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.
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