12/31/20

Covid Kristi continues killing kin

Make no mistake: Donald Trump and Republicans like Kristi Noem are targeting Indian Country for annihilation. His Tulsa trip and the Sturgis Rally in occupied South Dakota spread the virus all over Native America. It’s called ethnic cleansing even genocide elsewhere but in Trump’s America it’s called MAGA. 

Over 11.15% of South Dakotans have contracted the coronavirus since March or 163 per 100,000 people - a figure far higher than the national average and about two and a half times that of California.
In a column last month, I described Gov. Noem as the female equivalent of Johnny Appleseed if Johnny planted COVID-19 trees instead of apple trees. The governor needs to get poked ASAP. [David Lias]

12/30/20

Chinese investors stake cannabis grow-op in Oklahoma

In May the Red Lake Nation in occupied Minnesota voted to legalize therapeutic cannabis expanding the list of qualifying symptoms for tribal patients seeking treatment in the first application of cannabis flower in the state. The White Earth Nation voted to legalize for some patients and according to activist, Winona LaDuke hopes are high that voters will embrace the Oklahoma model, home to the loosest therapeutic cannabis rules in America. 

With the help of an Indigenous firebrand a Chinese syndicate had been growing cannabis on the Navajo Nation so the tribal council has changed the definition of marijuana to include the entire plant, industrial or otherwise. 
“Oklahoma, it’s like a heaven there,” said Bryan Peng, a Los Angeles-based marijuana farm manager whose grow site in New Mexico was shut down by the federal raid in November. “The sky is the limit. We can take it to the next level.” By any measure, the New Mexico venture was a disaster for Chinese investors and growers alike. “We are victims, we lost our money and our reputations all because of a scam by Dineh Benally,” said Peng, the farm manager. “We tried to help the local people here and bring up the economy. Why did they show us so much disrespect and chase us off like rats?” Unlike other states, growers in Oklahoma have no cap on the number of plants they can grow. [Fields of Green, Searchlight New Mexico]
New Mexico has more patients in its therapeutic cannabis program than Colorado does and Speaker of the New Mexico House Brian Egolf not only supports legalization for all adults he serves as legal counsel for the state's cannabis volume leader, Ultra Health. As New Mexico's therapeutic cannabis program exceeds 103,000 patients the legislature is poised to legalize cannabis for all adults despite the state being the most water-stressed in the entire US. 

Last year the cannabis legalization task force established by New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham released details of its discussions to the media. Kelly O’Donnell, an economist and consultant who has studied the market, told participants New Mexico should expect increased tourism especially from red states like Texas and Oklahoma. 

Today, Big Dope Ultra wants to monopolize the industry in New Mexico. 
“No other state in the entire country is better postured, better positioned to succeed at legalization than New Mexico,” said Duke Rodriguez, founder of Ultra Health, the largest chain of dispensaries in the state. While transporting cannabis across state lines remains illegal under federal law, Rodriguez and O’Donnell agreed that Texans would likely make up a significant customer base for New Mexico recreational cannabis. Rodriguez said that Texas has more adults living within 200 miles of the New Mexico border than New Mexico has adults statewide and that visitors could account for around 40% of a potential market for New Mexico cannabis. [Albuquerque Journal, How much green would recreational cannabis bring?]
A failure to reach a consensus on legal cannabis for all adults in New Mexico during the last legislative huddle was due in part to Rodriguez' objection to home growing but now with oil and gas revenues in the shitter legislators are far more receptive to legalization. 

The US House just passed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019 or MORE Act which removes cannabis from Schedule 1 but legalization remains in the hands of the states. The bill's lead sponsor in the Senate is Vice President-elect Sen. Kamala Harris. It's unlikely the bill will pass in the current Senate but after the Georgia runoffs in January Vice President Harris will vote to break a 50-50 tie. Indian casinos are small banks. It's time for more states to enter cannabis compacts with tribal nations.

12/29/20

Slime ball Schoenbeck has Trump virus

Catholicism is hope like gonorrhea is charity. 

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.
Schoenbeck said he’s aware of 12 senators who have tested positive for coronavirus. He declined to give names. Representative Linda Duba, a Sioux Falls Democrat, informed House leaders on Christmas Eve that she would participate remotely in the 2021 session until she’s had two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. In March, Representative Bob Glanzer, a Huron Republican, died of COVID-19. [KELO teevee
In South Dakota at least thirty two members of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers have been credibly accused of preying on children and vulnerable adults but don't expect suspected incel Jason Ravnsborg, Attorney General and former altar boy to take on both South Dakota Dioceses.

Veteran reporter, Bob Mercer, who wrote the piece for KELO, is also a member of the pederastic Roman church but has never exposed it to journalistic scrutiny.

12/28/20

Shad Olson mulling run for Thune seat

South Dakota’s ideological purists are incensed with Republicans John Thune and Dusty Johnson for caving on Herr Trump. 

Potential alternative party or unaffiliated candidate Shad Olson has had enough. I have already predicted Thune won’t run for re-election so Kristi Noem has a straight shot at South Dakota’s seat but Olson believes she's just another RINO lapdog.
If you believe that John Thune, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Mark Meadows, Marco Rubio, Mike Pompeo and all the rest of the traitorous milquetoast personalities of the GOP didn't know for four years and just as thoroughly as Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden that the 2020 Election would be wired comprehensively for guaranteed outcome, you get what you deserve. The GOP sycophants didn't wake up the day after the election and decide to stab Donald Trump in the back. This was the plan for four years....just as I wrote in March of 2017, that if and when Trump's political star began to wane, it would not be the Democrats to plunge the final dagger, but the establishment Republicans that he defeated in 2016. That includes Ted Cruz and Kristi Noem. Both of whom are feigning tacit support while silently watching Trump's betrayal and positioning for a 2024 political theater exercise in a nation where the only people who will ever bother voting again are dead people, Democrats and special needs Republicans who still think pro wrestling is real. Anyone silent now is a traitor. And I mean that from rank and file sycophant toadies and precinct poseurs in my home state...all the way up to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. This is treason. Anyone who acquiesces is complicit in America's death. [Faceberg post, Shad Olson]
The Dakota Progressive: "unfortunately Shad Olson doesn't have the financial resources to run an effective statewide campaign."
That's absolute defamatory balderdash. But I would pay you to convince the IRS of that idiocy prior to my next quarterly filing deadline. It might save some on 1031 property exchange sheltering and Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery itemizations on my real estate properties and ancillary deductions. Someone has been reading too much fiction. [Shad Olson] 
Former Chairwoman at the Lincoln County GOP Betty Otten is calling for Republican heads to roll so is Rapid City’s Bill Napoli. Republican former legislator Betty Olson wants Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to be driven into exile after he acknowledged Joe Biden’s win. Arch-conservative Lora Hubbel from Sioux Falls calls Thune an “embarrassment.” Gordon Howie is saying Thune and Reich Mike Rounds are “out of touch with South Dakota” and should be replaced. Recall longtime Republican stalwarts like Phil Jensen, Charlie Hoffman, Betty Olson, Florence Thompson and at least fifteen others threw up their hands in desperation with first term Representative Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson and backed Elizabeth Marty May in the Republican US House primary. 

