We've been seeing a lot of Governor Kristi Noem's "Freedom Runs Free" campaign ad, in heavy rotation on Keloland (CBS) and Dakota News Now (ABC/FOX).
She's a fine horsewoman and the landscape's pretty, but it looks a lot more West River than the ranch in the Castlewood area she talks about.
But that line about South Dakota's being the best in the nation? Fake news, if we're to believe CNBC's America’s Top States for Business 2022: The full rankings, released last Wednesday. South Dakota lingers at #22. Indeed, the state declined from 2021's number one ranking for business friendliness to number eight in 2022.
The "economy" is ranked in 12th place.
But we're not the only Americas getting a geek at the ad.
Fox News reported early Sunday morning in Kristi Noem running digital ads in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina; new northeast trip planned:
A new ad from Gov. Kristi Noem is fueling presidential rumors.
The South Dakota Republican, who’s campaigning this year for a second term steering her heavily red state, has been running ads on Facebook in recent weeks that detail the family struggles she endured as a child after the death of her father, showcase her steering of South Dakota through the COVID crisis without implementing shutdowns, and tout the state’s current economic standing and the increase in families moving to the plains state.
"Here, freedom runs free. So saddle up, we’re just getting started," Noem says in the spot.
But what’s sparking 2024 presidential speculation is less about what’s in the ads than where they’re being viewed. . . .
Among the states where the ads are getting clicks are Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, the first three states to hold contests in the Republican Party’s presidential nominating calendar.
According to ad library from Meta — the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and other services and products — Noem was the ninth-biggest spender on Meta ads in New Hampshire and South Carolina during the July 5-11 period, and the tenth-biggest spender in Iowa during the same period. . . .
Those who want to watch the ad can find here on Governor Noem's twitter account.
We were naturally curious where those states placed in CNBC's rankings in America’s Top States for Business 2022: The full rankings.
Iowa is ranked 12th; New Hampshire lags in 35nd place; South Carolina ties with New York for 36th.
Responding to similar twitter claim by Noem last Wednesday, Dakota Free Press Cory Allen Heidelberger wrote in Correction for Noem: South Dakota Has (12th-) Strongest Economy, (22nd-) Best Business Climate:
Tweeting from her sauna yesterday evening, Kristi Noem resurrected (in cute parentheses) her easily debunkable claim that South Dakota’s economy is “(still the strongest in the nation)“ . . .
21 states are better for business than South Dakota, including…
- #7: Nebraska
- #9: Minnesota
- #12: Iowa
- #13: North Dakota
Economy is just one of ten criteria CNBC used to to determine its business rankings. CNBC assigns Economy 13% weight in its calculations for each state and explains Economy in its methodology:
Particularly in uncertain times, companies are seeking states with stable finances and solid economies. We examine the economic strength of each state by looking at gross domestic product growth and job growth over the past year. We measure each state’s fiscal condition by looking at its credit ratings and outlook, its overall budget picture including spending, revenue and reserves, as well as pension obligations. We rate the health of the residential real estate market. Because a diverse economy is important in any environment, we consider the number of major corporations headquartered in each state [Scott Cohn, “How We Are Choosing America’s Top States for Business in 2022,” CNBC, 2022.07.12]. . . .
Jeepers, what is Noem selling? At the GOP-bashing Political Flare site Sunday, Nicole Hickman hypothesized Gov. Kristi Noem Releases ‘Dances with Wolves’ Style Ad Which is Obviously a ‘Pick Me for VP’ Commercial to Trump. She speculates:
We wouldn’t say that Governor Kristi Noem is willing to do anything to be Trump’s running mate in the 2024 election because the connotations with women are always unfair. What can be said is that Kristi Noem has made it unbelievably obvious – for quite some time – that she wants to hang her [cowgirl] hat on MAGA and ride it as far as it’ll take her. This is the woman who knew that Trump so loved the idea of being carved into Mount Rushmore that she had a replica of Rushmore sculpted, one in which Trump was added.
Now Fox News tells us that Noem’s new commercial, straight out of Dances With Wolves, with movie-quality production, isn’t running in South Dakota so much as it is in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, which – coincidentally, are the first three primary states. . . .
We take issue with that description, except perhaps an awkward equivalence between Kevin Costner's "white savior" role in the 1990 film and Noem's self image. The tweets by South Dakotans embedded in the article are priceless.
Noem's story of the near-loss of the family ranch is another exercise in myth-making. In 2017, Chuck Collins wrote in a column, She's the poster child for estate tax repeal, but her sad family saga doesn't add up:
Noem perpetuates the “estate tax hurts farmers” argument using her life experience. The story she tells, however, does not line up with some very basic tenets of the tax code. Now, 23 years later, it is high time to get the facts. It’s also an important time to understand just who is subject to the estate tax and what its repeal really means.
On April 16, 2015, Noem stepped onto the floor of the House and described how her father was killed on March 10, 1994 in a tragic accident on their family farm. Noem, who was a 21-year old student at the time, recounted:
It wasn’t very long after he was killed that we got a bill in the mail from the IRS that said we owed them money because we had a tragedy that happened to our family … We could either sell land that had been in our family for generations or we could take out a loan. So I choose to take out a loan but it took us 10 years to pay off that loan to pay the federal government those death taxes. It is one of the main reasons I got involved in government and politics was because I didn’t understand how bureaucrats and politicians in Washington DC could make a law that says when a tragedy hits a family they somehow are owed something from that family business.
