Senator Tester 'cutting through the gridlock'

Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and this blog follow each other on Twitter. As rail coal traffic dies Tester wants to restore the Hiawatha Line. He and his colleague, Tom Udall (D-NM) are leading efforts to improve the Indian Health Service.

Dear Larry,

For too long politics has forced Congress into a gridlock.

Today elected officials are more interested in scoring political points, than doing what is right for the folks they represent.

But last week, I helped lead a bipartisan group of Senators through that gridlock and we delivered for our state's energy future, outdoor economy, and transportation infrastructure.

A decade ago, America was a net importer of energy. Today, America is more energy secure than ever - thanks not only to oil and gas development, but also dramatic advances in wind and solar energy. This week, I joined my colleagues to pass a bill that builds on this success. The Energy Modernization Policy Act, invests in an all-of-the above energy strategy that includes wind, solar, geothermal, oil, gas, and coal.

This bill will cut red tape on the permitting process for renewable energy projects and it prioritizes clean coal research and development.

At a time when the coal industry is facing competition from low natural gas prices and changing consumer demand, this bill takes steps forward to protect our good-paying jobs and it addresses the bizarre changes in weather patterns that are threatening Montana's agriculture and outdoor industries.

Speaking of Montana's great outdoors, this bill permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).

The LWCF is used to increase public access to public land for folks who love to hunt, fish, and hike.

Additionally, this bill helps establish more shooting ranges on our public lands, and it requires most BLM and Forest Service lands to be open for hunting, fishing, and shooting.

But the week of bipartisanship didn't stop when we passed the Energy Policy Modernization Act.

The Senate also made significant investments in Montana's airports by reauthorizating the Federal Aviation Administration.

I was able to successfully add several amendments to strengthen our national security to this bill, including requiring folks to look at the feasibility of installing the most up-to-date security equipment at all Montana airports.

I also was able to pass an amendment that doubles the number of security teams monitoring baggage claims and increases law enforcement training for active shooter situations.

These amendments will make traveling safer and invest in critical transportation infrastructure.

It was the a breath of fresh air in the Senate, and going forward I will continue to reach across the aisle and ensure that Congress is doing what's best for Montana.

It's an honor to serve you in the U.S. Senate,

Jon

Today we passed 4 bills out of the Indian Affairs Committee to increase education outcomes & reform criminal justice https://t.co/ulAKE1FTXi

— Senator Jon Tester (@SenatorTester) April 27, 2016

Stace Nelson running against SDGOP establishment

South Dakota voters have had it with single-party rule in the chemical toilet. Registration trends show that Democrats are signing up as earth haters and GOPers are leaving that party to become unaffiliated with any political organ. Joe Lowe has called South Dakota's current governor incompetent.

During South Dakota’s 2014 legislative session, HCR 1017 — a resolution urging the federal government to reconsider hemp’s status as a controlled substance and recognize its viability in agriculture — was introduced. District 19 Rep. Stace Nelson (R) co-authored the resolution along with primary sponsor Elizabeth May (R-27) and told the Press & Dakotan hemp is deeply rooted in American history. Despite the setback, Nelson said he believes the Farm Bill provision, plus time and increased education on the subject, could make it easier to enact legislation aimed at easing hemp restrictions in the coming years. “Next year, we’ll probably see another bill come forward,” he said. “As people get educated on it and understand more, I see it not being a problem in the future.” [Rob Nielsen, Yankton Press and Dakotan]

Establishment obese Republican Student Association President Caleb Finck has announced a run for the state senate from District 19.

We are witnessing corruption in South Dakota that is akin to Third World country corruption. We had politicians that happily sold out that state of South Dakota to get access to communist Chinese money. Wasted millions of taxpayer dollars to do so. I don't know of anybody in my field (military intelligence) that would think it was wise or prudent for any elected official to marry South Dakota taxpayer dollars with communist Chinese interests. [Rep. Stace Nelson, interview in Rapid City Journal]

As a CASA volunteer former state Representative Stace Nelson picked up the pieces shattered by the Rounds/Daugaard years. This reporter certainly doesn't agree with everything Nelson believes in but he is honest to a fault: a trait sorely lacking in any of the other candidates in South Dakota's Republican Party. The GOP D19 primary winner will face Democrat Russell Graeff of Scotland.

In 2014 I sent Nelson money for his US Senate campaign against the corrupt Mike Rounds. Now he needs our help for his District 19 primary run.

Please join me in sending Stace Nelson some money.

Cops' lives suck: South Dakota falling down on prison industry oversight

Draconian drug laws have effectively reduced the number of hires in South Dakota's mass incarceration businesses.

The six prisons in the South Dakota Department of Corrections are all feeling the pinch of staff shortages and high turnover of 18 to 20 percent. The Department of Corrections tells us there are reduced staffing levels at community work centers on the overnight shift because they are watching minimum-security inmates. [KELO teevee]

More than 5 million children in America are separated from a parent because of a prison sentence. Eight percent of South Dakota's kids or about 17,000 children are affected by the state's repressive law enforcement industry.

Scot Spencer, the Casey Foundation's associate director for advocacy and influence, said that can have long-term negative effects. "Having a parent incarcerated can be a lifelong experience," he said. "It has the same magnitude of impact as abuse, domestic violence and divorce." [Public News Service]

Conceding South Dakota's bleak history of incarcerating adolescents and young adults Marty Jackley's School to Prison Pipeline has gotten the shaft.

South Dakota's attorney general's office has a history of being more like a KGB unit, according to David Newquist at the Northern Valley Beacon. Jackley receives campaign contributions from the very people he is obligated to oversee.

Todd Epp has called Pierre a Reichstag.

Exacerbating prison population and hopelessness, personal income in South Dakota has plummeted under Republican Governor Denny Daugaard according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. The state is addicted to gambling creating staggering homelessness and despair.

Shootings in Sioux Falls are directly related to video lootery and residents are telling the press they don't want to live there anymore. School lockdowns are reaching epidemic levels in a state that grew up with open doors and optimism about the state's future is being dashed.

Even Kmart is leaving South Dakota as Main Streets in Yankton and Huron are being emptied by Walmart peddling poisonous plastic crap imported from China.

