6/30/19

Sanford using monopoly power to control therapeutic cannabis in North Dakota

North Dakota has turned to therapeutic cannabis and is widely expected to legalize for all adults in its efforts to reverse opioid abuse.

So far nearly 700 patients in North Dakota have received cards. But, earlier this month a group of protesters held a rally at the Sanford hospital in Fargo claiming the medical industry monopoly is creating barriers to therapeutic cannabis.
However, according to a statement released by Sanford, each doctor can decide whether to certify, based on what they feel is “medically best” for patients. The statement also said patients legally using medical marijuana are allowed to do so at Sanford hospitals in North Dakota and Minnesota. [Patients face roadblocks 2 years after North Dakota voters approved medical marijuana]
In 2016 North Dakota voters passed Measure 5 then the legislature drafted rules and a Republican governor signed it into law. The Botanist in Fargo was the first of eight planned therapeutic cannabis dispensaries in North Dakota and seven other North Dakota cities have been named for stores.
The most recent cities to be added to the list of dispensary sites are Minot, Devils Lake, Jamestown, and Dickinson. They join Grand Forks, Bismarck, and Williston as future homes to medical marijuana dispensary sites. There are currently 14 conditions that qualify for medical marijuana treatment. They range from cancer and glaucoma to epilepsy and Alzheimer’s Disease. [It’s about high time]
Republican Gov. Doug Burgum supports decriminalization but there is concern among activists that Republican operatives will provide names of patients to the Trump Organization that would prevent them from purchasing firearms.

North Dakota's failed poorly-written Amendment 3 that would have legalized for all adults also included language that would have forced the expungement of the records for some cannabis convictions yet in its repressive nanny state neighbor to the south if you're even suspected of ingesting cannabis members of the law enforcement industry will force a catheter into your urethra and seize your assets.

Yes, South Dakota is among the worst states for opioid abuse yet even Democrats in that red state believe residents are too fragile for legal cannabis. Even the South Dakota State Medical Association contends that although "marijuana and dronabinol decreased pain" the fact that it is illegal makes it less effective as a therapy.

Sanford, Avera and Rapid City Regional enjoy virtual medical industry monopolies in South Dakota, too. Even today Sanford is preparing to absorb an Iowa health care giant.

Meanwhile, Illinois has just legalized for all adults and in New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has created a study group designed to bring a plan for legalization to the next legislative session.
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6/28/19

Boycotts and brain drain: South Dakota Republicans are driving people away

After a former Republican South Dakota governor signed a bill into law that discriminates against some couples seeking to adopt the evidence is clear that a California-led boycott is having effects.

South Dakota is struggling to keep white workers, infrastructure is crumbling, industrial agriculture is failing, South Dakota churches are girding for gun violence, meth is replacing alcohol as the state's drug of choice, Pierre's culture of corruption and rape violence threaten open government, socialism is quietly replacing free enterprise, pheasant numbers are dwindling, environmental degradation is increasing, wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl, jails far outnumber colleges, ag bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state's medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny.

But even now the extreme white wing of the Republican Party has doubled down.
In recent years, South Dakota has become a laboratory for anti-trans legislation, a place where extreme right-wing ideologues can field their basest anti-trans fantasies. Opinions are mixed on why then-Governor Daugaard vetoed the 2016 bathroom bill after initially signaling that he might support it—some activists cite his listening sessions with members of the trans community, while others say behind-the-scenes pressure from the business community was probably the more significant factor. If the Court rules that Title VII does not apply to gender identity and sexual orientation, there will be no federal law to protect LGBTQ people from catastrophic policy measures like the ones that were floated this year in South Dakota’s legislature. [How Did South Dakota Become a Factory for Anti-Trans Legislation?]
South Dakota is graying fast and nursing beds represent economic development. The Janklow-owned Riverside Manor in Flandreau is overwhelmingly staffed by Filipinos and Filipinas as are most facilities for the elderly in South Dakota but any registered nurse with half a brain will leave for Minnesota, Colorado or the Southwest the instant they graduate so the work force in South Dakota will just get stupider and more Republican.
The viability of some businesses in the tourism, agricultural and construction industries are at stake if federal programs that bring foreign workers to South Dakota each summer are not stabilized. With the unemployment rate at 2.8% in South Dakota — one of the lowest rates in the nation — hundreds of businesses and farms cannot hire enough people to get them through the summer tourism, harvest and construction seasons. But several recent reform efforts have been stymied by congressional gridlock and a reluctance by the Trump administration to prioritize improvement of legal immigration programs that aid states like South Dakota. [Immigration debate hampers guest worker programs critical to SD businesses]
What’s not to like about six (seven? eight?) month winters, rampant racism, chilling effects on civil rights, an extremist legislature, living in a chemical toilet, perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area? Unless your Social Security pays your property taxes you’re just another poor grudznick eking out a living and bleeding out every penny you can scrabble.

