8/31/16

Rounds pulls boner on ESA

Mike Rounds (earth hater-SD) is a serial liar. During a field hearing in Rapid City the dolt said, "I agree with the goals of the Endangered Species Act but I am concerned with the low success rate."

Fact is: the ESA is resoundingly successful according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
CBD found that the ESA had “a remarkably successful recovery rate: 90 percent of species are recovering at the rate specified by their federal recovery plan,” adding: “On average, species recovered in 25 years, while their recovery plan predicted 23 years—a 91 percent timeliness accomplishment.” [Scientific American]
This is certainly not the first time Rounds has outwardly lied to voters.

Rounds and chippy cohort Natalie Krings recently appeared on Facebook Live acknowledging that they are part of the dysfunction in DC.
The Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” It is the clearest constitutional description of a federal government of limited powers. This is when a clause in the Constitution allowing Congress to regulate commerce comes in handy. Between the beginning of the New Deal and the early 1990s, federal judges allowed the federal government to vastly expand its powers, as long as Congress could find some plausible connection to interstate commerce. [Natural Resources Defense Council]
Recall that Rounds pledged to raise $9 million to run for Senate but is still struggling to erase his campaign debts. White supremacists like Mike see Donald Trump as their last hope.

Another step toward preserving some Black Hills habitat has been taken.
In an effort to conserve the northern long-eared bat, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced a final rule today that uses flexibilities under section 4(d) of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to tailor protections to areas affected by white-nose syndrome during the bat’s most sensitive life stages. As white-nose syndrome continues to affect this species, the bat’s status may decline to the point that it becomes endangered. In that event, the Service would publish a new proposal requesting public input. If the bat were to be listed as endangered in the future, the 4(d) rule would no longer apply, and all regulatory prohibitions under the ESA would take effect. In the United States, the northern long-eared bat is found from Maine to North Carolina on the Atlantic Coast, westward to eastern Oklahoma and north through the Dakotas, reaching into eastern Montana and Wyoming. [press release, USFWS]
GOP donors being subsidized by the federal government to log in the Black Hills are putting pressure on the state's congressional delegation to resist habitat protection for the black-backed woodpecker, too.
"The species, by any sensible measure, clearly deserves endangered status," says Mollie Matteson, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity in Vermont. "It's dying at rates of 90 to 100 percent." [Environmentalists Say 'Threatened' Status For Bats Not Enough]
Senator don Juan Thune and Rep. Kristi Noem have tossed bones to their campaign contributors by railing against the protection of endangered species like the northern long-eared bat and for more money for the Neiman family to log the old growth ponderosa pine essential to preserving Black Hills habitat. Neiman Enterprises sells clear pine to Pella for windows and doors.
Like most bats, northern long-eared bats emerge at dusk to feed. They primarily fly through the understory of forested areas feeding on moths, flies, leafhoppers, caddisflies, and beetles, which they catch while in flight using echolocation or by gleaning motionless insects from vegetation. [USFWS fact sheet]
Cougars and the American Dipper have been all but extirpated from the Black Hills.

While Rounds was governor the Department of Social Services seized hundreds of American Indian children and placed them in subsidized foster homes. Activists are reversing those attempts at genocide.

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.

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.

According to a source close to the Rounds family South Dakota's functionally illiterate junior senator is lamenting his time living inside the Beltway.

Under Daugaard, SDGOP education in free fall

Under Denny Daugaard and the SDGOP ACT scores in Rapid City are in free fall.
"of the 450 Native American students who took the ACT, only 4 percent met the four benchmarks. That's less than half of the national rate of 9 percent." [KEVN teevee]
And:
Rapid City high school seniors continue to achieve scores above the national average on the ACT college entrance exam, but this year’s scores were below the state average, and the lowest the district has seen in 10 years. [Rapid City Journal]
A Feeding America survey shows 105,880 people in South Dakota are food insecure. Homelessness in the state is rampant; drunk driving, meth use and teen binge drinking are off the charts.

The state is second in addiction to gambling and teachers' salaries are 51st in the nation. Wage slavery is the state's biggest claim to fame and South Dakota dairies are wreaking habitat havoc. Infrastructure is crumbling and the state's bureaucracy is overbearing and unwieldy. Ag groups want federally subsidized crop insurance and the right to pollute. Corruption and graft are commonplace.

Pollution from industrial agriculture has made waterways poisonous, the state has no modern statute addressing financial assurances for pipeline leaks. Trophy fishing for threatened species is a tourist activity. East River, South Dakota is a dead zone and likely a new repository for nuclear waste.

Racism is endemic and white immigrants have been accepted while displacing and disgracing American Indians. South Dakota wrongly puts thousands in nursing homes. Mass incarceration fuels the white foster home industry: a pet project of the governor's wife.

In South Dakota 302 children are confined per 100,000 kids; that's the highest number in the United States according to Pew.

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.

South Dakota is a sanctuary state for white collar crime, though.

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.

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 isn't about growth; it's about keeping Social Security recipients alive long enough to pay the property taxes that sustain red state failure.

But, earth hater and climate change denier Governor Denny Daugaard had the temerity to travel to the Sicangu Oyate to tell tribal leaders they have better shit to do than restore Pe 'Sla to federal trust status taking it off the tax rolls.
The governor began his presentation by noting how little he knew about tribal politics, history and land issues when he first came into office in 2011, but explained that he had learned about these topics over the past five years from South Dakota Tribal Relations Secretaries. [Daugaard] didn’t mention either of the reasons for appeal noted in the September 2015 document from the S.D. Attorney General’s office while discussing the land transfer before the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council. [Jim Kent]
Meanwhile, climate change denier Republican Governor Denny Daugaard is presiding over an exodus of educators fleeing the failed red state as his cronies plot to prevent medical insurance for South Dakota's least fortunate even as his office touts a budget surplus. He has virtually hand-picked a compliant extremist legislature.