Instead of helping South Dakota's least fortunate, the state's Republican congressional delegation has moved to privatize hospitals in Indian Country enriching campaign donors like the Sanford and Rapid City Regional health care oligopolies.

Crony capitalists have been siphoning money from programs meant to fund Native education until an alleged murder/suicide exposed the corruption.

As hypocrisy reigns supreme at the highest levels of power in South Dakota residents endure Policing for Profit and civil forfeiture so the sitting governor can crow about his leadership and self-reliance while moral hazards pay the bills.

Attorney General Marty Jackley is not only a partisan twerp he's as dirty as the police forces he oversees. Jackley says he believes conflict of interest laws are too lax yet he is hoarding information on Bendagate that could put his political party in the legal cross hairs. He's struggling to raise enough campaign cash to run for governor.

Another Republican threatening to run for governor is sleaze ball, Mark Mickelson. A pale shadow of his father, the late Governor George Mickelson, Mark believes prosperity is more important than environmental protection and that Medicaid expansion for the state's least fortunate is inconsistent with South Dakota values.

There is no money for South Dakota education in medical or industrial cannabis and no video lootery revenue goes to the state's tribes. Cannabis prohibition is not protecting South Dakota kids any more than video lootery is.

This election year earth hater don Juan Thune is slithering back to the center hissing bipartisanism whilst getting squeezed by the pythons that brung him but his Democratic rival, Jay Williams is being revolutionary by adopting the kurtz template. Maybe Williams should be running for the state legislature instead.

The Tribal Marijuana Sovereignty Act has been introduced in the US House of Representatives. The five-page bill includes a section authorizing Indian Health Service medical professionals to make recommendations to their patients with regard to cannabis.

Despite lies from SDGOP, 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.

If people have forgotten cops are human, it's their own fault for allowing bad cops, systematic abuses and racism to go unchecked.

Cops' lives suck. Little wonder they abuse their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and occasionally murder their wives.

Eisenhower was a socialist

South Dakota's porcine prevaricator, Pat Powers, may be an obese hypocrite; but, he is exactly right: the South Dakota Democratic Party, with less than 7k in the bank, is circling the drain without any chance of survival even as the national Republican Party is splintering.

Powers put up a post today saying no socialist has ever run for US President.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wouldn’t reveal just how high he’d raise income taxes on the rich during the Iowa presidential debate, but he guaranteed it wouldn’t be as much as it has been in the past. During the eight years of the Eisenhower presidency, from 1953 to 1961, the top marginal rate was 91 percent. (It was 92 percent the year he came into office.) For the duration of Eisenhower’s presidency, that rate affected individuals making $200,000 or more per year or couples making $400,000 and above per year. In 2015 dollars, that's roughly $1.7 million for an individual and $3.4 million for a couple. [PolitiFact]

Powers said he bought a T-shirt. Curious whether he had to pay extra for a 5X.

That would make John Thune a Communist by helping to empower the US military with tax and spend authority beyond President Eisenhower's wildest dreams.

Today, US infrastructure built under Eisenhower's direction is falling apart, especially in South Dakota, because of two disastrous wars waged by Bush Republicans costing at least $4 TRILLION.

SDDP has nothing to lose by being revolutionary yet blanches at the perception that the state party is run by pussies.

Napoli hinting SDGOP gubernatorial run

Personal income in South Dakota has plummeted under Governor Denny Daugaard.

Unfortunately, now that Bernie Hunhoff has abandoned statewide politics to spend more time with his, um...family, the South Dakota Democratic Party has nobody qualified to be governor.

But, earth haters abound in South Dakota's Republican gubernatorial primary so far. Embattled Attorney General Marty Jackley is mulling a go at it, so are ethics-neutral Mark Mickelson and scandal-plagued Avera lobbyist Lieutenant Governor Matt Michels. Career politician and Snow Queen Kristi Noem has all but ruled out a shot at South Dakota's chief executive.

Sovereign citizen Wendel Hiland has announced a third party run.

As South Dakota Governor I will stand with my fellow Citizens in defiance of unconstitutional overreach and abuses committed by the Federal, State and local Government. It's time WE remind Government who's in charge. [Facebook post]

GOP former Rapid City legislator and short guy, Bill Napoli is not so conciliatory.

Gov. Daugaard and his liberal Republicans have ripped off more than $200 million in tax increases in just two years from grandma and grandpa, the disabled, fixed income, veterans, families and low-income people. Now Daugaard wants us to believe it's OK for teenage boys to shower with your daughters at school. And we're told this is wonderful. Gov. Daugaard and his liberal Republicans are slapping each other on the back for the great liberal things they've done. Great? What are you going to do when that boy walks into your daughter's shower, strips and goes in to shower with your daughter? What happens when taxes are so high the elderly have to decide between food or medicine because they don’t have enough money for both? Now, Daugaard wants to spend $50 million to expand Medicaid. [LTE: Bill Napoli]

Bill Napoli is the guy who believes some medical procedures should be reserved for white christian women who have been saving themselves for future husbands but who were brutally impregnated by non-white men.

A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life. [Rapid City Journal]

Sorry, Bill, Denny may be a dictator and he ain't no humanist: Daugaard is a capitalist lock, stock and melody.

Hey, Bill: if you're so pissed why do don Juan Thune and Krusti Noem not have primary contenders?

Spearfish boy helping to preserve American Indian languages

Mato Standing High practically lived at our house in Spearfish from 1983 until he and my stepson graduated high school in 1994. As both my step kids did he got his Bachelors of Science at the University of Wyoming.

A Bush Fellow and a member of the Sicangu Oyate, he is an attorney having received his Juris Doctor at University of Montana Law School. He has also taught at Black Hills State University, a leader in American Indian Studies.

Underperforming South Dakota schools with majority American Indian student populations will be able to apply for $2 million in state grants to overhaul their curricula this summer. Standing High said the alternative model schools and another grant program that will offer state-subsidized scholarships for paraprofessionals working in majority American Indian schools could help boost South Dakota's American Indian retention rates. The Indian Education Advisory Council has visited schools in New Mexico and Colorado that focus more on Native culture and yield higher graduation rates for American Indian students. “We’re barely scratching this surface with these two programs, but if we’re successful, legislators are already asking what’s next," Standing High said. "So we’re planting the seeds.” [Dana Ferguson, Sioux Falls Argus Leader]

Let's see how this novel choice in education works.