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. When my dad visited us in Spearditch he was able to see how most of the fertile land in Lawrence County was incrementally being covered with concrete and housing for white people. He wept as shelter belts were being cleared for center-pivot irrigation and fossil water was being pumped from fragile aquifers for the industrial agriculture now killing his once-beloved Brookings County. Until Democrats seize power nothing will ever change.

Thoughts? Prayers?


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6/26/19

Highmore Trumper was right but for the wrong reasons



The cult of Trump has very good reasons for suspecting the Obama Administration and the Clinton campaign of colluding to destroy Trump and the Republican Party.

But they’re mostly the wrong reasons.

In South Dakota Meade, Moody, Potter and Pennington Counties struggle with racism on daily and local levels. Confederate flags routinely fly in Rapid City showing support for racism in like-minded states, South Carolina and Mississippi. Many more come out during the Sturgis Rally as bikers in the Black Hills flaunting their racist bents fly the flag of slavery from their machines. Gettysburg, South Dakota remains a white supremacist stronghold. South Dakota is home to numerous sculptures that idolize genocide visited upon American Indians. Mount Rushmore is the state's premier example of racist ideology. Its sculptor was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. As James Van Nuys puts the finishing touches on his statue of Barack Obama Democrats are privately discussing its safety in racist Rapid City.

But, it’s impossible the Obama Administration didn’t know Donald Trump was being installed by a hostile government. The Deep State wanted Trump in the White House because they're the Mob, too and he’s leveling the other guys’ poppy fields and heroin distribution with bombers from South Dakota while leaving the friendly opiate trade to flourish. The Trump Organization is an equal opportunity money launderer doing it for CIA and other Deep State actors for decades. Trump hasn’t released his financials because they show the paper trail leading to every White House since probably Eisenhower. Fred Trump is a JFK assassination conspirator hence those dox are being held up, too.

John Thune's rejection of Trump was a ruse. He already knew Donald Trump was a sleaze from his basketball buddy Jim Comey. That's right: the vast white wing of the Republican Party was going to beat Hillary Clinton at any cost even if it meant colluding with a sworn enemy of the United States, destroying the presidency and taking down the republic. So Thune made Congress look the other way as Russia and Cambridge Analytica conspired with Facebook to hack the election.

And, had former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton been elected in 2016 Paul Ryan would be president today. Her campaign knew that if Hillary won the rabid Republican House would have impeached her by now, the Senate would have removed her before midterms and Trump would be on the sidelines egging them on. Somebody (Robert Mercer and Cambridge Analytica) promised Paul Ryan the presidency had Clinton been removed and Tim Kaine met an unfortunate end but that all crashed when Trump was installed. There’s no way in Hell the GOP would have given a President Kaine the time to choose a Veep.

Clinton sat in with the most sophisticated intelligence community on the planet, ferfucksake! She and her campaign knew the Russians, the Trump campaign, Mike Pence and the Republican Party were hacking the election and the battle over her private emails proves it. The tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch was to deliver a thumb drive containing the Steele Dossier to the Justice Department. It was likely an open secret Trump was already under the microscope. Hillary's campaign was phoned in at best so they gave Trump and the GOP all the rope they're using right now to hang themselves.

