Dusty, you've let us down. Time to step aside, return to the private sector
An open letter to Dusty Johnson:
Rep. Johnson, just recently you have taken up the banner to save the USPS and the rural post offices. All this in an effort to make it seem like you care about rural citizens.
You do this just a few months before you run in the Republican primary election for governor of South Dakota. Where were you two years ago when Louis DeJoy and U.S. Postal Service upper management was moving the mail-sorting centers to Minot and Omaha? We told you it would not work without a delay of mail service of one to two days for first class mail and longer for newspapers and packages.
Guess what? That is exactly what happened. This further eroded the USPS reliability. Where were you Dusty? Your staff was there at the meetings. Did you not believe your staff? Did you not believe your constituents? Did you not believe the postal workers?
Sheryl Johnson was there standing with all of us. She was willing to take the lead in stopping this travesty as a top priority if she were elected to Congress. Over and over again, your campaign is riddled with hypocrisy.
Dusty, it hurts me greatly to say you are a political opportunist and a quitter who was duly elected to the Public Utilities Commission a second time and quit shortly after the election to become chief of staff for Gov. Dennis Daugaard.
When the heat was on with the Gear Up Scandal (Editor’s note: Gear Up was a publicly financed program aimed at serving troubled Native-American youth. It had a history of financial discrepancies, culminating in the early 2015 murder-suicide of its finance officer and his wife) and other events, you quit that job and “went to the private sector.”
Now you are quitting as a congressman when the political heat is coming for your disgraceful votes, bill sponsorships, words and deeds which are clearly against the best interest of your own fellow South Dakotans.
Dusty, your introduction as prime sponsor of HR4135 opens the door to striping private property rights away from landowners concerning eminent domain for private companies to build a carbon dioxide pipeline in South Dakota, North Dakota and Iowa was another big mistake. At the Freeman Chislic Festival last year you denied it being true to me three times and told me those folks who said that to me were liars.
Once again Sheryl Johnson stood up time and again to defend private property rights and you did not.
At the Turner County Fair, I had a copy of your bill to show you that indeed it did what these friends of ours [that you called liars] said it did.
You were too busy berating me and calling names to even consider it. That was not very gubernatorial, to say the least.
Once again, Sheryl Johnson was there for the landowners and stood up for private property rights.
Your ads on Chinese investors ownership of farmland fall on deaf ears when you do nothing and have done nothing about Chinese ownership — the WH Group — of packing plants and the production of fake meat by a Korean-owned company near Sioux Falls.
Who can ever forget you bringing a Russian woman spy to the South Dakota Teen Age Republican Camp in July 2015 and having her speak to them? What were you thinking, Dusty? Russians speaking on freedom to own a firearm without severe restrictions at a TAR camp?
I find that a hard pill to swallow.
Rep Johnson, your illogical support for Trump’s tariffs on Canada and legislation to purchase the Panama Canal speaks volumes on your lack of knowledge on foreign affairs. On the more humorous side, will your next move be to try to buy, annex or invade North Dakota and or Wyoming if you are elected governor?
Dusty, I truly wish you the best, whether you win or lose, but it is time you stand up for the people you represent not the huge corporate donors who own you politically. It is clear you are not ready to be governor of the great state of South Dakota.
There are times politicians should return to the private sector. Dusty, this is the right time for you to do just that.
Frank Kloucek of Scotland, S.D., was a Democratic state senator for 16 years and a state representative for six years. A 1974 Scotland High School graduate and 1978 SDSU graduate, he and his wife Joanie farm in Bon Homme County. He can be contacted at fkloucek@hotmail.com.
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
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