BHSU adds photovoltaic output

Utilities are not your friends. The cost of subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting and maintaining just one wind farm turbine bat and bird killer would take a thousand subscribers to energy self-reliance. Microgrid technologies are destined to enhance tribal sovereignty, free communities from electric monopolies and net-metering only gives control back to utilities enabled by moral hazard.

Leaving the grid has never been easier so anyone who can afford to it should do it now and with Trump still in the White House it's never been more urgent.

Wildfire danger worst in cattle country

As the Trump Organization prepares to end protection for endangered species and public lands because ranchers insist grazing cattle reduce wildfire risks the Bureau of Land Management is holding livestock production scoping sessions in February. After groupthinks in industry-friendly Miles City, Montana; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Elko, Nevada and Casper, Wyoming BLM will end public comment February 28 then rule on its findings March 6.

But if domestic livestock grazing really reduces fuel loads why is extreme fire danger still a thing in ranch country?

“Changes to the regulations are a big deal for the West,” said Greta Anderson, deputy director for the Western Watersheds Project, which launched a court challenge to George W. Bush administration efforts to relax compliance requirements for grazing regulation. Anderson said she worries the language of the BLM’s announcement suggests the agency may reduce standards for land health. The announcement says BLM will “explore ways to use livestock grazing to reduce wildfire risk and improve rangeland health,” but Anderson said there is little scientific evidence that shows grazing can accomplish that. [Bloomberg Environment]

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

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 Pecos 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.

The grassland fire danger index will reach the very high and extreme categories today and tomorrow for parts of the chemical toilet and permanent disaster area that is South Dakota.

A Red Flag Warning is in effect Saturday afternoon and evening for gusty west to SW winds and RH as low as 15 percent. #mtwx pic.twitter.com/4ToTp0ZGg7

— NWS Glasgow (@NWSGlasgow) January 31, 2020

High fire danger over the southeast Colorado plains this afternoon. #cowx pic.twitter.com/zMM4aELjdU

— NWS Pueblo (@NWSPueblo) January 31, 2020

South Dakota a laughing stock — again

Boycotting South Dakota is the only language the Republican Party seems to understand.

Ok hilarious bipartisan moment: everyone on this panel can agree nobody wants to live in South Dakota! 😂 #mnlso pic.twitter.com/w09CTtNwZm

— Amelia Hennes (@amelia_maude) January 29, 2020

Climate specialist: Corn Belt will be Dust Bowl by 2025

My dad used to recount a favorite story about a day in 1935, when, in the worst of the Dirty Thirties, he and his brother Kenneth walked across a completely dry basin that had formerly held Lake Benton.

Yes, tornadoes, flooding, habitat destruction, wildfire potential, eight month winters now the weather outlook is for the Dust Bowl to return to the chemical toilet, perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area that is South Dakota.

Ellwyn Taylor spoke Tuesday on “Climate Trends for 2020 and Beyond” at the Southeast Research Farm’s annual meeting in Yankton. South Dakota State University’s Cooperative Extension Service operates the farm southwest of Beresford. The United States is moving toward a dust bowl similar to the Depression with its “Dirty ‘30s,” Taylor predicted. “We’ve seen dust bowls in 1847 and 1936, which would put the next Dust Bowl at 2025.” One of the significant areas of change in corn production has come in South Dakota. “Look at the extent now in South Dakota, the acres that are in corn production as compared to what it was at the end of 1950,” he said. [Yankton Press & Dakotan]

The grassland fire danger will reach the high category Thursday for parts of western South Dakota.

Ash and soot from wildfires in the Siberian taiga are accelerating the loss of Arctic sea ice driving more frequent and deeper polar vortexes. Very soon the Yellowstone supervolcano will finally put South Dakota out of its misery.

Late primary states mostly irrelevant

Tuesday, June 2 is mostly a dead letter day in South Dakota during the Democratic presidential primary where voters usually just go through the motions after the nominee has already been selected.

Many can't wait for the candidates and journalists to pack up and move on to the next states on the primary schedule. Not Melody Beaulieu. President of College Democrats at USD, Beaulieu will be among more than a dozen student volunteers from the university in Sioux City on caucus night, doing what they can to help their Iowa neighbors conduct their electoral business. Aaron Vlasman, a sophomore from Watertown, South Dakota, will be one of the volunteers wishing he, too, could be standing in support of one of the candidates rather than watching others do so. [Onlookers from neighboring states long for Iowans' ability to caucus]

Just the thought of a daughter living in Sioux City Fucking Iowa is nightmare-inducing.

Hey @BetoORourke thank you for meeting with us today and I’ll see you in 2020 👀 pic.twitter.com/VPjxgGhS2j

— Long Legged (@claire_kurtz) April 5, 2019

DES MOINES, Iowa — Sen. @amyklobuchar, D-Minn., is in Washington, D.C. for the Senate impeachment trial, but her face will be on Iowa airwaves by way of two final TV ads launching Tuesday — just six days before Iowans go to their caucus sites. #IACaucus https://t.co/4IZc35NKio

— C.J. Warnke (@cjwarnke) January 28, 2020

Rankin: raping Native cultural sites good for business

Gold prices are heading higher as coronavirus fears drive panic buying so South Dakota School of Mines President Jim Rankin believes there's no time like the present to rape Native cultural sites in He Sapa, The Heart of Everything That Is.

