KSFY reports on Governor Rounds weekend adventure:
South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard is attending the annual meeting of the National Governors Association in Salt Lake City this weekend.
Topics will include education, innovation, international trade and economic growth.
There will also be a U.S.-China Governors Forum.
Note the involvement of China. This was set up by our Secretary of State:
Over the past several years, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has stepped up its courtship of America's state and local officials. A growing stream of Governors, Mayors, County Commissioners, school superintendents, college presidents and university officials have been making the pilgrimage to Beijing and other Chinese "sister cities," in efforts aimed at wooing Chinese investors to their communities and in search of export opportunities to China's growing consumer market.The intense mutual lobbying between local U.S. and Chinese officials is expected to hit a new zenith in mid July, as our nation's state Governors gather in Salt Lake City, Utah, for the summer meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA). Their Chinese counterparts will join them there at the NGA's first U.S.-China Governors Forum.
The Forum was created with the help of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration during Chinese President Hu Jintao's White House visit in January. In a January 19, 2011 press statement, Secretary Clinton announced a "Memorandum of Understanding concerning the establishment of the U.S.-China Governors Forum to Promote Sub-National Cooperation," which she said was the culmination of two years of effort by the Obama administration "to extend mutual understanding and interests beyond national governments to individuals, businesses, and state and provincial governments."
The real purpose is this:
However, the NGA's scripted chorus line, with U.S. governors and Chinese provincial officials linking arms in smiley-faced, harmonious poses, is already generating sour notes with many constituents who see the song-and-dance routine as more cover for the continued transfer of the U.S. industrial and economic base to China. With most of America's manufacturing base and much of our technology and jobs already having been shipped to China, the Beijing regime's strategists are now targeting the remaining U.S. hi-tech sectors, as well as agricultural and food production, pharmaceuticals, and nutritional supplements. In addition to alarm over the ongoing strip mining of America's productive capabilities, many Americans are becoming more concerned about plans by their state and local officials to implement Chinese-styled Special Economic Zones, or SEZs, with the help of China's state-run corporations. Besides dragging the American economy further into socialist/fascist central planning, the SEZs would likely serve as a springboard for massive transfers of Chinese emigrants to the United States to serve in the new SEZ workforce.
Central planning is what HB 1230 is all about. While I am happy that the Democrats have put the slush fund up to a vote of the people, I disagree with their political agenda of transgerring the taxes to education. Central planning of the economy is fundamentally wrong.
I have been taking Dusty Johnson, the governor's chief of staff, to task for being a part of the big government agenda and have issued concerns on the governor's involvement with the NGA. I am not alone with my concerns regarding the NGA agenda:
Oklahoma's Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, is also feeling some heat over her coziness with Beijing. Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise (OK-SAFE, Inc.), a coalition of prominent Oklahoma conservatives with proven effectiveness in political and educational battles, has taken aim at Fallin's participation in the NGA's Salt Lake City Governors Forum. In an article posted on its website on June 7, entitled "Sleeping with the Enemy — U.S. Governors to Pair Up with Chinese Officials,"OK-SAFE urged Oklahomans to contact Gov. Fallin and ask her about details of the U.S.-China dealings under the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiated by the Obama administration and the NGA with Beijing. Gov. Fallin is a member of the NGA's Economic Development and Commerce Committee. One of the questions OK-SAFE has for Governor Fallin — and Hillary Clinton — is: "Where's the MOU?"
As usual, despite the standard talk about "transparency," the NGA and State Department have not released a copy of the MOU so that citizens can decide for themselves whether their elected officials are cutting deals that would harm or help their state and their nation. This reporter has been unable to locate a copy of the MOU on either the State Department or NGA websites, and the State Department has not returned our repeated calls for a copy. If the deals contained in the MOU are completely straightforward, then what's to hide? Why not put it out in the open? It does seem that the more our leaders associate with the (Communist) party leaders in China, the more they are willing to emulate the Chinese Communist Party's proclivity for secrecy and autocratic rule.
Having failed to obtain a copy of the MOU by simply asking, as citizens should be able to do in a free republic, OK-SAFE has had to resort to filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with the State Department.
Nationally, The John Birch Society is one of the few organizations challenging the conventional Republican-Democrat wisdom on this issue, which seems to be that any and all expansion of political and economic ties with Communist China is a wonderful thing. In the Society's July Bulletin, an article by Larry Greenley, "The U.S.-China Governors Forum Leads to Disaster!", urged members to "contact your governor now and ask him or her to protect our national independence and prosperity by avoiding further entanglements with the state-run corporations of communist China and by not participating in the U.S.-China Governors' Forum in Salt Lake City on July 15-17."
And this tells us that the South Daktoa media will not be the ones to hold Governor Daugaard accountable for his particiaption with Communist China:
American Governors, Mayors, and County Commissioners who come to China as supplicants rarely risk spoiling the wining and dining festivities — not to mention spoiling their hoped-for economic deals — by bringing up embarrassing topics such as gross human rights atrocities, spying, technology theft, and support for terrorists and terror regimes. Like our national politicians, most of them seem to be incapable even of demonstrating enlightened self-interest, insofar as it relates to our national security and independence. Nor do they appear to be inclined to oppose policies that would increasingly make the continued economic viability of our states and communities inextricably intertwined with — and subject to — the five-year plans of China's Communist Party functionaries. It is up to constituents to make these issues important enough that wayward and pragmatic politicians will "find their conscience." In other words, as is usually the case with politicians, they must be made to feel the heat before they will see the light.
Don't look for the leadership of the SDGOP to be the "constituents" that make the governor "feel the heat". It will be what the media has coined as "The Tea Party Movement" that will step up to that task. Now we understand another reason why both parties are creating this "debt ceiling crisis" so that the tail can be pinned on the Tea Party. Grass roots truth-sayers are problematic for the establishment.
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