The Buffalo Ridge Blog, coming to us from somewhere in western Minnesota, laughs at Governor Dennis Daugaard's impending Mall of America recruiting trip:

Yup, the GOP governor of South Dakota... is coming to the Mall of America to persuade all us overpaid Minnesotans to move to South Dakota where unions are all but illegal to work for less. Less like in $12 an hour to drive a double trailer rig to haul twice the payload at half the pay. Less like unfilled jobs in South Dakota offering that same low teens dollars per hour for skilled machinists and welders. And way less like semi skilled jobs paying minimum wage. No thanks, South Dakota… I’ll stay retired on my union pension in Minnesota that pays more than your jobs! ["SD Gov invites Minnesotans to work in SD, MN ROTFL!" Buffalo Ridge Blog, 2013.05.07]

In an April post, BRB illustrates the point that Minnesotans get value for the dollar with their higher taxes:

So what do we get for our state tax dollar? Well, our small towns on the Buffalo Ridge are a good measure. My home town of less than a hundred souls maintains paved streets, a water system, a park, and a bunch of other stuff towns do, and about half of that is paid for by local government aid from the state ["Tax Trilogy: The States… You Get What You Pay For!" Buffalo Ridge Blog, 2013.04.21].

With local government aid, Minnesota makes a commitment to help rural towns provide residents with basic services and quality of life comparable to what bigger city Minnesotans enjoy. That makes it a little easier for small Minnesota towns to compete for residents and business development. Meanwhile, South Dakota focuses on economic development plans that help our big towns get bigger while accelerating the emigration of talent from rural areas.

BRB also catalogs the federal largesse that keeps South Dakota afloat:

Over the better part of a century the Dakotas have benefited from a  plethora of pork barrel projects. The WPA was just the warmup, followed by the Missouri River dams and hydro projects, the Interstate System, the world’s 3rd largest armada of ICBMs, multiple military bases, four laning highways to towns of less than 10,000, and now billion dollar flood control projects. The highway projects are illustrative- by objective standards I-29 would have ended at Sioux Falls and in fact wasn’t on the original Interstate System planning maps back in the 1930s. But thanks to lobbying by the Dakota’s long serving (read “high seniority”) congresscritters, I-29 was penciled in. In it’s wake came a bunch of other 80% fed funded highway projects, like the 4 laning of US2, US12, US81, US83, US85, etc. [BRB, 2013.04.21]

South Dakota is a red-state moocher, and our Minnesota neighbors know it. Asking them to come join our economic model may be a hard sell for Governor Daugaard at the Mall of America.

Hey, you know that big dairy operation up by Ramona whose management has a history of breaking environmental rules and dodging taxes? Lake County Dairy LLC, managed by Rick Millner?

Guess who's delinquent on Lake County property taxes:

Property tax record, Lake County online database; screen caps taken 2013.04.15 18:00 MDT

The Lake County property tax database lists 416 of its 10,340 tax records as having "delinquent taxes on this parcel". As shown in the records above, the six parcels owned by Lake County Dairy, LLC, are listed twice as delinquent, since apparently no one in manager Rick Millner's office has bothered to pay any of the taxes due for 2011, the first half of which would have been due on April 30, 2012, and the second half of which would have been due on October 31, 2012. These six parcels include the old Swier apartment building at 150 East 4th Street on the south side of Ramona, which I find listed in various directories but not in the Secretary of State's corporate database as "Lake County Dairy Housing."

I checked with the Lake County Treasurer's office. The office assured me there is no clerical error here.

Once again, Rick Millner is not following the rules. He's already stiffed one local contractor for $23,000. Now he's cheating all Lake County taxpayers. Lake County, you were warned.

One of my Republican friends noted yesterday that a lot of RINO flak around U.S. Senate candidate M. Michael Rounds focuses on his weak fiscal conservatism, not his weak social conservatism. I would welcome a stiff GOP primary where a majority of the shouting was about taxing, spending, and sloppy money management rather than another tired reiteration of the culture war.

Of course, any Republican South Dakota legislators contending that M. Michael Rounds isn't Grover Norquist enough will have to explain why they voted to increase tax rates during the 2013 Legislative session. Josh Verges explains that taxes in the Sioux Falls school district are going up largely because the Republican Legislature approved increased in the property tax levy for schools.

Take a look at this year's Senate Bill 28, which increases the maximum school general fund levy 6.6%. Of the thirteen South Dakota listed as signatories of the Grover Norquist no-taxes pledge, eleven voted voted for this tax rate increase. The House roll call vote shows that Reps. Craig, Hickey, May, Miller, Olson, Schremp, and Westra violated their pledge to Grover. In the Senate, Senators Lederman, Monroe, Otten, and Peters broke their promise to "vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes."

The only two South Dakota legislators who stuck to their word (at the expense, of course, of practical budgeting for our K-12 system... but dangit, pragmatism is a dirty synonym for liberal!) are Senator Phil Jensen and Rep. Stace Nelson.

Stace Nelson... haven't folks been talking about him as a guy who could challenge Mike Rounds in the primary?