We are asking for another investment in the future of science, engineering and technology in the Black Hills and the state. The Mineral Industries building on the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology campus is in desperate need of replacement. Much of the education and research happening in this facility supports the technology needed to advance the mining industry in South Dakota for the 21st century. Rapid City has the potential to become the mining technology hub for South Dakota and the nation. The university is not advocating for a new tax. Mining businesses support a portion of their existing tax dollars going toward this investment. They recognize that this investment not only provides them with a highly skilled workforce, but the research conducted at South Dakota Mines adds to their bottom lines. We hope South Dakota citizens will see the wisdom of investing today for the future of earth sciences and technology. [Rankin, LTE, Sioux Falls Argus Leader]

While exploratory holes normally take millions of gallons of water they tend to have minimal impact on the Forest itself but the drillers usually sell their data to bigger miners like Barrick, a Canadian earth raper. Acknowledging there will always be acid mine drainage in the Black Hills the Republican-owned South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment is dealing with still another devil who wants to strip the Gilt Edge Superfund site as the US Environmental Protection Agency becomes a tool of the extraction industry and the Trump Organization plots moving the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado.

South Dakota is no stranger to ecocide because it's a way of life in the chemical toilet. Under the General Mining Law of 1872 even foreign miners have carte blanche to rape the Black Hills, so they are. At least five transients want to poke the Black Hills but it's happening on the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico and throughout the Intermountain West.

Rochford area residents say British Columbia-based Mineral Mountain Resources destroyed Black Hills National Forest Service Road 184A during their drilling of some 7,500 acres in the Homestake Gold Belt on public lands and at a private site known as the Standby Mine Target. Wharf Resources has filed a Notice of Intent to do exploratory drilling in a new area close to its current strip mine and cyanide leach pads in the Northern Hills and Valentine Mining Company, LLC is resurrecting the zombie Deadwood Standard Project on the rim of Spearditch Canyon.

Quake rattles morning coffee

A 2.9 quake rattled our morning coffee at 0633 MST. Epicenter is about thirty miles from here as the Sandhill Crane flies.

Republican physicians call out quack Deutsch

Look at the guy: he's icky catholic creepy evil in the flesh. Dependent on wedge issues for campaign donations and selling himself as the son of a Holocaust survivor Fred Deutsch is a small town chiropractor with a religion-driven vitriolic hatred of the 21st Century medical industry. His HB 1057 that would criminalize treating minors with some medications is ridiculous posturing by Republican Deutsch who's six feet under himself.

Native American legislator Troy Heinert is a Holocaust survivor. Lakota former legislator Kevin Killer is a Holocaust survivor. Sisseton Wahpeton Republican legislator Tamara St. John is a Holocaust survivor.

The South Dakota State Medical Association is comprised of Republican physicians.

The SDSMA is opposed to bureaucratic and legislative interference in medicine by government or other third parties that causes a physician to compromise his or her medical judgment with regard to what information or treatment is in the best interest of their patients. HB 1057 is an intrusion in the patient-physician relationship and prevents physicians from freely discussing medical treatment and information with patients and their parents. Receiving care is linked to reductions in the rate of suicide attempts, decreased rates of depression and anxiety, and decreased substance use in transgender people. Please contact your representatives today and urge them to vote NO on HB 1057. [Urge Your Representatives to Oppose Government Infringement into the Patient-Physician Relationship]

About 1 in a 1000 babies is born with ambiguous genitalia or intersex characteristics and with parents' blessings pediatric surgeons routinely assign a single gender to newborns. But South Dakota Republicans don't want schools to even talk about the causes of gender dysphoria. Why? Because their campaign dollars come from white christianists like the Family Heritage Alliance. Tampons, menstrual pads and even some sunscreens contain gender bending endocrine disruptors.

People go outside South Dakota for medical care all the time just like Jean Rounds has done. 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 now women and children just go out of state for medical care.

It’s all related: a medical industry oligopoly, gender dysphoria, polluted waterways, subsidized agriculture, absence of medical insurance, cancer and a Republican legislature on the dole.

Anyone who believes Fred's never groped a teenager is delusional. 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.

Guest post: what South Dakota Republicans have done to habitat 'managerially inexcusable'

John Wrede lives in the occupied Black Hills.

Frankly, a tax break is a start but it won’t accomplish much because the costs of installation far exceed the savings in property taxes. Cost data show that conventional installation of sodded turf grasses may exceed $12,000 per acre. Planting turf grass seeds may cost in the range of $4,000 to $8,000 per acre. This contrasts with installation costs of $2,000 to $4,000 per acre for seeding native prairie grasses and forbs. In order for this to work as intended, native grass and forb plantings are the only seedings that can or will achieve success and seed mixes must be closely matched to soil classifications and capability classes. Tame grass seeds don’t last long in shallow soils in Western SD. There needs to be incentives to reclaim the plow out in addition to tax incentives. USDA has been trying to do it for 40 years or more. Then, what are we going to say to all those responsible landowners who have gone years resisting the urge to plow out their native range; opting [instead], to improve their range and grass management practices to improve their bottom line while protecting soil, water, and wildlife habitat….. Shouldn’t they get a tax break too?

