Rounds is starting to look like his hero Reagan more and more everyday

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[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHXq8TRejow[/youtube]

Was Larry Pressler having a few ‘senior moments’ in yesterday’s ‘100 Eyes’ interview? He sure was. He talked about how our military should use more lasers and how the US military should stop giving our AK-47’s away (Hey Larry, I’m not even a gun person, but I think we use M-16’s). He also talked about how he voted for Obama instead of ‘Ted’ Romney (whoever that guy is). The best part of the interview was when he couldn’t decide whether he was pro-life or pro-choice (which really makes you pro-choice). Even with all of Larry’s fumbling about guns and abortion, I’m not as concerned about his memory loss as Governor Rounds. He seems to be pulling a Ronald Reagan lately.

I had a contributor to this post

Just look at Rounds’ involvement, with not only EB-5, but the No-Bid contracts legacy.

It’s interesting to note a bit of wiggle room in Mike Rounds’ statement given to KELO TV broadcasted on October 2, 2014. Many South Dakotans have tried to open the veil of secrecy of the No-Bid contract system of state government for many years. Marian Michael Rounds and Dennis Daugaard have opened the doors just a crack. Too bad it took an unusual suicide and the fleecing of international money to move it into the forefront.

He states there was no conspiracy. In the decades following the election of William Janklow in 1978, the Republican governors who followed worked the tried and true process of closing all pretenses of open government. Let me try to explain how questionable conspiracy has become such a way of life in South Dakota state government, those in power can no longer see it.

A hallmark of the 1970 election of Richard Kniep was “open the books”. The decades long good old boys club of GOP rule in Pierre caused the power holders to become sloppy during the Farrar years. The people of South Dakota finally had enough of it. The groundswell of support for cleaning up the mess brought a group of legislators to Pierre to do the cleaning.  The no-bid contracts, special access passes and other conspiratorial activities exposed during the 1970 campaigns gave the Democrats in power the mission to open government.

We began to hear things like sunshine laws, open meetings rules, open records acts and other phrases new to our ears. We had leaders with a zeal unmatched before or after to make government clean. The first 4 years of the Kniep administration moved the state into a modern reporting period. We also had a fantastic group of Republican legislators who were very helpful in accomplishing these goals, but make no mistake the leadership of the Kniep administration made open records, law.

The electoral success of Bill Janklow began the information dismantling process. We have been through two Janklow periods, Miller, Mickelson, Rounds and now the Daugaard terms where secrecy is the way of life. No more open government. No more answering questions. No more meetings records are kept. E-Mails destroyed (BTW, any IT person worth their salt would be able to go back to the years of backup tapes federal law requires them to keep to get the data).

Secrecy is such a way of life now in state government, Mike Rounds can look comfortably into a camera and say a no-bid contract signed by a state employee to himself is just fine because it keeps South Dakota competitive in the EB-5 world. His office’s receipt of the legal documents from California and his denial of notice add an interesting twist to his involvement. Janklow might have been able to convince the world of his ways but Rounds’ actions keep getting muddier. How many of you have been actually in the Governor’s office suite in Pierre. It is a small set of offices. The service of legal papers on the staff would create a bit of a stir. The main door to the private governor’s office is mere inches from the secretaries desk. The secretaries of past governors present items to the office with expediency. If the Chief of Staff accepts the paperwork, it is put immediately on the governor’s calendar.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiz20TR7qXk[/youtube]

We can be assured AG Marty Jackley has possibly performed a shallow investigation or likely none at all. What we’ll likely find out at some point after the November balloting are the results of the forensic work of the Federal investigators. The Federal investigations do not happen overnight or in public. Mike Rounds like the other governors tainted by the no-bid contracts they approve are currently hiding behind a very thin veil likely pulled back after the election.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FekSvXxnS4g&[/youtube]

To the suckers who believe the Mike Rounds “I see nothing” story here is what it sounded like from our childhood:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PibDMGxiyJw[/youtube]

EB-5 isn’t Rounds’ first Scandalous Rodeo

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mikerounds

He was lying 8 years ago, and he keeps lying today.

