This is fucking unbelievable. I don't think any amount of incompetence could be behind this, I think it's got to be something extremely sinister involving pedophilic officials or blackmail or wanting to look good for political elections or something. I've heard nothing about this until now, but there have apparently been scattered blogs reporting on it for almost two years. Why haven't the big news agencies done anything? Why is it that no one I've talked to about this has known about it until now? Why is it that the people who tried to pursue this were fired and then put into bankruptcy? And why hasn't anyone lost their job?

South Dakota was ranked 49th out of 50 states in corruption by the State Integrity project, receiving a grade of F. I wouldn't be too surprised if there are third world countries with more transparency and legitimacy than we've got. Just a few decades ago the federal government did all sorts of atrocious things due to corruption and lack of oversight, while the individual states did the same. MKULTRA, spying on civil rights leaders and trying to discredit them, wiretapping the offices of opponents, things like that. Since then, the rest of the nation has improved, mostly, or at least apparently. But we seem to be just as horrible as before.

Between this and EB-5, I now think we're pretty screwed. But what concerns me even more is wondering why the federal government hasn't come down hard on our officials for their misdeeds and "mistakes" like this. We are used to trusting our governments in the United States, while looking skeptically at the motives of governments abroad. I think perhaps we should not be so trusting at home, and we should start feeling a little scared.

I'm outraged. If I ever become a billionaire or politically powerful somehow, I'll tear this fucking state's government to the ground. It's not paranoid conspiracy theorizing when shit like this happens. The last shred of my trust in this state's government just died.

I know this comment might seem like an overreaction. Rest assured it's not that this one specific incident has caused me to radically change my opinions. Instead, my opinions have evolved over a long period of time and I have lots of background information I'm considering when I make this decision right now to distrust the state government. Please rest assured that I'm not a kook, just very sad.