Meth, bikers, video lootery likely driving Rapid City's violent crime surge

Most, if not all, meth in South Dakota is trafficked by white Trump-worshiping motorcycle gangs. These hordes are essentially domestic terrorists operating with the blessings of the prison/industrial complex where the tribal nations trapped in South Dakota are among the victims and meth is just another tool of genocide. 

But, a red moocher state like South Dakota is powered by sin: video lootery and a too-big-to-jail banking racket fill in the gaps created by lobbyists who enjoy the protection of single-party tyranny. Desperate to pay off those who benefit the entrenched Republican establishment criminals can expect to have champions sitting as governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. So packs of armed men with mental illnesses and addictions to meth power their way into western South Dakota every year; and, an accepted outlaw biker culture routinely trafficks illicit behaviors that would otherwise be subject to legal interdiction. 

Despite lies from the South Dakota Republican Party video lootery, suicide, domestic violence and homelessness are inextricably linked putting children at risk to more catastrophic consequences far more often than has happened in states that have legalized or lessened penalties for casual use of cannabis. 

In 2018 it was determined that the annual criminal costs of video lootery in South Dakota have soared to $42 million and the social costs an estimated $62 million. $9 million were lost because state and local sales taxes weren’t collected. When video lootery began in 1986 104 charges were filed for robbery, grand theft and aggravated theft. There were 1,037 cases in 1990 and in 2017 they went past 4,000 yet South Dakota continues to raise revenues off those least able to pay. 

The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it's all about the money prostitution, the Sturgis Rally, policing for profit, sex trafficking, hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the SDGOP destroying lives, depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule. 

Labeling video [lootery] a scourge on South Dakota that has led to increased social ills, District 30 Rep. Tim Goodwin also said state government had grown addicted to the revenue. [Rapid City Journal]

The Rapid City Police Department reports that 2020 was marked again by overwhelming challenges to the law enforcement industry and an overall increase in what it calls "crimes of opportunity." 

Homicide – 100% increase

Robbery – 48.6% increase

Motor Vehicle Theft – 43.6% increase

Burglary – 39.1% increase

Aggravated Assault – 29.5% increase

While it’s difficult to pinpoint a specific cause for the dramatic increase in homicides, it’s important to know that in all cases from 2020 in which the suspect has been arrested, there was an existing relationship between the suspect and the victim. In the vast majority of these murder cases, police have identified a nexus with illegal drug use. [RCPD releases 2020 annual crime statistics]

Veteran South Dakota reporter Tom Lawrence wonders what Joe Boever's killer has to Hyde

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 in a distracted driving incident 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.  

Even Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is frustrated with the slow pace of charges. 

The Sept. 12 fatal crash that left Highmore resident Joe Boever dead has not resulted in any criminal charges. The stunning reality is, Sheriff Mike Volek was called to the scene of the crash, but was somehow unable to locate Boever’s body, despite the fact that it was right next to the westbound lane of Highway 14. I have been to the location. I knelt down where Boever’s body was discovered the next morning by the man who killed him, South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg. There was dried blood evident on the road surface. Ravnsborg’s 2011 red Ford Taurus skidded to a stop about 100 feet or less from where the body lay.

Read it all here.

Proposed rare earth strip mine in Belle Fourche watershed taps DoE

Missouri Buttes and Mahto Tipila at sunset 

A strip mine intended to remove Bull Hill from the headwaters of the Beaver Creek drainage near Mahto Tipila (Devils Tower) in the Bearlodge Ranger District then replace it with a pile of waste rock could pollute the Belle Fourche and Cheyenne Rivers even worse than they are now. 

In January of 2016, the US Forest Service suspended the Draft Environmental Impact Study for a Wyoming Black Hills mountaintop-removal mine that would extract minerals containing elements like neodymium and praseodymium from the Belle Fourche watershed. 