The graduation rate for Native Americans nationally hovers at about 50 percent — compared to just over 80 percent for all U.S. students. But at Walatowa, the graduation rate is 91 percent — a figure that outranks the state average for Native American graduates (64 percent) and most other charter schools in New Mexico. All but five of the school’s 68 students are Native American. Students credit Walatowa’s small, welcoming community — which stresses the teaching of Native values, culture and the pueblo’s traditional language, Towa. Even non-Native students have found in the school an environment where they can thrive. [Santa Fe New Mexican]

The Cheyenne River Sioux Nation is developing a Lakota language immersion curriculum.

Standing High is a human rights activist who participates in the Lakota Omniciye Wacipi.

No doubt he has heard me expounding on the importance of preserving indigenous languages as i have been ranting about it for over twenty five years. My young nephews called him "My Toad." Mato is Lakota for bear.

Here is a post from 2010. If the Rapid City Journal archived old Mount Blogmore posts we could read more.

Tribes urged to support reform of General Mining Act of 1872

It's getting lonely being the only blogger covering West River politics in South Dakota.

The Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are not the only public lands plundered by foreign companies under cover of an antiquated mining law.

Montana environmental policy advocate Bonnie Gestring told an audience observing World Water Day at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City that tribal nations should support proposed regulations and two new federal companion bills that lead to reform of the General Mining Act of 1872.

“The revenue stream would generate funds that can be used to clean up the legacy of abandoned mines that plague so many communities with highly polluted water,” she said. The money would be available for cleanup of abandoned claims on federal and Indian trust lands. It could be applied to mining reclamation in counties across western South Dakota, including Custer, Fall River, and Harding, where 272 abandoned uranium mines and prospects are officially recognized among the 15,000 in the Western United States. [Native Sun News]

Blaming depressed uranium prices Cameco is planning to abandon parts of Wyoming and Nebraska.

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.

Home to indigenous peoples for thousands of years the Wyoming headwaters of the Little Missouri watershed is at risk to an Australian uranium mine.

Bob Beck is Wyoming Public Media's News Director. Not long ago he began an interview with Senator John Bare Asso (earth hater-WY) asking the question: "Senator, why do you hate the environment?"

A Mother Jones piece tells readers when the GOP began hating the Earth:

According to a new study in the journal Social Science Research, the key change actually began around the year 1991—when the Soviet Union fell. "The conservative movement replaced the 'Red Scare' with a new 'Green Scare' and became increasingly hostile to environmental protection at that time," argues sociologist Aaron McCright of Michigan State University and two colleagues. [Chris Mooney, When Did Republicans Start Hating the Environment?]

An earth hater running against Lynn Cheney for Wyoming's lone US House seat says he's hoping to seize public land from We the People and divvy it up for exploitation.

Another activist is calling out the United States for its ongoing extermination of American Indians. South Dakota's experiment with a GOP-dominated congressional delegation and Statehouse has failed so many generations that to some suicide looks like the only way out of lives twisted by a special brand of torture.

Frightened by the prospect that it would create an equivalent to “reservation land” Republicans in South Dakota are appealing a Bureau of Indian Affairs decision placing Pe'Sla, owned by four American Indian tribes, into federal trust status.

It's time to talk about George

On the passing of Harriet Kurtz, Lizabeth Craig, Reva Palmerton Kurtz and Bill Nelson it's time to reveal that i have a half-brother born in 1943 who is the son of my mom before she met and married my dad.

Mom didn't talk until 2009 when she was outed by her sister, Liz after Dad cut off what i now believe was blackmail that Mom was paying.

It's an evolving story and this blog is as good as anywhere to tell it.

These letters were forwarded to me in 2009 from my maternal cousins, Jane Mountain Nielsen and Mary Mountain, daughters of Norma Craig Mountain. I have edited them:

Mary has been doing some genealogy online for both sides of our family and she was contacted by a man that says he has a friend that knew your mom from Wyoming. he had the correct names and says he emailed Twig and didn't hear back from her so he then emailed Mary. this man sent Mary a long letter with details and we didn't know what to do. if you like i can forward the letter to you. it has some interesting and rather shocking information in it, so may be you don't want it. and of course, with the internet it could be a hoax. Let me know what you want to do.

Jane

And:

Dear Ms. Mountain:

I am writing in hope that your genealogy and family history interest will allow you to join forces with me and solve a mystery.

To begin, by way of introduction, my name is Charles P. Moriarty (Charlie).   

My wife Mickey and I have two children and five grandchildren. I have just recently retired from a 42 year career at the Omaha Public Power District, retiring as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I relay all of this in an attempt to show my honesty and seriousness.

I was born and grew up in Omaha. I lived at 4705 North 29 Street along with my parents and eight siblings.

Now, I will get into the heart of the matter.

Growing up across the street at 4702 North 29 Street was a Schmitz family. There were three children in the Schmitz family -- two girls and a boy. All the Schmitz children were adopted at the Saint James Orphanage in Omaha Nebraska. The boy's name was George B. Schmitz. George was and is my best friend. Our friendship extends well beyond 50 years. George was born in May 1943.

George Schmitz is 65 years of age and lives in St. Louis Missouri. He and his wife Rosalie have been married over 40 years and have three children and ten grandchildren. George is a successful business owner of the Surety Refrigeration Company.

About 1990 following the deaths of his adoptive parents George began an interest in learning of his natural parents. This led him to meetings with the Catholic Social Services Saint James Orphanage. He was given several pieces of information about his mother. Those pieces of information and a year's research led me to suggest that George's mother was a Harriet M. Craig, now Harriet M Kurtz of Elkton South Dakota.

George contacted the Orphanage and relayed my findings. Harriet M. Craig was confirmed as George's mother. George excitedly asked the Orphanage to attempt a meeting with his mother. The Orphanage contacted Mrs. Kurtz who indicated that she would not meet and did not wish any further contact.

George has honored his mother's wish for 18 years. He will continue to do so. George is not the kind of person who would interrupt another's life. It is a difficult acceptance.

