Democratic NM gubernatorial candidates pondering legal cannabis

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson lives in Taos. According to a poll conducted by Military Times had armed forces personnel been the only voters in the 2016 presidential election he would have won. He has said he buys cannabis in Trinidad, Colorado.

Under term-limited Republican Governor Susana Martinez New Mexico unemployment rates are the worst in the United States while enrollment in New Mexico's therapeutic cannabis program has just gone over the 40,000 member threshold.

So, legalization initiatives have a clear Democratic benefit. Democratic-leaning voters, who otherwise might have stayed home, could turn out to vote on marijuana reform. Some may leave other parts of the ballot blank, but Democrats could see a meaningful benefit overall. In a race that is close, a few thousand votes here or there could force an incumbent Republican Senator to pack up his office or shift a state’s electoral votes from red to blue. [Brookings Institution]

Democrats Jeff Apodaca, Peter DeBenedittis, Joseph Cervantes and US Representative for New Mexico's First District, Michelle Lujan Grisham are expected to run in next year's primary to replace Martinez. They all laud the state's cannabis initiative.

Apodaca’s father, former governor Jerry Apodaca, was governor when New Mexico became the first state to legislate the medical use of cannabis in 1978 through Controlled Substances Therapeutic Research Act. But Apodaca says cannabis could be more than a driver of jobs: It could also be an area where New Mexico’s universities lead other states in research and development. “If they can create 34 different strains of green chiles, are you telling me we can’t lead the world, the country, in [cannabis] research from our university?” [Santa Fe Reporter]

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.

Revenues from therapeutic cannabis in the first quarter of 2017 reached $19 million, an 86 percent increase over the first quarter of 2016. Total receipts for 2017 are projected to exceed $83.5 million.

For the record, I do not support widespread growing of hemp: it is an invasive species capable of overgrowing native grasses.

New Mexico's Democrat-dominated legislature is in special session to address the state's budget woes. Gov. Martinez could sign a cannabis bill if Democrats support capital punishment for Victoria Martens' killers.

Betty Olson adopts Donald Trump's double standards

Earth hater former South Dakota legislator Betty Olson writes a mostly-weekly column for the Rapid City Journal. She never misses a chance to rail against big government, climate science and apex predators especially if it boosts her bottom line.

Because of the highly offensive content she lifted without attribution this blog isn't going to provide the link to Betty's current sliming in the Journal who rewards her for this shit but here is a snip from it:

Pres. Trump is planning to reduce the federal budget deficit by cutting back on taxpayer money going to fund Medicaid, food stamps, farm subsidies, and several other welfare programs.

Put me in charge of WINZ food grants [WINZ is a New Zealand social safety net., ed.]. I'd get rid of cash for potato chips, candy or sodas, just money for 50kg bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of healthcare. We'll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. You will not receive a bigger check for every time you have another illegitimate child. If you want to reproduce, use drugs, alcohol, smoke, or get tattoos and piercings, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your "home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

Put me in charge of compulsory job search. In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a government, community service job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good”.

Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules.

Before you say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin their self-esteem, consider that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self-esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people's mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND while you are on government subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes, that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will vote for a ‘welfare’ government only. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a government welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job. [Betty Olson, column]

Betty is still defending the Bundyists in Nevada. Writing in the Black Hills Pioneer she said:

The federal government shouldn’t be allowed to own any land within a state’s boundaries unless it is granted permission by the legislature of that state, and so far, no state has given that permission to the federal government.

Betty has apparently forgotten that the ground she lives on was seized from aboriginal cultures by President Thomas Jefferson through an executive order that even he believed was unconstitutional. She and other GOP ranchers take subsidies just to survive.

Socialized military, socialized ag and livestock production, socialized coal: Republican hypocrisy on parade.

The above photo is lifted from her Facebook page and as we can see she was a drop-dead, stone-cold fox in earlier days. Her daughter is in her arms as her grandmother-in-law photo-bombs in curlers.

pic.twitter.com/jj1cj1Lzt9

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) May 27, 2017

Montana Republican assaults reporter; campaign circling drain

Wow, it sure is hard covering how badly Republicans fucked up today. The devastating Congressional Budget Office report on Trumpcare, Marty Jackley pissing the Hagen trial down his leg and the Montana At-large earth hater candidate body-slamming a Guardian reporter in Bozeman today are all competing for blog space. Even my own tweets are going viral.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is calling for the Republican to leave the race and the event is trending on twitter.

Montana's special election will give way to a 2018 election for the US House seat on Friday.

Ben Jacobs exposed Greg Gianforte's links with the Russian mob. Here's his recording of his interaction with the candidate:

Greg @gianforte is the extreme wrong wing of the Republican Party. #mtpol https://t.co/oLIaJNJ3Ct

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) May 15, 2017

SD Board of Minerals and Environment more about minerals than environment

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

Acknowledging there will always be acid mine drainage the board just met in Pierre to announce its plans to continue the war on the Black Hills Gilt Edge Superfund site as EPA becomes a tool of the extraction industry.