Buffalo grass and blue gramma grass, (native short grass species) are extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to start from seed and their rhizomatic/stoloniferous spread is slow at best. The same with highly nutritious sedges. In one case, buffalo grass/blue gramma, these are increaser species that usually spread with normal grazing pressure. In the case of most other species in the short/midgrass prairie, they are decreasers. County seed mixes are by in large comprised of mixes of tame and wild species that are the cheapest and most available. They are short term vegetative cover mixes designed to be quick livestock forage rather than a remedy for an ecologically sustainable landscape. And I will argue that there are plenty of plants that survive well on clay pan and silt soils. Then there is curly cup gum weed and prickly pear to consider. In Harding, Butte, much of Fall River, and parts of Meade, Pennington, Perkins, counties, the original ground cover is sage steppe which includes two different varieties of sage brush and associated understory of mid grass, forb plants and sedges that when properly managed, provide good forage for both wildlife and livestock (particularly sheep).

There are not less than 10 species of native wildlife, that are 100% sage steppe dependent to include the greater sage grouse which has been on the SD Threatened Species list for over 15 years. Like the short grasses, sage brush can not be easily started with seed and once it is converted to any other vegetative cover, can not be reclaimed in any volume or quality in under 25-30 years. We shouldn’t have to be reminded, continually, that this state use to be called “The Land of Infinite Variety” and within that identification, was not less than 6 biographic regions of unique habitats; only one of which ideally supports the chinese ringneck [sic] pheasant. The term habitat, in political circles in SD has come to be understood to be pheasant habitat and more particularly, pheasant nesting habitat…. What we refuse to address is the damage this state has done to all other habitats and even the 4 other habitat requirements for the ditch parrot that makes cash registers ring.

What we’ve done to tall grass prairie, riparian tree zones, wetlands, marshes, entire watersheds is both economically damning but it is also managerially inexcuseable [sic]. Why don’t we concentrate on repair of those habitats equally? What we refuse to address is the reality that all that land use conversion to “pheasant nesting” habitat has negative consequences for other species of native wildlife at the same time as it benefits something we exploit for fun and profit. What all that habitat inferrence also means is virtually all other species of wildlife, managed and otherwise, and their habitat needs, are ignored or disregarded because they aren’t economically important or worthy of development…… Is that good stewardship or responsible government advocacy. I think not.

40 years of wildlife habitat development, formal instruction and 30 years of practical experience in range science and cumulative 25 years spent with 1. the Chief Range Scientist and researcher for the US Forest Service, 2, my best friend and ranch owner that retired from a 35 year careeer with the NRCS as a range conservationist,( by the way, I work on that ranch of and on and have for the past 20 years. 3, 10 years with another good friend and a district conservationist and west river range conservationist for the NRCS. Add to that 8 years of field training and experience in both plant physiology and vegetative monitoring with both USFS, NPS and NRCS. Those are the people that ranchers go to for help and understanding when they can’t figure it out themselves.

Did I fail to mention that the reason ranchers like buffalo grass is because it’s the only thing that survives heavy grazing pressure while decreaser species start to disappear and invasives like cactus, curly cup gum weed et al try to fill in the gaps.

May: Howdy Doody Dusty not crazy enough for Congress

The chasm separating the establishment Republicans from the principled conservatives in South Dakota is widening. Calling him a globalist at her Faceberg Facebook page Republican former legislator Liz May is excoriating Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson for folding on Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling or MCOOL to help salvage the Trump Organization's trade bill. May can't win in a primary fixed against her but if she can mount an unaffiliated run for Congress it would be historic.

Gordon Howie got a five figure sum from SDGOP chair Dan Lederman for renouncing his third party insurgency but Liz May doesn't need the money so maybe this time self-reliance might actually trump moral hazard.

More South Dakota ranchers and farmers headed for the shitter

The number of suicides in South Dakota has increased by 40 percent in the past decade. State officials announced a new five-year plan this week to try to reverse the trend. https://t.co/8WjdOHJfwR

— Lisa Kaczke (@LisaKaczke) January 23, 2020

In 2018 the Rapid City Journal blamed the South Dakota Republican Party for spikes in suicides and depression then a Sanford Health executive did the same in 2019. South Dakota is ranked 6th highest in the nation for suicides reporting more than 22 self-administered terminations per 100,000 people or an increase of 59% since 1999 and the 11th highest increase in any state.

Passing South Dakota’s farms on to a new generation won’t be easy. That was evident Thursday morning as South Dakota Agriculture Secretary Kim Vanneman discussed her goals with the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. Rep. Bob Glanzer, R-Huron, told the secretary that bankers are concerned about the future of farms in his area, where some farmers have no future generation waiting to take over. Before lenders foreclose on a farm, they must file for mediation with the agriculture department. Since 2015, there has been a steady increase in mediation requests. [Rapid City Journal]

Restoring and rewilding American ecosystems are parts of the Green New Deal. Throughout its history the US Army Corps of Engineers has had purview over water that flows into bodies that can support navigation and in 2014, through the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Obama White House moved to more closely identify the sources of non-point pollution. Despite a judge's ruling EPA went forward with a new federal rule protecting small streams, tributaries and wetlands. The Waters of the United States legislation sought to give authority to the EPA to use some teeth to enforce the rights of people downstream to have clean water even from some sources that the US Geological Survey has already identified as impaired.

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 and buy out ranchers or lease private land for wildlife corridors, turn feral horses from Bureau of Land Management pastures onto other public land to control exotic grasses and elect Democrats to lead the way.

What are the Trump Organization and his earth hater party doing about it? Accelerating the end of all life on Earth, of course.