A year ago, George Schmitz again contacted the St. James Orphanage seeking information about his natural father. He was given a few facts -- Harriet conceived George in Wyoming while visiting there rather than in Columbus or Omaha Nebraska. The father was a serviceman. Harriet relayed the father's name to the Orphanage and it is part of the official file.

George asked the Orphanage to attempt a contact with the father. The result of the attempted contact was -- the father could not be found -- the father was not in the Social Security Death Index -- and the father's surname was so rare that in a white pages search the name resulted in only six listings in six different States.

Saint James Orphanage has also relayed that the entire Adoption File will be released to George after the deaths of both the natural parents. And, as you can deduce, if the father is not found, the file will never be released.

This leaves George in the state of having only one source to ever know who his father was -- Mrs. Harriet Craig Kurtz. However, George is adamant that neither he nor the Orphanage contact Mrs. Kurtz.

Now, you know the "why" of my inquiry.

I hope that I have not relayed something of which you did not have previous knowledge.

Can you be of assistance? I believe your mother was the sister of Harriet Craig.

My first hope would be to simply learn the name of the father - now.

However, a scenario by which the name is determined, written down and kept for relay to George at a future date would be acceptable.

The worst thing would be to have the name of George's father never be determinable.

Please help.

Ms. Mountain, I have tried to be straightforward in this effort -- and so I must also tell you that I wrote a letter of introduction to Leslie Kurtz Leech a couple weeks ago. I did not relay the above story to her. I simply asked if she would exchange e-mails on the Craig family. I have had no response.

George Schmitz built Surety Refrigeration in St. Louis. We've talked on the phone: he's Republican, catholic and has a big family.

My sister Leslie (Twig) has met George and they enjoy a cordial personal relationship.

I had a whiff of the story in 2005 after my Aunt Frances died but after Dad cut off my Aunt Liz Craig's 'allowance' Mom had set up she caved in 2009. It solved so many mysteries in my own history.

Mom gave George up for adoption with Catholic Social Services in Omaha and when she spilled her guts to Dad and me she intimated that his conception was not consensual but she was not a reliable witness after 2009.

My Aunt Liz's betrayal stuck a knife in my dad. Mom carried it for nearly 70 years and Dad only learned about it just months before he died.

Aunt Liz (we kids called her Babe) went to Spain with us in the late 50s to '61 on Dad's dime unbeknownst to him.

For some reason i deleted a post in late 2013 about Babe's funeral in Omaha that included pictures. Damned if i know why it's gone. There is reportedly a photograph taken in 1942 or '43 of a pregnant Harriet somewhere.

Forest Service introducing Bhopal chemical to Black Hills environment

While lodgepole pine is native to the Black Hills ponderosa pine only reached the Hills and northern Rockies four thousand years ago; but, under orders from timber monopolist, Neiman Enterprises, a Colorado contractor working for the Black Hills National Forest is spraying Carbaryl on ponderosa pine trees.

"This is a little early. We usually wait until the later part of April," said Black Hills National Forest timber planner Blaine Cook. "But we want to get these recreation sites sprayed because our campground hosts come in and they want to get ready for the tourism season." This year the spray crew will hit 3,700 trees at 28 locations across the Black Hills, most of them at campgrounds and recreation sites, along with a few U.S. Forest Service administrative centers. [Kevin Woster, KELO teevee]

Carbaryl (1-naphthyl methylcarbamate) is a white crystalline solid commonly sold under the brand name Sevin®, a trademark of the Bayer Group. It kills beneficial insects like honeybees as well as crustaceans not to mention its havoc wreaked on fungal communities and amphibians. Sevin® is often produced using methyl isocyanate the chemical that Union Carbide used to kill thousands of people in Bhopal, India.

The deadly chemicals migrate easily into waterways then into groundwater. Bayer CropScience is in court after studies ordered by the US Environmental Protection Agency confirmed that another Bayer pesticide is too toxic for wildlife to keep on the market.

EPA has found that 97% of endangered species are threatened by pesticides like Carbaryl. The Black Hills is home to the threatened northern long-eared bat, the American dipper and the black-backed woodpecker that feeds on bark beetles.

The mountain pine beetle is hard at work clearing centuries of overgrowth throughout the Rocky Mountain Complex, so is the western spruce budworm and the spruce beetle. But leaving dead or dying conifers on the forest produces methane, an even more dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is.

Water supplies are critical this year as human-caused climate disruptions reduced snowpack in the Black Hills. Insects and fire are critical to reversing the ravages of conifer overgrowth on the Rocky Mountain West.

OKC bombing was just another day in the ditch

Twenty one years ago i had survived a divorce, had a daughter, my little sister was killed in a car/bicycle collision, my best friend was flooded out of his home and then Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Timothy McVeigh=Cliven Bundy=Ted Nugent.

Timothy McVeigh was 27, Eric Robert Rudolph, part of the Christian Identity movement, was 30, Eric Harris was 18 and Dylan Klebold, 17, Seung-Hui Cho was 23, Nidal Hasan was 39, Jared Loughner, 22. Average age--25 years.

All seven men were victims of bullying, isolation, and ostracism. All seven had histories of extensive video game exposure and easy access to firearms. Distrust of government was a factor in most, if not all of these episodes. Ted Kaczynski, likely master of the minds in all these events, punctuates this post since he resided in Montana, a red state when, at 36, his activism morphed. His case changes the average age to 26.5.

Bruce Edwards Ivins, the 55 year-old Zionist and anti-abortion anthrax weaponizer, deserves dyshonorable mention maybe because Maryland is a solidly blue state.

Eric Frein was 31: his right wing views led him to assassinate a state trooper and the attempted murder of another.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston bombings, subscribed to right-wing American publications that espouse white supremacy and government conspiracy theories.

Bombs, wildfires, and mass shootings are just some of the tools of terror. It's likely that the FBI is stretched too thin to get ahead of the curve and it is hiding the scope of its findings to mask the extent of the hatred.

The sovereigns are overwhelmingly white christians using a maladapted interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to rationalize its commitment to a pending race war using links to the federal storming of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas and culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing. Many are either convicted felons no longer able to vote or have been marginalized by those who believe that the democratic process is ineffective especially since a person of color is President of the United States.

