While Mike Rounds's apologists whine and wheedle, Libertarian Kurt Evans offers an apt response to the GOP Senate candidate's deceptive dodge on his irresponsible promotion of Northern Beef Packers and the EB-5 visa investment program:
[DISCLAIMER: The following comment is intended ironically.]
EB-5 is the greatest federal job-creation program ever invented. Without it your children would be starving. And Mike Rounds didn’t have anything to do with it. It was invented by liberal Democrats like Rick Weiland’s political mentor Tom Daschle.
Rounds didn’t run EB-5. And he didn’t appoint Richard Benda. And he didn’t hire Dick Wadhams. And he definitely doesn’t preapprove these nasty press releases.
And those air molecules you’re breathing in Aberdeen? They wouldn’t have been there for you if the Northern Beef construction equipment hadn’t slightly altered the wind currents.
Liberal Obama Democrat Rick Weiland wants everyone in Aberdeen to suffocate.
Keep it classy, Manager Mike [Kurt Evans, comment, Dakota War College, 2014.09.05].
Mike Rounds backed a boondoggle with a boondoggle. He can only defend his failure with flim-flam. Good call, Kurt!
Cory Heidelberger wrote:
>"Good call, Kurt!"
Thanks, Cory. From a tactical standpoint, Rounds would probably do well to choose between the claim that he didn't run EB-5 and the claim that "thousands of hard-working [sic] South Dakotans would be out of a job" without it. From a moral standpoint, he'd probably do well to abandon both of those claims.
I want Mike Rounds to show me one person who has a job in South Dakota right now at Northern Beef Packers or any other project he backed with EB-5 dollars who would not otherwise be working.
Cory, is that even possible? If we don't have access to South Dakota's EB-5 records, how would we know which projects in SD were funded with it? Maybe that's why Pat Duffy did the "all call" in the press conference. "Hey folks, anybody out there know anything about this? Anyone? Anyone? Beuhler?" *crickets*
In a previous post, Cory Heidelberger had written:
>>>"[Rounds] repeated his argument that we gained more than we put in thanks to the taxes paid by the EB-5 projects."
And I'd commented:
>>"As if all the people whose hard work on those projects generated the tax dollars in question would have been sitting on the couch watching TV without EB-5 ... Rounds is promoting an extremely anti-libertarian understanding of economics."
https://madvilletimes.com/2014/08/roundss-glass-jaw-weiland-pressler-howie-hammer-eb-5-policy-and-scandal/#comment-351472
Today Cory writes:
>"I want Mike Rounds to show me one person who has a job in South Dakota right now at Northern Beef Packers or any other project he backed with EB-5 dollars who would not otherwise be working."
Rounds seems to be suggesting that employment generated apart from government isn't real employment, and that the value of human endeavors is determined by the number of tax dollars those endeavors generate.
I'm not trying to offend you, Cory, but he's making you seem like an anti-government radical by comparison.
They are making the tactical decision that people will look into eb5 and see that these projects did happen. But not see the other side of things, empty buildings, bankruptcies, and communities coping with the burden.
The second part of this tactical decision has to do with how their opponents would respond to this. By the opponents pointing out the above they are making it partisan. Republicans will not take seriously any claim brought forward by its opponents. The solution is for Wieland to goto Aberdeen, and talk to the contractors and the old workers and community leaders about how disastrous NBP was to the community. It would be better if it could come from a non-profit not related to Wieland though.
The problem with that tactical decision, Dale, is that the first thing we look at is Mike Rounds's flagship EB-5 project, Northern Beef Packers, where everything went wrong, where all the shady financing and cronyism is laid bare.
Someone's got to bring it forward, Dale. Northern Beef Packers started laying people off in April 2013. It went under in July 2013. Weiland waited that entire time for some non-profit (who? seriously, realistically, practically, who in the non-profit world takes on that attack?) to bring that message out. He has no time to lose. It's his issue to bring forward on behalf of everyone who got screwed in South Dakota.
No offense taken, Kurt, because that's exactly the critique that every conscientious conservative should hit Rounds as they check Gordon Howie's name on the ballot.
Mr. PP has a good post this afternoon about how EB-5 is the last glomming on that some of the libbie candidates have. And they are sinking and lashing out, he says.
You all should read it some.
PP is a white supremacist, a cult member and an earth hater who goads people with whom he disagrees using a panoply of aliases in the comment section.
I get a kick out of how the establishment SDGOP is trying to not only neutralize the EB-5 scandal but also have Rounds staff members posting as Blue Dog Democrats, Democrats slamming Rick Weiland or the state Dem Party in an attempt to divide and conquer.
grudz,
PP has a good post this afternoon, hardly. There were 31 comments on the post, most of them from some guy named anonymous and of course Bill Flemming, who has a strong stomach and debate those clowns.
Powers is using Wadham's talking points in attempt to defuse what Powers call Rick's mass of destruction.
The tide is slowly shifting on EB-5, the up coming debates will add little more than we already know.
What will be explosive is September 23 when Rounds and Daugaard refuse to give sworn testimony before GOAC.
Rounds and Daugaard can run and hide from debates, they can't run from GOAC.
If they do choose to testify under oath, all evidence and questions should be put on the table. If they refuse to testify under oath, that will be big news too.
Susan Wismer and the SDDP has effectively cornered them.
The recent puke-inducing ad from Rounds in the Department of Partisan Pornography division of his campaign is becoming a classic GOP tactic. Bring up any of the legitimate complaints and facts about any GOP failure and a Democrat is attacked for negativism and harping on old history. Ironically, the same GOP ads are no more than outright attack mudslinging lies itself coupled with somebody like smilin mike coming on with his smarmy insurance agent's smile and acting all positive and just part of apple pie, baseball, and motherhood America.
The same kind of trainload of crap is being used to attack Obama for the errors and incompetence spewing from Bush and Reagan administrations as if their retrograde economics and militarism had nothing whatsoever to do with current mess.
Mr. Wiken, I thought you hated Mr. Obama. Aren't you over there in the little tent-of-insanity with Sibby?
Grudznick, I don't hate Obama or any other politicians. Obama has missed many opportunities and despite his reputation as an orator, has failed miserably in using the "Bully Pulpit" to overcome the nonsense that the GOP mighty wurlitzer spews into news and opinion every day. Whatever actual failings Obama has however, he is head and shoulders above any Bush and Reagan.
grudz, Wiken is an angry old white man, he hates everybody, especially Indians.
Troy is over at the toilet mansplaining polls and why the ones he disagrees with are wrong: pathetic really.