It’s becoming likelier all the time the outcome of the 2016 presidential election was engineered by the Obama White House, the Clinton campaign and the FBI to throw the election and destroy the GOP by destroying Trump.
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Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers throw Black Elk Hail Mary pass to woo American Indians


Heȟáka Sápa or Nicholas Black Elk, was a holy man who rejected catholicism and returned to Lakota ways after he realized the Roman Church was committing crimes against his people.
Black Elk is said to be a person who lived the gospel's message and he's on his way to being considered a saint in the Catholic church. The process is now pending one final step: approval from the pope but it's not a quick process to promote someone to sainthood. It could take some time for the pope to decide whether or not Black Elk will be considered a saint. [KOTA teevee]
Catholicism is hope like gonorrhea is charity. That the Roman Church is trading sainthood for Black Elk after centuries of the rape of American Indians by clergy is rank extortion.
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)]
Both South Dakota dioceses are up to their areolae in debt to the white christianic ruling class for covering up crimes against Native Americans committed by pederastic priests where catholic congregations and the state's legislature have engaged in obstruction of justice for decades. Bernie v. Blue Cloud Abbey was one of several cases that ended up before the South Dakota Supreme Court alleging church officials at the time covered up serial sexual abuse taking place at the compound. After helping to broker the sale of the abbey Watertown member of the criminal cult, Lee Schoenbeck, aided by fellow cultist and lobbyist Jeremiah Murphy, forced the South Dakota Legislature to pass laws covering up countless crimes committed by their sect by enacting statutes of limitations.

Pennsylvania used a grand jury for the statewide investigation of predator priests and the Philadelphia Diocese is the bishopric of former Rapid City primate Charlie Chaput but don't expect suspected incel Jason Ravnsborg, Attorney General, former altar boy and member of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers to take on both South Dakota Dioceses.
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6/25/19

SDGOP would fund campus intellectual diversity by defunding intellectual diversity on campus

On April 25th sleepy Vermillion became ground zero for Donald Trump's war on America in South Dakota.
The main speaker was Charlie Kirk, a guy who apparently makes a living by going from one campus to the other to tell students that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. Midway through his talk to both grown-up Republicans from Clay, Turner and Union counties, and to members of USD’s chapter of College Republicans who organized and served the banquet meal, Kirk said he’s concluded that, with a few exceptions, the media are the enemy of the American people. I learned two things from the April 25 event: 1) Kirk is as big of a liar and grifter as our president. 2) The Republican Party has morphed into something that would be unrecognizable to past GOP leaders like Jim Abdnor and George Mickelson and Bill Janklow. And that’s really, really sad. [David Lias, The SD GOP Inspires Sadness These Days]
Dakota War College is known for hosting hate speech but repeatedly jumps the shark by letting Steve Sibson and other members of the extreme white wing of the Republican Party paint targets on South Dakota's Democrats and Muslims.

One might think it would be frustrating for principled conservatives to have establishment Republicans in the South Dakota legislature encouraging intellectual diversity on campus while ridiculing and stifling it in the statehouse but in South Dakota local control means Republican control so principles remain nonexistent.

Does anyone else think Sue Peterson looks like a murderous Romulan sub-commander?


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6/23/19

Jean Rounds chooses Minnesota abortion hospital for cancer treatment

Let's face it: Jean Rounds already looked like Hell in 2013 because of her alcoholism, addiction to opioids and chronic back pain. She had even asked her husband not to run for US Senate in 2014 but Reich Mike Rounds knew he had to run to prevent then-US Attorney for the District of South Dakota Brendan Johnson from opening his investigation of Rounds' role in Bendagate to the public.