There is a “Primary John Thune in 2022” Faceberg page with 1800+ members. They’re serious but not serious enough to run an unaffiliated big name candidate against him in the general election because nobody can match his $13 million war chest. Making him burn off a few thousand dollars won’t weaken him one bit but moderate Jeff Lassle has all but announced for the SDGOP Senate primary as a symbolic protest. A big name principled conservative running an affiliated race in the general election is the real bang for the buck. 

Recall Bill Janklow banked his war chest even after killing Randy Scott. Thune is no less greedy, that’s for sure. 

Saudi-funded SDGOP chair Dan Lederman paid Gordon Howie a five figure sum to abandon his third party insurgency. Now the chasm separating the establishment Republicans from the principled conservatives in South Dakota is widening even more. Ideological purists loathe Lederman because sleaze and crime built his business. He spent $50,000 to buy a seat in South Dakota's corrupt legislature flaunting the same class by throwing it away resigning after the 2015 session then forcing his way into the chair of South Dakota's earth hater party and challenging Trump darling Governor Kristi Noem to become a Republican elector. 

There is a mass exodus underway from the SDGOP and there isn’t a single story about it in the South Dakota media. Principled conservatives are sick of being lied to by Zionist mob boss Lederman and are already fighting back against the South Dakota Republican Party insiders in the state. South Dakota's most ardent citizens for liberty are recruiting conservatives to run not just for the legislature but for statewide offices, too. That Lederman would steer criminals like Mohammed bin Salman into South Dakota is completely within his crooked wheelhouse.

The patriot movement wants to leave the GOP and form its own party. How would that work in South Dakota?

12/27/20

Town named for war criminal schedules 2021 Neiman glorification


Dendroctonus ponderosae or mountain pine beetle predates by millions of years Pinus ponderosa in the Black Hills which only reached that region less than four thousand years ago. Native Douglas fir, limber and lodgepole pine have been mostly extirpated from He Sapa, The Heart of Everything That Is. European settlement in the New World and the Industrial Revolution took hardwoods for charcoal then humans allowed fast-growing conifers to replace lost forests. 

After Case #1, the first Forest Service timber sale in US history near Nemo, the Black Hills National Forest ceased being a wild thing. The Island in the Plains has been broken for decades but the collapse of select Black Hills ecosystems has been evident since at least 2002 and after a century of destructive agricultural practices invasive grasses infest most of western South Dakota.

Today in the Mountain West aspen and other hardwoods have been choked out by fire suppression and the timber industry exacerbating climate change. Aspen leaves reflect sunlight in the summer and aspen communities hold snow pack into the Spring while pine needles absorb heat and accelerate snow melt warming the planet. 

Restoring and rewilding American ecosystems are parts of the Green New Deal so with some coaxing from the incoming Biden Administration public land managers within the BHNF might come to their senses and just leave it to Wakan Tanka and Mother Earth to heal. 

The absence of prescribed burns, the persistence of cheatgrass on the BHNF and on other federal and state ground are just more examples of the intense lobbying efforts of Neiman Enterprises and from welfare ranchers addicted to cheap grazing fees. Instead of allowing native aspen to be restored, stands of doghair ponderosa pine (ladder fuels that feed wildfires) cover much of the BHNF. 

Spurred by the Neimans the Forest Service is still planting pine in the Jasper Fire area. Much of the 2002 Grizzly Gulch Fire outside Deadwood occurred on ground owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) but because of Senator John Thune (NAZI-SD) costs of conducting prescribed burns are now thousands of dollars per acre instead of hundreds. 

Add the very high number of private inholdings within the BHNF that make the wildland urban interface (WUI) very large to one of the highest road densities in the entire national forest system and Region 2 to lots of logging, hardrock mining and pesticides like glyphosate then understand why over a hundred species in South Dakota alone and a million worldwide are at risk to Dusty Johnson, Jim Neiman and the former Republican Party now the American Nazi Party.

So, to honor Hulett, Wyoming-based Devils Tower Forest Products the South Dakota town named for a war criminal plans its eighth ritualized bark beetle burning 16 January. 
Vigilance gets lit at 4pm. Check it out! Gather at the Custer High School at 4pm to get organized and get your torch. March at 5pm. Burn at about 5:15pm. Or so. This isn’t a science people. It’s a party. Outdoors. Wear your mask. Everybody is coming out.

Photo: Paul Horsted.

12/26/20

Haaland ready to make herstory at Interior


Native Americans overwhelmingly turned out to vote for Joe Biden. One leader getting Natives to the polls is Democratic New Mexico Representative from the First District, Deb Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo. That's her in the above photo.
One Trump administration action with a high possibility of being reversed is of particular local interest — relocation of the Bureau of Land Management national headquarters from the nation’s capitol to Horizon Drive. It’s worth noting that both the nominee to be Interior Secretary, N.M. Rep. Deb Haaland, and the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, questioned the moves. As did numerous organizations, including former BLM staffers and conservation groups that provide a powerful chunk of the constituency that drove the red-to-blue election results. And a General Accounting Office review of the reorganization raised questions about administration claims regarding efficiency, retaining expertise and geography. [Grand Junction (Colorado) Daily Sentinel
In a letter dated April 24 US Representatives Haaland and Grijalva asked for a grant of clemency and the release of Peltier, a 75-year old tribal citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. In May Peltier applied for a compassionate release because of the coronavirus outbreak but it was denied by the Trump Organization.
Over the course of the last 16 months, Peter Clark, the former director at International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, who resides in Albuquerque, N.M., which is part of Haaland's congressional district met with the congresswoman and her staff, and provided information to the New Mexico congressional delegation regarding the various avenues of relief for Peltier. Leonard Peltier's eldest son Chauncey Peltier is a co-founder of the Indigenous Rights Center located in Albuquerque. Leonard's daughter, Kathy Peltier, is an enrolled citizen of the Navajo Nation, and had recently written to Rep Haaland seeking support for her dad. [Native News Online
It’s been 40 years since attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzalez contends that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations.
The Editorial Board of Native Sun News Today and its Publisher Tim Giago sent the Bill Bradley Bill and the history of the illegal taking of the Black Hills to Deb Haaland, (D-NM) Congresswoman from New Mexico, a Native American woman, and we are encouraging her to study them and perhaps meet with some of the leaders of the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation, in order to discuss the idea of putting together another Bill in the fashion of the Bradley Bill, in an effort to get some of the stolen lands of the Black Hills returned to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people. [Native Sun News Today]
In 2019 Rep. Haaland called for greater protections for BLM employees after threats of violence from white welfare ranchers like Cliven Bundy.