The American Left poses no violent threat to the United States while the hate-filled right wing of the Republican Party always will.

Late 1994: we wrote AG Reno and warned about the "mixture of armed groups and those who hate” http://t.co/5d5l2BZhZD pic.twitter.com/rO6FTmzLw4
— SPLC (@splcenter) April 19, 2015

19 years ago today, domestic terrorists murdered 168 people. Visit the OK city National Memorial & Museum online: http://t.co/bBVF3CYth0
— Terrorism & Security (@CTSS_Research) April 19, 2014

Dan Lederman, Frank Gaffney, Tom Trento, Joel Arends https://t.co/OhdpFaprr9 #aipac #sdsen #sdleg #RWNJ
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) April 18, 2014

U.S. history in one sentence. #NativeProblems pic.twitter.com/RvBeUE68YW
— Native Life™ (@_Native_Life) April 9, 2014

.@Morning_Joe @olsen_lynn pic.twitter.com/wo7RQgypm3
— Becki L (@MAlib4eva) April 18, 2014

Sanders, Trump still leading in SD FB primary

Corson, Dewey, Ziebach, Lawrence, even Brookings are among fourteen SD Counties liking Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in The Facebook Primary.

White supremacist billionaire Donald Trump leads among earth haters.

See the results here.

Meade County and the Rapid City School Districts spend the least per student than any other districts in the state of South Dakota. Hill City's district will not benefit from Governor Daugaard's sales tax hike.

Sanders won Wisconsin after raising awareness of the failed war on drugs. Vermont's legislature is debating legal cannabis for adults and Pennsylvania's governor has signed a law legalizing for therapeutic reasons.

Some Oregonians with cannabis felonies will have their convictions expunged.

In Arizona the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has collected more than 200,000 signatures, about 50,000 more than is required, for the initiative to appear on November’s ballot.

Legal cannabis would disrupt Islamic State's drug trade according to Italy's top prosecutor: Reuters.

Democrats must be doing something right: earth haters are angry with Congress and the feds. In their weekly propaganda messages all four statewide South Dakota Republican office holders reacted to my previous week's blog posts.

14-year-old activist slams Ted Cruz in open letter—and it's awesome https://t.co/v8lqDr6db4

— Daily Kos (@dailykos) April 15, 2016

It's time to stop pretending that the UN drug treaties matter for modern-day drug policy. https://t.co/TbWamlFZ3e

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) April 18, 2016

Missouri River dams filling with silt, destroying diversity

South Dakota's earth hater junior US senator is leading a crusade to block the US Environmental Protection Agency from identifying non-point sources of pollution deposited into watersheds by his GOP donors.

The 2016 Missouri River Institute Symposium was held Thursday on the campus of the University of South Dakota where everyone from chemists and biologists to National Park Service representatives and geologists shared their information on research done in the last several months on the Missouri River, and what impacts the data they have collected will have on the river and the people who live along its banks. David Swanson, Director of the Missouri River Institute and Professor of Biology at USD said that sharing of findings falls directly into line with the goal of the institute founded in 1999. “Part of it is, (the river) stays the same a lot more now than it did before the dam,” Swanson said. “Some of that variability of what you had before the dam is what made that whole ecosystem go and some of that is lost now. Can we mediate for that and is it important – those are some of the questions we need to be asking.” [Symposium Looks At Impact Of River On Area Ecosystem, Wetlands]

Mike Rounds is still blaming the US Army Corps of Engineers for his own stupid choice to build in a floodway.

A report released Sept. 12, 2014, by the Government Accountability Office said a number of factors were behind the flood and there were no forecasting tools available to the Corps that could have prevented the event. “By June 2011, the volume of water coming into the reservoirs from the extreme rains and melting snow was so great that the Corps had no choice in June and July but to release water to accommodate the inflow and prevent damage to dam infrastructure, such as spillways in danger of being overtopped,” the report says.[Joel Ebert, Pierre Capital Journal]

The Republican former governor of South Dakota after having built a house in a swamp that flooded received a generous self-reimbursement from insurance coverage underwritten by his own company knowing Lake Sharpe is filling with silt.

Fort Pierre and Pierre, South Dakota, sit at the head of Lake Sharpe. The Army formed Lake Sharpe after the closure of Big Bend Dam in 1963. The capital of South Dakota and its sister city now face a flood of epic proportions because of a combination of high water releases from Oahe Dam and the presence of a silty delta at the head of Lake Sharpe, which begins just southeast of Fort Pierre. [Muddy Mo: Reservoir Siltation and the Flood of 2011]

He's the same US Senator under federal investigation for his role in the EB-5 Bendagate scandal. He also lavished $75 million of state money on political cronies and donors and flagrantly violated the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Hidden agenda? The state has at least a $83 million dollar surplus but would argue it can’t afford to dredge and treat the dams so it expects taxpayers to do it. Ag and livestock special interests likely contribute the most poison crap to the system followed by human-based pharma/chemical toiletries.

Barrick Mining Company is on the hook for most of the worst shit: it's armed to the teeth with a bank of lawyers and lobbyists. The State enjoyed royalties and severance taxes. In another government land grab Barrick is engaged in negotiations that would trade property in Spearfish Canyon to the State of South Dakota belonging to tribal signatories of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.

With help from former Homestake land manager now Sturgis real estate broker, Denny McKay, former US Senator Tom Daschle sold out the people of South Dakota and the tribal nations trapped within its border by drafting legislation holding Barrick harmless.

Robert Schneiders is the author of two books on the environmental history of the Missouri River.

As for pheasants, they don’t stand a chance. Although the South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department claims pheasant numbers rebounded somewhat in 2014 and 2015, because of two back-to-back warm winters, the overall trend looks bleak. Why? Because urbanization and industrialization of rural Dakota isn’t slowing, it’s accelerating. Consequently, habitat is going to continue to fall under the plow, bulldozer and backhoe. And there is nothing, and no one, who is going to stop it, especially not Gov. Dennis Daugaard and his lame pheasant recovery task-force. [op-ed, Robert Schneiders]

The bird is not wildlife but it is a canary in a chemically and genetically engineered coal mine.

