8/31/15

CSU: industrial cannabis unlikely to catch fire any time soon

This blogger is a single-issue voter: the Earth trumps all other concerns.

Some farmers want to grow industrial cannabis but introducing a non-native species into habitat where it would compete with short grass prairie is counterproductive to rewilding efforts. Hemp is illegal partly because it’s a noxious weed prone to overrunning habitats where native grasses are facing a sixth mass extinction created by the Anthropocene.
“We’re sort of piggybacking onto that as our first foray into working on hemp,” said John McKay, associate professor of plant evolutionary genetics in CSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences. “The Colorado Department of Agriculture worked with the researchers in Europe as well as negotiated with federal agencies to import the seed on our behalf. “So it is unlikely that millions of acres of hemp will be grown for textiles anytime soon,” he said. [CSU researchers test hemp’s heartiness in US]
Hemp was imported by Europeans during colonization but cotton is native to the New World. Feral hemp grows in ditches from South Dakota to Logansport, Indiana and beyond.

That industrial cannabis is being heralded in Indian Country as an economic development initiative remains a mystery. Cannabis grown under organic specs in controlled environments for casual enjoyment is where the profits reside to reverse the effects of colonialism and not in wholesale habitat destruction.

The guy who taught me to build bicycle wheels in Missoula when we were introducing something called the mountain bike to the world told me that if you produce something people need you will get by but when you produce something people want you can get rich.

Commodities are for farmers who rely on federal crop insurance subsidies and not for entrepreneurs spending capital at their own risk. Expect vigorous discussions in legislatures that would allow genetically engineered hemp requiring tons of glyphosate and millions of acre/feet of water from dwindling aquifers while isolating tribal nations from the real cannabis industry.

It’s not a question of legalization so much as government getting out of the so-called War on Drugs. Why conservatives support the enrichment of drug kingpins like El Chapo and GlaxoSmithKline remains a mystery.

If red state attorneys general could find a federal judge to stop tribal nations from exercising their cannabis rights they would have done so by now. One Oklahoma lawgiver wants to stop tribal cannabis rights in that state even though Thomas Jefferson introduced the plant to Virginia tribes.

So, okay, farmers: let your corn ground laden with glyphosate go fallow for five years and see if you can get organic certification for your hemp crop.
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8/28/15

Papal visit raises voices on crimes of colonization


Catholicism is hope like syphilis is charity.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast President Barack Obama counseled Americans to remember that Christians are disproportionately guilty of genocidal atrocities.

With the Supreme Leader of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers invading America indigenous activists and others are calling on Pope Frank to not only deny sainthood to a symbol of colonization but to also renounce the Discovery Doctrine.
We call it the European Invasion but modern academics have a more anodyne term, “Columbian Encounter.” Whatever you call it, the civilizations invaded or encountered left physical evidence on the land that far exceeds what could have been done by Native Americans in the numbers commonly thought to have lived in 1492. With the climate change crisis driving methods for measuring CO2 in the air far into the past, scientists got interested whenever CO2 spiked up or down. One spike downward coincided with the Columbian Encounter. The working hypothesis is that the CO2 went away because it was absorbed by the foliage that took over indigenous farms gone fallow when about 50 million people, farming 1.3 hectares per person, died as a result of the European Invasion. Like most crimes, the Columbian Encounter has left physical evidence, enough physical evidence to put the claims that the Americas held only small bands of nomadic hunters in the same category as denial of the Holocaust. [excerpt, Steve Russell, Indian Country Today]
The indigenous population at the time of European arrival in what is now the United Snakes was about 25 million: today it is around 2.5 million.

When Lewis and Clark explored the Missouri River and beyond some men in tribes would urge their wives and daughters to trade sex for things like iron kettles and axes.

According to historian Clay Jenkinson, Thomas Jefferson would be surprised that there are any American Indians still alive at all in 2015.

From a piece by Stephen Rex Brown in the New York Daily News:
A 15th century Catholic decree permitting Europeans to seize Indian land in the New World is a load of papal bull. That was the message Tuesday from the Onondaga Nation, which is calling on the new Pope to revoke the so-called Discovery Doctrine, which evolved from a papal decree written by Pope Nicholas V in 1455. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the doctrine in a 2005 ruling against the Oneida Indian Nation. The ruling affirmed the government’s sovereignty over lands, even if they’re sold to an Indian tribe.
His Eminence is calling on his American flock to turn out Republicans for their belligerence on human-caused climate disruptions.
Pope Francis has apologized for the sins and "offenses" committed by the Catholic Church against indigenous peoples during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas. History's first Latin American pope "humbly" begged forgiveness Thursday during an encounter in Bolivia with indigenous groups and other activists and in the presence of Bolivia's first-ever indigenous president, Evo Morales. Francis noted that Latin American church leaders in the past had acknowledged "grave sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God." St. John Paul II issued a sweeping apology in 2000 for the sins of the church in the past and in 2001 sent an email apologizing for missionary abuses against the aborigines of Oceania.
Read that here.

Restoring those wild lands in the Greater Missouri River basin decimated by the extirpation of indigenous Americans can reverse the effects of the Anthropocene.
Another researcher, Bonnie Duran, an associate professor at the University of Washington, calls this a “colonial health deficit.” Not only does this new study illuminate the long-term effects of the suffering of Holocaust survivors and Native Americans, but it also suggests an intriguing avenue for future research: whether victims of other historic or ongoing genocides, such as America’s black and brown population or the millions of those killed in U.S. wars in the Middle East, also suffer from a colonial health deficit. [Native Americans Have ‘Always Known’: Science Proves Genetic Inheritance of Trauma]
Pope Frank, when you address Congress: call out the ecocidal Republican Party and urge President Obama to rewild the West.


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8/26/15

Noem sleeping with the ones who brung her

Hey, Tory Troy Jones, you hapless sot: my confirmation name was John to honor the 35th President and the 23rd pope with that handle.

If Tike Mike Rounds says DC is dysfunctional he should know: he's a pro at dysfunction.
.
No, Aaron Schock is not gay but he is as corrupted as South Dakota's At-large Representative is.
South Dakota Rep. Kristi Noem on Tuesday said a proposed $10 million economic-recovery grant would help the Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern Railroad continue to improve its rail lines in the state.
Read more about GOP hypokristi here.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway gave Noem $10,000 last cycle and Union Pacific gave her 2,500 simoleons.