12/22/20

Guest post: seven long years

[Editor's note: Brady Folkens of Brookings died in state custody after a botched diagnosis at the former State Treatment and Rehabilitation (STAR) Academy in a county named for a war criminal on December 21, 2013 then the State of South Dakota’s Office of Risk Management helped to bury the evidence of negligent homicide. 

After a public outcry the death camp was shuttered and the sprawling property put up for auction. Now the stigmatized site is being offered for a fourth time at a substantially reduced price. 

The state has a history of poor choices made by state employees.  Fourteen year old Gina Score died after a forced run in 1999 then the state settled with Score's family for an undisclosed amount of money without accepting guilt for her death.

No doubt Republican Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg is enjoying similar cover.]

Seven Long Years Ago…. 

When 17-year old Brady Folkens died unexpectedly while incarcerated at STAR Academy for having smoked marijuana, Nancy J. Turbak of Watertown SD referred his mother to her husband lawyer David Berry, who practiced in Hilton Head, South Carolina… 

We believe Berry, who at one hearing was admonished by South Dakota judge Pfeifle for not knowing South Dakota law, conspired with Gary Thimsen of Woods, Fuller, Schultz, and Smith LLC, hired to protect the state of South Dakota, to make Dawn van Ballegooyen’s case go south. An Avera McKennan Hospital pathologist, Raed A. Sulaiman MD, had falsely blamed a common virus for Brady’s death when, in fact, he died from medical negligence: being prescribed an antibiotic to which he was allergic… 

I was stunned as Craig Ambach of SD Risk Management, present at a hearing I also attended, submitted false evidence that no drug reaction was found when Sulaiman performed Brady’s autopsy. As corroborated by five outside medical experts, Brady died from a fatal reaction to a wrongly prescribed antibiotic. Five medical experts also had told Dawn Van Ballegooyen that Brady’s death could not have been due to a virus – a fact corroborated by a second autopsy at the University of Nebraska Medical Center… 

Ms. Ballegooyen, her husband, and I spent over an hour outlining the multiple criminal behaviors by these and other cover-up perpetrators to [then] Attorney General Marty Jackley with absolutely no action or anything from his office. 

We pleaded with [Avera’s] CEO John Porter to allow Sulaiman to update his autopsy report to be consistent with common medical knowledge, but Porter merely forwarded our request and accompanying analysis to the [Avera] lawyers… 

We submitted an extensive researched study on Sulaiman’s autopsy to William H. Golding, lawyer for the South Dakota Board of medical and osteopathic Examiners (a medical board). But the SDBMOE did nothing – except to plant two false letters in Brady’s file at Thimsen’s office inferring that an outside review agreed with Sulaiman… 

Then governor of South Dakota, Dennis [Daugaard] appointed Nancy J. Turbak to SDBMOE but, even before her term was over, the new governor, [Kristi] Noem, kicked Turbak off the medical board and appointed her own candidate… 

Seven long years and no one has ‘fessed up. But we believe the mills of God, that grind ever so slow, will eventually expose this cover-up and its perpetrators…

12/21/20

Living rock: solstice reminds us that all species are related


I seized upon the oscillating universe model when I was at university nearly fifty years ago. 
The idea is controversial, although many scientists do believe that the universe operates in a perpetual cycle in which it expands, before contracting back in a ‘Big Crunch’ followed by a new Big Bang. [An earlier universe existed before the Big Bang, and can still be observed today, says Nobel winner
Living rock, like limestone just for instance, contains the stuff from which bone is grown. Dirt is alive, an amalgam of organisms living in community. The holy trinity is one oxygen and two hydrogen molecules. The Earth has a nucleus, a core generating untold power that creates a magnetic field not unlike our own bipolar bio-batteries driving our heartbeats and brain signals singing in B flat, the noise of the universe and has evolved the consciousness to remind even the fungi when to fruit. 

Some of us believe the Earth is consciously reacting to an infestation of humans.
First, we’d need to accept differential persistence – mere survival – as a legitimate form or mechanism of natural selection. Maybe it’s not possible for radioactive atoms to acquire stabilising mutations. And maybe it’s highly unlikely that whole biospheres, with multiple independent evolutionary lineages, could do so. But the latter is possible, and in biology we should be comfortable with this kind of reasoning. Let’s transpose this argument to Gaia. Gaia (the biological part of it, at least) is nothing more than the single clade of all living things descended from life’s last universal common ancestor (LUCA): we are all one big family of Joneses. [Is the Earth an organism? The Gaia hypothesis states that our biosphere is evolving. Once sceptical, some prominent biologists are beginning to agree
"Modern society" is a product of the forbidden fruit--agriculture. Cain, the farmer, slew Abel, the hunter-gatherer and, yes, humans' collective knowledge is pushing us home to the stars whose dust make us who we are. Reproduction is the reason, food is the fuel. Humans are merely Terran tools to go forth and find more...unless or until we kill it before it kills us for taking more than our share

 

12/20/20

SDFU joins Ganje in opposing the merger of Ag, DENR


Democratic former US Senator Tom Daschle gave the keynote address at the South Dakota Farmers Union's virtual December 9th convention where SDFU President Doug Sombke learned members overwhelmingly oppose merging the SD Departments of Agriculture and Environment and Natural Resources. 

David Ganje is an attorney based in Rapid City who practices environmental law. 
The Department of Agriculture is principally chartered to deal with supporting agriculture and economic development related to ag. It is agriculture’s advocate on behalf of the state. The Department of the Environment and Natural Resources is a regulatory agency meant to oversee, for good or ill, activity that affects the air, water, and earth in the state. The DENR is an agency whose effectiveness political leaders would prefer to dilute. The DENR is the real target in this merger. [GANJE: Combining departments is a mistake]

Republican leadership is an oxymoron. Like most, if not all, Republicans holding office today Republican Governor Kristi Noem is milking the prosperity gospel for every dime using every trick in the Koch playbook. Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem (KLAN) is a one woman death panel and the Koch soaked South Dakota Legislature will ignore all pleas to keep the departments separate. Backed by the Council for National Policy and the Kochs Noem is using her office to raise money for the Trump Organization.