But even though the family is catholic and there is a new cancer clinic in Pierre, the gossip would hinder her recovery at South Dakota's Avera which is already operating as an oligopoly funneling money to parishes paying settlements or hush money for the sins of predatory priests paid for by insurers and patients. So, to treat Jean's aggressive tumor near her sciatic nerve the Roundses headed to a Minnesota hospital well known for its excellent reproductive health care services.
Medical abortion is a procedure that uses medication to end a pregnancy. A medical abortion doesn't require surgery or anesthesia and can be started either in a medical office or at home with follow-up visits to your doctor. It's safer and most effective during the first trimester of pregnancy. [Mayo Clinic]
Rich women have full reproductive freedom while women at middle and lower income levels experience chilling effects on their rights. Women in South Dakota who can afford it simply jump on a plane and fly to Albuquerque, Minneapolis or Denver for their procedures. Imagine a woman on the Standing Rock or Pine Ridge doing that. Any registered nurse with half a brain will leave for Minnesota, Colorado or the Southwest the instant they graduate so the work force in South Dakota will just get older, stupider and more Republican.

But Mike Rounds' hypocrisy on access to medical care is hardly new. His donors Sanford, Avera and Rapid City Regional all have virtual medical industry monopolies in their markets.
U.S. Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) today introduced the Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act of 2019. This legislation would prohibit physicians from performing dismemberment abortions. It would impose a criminal fine, up to two years in prison, or both for individuals who perform this type of abortion. [press release, Senator Mike Rounds]
South Dakota’s repeated attempts to restrict access to medical care are not only mean-spirited, they're discriminatory anti-choice extremism. But, applaud the nutball Republican efforts diverting attention from the party’s culture of corruption where murders and their covers up are commonplace by clogging the legislative session with christianic religionist argle-bargle.
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6/22/19

Welfare ranchers get less than $250,000 from Pautre Fire after asking Forest Service for $50M

Cost to We the People for managing the 2013 Pautre Fire was about $1 million. No livestock was lost and there was minimal damage to fences. There were no injuries and the only structure lost was a derelict rural schoolhouse. 3,519 acres of federal and 7,160 acres of private property were cleared of invasive grasses.

The US Forest Service knew an advancing cold front would aid the clearing of foot-high grasses and mowed a fire break instead of using a disk to make a fire line because disturbing soils can allow the infestation of plants that had been introduced by European settlers in the 19th Century. Snow showers ended the fire. A lawsuit claiming $50 million in recompense for the Pautre Fire was not only frivolous, it was reckless in its hypocrisy.
The government agreed to three payments to various ranchers: One for $90,000, one for $81,000 and one for $70,000. As part of its settlement with the ranchers, the government did not admit liability for the wildfire. [Government to pay ranchers for wildfire losses]
After a century of destructive ranching practices invasive grasses still infest northwestern South Dakota but in the aftermath of the fire a Republican US Senator added additional layers of bureaupublicanism to fuel treatments driving the cost of prescribed fires to over $2000 an acre.
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6/21/19

Speaker Egolf: New Mexico should allow non-residents to become therapeutic cannabis patients


Speaker of the New Mexico House Brian Egolf not only supports legalization for all adults he serves as legal counsel for the state's therapeutic cannabis leader, Ultra Health. Calling itself "New Mexico's No. 1 cannabis company" Big Dope Ultra just opened facilities in Clayton near the borders with Texas and Oklahoma. Keeping the industry from the clutches of a monopoly has been contentious.
State law now allows for medical cannabis patients from other states to use their credentials from those states to purchase medical cannabis in New Mexico. That change requires [Department of Health] to come up with a rule change by March 2020. Egolf said that New Mexico already allows non-residents to receive medical care and fill prescriptions through the mail. That, combined with the law’s stated intention to normalize medical cannabis is enough reason for the state to reverse their previous statement, he said. Egolf also cited fishing and hunting licenses as well as access to oil and gas extraction as benefits non-residents get in New Mexico. [NM medical cannabis producer implores DOH to reverse stance on non-resident medical cards]
Lawmakers in New Mexico's Democrat-dominated legislature rejected a Republican plan that would have established state-run cannabis retail operations but did decriminalize possession of up to one half ounce. The state's therapeutic cannabis program is nearing 74,000 patients.