What a fucking surprise.

$12,500 for $10 million: good pimping.

Noem is famous for sleeping with the enemies of the good and a known philanderer.

How desperate is John Thune to hide his shitty record? He's hired a Pandering Pig to squeal out his message.

Big Government is when it helps the little guy but when it greases Republican donors it's essential services.

So, i have two popes on SDGOP squish, Jones: Pius XII blessed the rosary in my hands at Vatican City just weeks before the war criminal died in October of 1958: the year we went to the Worlds Fair in Brussels because nothing says Big Government like the United States Air Force.

Democrats = safe. Republicans = cheap.

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8/25/15

Flandreau tribal nation dismisses Jackley-booted thugs

Marty Jackley is not only a partisan twerp tribes are already counties in the 51st State.
The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe is cutting ties with the City of Flandreau Police Department because of a rift over marijuana legalization, city officials said. Among the officers the police department lost is the Flandreau Public School Resource Officer. Flandreau Police Chief Anthony Schrad said the resource officer was paid for through the federal funding, which covered roughly 30 percent of their operating budget.
Read more about tribal sovereignty here.

Excitement is building as the Flandreau Santee Sioux Nation expands on its cannabis plans that include shuttle service to its revolutionary facility.
Terms of the initial 5-year agreement includes; the design, construction, and development of a 10,000 sq. ft. marijuana grow facility to supply a 15,000 sq. ft. on-site retail recreational marijuana consumption lounge. That lounge will be in the current Family Recreation Center on S. Veterans Avenue. The tribe hopes to officially re-open on or before January 1, 2016. [Moody County Enterprise]
The Kul Wicasa Oyate could be the next tribe trapped inside South Dakota to legalize cannabis.
Vice-Chairman Kevin Wright says it's a matter that's crossed the minds of members in the community. “What I gathered from a small group of people is that they want it legalized and they're asking us what we're going to do about it,” said Wright.
Read it here.

The Lower Brule Nation has off-reservation property in Fort Pierre where they could test their sovereignty.

Tribes are the 51st State to the US Environmental Protection Agency. It just awarded the Lower Brule $200,000 to clean up contamination in their community.

The Standing Rock, Cheyenne River and Oglala Lakota Nations are also mulling cannabis projects.

Legislators and other stakeholders should use my model as a roadmap to legalization to raise revenue for critical infrastructure improvements and teachers' salaries.

Stock in Monarch America gained over seven and a half percent today in an otherwise dismal market.
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8/23/15

9/11 just one Israeli hit on America

The Supreme Court of the United States caused 9/11.

As we circle back to the events of 11 September, 2001 it's important to remember that had SCOTUS actually heard Bush v. Gore and ruled for Al Gore rather than upholding Jeb’s secretary of state the entire head-lopping W performed on the chain of command would have been avoided. Gore would have retained Bill Clinton’s security agency as the intelligence apparatus was connecting the dots Mossad and IDF were leaving ahead of the event. Angel would not have been in the air that day if the plot had been uncovered.

That the buildings were dropped into their footprints with explosives during what some describe as a coup is entirely plausible.

Yes, I believe that 1, 2, and 7 were "pulled." And, when you're appointed POTUS by your brother(s) or your father, you lop all the heads of those with whom you do not agree when you come to office because you're focused on deposing Saddam, the winner of the first Gulf War.

CIA analysts threatened to resign ahead of the attack because they knew they'd be blamed for the failures of the Bush White House.

Two Supreme Court Justices expressed regrets in the ruling that put a war criminal in the White House:
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said Thursday night that he’s come to the realization that the rationale behind the court’s Bush v. Gore decision that effectively decided the 2000 presidential election “was really quite unacceptable” because it differentiated between so-called “hanging chads” and “dimpled chads.” That distinction, he told a gala event for the liberal watchdog group Public Citizen in Washington, “violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.” All votes should have been considered the same way, he explained. Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recently expressed regret that the court had taken up the case at all, and Stevens said he was “pleased to hear” about O’Connor’s shift. [Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon]
ProPublica has this. Salon has this. The New York Times has this. lizard posted this. VegasJessie said this. The Dick, Cheney, blames President Obama for poor timing to take out OBL.

No Middle East leader is more unstable than Bibi Netanyahu.

George Weasel Bush created the Islamic State and ordered troops out of Iraq at the end of his failed tenure.
They’re convinced because they interpret foreign affairs through the prism of Bronze Age biblical prophesy. Without getting bogged down in the colorful details of Christian eschatology, the story runs something like this: In order for Jesus to return and establish his Kingdom, the state of Israel must first be conquered by an invading army (preferably Persian or Arab) – because God says so. The unfortunate part (if you’re Jewish, at least) is that before Christ descends from the clouds, a holocaust of sorts must occur, resulting in the deaths of 2/3 of Israel’s people. For certain Christians, then, Israel must exist as a state (which is why they defend it so passionately), but it must also suffer immensely so that Christians can escape physical death in the form of the Rapture. [Salon]
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are struggling to remain relevant.

Zionists, terrorists, war criminals: just a few truths being spoken to power.


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8/20/15

American dams killing rivers, wildlife, futures

Hayduke lives.

There is conscious action to remove the Glen Canyon Dam since Lake Mead could now hold the contents of Lake Powell.
Over 3 million miles of rivers and streams have been etched into the geology of the United States, and many of those rivers flow into and over somewhere between 80,000 and two million dams. Yet only 3% of dams in the US are hydropower facilities—together supplying about just under 7% of U.S. power demand. Nearly one-third of dams in the national inventory list “recreation” as their raison d’être, a rather vague description. 
Migratory fish can be visceral reminders of how a dam changes a river. Roughly 98% of the salmon population on the Elwha River disappeared after the dam went up, says Amy East, a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Dams not only upend ecosystems, they also erase portions of our culture and history. The decision to remove a dam is surprisingly simple. Consideration for Native American tribal rights may also influence decisions over whether to keep or kill a dam. Even Daniel Beard, Commissioner of Reclamation under the first Clinton Administration agrees there’s too many dams. He has been calling loudly and unequivocally for taking out one of the largest in the country, the Glen Canyon Dam. [The Undamming of America]
29 tribes hold 20% of Colorado River rights.
With the oldest claims to water, the tribes command a considerable role in directing the region’s future. Combined, they hold rights to a substantial portion of the Colorado River’s flow: roughly 20 percent, or 2.9 million acre-feet, which is more water than Arizona’s allocation from the river. The tribal share, moreover, will increase, perhaps by as much as hundreds of thousands of acre-feet as the 13 tribes without confirmed rights settle their claims with federal and state governments. The power of settlements to shape the future is already apparent. New Mexico, for one, has set aside a portion of its unused share of the San Juan River, a Colorado River tributary, for tribal water rights settlements, according to the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer. [excerpt, Brett Walton, In Drying Colorado River Basin, Indian Tribes Are Water Dealmakers]
The walk into the Colorado River in Lake Mead Recreation Area to Arizona Hot Springs is other-worldly. One can almost feel the eyes of the wildlife looking down at you while you hike. Most annoying, however, was the steady stream of airliners on approach to Las Vegas just thirty miles away as the vulture flies.