Bob Mercer sat through the meeting so we didn't have to then filed three stories.

The problem is acid mine drainage that occurs when sulfide-bearing rocks are exposed to oxygen. The acid drainage led Brohm mining company to walk away from Gilt Edge in 1999, in the process forfeiting its state bond of about $6 million. South Dakota becomes completely responsible for the cost of managing the Gilt Edge site after EPA completes the cleanup. [Mercer 1]

Under the General Mining Act of 1872 Canadian miners have carte blanche to rape the Black Hills, so they are. Brohm was an Australian company recruited by a Republican governor who gutted environmental protection in South Dakota.

A European miner is cutting a fat hog on stolen Black Hills ground near Lead.

Wharf Resources produced more than 100,000 ounces apiece of gold and silver last year from its Golden Reward mine in the Black Hills, environmental manager Matt Zietlow said Thursday. [Mercer 2]

The earth haters also announced a plan to resume moving 'waste rock' from the Sanford Underground Lab in the former Homestake Mine to Lead's Open Cut.

The rock would cross over Main Street, aka U.S. Highway 385, and spill into the Open Cut next to the basketball courts. The new conveyor system would retrace part of the path of the old aerial tramway that, while now gone, had carried ore for decades o’er the streets of Lead. [Mercer 3]

EPA has been hearing public comment about a uranium mine in Fall River County. It's largely window dressing for the industry.

Homestake Mining Company has a Superfund site in New Mexico, too.

Because of the antiquated 1872 Mining Law, companies take federal (read: publicly owned, by you, the taxpayer) minerals with no royalty payments and are generally allowed to operate on any federal lands they select, regardless of public opposition. Even more heinous, new mega-mines are allowed to be built even though it’s clearly understood that they will have to treat acidic, metal-laden runoff for thousands of years at extreme cost. Not only are we allowing companies to take minerals for free, but we’re telling them it’s OK to create the same type of permanent water treatment liabilities that polluted the Animas. [Major Colorado mine waste spill highlights urgency for comprehensive mining law reform]

Logging out the basin for the Grizzly Gulch Tailings Disposal Project above Pluma and Deadwood in 1977 helped to launch this blogger's love of the Black Hills.

FSST, Hagen cannabis trial soft target for Jackley

Recall officials of the Flandreau Santee Sioux Nation advanced their cannabis initiative after an Iowa casino on the border cut into the tribe's gaming business. Iowa's earth hater governor just signed a therapeutic cannabis bill into law.

Dana Ferguson, who covers politics and state government, received a subpoena Monday ordering her to appear at the Moody County trial of Eric Hagen, a consultant who helped the tribe set up a marijuana growing facility. [Sioux Falls Argus Leader]

All of a sudden it's pretty clear why 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 tribe filed a lawsuit against the state in federal court challenging the state’s interpretation that contractors working on an expansion of the Royal River Casino are required to pay contractors excise tax to the state. The lawsuit alleges that the state’s imposition of the tax “subjects the tribe to an intrusion into tribal sovereignty within its reservation.” The state has comprehensive tax collection agreements with Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, Rosebud and Oglala Sioux Tribes, as well as limited agreements with the Yankton Sioux Tribe and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. [Sioux Falls Argus Leader]

This is simply more evidence that every media outlet in South Dakota is a mouthpiece for the SDGOP.

Bill Janklow's idea of public broadcasting can't cover Pierre effectively because its funding is reliant on the South Dakota Republican Party, the Associated Press can't do it because they've been neutered so has the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. South Dakota's teevee stations are bound to Republican advertisers and nobody reads college publications.

Ferguson will testify because the South Dakota Newspaper Asssociation is powerless to do anything to protect its membership.

Marty Jackley is a recipient of campaign contributions from Big Pharma and Big Booze, has mounted an uphill race for governor and would stoop to anything, including the falsification of drug screens, to look tough on crime. FSST and Eric Hagen are simply soft targets for Jackley.

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.

It's 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.

South Dakota truly is the Land of Infinite Vitiation.

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

https://t.co/LK3npAo396 @SDAttorneyGen 😉

— Eric Hagen (@ericmhagen) March 31, 2017

Montana's special election is a referendum on Trump

Despite a measure passed by the Montana legislature in 2015 giving the governor power to appoint its At-large US House Representative during the interim between a vacancy and a special election Congress can refuse to seat that appointee according to Art. I, Sec 2 of the US Constitution. Governors can, however, appoint US Senators in the interim.

Singer/songwriter Rob Quist is the Democratic contender in Montana's 25 May special election, Mark Wicks is the Libertarian Party nominee and the earth haters chose Greg Gianforte even after he lost the governor's contest spending some $6 million of his own money.

It's not like Quist is a perfect human. He has a long debt trail resulting from an acute medical condition that left his family nearly penniless for some twenty years but he does believe it's time to make cannabis legal.

Libertarian Wicks has delivered an effective debate performance. In Montana the LP has had significant impacts in previous elections usually taking three votes from Democrats for every five votes from earth haters.

