As usual the parking lot is full of legislators working to find money for education at 615 a.m . pic.twitter.com/64wGZCDuVk
— Terri Haverly (@haverly_terri) February 19, 2016
The Argus Leader alluded to it tonight, and make no bones about it – Jay Williams was recruited to run for US Senate because he follows the Democrat line of raise taxes, raise taxes, and then raise them again!
If you’re in doubt, check out this video from 4 years ago where he tried to explain how “TAX is not a dirty word”
Jay Williams at Ignite Yankton from Ignite SD on Vimeo.
Watch for some of the Jay’s golden nuggets of wisdom. (otherwise known as his worst offending lines):
Will Senator Thune beat his own record for the margin of victory running against this guy?
Proud to put my yes vote behind the teachers of South Dakota. Motion to reconsider has been made. #SDLeg pic.twitter.com/AJhjN0seoH
— Mathew Wollmann (@MathewWollmann) February 18, 2016
I can’t stop laughing at this article, as I couldn’t have written it better myself regarding tomorrow’s roll out of the Dem’s sacrificial lamb against US Senator John Thune. From the Argus Leader.
Williams, reached by phone Thursday, declined to comment but said he would be in Sioux Falls on Friday for an event at the VFW. Democratic Party spokesman Michael Ewald said the party would unveil its U.S. Senate candidate noon Friday at the Sioux Falls VFW.
and…
A lack of name recognition and an unsuccessful track record in legislative elections has some questioning Williams’ viability as a candidate.
Charlotte Gilson in 2010 ran against Williams for a pair of House seats that ended up in the hands of Republican Nick Moser and Democrat Bernie Hunhoff. A Republican, Gilson laughed when she heard Williams would be challenging Thune.
“It’s surprising. I don’t know what he’s thinking. He’s gotten trounced in everything he’s ever run for,” she said, speculating that he’s too liberal to resonate with South Dakota’s conservative voting base.
and…
Williams has a history of supporting higher taxes and has said Americans aren’t taxed enough.
“Look at yourself. If you have property, ask for your property taxes to be raised. If you have income, lobby for a state income tax. If you buy lots of things, go for sales tax,” he said during a presentation called “Tax is NOT a dirty word: A call for rationality” in Yankton in 2011. Video of his comments remain online.
There was a part of the article that was a blatant lie from the Democrats, as they said Williams has not been running for office for the last 20 years like Thune has.
#1 – Thune hasn’t had to run all that much. They haven’t put up a candidate.
And #2 – Just because Williams has gotten trounced is not an indication that he hasn’t run. Williams has ran, he just hasn’t won.
“Williams has a history of supporting higher taxes, and has said Americans are not taxed enough.”
You can probably kiss the Dem’s golden candidate Williams goodbye on that statement alone.
This might not be pretty to watch.
Did I miss something?
When I started reading the campaign finance report recently filed by Democrat Snake Oil salesman “Slick” Rick Weiland, who has been calling for a ballot measure and affiliated organization called “South Dakotans for Ethics Reform;” promoting removing PAC money from campaign finance, ethics reform, and empowering small donors, I swore I must have missed something.
Because what they group practices, and what they preach appear to be a valley’s width apart. But, don’t take my word for it – read the report yourself:
South Dakotans who don't practice what they preach
If you look at Weiland’s group’s intake of funds, you would suppose that this is a grassroots measure, with small donors kicking in.
Wait? Is that a big goose-egg in the donations coming in as contributions from individuals? Nothing from Slick Rick, nothing from Don Frankenfeld or Dave Volk, who has joined Weiland in this crusade. Not even $1 in unitemized contributions.
Zero. Zip. Zilch. NOTHING.
Which begs the question, who is promoting the measure?
ALL OF THE MONEY FOR “South Dakotans for Ethics Reform” comes from an organization called “Represent Us” out of Florence, Massachusetts. Massachussetts. Not South Dakota.
So, we have no South Dakota donors backing this measure, but an out of state organization is putting in $228,250 for it to be passed? Who are these guys?
Well, one independent news site went through the work of figuring it out, and came up with an interesting point. That they’ve seen them all before, in an article titled One Percenters trying to lead the Revolution:
For the second time in five years, there is a group of political revolutionaries determined to end the corrupt and rigged political and economic system perpetrated on the 99 percent by the 1 percent. The only problem is that these revolutionaries are the 1 percent. Can they be trusted to lead a peaceful rebellion against themselves? They claim to be reformers, corruption-busters and non-partisan independents. We’re not sure what to make of them.
The name of the movement, organization, idea and website is Represent.us or Represent Us. Registered as a non-profit charity, the group was launched in 2012 and is reported to have raised millions of dollars in donations. Their website is expensive and professional and their Board of Advisors is a who’s who of the 1%. In fact, the information provided by Represent.us said all the right things, but came from all the wrong places. The high priced grassroots campaign, an oxymoron in itself, looked very familiar to this author. It took only a few seconds to remember where we’d seen some of the same names, corporations and wealthy donors before – Americans Elect.