Invasive species are plaguing dams in the Missouri River main stem dams.

Accumulated mercury in large fish causes spontaneous abortions yet testing record non-native salmon in Lake Oahe go untested.

Christopher Guy, assistant unit leader with the US Geological Survey Montana Cooperative Fishery Unit and professor at Montana State University, joined Dakota Midday host Karl Gerhke on Bill Janklow's idea of public radio to talk about the importance of recent findings on the endangered pallid sturgeon in the upper Missouri River basin.
According to American Rivers, an advocacy group that tracks U.S. dam removals, 72 dams in 19 states were torn down in 2014, a record. That is roughly double the annual number from 10 years ago. Some 1,185 dams have been removed since 1912, according to the group. The fleet of U.S. dams, however, is still enormous. The Army Corps of Engineers counts at least 87,000 dams in its database. Removing dams produces its own benefits. Public safety is enhanced by reducing the risk of a dam failure, and moribund freshwater fisheries are rejuvenated when a segmented river is reconnected. [Circle of Blue]
Below the Missouri River dams pallid sturgeon are showing signs of recovery but above?

Surprise!
Pallid sturgeon come from a genetic line that has lived on this planet for tens of millions of years; yet it has been decades since anyone has documented any of the enormous fish successfully producing young that survive to adulthood in the upper Missouri River basin. Now, fisheries scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, Montana State University and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have shown why, detailing for the first time the biological mechanism that has caused the long decline of pallid sturgeon in the Missouri River and led to its being placed on the endangered species list 25 years ago. 
In a paper published this week in the journal Fisheries, the scientists show that oxygen-depleted dead zones between dams in the upper Missouri River are directly linked with the failure of endangered pallid sturgeon hatched embryos to survive to adulthood. Given what the new research shows about how no oxygen is available to hatched pallid sturgeon embryos, the authors of the paper propose that officials will need to consider innovative approaches to managing Missouri River reservoirs for pallid sturgeon conservation to have a chance. [press release, US Geological Survey]
President Obama: decertify the dinosaurs that are the main stem dams, tear the earth fuckers down and rewild the West.
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Jackley settles suit with GOP donor

Mike Rounds got $6000, John Thune and Kristi Noem got $1000 from Amgen last cycle. Thune got $5000 from the criminals in 2012. Thune got $8000 and Noem got $2000 in 2010. Tim Johnson got $0 from Amgen in 2008.
Under a settlement announced this week, the company will pay $71 million to settle an investigation into illegal marketing of its drugs Aranesp and Enbrel, ending an investigation by 48 states and the District of Columbia. Amgen says it is pleased to have resolved the matters and adds it has a strong legal compliance program. [KWAT Radio]
Of course, Amgen gave far more to Republicans.

Marty Jackley helped negotiate a settlement with his donor, GlaxoSmithKline. That firm has also been busted for bribery.
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8/19/15

Board tours Janklow mine disaster

With uncanny accuracy the late Gary Heckenlaible predicted the failure of the Gilt Edge Mine south of Deadwood now a Superfund site. He was also a strong champion for reproductive rights and a valiant opponent of the Dewey Burdock uranium mine.
Members of the South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment took a tour of the Gilt Edge Gold Mine, which in 2000, was placed on the EPA Superfund list due to concerns over acidic water created by the exposure of sulfide rock during mining activities. Brohm Mining Company began large scale mining operations at Gilt Edge in 1986, despite potential acid mine drainage concerns. After filing for bankruptcy, Brohm abandoned the mine in 1999, turning over responsibility for the cleanup to the EPA.
Read more about Bill Janklow's toxic legacy here.

Brohm was an Australian company recruited by a Republican governor who gutted environmental protection in South Dakota.

The Board of Minerals and Environment is an arm of the South Dakota Republican Party who ceded regulatory authority to the US Environmental Protection Agency for uranium mining after the state's moocher state legislature realized there is no competent oversight from state agencies.

Under the General Mining Act of 1872 Canadian miners have carte blanche to rape the Black Hills, so they are.

Photo is of acid mine drainage on Minnesota Ridge in the northern Black Hills.
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8/18/15

CATO wonk: "The problem is not climate change and the solution is not to give firefighters more money."

Talk about shutting the barn door after the horses were incinerated by arsonists.
Any fire study that only looks back as far as 1979 ignores huge fires that resulted from major droughts in earlier decades. The 1970s were one of the wettest decades on record, with an average of just 3 million acres a year burned. By comparison, there were 9 million acres of annual fires in the 1950s; 23 million in the 1940s; and 39 million in the 1930s. While there are some problems with data from those early decades, they are valid enough to show that recent changes in droughts and fires are due to cyclical variations in climate, not to human-caused warming. [The Antiplanner]
How firing off those forests didn't contribute to a warming planet remains a mystery.

Global warming has been accelerating since humans began setting fires to clear habitat, as a weapon or just for amusement. The Industrial Revolution and European settlement in the New World took hardwoods for charcoal then humans allowed fast-growing conifers to replace lost forests.

According to the US Department of Interior forests, grasslands, shrublands and other ecosystems in the West sequester nearly 100 million tons (90.9 million metric tons) of carbon each year.

The US Forest Service responded to 52 new wildland fire starts yesterday totaling 23,425 acres. 15,089 of those acres are in the Northwest. The US Army is mobilizing to assist with structure protection. A record 35 Incident Meteorologists have been deployed to support firefighters and to provide vital weather info to responders.

Latest reports place western wildfire damage at a record-breaking 6.9 million acres so far this season, 45% higher than in an average year. Half of the Forest Service budget is ear-marked for wildland fire costs and this year's allotment is up in flames.