President-elect Joe Biden wants to see trade relations loosened and improved between the U.S. and Cuba. South Dakota Farmers Union President Doug Sombke is pleased to see the new Administration focusing on that island nation so close to the U.S. as a possible trading partner. [WNAX]
Country of Origin Labeling was repealed in 2015 to shield American commodities from scrutiny because every ag product, meats both wild and domestic not grown organically in the United States and South Dakota is contaminated with atrazine, neonicotinoids, glyphosate, dicamba, DDT, mercury, lead, cadmium, PFAS, E. coli, Shigella, Legionella plus other toxins and pathogens

The grassland fire danger index will be in the extreme category Sunday for parts of Trumpistan because South Dakota is a perpetual welfare state, a permanent disaster area and a chemical toilet by design and also because DENR has already become the Department of Ecocide and Natural Ruination

12/19/20

Patriot Party could shake up politics in GOP-heavy South Dakota

South Dakota's ideological purists are incensed with Republicans John Thune and Dusty Johnson for caving on Herr Trump. 

Former Chairwoman at the Lincoln County GOP Betty Otten is calling for their heads so is Rapid City's Bill Napoli. Republican former legislator Betty Olson wants Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to be driven into exile after he acknowledged Joe Biden's win. Arch-conservative Lora Hubbel from Sioux Falls calls Thune an "embarrassment." Gordon Howie is saying Thune and Reich Mike Rounds are "out of touch with South Dakota” and should be replaced.

Saudi-funded SDGOP chair Dan Lederman paid Howie a five figure sum to abandon his third party insurgency. Now the chasm separating the establishment Republicans from the principled conservatives in South Dakota is widening even more. Ideological purists loathe Lederman because sleaze and crime built his business. He spent $50,000 to buy a seat in South Dakota's corrupt legislature flaunting the same class by throwing it away resigning after the 2015 session then forcing his way into the chair of South Dakota's earth hater party and challenging Trump darling Governor Kristi Noem to become a Republican elector. 

Recall longtime Republican stalwarts like Phil Jensen, Charlie Hoffman, Betty Olson, Florence Thompson and at least fifteen others threw up their hands in desperation with first term Representative Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson and backed Elizabeth Marty May in the Republican US House primary. 


At his blog, Dakota War College obese Brookings blogger Pat Powers routinely smears principled conservatives who don't bend the knee to the South Dakota Republican Party establishment. Pernicious Pug Powers, who makes a stopped clock look like a well-greased machine, salts his blog comment section with a seemingly infinite variety of aliases that threaten or jeer his political enemies. That SDGOP condones, encourages and even pays Pat Powers to threaten, malign, bully and libel women while their party standard-bearers preach the protection of women is a measure of hypocrisy that strains human gauges. He has long been banned from this and other South Dakota related sites because of a constant stream of bigotry, misogyny and other hate speech. 

Potential primary or third party candidate, Shad Olson has had enough. 
All roads lead to a new American civil war as patriots and communists wait on pins and needles to see whose turn it is to lead the charge of the light brigade. Intimidation, threats of violence and promised reprisals are the language of the militant left as illustrated perfectly by Michigan Representative, C.A. Johnson who issued an open threat to “Trumpers” and then doubled down on it in her latest unhinged violent rant. [Olson, Faceberg post]
There is a mass exodus underway from the SDGOP and there isn’t a single story about it in the South Dakota media. Principled conservatives are sick of being lied to by Zionist mob boss Lederman and are already fighting back against the South Dakota Republican Party insiders in the state. South Dakota's most ardent citizens for liberty are recruiting conservatives to run not just for the legislature but for statewide offices, too. 

The "Patriot Movement" wants to leave the GOP and form its own party. 
In the parallel universe where Trump won, the passage of time and the accumulation of facts indicating the opposite result have done nothing to change his most steadfast supporters’ minds. Instead, many seem even more resolute, and their rhetoric is growing more extreme. “I think we're gonna have to have a war; we're gonna have to secede,” said Crystal R., 40, who declined to give her last name. “I'm not prepared to die for this country,” she added, “but I would sure kill somebody if they were gonna try to take the freedom of my God away.” It's not clear if Republicans who have deferred to Trump's desperate effort realize that what has been set in motion won't be easily stopped. [The Next Tea Party Is Lurking Inside Trump’s Election Results Denial]
Arizona is a hotbed of Trumpist fervor
Also in May, future Patriot Party of Arizona chairman Daniels issued a public warning to Arizona state lawmakers, vowing that Arizonans for Liberty would support opposition candidates in future races against “any incumbent that does not immediately take action to end these Tyrannical Executive Actions by Governor Ducey.” At the December 1 Patriot Party meeting, strategies in “psychological warfare” were discussed. The value of “fear” was an underlying theme of the conversation. [The Far-Right Arizona Revolution Screaming Up Out of Trump's Presidential Carcass]
Pierre is broken and the only way to fix it is to have Republicans lose several races to Democrats. 

12/17/20

Biden, Buttigieg expected to boost Amtrak


Combined with some $5 million it has set aside, $1 million from the state and a $5.6 million federal grant Amtrak is conducting track and infrastructure improvements for the Southwest Chief between Trinidad, Colorado, Lamy and Los Cerrillos, New Mexico. 
The choice of former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg as secretary of the Department of Transportation offers big possibilities for New Mexico. We know President-elect Joe Biden wants a big infrastructure bill — some $1.3 trillion to revamp transportation, rebuild highways, refurbish bridges and otherwise upgrade structures across the country. And that’s not just in high-population areas where train commutes are part of life, but in rural America, where the sound of the train whistle echoes through the town. [A train-loving president is good for New Mexico]
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and the Rio Metro Transportation District, which operates the New Mexico Rail Runner, are laying new ties along a 31-mile stretch of track south of Raton Pass, replacing some 12 miles of bolted rail with welded rail between Lamy and Los Cerrillos and completing installation of a Positive Train Control system

Earlier this year Game of Thrones author George RR Martin and two other New Mexico celebrities purchased the Santa Fe Southern Railroad and the depot in Lamy. The State of New Mexico bought the track bed that Amtrak's Southwest Chief uses from just north of Lamy to Behlen south of Albuquerque from the BNSF Railway when the Rail Runner was built. BNSF owns virtually all the rail rights of way in New Mexico. SFSR was featured in the Breaking Bad episode, Dead Freight
“Our past and current investments, from Kansas through Colorado and New Mexico, demonstrate our commitment to the Chief route and also preserve this segment for eventual inclusion in a north-south connection along the Front Range between Denver and Albuquerque, via Colorado Springs and Pueblo,” Bill Flynn, Amtrak’s president and CEO, said in a news release. [Albuquerque Journal
Amtrak has long expressed interest in establishing passenger rail service along the Front Range but that "project is a long way away from reality" and could cost some $2 billion.