Nebraska rancher and lifelong Republican Randy Thompson understands what South Dakota Republicans (and Senator Tim Johnson) refuse to admit: the Keystone XL pipeline is all risk and no reward:

The risks to our country’s freshwater, and the risks to our land, are ammunition enough for the President to reject the pipeline.

But the fact that the tar sands oil will be exported to countries like China and Venezuela, and won’t even stay in the U.S. puts me over the edge — because it means that American citizens like me would be taking on all of the risk so that Big Oil and foreign countries could get the reward [Randy Thompson, "All Risk, No Reward," York (NE) News Times, 2013.04.06].

I couldn't agree more, Randy!

Thompson is thus chairing the new All Risk No Reward Coalition, which is telling President Obama not to socialize TransCanada's risks just to boost Big Oil's profits.

Dakota Rural Action has joined the All Risk No Reward Coalition. Unlike the Republican Party, they've been fighting to protect South Dakota landowner rights from TransCanada's predations from the beginning. Now they want to highlight both the environmental risks and the financial costs South Dakotans will bear if Keystone XL blows a gasket:

The All Risk and No Reward Coalition focuses on the risks to landowners, water, and the environment posed by the Keystone XL pipeline – risks that are on display in recent Arkansas tar sands spill. The Pegasus pipeline spilled over 80,000 gallons of diluted bitumen, the harsh chemical-ridden substance that will be flowing through the Keystone XL pipeline. But while the Arkansas spill happened in a well-populated area with quick emergency response teams available, any spill that will occur in South Dakota will not have that kind of support.

Because the IRS does not consider diluted bitumen to be oil, companies transporting tar sands oil are exempt from paying into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. The tax-free tar sands product flowing through South Dakota in the Keystone XL pipeline would be exempt from paying into the fund which is used to pay for oil spills. This means South Dakotans will have to rely on taxpayer dollars to pay for a spill, because the state legislature has declined to require a bond from TransCanada for the pipeline [Dakota Rural Action, press release, 2013.04.08].

Now TransCanada might be nice like Exxon and pay for the cleanup of a Keystone XL tar sands spill anyway... but should we take that chance? Should we let TransCanada lay that risk on us before we've change federal tax law and state bonding law to hold them accountable?

The Keystone XL pipeline is essentially corporate welfare. We take a whole lot of risk off TransCanada's (and Canada's!) shoulders, we don't charge them for the favor, they increase their profits, and we get no lasting benefits in return. Even Republicans should recognize that's a bad deal for South Dakota.

Related: The Oglala Sioux Tribe passed a resolution March 26 reaffirming its commitment to stopping the Keystone XL pipeline "from crossing the Mni Wiconi Water Line, any part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and any and all 1851 and 1868 treaty lands." An organization called Owe Aku International is holding the Moccasins on the Ground Tour of Resistance, which brought over 300 activists to Manderson last month for training in direct action techniques to stop Keystone XL construction. Talli Nauman reports that another Moccasins on the Ground training took place near Yankton (Lake Andes, actually) last weekend, and a third is shaping up for Eagle Butte later this month.

Spearfish High School held a career fair for the sophomores yesterday. The nice businesspeople who came to my classroom to hold forth about the real world said, among other things, that they see a big need in every field for people who can write well and proofread.

Meanwhile in Aberdeen, Brown County Commissioners want the City of Aberdeen to pay $358 to cover a tax abatement caused by City Attorney Adam Altman's clerical errors:

The issue was broached at today's commission meeting by Mary Worlie, Brown County director of equalization. She and [Commissioner Duane] Sutton said there have been too many recent clerical errors involving legal descriptions on documents from Adam Altman, city attorney.

Sutton noted that a legal description was also inadvertently left out of  Tax Increment Financing district paperwork involving a plan to convert buildings at old Central High School into apartments.

And, Worlie said, there's another potential abatement resulting from an incorrect legal description on a deed. She said each of the documents was prepared by Altman.

Sutton said the mistakes are aggravating. He said he doesn't think getting the proper legal description on documents should be that difficult [Scott Waltman, "Weary of Clerical Errors, County Sends Abatement to City," Aberdeen American News, 2013.03.26].

City Attorney Altman says he's frustrated that the county didn't invite him to the meeting to discuss these errors first. Aberdeen's counsel also "doubts that errors in legal descriptions are all that unique"... which leads one to wonder how many other folks in Aberdeen have paid more property tax than necessary due to a slip of the pen.

I have a friend about to take the bar exam. I'll ask him what they teach in law school about proofreading and attention to detail.

Rep. Kristi Noem justifies the GOP's destructive fiscal policy with this inaccurate statement:

We’ve got more federal revenue coming into our coffers this year than we ever have in history. We haven’t seen a dramatic downfall in tax receipts or income. So we know that really what has caused this deficit spending and continued debt to accumulate has been the actions of what this government is doing [Rep. Kristi Noem, unofficial transcript, radio interview with Mike Adams, AgriTalk, 2013.03.18].

