Pierre has been loudly called a swamp to applause at the Brookings anti-pipeline forum, but so speaks the demagogue. I find it shocking that they call the capitol city a swamp when many of the swamp creatures were in that room.

The average number of constituents in South Dakota for State Representatives and State Senators is 5 times less than the average US State. That our state is becoming a populist confederacy of sixty six counties with a weak central authority is the trajectory of our current GOP Leadership. We have seen wild bills presented to our legislature and through cult-like faith, we are to turn away anything that moos, smells, or might hire someone that’s not a local to please every neighbor. We see the chipping away of project development and regulatory uniformity so that South Dakota remains closed to business. Adam Smith’s concept of the Invisible Hand will not work if our state officials manipulate our business environment to fit their personal whims of whats worthy for South Dakota. We embrace change so we don’t create a generation that get their marching orders from fear mongers and do-nothings. We came to the frontier to build it, that was celebrated in would-be settler publications over a century ago. With every railroad tie pulled that promise is vanishing. They came, and we’re here, for opportunity.

JES Farms would have never been allowed in South Dakota today because of the canal system alone. Until I can be disproven, then how are my children inheriting freedom as we’ve lived it? Dreams are never small and inoffensive when it comes to American greatness.

Now our legislature will debate zero property taxes. Property taxes are for compensation to the citizenship for depriving them of the use of that land. Thomas Paine understood how a nation could create its own elite and suffer its tyranny. The founders structured our government to prevent a despotic concentration of power. When did some farmers start looking in a mirror and seeing a King instead of a fellow citizen? It is a bizarre shame that those with little to no land would ever support a zero property tax. It would cause an entrenched oligarchy of landowners, further boosted by the federal farm program. The burden of that missing tax revenue will fall on the shoulders of the people the property taxes were meant to provide for. Instead of zero property tax, we could toil over our pathetic infrastructure to get our goods to market cheaper, or lower interest rates. We should not be toying with the inability to properly fund school teachers and local police. Our property rights should be protected by those that won’t chain them to a mobs popular opinion about its development, as raw land or nothing. Property tax elimination is the destruction of the centuries old paternalism between landowner and village, curbing revolutions that might have otherwise taken place. The despotism is now overflowing with the radical effort to be anti-development by our GOP leadership, weaponising conservatism against our own Republican colleagues.

Republicans are not in control of the South Dakota legislature, the populist conservatives are. I’ve heard pitched xenophobia against both Saudi Arabia and Israel during the anti-pipeline forums. Both American allies slandered. That behavior comes the same way, by demagogues whipping up hysteria to a contrived enemy. It is the devolution of professional politicians and unworthy of our halls. The Eschenbaum Mob should be thrown out for the sake of party integrity. Their tar and feather politics floods local social media repeatedly. They have become gatekeepers to our natural resources, vilifying those neighbors that would resist the paralytic policies that seize our economy. Instead of statesman, we have too many agitators. Instead of willing participants in the free market, we have protests by those who believe they suffer not through its consequence.

Unfortunately, the seduction of producing results that benefit their agenda tempts our politicians to trample the integrity of our property rights. A tyrant can always ‘justify’ why you no longer have rights to your property. Because our Supreme Court has mishandled our Founders’ intentions and our personal rights so handily, the public’s disregard for private property rights has been emboldened. For instance, the Supreme Court in Kelo v. New London decided to interpret the 5^th amendment in a broad sense so as to continue the expansion of abuse. It was successfully argued that if a town could increase tax revenues then they had a legitimate right to condemn private property. In New London, the town had become more important than the people residing there and they condemned property that wasn’t blighted in order to fit a vision to restore the town’s economic progress. Any developer or politician may have the ability to prove that your private property is worth more to the government in some other entities hands, and Kelo v. New London’s result gave them authority to steal. Eminent domain in this tyrannical form is an assault on property rights, and it can arrive at anyone’s doorstep.

The people who are supporting the Keystone XL Pipeline have been manipulated through their desire for oil development. But, sound initiatives towards oil development exist that will not erode the rights of America’s citizens. The bottleneck in oil refining that exists in America is the culprit of high fuel prices. The EPA has, through regulations and red tape, made creating oil refineries in the United States impossible. Building more refineries would lower fuel prices and contribute to our economic progress. Also, continuing to support the drilling of known and existing oil fields, as well as continuing to develop techniques that better extract oil from America’s oil shale, from which would encompass the entire worlds proven oil reserves again, will benefit the United States. Oil fracking and other methods, such as Enhanced Oil Recovery, will further utilize known and proven fields. These methods will help lower fuel prices by increasing supply, while the Keystone XL Pipeline will likely raise fuel prices in South Dakota by lowering the supply of pumped crude oil in the Midwest.

Our political leadership is trampling on our property rights for a pipeline project that will actually raise our fuel prices. But our governments’ main concern should be maintaining the integrity of the rights guaranteed to all Americans in the Constitution. We value the rights of the individual in America above all else. We became a Republic in order to protect individual rights from the tyranny of the masses. A Constitutional amendment may be the only logical route to define, narrow, and ensure that when eminent domain is applied, it is absolutely necessary and in the best interest of our citizens.