As rail coal traffic dies Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and the Big Sky Rail Authority have moved ten counties to restore the North Coast Hiawatha line through southern Montana after Amtrak ended service in 1979. A Front Range route would connect the Southwest Chief to the Empire Builder at Shelby, Montana through Denver, Cheyenne and Gillette, Wyoming and intersect with the North Coast Hiawatha line at Laurel, Montana.

ip photo is of the Lamy depot.

12/16/20

Instead of building a water pipeline Rapid City could use rail, harvest rainwater, snowmelt

A water pipeline from the Missouri River to Rapid City would cost almost $2 billion and rip up a few hundred miles of stolen treaty ground. 

For every 1” of rain and 1,000 square feet of surface (roof, driveway, etc), about 620 gallons of fresh water are generated. The graphic on the right is of snow water equivalent.
West Dakota board member Nathan Gjovik compared the Black Hills pipeline idea to the Lewis and Clark pipeline on the east side of the state. That project is 30 years old and still not finished. The board also paid $37,341 for a prior study by South Dakota Mines professors and students. That study predicted the Rapid City area could suffer water shortages in the future, due to extended drought or population growth. The city currently gets water from Rapid Creek, Pactola Reservoir and wells. [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio
A contributor at the Aberdeen American News Facebook Faceberg page wants to melt snow, put the water in a pipeline and pump it to the Southwest. 
We could be cashing in on all the snow we get here. Let's build snow melting plants and get water pipelines to California or Nevada where the drought is severe. We have oil pipeline from Alaska to Texas. We could do the same with snow: WATER THE NEW OIL..But Kristi Noem will think I am on Meth to suggest that idea. [Baka Bagoubadi]
Good idea but it’s not really new. In 2011 an interested party wondered whether compressing snow into ice and loading it onto flat rail cars might work. The capacity of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River is 27,000,000 acre-feet.
If East River would either carve ice out of the James and Big Sioux Rivers, load it onto side-dump railcars or pump flood water into tank cars, or both, then dump it into the Colorado's closest tributary, the Green River in Wyoming, South Dakota could sell that water to Las Vegas and Phoenix. [interested party]
The Lewis and Clark water system enables ecocide. Instead of empowering communities to harvest snowmelt and rainwater rural communities continue to be dependent on politicians who exploit need.
Diesel fired portable snowmelters are the most popular models since you can move them from site to site as self-contained units. Current portable snowmelters come with a debris catch area with baskets for manual removal of debris - even during operation! The SND5400 is designed for the airport market and other large-scale users. It economically melts 180 tons of snow per hour (based on latent heat of ice). [Snow Dragon Snowmelters]
That’s about 5421 gallons per hour and a rail tanker holds about 30,000 gallons. An acre-foot of water is almost 326,000 gallons. And there already is a railway connecting the Oahe Dam, Big Sioux and James Rivers to Rapid City. Another railroad connects Lake Frances Case to Rapid City.

As Spring ice floes bash moorings and flooding causes the scouring of fill from river bottoms the disasters soon to befall the Missouri basin should be a stern warning to erstwhile pipeline operators: it's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

12/15/20

“Care, Cannabis, Codetermination” the best way to rebuild the SDDP

The South Dakota Democratic Party should look at a DFL-type strategy, gang. 

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. Platforms are crafted at the convention by delegates who are frustrated that candidates like Dan Ahlers, Billie Sutton, Joe Lowe and Tim Bjorkman completely ignored what the party stands for. Billie Sutton was a fart in a haboob who bought Susan Wismer's mailing list and bombed my inbox begging for money. 

And dry drunk atheist Cory Heidelberger is using his newest blog, Dakota Free Press as a personal cash cow and just hasn't delivered for Democratic voters. During the 2016 presidential primary Senator Bernie Sanders won West River. 
And one could combine such a policy with Medicaid expansion, higher subsidies for the ACA marketplaces, and a child allowance under the rubric of “care” and run on “Care, Cannabis, Codetermination.” Or a “Public Option, Pot, Paid Family Leave.” Whatever. Moderates and progressives can get together around a table, look at a list of popular policies and a thesaurus and let a thousand pitches bloom. [Democrats Have a Problem. ‘Workers, Wages, Weed’ May Be the Answer.]
While the author of interested party 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 jammed a fork up his nose. 

Combined with a split in the SDGOP South Dakota Democrats could become competitive again. Not running a Democrat against Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson was stupid. Hold him accountable in 2022. The Democratic Parties in Montana and New Mexico are already formulating tactics and raising money so Democrats can recover and run strong campaigns. 

If the Neanderthal South Dakota Legislature had any integrity or ethics (they don’t) they would empower the tribal nations trapped in South Dakota to be the sole cannabis industry producers in the state (they won't). 

Indian casinos are small banks. It's time for my home state to enter cannabis compacts with tribal nations.

12/12/20

Nemec signals civil lawsuit in death of Joe Boever

Republican South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg is an incel and serial lawbreaker having been cited eight times for breaking speed limit laws in five South Dakota counties and in two Iowa counties. In September he struck and killed Joe Boever just west of Highmore then with help from the Hyde Country sheriff who should have arrested Ravnsborg the next day for potential felonies he left the scene. 