It's only a matter of time before the US Department of Interior, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the US Environmental Protection Agency come to South Dakota and tell Gov. Daugaard he has better shit to do than tell sovereign tribes how to run their worlds.

Make South Dakota great again. Flush the SDGOP.

8/29/16

Guardians: end livestock grazing on the People's ground


ip photo of cattle shitting in a sensitive watershed on the Black Hills National Forest. Note bug kill. Antimicrobials in manure kill fungal communities necessary for healthy forests. In 2014 there were eight grazing allotments on the Northern Hills district that can no longer support livestock.

WildEarth Guardians is based just up I-25 from the ranch yet they have had far-reaching influence on sage grouse and wolf protection in the Northern Rockies. The Guardians' Jeremy Nichols has litigated environmental issues in the Black Hills.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported the federal government spends at least $144 million annually managing private livestock grazing on federal public lands, but collects only $21 million in grazing fees—for a net loss of at least $123 million per year. It’s time to give ranchers a graceful way out. Join us in telling Congress to pass legislation that will allow us to work with ranchers to retire livestock grazing from our most sensitive and valuable public lands in the West. [WildEarth Guardians]
Republican welfare ranchers are the real ecoterrorists who hate subsidies unless they benefit from them.

8/28/16

Federal court rules against profiling cars from cannabis states

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

A South Dakota state trooper spent his time profiling cars with license plates from states with legal cannabis...that is until Zachary Bader was nearly killed for violating a Washington man's civil rights.
A federal appeals court says law enforcement officials in Kansas cannot stop and search motorists for having nothing more than out-of-state license plates from states that have legalized marijuana. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday says the officer’s reasoning would justify the search of citizens from more than half of the states in the country. It found the officers violated Peter Vasquez’s Fourth Amendment rights in searching his car. [Associated Press]
After defending himself against Trooper Bader Donald Willingham wants his assault case moved from Pennington County because pre-trial publicity in the chemical toilet prevents a fair hearing. There isn't a single media outlet in South Dakota that isn't in the tank for the Republican Party. Willingham's co-defendants could be freed after the Appeals Court decision on unlawful search and seizure.

Recall that in 2012 short guy power hungry Bader accosted a Montana family instead of policing Sturgis Rally traffic. In 2004 Montana voters legalized cannabis for some patients.

South Dakota vilifies teachers especially those who won't carry firearms into classrooms but hides the records of psychotic behavior presented by bad actors like Trooper Bader from public view.

Cannabis activists are opposing California‘s legalization measure because they fear Big Dope will dominate the industry.

In a related story Spearditch has been named Best Hippie Town in South Dakota.

With no thanks to lobbyists for the pharmaceutical, alcohol and law enforcement industries South Dakota has the most tyrannical and dangerous cannabis laws in the US.

"Permanent ban" my pink glutei: being a pariah is hard but holy fucking jesus the rewards are so transcendentally satisfying!

8/26/16

Jackley supports cannabis research; studies say it lowers taxpayer cost

According to WNAX Radio South Dakota's fuzzy earth hater attorney general has made an about-face on cannabis. Marty Jackley says he supports a further look and that he's working with federal agencies to ensure his donors can cut a fat hog institutionalizing pharmaceutical weed.
“We are seeing patients that are reporting that they are finding a medication that is meeting their needs where other medications did not," said Steph Sherer with Americans for Safe Access. Sherer says she's encouraged to see new research published by the journal, Health Affairs. It found the number of prescriptions for painkillers dipped dramatically in states where medical marijuana is legal. [KOTA teevee]
Ahead of a run for governor the Jackley-booted thug popped two cannabis consultants who allegedly contracted with the Flandreau Santee Sioux Nation to provide cultivars and equipment for a grow operation. All of a sudden it's pretty clear why fellow Republican, Governor Dennis Daugaard, supported more gambling at the FSST casino. The State of South Dakota receives revenue from FSST through a compact with the nation. The state and the Yankton Sioux Nation are mulling a gaming compact.

The hypocrisy of Jackley and the SDGOP is boundless. Jackley is a white supremacist bent on keeping tribes repressed. $20 says the State of South Dakota has paid off tribal officials to resist cannabis grow ops.

One player has rolled over to cover his own ass and Eric Hagen has pleaded not guilty.

South Dakota's Division of Criminal Investigation has revealed multiple unlawful practices and questionable activity throughout the Flandreau Police Department.

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.

South Dakota media outlets are rife with stories about a meth and heroin epidemic and Marty Jackley takes on a guy alleged to have fifty five cannabis seeds for a legal buyer even as his homeboys and minions in the law enforcement industry look away from the Sturgis Rally bacchanal.

Jackley is a recipient of campaign contributions from Big Pharma, the major beneficiary of the recent Drug Enforcement Administration edict, and of course big bucks from Big Booze. Thanks to lobbyists for those industries South Dakota has the most tyrannical and dangerous cannabis laws in the US.

It would be interesting to know how much beer distributors pay tribal authorities to keep reservations dry.
The state should hire a full-time law enforcement officer in Whiteclay, Nebraska, and open an alcohol detox center to clean up the notorious border town, an ad hoc committee formed by Gov. Pete Ricketts has recommended. “Whiteclay is becoming the Flint, Michigan, of Nebraska,” said Lincoln businessman Alan Jacobsen, a former candidate for governor. He was among a group of Lincoln advocates calling for action from the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission. [Omaha World-Herald]
Cannabis has shown to be an effective treatment for alcoholism.

