’t let your message get lost in partisan sloganeering. South Dakota landowners can’t fight their enemy if they don’t know exactly who the enemy is. And in the case of Summit Carbon Solutions and its carbon dioxide pipeline, the enemy includes some of your most powerful Republican leaders.

22 Comments

  1. larry kurtz 2023-05-14 08:42

    That Earth haters like Jon Hansen and Dan Lederman are beating themselves up over this pipeline trumpery is borderline orgasmic.

  2. Tim 2023-05-14 09:03

    A RWNJ failing to admit the facts and instead blaming the left? I’m shocked, SHOCKED I say.

  3. Donald Pay 2023-05-14 09:21

    Lindell TV? That’s really bottom-feeding in the media world. But no matter what sort of lie he needs to tell to get on that lightly watched media platform, his opposition to eminent domain for these awful projects is welcome. In reality, the grassroots people on the left and and the right have often worked together against these sorts of dumb projects. It’s the crooked establishment earth-hating Republicans who generally seek to shove these projects onto the grassroots folks.

    Certainly there is a lot to criticize about the Biden climate agenda, which in some areas has gotten sidetracked into some bad projects, like mini-nukes and clean coal. I blame most of that on trying to buy off establishment Republicans, who are all in on expensive projects that suck funding out of better alternatives to the climate crisis.

  4. Francis Schaffer 2023-05-14 13:19

    Revisionist historian much. Why do we need to suddenly manage CO2 as a waste product? Ethanol production? Difficult in rural American to be truthful without consequences of a monetary sort. Think renewable energy with Energy Dome installations.

  5. Francis Schaffer 2023-05-14 13:25

    I do oppose the use of eminent domain for private companies. I am not even sure how this is a thing, which we should be arguing about. Count me on the side of property owners.

  6. All Mammal 2023-05-14 15:58

    Representative Jon Hansen is dangerous. He has that self-righteously paved road to his promised land nearly constructed. Guys like him are the reason SD pays the price in the loss of good men and women. Who will he blame once there aren’t any non-white, non-straight, non-Christian, non-rich men left? What will he do when there is no one with integrity around to watch struggle? His God cannot be trusted.

  7. Arlo Blundt 2023-05-14 16:10

    Yup, the carbon pipeline is just more rape and pillage. Yup, it probably will, at some time, be converted to pipe oil. Yup, it’s another scam to squeeze every possible dime out of South Dakota farmland. Yup, it totally destroys the property rights of family farmers to favor corporate America. Feel Free Again, in South Dakota.

  8. Mark Anderson 2023-05-14 19:50

    Well the Dell Rapidian has to twist his mind and mouth around opposing something he doesn’t really oppose in other circumstances. Did he blame Soros? That’s always a good one Jon boy. He could work trans in somehow. Any help on that anyone. CRT would be tricky too but I’m sure Jon could work it in.
    How’s the Sioux around the Dells anyhow? I used to fish at Aunt Annie’s just south a few miles above Baltic. The only worry was the big snapping turtle by the bridge. Now Dell Rapids has a Hansen snapping. He always did like to perform.

  9. Mark Anderson 2023-05-14 20:06

    It is something that Jon Hansen is on the side of property owners. You can’t really blame him for his blaming game. He has to do it. Maybe he could just sing Phil Ochs Love Me, I’m a Liberal at his next performance. It’s probably a bit too sophisticated for his followers, sorry Jon, never mind. Maybe you could have the bar you play at ban BudLight just for your night. Make it special. That would work.

  10. grudznick 2023-05-14 20:26

    Mr. Hansen is more than a bit squirrely, but is a swell enough fellow to keep getting elected. I expect, after weathering the being of the first fellow who was the crown prince who didn’t get to be king, he may have to take a few more kicks to the teeth to really figure this business out.

  11. larry kurtz 2023-05-14 20:30

    Indeed. Mr. Hansen has already been assigned a color and squatted.

  12. grudznick 2023-05-14 20:53

    Mr. Hansen’s stool color is primarily influenced by what he eats, and what he eats is primarily influenced by the lobbists; those public, private, and secret, who feed him. So grudznick’s close personal friend Lar is righter than right. I suspect the secret lobbists shove the most input into Mr. Hansen’s output, but that’s only grudznick’s speculation.

  13. larry kurtz 2023-05-14 21:01

    That the SDGOP is a dissembling mish mash of jiggling gelatin is an omen of its inability to congeal in any normative sense.

  14. DaveFN 2023-05-14 21:04

    What else are we to expect when tax credits are given for carbon sequestration?

    https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11455

    Someone’s gonna rise to the occasion and use any and all means to do so.

    Hansen has a point, but what is he (and his like-minded colleagues) doing about it (Lindell TV doesn’t count)? That’s assuming, of course, inaction isn’t a function of a conflict of interest that has yet to be publicized.

  15. grudznick 2023-05-14 21:57

    The sequestration will end badly, Mr. DaveFN.

  16. DaveFN 2023-05-14 22:14

    grudznick

    How so? Please explain. Thanks in advance.

  17. Arlo Blundt 2023-05-14 22:14

    Sequestration always ends badly…I think that’s the point the Republicans are trying to make…throw the country into turmoil, blame Biden, puff Trump. I just don’t think Americans are that stupid. If Biden can stay upright and on his feet, talk in simple sentences, he will win.

  18. grudznick 2023-05-14 22:20

    Mr. Blundt, Mr. Biden is only guarantied a win if he is facing Mr. Trump,. If wiser fellows rise to the reality, the GOP could really romp an orange rump and dominate with 60%, maybe 70% of the world that is anti-Biden.

  19. Mark Anderson 2023-05-15 08:50

    Grudz, what did you eat for breakfast that causes delusionality?

  20. Arlo Blundt 2023-05-15 11:32

    Grudz–there’s about 30 per cent of Republican voters who will vote for Trump regardless of whether he’s sitting in prison or not. It gives him a huge advantage in the primaries against multiple candidates. Plus he will get over half the folks who claim to be undecided. He’s burned out the rest of the public and how women are going to vote for him is a mystery to me…but he’s the undisputed Christian Nationalist Candidate…the Christian part is very weird..Trump=Christian???

  21. larry kurtz 2023-05-21 19:17

    Looks like Dan Lederman’s lobbying efforts to shove Summit’s pipeline into South Dakota’s assets is going nowhere and better yet the permit process is rapidly but not unexpectedly dissembling the SDGOP altogether.

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