This scandal should trigger a long awaited cascade of revelations about the culture of corruption surrounding the Republican establishment in South Dakota but so far it looks like the fix is in. The weapon Ravnsborg used to kill Boever is a 2011 Ford Taurus apparently equipped with an event data recorder (EDR). The car was damaged so badly it had to be towed. 
Sunday, December 12, 2020 will mark the 3 month anniversary of SD Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg running over and killing my cousin Joe Boever as he walked after dark on the shoulder of US14, facing traffic, carrying a flashlight. Maybe we will learn if there will be a charging decision sometime before the end of the year. But the Electoral College has to meet first since Jason Ravnsborg is a Trump presidential elector, the Electoral College will meet and vote on 12-14-2020, until then expect this to be swept under the rug, but time is running out. Ravnsborg might take some sort of reduced plea deal or even avoid charges all together but avoiding a civil suit will be more difficult. [Nick Nemec, Faceberg post
Nemec is a Democratic former legislator and party officer.
Life is cheap in South Dakota, especially if the killer is a high ranking Republican elected official. 12-12-2020 will mark 3 months since Joe Boever was run over and dragged along for 200 feet under Ravnsborg’s car, his body being ground to pieces by the pavement. I have visited the site many times and measured and photographed the blood skid marks made as my cousin Joe’s body was ground up beneath Ravnsborg’s car. [Nemec, blog comment]

Brady Folkens of Brookings died in state custody after a botched diagnosis at the former State Treatment and Rehabilitation (STAR) Academy in a county named for a war criminal on December 21, 2013 then the State of South Dakota’s Office of Risk Management helped to bury the evidence of negligent homicide. After a public outcry the death camp was shuttered and the sprawling property put up for auction. 

No doubt Ravnsborg is enjoying similar cover

More on the investigation from the Rapid City Journal report is linked here.

12/11/20

Weakened by a demoralized federal workforce BHNF now hiring for Biden Administration

One startup that might be emboldened by a Biden presidency is Black Gold Biochar LLC, a proposed project partner and interested party in the shuttered STAR Academy property. 
Biochar is a charcoal-like substance made by burning organic material from agricultural and forestry wastes (also called biomass) in a process called pyrolysis. Although it looks a lot like common charcoal, biochar is produced using a process that reduces contamination and safely stores carbon. [War Criminal County Chronicle]
Biochar got a boost during the Obama Administration so more applications for it are still being advanced by the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station and according to a 2013 Argonne National Lab study the Black Hills National Forest is highly suitable for that type of harvest.  
When President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month, one of his first challenges will be the nearly 2 million-member federal workforce. Morale is down in many agencies after four years of attacks on the civil service from President Trump. Max Stier, president of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, says the actions and rhetoric by the president have taken their toll on the federal workforce. "There's no question that the Trump administration has diminished the value of civil service or public service for many agencies," Stier tells NPR. "And you can see that just in the morale scores of those agencies themselves." [NPR, Morale Down, Federal Workforce Gets Ready For A New Boss]
Slow-walking prescribed burns, the persistence of cheatgrass on the Black Hills National Forest and on other federal and state ground are just more examples of the intense lobbying efforts of Neiman Enterprises and from welfare ranchers addicted to cheap grazing fees. Instead of allowing native aspen to be restored, stands of doghair ponderosa pine (ladder fuels that feed wildfires) cover much of the BHNF. Spurred by the Neimans the Forest Service is still planting pine in the Jasper Fire area. 

Add the very high number of private inholdings within the Black Hills National Forest that make the wildland urban interface (WUI) very large to one of the highest road densities in the entire national forest system and Region 2 to lots of logging, hardrock mining and pesticides like Carbaryl then understand why over a hundred species in South Dakota alone and a million worldwide are at risk to Kristi Noem, Dusty Johnson, Jim Neiman and the former Republican Party now the American Nazi Party. 

12/10/20

Medicare for all is an insult to Indian Country

Hey Democrats. Most Native Americans don’t want Medicare for All; they want a fully funded Indian Health Service and military personnel want better TRICARE coverage. 
The U.S. Indian Health Service under the direction of Michael Weahkee entered into a Public Law (P.L.) 93-638 contract for the management of the Sioux San IHS facility in Rapid City, South Dakota, with a non-profit corporation. The Sioux San serves 28,000 patients from 305 tribes. All of these patients live in Rapid City or the nearby area. The contract was and is a clear violation of P.L. 93-638, a federal law, as a federal agency can only enter into such a contract with a Tribe or a Tribal Organization. The non-profit corporation on the contract is NOT a Tribe or a Tribal Organization and is under the jurisdiction of the state of South Dakota which is known for its anti-American Indian stance. Little wonder as all of western South Dakota is STILL Indian land under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. Health care is also a right under that Treaty. [Charmaine White Face: Health care remains our treaty right]
Only 30% of Native Americans know the Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds for some procedures at Indian Health Service clinics so I like the idea of rolling the funding for TRICARE, Medicare, the IHS and the VA together then offering Medicaid for all by increasing the estate tax, raising taxes on tobacco and adopting a carbon tax. Reproductive freedoms should be included with conditions just like the military does under TRICARE. 
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the most visible federal expert on the coronavirus, will speak to leaders from the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe on December 14. The meeting takes place virtually via Zoom, said Kevin Killer, the recently inaugurated Oglala Sioux president. [Tribes host Dr. Fauci as COVID-19 crisis continues in Indian Country]
Make no mistake: Donald Trump and Republicans like Kristi Noem are targeting Indian Country for annihilation. His Tulsa trip and the Sturgis Rally in occupied South Dakota are spreading the virus all over Native America. It’s called ethnic cleansing even genocide elsewhere but in Trump’s America it’s called MAGA.

12/9/20

Judges are boycotting courthouse in South Dakota town named for a war criminal

A state park, a peak, a county and a town in the Black Hills, a county and national forest in Montana are named after a murderer. During the Battle of Greasy Grass on the banks of the Little Bighorn River in Montana George Custer attacked the encampment where the elderly, women and children were hidden and during the Washita Massacre he held a similar contingent as hostages and human shields. 

George Custer, Phil Sheridan, George Crook and William Harney all committed crimes against humanity yet their names still besmirch numerous government and geographical features. Crook City near Whitewood and Crook's Tower, one of the 7000 footers in the Black Hills, were named after a war criminal. 

Revisionist history turned the Wounded Knee Massacre into a battle now Senator Mike Rounds (NAZI-SD) said he won't vote for the Senate companion to the Remove the Stain Act that would rescind Medals of Honor for twenty war criminals responsible for the slaughter of children, women and men in 1890 at Wounded Knee in occupied South Dakota. But he and the South Dakota Republican Party are hardly the only racists in the colonized American West. 

In 1973 the below-mentioned courthouse was the scene of a confrontation between Native American activists that not only led to the occupation of Wounded Knee on the Oglala Lakota Nation it led to the creation of a white nationalist militia in the county named for a war criminal.
The Custer County Commission declined to make changes to its resolution to allow the public to carry a firearm into the courthouse. In an update, the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court has deemed the courthouse "unsuitable and insufficient due to safety concerns" due to the resolution. As of now, Seventh Circuit judges are refusing to come to Custer for court, and are conducting court either through audiovisual means or requiring people come to the Pennington County Courthouse in Rapid City. 