Dense Douglas fir, spruce, lodgepole, ponderosa pine stands prevent aspen restoration and hardwood release while opposition to mechanical harvest rages on in the environmental community. No longer natural after a century of fire suppression Montana's forests are building fuel loads in habitats where indigenous cultures cleared for millennia.

Last year the western spruce budworm defoliated 25,000 acres of Douglas fir, Engelmann spruce and lodgepole pine in northwestern Wyoming: more evidence of anthropogenic climate change.

Trees growing on public land are not agriculture any more than wild salmon are aquaculture. One part of a solution to forest management woes is to move the US Forest Service from the US Department of Agriculture into Interior where American Indian nations could more easily assume additional responsibilities for stewardship on public land.

People building in or near these hazards should be denied homeowners insurance but blaming federal land managers for running out of money to protect private property while denying climate disruptions are influenced by human activity is just delusional.

Pre-emptive burns and managed lightning-struck fires are essential to restoring balance in western ecosystems just like letting bison crop invasive grasses is to the Greater Missouri Basin.

So, the question remains: should rewilding efforts seek to restore sustainable wild lands to Pleistocene Era conditions or let the Anthropocene lay waste desertifying precious resources changing the landscape forever leaving survivors to cleave out habitable zones forsaking native species?

If enviros succeed in driving from office the only Democrats who can preserve public lands and leave Republicans to their devices we are truly fucked.

Update, 20 August, 1550 MDT:

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UNL study: ag responsible for uranium leaching into High Plains Aquifer

In a newly-completed study 78 percent of groundwater samples found with unsafe concentrations of uranium were also contaminated with nitrates from industrial agriculture.
The researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln estimate that nearly 2 million people in California and the Great Plains live over groundwater that has been contaminated with uranium, which can cause health problems. Data from roughly 275,000 samples from two of the nation's largest aquifers — the High Plains aquifer and the Central Valley aquifer in California — were examined for the study. Those two underground stockpiles supply water for irrigation and many communities rely on the aquifers for drinking water. The High Plains Aquifer stretches underneath some 174,000 square miles in parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. [Mitchell Daily Republic]
At Crow Butte near the headwaters of the White River above Crawford, Nebraska Canadian-based Cameco, Inc. has obtained rights to use 9,000 gallons of water per minute to extract raw uranium ore through 8,000 holes bored into the Ogallala and Arikaree Aquifers.

The foreign miners have already pumped about half a billion gallons of radioactive waste water into disposal wells and have rights to bury more. Two years ago Cameco, the world’s largest uranium producer, paid a million dollar fine for environmental damage in Wyoming.
In 2011, the total water stored in the aquifer was about 2.96 billion acre-feet, an overall decline of about 246 million acre-feet (or 8 percent) since pre-development. Change in water in storage from 2009 to 2011 was an overall decline of 2.8 million acre-feet. The overall average water-level decline in the aquifer was 14.2 feet from pre-development to 2011, and 0.1 foot from 2009 to 2011.
The High Plains Aquifer, also known as the Ogallala Aquifer, underlies about 112 million acres (175,000 square miles) in parts of eight states Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. The USGS, at the request of the U.S. Congress, has published reports on water-level changes in the High Plains Aquifer since 1988. Congress requested these reports in response to substantial water-level declines in large areas of the aquifer. --news release, US Geological Survey, links added.
A breach like one at the Gold King Mine in Colorado would send toxic, radioactive waste into the Oglala Lakota Nation and into the Missouri River.

Read more about indigenous action from Debra White Plume's piece at Indian Country Today.



At least one South Dakota Republican calls it the "fed's war on energy" when it's really Big Energy's war on the Earth.
Debra White Plume (Wioweya Najin Win), Executive Director of Owe Aku, is an Oglala Lakota grandmother and water rights activist who is taking on Cameco, the world’s largest producer of uranium, near her homeland on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota. From traveling through the lands, providing training camps, speaking engagements, strategic planning meetings, prayer circles with the Cheyenne Nation, Lakota Nation, Diné Nation, Apache Nation, Annishanabe Nation (Canada), Gila River Nation and Palestinian allies, the message is out there to continue to resist, to engage, to empower, to act collectively, to never give up.
Read it here.
Powertech/Azarga proposes a uranium mine split between Fall River County and Custer County threatening water uses and availability in those areas. This project is loaded with red flags for both water and public health. The economic fate of the Black Hills is at stake. The EPA has proposed rules changes for In Situ Recovery to protect valuable water resources. They recognize that ISR activities use significant volumes of water and state "the ISR process does directly alter groundwater chemistry, posing the challenge of groundwater restoration and long-term subsurface geochemical stabilization after the ISR operational phase ends." They also acknowledge that the lixiviants used can liberate other elements, particularly heavy metals, and that the migration of these outside the production zone can potentially contaminate surrounding aquifers. [Letter, Rebecca Leas]
With uncanny accuracy Gary Heckenlaible predicted the failure of the Gilt Edge Mine south of Deadwood now a Superfund site. He was also a strong champion for reproductive rights and a valiant opponent of the Dewey Burdock uranium mine.

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8/17/15

Today's intersection: John Oliver and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Great Falls-Billings



Sometimes, the blog just writes itself. These stories paired in my twitter feed like two lovers kissing.
On Thursday, documents obtained by The Billings Gazette revealed the Diocese, which covers the eastern part of the state, including Billings, has agreed to shell out $11 million to settle claims that the church had exploited the poverty status of the poor tribal school in order to benefit from fundraising. Unfortunately, what looks like hush money only continues to fuel the notion that the church is only out to protect its image. At any cost. Or, at least at the cost of $11 million. [Gazette opinion: Nothing is right about the St. Labre settlement]
The Helena Chapter of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers is also a known criminal enterprise as is a Minnesota branch.

Dakota Free Press followed up on a piece in The Dakota Progressive scoring a hat trick reporting on the crimes of religionists.

St. Joseph's Indian School in South Dakota fleeces $50 million a year from unwitting donors selling Chinese-made goods that appropriate Native culture all with the approval of a rubber-stamp red state legislature.


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8/16/15

Doctors: tax sugary drinks


New analysis has revealed that consumption of sugary drinks results in some 184,000 deaths worldwide each year.