Screw Nebraska: a tribal cannabis turnabout would be Whiteclay fair play. Flood the state with cannabis grown in the Oglala Lakota Nation.

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, let them distribute on the rez, on off-reservation properties and in Deadwood.

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

8/25/16

Gillette vying to become asshole of Wyoming

Gillette, Wyoming is a scary place. It's where ecocide is encouraged and Black Hills Energy releases mercury from coal burning power plants into South Dakota's watersheds.
A planned anti-Islam rally in Gillette has some residents concerned. The event, advertised on Facebook as a Wyoming Against Islam rally, is set for Saturday at Cam-Plex Park. The group plans to burn the faith’s holy book, the Quran, at the event. Jon Roan, an electrician for a local coal mine, said he is organizing the event with his wife and another man. [Casper Star-Trib]
These white supremacists are simply creating a wedge issue to raise money for personal gain.
Bret Colvin says [he] founded the “Stop Islam in Gillette” Facebook group for one reason. “I don’t want Jihadis in my neighborhood.” Colvin is a Catholic, and an ex-Marine. Aftab Khan is one of Gillette’s few Muslims. “I was born in Sheridan,” says Aftab Khan. “I lived in Worland for a while. I attended the University of Wyoming. And now I’ve been in Gillette for sixteen years. You can’t ask for more of a Wyomingite than me—I’ve lived my whole life here. And the same is true for much of family.”
Read it all here.

While Missoula, Montana is embracing refugees from America's War on Islam Wyoming is the only state refusing to accept the victims of empire.
Among the refugees who many are urging we shut the door on include Yazidis, Muslims and Christians who are being attacked and killed because they do not share terrorist ideology or support violent extremism. It is unfortunate politicians seek to exploit this tragic situation for political advantage. To turn our backs on men, women and children fleeing persecution from any part of the world would be a repudiation of all that America has stood for. [LTE, Brian A. Liesinger, Executive Director, Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation]
"Why Donald Trump should visit Heart Mountain, Wyoming:" Billings Gazette.

Catholicism is hope like syphilis is charity.

8/24/16

BHNF out of ideas to preserve habitat

The Black Hills National Forest is soliciting public input in an effort to head off collapse of historic habitat. Not surprising that the solution is hidden in plain sight.
The purpose of the proposed project is to move landscape-level vegetation conditions in the project area toward objectives set by the Black Hills National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan, as amended, in order to increase ecosystem resilience to insect infestation and other natural disturbances, contribute to public safety and the local economy, and reduce risk of wildfire to landscapes and communities. [press release]
Want to save the Black Hills?

Ponderosa pine only reached the Black Hills about four thousand years ago. Force private landowners to create defensible space especially if their lands abut federal ground or deny them insurance, increase stumpage for removal of any federally-owned tree older than a hundred years, get domestic livestock off the Forest, allow bison to return to their historic range, end Republican Party cronyism, and let lightning-struck fires on federal lands burn.

South Dakota-owned lands are already fucked. Gaia may not even be enough to fix those.

Of course, the South Dakota Democratic Party should urge President Obama to dissolve the Black Hills National Forest, move management of the land from the US Department of Agriculture into the Department of Interior; and, in cooperation with Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildfire Management, rename it Okawita Paha or He Sapa National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer/Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move.

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.

8/22/16

Red flag warning for proposed wildlife refuge


From the GOP-threatened National Weather Service: a large portion of the proposed Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge is under a red flag warning.

Gaia: be merciful but leave nothing.
URGENT - FIRE WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE RAPID CITY SD
140 AM MDT MON AUG 22 2016

...RED FLAG WARNING IN EFFECT THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH EARLY THIS EVENING
FOR GUSTY WINDS AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY FOR WYOMING FIRE WEATHER
ZONES 259 AND 298 AND SOUTH DAKOTA FIRE WEATHER ZONES 263 AND 265...

.HOT AND VERY DRY WEATHER IS EXPECTED TODAY. A DEEPLY MIXED LOWER
ATMOSPHERE WILL BRING MINIMUM RELATIVE HUMIDITY VALUES DOWN TO 8 TO
15 PERCENT...AND GUSTY WEST TO SOUTHWEST WINDS WILL DEVELOP. THE
STRONGEST WINDS WILL BE FOUND ACROSS SOUTH CENTRAL SD. CRITICAL
FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED FOR THESE AREAS.

8/21/16

Holy Roman Kiddie Diddler: “I am a heterosexual man who has been celibate my entire life.”



South Dakota's legislature is hiding clergy crimes while Minnesota is prosecuting predator priests.

After being censured for sexual contact with a minor John Nienstedt has been driven from the St. Paul Diocese and now lives in California. The Minnesota cleric with intimate ties to Sioux Falls cassock, Paul Swain, is said to have frequented a gay bar called the Happy Tap.
“The archbishop has been known to go ‘cruising’ (and I am not referring to the type of cruising one does on a ship in the Caribbean) and, on one occasion, purchased ‘poppers’ (and not the exploding candy preferred by elementary school students) and followed another gentleman to his car for, well, the type of activity that men purchase ‘poppers’ for…,” wrote Jennifer Haselberger, the whistleblower whose allegations prompted Nienstedt’s resignation last summer. In late July, more stories of Nienstedt’s “promiscuous gay lifestyle,” as a fellow priest put it, were released by prosecutors. At the end, as multiple investigations closed in, Nienstedt still stuck to the pattern, claiming both that he was unaware of abusers under his watch and that any accusations of homosexuality were merely retaliation for his anti-gay policies. He had no choice but to double down on denial. [Does it matter whether Archbishop John Nienstedt is gay?]
Nienstedt was Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the University of St. Thomas where Sioux Falls Bishop Paul Swain serves on the Institutional Advancement Committee. Close for decades, they are standing together in the front row in the above photo.