12/8/20

Paper: success of tribal cannabis dependent on tax equity

Working in conjunction with the University of Idaho College of Law, Professor Mark Cowan, J.D. is Director of the Accountancy-Taxation Program at Boise State University where his research interests include the taxation of nonprofits and tax issues in Indian Country. His paper, “Taxing Cannabis on the Reservation,” is forthcoming in the American Business Law Journal.
The current law surrounding the cannabis industry is uncertain. Tax is just one part of this complicated puzzle. Until the federal government acts, the states, the tribes, and the industry must bear the burden of these complexities with as much grace as possible. Since we are at an early stage, now is an opportune time for the three sovereigns to coordinate their efforts and level the tax playing field between on and off reservation sellers. States or tribes should not try to exploit an often ambiguous, unfair, and multi-sovereign tax structure to their advantage. Instead, they should work with their fellow sovereigns to develop a fair and certain tax framework that will allow the cannabis industry to grow. The best strategy for the cannabis industry, including the tribal cannabis industry, is to support these efforts. It is the industry’s stability and growth, fostered by a clear and fair tax system, which—through increased economic development and additional tax revenue—will benefit all the governments involved over the long term. Tax disparities—like cannabis itself—might temporarily alleviate some symptoms, but they won’t cure the underlying ailments. [Cowan, conclusion, American Business Law Journal Volume 57, Issue 4, [xx-xx], Winter 2020]
The US House just passed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019 or MORE Act which removes cannabis from Schedule 1 and legalization remains in the hands of the states. The bill's lead sponsor in the Senate is Vice President-elect Sen. Kamala Harris. It's unlikely the bill will pass in the current Senate but after the Georgia runoffs in January Vice President Harris will vote to break a 50-50 tie.

Indian casinos are small banks. It's time for more states to enter cannabis compacts with tribal nations. 

12/7/20

Rapid City legislator signals railroads could move more hazardous materials through South Dakota

A rail switch on the former Milwaukee Road at Stamford in occupied South Dakota

Watco Companies owns some 43 shortline railroads in North America and Australia but in Chicago the firm has been accused of environmental racism after the US Environmental Protection Agency found high levels of manganese, lead and arsenic in the soil on the city's Southeast Side. Chicago is a notorious railroad bottleneck where spills of toxic materials are myriad. Despite those revelations the State of South Dakota intends to sell the former Milwaukee Road right of way from Mitchell to Rapid City to Watco instead of deeding it back to the tribal nations signatory to the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868. 

The move comes after catastrophic plunges in commodities prices, numerous wrecks and water breaches on track owned by Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad (RCPE), a subsidiary of Genesee and Wyoming operating just north of the former Milwaukee line on a nearly parallel trackbed. The Trump Organization's Department of Transportation headed by the wife of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has just awarded more than $5.6 million in grants to upgrade infrastructure and enhance rail safety in the red moocher state that is South Dakota including $2.24 million for the RCPE mainline.
Since the 1980s, the Surface Transportation Board's regulation of the rail sector has been focused on ensuring competition, fair rates, efficiency, and suitable financial performance. The proposal would compel the STB to reconsider its use of a financial measurement called revenue adequacy. The new construct would consider revenue adequacy metrics as the upper limit on a railroad's financial performance and would do so on a year-by-year retroactive accounting basis. The proposal before the STB would make it much harder for railroads to receive the private [investment] they need to succeed for shippers by artificially disincentivizing strong financial performance capital. Investors consider a host of options and make choices driven by an expectation of strong performance and financial returns. [State Senator Jessica Castleberry (R-35)]
South Dakota's rail board is made up of two Democrats and five members of the Republican American Nazi Party. A majority has voted to put all of the state-owned track up for sale and the Mitchell Rapid City Regional Railroad Authority is expected to survive if the Watco deal goes through. Based in Pittsburg, Kansas Watco's biggest customer is Koch Industries, a major campaign contributor to Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.
State officials said that the authority should remain, if only to help serve as an economic development arm for any upgrades Watco wants to do that might require funding through the state. In order for the Watco sale to be finalized, the MRC Authority would have to hold a special meeting to sign off, but the primary power rests with the State Rail Board and Gov. Kristi Noem, who also would be required to approve of the sale. [Mitchell Daily Republic]
TransCanada, now TC Energy, spilled some 5000 barrels of toxic diluted bitumen on northeastern South Dakota in 2017. South Dakota has no contingency money for cleaning up such disasters and because it is an international project ecoterrorist TC Energy doesn’t pay into a reclamation fund.
Early Wednesday morning, September 16, a few Martin city residents got to see to a phenomenal sight as Perkins Specialized Transportation Contracting hauled this unidentified object along Highway 18 heading west. PST is a long-distance superload transport service based out of Northfield, MN. The company is approved as a Tier 1 National MCEP (Motor Carrier Evaluation Program) carrier for the U.S. Department of Energy to haul nuclear waste and low-level radioactive components from decommissioning sites throughout the USA. [Bennett County Booster]
Rail cars carrying diluted bitumen could be loaded in Philip then be transported through Pierre, Huron and maybe Brookings then south through Sioux Falls to the depot at Cushing, Oklahoma. But, running a bomb train through white towns won't fly when you can build a leaky pipeline through stolen treaty ground so it's hard to imagine these projects going through cemeteries where people of European descent are buried.

12/6/20

Udall best for Interior, Bullock for Agriculture


It’s been 40 years since attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzalez contends that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations.
The Editorial Board of Native Sun News Today and its Publisher Tim Giago sent the Bill Bradley Bill and the history of the illegal taking of the Black Hills to Deb Haaland, (D-NM) Congresswoman from New Mexico, a Native American woman, and we are encouraging her to study them and perhaps meet with some of the leaders of the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation, in order to discuss the idea of putting together another Bill in the fashion of the Bradley Bill, in an effort to get some of the stolen lands of the Black Hills returned to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people. [Native Sun News Today]
Representative Deb Haaland is a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo but few Democrats in New Mexico want to gamble with a special election even as she is being vetted for Secretary of the Interior.
Sen. Tom Udall, although he is about to step down from his Senate seat, has expressed interest in becoming Interior secretary. Among other things, Sen. Udall is the son of highly regarded Interior Secretary Stewart Udall who served in the position from 1961 to 1969. Why are so many New Mexicans under consideration? I suspect it has something to do with Kevin Washburn who is leading President-elect Biden’s transition team for the Department of the Interior. Washburn grew up in Oklahoma and is a member of the Chickasaw Nation, a federally recognized tribe. He eventually graduated from Yale Law School and served as dean of the University of New Mexico Law School from 2009-2012. He left that job to serve as assistant secretary for Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior from 2012 to 2016. [Grand Junction (Colorado) Daily Sentinel
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has been named Chair of the Democratic Governors Association after turning down a post as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden Administration — an office former US Senator Tom Daschle from South Dakota turned down in the Obama Administration.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who lost his Senate bid after leaving the White House race, is part of discussions for a Biden administration role, perhaps as secretary of agriculture. [Helena Independent Record
Hey, President Biden, settle the Black Hills Claim. Move the US Forest Service into the Department of the Interior, dissolve the Black Hills National Forest and make it a national monument co-managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the tribal nations signatory to the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. 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. 