How Coca Cola, Archer Daniels Midland, and News Corpse have fattened themselves and us on sugar water is patently offensive and criminal. Drilling for the petroleum to make containers that end up in landfills is malicious and hateful especially when exposure to plastic can cause hormone changes that can lead to gender dysphoria.
A new study published in Social Science & Medicine suggests that taxation that depends on the number of calories or amount of sugar per liter may be the best approach and could even encourage manufacturers to produce and promote healthier alternatives. Last year, Mexico became the first country to implement a nationwide sugar-sweetened drink tax when it introduced a tax of one peso (around $0.07) per liter – about 10 percent of the price. As well as being a possible approach for sugar-sweetened drinks, this dose approach to taxation could also be effective at controlling unhealthy food consumption, and even fuel consumption.
Read it here.

Mexico has slowed its consumption of beverages with added sugar by taxing the industry.

Treating patients in a surge of obesity, doctors in the United Kingdom are urging lawmakers to pass a 20 percent tax to pay the medical costs to the national health care system.
Chicago consumers of soda pop, energy drinks and other sugary beverages would be taxed — at a rate of a penny per ounce — to curb soaring obesity rates, bankroll school physical fitness programs and chip away at the $30 billion pension crisis at the city and public schools, under a plan proposed Wednesday. [Chicago Sun-Times]
Autism is caused by faulty gut/brain connections even in nanny states like South Dakota. Genetically engineered sugar beet seed contributes to the spectrum disorder in kids.

Cannabis is an effective therapy for autism and it usually only kills by keeping it illegal.

Advertising is a gateway drug; it should be subject to increased taxation, too.
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Ecocide's best hits: death and taxes edition

Tike Mike Rounds is getting basted in the Rapid City Journal's notoriously Republican comment section. Rather than fund veterans care South Dakota's GOP Senators would rather expand the size of a cemetery.

Ellsworth Air Force Base will start practice-bombing parts of Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota if the expansion of the Powder River Training Complex ever gets off the ground. Damage to ranch land values, wildlife habitat and to quality of life is expected to be in the millions if not more. Can't wait for bombers to buzz Betty Olson's house.

The "'Black Hills National Forest' and 'He Sapa' are one and the same place," according to Rainbow Family member, Scottie Addison.

In a trip to Iowa Jeb Bush pushed for agriculture deregulation in a state where drinking water is fouled and beaches closed due to rampant ag pollution while calling for an end to federal funding for women's health needs.

The Keystone XL Pipeline is a moral hazard.

Vice president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council Kari Cutting has blown off workplace deaths about the same way Dennis Daugaard blows off the Sturgis Rally carnage.
On average, someone dies about every six weeks from an accident in the Bakken – at least 74 since 2006, according to the first comprehensive accounting of such deaths using data obtained from Canadian and U.S. regulators. Scientists plan to ask energy companies for permission to invite workers at man camps, which house laborers; trucking centers and other facilities to participate in the survey. [The Center for Investigative Reporting]
40 percent of children in the now busting Bakken southwest of North Dakota are in foster care because of that nanny state's crackdown on parental substance choices as they deal with brutal workplace conditions and six month winters while the Federal Drug Administration approves the use of OxyContin for kids as young as eleven.

Clay Jenkinson, my new favorite historian, writes in the Bismarck Tribune: "In short, the settlement of North Dakota was made possible by the federal government."

White supremacist Craig Cobb wants to take over Antler, North Dakota and rename it after Donald Trump.

Because of a perceived threat to its bottom line a GOP farm group in Wyoming is interfering in an Indian reservation boundary suit.

Policing for Profit: in Wyoming only a small percentage of cash seized under asset forfeiture is returned.

The Crow Nation, a tribe trapped in Montana that sided with Custer at the Battle of Greasy Grass, signed a coal deal.

According to federal estimates of the more than 160,000 abandoned mines at least 33,000 have polluted water supplies or left arsenic-contaminated tailings.

Scientist: “This definitely has the potential of being the Godzilla El Niño.”

Like me more and more retirees are seeking out states where cannabis rights are being recognized.
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8/15/15

Quack Unruh selling lies to raise hush money

I caught this LTE this morning in the paper and thought I'd expose another charlatan in the South Dakota Republican Party.

Religious fundamentalists that colonized the New World were debauched, polygamist slavers. Those are parts of American History liars like Al Unruh want excised from Common Core guides.

Are all chiropractors criminals and nutjobs or just the Republican, catholic ones? Scott Munsterman groped at least one teen, Fred Deutsch wants to end women's civil rights and Unruh wants to rewrite history.
The same five lawyers on the Supreme Court changed their minds and over-ruled the American people, dismantling the laws of all 50 states according to their own humanist ideology. It was judicial activism unauthorized in the Constitution according to Supreme Court Justice Roberts. [Al Unrubh, My Voice: America is in need of a ‘spiritual revival’]
Unruh is an Elkton boy: his family was run out of town after his father, also a "chiropractic physician," was caught molesting children during exams at a time in South Dakota history when quacks enjoyed intimate physical contact with boys to determine who would participate in school sports.

It's just creepy.

You see this all the time with Talibangelicals: someone threatens to out one as a serial molester, he runs an op-ed in the paper then diverts some cash he raises from sermonizing wedge issues to shut up the people he's raped or groped.

Think of it as the Bill Cosby Effect: the more sanctimonious the speech the more cash gets raised to hide career criminal behavior.

Republicans are evil.

Turn your head and cough.


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8/14/15

Republican Pierre mayor reaches for more federal cash

Gravity-challenged Mayor Laurie Gill is a career bureaupublican and former operative in South Dakota's authoritarian executive branch.
The $150,000 from the feds would make up the bulk of a two-year $180,000 marketing campaign, buttressed by $20,000 in cash and $10,000 worth of “in-kind” contributions provided by the “City of Pierre and the community,” according to the application. The city’s application for the grant proposes spending $100,000 on television and radio advertisements and $15,000 on newspaper advertisements. It includes letters for hunting lodges saying how important it is to improve air service to Pierre. [Pierre Capital Journal]
South Dakota voters already know subsidized air service into Pierre is a bridge to nowhere.