The leader of the Roman Church is slowly cleaning house of pederastic predators but is taking heat from Republicans for his stance on curbing human-induced climate change and from progressives for his intent to canonize a colonizer accused of raping children.

South Dakota's Ku Klux Klan "opposed Roman Catholicism because it feared Catholic involvement in politics."

Both South Dakota dioceses are up to their areolae in debt to the white christianic ruling class for covering up crimes committed by pederastic priests where Catholic congregations and the state's legislature have engaged in obstruction of justice for decades. In South Dakota the Roman church has been behind the seizures of hundreds of American Indian children in violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Makes you want to puke, doesn't it?

As lawsuits and the US Department of Justice swamp the Roman church the future of the religious cult isn't looking very rosy.

8/19/16

Northern Cheyenne could test South Dakota cannabis, abortion restrictions

A 1986 amendment to federal law allows tribes to acquire off-reservation land to serve the needs of its peoples. A court case upheld these tribal rights. The Arizona Republic explains:
Luis Plascencia, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, questioned the states-rights argument. "When states joined the union, they agreed to be a state, political entities authorized by the federal government," Plascencia said. "States are given power but it doesn't make them independent of the United States of America the same way cities are not independent.
The Fort Peck Tribes in occupied Montana have legalized therapeutic cannabis and the Northern Cheyenne have been mulling the concept. The Northern Cheyenne own land near Mato Paha (Bear Butte) in western South Dakota considered "non-contiguous" reservation land.
The 2016 resolution approved by a majority vote of the Council, but awaiting signature of the Tribal President and BIA approval would: rescind Resolution DOI-009 (2015) in its entirety and allow Economic Development activities to be established on this tribal property and approve the Northern Cheyenne Development Corporation to develop and implement economic development activities on the Bear Butte property on behalf of the Northern Cheyenne people, Tribe and its members. [Native Sun News]
As co-owners of Pe'Sla the Minnesota-based Shakopee Mdewakanton Nation could bring that state's medical cannabis and reproductive rights freedoms to the Black Hills. Tribes want that ground to go into federal trust.

South Dakota has charged non-natives with providing the means for a cannabis resort within the Flandreau Santee Sioux Nation and passed an anti-civil rights law that seeks to restrict the number of abortions performed in the state by imposing a waiting period and a prior consult from a non-medical religious organization.

It is time to test South Dakota's jurisdiction over nations where cannabis is legal and for tribal medical professionals to establish clinics that perform abortions on these non-contiguous parcels as islands of health care that supersede state law.

8/18/16

American West "being eroded at an alarming rate"

What appeared to be a KOTA teevee hit piece on environmentalism, even featuring quotes from earth hater Rep. Cynthia Lummox (R-WY), turned out to be a hit piece on the Anthropocene.
From the wide open plains of Wyoming to the breathtaking forests in Colorado, when most people think of the American West, they imagine an open space untouched by human activity. But, a new report says that pristine country is being eroded at an alarming rate. "Really what we are seeing right now in the West is that urban sprawl and energy development are driving natural area loss fastest in the West," said Matt Lee-Ashley with the Center for American Progress. [Is the American West disappearing?]
Turns out Wyoming is being hit the hardest experiencing the largest area modified by human development between 2001 and 2011.
Despite the bombastic assertions of some politicians that the West is “locked up” and “off limits” to mining, drilling, and logging, only 12 percent of lands in the West are actually protected from development. Of the more than 250 million acres of land overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in western states, the oil and gas industry can drill on 9 out of 10 acres. [Center for American Progress]
According to the Bureau of Land Management in Montana and the Dakotas fire danger is still very high in the sage steppe and northern Rockies. The Roaring Lion Fire in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana is burning homes within the Wildland/Urban Interface: a place where humans shouldn't be building at all.
Anyone having the opportunity to walk through the Roaring Lion fire next spring or summer will be blessed with a cacophony of birdsong accompanied by a mushroom, wildflower and pollinator show unlike anything anywhere else on this planet. Fire-killed trees attract legions of insects that flourish in the wood beneath the charcoal bark and in the new shrubs and flowers. Many bird species seek out severely burned forests specifically for this rich insect food source. One species in particular, the black-backed woodpecker, occurs in astronomically greater numbers in burned than in unburned forests, and in the more severely burned portions of those forests as well. The black-backs excavate their nest holes in the dead trees, which then provide nesting sites for other animals that can’t make their own nest cavities. No other woodpecker in the world is as adept at extracting beetle larvae from fire-killed trees, and it has become an icon for the ecological importance of severely burned forests. [Richard Hutto, University of Montana]
And:
Plenty of partisans would prefer we let nature sort out the imbalances, not pretend, with costly hubris, that we know enough or are skilled enough to do the right thing. People caused the problem; removing them altogether is the surest means to set matters right. Less active management, not more, is the way to reconcile past conditions with future wishes. Tallgrass prairie requires fire. Probably most tallgrass environments burned every three years or so before European settlement. Longleaf pine, once pervasive on the southeastern coastal plains, burned like a savanna, its wiregrass understory carrying flames among the woods nearly annually. Its western counterpart, ponderosa pine, also behaved like a grassland with big trees clumped throughout it. Likely it burned every 3-8 years. [Stephen Pyne, Recreating forests of the past isn’t enough to fix our wildfire problems]
In a twitter exchange with this blog Hutto disagreed with Pyne saying: "Unfortunately, Stephen Pyne offers a shockingly uninformed view of severe fire here. '...outlier researchers insist that severe fires have always been a part of the scene. Mainstream scientists disagree' is wrong. switch 'mainstream' and 'outlier' (he's labeling those he disagrees with as 'outliers' when they are solid scientists)."