In February two University of New Mexico researchers published a study on how cannabis helps treat certain medical conditions. Their results showed that smoking the herb is most effective method for people who ingest cannabis.

A failure to reach a consensus on legal cannabis in New Mexico last session was due in part to home growing. If people want to grow commercially that’s where the state is paid to conduct inspections for purity and standards through a tax on sales. Let growers have retail outlets.


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Source: Heidelberger will run in Democratic primary for South Dakota's lone US House seat

According to one of my sources anti-cannabis crusader Cory Heidelberger is preparing to enter the Democratic primary for South Dakota's lone US House seat.

When this blog asked Susan Wismer to run for governor she told me Cory Heidelberger and Madville Times were just too radical for her, hence Cory supported Joe Lowe in the primary so that weblog never really got behind Rep. Wismer as a gubernatorial candidate.

Although dry drunk atheist Heidelberger has been a thorough investigator his newest blog, Dakota Free Press just hasn't delivered for Democratic voters. Even former Argus Leader reporter, David Montgomery believed Wismer was a fantastic candidate with the skills to govern she had no chance because she didn't have the cash resources to fight the gubernatorial battle on teevee but it was Wismer's choice of running mate that sank her campaign.

While the author of The Dakota Progressive is a staunch Democrat and has been 100% correct on how to run a credible political campaign in South Dakota up til now it's been far too revolutionary to represent South Dakota Democrats in the party's present deflated context. When only one Democratic South Dakota native knows what wins elections in that state, life might be easier if this scrivener just jams a fork up his nose. Billie Sutton was a fart in a haboob who bought Susan Wismer's mailing list and bombed my inbox begging for money. The South Dakota Democratic Party has apparently learned nothing from the failure of a cowboy running for Montana's At-large congressional seat. Primaries are expensive and allow far too much mischief: since turnout is so pathetic especially during midterms the drain-circling South Dakota Democratic Party should end them and choose candidates at the state conventions.

We should look at a DFL-type strategy, gang. The Democratic Parties in Montana and New Mexico are already formulating tactics and raising money so that we can recover. Minnehaha County is going to step up and own the South Dakota Democratic Party if county chairs don't fire up their delegates to go to the goddamned convention. If candidates want support from the party they should know what the platform is and not announce a run expecting the party to back them, especially if they don't attend the convention. The platform is crafted at the convention by delegates who are frustrated that candidates like Billie Sutton, Joe Lowe and Tim Bjorkman completely ignored what the party stands for.

If I was a cannabis lobbyist in South Dakota I would draft a resolution acknowledging there is a segment of the population who believes some medical procedures are offensive to some voters as a compromise to principled conservatives. Republicans preach civil rights for human zygotes but deny the protections of the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments to people who enjoy cannabis. Democrats should pounce on that.

As progressive activist Chaz Jewett said, "Again we are given a shiny penny by the South Dakota Democratic Party. When is enough enough? Options are wanted."