Yes, the ‘non-political party’ political party created to elect a US President in 2012 by bypassing the Republican and Democrat parties was called Americans Elect. But it was made up of the same Republican and Democrat operatives and donors that have, and continue to, corrupt America in the first place, including the Rothschild family. Read the 2012 Whiteout Press article ‘Americans Elect closing in on a Presidential Nominee’ for more information.
So, it’s many of the same people who tried to sell us on the Nathan Daschle led “Americans Elect” experiment, which went down in flames?
According to CitizenAudit.org, Major funders for the Represent US Education fund include The New York Community Trust, and Sandler Foundation.
Take note of the Sandler foundation, as they provide significant funding for many of your favorite organizations. According to Wikipedia:
A 2008 New York Times article notes that the foundation has provided substantial support to several nonprofit organizations, including ProPublica, the Center for American Progress, the Center for Responsible Lending, Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as other nonprofit organizations.
And yes, this is the same Sandler Foundation who is funding the people backing another ultra-liberal ballot measure, the Hickey/Hildebrand 36% cap payday lending measure, which I also recently wrote about.
But, let’s not stop here.
The director of Represent Us is Josh Silver, who had previously championed public financing of elections in Arizona. This past September Silver wrote a very revealing piece in the Huffington Post of how he now “bundles” public funding of elections into a package in order to make them more palatable to voters:
But don’t give up just yet. Contrary to popular belief, the money-in-politics problem can be fixed by emulating the stunning successes of marriage equality and marijuana decriminalization over the past twenty years. Here’s how to do it.
First, we need to take the fight to local communities, by passing city and statewide reform initiatives. For too long, reformers have advocated small-step, incremental reforms at the federal level, such as ending secret donations. This is a good and popular proposal, but alone will not come close to fixing the problem. Other reformers are advocating “publicly funded” elections, which is also good policy, but remains unpopular with many voters and would not fix the entire problem if passed without simultaneous ethics, lobbying and transparency reforms.
And here’s the key thing: comprehensive reform proposals that overhaul ethics, lobbying, transparency and provide public funding in one fell swoop enjoy over 80% voter approval, and they are constitutional, even under the current Supreme Court. Together they are much more popular than public funding alone, and far more palatable to moderates and conservatives to boot.
Hmmm…. Where have we heard about a bundle of reforms on “ethics, lobbying, transparency and provide public funding in one fell swoop?” Yes, that is exactly what Slick Rick Weiland’s ballot measure is to the letter. Public Campaign financing bundled, just like your cable TV, into a package with other things in order to get you to buy it.
In a nutshell, “The South Dakotans for Ethics Reform” is a misleading description, because the associated ballot measure is yet another in a long line of out-of-state interests trying to get a ballot measure passed in South Dakota because we’re the – if not one of the – easiest and cheapest states to put a measure on the ballot.
They’ve packaged it up, and handed it off to Slick Rick, with over $228,000 – which I’m sure is the first installment – to promote this out of state measure in South Dakota.
“South Dakotans for Ethics Reform?” There’s nothing involving “South Dakota” or “Ethics” with it. It’s just big out of state money trying to use South Dakotans. Once again.
I was preparing to slog through the Secretary of State’s campaign finance system to do a search…. strike that, it has no search capabilities…. to page through the committees until I could find what I wanted… and I noticed they added an enhancement.
Apparently, you can now filter out the inactive committees.
To it’s credit, I have heard positive things about it’s back end in terms of ease of people filling out on-line forms to report. But as I detailed a while back, the front end where taxpayers can search for who is donating to whom? The important bits for the public? There’s still nothing good to report.
What should be concerning to transparency advocates is that with the new system transparency has taken a giant leap backwards when it comes to the availability and searching of donor information that was present in the preceding system. The new system has eliminated that functionality, and returned to the roots of the 2007 system, ignoring any evidence that the State of South Dakota ever dipped a toe in the waters of that kind of campaign finance transparency.
Still no wildcard searching for committees (which they had in 2007). No searching or sorting by filing date. The donor searching and cross-committee searches are gone.
If I can offer any praise, at least we don’t have to page through inactive committees anymore.
If only they’d fix the rest of it.
Ann Tornberg had to work pretty hard to wrest the title of “worst candidate rollout in state history” from Paula Hawks, but somehow she managed it. Tomorrow, Dems will roll out their “golden boy,” Yankton Democrat Party Chair Jay Williams to the world as their US Senate candidate.
Williams probably didn’t realize when he told the Democrats that “he would do it if no one else would” that he would be the one to get stuck with the hot potato. And now, as his Yankton hometown newspaper notes, they anticipate that given his no-name status, he will “be little more than a token lamb for slaughter.
Even the Argus mocked the announcement this week, praising Dems only because scotch would be available to blunt such awfulness.
I don’t suspect tomorrow will be any cause for celebration for Democrats. If anything, it’s a chore they can check off their list, as they begin the long march towards the inevitable.
