Here's how to talk to your conservative legislators in their own language.
Gaslighting at its finest
Hi Readers!
I’m probably adding Buspar to my current Zoloft regimen to keep from fretting too much in light of our recent leadership. But let’s not rest on the laurels of medication and mildly controlled anxiety.
My home state of South Dakota is following Kansas’s lead. I’m fully expecting not to have a valid driver’s license sometime in the next month due to the effects of South Dakota House Bill 1184.
I’ve already written on Medium that there is a way to talk to conservatives, and this is the result.
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In the spirit of that article, this is what I recently sent to my SD legislators.
Dear Legislative Senators and Representative, (I only have one.)
Conservatives in South Dakota are being played.
We all agree that South Dakota must legally define “man” and “woman” based on biological reality. Protecting our state from radical gender ideology is a top priority for the conservative base. Unfortunately, the political establishment in Pierre is using our deeply held values as a smokescreen to sneak massive government expansion and crony capitalist tax breaks into law.
House Bill 1184 is a Trojan horse. If you look past the title and read the actual text of the engrossed bill, you will find that the establishment has hijacked this crucial legislation to feed the Swamp.
Here is what the fine print of HB 1184 actually does to conservatives:
It creates a Slush Fund for the “Woke” Board of Regents. Section 7 of HB 1184 amends state law to create an “FTE demand pool” for the Board of Regents. Let’s be clear about what this means: it hands a blank check of unallocated, floating government jobs directly to unelected university bureaucrats. While conservative lawmakers are fighting to defund DEI programs and woke administrative bloat on our college campuses, HB 1184 gives the Board of Regents a secret employment pool that they can shift around without direct legislative appropriations oversight. We cannot fight woke ideology on campus while simultaneously giving university administrators a legislative slush fund hidden inside a conservative bill.
It Sneaks in Corporate Tax Carve-Outs Sections 11 and 12 of the bill alter the motor vehicle code to grant explicit excise tax exemptions for licensed auto dealers titling vehicles under the new 605Drive system. What does a tax break for corporate auto dealers have to do with defining “man and woman”? Absolutely nothing. This is crony capitalism at its worst, hiding corporate handouts behind a culture war shield.
It Guarantees a Liberal Supreme Court Victory Because the establishment decided to engage in corrupt “logrolling”, shoving university slush funds and auto dealer tax breaks into a bill about biological sex, HB 1184 blatantly violates the South Dakota Constitution’s “Single Subject Rule” (Article III, Section 21). The South Dakota Supreme Court strikes down bills that do this. We saw it happen with Amendment A in Thom v. Barnett. If we pass HB 1184 as written, liberal activist groups like the ACLU will immediately sue, the Supreme Court will strike it down as unconstitutional, and our definitions of man and woman will be wiped off the books forever.
The Solution: Pass the Clean “Hoghouse” Amendment. The conservative base demands results, not establishment tricks that empower the administrative state. We must pass the “Clean” Substitute Amendment to HB 1184 currently circulating in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Clean Amendment eliminates the university FTE slush fund, removes the crony tax carve-outs, and addresses constitutional defects. It leaves us with a bulletproof, ironclad law that defines biological sex and permanently prohibits the state from funding radical gender ideology.
Do not let the Pierre establishment hold our values hostage to fund the administrative state. Protect the Constitution, protect conservative principles, and stop the logrolling.
Vote YES on the Clean Substitute Amendment, and vote NO on the Board of Regents Trojan Horse.
Make no mistake, I’m gaslighting my legislators. But I think their egos and values won’t see through this. Make an effort to speak in the language of your conservative legislators, and get them to do the right thing by sinking into the mud with them, instead of using our highly educated, “condescending, woke” speak, with them, usually only respond to violence.