There are several important questions raised by Noem’s account. First, the estate tax has had a 100% marital deduction since 1982. In other words, upon the death of Noem’s father, all the family assets could have flowed to her mother without being subject to the estate tax. Noem’s parents were married and her mother, Corinne Arnold, is still alive today.
“It’s hard to believe the estate of a farmer who died in 1994 and was survived by his spouse was subject to tax,” said Robert Lord, a Phoenix tax attorney with an expertise in estate tax law. “It easily could have been deferred. That would have been a no-brainer.”
Another oddity in Noem’s story is that the IRS doesn’t send a bill for an estate tax without a tax filing. In 1994, families had nine months to file a return with the option of filing a six-month extension. The conservative canard that the taxman shows up at the funeral is emotionally gripping, but simply false. The law at the time allowed farms to defer estate taxes for up to five years.
In the event that the Arnold family did owe taxes, the IRS had flexible installment plan at an interest rate lower than any lender. There would have been no need to get a loan from a third-party. But this doesn’t answer the fundamental question: Why did they pay any tax?
“It’s very unclear they would have been subject to the estate tax given the law at the time,” said Lord. “But if she did pay a big estate tax bill. she should elaborate on the unusual circumstances.”
Noem is now at the center of the national debate over estate tax repeal and her personal story is regularly repeated as an example of how the estate tax hurts family farmers and ranchers. But things have changed a lot since 1994, when the amount of wealth exempted by the tax was $600,000 for an individual. The wealth exemption is now $5.49 million per person and $11 million per couple. Closely held businesses and farms have 14 years to pay the tax at low interest.
The number of farmers subject to the estate tax has been dramatically reduced as have the total number of estates. South Dakota is the state with the fewest taxable estates in the entire country, roughly 15 a year.
In her speeches attacking government overreach, Noem leaves out another important fact. Between 1995 and 2016, her family-owned Racota Valley Ranch in Hazel, S.D. cashed $3,704,415 million in government farm subsidies. In 2012 alone, they accepted $232,707 in subsidies. . . .
Golly gee. The information in column is a few years old. The current figure at the EWG database for the Racota Valley Ranch is $4,288,571 from 1995 through 2020. Despite the operation's name, over half of the subsidy payments are for grain crops like corn, soybeans and wheat ($3,014,081).
Riding that horse through a cornfield would have looked silly.
Farm subsidies weren't the only payments tht freedom factory ranch recieved. In early March 2021, Stephen Groves reported for the Associated Press in Businesses tied to Noem family got $600,000 in virus grants:
Family members of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem received more than $600,000 in funds from a state grant program pushed by the governor that directed federal coronavirus relief funds to small businesses.
A ranch belonging to Noem’s family, Racota Valley Ranch Partnership, received one payment of $500,000, and a business operated by her brothers, Rock and Robb Arnold, received payments of just over $100,000, according to records on the grant program.
The Legislature approved the grant plan in October, but the family businesses benefitted from adjustments the Republican governor made. The plan initially capped grants at $100,000, but later in the month, with plentiful federal funds at their disposal, Noem’s administration adjusted the grant cap to $500,000. The governor also later opened up a second round of grant applications to businesses hurt by the pandemic from September to November.
A total of 126 businesses across the state — less than 4% of grant applicants — received grants of $500,000. Some received even more because they applied in both rounds of applications. There is no indication that Noem played a part in the allocation of funds.
Noem — who is becoming a rising force in the GOP as the party tries to identify 2024 presidential candidates — once maintained part-ownership of the ranch, but her office said she no longer does.
“The Governor has no financial interest in Racota Valley and hasn’t for years,” said her spokesman Ian Fury, but he acknowledged the ranch had paid rent for 22 acres of farmland Noem owns. Fury said Noem had rented out the land for $2,200 annually but ended the lease agreement on Jan. 1. . . .
The business grant program was a cornerstone of Noem’s plan to spend $1.25 billion in federal coronavirus money. It made grants of up to $500,000 available for businesses that could show a 15% drop in cash flow from the previous year. So far, it has paid out $288 million to businesses that showed they were hurt by the pandemic.
As the program was formed, Noem also asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in on whether lawmakers could benefit, either directly or indirectly, from the program as lawmakers inquired whether they could apply for the grants. Noem’s lawyers acknowledged that the windfall of funds was “unprecedented” and that there was a potential conflict of interest in administering the funds.
The Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers were ineligible for the funds, citing a 2001 ruling that found the state constitution kept legislators from financially benefitting, directly or indirectly, from legislation they passed. This wouldn’t apply to the governor, though.
Freedom isn't free, that's for sure.
Related posts:
- Pants on fire at CPAC: Governor Kristi Noem claims "We kept kids in the classroom
- South Dakota ethics: Will lawmakers resolve Governor Noem's closed-door meeting with daughter violated public trust?
- SD Gov Noem blames Soros' money for pipeline protests; cuts tribes out of anti-protest bills talk
- Noem Stoops To Conquer; Or, "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."
- Will today's setbacks fuel more base love for South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem?
- SD Supreme Court strikes down legal cannabis; supporters vow to make the people rule
Still: From the campaign ad video, via Daily Mail, Kristi Noem's digital ad buy in first-to-vote states fuels speculation of 2024 White House bid – as the pro-Trump South Dakota governor also plans a trip to the northeast.
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