Pyne has done extensive research into the history of wildfire in the Black Hills.

Still more:
According to Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension based at UC Berkeley, past computer models of wildfires have largely ignored humans and too many people think simply in terms of how much fuel there is to burn. But the population in an area, where people live, and how many roads there are, all affect the behavior of fires and their risk to people. [The Push and Pull of Forest Fire Management]
A protest led by American Indians and those opposed to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline through North Dakota has stopped movement on the project citing potential damage to waterways. A tribal chairman has been arrested.

Humans have triggered a trophic cascade. The Greater Missouri Basin supplies water to 92 million Americans: it's at risk to sprawl adding to the disappearance of the American West. Wyoming is just the tip of another dying glacier in Yellowstone.

8/17/16

SDGOP piqued over Black Hills name change


It's not that Black Elk Peak has been renamed for a Lakota holy man that irks earth haters like John Thune, Denny Daugaard and Pat Powers it's that the mountain has been named after a Lakota holy man who rebuked the Roman Church.

No doubt frequent contributor to Pat's Pissoir, Troy Jones, is perfectly happy if the names Stalingrad and Rhodesia were still in practical use.
The story of Black Elk is fraught with historical myth making as historians and academics have questioned the accuracy of John Neihardt’s account in his book “Black Elk Speaks”. Indeed the book is not only a poor historical text but it is also a disputable biography. Neihardt is not only guilty of constructing a “noble savage” caricature of Black Elk and North American Indians but also of engaging in exaggerations and alterations to the translations of his notes to make the story more palatable to white and European markets. The book is as much about Neihardt as it about Black Elk and it should be read in the same context as a novel would be. [comment, Jon Lauck, South Dakota Republican Party]
Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk) returned to Lakota ways after he realized the Roman Church was committing crimes against his people.
Damian Costello's monograph on Black Elk, the Oglala holy man, is the latest in a growing number of scholarly contributions to the controversial topic of Black Elk's religious identity. Was Black Elk truly a wicasta wakan, a holy man, who only became a Catholic convert as a result of the colonial pressures endemic to the reservation system? Or was Black Elk actually a devout catechist, whose "Great Vision" was unnecessarily bereft of its Christian message because John G. Neihardt desired a romanticized and non-Christian Indian narrative? First, tribal nations such as the Lakota are still under the yoke of colonialism and, as such, are engaged in a process of decolonization rather than postcolonialism. Second, taking [Lamin] Sanneh's perspective and arbitrarily applying it to early twentieth-century Lakota history only serves as a way of making excuses for historic wrongs that both Protestant and Catholic churches committed against the Lakota people. [excerpt, Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism (review)]
Revisionist history turned the Wounded Knee Massacre into a battle where soldiers were awarded medals of honor then a peak or town in the Black Hills and a national forest were named after a murderer like George Armstrong Custer. Crook City near Whitewood and Crook's Tower, one of the 7000 footers in the Black Hills, were named after a war criminal.

This blogger has been arguing for Lakota names on South Dakota's geological features for at least twenty years. It is the opinion of this blog now that the mountain is named for Black Elk it should be in the Lakota language: loosely translated as Paha Heȟáka Sápa.

Get Custer's name off a South Dakota state park, a mountain, a county and a town? What a great idea! Harney County, Oregon is where white supremacists seized a federal wildlife refuge.

Senator Lisa Murkowski and the US Park Service are doing what Alaskans are asking of Congress urging the body to approve a name change for North America's highest peak.
The Athabascan name, meaning “the high one,” has been a bone of contention between Alaska’s congressional delegation and Ohio’s, which has sought to preserve the current name honoring assassinated U.S. president William McKinley. “At home in Alaska, we just call it Denali because it’s part of our history,” Murkowski said, according to the statement. “Officially changing the name from Mount McKinley to Mount Denali will show the long-standing significance that the name Denali holds for Alaskans.” [KTUU teevee]
In the early days of South Dakota statehood Indian agents embezzled federal funds meant for tribal nations, just like James McLaughlin did.

Little has changed.

Habitat destruction, watershed ruination, native species extirpation, rampant ecocide, statewide corruption: this is today's South Dakota.
On September 22, 2015, the Pennington County Democratic Party passed a resolution calling for the renaming of Harney Peak, the highest mountain [*] in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The resolution states that public comments received by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names included support of the name change by a descendent of General William S. Harney and a descendent of Little Thunder, a leader of a Lakota village destroyed by Harney in 1855. The resolution further states that the existing name of the peak is highly offensive to Native people. [press release]
* Odakota Mountain is the highest natural peak in the Black Hills.

Of course, the South Dakota Democratic Party should urge President Obama to dissolve the Black Hills National Forest, move management of the land from the US Department of Agriculture into the Department of Interior; and, in cooperation with Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildfire Management, rename it Okawita Paha National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer/Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move.

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.
ip photo.

After leading the charge on Black Elk Peak Basil Braveheart has turned his sights on Battle Mountain in Fall River County.

