Received this e-mail today from the South Dakota Democratic Party:
Mike Rounds is only kidding himself when it comes to the EB5 citizenship-for-sale scandal, says Zach Crago, Executive Director with the South Dakota Democratic Party. Crago released the following statement after Mike Rounds tried defending his indefensible position on the EB5 scandal in a new ad:
"Who is Mike Rounds kidding on the EB5 scandal? Governor Mike Rounds made EB5 a key component of his economic development strategy. A state employee administered the EB5 program. Mike Rounds privatized the EB5 program with a no-bid contract to his state employee. And when the EB5 investments went belly up, South Dakota taxpayers lost millions of dollars, South Dakota businesses never got paid, and South Dakota workers lost their jobs.
"Maybe Mike Rounds hasn't read the 8 different South Dakota editorials calling the EB5 program under Mike Rounds a "scandal," "controversy," and a "black mark on South Dakota and state leadership. Or maybe Mike Rounds forgot that his administration is under state and federal investigations for its bungled mismanagement of the EB5 program.
"When it comes to the EB5 scandal, Mike Rounds is only kidding himself."
Investigative blogger Cory Heidelberger rebutted the Rounds ad point for point in the following article:
2014
· Rounds Projects, Refuses to Own Economic Development Corruption and Failure
http://madvilletimes.com/...
Posted by caheidelberger
Mike Rounds, Dick Wadhams, and Pat Powers are projecting. They say Rick Weiland and I and anyone else who reports the facts about Mike Rounds's economic development policies are telling big desperate lies, when in fact the big desperate deception comes from those trying to help Mike Rounds win a U.S. Senate seat. As is the case with deficit spending and government intrusion in the doctor-patient relationship, Republicans accuse Democrats most loudly of the sins Republicans themselves commit.
Rick Weiland encapsulated the corruption of Mike Rounds's administration in the neat and direct 30-second "Auction" ad released yesterday, accusing Rounds of selling U.S. residency to wealthy foreigners through the EB-5 visa investment program so his cronies could make millions. The attack stung enough to provoke immediate and voluminous responses from Rounds, including a swiftly produced video summarizing Rounds's evasions and absurdity.
As usual, Rounds says EB-5 is a federal program. "Mike didn't create EB-5, didn't run it," says the Rounds response. The former is true; the latter is either false or damning. But the federal provenance of EB-5 is far less important than how Mike Rounds used and abused it:
· Through his Governor's Office of Economic Development, Mike Rounds authorized state employee Joop Bollen to seek EB-5 investment for projects that apparently couldn't stand on their own in the South Dakota market.
· Mike Rounds allowed his cronies Joop Bollen and Richard Benda to privatize this portion of the Governor's Office of Economic Development's portfolio, for no apparent reason other than sheer greed.
· Mike Rounds allowed his cronies to create a bank that appears to have violated South Dakota law and cheated the state of millions in bank franchise tax.
· Mike Rounds signed off on $2.36 million in lame-duck handoutsto subsidize his delayed and doomed centerpiece EB-5-financed economic development project, Northern Beef Packers.
· Mike Rounds hired and admired a GOED chief, Richard Benda, who used his EB-5 travel expenditures as his personal slush fund.
Rounds responding to concerns about bad policy choices, corruption, and mismanagement in the Governor's Office of Economic Development by shouting "EB-5 is federal!" is like the kid we nab running with scissors shouting, "But these scissors were made in China!"
In further evasion, Rounds repeats his absurd semantic stretch that "the state did not lose money" in Rounds's/GOED's/Joop Bollen's/Richard Benda's (yes, this is complicated) exploitation of the EB-5 program. Even under the most generous yet documentable reading, the state poured $4.3 million in tax dollars into the EB-5-dependent Northern Beef Packers, which generated $3 million in sales, use, and contractors excise tax. That's a loss. And even that $3 million came at the cost of one local contractor being stiffed $2.1 million and other contractors and suppliers losing big money when the plant went bankrupt after just nine months of operation.
The newest Rounds ad then goes for the big enchilada, saying EB-5 "creates thousands of jobs across South Dakota. If Rick Weiland had his way, thousands of South Dakotans would be unemployed today."
