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From last evening’s Brookings Register:

Hot out of today’s mailbox comes Governor Daugaard’s 2016 Christmas card:

I’m hearing this week that there’s a couple of people that we need to keep in our thoughts this holiday season.

Reporter Bob Mercer, whom we heard had collapsed at the IM22 hearing, is apparently anticipated to be out of pocket for some time due to illness.  Please keep him and his family in your thoughts.

GOP Activist Lance Hildebrand, who worked on the Munsterman campaign and served on the Noem Congressional staff is quite ill, and should also be in your thoughts this holiday season.

Please keep them both in your prayers.

I had the opportunity today to listen to Attorney General Marty Jackley as he spoke to a group of about 40 people in Brookings today on a number of topics, and opened himself up for a wide range of questions from the audience. You don’t often get a lot of opportunities to ask our statewide elected officials open ended questions, so it was a rare opportunity from the mixed audience of local businessmen and women, as well as some of the Republican faithful.

Introduced by State Representative Scott Munsterman, Scott enthusiastically told the group that several months ago he told Marty he was all in on Marty’s candidacy to become the next Governor of South Dakota.

Marty spoke at length about IM22, and despite yesterday’s coverage from the Argus, as I’d suspected, his thoughts on an ethics panel weren’t far from my own. He indicated that in his travels, people weren’t worried about campaign finance. And they certainly aren’t worried about paying for campaigns. But they do want to see some form of ethics panel – and his thoughts along those lines mirrored mine yesterday; where it could take the form of a panel to hear many of these issues that are too small to prosecute, but should be looked into nonetheless.

He quickly shifted from initiated measures, and laid out his rudimentary campaign plan of five areas he would focus on as Governor;

• Economic development, including such components as workforce development, housing, and engaging businessmen who understand development.
• Improving Education and working further with tech schools our university system
• In Health Care – He noted that there could be a delay in repealing Obamacare, and Medicaid expansion could still be on the table. He noted that Health care reform from the federal government could come in the form of block grants, and the next governor may need to know what to do with them.
• Public safety was one of his five planks, and addressing concerns in law enforcement with regards to addressing meth use, other drugs, drug treatment, drug courts, and veteran courts was important.
• Quality of life – Why does he want to be gov? He cited that we have a great state & opportunities, and he wants that for his children.

Marty was very pointed in comments criticizing Congress and talking about the work that the Attorney Generals had been doing in challenging Obamacare, the Waters of the US (WOTUS), etcetera, noting that while the Attorney Generals were doing the heavy lifting, all Congress did “was send a press release” – a theme he repeated a couple of times, as he noted that the Federal Government continuously fails in it’s oversight and it’s left to the AG’s to clean up the mess, specifically citing that “AG’s have stepped in and accomplished solutions” and “Congress passes resolutions and little else.”

The Jackley challenge and criticism against Congress as a whole seems to be a sharpening of rhetoric, as he develops his line of attack against his likely opponent, Congresswoman Kristi Noem. It’s expected that Noem would probably be challenging Pierre as an outsider candidate to State Government.

As he continued, Marty did shift back to some of the ethics and oversight legislation he’s planning on bringing this next session, and specifically addressed that he’d like to see a three pronged approach in new conflict of interest laws –

1. You can’t have oversight your own contract.
2. Whistleblower protections; you won’t lose your job if you report double dealing.
3. And that financial crimes, such as EB5, are on the same footing as regular crimes, noting if you steal $1000 from your public employer, it should be the same crime if you steal $1000 from someone else. It should not be a misdemeanor.

That’s the lion’s share of the takeaway from today’s luncheon wth the Attorney General – A platform, lots of content, and maybe a couple of potential barbs that might be used in the upcoming Gubernatorial campaign.

Congresswoman Kristi Noem dropped the below letter to supporters on her decision to forego another term in Congress, and to run for Governor in 2018 instead.

There’s lots of good stuff in the letter, including the rough outline of a platform, where she noted three key issues for her candidacy – Job Growth, Fiscal Responsibility, and Federalism.  Check it out for yourself.

Noem Announcement Letter to supporters by Pat Powers on Scribd

i’ll have more of a report late this afternoon, but over the noon hour Attorney General Marty Jackley addressed a group of about 40 Brookings residents on a variety of topics, most notably his interest in running for governor.

I missed this earlier this evening, as I had my head buried in continuing ed for my Real Estate License. From Congresswoman Noem:

“It’s an honor to be considered by President-elect Trump to join his administration. The opportunities we have to invoke genuine change under the next administration are incredible, but to realize them fully, we must have strong leaders who understand agriculture and life in rural communities throughout each branch of government. 