BREAKING: Today, the administration announced its final #WOTUS rewrite, gutting clean water protections across the country. This marks their second rollback of key environmental protections in two weeks. #ProtectCleanWater #ProtectNEPA https://t.co/iw5TuLxZz4

— National Parks Conservation Association (@NPCA) January 23, 2020

Former Johnson staffer will drive legal cannabis in South Dakota

Democrats have been leading and running election campaigns on destigmatizing cannabis and legalizing for adults for decades.

Drey Samuelson has accepted an offer to be political director for the two marijuana-legalization measures that are on the South Dakota election ballot in November. He was chief of staff for 28-year career in Congress of now-retired South Dakota U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson. #KeloNews

— KELO Bob Mercer (@pierremercer) January 23, 2020

Brookings bans plastic bags from municipal recycling stream

More evidence of a dying rural culture

The Socialist People's Republic of Brookings began the process of banning single-use plastic bags since at least 2016.

Plastic bags will no longer be accepted in the recycling stream for the city of Brookings, according to Chelsie Bakken, public information officer. Plastic bags shred easily, and sometimes pieces of them find their way into other baled-up recyclables, like paper. “Then it also contaminates the paper streams,” Bakken said, which hurts the paper’s recyclability, like weeds in a field hurt the crop’s yield. [Brookings Register]

The move comes as earth haters in South Dakota's extremist legislature continue to end local control over reducing plastic waste and resume victim-shaming intersex kids. About 1 in a 1000 babies are born with ambiguous genitalia or intersex characteristics and with parents' blessings pediatric surgeons routinely assign a single gender to newborns. But South Dakota Republicans don't want schools to talk about the causes of gender dysphoria. Why? Because their campaign dollars come from white christianists like the Family Heritage Alliance and the very industries that manufacture the products like tampons, menstrual pads and even the sunscreen that contain gender bending endocrine disrupters.

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. As more young people fall through the cracks created by the Republican Party South Dakota State University in Brookings is doing community outreach.

Kas Williams, the Chief Diversity Officer at South Dakota State University entered an Honors Colloquium classroom, with what she calls her “normal spiel” for the Office of Multicultural Affairs. According to Williams, the program has expanded beyond the reaches of the SDSU campus and into the Brookings community. “When you do good stuff and it becomes a community service effort, everybody gets behind it,” Williams said. “I don’t even think the students even realized that they tapped into something that everyone wants to be a part of.” [SDSU Collegian]

The cult of Trump is leaving young people in Brookings County without a voice in local affairs.

Youth can give a unique perspective to issues, Jaixai Reineke explained to the Brookings City Council during a study session on Dec. 10. The council is considering organizing a Brookings Youth Council to get input from young people. Some adults might bring up a youth’s perspective, but they tend to do it by looking back at their own youth and the times in which they lived then, Reineke said, but today’s children are growing up in a new generation. “My childhood is probably a lot different than any of your childhood,” she told the council. Reineke wants a council comprised of five to seven youth from middle school and/or high school. [Brookings Register]

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.

South Dakota's extremist congressional delegation, governor and legislature won't support combating bulging jails and prisons but will wholeheartedly jump on the bandwagon to save a town where a Democrat could win a legislative seat unless Republicans practice a little more socialism.

In Canada, Goodwood Plastic Products Ltd. harvests shopping bags, food containers and peanut butter jars from the municipal waste stream then turns that material into synthetic lumber, wharf timbers, guardrail posts and agricultural posts. Read that here.

NM Legislature, pueblos preparing to tackle legal cannabis

New Mexico's unpaid citizen legislature will begin debating legal cannabis for all adults Tuesday following Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham's State of the State Address. Home growing rules have yet to be agreed upon but her proposal that would keep taxes at roughly 17 to 19 percent would also make therapeutic cannabis tax-free while subsidizing it for low income patients.

“The Legislature has the opportunity to pass the largest job-creation program in New Mexico in a decade,” Gov. Lujan Grisham said. “Skeptics have been right to preach study and patience. I agree with their caution – and that’s why we haven’t rushed into this issue. But if we are clear-eyed about the risks, we have to be clear-eyed about the opportunity.” The governor’s proposal, the Cannabis Regulation Act, House Bill 160, is based on a report by the Cannabis Legalization Working Group, a bipartisan task force she appointed to study the issue all throughout last year. Under the proposal, local jurisdictions are empowered to adopt reasonable time, place and manner operational rules. The initiative includes conviction and arrest-record expungement provisions and provides for a mechanism for possible recall and dismissal of cases of individuals incarcerated for cannabis-related offenses. And, among other highlights, the proposal provides a mechanism for entering into intergovernmental agreements with any sovereign tribe or pueblo that elects to implement the Cannabis Regulation Act. [New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham unveils recreational cannabis legalization proposal]

It's the view of this interested party that growers should be able to market their product like vineyards have tasting rooms and breweries have tap rooms but allowing state-owned stores will only give the government control over the various strains. The State of New Mexico should offer incentives to tribes, pueblos and others for organic cannabis grown with off-grid sources of electricity and rainwater harvest. Also, all grows and product offered for public sale, including cannabidiol or CBD, should be inspected by the state.

RCPD still struggling with racism

The Rapid City Police Department is staffed by white supremacists and bigots. A former police chief now Mayor Steve Allender has been accused of managing "a bunch of racists."