Gill has embraced Agenda 21. Pierre's struggling mayor entered her town in competition for recognition by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, or ICLEI.
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Raped veteran loses lawsuit in cannabis for post-traumatic stress case

A New Mexico state district judge has upheld the firing of a physician’s assistant by Presbyterian Healthcare Services. Veteran Donna Smith, who was raped in the military, qualifies for therapeutic cannabis under state law.
She subsequently transmitted copies of her state-issued medical marijuana card, a doctor’s note and her driver’s license to the office, which informed her within minutes that she was fired, according to the lawsuit. Smith also voiced her disappointment. “How can you say it’s against federal law when we have 23 medical programs across the nation and four that are recreational? What’s the point of having a medical program at all if it’s not compassionate?”
Her attorney, Jason Flores-Williams claimed the hospital's decision is a chilling effect on Smith's civil rights, a discriminatory termination and a failure to accommodate a serious medical condition in violation of the New Mexico Human Rights Act.
Ultimately, this will be rectified in the courts, and someday soon, and we’ll look back on this as an unfortunate moment when our justice system could have been progressive and protected the rights of individuals, but instead chose to play it conservatively,” he said.
Read the whole story in the Albuquerque Journal.

Presbyterian is the largest employer in the state wielding tremendous lobbyist and coercive power.
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8/13/15

SDGOP blog bully embraces usury but cannabis prohibition not nanny-statism


Update, 14 August, 0850 MDT: here is more evidence that video lootery, payday and title loan sharks are parasites feeding off South Dakota's regressive tax structure.

In her column Democratic lawmaker, Representative Peggy Gibson reminds readers of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that South Dakotans owe the state over $127 million while taking an extremist Republican to task for lying to voters.

.....................

In June, Colorado collected a total of $9 million in taxes and fees after Democrats backed the state's cannabis initiative.

South Dakota's Republican Party blowhole has been pouring putridity over efforts of groups trying to put cannabis rights reform in front of the state's voters.

Video lootery, payday loan sharks, domestic violence and homelessness are inextricably linked putting children at risk to more catastrophic consequences far more often than has happened in states that have legalized or lessened penalties for casual use of cannabis.

While admitting he has just recently availed himself the services of a pawn shop Pat Powers is stumbling drunk through a nanny state minefield decrying proposals that would mean more consumer protection from predatory pawn brokers and quickie loan joints while upholding that same state's mandate to deny drug therapies to patients with life-threatening medical conditions.

Now he's bashing fellow Republican, Steve Hickey for being part of a drive to end predatory lenders.

Yes, the initiative and referendum processes are blunt instruments but they're the people's weapons to resist the tyranny of one-party rule.

Divining the alternate universe where Randy Scott still cruises the Moody County back roads while a Hellbent Bill Janklow serially lurks at every intersection in South Dakota's ideological landscape is one of the most flagrant examples of putting the best possible face on the decriminalization of Citibank's prospectus that has ever been perpetrated by an entrenched Republican spin machine.

It's becoming increasingly apparent that this phenomenon is no accident: it has been manufactured to make the state a corporatist tax haven for an exclusive set of Republicans while $2.5 trillion languishes in South Dakota banks.

When democracy is outlawed only outlaws will have democracy.

Ohio will have a legalization initiative on her ballot.


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8/11/15

Wyoming moves to legalize therapeutic cannabis

Activists in Wyoming will begin collecting signatures for an initiative to legalize cannabis for medical reasons.

A recent study has found evidence that cannabis is not a gateway to abuse of stronger compounds.
The researchers based their conclusions on data gathered from Monitoring the Future, an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes and values of American high school students. Roughly 15,000 high school seniors are assessed each year. Paul Armentano, deputy director of the pro-marijuana group NORML, said the study findings weren't surprising. "Science has consistently shown that environmental factors, such as ready access to other illicit substances, and personal traits, such as a propensity toward risk-seeking behavior, are associated with the decision to move from marijuana to other illicit substances," Armentano said. "But marijuana's drug chemistry likely does not play a significant role, if any role, in this decision." [Marijuana Study Counters 'Gateway' Theory]
“The change in drug arrests has been nonexistent,” said Sweetwater County, Wyoming Sheriff Mike Lowell. “You’re going to deal with it, you’re not going to stop it.”

Colorado's cannabis industry has not only not telegraphed an increase in prosecutions for possession in Lowell's county charges have dropped 18 percent from 2013 to 2014 and only 8 percent of arrests in Wyoming involved the herb. Even felony cannabis seizures by Highway Patrol troopers are trending downward and the number of pounds of confiscated product dropped 50 percent from 2012 to 2013.

Sheriff Lowell has his deputies undergo other interdiction training saying his agency is far more concerned with methamphetamine and heroin.

Chris Christian is director of the Wyoming chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). Her group has filed to put a proposal to legalize therapeutic cannabis on the state's ballot after Denver law firm, Hoban & Feola LLC volunteered to help write the measure. A statewide poll conducted last year by the University of Wyoming found 72 percent of Wyoming residents support medical cannabis.

Want to encourage young people to become involved in the democratic process in your state? Get legal cannabis on the ballot.
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8/10/15

Fang: AFP linked to Trump campaign

South Dakota's Political Porker squeals with glee over the dark money efforts of the Koch-powered 'Americans for Prosperity' and pretends to be offended by the un-coded misogynistic hate speech being delivered in the center ring by the leading performer in his party's 2016 presidential clown show.

But, reporter Lee Fang has discovered that the Trump campaign roster reads like a Koch/AFP law firm.




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Rounds blames Congress for Pierre's loss of subsidized air service


Tike Mike can't fly home.
Pierre’s essential air service most likely will not get better anytime soon. That’s according to South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds. Rounds says the air service problem in Pierre, was actually caused by Congress. Rounds says he is frustrated with Pierre’s air service just as much as anyone else. Rounds adds that hopefully, there will be some act of congress that will eliminate the minimum amount of flying hours for pilots and alleviate some of that pain of airlines, especially the smaller ones like Pierre’s. [KCCR Radio]
Recall that the TEApublican former GOP governor, Rounds squandered Amtrak money on an airplane for his personal use now Pierre continues to suffer Essential Air Service woes and low boarding numbers even while the legislature is in session.
Recent concerns of poor service and late or canceled flights from Great Lakes Airlines have prompted Pierre officials to try and find a different air carrier as of lately. Pierre’s bid to get another airline firm, Aerodynamics Inc., to provide flights in and out of the capitol is not going to happen.
Read that here.

South Dakota's At-large Representative Republican Kristi Noem voted for an amendment that would have ended federal funding for Amtrak. A bill investing $8 billion in Amtrak's future was ultimately passed.

