Derailing the Green New Scam Starts in South Dakota

Save America, Stop Corporate Welfare: Vote NO on RL 21

If only more states were like South Dakota, the only state in the nation to reject Department of Energy rebates in Kamala’s Inflation Reduction Act. This continues the policy of rejecting Environmental Protection Agency grants in 2023. Refusing this inflationary corporate welfare, choosing to prioritize the taxpayers over political pet projects, shows leadership that’s poorly needed across our country.

Ian Fury, spokesman for South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, stated, "the federal government’s wasteful spending, much of it at the behest of President Biden, is the single largest cause of the inflation crisis that our nation finds itself in.”

However, if South Dakota had a harbor, you can bet there would be some tea in it right now. The passage of Senate Bill 201 is an unprecedented encroachment on private property rights and one of the most flagrant acts of corporate cronyism in our history.

I’m confused why the state legislature would embrace a meaningless carbon dioxide pipeline and pave the way for its construction. Is the grift just too much to reject? As California has learned firsthand, you don’t make energy more affordable and more reliable by handing out corporate welfare. It’s time to eliminate federal subsidies, full stop. All of them. They are inflationary and are crushing the least among us in higher costs for everything.

Fortunately, South Dakotans have the opportunity to vote in November on Referred Law 21 (RL21), a ballot initiative to overturn SB 201 and protect private property rights of its’ citizens.

Through SB 201, the state stripped away nearly all county authority to usher through the land grab for a massive carbon dioxide pipeline, giving the state’s Public Utilities Commission the ability to override local control. Instead of protecting landowners, as the bill’s deceitful nickname “Landowner Bill of Rights” suggests, it cedes unprecedented land acquisition power. It’s akin to the Inflation Reduction Act reducing inflation.

It flies in the face of the system our founding fathers designed, giving the most power to local governments, who by sheer proximity better understand the needs of their unique constituency. What works in one community may not fit well with another, but this bill “took the voice away from county commissioners and gave it to three people in Pierre,” one county commissioner said.

One state senator continued, “It would entirely preempt all local laws and ordinances where citizens and communities voiced their opinions, and local governments did their job and passed land use ordinances.”

SB 201 is an unconscionable act of corporate cronyism, an unapologetic land grab to pave the way for a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline crossing 460 miles of South Dakotans’ land. 

The legislature claimed the pipeline constituted “public benefit” — terminology that then makes pipeline construction eligible for eminent domain — when in reality, it’s for corporate benefit alone. Calling carbon dioxide pipelines “public benefit” is a ludicrous abuse of science and of government power. Carbon sequestration projects are pure greenwashing that provide no environmental benefit. All they accomplish is higher prices as businesses are forced to waste time and manpower to keep environmentalists at bay. 

All this is happening because of the rise of environmental, social, and governance (ESG), a philosophy that threatens publicly owned businesses with vicious public shaming campaigns, divestment by Wall Street firms, and loss of access to essential financial services. And, it’s happening because Democrats are throwing billions of your dollars, not just to appease their donors, but directly to their donors in hopes of filling their campaign coffers. Unfortunately, some Republicans are going along with the scam. Those billions of dollars are hard to turn down. The morally bankrupt “I’m gonna get mine” mentality is literally bankrupting our country; the politicians that are going along with it need to be held accountable. One way to do that is at the ballot, a NO vote on RL21 would be a good start.

America is no longer free if well-connected corporations can simply seize citizens’ private property, including taxpayer dollars, for their newest political pet projects.