8/16/16

South Dakota failing to report entire Sturgis® death toll

South Dakota killed at least 16 during last year's Sturgis Rally bacchanal driving some bikers to boycott the annual slaughter.
Officially, the South Dakota Highway Patrol reports that three people died during this year's Sturgis motorcycle rally. But, when you take into consideration the accidents that happened in days leading up to the rally and immediately following in locations across South Dakota and the region, a total of 10 people died in accidents involving motorcycles in 2016. [Rapid City Journal]
This year Rapid City Regional Hospital was the only Republican-owned business to cut a fat hog.
Numbers are down in Sturgis this year and that trend appears to be the same in Custer. Both merchants and officials are saying numbers are down and the bikers who have made their way to Custer have been mostly docile. [Custer County Chronicle]
Even the State of South Dakota is lamenting fewer sex crimes, drug busts and hospital visits that pay the bills in the chemical toilet where civil forfeitures and sales taxes fund single party rule especially in Marty Jackley's home town. Traffic counts are down at least 40 percent from 2015 according to state Transportation Department spokeswoman Kellie Beck.

It's being reported this morning that yet another biker was killed near Menno.

South Dakota media outlets are rife with stories about a meth and heroin epidemic but Marty Jackley takes on a guy alleged to have fifty five cannabis seeds for a legal buyer. Leave it to his homeboys and minions in the law enforcement industry look away from the hallmark lawlessness peculiar to the Sturgis Rally.

Montana's Northern Cheyenne joined tribes trapped in South Dakota in raising awareness of the Rally's desecration of sacred ground on and near Mato Paha known to white people as Bear Butte.

Costs to South Dakota's law enforcement industry cut into whatever profits the state enjoyed from selectively arresting those "docile" offenders.

That's why cops' lives suck. Little wonder LEOs abuse their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and occasionally murder their wives.

So, hats off to those who resist the drunken social engineering white people employ while defiling He Sapa!

TDP going on hiatus

There is nothing but derision and hatred among South Dakota's four most read bloggers.

It took the creation of The Dakota Progressive to force fake progressive Cory Heidelberger to admit he is a Democrat and to adopt the mantle of mouthpiece and advertiser for the bumbling South Dakota Democratic Party. Shaming him really is the only way to keep him honest.

As a trailing candidate for legislature dry drunk Heidelberger can't afford to link to this blog. He is an "ultra-liberal" like obese earth haters Pat Powers and Scott Ehrisman are yoga instructors. Powers and Ehrisman simply can't bear dissent.

This blogger controls every twitter hashtag pertinent to South Dakota politics and will continue to do so unless bought off.

Follow real progressive news about South Dakota, cannabis rights, politics of the environment, the greater Missouri River Basin, the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and the sage steppe at interested party.

8/14/16

Feminists sue administration over Title IX fraud

Here is an interesting take on the Obama administration's transgender policy:
The Women’s Liberation Front, a self-described “radical feminist organization,” has sued the Obama administration over its directive that all publicly funded schools allow students to use the restroom that corresponds with their chosen “gender identity.” The group, in a complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in New Mexico, said the words “sex” and “gender identity” were used interchangeably in the May 13 memo sent out by the U.S. departments of justice and education. It said this contradicts the intent of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on “sex” in publicly funded schools. A federal judge is already considering requests from 12 other states seeking injunctions against the policy, The Associated Press reported Friday. [Phaedra Haywood, Santa Fe New Mexican]
Two Spirits have existed as sacred for millennia; it took Protestants to make sex aberrant.
Like the typewriter and the light bulb, the heterosexual was invented in the 1860s and swiftly and permanently transformed Western culture. The idea of “the heterosexual” was unprecedented. After all, men and women had been having sex, marrying, building families, and sometimes even falling in love for millennia without having any special name for their emotions or acts. Yet, within half a century, “heterosexual” had become a byword for “normal,” enshrined in law, medicine, psychiatry, and the media as a new gold standard for human experience. --historian Hanne Blank
Indian Country Today:
Edited by Qwo-Li Driskill, Deborah Miranda, Daniel Heath Justice and Lisa Tatonetti, Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (University of Arizona Press, 2011)is a landmark book—the first Native gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirit (GLBTQ2) prose and poetry anthology since Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology (St. Martin’s Press, 1998).

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.

Even South Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota have embraced gender equality.

This blog received a completely out of the blue call from a transgendered person in Aberdeen, South Dakota who railed not only against Stace Nelson but against sniveling liberal blogger Cory Heidelberger. Livid at Heidelberger's lack of progressive ideals the caller is preparing to flee the chemical toilet that is South Dakota.

US Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) is leading Congress in protecting the rights of all Americans, so are Senators Al Franken and Tammy Baldwin.

The United States was founded by misanthropes and misogynists. Western religion will be the death of us all.