During the flooding of 2011 Schneiders appeared on Bill Janklow's idea of public radio where he forecast the death of the Missouri River as a living ecosystem.

Since at least 2004 zebra mussels have been plaguing the main stem dams in the Missouri River. The invasive mussels compete with paddlefish and other native species like the pallid sturgeon.

Rounds co-conspirator, Attorney General Marty Jackley, is engaging in legal sock-puppetry. By suing the corps over surplus water he is forcing We the People to pay for the clean up of a century of mine tailings and organic effluent that has saturated the banks of the Belle Fourche/Cheyenne River system depositing many tons of toxic silt into Lake Oahe and the other downstream dams after 1962 now displacing many acre-feet of water.

The federal government has taken steps to remove dams on the Klamath River to restore habitat essential for spawning salmon and to preserve biological diversity.

It's time for that to happen on the Missouri River, too.

Rewild the West.

Image courtesy: interested party.

South Dakota dairies bring habitat destruction, wage slaves

Brookings County is not just home to SDGOP's most obnoxious liar; it's home to some of the most polluted watersheds in South Dakota.

A cheese factory made possible by Republican cronyism sustains the stench of thousands of dairy cattle making eastern South Dakota a wasteland.

In 2012, after another GOP governor gutted environmental protection in South Dakota, the Big Sioux River was named the thirteenth most polluted river in the US and nearly every waterway in the state suffers impairment.

The state's GOP congressional delegation is scrambling to cover up their roles in creating the circumstances for the Big Sioux River's impairment and protecting their campaign donors from scrutiny.

South Dakota's lack of environmental oversight has everything to do with offshore and out of state investors in economic development initiatives: little wonder the Big Sioux River is a sewer of biblical proportions.

South Dakota suffers from high cancer rates and instances of spontaneous abortions due to industrial agriculture. The Big Sioux and James River systems are poisonous to anyone exposed to the liquids within their banks that used to be water.

Habitat destruction, lapses in ethics, crime spikes, increased incarceration rates, more people infected with sexually transmitted diseases, the failure of prisons, human trafficking: all mark the terms of Republican governors in South Dakota.

So-called 'Americans for Prosperity' a Koch-funded group with a lobbyist based in Sioux Falls signaled to legislators that they will lose campaign funding from the Kochs unless they act to reverse the progress the US Environmental Protection Agency has made in South Dakota.

South Dakota is a sanctuary state for white collar crime, though. John Thune's family came from Europe and Canada just two generations ago. His mean-spirited attack on sanctuary cities comes as the Center for Immigration Studies exposes his party's EB-5 corruption.

Ag producers have destroyed shelter belts to plant industrial crops that deplete aquifers and now drought is blowing toxin-laden silt into downwind states.

South Dakota has the worst access to healthy food in the United States.

The crony capitalism that keeps South Dakota the 8th worst state for the working class is destroying lands promised to native peoples by treaty and my home town of Elkton is struggling to find enough housing for migrant workers often living in squalor.

South Dakota: Land of Infinite Vengefulness.

Squaw Humper Dam: SD Board tackles another racist symbol

The South Dakota Board of Geographic Names spent most of their time Monday on the proposal to change the name of Squaw Humper Dam in Oglala Lakota County. The proposed name is Tahc’a Okute Mni Onaktake, which, according to Lakota and internet sources, translates roughly as “blocking water at a place for shooting deer.” No action was planned for the re-designation of a Black Hills peak named for a war criminal; but, a federal board could render a decision on renaming that promontory as early as this week or as late as June.

The word 'squaw' is derived from Algonquin and Inyan Kara Peak in the Wyoming Black Hills is the bastardization of American Indian words; but, humper is simply wasicu for any man engaged in the act of copulation.

With the Oglala Lakota Nation as an interested party Chief Arvol Looking Horse has submitted a request to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names saying the words “Devils Tower” are a malapropism.

During the 2016 session South Dakota's Republican legislature voted to usurp the local control of the SD Board in favor of federal command over geographical names.

It's time for the State of South Dakota to abandon Bear Butte State Park that it claimed through colonization and remand it to the tribes for governance so they can restore its name to Mato Paha and for the US Park Service to add the name Mahto Tipila to Devils Tower National Monument.

NM weighing cannabis profits with local control

The Santa Fe Reporter's Peter St. Cyr won a lawsuit that opened New Mexico's cannabis growers to journalism's watchdog spotlight saying the state's Department of Health was violating public records law by keeping producers’ names secret.

He and this blog follow each other on Twitter.

New Mexico cannabis producers are required to operate as nonprofits, but the model is more of a myth than a reality. Late last month, Ultra Health opened its fifth state location in the back of a self-described hippie smoke shop in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill neighborhood. In February, the company announced plans to construct two medical cannabis facilities and a cultivation and production facility for the Paiute Tribe in Las Vegas, Nev. The firm says it also hopes to announce deals with New Mexico tribes in the future and just last week sent out a press release about a research project in partnership with an Israeli company.

Fruit of the Earth Organics founders Lyra and Juan Barron run a debt-free family operation and insist they’re not interested in shared management companies or outside capital. Lyra says the nonprofit requirement keeps the focus on patient service rather than profit goals, “which is really a greed factor.” “It’s like a gold rush, and rather disheartening and disappointing, but then that’s the trend everywhere,” she says. “What a crazy world, where helping an epidemic of people trying to recover from sicknesses predominantly caused by environmental and food toxicity is used to create another profit industry.” [excerpt, St. Cyr, Growing Pains: How money flows from a nonprofit cannabis producer in Santa Fe to a for-profit Arizona company]

In my view Colorado shafted her medical growers to expand the industry there; also, edibles should only be available to patients suffering from debilitating diseases, disorders or conditions, be dispensed by pharmacists and taxed like other prescriptions.

Local control is essential to keeping profits from legal cannabis out of the hands of Big Dope and working for the states' stakeholders where it's legal.

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is running for president as a Libertarian. In a Politico interview about the Veep rumors swirling around current Gov. Susana Martinez:

"This is a Sarah Palin-esque kind of choice. She’s served as governor of New Mexico for about the same amount of time,” Johnson said. “I think there were lessons learned [from 2008]."