As we tackle tax reform, the 2018 Farm Bill, the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, and regulatory relief efforts, I’m convinced the best way for me to help President Trump succeed while also producing the greatest impact for South Dakota is to serve out my two-year term in the House of Representatives.  I’m excited about the work we will be doing alongside the Trump administration and wholeheartedly look forward to implementing policies that secure the American Dream for all.”

Today, Marty Jackley was talking to the Sioux Falls Rotary club, proposing that maybe we do need another level of government in South Dakota in the form of an ethics commission. From the Argus Leader:

Attorney General Marty Jackley encouraged Sioux Falls Rotary Club members to support a proposed ethics commission, a provision of a ballot measure narrowly approved last month by voters.

and..

“The voters of South Dakota spoke and they said there needs to be some level of change and I think that change ought to focus on an ethics commission,” Jackley said. “I don’t think we should necessarily be scared of that, we should embrace it.”

and..

Another prominent Republican, Secretary of State Shantel Krebs on Monday said she’d also been working on a proposal to create an independent review or ethics commission to be managed by her office.

“You can count two Republicans in on this,” Krebs said. “You will hear me testifying in favor of some sort of ethics commission in South Dakota.”

Read it all here.

I don’t think it serves much purpose to grow government, and have a commission for the sake of having a commission, so we can go “Yay. We did something.”  But I also get the sense that given the turmoil over constant political accusations that have flown around the capitol for the past few years, that both Marty and the Secretary of State might have an interest in offloading those headaches to someone else.

Investigating charges of improper disclaimers, whether someone may or may not have actually circulated their petitions; Allegations over whether a donation was reported properly, or did so-and-so at that College turn in those voter registrations forms, and on and on…  now those types of issues might more properly find themselves housed with a group empaneled and charged with making a firm determination, and assessing a penalty when warranted.

This would be opposed to these matters bouncing around state government between one person who would like to spend more of their time prosecuting murderers and rapists, and another who would like to run elections. If investigating and adjudicating issues of that nature was the purpose and charge of an ethics panel, that might actually make a little sense.

But I’m very wary about spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions on a panel that operates with little to no oversight, with an ill-defined or useless mission.

If Marty wants to make that proposal, and have it serve a real purpose, that could make the difference between something useless, and something real.

Bridging that gap in reality? That could be the challenge.

Trump is vetting Kristi Noem, South Dakota’s lone member of Congress, for Agriculture secretary. She’ll be visiting Trump Tower this week

— Jeremy W. Peters (@jwpetersNYT) December 12, 2016

I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t know if I note that I think a lot of Governor Daugaard, and believe him to be a good an decent person.  But, I’m truly, truly disappointed in him for a statement he made this past week.

South Dakota will be fine without payday lenders that pay excessive interest rates, Gov. Dennis Daugaard said Friday.

The statement came in response to the news that dozens of short-term lenders across the state plan to shutter following the implementation of a voter-approved cap on the industry’s interest rates.

“Certainly to the extent that they were only economically viable because they are subsidized by the earnings from excess interest charges, it’s certainly unfortunate, but I don’t think it justifies unreasonable interest charges,” Daugaard told Argus Leader Media. “So if we have to do without those things, then we have to do without them.”

Read that here.

It’s not the first time it’s happened, where the Governor has seemingly substituted his personal morality in an issue and expressed a desire to limit freedom. If you recall the 2013 fight over changing laws to allow MMA fights to happen in South Dakota:

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard says he opposes a bill that would create a state athletic commission because it would legitimize mixed martial arts fights, events he says are so violent they don’t deserve to be called sports.

and..

But Daugaard says he is offended that the state would legitimize what he calls cage fighting. He says it’s absurd to call such violence a sport.

Read that here.

Along similar lines as his opposition against Mixed Martial Arts bouts because he likened them to “violence,” we again had the Governor speaking out because he believes businesses charging a sufficient amount to cover the costs of loaning money for a matter of a few weeks or months is not something they should do in South Dakota.

For long-time readers, I don’t think I have to express my personal disdain for the nanny state.

Why would we spend millions in tax dollars through state government for economic development to attract businesses, when the Governor declares that we only need certain businesses that he approves of, and we’ll do fine without them?  I think it’s an incredibly dangerous thing for the Governor to say.

Because what happens if another Governor comes along and decides they dislike a certain type of mining?  Or wants to ban energy production from the use of coal?

I’m sure I could argue until I’m blue in the face that there are going to be a number of people of common means affected by the loss of short term lending, as very few (or no) banks are going to want to take on the high risk/low return lending activity at an unsustainable lending rate. Because now, those disenfranchised people are going to be stuck.

But as big an issue as that will become, there’s a bigger one. We’ve established that sparsely populated South Dakota’s is a little less free. And we’ve started down the road our chief executive telling us we’ll be “fine” without a certain type of business.

Personally, whether or not I chose to patronize them is a decision I would have rather made myself.