In 2017 Rare Element Resources said its mine just upstream of the South Dakota border announced financial backing from General Atomics and applied for enough water for the mineral separation process despite widespread contamination in Crook County wells. Acid mine drainage can kill or cause birth defects in the birds and mammals that happen into contaminated standing water on these sites. 

Wyoming Senator John Barrasso and the other Earth raping Republicans are working overtime to defund environmental protection, especially on public lands. The US is beginning to get religion on existing rare earth stocks and we have more buried in landfills than all other developed countries combined. Japan recovers most of her needs from the waste stream. 

A demonstration-scale separation and processing plant is expected to cost $35-40 million and a site in Upton, Wyoming near the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) is a prime candidate but the Biden Administration could reverse that funding.

An announcement from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has increased the likelihood that Crook County will one day host its own rare earth mine in the Bearlodge Mountains. Rare Element Resources has been awarded half the funding needed to construct the demonstration-scale plant that represents the next step forward in developing the project. A formal proposal was submitted to the DoE in mid-2020 to secure funding for a separation and processing plant that uses RER’s proprietary technology to produce commercial-grade products. [Sundance (Wyoming) Times]

Earlier this month the South Dakota Board of Water and Natural Resources gave formal support for a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant to continue the $4.3 million ninth phase of the Belle Fourche River watershed implementation project. It's designed to mitigate agricultural and livestock damage in sensitive riparian zones even as Republican Governor Kristi Noem ends environmental protection in the red moocher state.

FLDS compound headed for sheriff's sale

Over a year later there are only three possible outcomes for Serenity Dennard's "disappearance:" she perished in another brutal South Dakota winter, she hooked up with a Jeffrey Epstein-type character or was abducted by a representative of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) Church where minor girls were trafficked and raped.

Bill in New Mexico Legislature would encourage more fuel treatments on private ground

ip photo: mixed pine, fir and aspen stand after Las Conchas Fire 

Public land managers in New Mexico are conducting prescribed burns and fuel treatments throughout the central mountain chain ahead of seasonal wildfire conditions. The US Park Service is burning in the Pecos National Historical Park, the Santa Fe National Forest is burning slash piles in the Jemez Mountains and reducing fuels on the Rowe Mesa. In southwestern New Mexico the Gila National Forest is also gearing up for fuel reduction. 

The former administration blamed California wildfires on the lack of logging with statements typically devoid of facts but the real culprits are downed power lines and a warming climate. Over a half million wildfires are started by arsonists every year in the US and if you live in the wildland-urban interface government can't always protect you from your own stupidity. If counties and states just burned off their road and highway rights of way every year that creates substantial fire breaks. 

The Las Conchas Fire started in late June of 2011 when an aspen tree fell onto power lines in the Jemez Mountains then quickly spread and became one of the most extensive wildland fires in New Mexico history. 

But, instead of burning slash piles the federal government should consider biochar. 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.

Like laws in other Western states, House Bill 57, the “Prescribed Burning Act,” would essentially ease the current liability standards encountered by private landowners who want to conduct prescribed burns, including pile burns related to thinning projects, and seeks to encourage more coordinated wildfire prevention and land management efforts across New Mexico. “Prescribed burning is the single most effective way to reduce the unwanted damaging impacts of wildfire in places that affect people in communities, that damages our water supply and water reliability, and places where wildlife habitat is important,” said N.M. State Forester Laura McCarthy, who testified Tuesday in support of HB 57 in front of the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee, where, with a few friendly amendments, the bill garnered a strong, bipartisan “do pass” recommendation without objection. “We have prescribed fire occurring today on federal and state lands, but very little is happening on the private lands. As you all know, fire doesn’t respect our jurisdictional boundaries.” [Silver City Daily Press]

Great article in @SantaFeReporter about the importance of he Prescribed Burning Act! Last year a prescribed burn helped keep the Medio Fire from expanding highlighting the usefulness of the practice. Burns are an important tool for forest management: https://t.co/rNL2MsuPMb

— EMNRD (@EmnrdNM) January 27, 2021

Another racist incident in Rapid City should award Murphy's the Trump statue

Rapid City SD. White girl calling native females “ugly “ “Rez bitches “ and to go on their “reservation” pic.twitter.com/mOpNAZNZVY

— Wambli Eagleman (@WambliEagleman) January 23, 2021

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 is the state's premier example of white supremacist ideology. Its sculptor was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. 

