When I lived in South Dakota, I often got high with a little help from my friends.
That was over half a lifetime ago, long before 4:20 pm became the assigned time to light up, so we wouldn’t wait for afternoon on days that we got up before noon. Oh, those five years are still cherished for lasting friendships, weekend music, and a launch into a lifetime of writing and teaching.
But the first word that comes to mind when I recall sitting in my already-old-at-the-time, wood-paneled mobile home with a blue “McGovern for US Senate” sticker on its back on the northwest corner of that college town looking out a window over endless corn and alfalfa fields, whether ripe for harvest or covered in snow?
Sleepy.
This week’s wake up call is triggered by the most unlikely source. You’ve likely heard of the “Pandora Papers,” 12-million financial records that have just surfaced to reveal a vast international network of financial schemes to hide money from taxation, investigators, creditors, and citizens.
Only if you read past the headlines did you get to the surprise. Along with the usual suspects of small nations that serve as money laundromats–the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Malta, Switzerland–was America’s fifth smallest state.
Strange to recall that 40 years ago, just as I was leaving South Dakota for my Prodigal Son return to Massachusetts, financial institutions with global reach were leaving NYC for Sioux Falls where tax rates and labor costs favored them. Just a few years earlier, manufacturers in nearby states relocated just over the border, including 3M–as in Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing–which landed in Brookings, S.D., where I worked on scaffolding one summer, building the shelves in their new warehouse.
Many of the graduate students who attended the same classes, seminars, and meetings as I, and friends with whom I got high–among other shared youthful pleasures–made the one-hour move south on I-29 to manage this or account that for Citi-Bank, the first of the mega-banks to land on the banks of the Big Sioux River.
When it began, I started asking to which city “Citi” referred, but they didn’t seem to notice or get the reference. If that wasn’t enough, on that last spring in Brookings, the Big Sioux flooded the Easy Livin’ Trailer Court, and I had to find, place, and gingerly cross several planks of wood to get from my old Ford Falcon to my trailer’s only door.
No surprise that I have lost touch with all of the South Dakota State-to-Sioux Falls migrants, but I have stayed in touch with fellow SDSU alum who went into careers of teaching, research, and public service, including my sometimes editor, Helen Highwater, a native of Mitchell, S.D.–home of the Corn Palace, a monstrosity the size of Grand Central built entirely of corn cobs.
Highwater’s email arrived before I got one off to her:
Pandora Papers reveal SoDak leading the states as a haven for off-shore trusts, and not by just a little. Hundreds of billions hidden in Sioux Falls. All the people revealed as being involved, if they are willing to say anything at all, make the same claim: “I did nothing illegal.”
Epiphany was immediate: “I did nothing illegal” is the financial world’s variation of “I was only following orders.” Highwater’s next line confirmed it:
And they may be right. USD law prof explaining what SD did (paraphrasing), “As a way to bring in foreign investments, re-writing privacy laws is pretty cheap. Unlike building ports, roads, and other infrastructure, words are free.”
She went on to cite a South Dakota newspaper’s front page report headlined, “State’s role as trust fund destination is well planned,” that–as she claimed and I agree–“somehow spins it as a good thing.” Nor did she exaggerate when she mocked the tone of the report:
Yes, we want your trust business! Yes, our Sioux Falls banks hire locals to service the wealthy! We review the rules every year to stay competitive with the other off-shore dealers… Um, by a commission appointed by the Governor, in secret meetings with no legislative oversight. What could go wrong?
As you may well know, South Dakota Gov. Kristy Noem is an ardent Trumper who has headlined Trump rallies in states from Florida to Texas with Cory Lewandowski, apparently vying for the VP spot on a Trump 2024 ticket. She ranks with Republican governors such as DeSantis and Abbott as adamantly anti-mask and/or vax mandate, and South Dakota has a death rate comparable to Florida and Texas to prove it.
But unless you live in South Dakota, you may not have heard that Noem is at the center of corruption scandals, one involving her daughter’s application for a real-estate appraisal license, another involving potential bribery to send the South Dakota National Guard to the southern Texas border, which she did.
Anyone who revels in scandal can Google other Noem involvements, but it is as clear as Martin Two Bulls’ cartoon, that Noem reaches often and deep in South Dakota’s cookie jar–most notably when she turned Trump’s Mount Rushmore 4th of July Rally into an anti-mask, anti-social distancing event.
She has also called for Trump’s face to be added to Rushmore, and the nine-ounce statuettes are already on sale for $19.95.
Noem can be as openly corrupt as she wants in the world of Trump where cynicism passes for citizenship–and in a place that prides itself on being sleepy, where wake-up calls are no more welcome that any restrictions on the amount of money that billionaires from all over the world can hide in Sioux Falls. As Noem’s hero famously declared, avoiding taxes makes them “smart.”
Most tellingly, in the spirit of Nuremburg, none of this is illegal.
-30-
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pandora-papers-tax-haven-south-dakota/
http://m2bulls.com/
Mouth of the River 