Watch this space.
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6/20/19

Dwayne Beck of SDSU Dakota Lakes Research Farm slams irrigators, main stem dams

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6/19/19

Liver disease ravaging South Dakota but SDGOP points to cannabis squirrel

South Dakota and New Mexico both suffer the worst liver disease rates in the US mostly because of poor lifestyle choices but also because of easy access to pharmaceuticals metabolized by the liver.
Data gathered by the South Dakota Department of Health shows the poorest of the state’s citizens actually drink less often than the more well off: About 47 percent of those whose household income is less than $35,000 a year reported being regular drinkers, which means they consumed alcohol within 30 days of being surveyed. The number climbs to 74 percent for people whose yearly household income is $75,000 or more. Many South Dakotans live far from a hospital with a full slate of specialty care. Pierre, the state’s capital city, for example, didn’t have a cancer treatment center until 2018. Many rural hospitals offer primary care, an emergency room and not much else. [SD has high rate of death due to liver disease]
But, a red moocher state like South Dakota is powered by sin: video lootery, a loan shark industry that preys on the least fortunate, a massive gambling addiction and a too-big-to-jail banking racket fill in the gaps created by lobbyists who enjoy the protection of single-party tyranny. Homelessness in the state is rampant; drunk driving, meth use and teen binge drinking are off the charts. And because the prison, liquor and beer distribution industries give so much money to Republican lawgivers in South Dakota cops want to crack down on cannabis.
Rep. Steven Haugaard, R-Sioux Falls, pointed out that the role of government is to "never exercise a vice upon the citizens" and questioned how state officials can stop the "steamroller" of legalized marijuana. Manitoba differs from Colorado and South Dakota in that marijuana was legalized at the federal level and then the province was responsible for setting some of the parameters for legal marijuana. Nearly two-thirds of Manitoba residents indicated on a survey that they wouldn't use marijuana when it was legalized last year and the province hasn't seen a "mad rush" to use it, said Kadri Irwin, director of licensing at the Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis Authority of Manitoba. [Colorado, South Dakota officials debate merits of legalized marijuana]
Rick Holm is the Prairie Doc. His program airs on KBRK radio in Brookings, on Bill Janklow's idea of public teevee and his column appears in my hometown paper the Elkton Record, in the Brookings Register and about sixty other rural South Dakota newspapers.
During the Obama administration, the Department of Justice was directed to relax prosecution of cannabis rule-breakers while allowing state rules to supersede the U.S. law. Consider the tragedy of 70,000 deaths per year (and rising) from the overdose of legal and illegal opioids while there are almost no reported deaths from cannabis use, despite quite extensive consumption in the U.S. Most opioid abuse seems to stem initially from efforts to reduce chronic pain syndrome, and this condition seems to be potentially helped with medicinal doses of cannabis. It is time to allow medicinal use of cannabis. It might help us reduce the deaths from opioids. [Dr. Richard Holm]
Even the Republican-heavy South Dakota State Medical Association admits that although "marijuana and dronabinol decreased pain" the pharmaceutical industry produces opioids that are legal albeit highly addictive, easily abused and often deadly. South Dakota is among the worst states for opioid abuse.
Although there are different schools of thought concerning the efficacy of marijuana to treat certain medical conditions and concerning whether its possession and use ought to be decriminalized altogether, the fact remains that it is a violation of federal law and South Dakota law to possess or distribute it for any purpose. And while many states, including some close to South Dakota, have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes, writing a prescription for marijuana, even to a patient living in a state where its use and possession is legal, could result in a disciplinary proceeding brought by the SDBMOE. Accordingly, it is recommended that the practitioner not prescribe (either using a traditional prescription or a certification) marijuana unless and until changes in the law make it clear that doing so is legal, and then only when it is medically-necessary and appropriate. [Marijuana as Medicine]
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association opiate-related deaths have decreased some 33 percent in 13 states after therapeutic and casual cannabis were legalized.
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]
South Dakota has the most draconian cannabis laws in the US and the law enforcement industry can even force catheters into urethras and penises to test possession by ingestion.

Travel with Rick Steves airs on Bill Janklow's idea of public radio on Sunday mornings. Steves lives in Edmonds, Washington.
After four years of legalization, I look out my window here and marijuana's legal and it looks just like it did before it was legal. It just means we arrest 8,000 people fewer a year, it means money is being taken away from organized crime and our government is enjoying tens of millions of dollars of tax revenue that they wouldn't have had otherwise. And mature adults have the civil liberty of going home and smoking a little pot if they want to. I mean, I've got my bong right out on my shelf at home, and it's just great to have it there right next to the wine glasses. [PBS Host Rick Steves Discusses His First Trip, Breaking Marijuana Stereotypes And Being An Advocate]
Cannabis is a safe, effective palliative but black market cannabis not tested or subject to regulation makes America and South Dakota less safe. Legalizing and regulating a product that so many people enjoy is reasonable public policy that would align with our life safety concerns.
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6/16/19

CWD outbreak linked to the extermination of apex predators, overuse of weed killers


Figure 2. Glyphosate usage over the last two decades. It has been estimated that the production of glyphosate is increasing with a rate of about 40 tons per year. Adapted from Benbrook (13).