“I would be eating lunch and Steve would say, ‘What’s on the menu today, a bowl of guts?’ Or if I was eating a sandwich he would say, ‘What you eating, a slab of lab?’ You know Labrador, a dog,” he said. “Then it rubbed off on the secretaries. I was right out in the squad room and I’d be sitting there eating a sandwich and the secretaries would say, ‘What you having today Glen, a slab of lab?’” [Native Sun News: Retired police officer speaks out on racism]

One reason that Republicans don't like Common Core history standards is that the curriculum includes the near-extermination of Native Americans by European colonialism long-ignored by textbooks. Rapid City's population is about 11% Native but South Dakota's jails and prisons are overwhelmingly warehousing American Indians. Journalist Tim Giago sees little difference between Rapid City and Ferguson, Missouri where Michael Brown's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against that police department. Daniel Tiger chose to take out two Rapid City police personnel with him rather than be gunned down in cold blood like Christopher Capps was. After another high profile racism incident the Rapid City Rush has an alcohol-free family section in the civic center.

With the purpose of reflecting the community it serves, the Akicita Mentorship Program pairs local law enforcement with criminal justice students at Western Dakota Tech. "It's a partnership to solve the problems that we have, such as a lack of diversity, or shortages in the workforce, and so what better place to go to the place that already has these students that have this particular interest," said Peter Ragnone, director for the Criminal Justice Program at Western Dakota Tech. [KOTA teevee]

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

American Indians in the RCPD are ridiculed, reviled and rejected by their relatives because the fact is: cops' lives suck. Little wonder they abuse their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and occasionally murder their wives.

Klomentum: Klobuchar wins top endorsements

Editorial: Klobuchar is the one https://t.co/5fYSlKKPhC pic.twitter.com/jLhRRbHN1J

— Q-C Times Opinion (@QCTopinion) January 19, 2020

Breaking: The New York Times's editorial board has endorsed two candidates (@AmyKlobuchar and @SenWarren) for the Democratic presidential primary. https://t.co/uYfO4VsCu6 #TheWeeklyNYT

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) January 20, 2020

Endangered fish another species at risk to Republican Party

With the Endangered Species Act nearing extinction while in the clutches of the Trump Organization the US Fish and Wildlife Service is asking for comment on a draft recovery plan for the Topeka shiner (Notropis topeka) nearing extirpation from the tributaries to the James, Vermillion and Big Sioux Rivers, some of the most polluted waterways in the United States. Americans are learning Trump supporters can't seem to end all life on Earth soon enough.

Over a hundred native species in South Dakota are at risk to the Republican Party including the endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, black footed ferret, northern long-eared bat, the black-backed woodpecker that feeds on bark beetles and a bird that actually walks underwater - the American dipper, just to name a few. Threatened by the increased conversion of native prairie to cropland the most endangered plant in the chemical toilet that is South Dakota is the white-fringed orchid (Platanthera praeclara) found mainly in tallgrass prairies west of the Mississippi River.

The Topeka shiner lives in isolated pockets of slow-moving, winding prairie streams. A draft recovery plan involving sufficient numbers of the fish in addition to suitable and better connected habitat is now available for public comment. More: https://t.co/23vxb10Yzq 📸:@USFWS pic.twitter.com/bzDts8rtnR

— US Fish and Wildlife (@USFWSMtnPrairie) January 17, 2020

South Dakota ended environmental protection to woo Republican-owned businesses. That’s not self-reliance; it’s moral hazard. https://t.co/Puu27iaaMe #sdleg #sdgov #ecocide https://t.co/Bs0zyXAi77

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) January 17, 2020

The industry waged a propaganda war against Obama’s EPA now Trump has put all life on Earth on the brink of collapse. https://t.co/p2g911eEcS

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) January 18, 2020

In South Dakota gravel trumps gold

As yet another sacred site in the Black Hills is being probed, threatening to destroy Indigenous cultural centers is simply another American tradition. Rapid City attorney David Ganje tells readers how waste rock and overburden can be more valuable than the ore it covers.

In the natural resources, mining and geological fields, the ‘experts’ are reluctant to call gravel a mineral. It matters not whether they are a lawyer, judge or geologist. Gravel is everywhere – in South Dakota alone, there are more than 1,800 permits for gravel mining on file with the Department of Mining and Natural Resources. As a result, the term ‘mineral’ will sometimes be construed so as to include gravel, and other times to exclude gravel. On private land, gravel rights are managed by the state. In South Dakota no statute provides a definition for ‘mineral’ or ‘mineral interest’ with the purpose of explaining existing mineral interests or leases. On federal land, where the federal government has reserved mineral interests, the analysis is similarly convoluted. This may indicate that whether or not a specific federal mineral reservation includes gravel can depend heavily on the composition of the court at the time of the case. [Ganje: Don’t look for the gold, look for the gravel]

Thank you, Nino Scalia, for reminding us why Democrats need to control not just the federal bench but every court and every jurisdiction. Yes, white people have cashed in on the General Mining Law of 1872.

Estimates of the number of such abandoned mine sites range from 161,000 in 12 western states to as many as 500,000 nationwide. At least 33,000 have degraded the environment, according to the Government Accountability Office, and thousands more are discovered every year. In 2017, the EPA proposed requiring companies still operating mines to post cleanup bonds or offer other financial assurances so taxpayers don’t end up footing cleanup bills. The Trump administration halted the rule, but environmental groups are scheduled to appear in federal court next month in a lawsuit that seeks to revive it. [US mining sites dump 50M gallons of fouled wastewater daily]

Republican former State Senator Stan Adelstein's ancestors owned a store in Kadoka, adjacent to the Pine Ridge Reservation: he is vested in many mining interests from gold to gravel on stolen treaty lands.

Photo: the wanton destruction of an entire northern Black Hills ecosystem is clearly evident.

