IM15's big push is coming from South Dakota's Corporate Medical Establishment, who are also big campaign donors to the SDGOP RINOs

Bob Mercer has some very interesting details on who is behind the push to the proposed 25% increase in South Dakota sales taxes:

Here’s the source for a big chunk of the money paying for the advertising blitz in favor of Initiated Measure 15, which would increase South Dakota’s sales tax on most items to 5 percent, from the current 4 percent, with the proceeds to be split between K-12 school districts and Medicaid funding. The campaign money is coming largely from the Big Three of healthcare in South Dakota — Avera, Sanford and Rapid City Regional — along with a handful of smaller centers. According to pre-election campaign finance filings, together they’ve donated more than $888,000 to a committee called Healthy Communities that in turn donated the money to Moving South Dakota Forward, the main committee promoting the tax increase. In rough numbers, each of the Big Three contributed in the neighborhood of $300,000 apiece.

Moving South Dakota Forward also received $200,000 from the National Education Association, according to its report, as well as what appearst to be a total of $10,000 in donations from the South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations. Moving South Dakota Forward, which was formed by the South Dakota Education Association and SDAHO, reported spending $970,462.79 so far and had $145,977.88 cash on hand at the reporting deadline.

Estimates say the tax increase will be $180 milllion and split 50/50 to schools and Medicaid. What we do not hear is that the $90 million going to Medicaid will be matched by the federal governemnt by about double the $90 million. So the Medical Establishmnent's take will be more like $270 million. And note that the IM15 ads primarily push the need to increase education funding due to Daugaard's budget cuts. Those cuts were about $40 million (scroll down to the State Aid section), and we already put away an extra $48 million in 2012 after the last legislative session spent $10 of million more than was approved during the so-called budget crisis caused by Governor Daugaard.

So South Dakota children are being used as political pawns by the Medical Establishment, with $200 million in blessings of the National Education Association. If passed, IM15 will take $180 million out of the South Dakota economy (including the working poor), add another $180 million to the federal debt (that will be passed on to the very children this is suppose to be helped), and with most of the benefits (around $270 million) going to the Corporate Medical Establishment. And how much campaign money is the Corporate Medical establishment giving to the SDGOP candidates, past and now? And the offical position of Governor Daugaard is that he is against IM15. If he truly was, then he needs to come out and say the education cuts will be eliminated with the extra revenues we already have in reserves, so there is not need for IM15. He won't do that because the future Corporate Medical establishment campaign donations are just too important to him and his fellow RINOs.

All of these points will be ignored by the RINO leadership of the SDGOP because they view me as some radical who believes in conspiracy theories. How many parents believe that IM15 is only about helping their kids? That is not even a bad conspiracy theory, that is an outright lie.

Comments

[Fact Checker]

And let's not forget that Daugaard's campaign has raked in at least $7,500.00 in campaign cash from SDAHO as well.

In fact, during the 2010 election cycle alone, SDAHO gave campaign contributions to candidates in no less than 60 House and Senate races.

In 48 of those 60 races (80% of the time), their favored candidate won a seat in the legislature.

So I'm afraid you're probably right in saying that neither the governor nor many of the members of the House or Senate will dare to speak up against IM 15 and risk "biting the hand that feeds their campaigns".

Once folks become aware of these facts, it really shouldn't be a shock that SDAHO PAC was able to spread enough money around to garner the votes they needed to pass SB 38 and SB 43- both of which have helped clear the path for implementation of Obamacare in South Dakota.

And as you know, the big hospitals stand to reap a considerably larger share of the market once Obamacare is implemented due to a provision in Section 6001 which places a moratorium on the opening or expansion of any more physician owned hospitals.

In other words, Obamacare is truly a law that only crony corporatists like Kelby Krabbenhoft, T. Denny Sanford, and their BFF Dennis Daugaard could love.

[other]

Also note that Kelby Krabbenhoft has said at the June 2011 Promise Lab conference that.."no matter what you politics are, we cannot repeal PPACA sometimes called "OBamaCAre" or Sanford will have to go back to the drawing baord".!!!! Also given the fact that Rounds now works with Daschle at the Bipartisan Policy Center...there is no way Rounds can say he is against brureacrat controlled healthcare. In Dascle's book, "Getting It Done" he tells how this Bipartisan Policy Center literally wrote the ObamaCare plan "outside of congress..." (Sounds like our Lust for Power BIll got its idea here!

[grudznick]

Mr. Sibby, we need people like you with analysis ability to help show the public that raising taxes on food for old people like me to give to these fat cat hospitals and school administrators is insane. Please make sure people in your town know the truth people who live there listen to you and trust you to know.