Way back when, Bob Newland posted my inaugural blogospheric essay at The Decorum Forum. In the comments, I added:
Evidence exists that sudden aspen death is attributable to non-point sources of pollution, ie. POEA, polyethyoxilated tallowamine, a surfactant present in Monsanto's Roundup®, is a prime suspect. POEA interferes with mycorrhiza and their ability to metabolize water. Malathion®, a widely used insecticide and legion for its toxicity, also contains a surfactant.
I have been covering effects of the surfactant POEA for nearly three decades. Today, wapiti (elk) in the Mountain West are dying en masse from Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) that some researchers say results from the federal government feeding those cervids in close proximity. Hay fed to those animals is likely contaminated with Roundup®.
Heather Swanson and Ryan Prioreschi monitor wildlife with the City of Boulder. The mountain lions know that something is wrong. A number of years ago, Swanson and her colleagues studied which deer mountain lions prefer to attack. "The mountain lions were definitely preferentially selecting deer that had chronic wasting disease over those that were negative," she says. "And for most of the ones that they had killed, we had not detected any chronic wasting disease symptoms yet. So certainly the lions were able to key in on far more subtle cues than we were." Unlike us, the lions know that while a deer might look sleek and alert, it's actually a ticking time bomb. That's one of the weird things about this disease. It isn't like the usual viral or bacterial illness. The infection can sit in a herd, crawling from animal to animal, for years before people notice anything is wrong. "Through time (it) degrades, essentially, their brain tissue," says Swanson. [Bent Out Of Shape: Could A Mysterious Animal Epidemic Become The Next Mad Cow?]
Environmental pollutants in the umbilical cord blood of infants? How conservative.
Meanwhile, Monsanto continues to sell Roundup formulas with POEA in the United States. The Pilliods’ expert toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer said that POEA makes the Roundup formula 50 times more toxic. [Two billion dollar judgment against Bayer/Monsanto in glyphosate cancer trial was “devastating rebuke” to company’s science]
From GM Watch:
In a new research published in the high ranked scientific journal Toxicology, Robin Mesnage, Benoît Bernay and Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, from the University of Caen, France, have proven (from a study of nine Roundup-like herbicides) that the most toxic compound is not glyphosate, which is the substance the most assessed by regulatory authorities, but a compound that is not always listed on the label, called POE-15. Adjuvants of the POE-15 family (polyethoxylated tallowamine) have now been revealed as actively toxic to human cells, and must be regulated as such.
Studies have shown POEA can break down tissue that protects the blood-brain barrier leading to prion disease.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists developing methods to measure POEA in the environment have shown that it’s a complex and variable mixture of related compounds, and that POEA is still a common additive in several newer agricultural and household glyphosate formulations. [Measuring POEA, a Surfactant Mixture in Herbicide Formulations]
Kill off apex predators like wolves and cougars; spray glyphosate and POEA on everything then wonder why cervids contract a prion disease like CWD.




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6/8/19

SD Game and Fish is robbing bighorn Peter to pay Kristi's pheasant Paul


After the 2002 Grizzly Gulch Fire opened nearly 13,000 acres of overgrown and beetle-killed ponderosa pine invasive weeds and cheatgrass moved in because collisions with cars and hunters have killed off most of the native bighorn sheep, elk, white-tailed and mule deer. Now, a herd of disease-prone bighorn sheep, likely seeking relative protection from cougars orphaned by one of Game, Fish and Plunder's other failed policies, has moved right in and made themselves at home within the City of Deadwood causing traffic snarls and wreaking havoc on gardens and lawns.