Three years into the Trump administration and Superfund appears to be in worse shape than ever. https://t.co/vHip8zfqDx

— grist (@grist) January 13, 2020

Morning Consult: Noem among least popular governors; Thune, Rounds drop

Read that here. Her American Nazi Party comrades, John Thune and Mike Rounds both dropped in popularity, too.

#sdsen Rounds and Thune have actually gone down in popularity since last year. #sdleg #SouthDakota https://t.co/hljVwr51Wp

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) January 17, 2020

Karen refugees are doing the heavy lifting in Huron

As young people and Democrats flee South Dakota more brown people are doing the work in the failed red moocher state. Spanish speakers prop up the federally subsidized dairy industry East River but in Huron Karen refugees slaughter and process turkeys.

This is the Karen year 2,759, which has been a major holiday in the Karen nation since 1938, at that time 2,677 was declared the first Karen New Year. “The Karen people use the Lunar calendar and so will be a little bit different each year,” explained Thra Iah Say. This year the Huron schools were presented with an award as a symbol of thanks from the Karen community. [Huron Daily Plainsman]

But NAZI Neal Tapio has been leading a crusade to refuse asylum seekers in South Dakota. Tapio loathes the SDGOP establishment and believes his potential unaffiliated US House candidacy is more about the message than the win.

Tapio says the country is not vetting for refugees like it used to, and he says we are taking in people from countries that don't share the same values of religious freedom that we do. [KELO radio]

The Gregorian calendar is a ridiculous anachronism.

Of course, in a 13-month calendar system, we’d also have a new additional month. The International Fixed Calendar system calls this extra month Sol and requires that it fit between the months of June and July. [A year with 13 Friday the 13ths?]

How does something called the 'the christian calendar' still exist in secular societies? Because 13 is not only a prime number and mark of the devil, it corresponds to the number of women's menses each year in a world where men still have control.

For Indigenous people across the globe, the natural world is a source of teachings about natural and universal laws. In understanding the interconnectedness of all things, we recognize that the cosmos– the sun, moon, stars, and other planets– affect us and connect us in undeniable ways. Some Tribal Nations have maintained teachings around solstice time, while others may be seeking to revive the teachings, practices and ceremonies that were forcibly taken from us. [Sarah Sunshine Manning]

Winter solstice begins another new year for us pagans. It occurred at 21:19 MST on Saturday, December 21.

This is not defiance. This reinforces Trump’s border brutality and exploits cheaper labor especially in states like South and North Dakota by importing Trump-approved wage slaves. https://t.co/D89EU0UGY9

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) December 29, 2019

A unanimous vote to welcome refugees in Minnehaha County! 👊 pic.twitter.com/OR4XaSmVQG

— ACLU of South Dakota (@ACLUSouthDakota) January 14, 2020

Water protectors move to block KXL permits

South Dakota has no contingency money for cleaning up pipeline disasters and because it is an international project ecoterrorist TC Energy doesn’t pay into a reclamation fund.

TC Energy and two landowners want to use water from Western South Dakota sources to build the pipeline and run worker camps. Opponents include West River tribes and landowners. [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]

Had the Quinn Dam failed during high water last Spring one of its first casualties could have been the Keystone XL pipeline where it's proposed to cross the Bad River. Contaminated with mercury for decades, Newell Lake in Butte County, South Dakota has just been closed to the public because of unstable dam conditions. Now a dam near Mina is nearing failure.

#ecocide #nokxl https://t.co/CntY5TSJJ5

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) January 13, 2020

Montana and North Dakota have both suffered the effects of man camps that prey on women and girls where rapes and murders committed by white walkers have become commonplace.

An elder from the Yankton Sioux Tribe testified Monday, Jan. 13, on the potential impacts on women if the Keystone XL pipeline is built. Faith Spotted Eagle says the past, present, and future of indigenous women are threatened by construction and pollution. She made comments to the South Dakota Water Management Board in its hearing to determine whether to allow water use for the pipeline.

Read or listen here.

Crow rapper to perform in Spearditch

Crow Peak just outside Spearditch or Paha Karitukateyapi is translated as "the hill where the Crows were killed" stemming from a battle between the Lakota and Crow Nations. The Crow allied with Custer and the United States Army believing they would reclaim the Black Hills.

Day trips and more pix

Our Lady of the Arroyo and an interested party have been looping in Nuevo Mexico del Norte.

Stacked stone hacienda, adobe ruin and view of Sangre de Cristos all shot near Pine Mesa on Santa Fe County Road 51

Sangre de Cristos in a background shot from Cañon Blanco

Our Lady of the Arroyo with 20th Century artifact

Work at the Rift Gallery/Southwest Stoneworks in Rinconada, New Mexico

Obsidian found in a local arroyo was probably quarried near the Valles Caldera then crafted as a projectile point.

Destruction of cultural sites has always been the American Way

The Amerindian population in the New World was some 112 million at the time of European arrival and in what is now the United Snakes it was about 25 million. Today's Native population is about 5.2 million with some 2.5 million living on reservations and if he were alive today Thomas Jefferson would be surprised any American Indians survived at all.

In the early twentieth century after President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House white supremacists began erecting statuary commemorating and celebrating treason in the United States. Mount Rushmore in occupied South Dakota is the state's premier example of white supremacist ideology. Its sculptor was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

As yet another sacred site in the Black Hills is being probed because of the 1872 Mining Law threatening to destroy Iranian cultural centers is simply another American tradition.