Gianforte sold his Bozeman-based company to Oracle who plans to use it to build a gun registry in red state Montana. He's a christianist with ties to a creationist museum, has sued to deny stream access to the public, discriminated against a person with multiple sclerosis, denies the anthropocene, has ties to the Russian mob and wants government to come between a woman and her gynecologist. He recently told an audience he opposes Trumpcare but was caught on tape applauding its passage by the US House.

Medical insurance has been a hot topic during Montana's 2017 legislative session and the body voted to tax therapeutic cannabis. Democratic Governor Steve Bullock vetoed an earth hater bill that would have restricted women's access to reproductive health care.

As efforts expand to impeach Donald Trump for his collusion with the Russian mob during the 2016 presidential election Democrats are pouring money into the Quist campaign hoping to fill the US House with sympathetic members. A recent Quinnipiac poll not only reveals voters are deeply dissatisfied with Trump but by a 54/38 percent margin American voters want the Democrats to retake the US House of Representatives.

According to state polls Quist trails Gianforte by single digits and is closing the gap.

Trump is a psychopath and despite Quist's foibles a vote for Gianforte enables treason.

Articles of Impeachment are already being drafted even as earth haters like South Dakota's John Thune say the appointment of an independent counsel will never happen.

Montana is the water tower for parts of two countries. She's too precious to be raped at the hands of Republicans.

Click here to help turn Montana blue.

Listen: @eosnos talks about his @NewYorker article "How Trump Could Get Fired." https://t.co/TVSCA5YZEe pic.twitter.com/diHdnsYBwG

— Fresh Air (@nprfreshair) May 4, 2017

1/ This happened at the @DonaldJTrumpJr rally today. #mtpol #mtnews pic.twitter.com/quLFrpt9E0

— Holly Michels (@hollykmichels) May 11, 2017

.@jontester hitting the campaign trail to send @RobQuistforMT to Congress in #MTAL. Vote early! #mtpol pic.twitter.com/ThiZv29Vcl

— Chris Meagher (@chrismeagher) May 11, 2017

Fiesta Days draw weekenders to T or C

In 1950, radio quiz show host, Ralph Edwards, awarded a name change to Hot Springs, New Mexico and the town officially adopted the show's handle, Truth or Consequences.

Like many other post-heyday small towns the main commercial district has shifted to the highways outside downtown leaving many storefronts empty or converted to single family dwellings. Cannabis-friendly T or C has become a tourism-driven economy where many northerners winter. The vast bulk of the properties outside the core are mobile homes and real estate signs are numerous. Much of the burg sits within the Rio Grande floodway in the relative safety of the Elephant Butte Dam.

Here is a favorite entry in the Fiesta Days parade.

T or C's gay and lesbian community is very active in the festivities in a collective where non-traditional couples have settled. We met a geologist from Missoula, Montana who prospects in Sierra County and has claims in Boulder County near my former home in Basin.

The cottage at La Paloma was our home away from home.

The Geronimo Springs Museum is home to a priceless collection of projectile points and stone tools as well as artifacts from the Spanish conquest, European settlement and the Ralph Edwards era.

Ted Turner owns the Sierra Grande Resort where a staffer took our picture after lunch. He’s got a ranch on the Rio Grande just north of town.

Wilson leaving SDSM&T even as confirmation for USAF hits snag

South Dakota's corrupt Board of Regents has announced Heather Wilson is leaving the School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City.

New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich, a Democrat, sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He defeated Wilson who was introduced at her hearing for Air Force secretary by South Dakota's two earth hater senators.

“My nomination was unexpected. I did not anticipate returning to federal service,” she said. In her written testimony Wilson basically asked Congress to send more money to defense firms she used to work for. She has disclosed at least some of her ties to the military/industrial complex.

A Democratic senator has a hold on U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee for Air Force secretary, and legislators need to "work through" questions before she can receive a confirmation vote, according to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain. The delay marks the latest setback for one of Trump’s picks for Defense Department leadership. If confirmed, former U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson would be only the second DoD nominee confirmed by the Senate after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. [DefenseNews]

McCain said he has great concerns about the team around Secretary of Defense Jim "Mad Dog" Mattis.

If confirmed, she would be the first of Donald Trump’s nominees to lead a military service branch to actually start the job. At least two other service branch nominees have withdrawn and Trump’s second pick to lead the Army is currently mired in controversy over statements he made about LGBT issues, Islam and evolution. [Michael Coleman, Albuquerque Journal]

The process to replace Wilson gets underway this month as the Board of Regents identifies and reviews candidates. Its timeline calls for the new president of the School of Mines to be appointed by fall but duties wouldn't begin until Jan. 1, 2018.

Like Greg Gianforte, the earth hater nominee running for Montana's At-large US House seat, Wilson has financial ties to the Russian mob.

A vote on her confirmation is scheduled for 8 May.

It does make one wonder what Trump's Kompromat Cabinet will do to America.