Rounds build a self-insured house in a swamp that his administration knew was susceptible to flooding which of course flooded in 2011.

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8/8/15

Schoenbeck plan would raise taxes on poorest South Dakotans


The hypocrisy of South Dakota’s Republican Party knows no bound.

A wealthy SDGOP legislator wants to raise taxes on the poor...again.
The state Republican Party denies the Anthropocene, the American Genocide, and the legacy of slavery while rich lawyers like Lee Schoenbeck scramble to cover up the crimes being committed against South Dakota's workforce.

Utilities and banks are using the state as a tax haven languishing in the regressive tax structure with which Schoenbeck, a member of a pedophile cult and the National Ravage Association (NRA), raises his campaign money.

South Dakota should listen to Paula Hawks, Bernie Hunhoff and Cory Heidelberger and pass a corporate income tax.

Reduce the number of South Dakota counties to 25, turn DSU into a community college, and adopt my cannabis template: the kurtz solution painted on a thumbnail.

A well-respected, less radical former Republican legislator, Stan Adelstein, was driven from the extremist South Dakota legislature for proposing the bill Schoenbeck is being lauded for.

A state that calls itself conservative depends on federal Social Security benefits to pay the property taxes that currently bankroll the bulk of South Dakota's moocher state bills while video lootery drives poor residents even further into despair.

South Dakota deserves the legislature it suffers.
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8/7/15

MIT: western deserts dried out quickly; human impact chicken or egg?

The results of a trophic cascade likely triggered, or at least exacerbated, by humans in North America during the end of the last ice age are being explored in caves in the American West.
David McGee, the Kerr-McGee Career Development Assistant Professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, says the results suggest that around 8,200 years ago, the climate of the American West began transitioning from a lush landscape to the desert terrain that we know today. On a geological timescale, McGee says the region’s moisture content appears to have dropped rather suddenly — “like falling off a shelf,” he says. This steep drop likely had a dramatic impact on humans living in the region.
“Based upon these data, I would hypothesize that you should see some pretty big changes in how people were living just before and right after 8,000 years ago,” McGee says. “What sort of game were they hunting, what plants were they eating, and where were they choosing to live? Montana’s going to start looking pretty good if the Great Basin is drying out. ”
“One of the big things that was happening at this time worldwide was the collapse of the last vestiges of this big ice sheet in Canada,” McGee says. “An ice sheet is thought to have important effects on where the jet stream goes. By having this ice sheet here, it made it so the jet stream was more likely to bring storms into the American West, and when it collapsed, the region became more like it is today.” [excerpt, Research suggests western U.S. deserts were relatively wet up until 8,200 years ago]
Evidence that humans have eaten or burned themselves out of habitats creating desertification behind them is strewn throughout the continent.

Is it too late for Earth? Have we reached Peak Human?

Should Liberals just say: "to Hell with biodiversity" and join the earth haters in a final orgy of death, consumption and/or prayer?

Coexist or kill them all and let Goddess sort 'em out?

Mary Hoff asks Johan Rockstrom in the Utne Reader: "What would it take? Why do we need to think about protecting Earth’s systems from catastrophic failure?"
The evidence shows that we may have entered a whole new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, where humans constitute the main geological force changing planet Earth. The planetary boundaries framework was developed to address this new reality. The second is the risk of nonlinear change, which comes out of resilience theory and from empirical evidence that particular ecosystems have multiple stable states. But there is a big “but”: And the big but is, have we already gone too far? And that we simply don’t know yet.
From a post by Alex Reshanov at EarthSky:
All this shifting meat consumption is a concern because, despite our middling trophic level, we’re quite good at sucking up resources. According to the study, humans use 25% of the net primary production (that finite amount of [planetary] energy we discussed earlier), and food production accounts for 35-40% of that allocation. Given that agriculture isn’t even our only drain on global resources, the fact that we’re not at the top of the food chain is probably a good thing. [Reshanov, Humans aren't top predators, says report]
At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, scientists, Brad Werner among them, asked a question: “Is Earth Fucked?”
Why shout out the blunt question on everyone’s mind? Werner explained at the outset of the presentation that it was inspired by friends who are depressed about the future of the planet. “Not so much depressed about all the good science that’s being done all over the world—a lot of it being presented here—about what the future holds,” he clarified, “but by the seeming inability to respond appropriately to it.” Resistance, Werner argued, is the wild card that can force dominant systems such as our current resource-chewing juggernaut onto a more sustainable path. Werner hasn’t completed that part of his model, so we’ll have to wait to find out what happens.--Jonathan Mingle, Slate
Japan's flat economic growth means she is consuming resources at slower rates and other nations haven't figured out how to do it yet.

Legalize automatic weapons and end restrictions on the sale and possession of rocket propelled grenade launchers now.

Let's get it over with. Let the carnage begin.

Rewild the West.

And now, a public service announcement.

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8/6/15

Non-white populations growing six times faster than whites in South Dakota

Billy Mills recently posted comments on his Facebook page about the time his family were visitors in a racist Custer in the occupied Black Hills. His posts on the town named for a war criminal have gone viral.

Oglala Lakota County is not just the bluest county in South Dakota, it's the most Democratic county in the US.

As Bob Mercer reports that more Democrats register as Republicans to monkey-wrench GOP primaries in South Dakota that trend could begin to reverse.
South Dakota's population of color grew by 16.6 percent during those four years while the United States population of color grew 8.6 percent. The state's white population grew 2.7 percent while the nation's white population grew 0.3 percent. South Dakota ranks 41st among the 50 states for its population of color, compared to last-place Maine at 6.2 percent and first-place Hawaii at 77 percent. In addition to Hawaii, three other states have populations of color above 50 percent — California at 61.5 percent, New Mexico at 61.2 percent and Texas at 56.5 percent. [South Dakota Dashboard]
Read Mercer's musings linked here.