Itching to steal land from the Great Sioux Reservation, Dakota’s Yankton Press printed the following call to break the Fort Laramie Treaty—which created the sprawling reservation, secured the Black Hills for the tribes, and stipulated that the American military would abandon its posts and forts on the land and hold accountable any citizens who violated the treaty—in an 1868 column: “The Indians can make no use of the country which has been set apart for them. The pine lands and mineral deposits are of no value to them, because they neither have the knowledge or inclination to utilize them,” the newspaper declared. “The government owes it to the country, and particularly to Dakota, to remove every obstacle to the immediate opening up and development of this vast field of untold and incalculable wealth.” [Nick Martin, America Has Never Cared About Sacred Sites]

44 presidential statues already sit or stand on corners downtown Rapid City and the City of Presidents Foundation leaders want to focus on the message it will send to visitors without invoking the town's long history of bigotry. Fact is: most of the downtown statues depict slave owners, war criminals, figures in history that ordered the murders of American Indians and at least one child raper.

Photo: a May thunderstorm engulfs Mato Paha (Bear Butte).

South Dakota Democrat Judge Rules for South Dakota Democrat

Personal details

Born

Charles B. Kornmann

1937 (age 82–83)

Watertown, South Dakota

Political party

Democratic

Education

College of St. Thomas (B.A.)

Georgetown University Law Center (LL.B.)

House Bill 1094 would have required petition circulators to apply with the Secretary of State’s Office for an identification number and be included in a directory of registered petition circulators.https://t.co/G6XjVVjT8l

— AberdeenNews (@AberdeenNews) January 10, 2020

Water shortages limit cannabis growth in New Mexico

New Mexico's legislature is poised to legalize cannabis for all adults but the state is the most water-stressed in the entire US.

Domestic well water may not be used for agriculture in the state. Farmers must irrigate cannabis or other crops with another water source by acquiring a valid water right. “It’s important that legislation create a robust framework to deal with these important issues that currently doesn’t exist,” said Rep. Javier Martinez, D-Albuquerque, a co-sponsor of last year’s proposed Cannabis Regulation Act. “Just like any other agricultural or manufacturing product or process in existence today, rules, standards and environmental protections must be established and applied to all licensees to ensure compliance, and to safeguard our natural resources like water.” [Albuquerque Journal]

New Mexico's therapeutic cannabis program has surpassed 80,000 patients.

Contaminated dietary supplements, vapes, ointments and edibles are unacceptable in a country with a long history of snake oil salesmen. Cannabis is a safe, effective palliative but black market cannabis not tested or subject to regulation makes Americans less safe. Legalization and state inspections of a product that so many people enjoy is reasonable public policy that would align with our life safety goals.

It's the view of this interested party that growers should be able to market their product like vineyards have tasting rooms and breweries have tap rooms but allowing state-owned stores will only give the government control over the various strains. The State of New Mexico should offer incentives to tribes, pueblos and others for organic cannabis grown with off-grid sources of electricity and rainwater harvest. Also, all grows and product offered for public sale, including cannabidiol or CBD, should be inspected by the state.

Early in 2020, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency plans to roll back #cleanwater rules, abolishing limits on how much pollution can be dumped into small streams and wetlands. #NewMexico is fearing more pollution and #publichealth risks. #WaterIsLifehttps://t.co/XlYhk8cCEk

— WildEarth Guardians (@wildearthguard) January 10, 2020

McKibben scheduled for talk at SDSU

SDSU School of Communication and Journalism in Brookings received a $7,000 SDHC grant to bring author Bill McKibben to SDSU on April 13, 2020 for the Harding Lecture at Larson Concert Hall, Performing Arts Center (7 p.m.) https://t.co/tzTsWfldw5 pic.twitter.com/NeK7bQoOhg

— SD Humanities (@SDHumanities) January 10, 2020

Whitewood building live/work space below tailings dam, former Superfund site

Part of a massive toxic slag pile below Deadwood sloughs into Whitewood Creek

Whitewood, South Dakota stinks and the smells are not just coming from the Ridley Block Plant on the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad tracks.

Today, the remaining combined sewer segments are not the only suspected source of E. coli in Whitewood Creek. The draft biennial report on the state’s surface water quality, known as the Integrated Report for Surface Water Quality Assessment, additionally identifies aging septic systems, wildlife and livestock as possible E. coli sources. [Lead struggles to keep sewage out of Whitewood Creek]

If the slag in Whitewood Creek was harmless or benign it would be added as aggregate to concrete destined for highway repairs. Nevertheless, Whitewood wants to spend $2 million on a live/work project.

Whitewood aims to attract a bigger workforce housing with work-live buildings, where the business is on the first level, with the living space situated on the upper floors. Whitewood officials say they are hopeful this could serve as a template and other communities will follow suit. [Whitewood group gets grant for building development]

No doubt Sturgis Rally developers will simply buy this stuff up and rent it out for ten days a year.

Homestake Mining Company dumped cyanide and other hazardous substances into Whitewood Creek for a hundred years so the waterway was named a Superfund site in 1981 but before selling to Canadian miner Barrick, Homestake restored some of it in 1994 and the stream was taken off the Superfund list in 1996. How Whitewood's water supply is safe for human consumption remains a mystery.

The GOP-owned South Dakota Department of Ecocide and Natural Ruination says the Grizzly Gulch tailings impoundment above both Deadwood and Whitewood is good to go until 2035.

Unless it's not.

