For the past two years, big government policies in Washington, D.C. have decimated our economy, left the southern border open, and skyrocketed inflation.

Our nation has faced tough times, but there is hope, and I believe our country will soon turn the corner. Today, House Republicans launched the Commitment to America. Ahead of November and a likely Republican-led Congress, House Republicans have identified ways to reverse the damage done by the Biden Administration’s policies. Our plan focuses on issues the American people care about—our economy, safer communities, freedom, and government accountability.

The announcement today revealed four pillars House Republicans are committed to:

• We commit to building an economy that is strong. We’ll support policies to fight inflation and lower the cost of living. We recognize the need to make America energy independent and reduce gas prices, and strengthen our supply chain, ending dependence on China.
• We commit to making America a nation that is safe. A safe nation includes a border that is secure, combatting illegal immigration, reducing crime in our communities, and defending our national security. Supporting our troops, establishing a Select Committee on China, and exercising peace through strength with our allies will counter some of our biggest global threats.
• We commit to ensuring a future that is built on freedom. Ensuring success for every student, achieving healthier and longer lives for our loved ones, and confronting Big Tech’s agenda that doesn’t protect our children online or our sensitive and personal data.
• We commit to being a government that is accountable. From accountability of Members of Congress to our election process to preserving our Constitutional freedoms, Americans should be able to trust their elected officials to uphold the Constitution and make decisions that don’t abuse their power.

Our fellow citizens are concerned about paying the bills, putting food on the table, keeping their children safe, and whether they can trust their government. Our plan addresses concerns held by many from coast to coast, including our friends and families in South Dakota. I and my fellow House Republicans look forward to upholding our Commitment to America.

To learn more about the Commitment to America, you can visit the website here.

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When I first ran for Governor, South Dakota needed new opportunities. For years, our economic growth had not kept up with the nation. Young South Dakotans were too often leaving our state to pursue college or a career. Cities like Sioux Falls were growing, but our rural communities were slowly falling behind.

I grew up in rural South Dakota – I love what our rural communities stand for. I knew that we could turn that trend around, and that’s exactly what we’ve done in the last four years.

Because of the example of Freedom that South Dakota set during the pandemic, millions of Americans visited our state. Thousands chose to make South Dakota their home. But they didn’t only move to Sioux Falls or Rapid City. We have folks moving to small towns, too – even some of our smallest town!

This was possible because we prioritized strengthening our small towns. Folks shouldn’t have to choose between the career of their dreams and our rural way of life, and now they don’t have to. We’ve made several key investments in our rural communities that have made this possible.

When I was first elected, I pledged to connect every corner of South Dakota to high-speed broadband, but it looked like this would take 10 years to accomplish. Because of South Dakota’s tremendous tax revenues, we managed to fully fund our broadband program in just a couple years. We have connected thousands of South Dakotans to high-speed internet. Families in small towns now can get Wi-Fi access right at home. Farmers can get internet to monitor various aspects of their operations.

Rural healthcare is an issue that has also fallen behind over the years, but we addressed that challenge, too. I proposed and signed legislation to extend telehealth flexibilities to South Dakotans. Now, you can talk to your doctor over the internet from wherever you are, making it so much easier to get the healthcare that you need, even from a rural community.

We also improved training and purchased new equipment for our emergency first responders and are investing in regional emergency response services. This will have a particularly strong impact on our rural communities. We want to be sure that every South Dakotan can be taken care of in an emergency, no matter where you live.

Our entire state’s economy depends on agriculture, and this is doubly true in our small towns. Lieutenant Governor Larry Rhoden and I made our living farming and ranching, so we understand the challenges that our farmers face.  I worked to secure favorable trade deals that give our producers new markets to sell their goods. We provided grants to 99 small meat processors across the state to increase competition, which will benefit our ranchers. And we’re investing in opportunities to innovate our agriculture industry and keep it strong for the next generation.

Our rural communities are thriving in South Dakota. For the first time in a long time, our young folks are choosing to stay here. People are moving to our small towns to share our way of life. And we are making investments to build on this momentum and keep rural South Dakota strong for the future.

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This might be one of the best thing I’ve watched today:

🚨 Rep. @RashidaTlaib asked all major bank CEOs to submit to her ESG agenda and stop funding fossil fuels.

Their response?

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon: “Absolutely not and that would be the road to Hell for America.” pic.twitter.com/rGX7EjrVZj

— Consumers’ Research (@ConsumersFirst) September 21, 2022

Gov. Noem & Attorney General Vargo Praise Ruling on Head Start Vaccine Mandate

PIERRE, S.D. – Today, Governor Kristi Noem and Attorney General Mark Vargo praised a Louisiana federal judge’s permanent injunction that blocked President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for the Head Start program. The injunction was issued earlier this week.

“President Biden attempted to use the COVID pandemic as an excuse to expand federal power to an unconstitutional level. Thankfully, the court didn’t let him get away with it,” said Governor Noem. “This mandate would have taken away the Freedom of South Dakota teachers and negatively impacted our kids’ education as a result.”

South Dakota joined 23 other states in this lawsuit late last year. The mandate would have required teachers, contractors, and volunteers in Head Start Programs to be vaccinated by Jan. 31, 2022 or face the loss of jobs and programming.

Louisiana Western District Judge Terry Doughty had initially issued a temporary injunction in January, but Wednesday’s ruling was on the merits of the case. The Judge ruled that the President did not have the authority to issue such a mandate without the approval of Congress.

“This is an important decision because it reaffirms that the executive branch can’t issue such mandates without the approval of Congress,” said Attorney General Vargo. “We applaud the judge’s understanding about the need for checks and balances in our government.”