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8/5/15

ND oil leases in free fall: Dakota Access, KXL on-ramp become non sequitur

More than $600,000 in bonus payments were collected Tuesday during a quarterly mineral acre lease auction held by the state, the smallest amount secured in a regularly scheduled quarterly auction since 2007. Leases in Williams County drew in just over half of the lease dollars, with $321,709 coming from 2,764 acres. This was followed by Divide County with $125,328 coming from 4,538 acres. [Bismarck Tribune]
Less than 3 percent of 8,000 acres in Iowa affected by a proposed pipeline has been surveyed by a professional archaeologist. The US Army Corps of Engineers are just required to perform archaeological surveys on 16 of the 17 major river and stream crossings.
Energy Transfer Partners spokesman Chuck Frey told North Dakota's Public Service Commission Thursday that 56 percent of the easements needed along the North Dakota route have been obtained. The company wants to build the 1,100-mile pipeline to move 450,000 barrels of North Dakota crude daily to Illinois. The $3.8 billion pipeline also would pass through South Dakota and Iowa.
Read it here.
Iowa’s state archaeologist contends the proposed Bakken Pipeline carrying crude from North Dakota to Illinois should face the same scrutiny as a state project with potential to disrupt archaeological sites. A public agency, such as the Iowa Department of Natural Resources or the Iowa Department of Transportation, would be required in such a project to test land for archaeological significance, wrote John Doershuk, director of the Office of the State Archaeologist, in a May 22 letter to the Iowa Utilities Board. “If this were an Iowa DOT or DNR project, the entire area of potential effect would be included in requirements for archaeological compliance and (the Bakken Pipeline) should be subject to the same level of scrutiny to which we hold Iowa agencies,” he wrote. Dallas-based Energy Transfer requested a permit from the Iowa Utilities Board for its subsidiary Dakota Access LLC to build the Bakken Pipeline for crude oil, which would cut diagonally across 343 miles in Iowa. [The Dickinson Press]
A Minnehaha County judge ordered nearly two dozen landowners who oppose the Dakota Access pipeline project to stand aside and allow developers to case their properties for condemnation.
Metal pin flags used to mark the pipelines so excavators can safely work in the area are often left behind, creating hazards for cattle when the metal winds up in hay bales. “They are everywhere out here,” said McKenzie County rancher Vawnita Best. “It looks like a confetti plant blew up.”
Read it here.
Indigenous Environmental Action (IEN), an international non-profit based in Minnesota also is intervening against the Dakota Access Pipeline in South Dakota. IEN opposes the proposals for Keystone XL, Enbridge Line 13, and Albert Clipper pipelines. [Talli Nauman, Native Sun News]
TransCanada has spent well over $100,000 getting its KeystoneXL ecocide into the veins of teevee users.

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Interim cleric: flood of cases against Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers 'staggering'

South Dakota's legislature has covered up crimes against children.

After a cassock with ties to the Sioux Falls diocese resigned amid clergy crimes, jaws are dropping.
A day after the deadline for filing clergy abuse claims against the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese, interim Archbishop Bernard Hebda described the number of victims who stepped forward as “staggering.” With the full list of creditors now in sight, the archdiocese will begin working in bankruptcy court with the victims’ committee, insurance companies and others to review the claims. Hebda argued that a speedy end to the bankruptcy proceedings is good for everyone. [StarTribune]
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South Dakota tribe moving toward adopting kurtz cannabis plan

The Sturgis Rally generates about $30,000,000 in tax revenue for the general fund and kills x number of bikers every year. Medical cannabis will never pay a dime to boost teachers’ wages.

Eric Hagen is talking with 24 tribes in 14 states about legal cannabis.
They say that hint in the air up in Flandreau, that suggestion of something to come, is the sweet promise of marijuana.
Read it here.

The cannabis buzz is happening in every other state Democratic Party but not in South Dakota. Democratic candidates in red states have exactly zero to lose by embracing legal cannabis as an alternative or supplement to corporate income taxes especially where regressive systems prevail. Cannabis is a winning issue and if Democrats want to win they’ll embrace it or lose: it’s just that simple.

Monarch America enjoys a kurtz Buy recommendation.

The record for rally-related deaths is eleven during the 50th anniversary bacchanal in 1990: that summer was a personal Hell, too.
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8/4/15

Legal cannabis wafting into national GOP ranks


Colorado’s cannabis law includes a 15 percent excise tax on wholesale product that is set aside for school construction capital.

Does anyone call it recreational alchohol? Of course not.
Pew poll data shows 63 percent of Millennial Republicans -- those born between 1981 and 1996 -- support legalized marijuana. But it's a divisive topic if the applause during Thursday's pot debate at CPAC, an annual gathering of conservatives, is any indication. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson argued for its legalization, casting it as a safer alternative to alcohol; "Having a debate right now over whether or not to legalize marijuana is kind of like having a debate over whether the sun is going to come up tomorrow," Johnson said. On that same panel, Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (N.Y.) said marijuana today is stronger and more dangerous than in the past. [Hunter Schwarz]
Even earth haters are beginning to see the green.
Vermont Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning is one of the state’s strongest proponents of legalization. The Republican from Caledonia has written opinion letters to local newspapers arguing that legalization will ensure safer pot products and give the state an economic boost. Vermont Republicans illustrate a national upswing in conservative support of marijuana legalization. [Burlington Free Press]
Cannabis is already legal in parts of South Dakota but getting the means of cultivation, seeds and clones past Marty Jackley's gestapo is daunting.
Minnesota's marijuana makeover was kicked into high gear Tuesday with a tour of a new cannabis-growing plant. "Nine months ago, this was all farmland. It's pretty amazing," said Dr. Kyle Kingsley, CEO of Minnesota Medical Solutions, as he led reporters through his sleek new plant in Otsego, about 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis. The high-tech, ultrasecurity, super-secret building is one of two marijuana factories in the state. The other is in Cottage Grove, operated by LeafLine Labs. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]
Public Policy Polling released a survey commissioned by Minnesota NORML from January 18-21, 2015. 49% of Minnesotans want legal cannabis ala Colorado and Washington, 44% are opposed; men embrace legalization 51/43. 76% of respondents condone therapeutic access. Even Republicans showed support at 61% and American Indians showed overwhelming approval at 93%. 54% believe cannabis prohibition is not more effective than alcohol prohibition, 51% think Minnesota’s economy would benefit from market legalization.

North Dakota has legalized cannabis so getting the means to cultivate onto the Standing Rock tribal nation is already taking place. But distribution of finished product remains smoke and mirrors unless states and tribes adopt a regulatory strategy and form compacts.

Progressives overwhelmingly support legal cannabis while liberals are too afraid to offend a non-existent base. Clearly, South Dakota ‘Progress’ doesn’t have a progressive spine and should just join the SDGOP.

Letting the earth haters lead on cannabis reform will result in the defeat of Democrats nation wide if we don't step up to the bong, listen to voters and send the message to end Prohibition.


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