Hogwash. EB-5 job creation numbers are mathematical fictions, not real bodies at new work. Fortune agrees:
First, the government is exceedingly generous in its employment tally. It gives EB-5 investors credit for all the jobs theoretically spawned by a project even when EB-5 money represents only a sliver of its financing. Second, for many mainstream ventures, EB-5 money isn’t really creating jobs—it’s merely saving developers money for projects that would be financed anyway. (Indeed, those big companies are actually “hijacking” money from worthy smaller investments in hard-hit areas, argues Michael Gibson, a financial adviser who vets EB-5 investments.) [Peter Elkind and Marty Jones, "The Dark, Disturbing World of the Visa-for-Sale Program," Fortune, 2014.07.24]
Homeland Security says EB-5 projects provide no evidence that they have created new jobs. The Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovations says "there is a dearth of reliable and publically available data that would enable better monitoring and evaluation of the economic impacts of regional center investments."
In other words, Mike Rounds is talking out his backside. Show us, Mike, the "thousands" of people at work in South Dakota right now who would not be working if you had not included EB-5 investment in your Governor's Office of Economic Development strategies. Where are they, Mike? Are they the Korean contractors brought in to drag Northern Beef Packers to completion? Are they the hundreds of Aberdeen workers who got stiffed paychecks by Northern Beef Packers when it collapsed in July 2013? I don't see them, Mike. Where are these mighty and prosperous thousands whom you say Rick would turn to paupers?
Mike Rounds is lying. He's making stuff up. He's kicking up dust to keep voters from seeing that Mike Rounds owns his bad policy choices and his sloppy management of his economic development policies.
And I also received this e-mail today from Rick Weiland's (D. SD) U.S. Senate campaign:
“Former Governor Mike Rounds in his latest television commercial, which is paid for by his big money special interests, says that Rick Weiland should be ‘ashamed’ for saying citizenship should not be for sale as it was under Rounds’ scandal-plagued EB-5 program.
“Why just ‘shame’ Rick Weiland, Governor Rounds?
“Why not ‘shame the following as well?
“The half dozen South Dakota newspaper editors who have called the scandal an embarrassment and a stain on our state and who have called for Rounds to come clean on what he really knows about the millions of missing taxpayer dollars and about the selling of citizenship to foreign billionaires and millionaires for $500,000 apiece.
“The state’s leading investigative journalist who has sued the South Dakota Attorney General demanding to get documents related to the scandal.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office which is investigating this entire mess because that office doesn’t take lightly things like millions of tax dollars gone missing in a Federal program that was run by Mike Rounds.
“Rounds’ own Lt. Governor and now Governor Dennis Daugaard, who when asked about the scandal runs away from the issue as fast as Usain Bolt runs on a 100 meter track and flat out says he had nothing to do with EB-5 that all the bad stuff that occurred there happened ‘not on his watch’. And just to show he really had nothing to do with the scandal, has said he would be happy to testify about it – something Mike Rounds won’t say.
“Former Republican U.S. Senator Larry Pressler who said at the Dakota Fest debate in Mitchell a couple of weeks ago that Mike Rounds needed to provide written testimony as to what really happened because Pressler feared that Rounds will be indicted following the election for crimes in the EB-5 scandal thus leaving South Dakotans without a second US Senator fighting for them.
“Current conservative Republican candidate Gordon Howie who went further than Pressler did at the Mitchell debate and called on Rounds to be subpoenaed and forced to testify publicly under oath as to what he really knows about the EB-5 scandal.
“The taxpayers of South Dakota who just want honest government and have the right to know why millions of their hard earned tax dollars have gone missing.
“No, Mike Rounds did not ‘shame’ any of these people – virtually all of whom have leveled stronger charges against Mike Rounds than did Rick Weiland.
“Instead, Mike Rounds ‘shamed’ Rick Weiland. And do you want to know the real reason Mike Rounds ‘shamed’ Rick Weiland? It is because polls show that Rick Weiland has closed the gap in the polls with Mike Rounds and has turned this campaign into a six point race. Mike Rounds sees in these same polls that the people of South Dakota like Rick Weiland by a two to one margin while Mike Rounds has nearly one in two South Dakotans with an unfavorable opinion of him even though nearly 100 percent of them feel they know him. Mike Rounds also sees that six in ten South Dakotans do not want to vote for him and even one out of two Republicans in his own primary didn’t vote for him.
“That is why Mike Rounds is ‘shaming’ and attacking Rick Weiland and no one else.
“Oh, and there is one other glaring person Mike Rounds did not ‘shame’ in his desperate smoke and mirror television ad.
Mike Rounds did not ‘shame’ himself for dragging our great name and our great state into the murk and sludge of this scandal and for not being honest with the people of South Dakota for what really happened here. In handing out ‘shame’, Mike Rounds should begin by looking in a mirror.”
Lets keep an eye on this race. Polls are showing the race tightening and lets see if Larry Pressler's supporters will go to Weiland soon. In the mean time, click here to donate and get involved with Weiland's campaign:
http://rickweiland.com/