His contention that legal cannabis can reverse rates of opioid overdose deaths is being borne out by new data. Cannabis is no longer listed as a gateway drug on the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) website.

Tight control of the cannabis industry is the only way legislatures will legalize. Vermont's is struggling to find compromise even as favorite son, Bernie Sanders used legalization in part to capture the win in Wisconsin's presidential primary.

As the Drug Enforcement Administration ponders the descheduling of cannabis it's time to enter compacts with the tribes and pueblos, let them distribute on the rez, on off-reservation properties and let local growers market in the town of Las Vegas where revenue could be generated for historic preservation.

Ralphie May is no different than every South Dakota Republican

Brian Kirby, the creator of the Caucasians marketing brand, and this blog follow each other on Twitter; interested party put up a post about him in 2014. But, I had to laugh like hell reading the flap about a potential Sioux Falls boycott of some fat comedian named Ralphie May.

May’s performance in Bemidji, Minn., was canceled Thursday following an uproar over anti-Native American jokes he made that were posted earlier this week to YouTube. Sioux Falls city leaders should follow Bemidji’s example given South Dakota’s push to improve tribal relations and heal racial tension, said Rep. Shawn Bordeaux, D-Mission. Representatives from South Dakota’s tribal groups have wondered why the Orpheum hadn’t canceled the show. Julie Garreau, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, shared the audio on her Facebook page and encouraged her friends to reach out to city leaders. “That’s their out,” Garreau said. “In a state where you have such a strong indigenous population, where you have nine tribes? Really?” [Sioux Falls Argus Leader]

Watertown High School hosts a racist pageant every year.

Channeling the Bundy domestic terrorists who laid siege on Harney County, Oregon Rep. Lee Schoenbeck (RWNJ-Watertown) embraces white privilege every day.

Rosebud rapper, Frank Waln, is a survivor of genocide visited against tribal nations.

Moody County struggles with racism on a local level.

Confederate flags are flying in Rapid City showing support for white supremacists in neighboring states, South Carolina and Mississippi and Gettysburg, South Dakota is a white supremacist stronghold.

The State of South Dakota is spending half a million bucks to say welcome to the Black Hills, white people, the state's highest geographical point is named after a genocidal war criminal and a town is named for the killer of women and children.

The South Dakota Department of Social Services is committing genocide.

So, let some obese white guy from somewhere else perform in Sioux Falls: he's no different than every other Republican in South Dakota.

Tired of ppl acting like Natives don't exist in the United States. This shit exhausts us daily

— Frank Waln (@FrankWaln) April 8, 2016

Bomani Jones is currently wearing an Indians parody "Caucasians" tee on Mike & Mike on ESPN. @UniWatch @PhilHecken pic.twitter.com/Hni9ycNnxu

— B-Dilly (@Titan4Ever2488) April 7, 2016

Passenger rail service is way behind schedule in South Dakota, elsewhere

Chicago is home to an infamous rail bottleneck that slows coast to coast service to a crawl.

As coal dies and more commodities are being shipped by trucks burning cheaper fuel flowing through pipelines the timing for increased passenger rail is at hand.

Come May 1, among the 48 states, only two are AMTRAK-less: South Dakota and Wyoming. I wish to see a change to South Dakota’s current passenger transportation status. As a railroad travel advocate from neighboring Minnesota, I have started an organization called, “TORTA” – “Tri-Otas Railorad Travel Advocates.” We are a daughter chapter of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, which is based in Washington, D.C. TORTA consists of: South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota’s current Seventh Congressional District) which runs nearly the Western length of the state). Three states ending with the letters a-t-a. Thus, Tri-otas. [LTE, Sioux Falls Argus Leader]

Curious why the Postal Service and Amtrak have not formed a strategic partnership.

South Dakota's Republican Representative 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.

Recall that former GOP governor, Mike 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.

Yes, overcoming the task of building a bridge at Chamberlain across (under?) the Missouri River and over the Pierre Shale should lead to passenger service being built on the abandoned Milwaukee bed between Sioux Falls and Rapid City including access for rural communities then connect with a future line built to Colorado's rail line. It's not hard to imagine a future without passenger rail of some kind in the I-29 corridor.

Building two east-west rail systems exclusively for freight in South Dakota is lunacy.

Build track and bed good enough to offer passenger service from Minneapolis through Sioux Falls, Rapid City and Cheyenne, Wyoming with stops near tribal communities to link with the proposed line between the Empire Builder at Shelby, Montana and the Southwest Chief at Pueblo, Colorado. Sioux Falls should get behind passenger service between Omaha and the Empire Builder at Fargo, too.

DEA edging closer to rescheduling cannabis

In a story published in the Rapid City Journal, Alex White Plume said, “When they cut my crop down they spread the seeds something awful.” 'They' were federal agents who raided his reservation home and cut his crop of cannabis using weed-whackers with metal blades.

In a lengthy memo to lawmakers, the Drug Enforcement Administration said it hopes to decide whether to change the federal status of marijuana "in the first half of 2016." According to the memo, in the years between 2010 and 2015, the government provided marijuana for research purposes to an average of nine researchers per year. Given the rapidly changing marijuana policy landscape, experts say that level of support is nowhere near enough to keep up with research demand. In addition to detailed information about the quantity and type of marijuana the federal government makes available to researchers, the memo outlines the steps the government is taking to improve coordination among federal agencies on data quality. [Washington Post]

Governor Kate Brown of Oregon just signed a bill that removes state criminal liability from banks and credit unions that do business with the legal cannabis industry.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won the Wisconsin primary promoting cannabis reform. Public radio personality Rick Steves just endorsed California's Adult Use of Cannabis Act.

Let’s ensure that cannabis cultivation and distribution stay out of the hands of Big Dope. It’s time to enter compacts with the tribes and pueblos, let them distribute on the rez, on off-reservation properties and in Deadwood or in New Mexico's case in the town of Las Vegas where revenue could be generated for historic preservation.

Montana should consider similar statutes allowing Butte to be the non-tribal market tagging revenue for historic preservation enlisting the growers who have suffered under that state's unwieldy medical cannabis law.