As a result, GF&P wants to auction opportunities to "harvest" bighorn sheep to prop up Republican Governor Kristi Noem's pheasant killing initiative.
The GFP Department is planning to create a marketing strategy for the auction that may include hiring a national firm to get the word out about the auction. Wild Sheep Foundation representatives were supportive of the changes, including limiting the bighorn sheep funds to $85,000. [State pushes spendy bighorn sheep tags to raise money for pheasant habitat fund]
The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it's all about the money hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the South Dakota Republican Party depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule.
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6/7/19

Climate catastrophes are KXL teaching moments

Genesee & Wyoming, the parent company of the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad, conducts the business on the west end of the state-owned track and operates on the right of way that intersects the proposed Keystone XL pipeline at Philip. Had the Quinn Dam just upstream of a RCPE washout failed one of its first casualties could have been the Keystone XL pipeline where it's proposed to cross the Bad River. The same geology that thwarts railroads and forces engineers to rebuild I-90 between Reliance and Rapid City and I-94 between Mandan, North Dakota and Billings, Montana every year also makes construction of the Keystone XL pipeline untenable.




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Hometown judge slows Flandreau tribe's industrial cannabis buzz

Despite the "threat of irreparable harm" Federal Judge and Flandreau native Karen Schreier has denied a motion by the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe to begin growing industrial cannabis (hemp).

Recall President Tony Reider and officials of the Flandreau Santee Sioux Nation advanced an adults-only cannabis initiative after an Iowa casino on the border cut into the tribe's gaming business but even Iowa's Republican governor signed a therapeutic cannabis bill into law. South Dakota's Republican governor believes the state is too stupid to grow cannabis - industrial or otherwise.

Flandreau has long suffered a history of racism and a crooked law enforcement industry.

This interested party believes the road to legal cannabis for all adults in South Dakota is paved with hemp and that tribal nations trapped in my home state should be the primary beneficiaries of industry growth there.

Observers are about to see whether Governor Noem will actually try to crush the industry when South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg sues US Attorney for the District of South Dakota Ron Parsons if grow/ops on the reservation are allowed to survive.
The tribe must now wait until the case concludes or until the [US Department of Agriculture] approves the tribe's proposed hemp production plan. [KSFY teevee]
Read the court ruling here.

But despite Schreier's ruling industrial cannabis is apparently still being cultivated on the Pine Ridge Reservation risking spread into native grasslands.


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6/5/19

SD News Watch proves South Dakota is a hellhole for kids

South Dakota's school to prison pipeline began in 1983 when Republican Governor Bill Janklow concocted a plan to convert the University of South Dakota at Springfield into a prison. Then the state killed Gina Score in a boot camp, ended environmental protection and accelerated the red moocher state's descent into the hellish chemical toilet it is today.
A six-month investigation by South Dakota News Watch has revealed a pattern of improper treatment of residents of the intensive youth treatment facility over the past decade that resulted in a variety of physical injuries and emotional trauma. Brittany Dozark of Sioux Falls spent two years as an employee of Aurora Plains and said major reforms are needed to improve therapeutic outcomes for residents but also to ensure their safety. “I definitely think there’s a sense of brutality there,” said Dozark, who worked to counsel and aid residents at the academy. “There’s nothing that says to these kids that, ‘Hey, everything is going to be OK.’ It’s more like they messed up and they’re in ‘kids prison’ now, not a place to get therapy, treatment or help for mental conditions.” [Residents suffer physical, mental and sexual abuse at S.D. youth home]
An activist judge with deep ties to the South Dakota Republican Party is still covering up Brady Folkens' death at the hands of the state. Folkens died in custody after a botched diagnosis at the now-shuttered STAR Academy on December 21, 2013.

State Senator Lynne DiSanto has been raising awareness of the abuses committed by the Children's Home Society leading up to the disappearance of Serenity Dennard. The Children's Home Society has been under the regulatory microscope before for violations of trust. One former executive director is none other than Republican former South Dakota Governor Denny Daugaard.

The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it's all about the money policing for profit, sex trafficking, hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the South Dakota Republican Party destroying lives, depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule.
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6/2/19

Climate catastrophes are KXL teaching moments

The same geology that thwarts railroads and forces engineers to rebuild I-90 between Reliance and Rapid City and I-94 between Mandan, North Dakota and Billings, Montana every year also makes construction of the Keystone XL pipeline untenable.


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