Trahant spotlights JR LaPlante

Mark Trahant is a member of the Shoshone Bannock Nation and has been writing about American Indians running for political office.
What do I mean? Candidates who have experience, drive, ideas, and own the tools needed to win. JR LaPlante is a great example. He’s running for the South Dakota Legislature as a Democrat. He’s an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. He’s an attorney and his current job is director of Tribal Relations for Avera Health where he coordinates a number of health initiatives. LaPlante’s public policy resume is deep. He has worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Equal Justice Works, an AmeriCorps Legal Fellow with South Dakota Access to Justice, and was in the first group of scholars with Bush Foundation’s Native Nation Rebuilders program. [Trahant, Indian Country Today Media]
Before she left the failing Rapid City Journal Mary Garrigan wrote an excellent piece on the appointment of Leroy "JR" LaPlante as secretary of the newly created South Dakota Department of Tribal Relations that suggested that maybe people are getting more serious about healing the scars of hate. That Mr. LaPlante is a christian who submitted to an autocratic GOP/wasicu administration made his choice highly suspicious.
Rosebud Sicangu Lakota elder and spiritual leader Albert White Hat spoke about the responsibilities and burdens that his nephew would face in his new job. "A lot of us still don't trust the state. Some of us have scars that we'll take to our grave," White Hat said, before praying over his nephew with an eagle feather to ask the Eagle Nation to assist him. The Bad Nation Singers, a drum group from the Crow Creek Reservation, offered Lakota flag and honor songs to the Great Spirit during the ceremony. A history of broken promises and the historic underfunding of treaty obligations is part of the challenge of his new job, LaPlante knows, but he echoes the governor in saying he wants to see new collaborations and fresh ideas in state-tribal relations. "We are mutually tied to the land and citizens of South Dakota, both Indian and non-Indian," he said. [Garrigan, Rapid City Journal]
In 2011 LaPlante appeared with Stephanie Rissler on Bill Janklow's idea of public teevee.



LaPlante, the inaugural Secretary of Tribal Relations, left that post under the current Republican governor to take a job as a prosecutor for former Democratic US Attorney for the District of South Dakota Brendan Johnson.

If he wins LaPlante represents a tiny glimmer of hope for the struggling South Dakota Democratic Party.

With the success of renaming South Dakota's highest geographical point American Indians have the opportunity to begin influencing policy in the chemical toilet.

Of course, the South Dakota Democratic Party should urge President Obama to pay the tribes, dissolve the Black Hills National Forest, move management of the land from the US Department of Agriculture into the Department of Interior; and, in cooperation with Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildfire Management, rename it Okawita Paha National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer/Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move.

8/13/16

Rounds playing a conservative to raise cash, fly to Pierre

Mike can't fly home.
Unfortunately, regional airline service in Huron, Watertown, Aberdeen and Pierre have struggled in recent years. Delays, canceled flights and fewer flight options have made it more difficult for residents to fly in and out of these communities. My amendment seeks to increase the qualified pilot pool for regional airlines by creating new state-of-the art, FAA-certified safety courses that would count toward minimum pilot flight hour requirements. [chippy staffer Natalie Krings writing as Senator Mike Rounds]
Pierre is undergoing another experiment with subsidized air service.
The system in Washington D.C. is broken, South Dakota U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R, told a hometown crowd Tuesday in Pierre. Rounds said he didn’t have good answer to the problem. “I wish I had a better answer,” Rounds said.
Read it all here.
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 governor 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.

Rounds and Krings recently appeared on Facebook Live acknowledging that they are part of the dysfunction in DC.

Recall that Rounds pledged to raise $9 million to run for Senate but is still struggling to erase his campaign debts. White supremacists like Mike see Donald Trump as their last hope.

While Rounds was governor the Department of Social Services seized hundreds of American Indian children and placed them in subsidized foster homes. Activists are reversing those attempts at genocide.

According to a source close to the Rounds family South Dakota's functionally illiterate junior senator is lamenting his time living inside the Beltway.

8/10/16

Panel: “Whiteclay is becoming the Flint, Michigan, of Nebraska”

It would be interesting to know how much beer distributors pay tribal authorities to keep reservations dry.
The state should hire a full-time law enforcement officer in Whiteclay, Nebraska, and open an alcohol detox center to clean up the notorious border town, an ad hoc committee formed by Gov. Pete Ricketts has recommended. “Whiteclay is becoming the Flint, Michigan, of Nebraska,” said Lincoln businessman Alan Jacobsen, a former candidate for governor. He was among a group of Lincoln advocates calling for action from the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission. [Omaha World-Herald]
Cannabis has shown to be an effective treatment for alcoholism.

Senators in the single-chamber Nebraska Legislature voted 30-19 to override the veto of GOP Governor Pete Ricketts who supports the death penalty. Ricketts has retaliated by vowing to execute people on death row anyway after ordering drugs illegally from outside the United States.

South Dakota enjoys killing and has built an economy around death but Nebraska's move has stirred hopes in South Dakota that its legislature could follow suit. Republican former Representative Steve Hickey says 46% of the state opposes the death penalty.
Conservatives who voted for the repeal cited their own personal principles, such bureaucratic overreach and fiscal recklessness involved in the process. So, in some ways, this has become a philosophical alignment, in which both conservative and liberal philosophies have melded together. ["]Do we want a government so big, so powerful, they can decide life and death?” stated District 18 Sen. Bernie Hunhoff (D) of Yankton in an Associated Press report. [editorial, Yankton Press & Dakotan]
The litigation costs of trying a capital crime persuaded Nebraska to abandon state-sponsored killing: how is the price of putting people to death either conservative or sustainable?

Screw Nebraska. Flood the state with cannabis grown in the Oglala Lakota Nation.

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, let them distribute on the rez, on off-reservation properties and in Deadwood.

8/9/16

Meep meep

Acceleratii incredibus


Carnivorous vulgaris


Casita de las Tres Hermanas

Montana thwarts cannabis repeal as South Dakota resists compassion

Update, 0945 MDT: a Republican judge has denied the petition for a vote on therapeutic cannabis this November.

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

In 2004 Montana voters passed an initiated law legalizing therapeutic cannabis and its red state legislature gutted the statute in 2011.