Frank Waln talks about being a survivor of genocide

One reason that Republicans don't like Common Core history standards is that the curriculum includes the near-extermination of American Indians by European colonialism long-ignored by textbooks.

Frank Waln is a rapper and member of the Sicangu Lakota. He has rapped about the Keystone XL Pipeline, his battle with depression, and the modern Native American experience. Waln joins Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson to talk about his new album, Tokiya, which comes out this year, and his efforts to be a role model for young Native Americans. “This album Tokiya is a very personal album,” Waln said. “A lot of it is telling the story of how I’m trying to deal and heal from the historical trauma that has been dealt to me through my ancestors and through being a survivor of genocide.”[WBUR's Here and Now]

Last July, Waln appeared on a Native America Calling broadcast on University of New Mexico-based KUNM: he is a thoughtful and exciting role model for young American Indians. KILI in Porcupine also airs the live call-in program and many who comment are from tribal nations trapped in South Dakota.

Waln joined Neil Young and Willie Nelson for an anti-KeystoneXL concert in Nebraska. Tribal nations are leading resistance to the Dakota Access ecocide/land grab.

More about genocide visited upon American Indians linked at NPR's Code Switch.

I've always wanted to flip this racist Disney song. Listen to What Makes The Red Man Red https://t.co/dSJhdoodWO

— Frank Waln (@FrankWaln) January 5, 2016

Ted was right: America is the world's merchant of death

Ted Kaczynski knew it all along: America is killing the rest of the world just to enrich the richest one percent.

People in Lincoln knew him simply as "Ted." To them, he was the odd recluse who ate rabbits, lived without power and rode his bike into town to check out books from the library. His victims were random, but most were connected to technology, timber, advertising and psychology in some way. His motive appeared to be rage against the impacts of the Industrial Revolution on nature, but his journals contained many contradictions. ['Hiding in plain sight': Lincoln residents recall arrest of infamous Unabomber 20 years later ]

Today, Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, South Dakota practice-bombs parts of four states, including Montana. Republican lawmakers support a multi-trillion dollar war machine that is bankrupting America.

Scientists have linked a climate crisis to the abandonment of parts of the Southwest US. To drive Russia into recession and create a backlash against Vladimir Putin the US fracking industry has put America at risk to climate disruptions and earthquakes.

In the US alone there are at least 15,000 abandoned uranium mines leaching radiation into the biosphere. Creationism is accepted in red states as a realistic alternative to science; and, discrimination against minorities is still widely practiced. Fourth Amendment protections are being stripped and any asshole can grow up to be President, no experience required.

Plastics derived from petroleum are causing gender dysphoria and endocrine disruptions in children and teens. The burning of fossil fuels is making war on the Earth. Ethnic cleansing is being visited against the First Nations and First Americans.

The extirpation of bison, cougars and wolves has created explosive wildfire conditions in the Greater Missouri Basin. Wildlife Services, part of the US Department of Agriculture, wants to exterminate a wolf pack that killed nineteen elk in a Wyoming refuge that feeds and over-winters the ungulates. Elk in the region are dying en masse from Chronic Wasting Disease that researchers say results from the federal government feeding of elk in close proximity.

Some wildlife managers want to treat elk and bison with PZP, a birth control method administered with dart guns, that has shown to be effective in feral horses and burros.

Kaczynski forecast all of this and acted on his fears inspiring a generation of white supremacists, militia wannabees, sovereign citizens...and some progressives.

So, reading through Ted's psych eval revealed some similarities with my own, where parents and nuns conspired to permit me to leapfrog fifth grade: "as the result of testing conducted in the fifth grade, it was determined that he [Kaczynski] could skip the sixth grade and enroll with the seventh grade class."

Here is the link to Ted's essay later described as the Unabomber Manifesto. It looks to me like an early forecast (and evidence) of the anthropogenic trophic cascade that's currently underway.

Kaczynski's brother, David ratted out Ted to federal authorities. His interview on WAMU's Diane Rehm Show can be heard here.

Rewild the West.

Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang. pic.twitter.com/sLmOprj8MR

— History In Pictures (@historyepics) April 3, 2016

Minneapolis will ban plastic bags

No serious discussion of issues associated with gender identity can be undertaken without the studying the effects of phthalates and other plasticizers on human genetics.

The Minneapolis City Council is banning retailers from using plastic carry out bags, under an ordinance approved Friday. Under the ordinance, retailers can offer paper, reusable or compostable bags. Retailers can either charge customers at least 5 cents per bag, or the retailer can pay the same fee to a litter cleanup nonprofit. Customers who receive food assistance will be exempted from paying for bags. The ban will take effect in June 2017. [MPR News]

Lake Street was home in '72 and part of '73 before a roommate stole three kilos from me.

Brookings has considered a plastic bag ban; so has Sioux City, Iowa.

In 2015 Santa Fe amended its Reusable Bag Ordinance requiring retail stores to charge a 10-cent fee for every paper grocery bag to encourage the use of reusable shopping bags.

This reporter has been chronicling gender bending chemicals in the environment since beginning blogging.

Here are twenty ways to just say no to plastic.

Bake a man a pie and he'll learn to divide by seven. Teach a man piety and he'll crucify the apples then say they died for his sins.

Jeff Bridges: Plastic Is a Substance the Earth Cannot Digest https://t.co/8otKoOrgHN via @ecowatch

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) March 30, 2016

Many Kids Received More #Plastic Than Candy or Eggs This Easter - https://t.co/MJXhTt8q8u via @EnviroNews

— EnviroNews (@EnviroNews) March 30, 2016

What a sad state of affairs. 25 tonne mammals starved to death and full of plastic https://t.co/iNefNmqOwX pic.twitter.com/FvUstGzrR9

— Alex Berryman (@AlexJB497) March 29, 2016

Post-Mortem on the 13 Stranded North Sea Sperm Whales Finds Their Stomachs Full of Plastic https://t.co/ovRTajcRtq pic.twitter.com/XwKWg2a1tS

— Quad Finn (@QuadSeaShepherd) March 29, 2016

Plastic shopping bags now banned in Cambridge:https://t.co/X5RgzZSn9V pic.twitter.com/CqKtJwD7Vf

— WGBH News (@wgbhnews) April 1, 2016