The lawsuit (Louisiana, et al. vs. Becerra, et al.) was led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Besides South Dakota, other states joining the lawsuit were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina; Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming, and West Virginia.

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Billboards starting to go up. pic.twitter.com/BPHVmsbdfj

— Rep. Fred Deutsch (@FredDeutsch) September 21, 2022

According to an image posted to Twitter today by State Representative Fred Deutsch, at least one billboard has been placed advertising against Initiated Measure 27 with a disclaimer that is was paid for by the (Al) Novstrup for State Senate, Brandei (Schaefbauer) for House and (Carl) Perry for State House campaigns, who are all running in District 3.

The South Dakota Canvassing group is at it again with pillow-guyesque conspiracy theories, claiming that they have hard evidence of problems with the state’s voter rolls. Except when asked for evidence, the challenges to the group’s assertion are met with a lot of redaction. Which is kind of funny, considering voter date is actually public information.

According to the subscriber only story posted today by Jon Ellis at Dakota Scout:

Materials released by South Dakota Canvassing Group during its Tuesday rally on the steps of the Old Courthouse Museum include affidavits alleging voting discrepancies. Members of the group say they  interviewed voters and registered voters who say that despite not voting, they’re showing up in voter participation rolls in the 2020 general election.

and..

Among the group’s claims was that 256 voters were older than 120 years old. Lund said that was because the state switched voting systems about a decade ago. Some voters on the old system didn’t have birth dates, and when the rolls migrated to the new system, it automatically gave people with no birthdates a birthday in 1900.

Lund said they can explain specific complaints, but not vague accusations.

“It’s so frustrating because I’m of the mindset that if there’s a problem, let’s fix it,” she said. “And they’re yelling, ‘There’s a problem. There’s a problem,’ but they won’t tell me what it is.”

Read the entire story at the Dakota Scout.

Rick Weible, a member of the group and author of election paranoia website Midwest Swamp watch was at my local GOP meeting last week going on about the claims, and went on about the people who were 120 years old (as noted in the above article by auditors as how they fixed records for those w/out birthdates in the system).

He was also going on about how in one county, all the RV voters voted on one day.  Which I would logically assume corresponds to the day they did the date entry at the office. That’s the problem with all the South Dakota election conspiracy theories. While it makes for fodder for the conspiracy minded, the real story falls a little flat.

Before coming out with mouths blazing and tongues wagging, none of these guys bother to ask if there’s a logical explanation. Nor can they point to anyone in South Dakota who was erroneously elected. So what’s the end game?  Disenfranchising voters who make South Dakota their home base? A push to going back to hand-counted ballots?

Neither one is terribly appealing.

Our county Auditors do a good job with the limited resources they have, in an ever more politically-charged environment when it comes to our elections.  It would nicer if they could do their job in an environment where conspiracy theories aren’t snatched up and amplified.

If you’ve noticed the site has been up and down a bit, I just finished working with the server people to turn away a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the website, so hopefully things will respond a little more promptly.

Seriously. Someone actually finds it worthwhile to go after a political website in the middle of South Dakota.

A correspondent noted to me this morning that the picture accompanying the article makes it look like even his companion at the event is incredulous at the crazy sh*t coming out of Jeff Barth’s mouth as the Democrat’s Public Utilities Commission Candidate just seems to be making stuff up at this point.

But read the article for yourselves and make up your own mind:

The Dakota Scout newspaper just released a story on-line about some of the convention fights that were had this last year at the GOP Convention.. but they might want to revisit one of their sources.

“Near as I can tell, these people hate Republicans,” the Watertown Republican said while referring to GOP delegates responsible for nearly upsetting Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden and Attorney General candidate Marty Jackley’s nominations at the South Dakota Republican Party Convention.

and…

“They didn’t like the outcome so they want to change the rules that favor themselves,” said Dave Roetman, an influential political operative in South Dakota politics who helped earn election victories for Johnson and other candidates whom his intra-GOP adversaries peg as “far-right” Republicans.

Read it all here.

Dave Roetman is influential in SD politics?  Er, maybe several elections ago, before he was ousted as chair by the Minnehaha County GOP, quietly removed as political director by the State GOP and most recently shown the door by the Monae Johnson campaign, as they promptly off-loaded him after the convention.

I’m not sure who else Dave can point to as support his alleged influence, as in his latest stint as co-founder of the Patriot Ripple Effect, a group who has been trying to replace incumbent elected officials, his track record hasn’t been so hot.

The other big item in the article by Sneve is that he completely and utterly ignores the main issue that those in local county Republican leadership have with what has come to be a biennial feature of the Republican Convention process, as brought to a head at the last Republican State Central Committee.  It’s that the people who come to convention simply to vote for these candidates show up for one day. And like a liquidation sale, it’s one day only.

More than one County GOP official has lamented the fact that the precinct committeeman and committeewoman positions were originally set up to assist the county organizations with their campaign activities in the counties, but many of the people who are coming in for the Saturday convention candidate vote are open about saying they only signed up to vote for their candidate and they’re never to be seen again.

They don’t volunteer, they don’t donate. Most won’t ever show up for a meeting. Yet, they believe they’re entitled to be a representative voice of the Republicans in their precinct, which their votes at last couple of conventions don’t exactly illustrate. And party leadership is getting a bit tired of it.

The world is ran by people who show up. And that’s what both the GOP Central Committee and Senator Schoenbeck each want to ensure in their own way.

Ice Man has a message for all his fans…

“Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Ice and I hope to be back on the range very soon. @DakotaScoutJoe pic.twitter.com/8CSmtIEZvT

— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) September 18, 2022