While things in the EB-5 world are heating up for Rounds (signing off on SDRC’s contract and now the Brown County Commission asking for a banking commission investigation) the stonewalling at Dakota Wuss College continues, and of course the lying (Wadhams claiming Kathy Tyler had a secret meeting with Brendan Johnson when all she said is that she talked to him, kind of like when I waited on him a couple of months ago and I asked him what he would like to drink, does our beverage conversation count as a secret conversation? I think he said something like, “I’ll take a merlot, and did you know, Rounds is guilty as Hell.” (snarc)

The lies get more ridiculous by the day, I hope they are paying BK Jr. good to purport all those lies on his ‘blog’. Pat really should have taken some lessons from the original fake political blogger, Jon Lauck.

But enough of those yahoos.

I wanted to remind everyone of all the other scandals Rounds was involved with while serving as governor, some of you have short memories;

Using his gigantic fleet of state owned airplanes for personal use, then paying the fuel bill from the Governor’s club fund ‘after’ he was busted. It was so scandalous at the time, Professor Reynold Nesiba got it on the ballot to limit Rounds’ travels, and the good people of SD agreed.

Increased the FTE’s by over a thousand during his short tenure, giving many jobs to family members and family members of campaign contributors.

No bid contracts to campaign contributors. Just call Scott Lawrence over at Lawrence and Schiller, he will explain it all to you, or maybe his dad can, you know, Craig Lawrence, the guy running the State GOP now.

Elkpoint / Hyperion fiasco. That has so many layers, don’t even know where to begin. How is that project going by the way? And how much state tax dollars were wasted?

Millions in subsidies to TransCanada, that they didn’t need or ask for.

Taking public education funding in SD back to the stone age (remember, one of Rounds’ objectives is to get rid of the Federal Department of Education as senator).

I could go on, but you get the gist. Why on earth any South Dakotan would want to send this crook to Washington is beyond me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have 100% confidence in Weiland or even Pressler as our next Senator, but I will say this about the two gentlemen, one was honored for his integrity and the other wants to fix healthcare by offering a public Medicare option, which is what the ACA should have offered from the freaking beginning.

All we will get with Marion Mike Rounds is more scandals, afterall, this is a guy who doesn’t even use his first name. Even Alice Cooper has more integrity then that.

 

An interesting observation on EB-5

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While Maddville and Dakota Wuss College go at it over who is lying about EB-5 (Mostly Rounds) I found an interesting twist on how Rounds ran EB-5 in this article;

Other press reports placed these fees — which are totally unregulated by the feds — at a flat, one-time payment of $30,000 to the regional center, and $15,000 to lawyers (who were probably related to the center.)

All of these fees, except the legal ones, would have gone to the state government had it not been for the contract with the Rounds administration

Let’s think about this conversion of a unit of a public university to a for-profit entity for a moment and discuss a hypothetical analogy:

Suppose the dean of the Engineering School at the hypothetical Maryland State Institute of Technology, discovered that some patents the school owned were about to become very valuable. Do you suppose the dean could persuade the president of MSIT to spin off the engineering school (including the patents) to the dean’s personal ownership, for a nominal return? That sound’s pretty unlikely, but that is exactly what happened in South Dakota at Northern State University.

I am puzzled as to why the facts outlined above — none of them secret — have not exploded into a major scandal in South Dakota. Here’s a situation in which one might well talk about self-dealing, conflicts of interest, depriving the state government of millions in revenues, the fiduciary responsibilities of state officials (such as Bollen), and the like.

I suggest you read the entire article. It is intriguing because what this blogger does is point out what is ‘scandalous’ about EB-5 that has already being reported to us, and fairly obvious to those who have been following the mess, and how the media isn’t effectively relaying that message to voters and constituents.

As the article points out, why hasn’t this exploded into a major scandal? Our apologetic, underpaid, advertorial media is mostly to blame.

Bring it on!

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bringiton

Towards the end of the Governor candidate debate yesterday at the state fair, Myers asked that Governor Daugaard be asked to swear on the bible to testify about EB-5, Dennis yelled out at Myers (in the above image) ‘Bring it on!’ a couple of times.

We are waiting Dennis, we are waiting.