Republicans don’t create; they’ve shut off that positive part of themselves and channeled it into finding more clever and devious ways to break things. Here’s another example from South Dakota:
The emergency package passed the House on Tuesday and is moving through a Senate committee on Wednesday, with a full floor vote in the upper chamber expected on Thursday. Once the GOP supermajorities finish up, state employees and lawmakers will be safe once again from independent investigations of public corruption in state government.
The new ethics rules would also have restricted lobbyist gifts to lawmakers, set new limits for campaign contributions, and made it harder for former state officials to move into lobbying roles. A narrow majority of voters approved the reforms after months of heated back-and-forth between the state chapters of two national organizations with wildly divergent ideas about the effort to restrict private influence in public affairs.
The opposition campaign was bankrolled primarily by the Koch brothers, through the South Dakota chapter of their Americans for Prosperity network. Supporters from the South Dakota chapter of Represent.us, a Massachusetts-based anti-corruption group, were also relying on out-of-state money. AFP nonetheless positioned itself as a loyal home-team resisting carpetbagger interference, CPI reported. The Kochs’ South Dakota chapter is run by a conservative operative who has lived in the state for two decades.
South Dakota — where early white settlers were accustomed to doing business through graft — enjoys a lousy ethics reputation even in modern times.