Rewild it and rename it Paha Sapa National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge in Montana along the Missouri River to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Pecos River through Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.

Photo: the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the background from Cañon Blanco, a tributary of the Pecos in Nuevo Mexico del Norte.

12/4/20

Hypocrisy, thy name is Kristi Noem

Forest Service and Wildlife Service at odds over Wyoming prairie dogs


Restoring and rewilding American ecosystems are parts of the Green New Deal. 

Wildlife corridors over public and private land to the Fork Peck, Crow, and Northern Cheyenne nations then into Wyoming's Thunder Basin National Grassland and beyond to North and South Dakota would help create the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge. 

But, the Trump Organization's Forest Service wants to poison prairie dogs for Republican welfare ranchers and the US Fish and Wildlife Service wants to reintroduce endangered black-footed ferrets into the Thunder Basin. 
In a press release, conservation group Western Watersheds Project said they are considering possible litigation over the decision. [Forest Service Releases Final Decision On Thunder Basin National Grassland

Prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets are critical to sustain the reintroduction of bison in sage grouse habitat as the West is rewilded. 

The Anthropocene is now and time to rewild some of the American West eventually becoming part of a Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell in Montana along the Missouri River through North Dakota to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Canadian River through eastern Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, western Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. 

Clear the second growth conifers and restore aspen habitat, prescribe burns, begin extensive Pleistocene rewilding using bison and cervids, empower tribes, lease private land for wildlife corridors, turn feral horses from Bureau of Land Management pastures onto other public land to control exotic grasses and buy out the welfare ranchers Tony Dean warned us about.

12/1/20

Extreme white wing of the SDGOP wants Republican heads to roll

Recall Saudi-funded SDGOP chair Dan Lederman paid Gordon Howie a five figure sum to abandon his third party insurgency. Now the chasm separating the establishment Republicans from the principled conservatives in South Dakota is widening even more. Longtime Republican stalwarts like Phil Jensen, Charlie Hoffman, Betty Olson, Florence Thompson and at least fifteen others threw up their hands in desperation with first term Representative Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson and backed Elizabeth Marty May in the Republican US House primary. 
I have long been disappointed with the lack of leadership demonstrated by our Senators on a number of issues. We haven’t seen either of them take the lead to advance the defense of unborn children, deal with the addiction issue in South Dakota or seriously address the plight of poverty and abuse on SD Reservations. Don’t get me started. I am not alone in believing BOTH South Dakota Senators should be replaced. [Howie
Mitchell's white christian nationalist and erstwhile Republican blogger Steve Sibson has emerged from his burrow to forecast civil war. Sibson is a 'special' case, if you get my drift. A perennial loser, Sibson suffers from paranoid delusions and acute depression. Sibson's Religionist Right is resisting parts of Common Core because the standards stress human influence on climate change, genocide of Indigenous by colonizers, gender equality and social justice but Sibson just wants control. 
Again, in order to put an end to the takeover of America by enemies both foreign and domestic, it is time for President Trump to use the Insurrection Act and to suspend the January Georgia Senate run off & the December meeting of the Electoral College so military tribunals can first be set up to properly investigate & resolve the cyber warfare that occurred during the 2020 election issue. Time to as Senators Rounds and Thune, along with Congresman Dusty Johnson to get off the pot and join in the fight to save America. [Sibson]
Ideological purists loathe Lederman because sleaze and crime built his business. He spent $50,000 to buy a seat in South Dakota's corrupt legislature flaunting the same class by throwing it away resigning after the 2015 session then forcing his way into the chair of South Dakota's earth hater party. That he would steer criminals like Mohammed bin Salman into South Dakota is completely within his crooked wheelhouse. 

The "Patriot Movement" wants to leave the GOP and form their own party.

My prediction? Moderate John Thune won’t seek re-election in 2022 and a radicalized Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem (KLAN) will become South Dakota's junior US Senator.

Incoming SDGOP legislator signals IM26 might survive

Despite the conventional wisdom that Initiated Measure 26 which legalizes cannabis for some patients will simply be repealed by South Dakota's Koch soaked legislature, a newly elected Lawrence County lawgiver is signaling it might survive. Mary Fitzgerald is married to LawCo State's Attorney John Fitzgerald and is a longtime SDGOP boss.   
Fitzgerald told KELOLAND News her proposals would apply to medicinal marijuana and, if the court doesn’t rule in favor of the lawsuit, recreational marijuana as well. [Bob Mercer]
As expected the Pennington County Sheriff and Superintendent of the South Dakota Highway Patrol have asked a Hughes County judge to toss Amendment A since it violates the state's constitution by addressing multiple topics. 

Incel Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg is required by law to defend Amendment A against legal challenges so despite killing Joe Boever with his car Governor Kristi Noem needs him because he will guarantee a shitty defense. Ravnsborg is an elector so it's possible he will step down after the Electoral College meets on December 14.

If either or both of the successful cannabis ballot initiatives stay afloat and the Neanderthal legislature had any integrity or ethics (they don’t) they would empower the tribal nations trapped in South Dakota to be the sole industry producers in the state (they won't). 

The US House is poised to pass the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019 or MORE Act which removes cannabis from Schedule 1 and legalization remains in the hands of the states. The bill's lead sponsor in the Senate is Vice President-elect Sen. Kamala Harris. It's unlikely the bill will pass in the current Senate but after the Georgia runoffs in January Vice President Harris will vote to break a 50-50 tie. 

But Republican leadership is an oxymoron and anyone who believes South Dakota's At-large Representative Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson will vote for it despite overwhelming support for legal cannabis in my home state is delusional.

As President Joe Biden is taking the Oath in January Trump Organization-appointed US Attorney for the District of South Dakota Ron Parsons will be leaving office freeing tribal governments to better exercise their sovereignty so Tatewin Means should replace him.