"[H]orsehockey in top hat and spats."
Amid heaps of praise on South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem from Republican members of the Minnesota Legislature and across Greater Minnesota conservative social media networks, it's a cold bucket of water on that adulation to read Cory Allen Heidelberger's Dakota Free Press.
On Sunday, he looks at recent reportage by Bob Mercer and Seth Tupper at SDPB in Noem Expands Lies About Coronavirus Job Recovery, Says Government Jobs Don’t Matter to South Dakota Economy.
And he has the receipts.
A taste:
Last week Bob Mercer had the guts to point out Governor Kristi Noem’s bald-faced lie about South Dakota’s job recovery during the coronavirus pandemic. In an August 14 press release, Governor Noem claimed, “South Dakota’s economy, having never been shut down, has recovered nearly 80% of our job losses.” Mercer pointed to public data summarized for and presented to the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors on August 18 showing that the job rebound since the onset of the pandemic is more like 48%, which by no mathematical or logical method may be characterized as “nearly 80%.”
In other words, Governor Noem lied.
Now Seth Tupper points to additional data indicting Noem’s economic exaggeration from Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation analyst Richard Cofer, who told the South Dakota Banking Commission Thursday that by his count our coronavirus-recession job recovery stands at 43.5% . . .
Government jobs are irrelevant to economic calculations, says the Texas boy [Ian Fury]who left the Beltway to live in Pierre and spout Noem’s nonsense for $112,200 a year.
Fury’s claim that “Historically, government jobs don’t tie to recessionary activity” is horsehockey in top hat and spats. Government provides the largest percentage of jobs in South Dakota—18.1% statewide, according to another of Cofer’s slides, and 25% in non-metro South Dakota. That’s significantly more dependence on socialist employment that the nationwide 15.0% rate of government employment.* . . .
To review the main points Governor Noem gets risibly wrong:
- South Dakota has not recovered 80% or even 50% of the jobs lost since the onset of the coronavirus recession.
- Government jobs matter to during a recession.
- Government jobs matter even more in South Dakota, where a larger percentage of people, like Ian Fury, depend on government for their paychecks than in the rest of the country.
Especially in this time of crisis, South Dakotans really need a Governor who doesn’t lie to them. But the more time Kristi spends with Donald, the more she brings back to sneeze on us the real Trump virus of shameless, self-serving falsehood.
We looked at false claims by a North Dakota conservative that the state of South Dakota did no contact tracing in Meanwhile in South Dakota, COVID-19 positive rate has exceeded 10 percent for eight days.
Meanwhile, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported Sunday in Coronavirus in South Dakota: Cases rise by 380 Sunday, state surpasses 13,000 cases total:
New positive cases of coronavirus continue to surge in South Dakota, as 380 new positive tests were reported Sunday by the state health department.
More than 2,000 cases have been reported in the last seven days, accounting for about 15% of South Dakota's total cases during the coronavirus pandemic.
No additional deaths were reported, keeping the statewide total of COVID-19-related fatalities to 167. . . .
Of the 380 new cases Sunday, over half of them were attributed to people between the ages of 10-29 -- 154 of them were people aged 20-29 and 60 were in those between the ages of 10-19. . . .
The number of active cases in the state is almost double what it was at the height of the peak in May (1,393) when an outbreak at Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls led to national attention.
The positive test rate for Sunday was 33.2% out of 1,145 tests total.
Here in Summit, our partner's son learned via a phone call that a grade school student had tested positive for COVID-19 and that the school was being deep cleaned so it could open as scheduled on Monday, he said.
Image: Cofer, 2020.08.27, Slide 15, via Dakota Free Press.
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