Rep. Noem is parroting numerous fellow Republicans with this deceptive "record federal revenue" line. In raw dollars, yes, Uncle Sam will set a record for collections. But in nominal dollars, we're still at a remarkable low for federal revenues as a chunk of the total economy:

This Republican talking point is rooted in a government report issued Feb. 5 by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023.” CBO projects that the U.S. government will collect more than $2.7 trillion in fiscal 2013. In nominal dollars, that would be higher than any year in history — topping the previous peak of $2.57 trillion in 2007 (See Table 1.1).

But it’s misleading to talk about revenues in nominal dollars. Economists prefer to view historic revenues as percentages of GDP. In fiscal 2013, federal tax revenues are projected to equal 16.9 percent of the nation’s economy, which is below the post-World War II average of 17.7 percent [Jesse DuBois, "Record Revenues," FactCheck.org, 2013.03.21].

So far, every year under the Obama Administration, the federal government has collected less than 16% of GDP in revenue. From 1950 to 2008, Uncle Sam collected between 16.1 and 20.6% of GDP in revenue. President Obama is still taking less of your money than Dwight D. Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan did.

The "record revenues" Rep. Noem and the GOP are squawking about are really a return to the low end of the recent historical normal range of net investment in federal services. (But I keep forgetting that Noem wants to send fiscal policy back to 1910.)

Rep. Noem's claim that "We haven’t seen a dramatic downfall in tax receipts or income" ignores reality... or at least redefines dramatic. From 2008 to 2009, federal revenues dropped 16%. If you wouldn't consider a 16% drop in your income dramatic, you've got steelier fiscal nerves than most of us.

Economist Dean Baker explains that Rep. Noem's portrayal of the expansion of the deficit as a result of irresponsible spending is simply wrong:

The deficit expanded enormously in 2008 and peaked in 2009 at 11.1 percent of GDP. But this wasn’t caused by some extravagant spending spree or an orgy of permanent tax cuts. It was caused by the fall in tax collections that occurs every time the economy goes into a downturn, coupled with the increase in spending for countercyclical programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps. There were additional spending and tax cuts associated with President Obama’s stimulus plan. But the overwhelming majority of them were explicitly temporary, and the impact on the deficit would be negligible by 2011 [Dean Baker, "Fix the Debt's Fuzzy Math," The Nation, 2013.02.20].

When Rep. Kristi Noem starts talking about fiscal policy, you might as well check your text messages. Our Congresswoman's pronouncements on the budget are just repetitions of propaganda you can hear from any other Republican, and they are just plain wrong.

Nathan Johnson finds that South Dakota has the third-least fair tax system in the nation, behind Washington and Florida. Pat Powers somehow justifies that unenviable status by noting that every state's tax system has unfairness, then starts aping Ayn Rand.

Powers also uses a dependent clause to assert Sue Wismer's socialism. Why do I bother?

Because Pat Powers is wrong. He forgets that, as an apologist for GOP skinflintery that makes South Dakota the fourth-biggest red-state moocher, he has no moral authority to complain about people using other people's money.

To the immediate point, in the cited text, none of the experts impugning South Dakota's tax system, including the estimable Dr. Nesiba from Augie, suggests excusing everyone but Pat's country-club friends from paying taxes. Dr. Nesiba simply offers the not-radical-anywhere-but-South-Dakota suggestion that poor folks ought not pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than rich folks.

In related news, I paged through the statewide Sales and Use Tax Report for Calendar Year 2012. Across South Dakota last year, gross sales were up 8.3%, to $67.2 billion. Taxable sales rose just 5.1%, to $18.6 billion.

We imposed taxes on $18.6 billion out of $67.2 billion of sales. We let 72% of the wealth moving around in South Dakota change hands untaxed. We don't tax the glitzy ads produced by the firm founded by GOP chair Craig Lawrence and purchased by well-to-do customers. But we tax the groceries we all need to feed our kids.

So shall we play Pin the Moocher-Tale on the Donkey... or should we be pinning that tale on the Elephants?

Indeed, my heart is gladdened: the Displaced Plainsman reports that conservative and liberal politicians tend to overestimate the conservatism of their constituents. LK points to Garance Franke-Ruta's hypothesis that legislators get a right-skewed impression of their constituents through exposure to highly-organized and loud conservative lobbying groups. And as avid Pierre-watcher David Montgomery observes, conservatives in our Capitol yell louder than liberals. Perhaps that explains our Legislature's blind spot on abortion, supporting extreme abortion restrictions that a majority of South Dakota voters consistently reject.

Franke-Ruta summarizes the working paper on this rightward misreading of the electorate as suggesting that "there's an effective supermajority requirement for passing liberal bills within state legislatures." Interesting: the South Dakota Legislature is trying to extend the formal supermajority requirement for passing arguably liberal tax increases to the initiative process via Senate Joint Resolution 2.

Think about that: our legislators want to ensure that, even if hardcore fiscal conservatives are in the minority, they can prevent tax increases at the ballot box. But they don't consider a rule that reducing our taxes and thus starving vital public services should also require a two-thirds vote. We build a conservative bias into our political process, as if we are afraid that majority rule won't always support the political agenda of the current party in power.

Why should conservatives be entitled to such favor? If we're going to govern by supermajority, let's apply that standard to every vote. Otherwise, let's pull the two-thirds requirement on tax increases and let the voters work their will, fair and sqaure.