Montana blogger shames Billings for racist tourism campaign

A settler's little broken house on the prairie near US 212 just east of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana

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.

A Billings ad campaign that was scrubbed a day after a blogger called it racist illustrates a larger systemic issue of excluding Native voices in marketing campaigns for tribal nations, several spokespeople and tribal members around the state said. [Billings Gazette]

Alexis Bonogofsky has been writing East of Billings for many years. She covers the environment, ranching and culture.

Let’s take a step back into history and talk about Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is a term used to describe the 19th century doctrine or belief that it was the country’s divine destiny and right to expand westward to fill the American continent. The philosophy drove U.S. territorial expansion and was used to justify the forced removal of Native Americans from their land and genocide that followed. My family benefited from it. Both sides of my family homesteaded in North Dakota and Montana. The language being used by Visit Billings is the same language that was used to justify the genocide of Native Americans: onward pioneer, conquer, take, it’s ours. The Billings Chamber of Commerce should officially apologize to all of Montana’s tribal nations, especially to the Northern Cheyenne and Crow Tribes. I have an idea for a new slogan though. Instead of "Today is ours for the taking - tomorrow too" we should just go with "Billings - we have a lot of work to do." [Onward Pioneers: Visit Billings’s Manifest Destiny Tourism Campaign]

During the Battle of Greasy Grass near 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.

Read more at the Billings Gazette.

Onward Pioneers: Visit Billings's Manifest Destiny Tourism Campaign https://t.co/wa7sxMFsQu #mtnews #mtpol #montana

— Alexis Bonogofsky (@abonogofsky) December 17, 2019

Lewis and Clark water system enables ecocide

In the above sketch the Lewis and Clark water pipeline runs nearly parallel to the Big Sioux River but in the opposite direction. South Dakota's socialized dairies are wreaking habitat havoc all along the state's border with Minnesota and like most of East River, southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa are Republican stronghold where dairies, swine units and other concentrated animal feeding operations have devastated water supplies by contaminating wells with nitrates.

Simon Healy is a cattle farmer in Irene who is pushing for several townships to secede from Yankton County. Healy says the idea is join Turner County, which he says is more friendly toward ag producers. In late 2018, three new [Yankton] county commissioners were elected over concern about concentrated animal feeding operation development. [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]

We all know South Dakota is a chemical toilet, sacrifice zone, perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area so eighteen million more dollars in federal pork are enabling the red moocher state in expanding the Lewis and Clark water system.

The project provides treated water to towns and cities in South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota from wells south of Vermillion near the Missouri River. [WNAX]

This isn't self-reliance; it's moral hazard. Instead of empowering communities to harvest snow melt and rain water rural communities continue to be dependent on politicians who exploit need.

Most municipalities don't have the luxury of owning the farmland around their drinking water wells. https://t.co/S1DlkRMe7j

— Don Carr (@donpcarr) January 7, 2020

As reported and written by content director @bartpfankuch1 of nonprofit @SDNewsWatch @INN @INNamplify @David_Bordewyk @Nlowrey432 https://t.co/ybreED9dfX

— South Dakota News Watch (@SDNewsWatch) December 15, 2019

Today in cannabis: Amendment A makes the South Dakota ballot

The group South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws submitted to a Republican secretary of state over 50,000 signatures in support of a ballot measure that would allow adults 21 and older to possess and distribute up to one ounce and cultivate up to three plants for personal use. If passed the measure would direct the South Dakota's extremist legislature to establish therapeutic and industrial cannabis (hemp) programs.

Wildfire danger returns to chemical toilet

The grassland fire danger will reach the very high category today for parts of the perpetual welfare state, permanent disaster area, sacrifice zone and chemical toilet that is South Dakota.

Bison added to historic Lawrence County ranch

Schoolhouse on the Frawley Ranch in Centennial Valley.

Hank Frawley's grandfather was the first lawyer in Deadwood. He moved his grandpa's law library into the main barn where I did the interior finish in 2003 at the family ranch across from the Centennial Quarry.

The Frawley Ranch has been an integral part of the history of the Black Hills since the Frawley Brothers began buying up failed homesteads in the Centennial Valley in the 1890s. In 1977 the nearly 5,000-acre property became only the second National Historic site in South Dakota. There’s even a section of the original Deadwood Stage Route running through the property. In the early 2000s, two families with a deep appreciation for South Dakota’s western heritage purchased the land and have been restoring and maintaining it as a sort of living historical preserve. [Meet the Frawley Ranch bison]

One of the last Democratic politicians in Lawrence County Hank died in 2017.

Klomentum: Senator Klobuchar turns to foreign policy

pic.twitter.com/KhJNdKV65V

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) January 3, 2020

Increase in fundraising, 3Q to 4Q

Klobuchar +138% ($4.8m 3Q / $11.4m 4Q)
Yang +67% (9.9/16.5)
Biden +45% (15.7/22.7)
Sanders +36% (25.3/34.5)
Buttigieg +29% (19.2/24.7)

So ^^^ those are all pretty impressive. But Warren, who has not reported yet, will probably be down ~10-20%. https://t.co/prnwcBkoby

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) January 3, 2020

.@AmyKlobuchar to @SCJ:
"I really don't really like labels. I think I'm a proven Progressive...To me, that means making progress, having people's back. I think I have been classified as being in the moderate lane in this primary. That's all fine." https://t.co/NTYx4pR84N

— Bret Hayworth (@SCJBretH) January 3, 2020