It looks like the Most Liberal Man in South Dakota might have fired off a shot at the wrong legislator when he suggested that State Representative Dan Kaiser resign. Kaiser, who is with his son Jaxon, currently being treated for Leukemia in Sioux Falls, missed a recent vote, and District 3 Senate Candidate Cory Heidelberger suggested that Kaiser resign, and he be appointed himself.
And just the next day, the conservative Prairie Country PAC has now started mining e-mail and facebook to raise money to go after the ultraliberal District 3 Senate Candidate:
The Extremist at Your Front Door
Cory Heidelburger. Many of you are familiar with his work as a blogger on the Dakota free press, others may have heard his name in the last couple weeks when he announced his candidacy for the state Senate.
But for those of you who are unfamiliar with him let me take a minute to introduce him to you.
- Would you support a candidate who is anti-gun to the point where you would criticize a local business that teaches firearm safety?
- Would you support a candidate for South Dakota legislature that would support creating a state income tax ?
- Would you vote for a candidate who has been a huge supporter of Obamacare expansion?
This list of extremely liberal positions could go on forever, but these are just a few that Democratic candidate for District 3 State Senate Cory Heidelberger holds.
State Senate candidate Cory Heidelberger is a liberal blogger/mouthpiece for the “radical left wing” of the Democrat party and he is feverishly trying to turn Northeast South Dakota back into a Democratic stronghold. I need your help to make sure that doesn’t happen.
But even after all this, we are talking about a candidate who supports radical left wing positions in addition to insulting members of his own community.
Conservative legislator Dan Kaiser and his family have been going through quite the battle in recent weeks. Earlier this year Dan’s son Jaxon was diagnosed with leukemia.
This has been an extremely difficult time for Dan his wife Laura and the whole Kaiser family. Battling leukemia is a tough fight and it has taken a toll on Dan and Laura.
Dan is a family man and his first priority is providing for his family and spending time with his two kids. Since the leukemia diagnoses Dan has made a firm commitment to care for Jaxon and stay at his side.
Because of this Representative Kaiser has not been able to attend the legislative session, I would hope that Dan’s decision to spend time with his ailing son is something that all South Dakotans could support.
Putting family before politics is an admirable decision, and I commend Dan for putting family first.
But while the Kaiser family has been battling leukemia Democratic Senate candidate Cory Heidelburger has made it about politics.
Just yesterday on his blog Heidelburger called for Kaiser’s resignation from the state house!
Why did Heidelburger call for Kaiser’s resignation? For the sole purpose of appointing someone new who would support raising your taxes.
Worse yet Heidelburger recommended that Governor Daugaard appoint himself to Dan’s seat.
This is shameful and is not what we stand for as South Dakotans!
Dan Kaiser has been a true leader on the issues of defending liberty and promoting conservative values, this is why Prairie Country PAC is 100% committed to helping Kaiser with his re-election efforts.
On the other hand Prairie Country PAC is 100% committed to defeating left wing liberals who do not support South Dakota values like Cory Heidelburger.
But we need your help!
Your immediate contribution to Prairie Country PAC will go directly to helping us defeat radical liberals like Cory, and supporting conservatives like Dan.
Prairie Country PAC would like to thank you for your continued support of conservative leadership in South Dakota.
Thank you and God Bless,
Richard Hilgemann
Prairie Country PACP.S. Prairie Country PAC is redefining the grassroots in South Dakota by only supporting our most conservative of candidates and taking down liberals as they pop up. Together we can make a more conservative South Dakota. Please chip in whatever you can today.
Just when you think Phil Jensen had that foot out of his mouth from last election’s comments over racial discrimination….
“If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery for instance, the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them,” Jensen told the Rapid City Journal.
…. he manages to wedge it back in there with the other foot with his comments in today’s Rapid City Journal:
Speaking over the phone on the way to Pierre on Tuesday, Jensen recalled when one of his constituents told him he witnessed “dozens of South Americans” fleeing a white bus parked near downtown Rapid City.
“He knew they were South Americans,” Jensen said, “because they had different skull structures and skin tones from Mexicans.”
“He knew they were South Americans,” Jensen said, “because they had different skull structures and skin tones from Mexicans.” Wow. I didn’t realize we had anthropology and bone structure experts wandering the streets.
It’s time to start cringing again.
Republican State Representative Dan Kaiser has been going through an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Kaiser has been busy for most of the session attending to his child in Sioux Falls who has been bravely battling leukemia. The Kaiser family has been the recipient of an outpouring of support for their son Jaxon, as they work for his treatment and recovery. I didn’t think there was anyone who would begrudge him that, until yesterday.
And yesterday is when a recent comment from newly announced District 3 State Senate Candidate Cory Heidelberger was shocking to the sensibility of many, as he suggested Kaiser’s resignation, so a bill Heidelberger favored could be passed:
Apparently, the cancer diagnosis was too inconvenient for the Aberdeen Democrat candidate for office. However, the comment was crass enough for at least one Republican legislator to take the time to chastise the ultra-liberal legislative hopeful for his insensitivity towards Kaiser:
Should voters hold this against Heidelberger at the ballot box?