The office of Democratic Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch has completed the count of a ballot initiative to repeal the state medical marijuana program. A county tally released on Aug. 2 put I-176 at 20,038 verified signatures lacking the 24,175 necessary.
A competing initiative, I-182, qualified in July for the fall ballot with more than 27,000 signatures. The measure would remove new restrictions on the medical marijuana program, including a limit of three patients per provider and a review of doctors who recommend more than 25 patients. [Billings Gazette]
In contrast, New Approach South Dakota is in Pierre today suing Republican SOS Shantel Krebs to place legal access to therapeutic cannabis on that state's ballot. Krebs recently dispatched one of her fellow reptiles with a firearm.

Even if cannabis is legalized by South Dakota voters the state's heartless legislature is expected to eviscerate the initiative because Big Pharma and Big Booze subsidize SDGOP campaigns. Industry leaders say SD felony charges against consultants are a "troubling development" even as the Sturgis Rally maims and kills bikers with reckless disregard for human life.

Montana recently reduced fees for patients with green cards.

Yesterday on Argus Leader Media's 100 Eyes webcast the panel excoriated South Dakota's Republican-glutted legislature for lack of access to documents saying other red states like Montana are far more transparent.

8/8/16

Noem, GOP delegation embracing socialism to save tourist trap

South Dakota's Republican congressional delegation has been obstructing attempts by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to streamline the agency weaning support from a hatchery known for introducing invasive species in Black Hills watersheds and into the waters of the United States.

When a socialist like David Nickel of Spearditch is supporting Republican US House member Kristi Noem you know things are getting weird.
Rep. Kristi Noem worked to get language in the just passed 2017 House Appropriations Bill that would (among other things) prevent closure and fill and station on-site all vacant staff positions (this will help serve visitors and maintain the facility). I urge my fellow Argus Leader readers to thank Noem and her staff for their work on this issue and ask Sens. Mike Rounds and John Thune to be sure that similar Booth Hatchery language is in the Senate Appropriations Bill. [LTE, Sioux Falls Argus Leader]
Trout are not native to South Dakota yet the state's sitting At-large US Representative is staking her seat on infesting the waters of the United States.

These clowns won't support the combating of infectious diseases but will wholeheartedly jump on the bandwagon to save a tourist trap.

Ya know: this blog does not support the state land grab in Spearditch Canyon but a smart South Dakotan would counsel the state's climate change denier governor to ask the Service to divest from Booth and make it part of the proposed state park.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service should block releases of these fish into any part of the greater Missouri basin.

Tribes, Black Hills still suffering effects of gold rush

It’s been 36 years since attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzales contends that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the document signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations.
Totally disregarding the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 the United States government illegally seized the Black Hills from the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation which prompted Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun to write, “A more ripe and rank case of dishonest dealings may never be found in our history.” And we should all pray that Hillary Clinton is elected as our next President of the United States so she can carry on the aspirations for the Indian people held by the Barack Obama Administration. Heaven forbid that Donald J. Trump steps in because his administration would surely attempt to force a settlement upon the Lakota people. [editorial, Native Sun News]
And:
Geotechnical monitoring of the Open Cut East Block reveals that the area is expected to fail, with failure on Homestake property within the pit boundaries. The Richmond Hill Mine reclamation acreage overview indicates 341 total affected acres, 265.94 total released acres, 75.09 total remaining affected acres, 73.33 un-reclaimed acres (for water treatment), and 1.76 acres to be reclaimed in the short-term. [Black Hills Pioneer]
South Dakota's earth hater US senators and attorney general are leading a crusade to block the US Environmental Protection Agency from identifying non-point sources of pollution deposited into watersheds by their 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 and for tribal nations secede from the states in which there are trapped then become the 51st State.

Of course, the South Dakota Democratic Party should urge President Obama to pay the tribes, dissolve the Black Hills National Forest, move management of the land from the US Department of Agriculture into the Department of Interior; and, in cooperation with Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildfire Management, rename it Okawita Paha or He Sapa National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer/Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move.

8/7/16

"Jackboots Jackley missing out on real crime"

Jonathan Ellis of Argus Leader Media apparently submitted his blog post to his editor as "Jackboots Jackley missing out on real crime" but that is not the headline.
He’s defended a Medievalesque law that allows law enforcement to forcefully catheterize suspects. You know, holding people down and sticking tubes up their whatchabadinks just to prove they’ve used drugs. Because, apparently, waiting for somebody to relieve himself isn’t as expedient. [Ellis, As violent crime surges across S.D., Jackley pursues pot growers]
Run your browser's cursor over the link. Too funny.

SDGOP‬ hack Pat Powers is on full tilt after Ellis exposesd Jackley as a partisan Trumpoid psychopath. Selective enforcement is a hallmark of South Dakota's Republican attorney general. Marty Jackley routinely settles lawsuits as attorney general with his own campaign contributors.

Be careful, Ellis. Anyone who believes Marty Jackley and his accomplices aren't capable of treachery has forgotten Heather Plunkett.

8/6/16

Mentele announces bid for SD House District 19


Tomorrow July 29th the attorney will be contacting the SOS office and giving them an opportunity to do the right thing before we go to court. The right thing would be to allow medical cannabis access to the 2016 ballot. He believes we will have our day in court instead of them cooperating.

We have to have a court date & a verdict by a judge no later then August 15. So time is of the essence. He has put in countless hours getting prepared for the fight & we need to make sure he is compensated for his hard work. Please donate if you can. The hard work is done hundreds of people came out last summer & circulated, educated and volunteered time. Let's show them all we appreciate the effort and are willing to put some money into ensuring this issue makes the ballot!

Thank You to all who have donated let's keep those donations coming!

Melissa [Facebook post]