44 presidential statues already sit or stand on corners in downtown Rapid City and the City of Presidents Foundation leaders are focusing on the message the Barack Obama sculpture is sending to visitors without invoking the town's long history of bigotry and racism. 

Fact is: most of the downtown statues depict slave owners, at least one child rapist, war criminals and figures in history that ordered the murders of American Indians. Confederate flags routinely fly in Rapid City showing support for racism in like-minded states, South Carolina and Mississippi. Many more come out during the Sturgis Rally. 

Dallerie Davis, co-founder and artist liaison for the organization, said the project is in the concept stage and that Rapid City “absolutely, positively” will have a President Trump statue. “Right now, we know we’ve got to deal with the very unusual hair style, and we know we’ll have to involve tweeting,” Davis said. A location has not yet been selected for the nation's 45th president. Davis said the City of Presidents has more than 80 street corners to choose from. The project also has not yet announced the artist who will create the bronze statue. [Rapid City Journal] 

Right to life? Not if you're non-white in South Dakota. So, maybe the bronze of Trump should be placed right outside Murphy's Pub and Grill. 

This happened to former SDPB reporter Chynna Lockett and Sunny Red Bear.

“Yeah, we didn’t get to officially meet but...Hello Summer, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Sunny Red Bear & I am the Director of Racial Equity at NDN Collective. My work is to make sure that Rapid City is racially equitable for all. It looks like I have a lot of work to do, but if any businesses would like a better understanding of the work that is about to take place in Rapid City, please contact me. All businesses should have a policy/procedure for handling situations such as these & I would love to help anyone that is looking to learn how they can do that. Murphy’s Pub & Grill, I’d love to start with you, if you’d like.” [Faceberg post]

 

FACE THE NATION- DR. DEBORAH BIRX SOTS
SUN0046- SOT On COVID-19 Data Access
SUN0048- SOT On COVID-19 Response
SUN0053- SOT "Someone Made Parallel Data"
SUN0054- SOT "I wish I were more Outspoken"
SUN0061- SOT "Sturgis was Not Okay" pic.twitter.com/2awx7KmxCz

— CBS Newspath (@cbsnewspath) January 24, 2021

South Dakota Republicans ignore causes of gender dysphoria, attack kids again

Republicans are evil. 

Wondering why some people want to cut off their testicles, change genders or why your kids are autistic and obese? No serious discussion of issues associated with gender identity can be undertaken without the studying the effects of phthalates and other plasticizers on human genetics. Aluminum, propylene glycol (steareths), Triclosan, parabens and phthalates are endocrine disruptors that wreak havoc in children and adolescents. Tampons, menstrual pads and even some sunscreens contain gender bending endocrine disruptors. 

That the rabid South Dakota Legislature is unwilling to tackle the root causes of gender dysphoria and attack kids is how they raise campaign cash. 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 and the LGBT-bashing Family Research Council.

 

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 1076 is ridiculous posturing by Republican Deutsch who's six feet under himself. Anyone who believes Fred's never groped a teenager is delusional. 

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. 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.

NM District 2 Representative at odds with Native heritage over border wall

At least two American Indian nations straddle invisible international boundaries – the Mohawks with Canada in the northeast US and the Tohono O’odham Nation with Mexico in the southwest. Etched into the rhyolite on Signal Hill in Saguaro National Park about 800 years ago by the ancestors of the modern-day Tohono O'odham are their petroglyphs and rock art which are probably directions to water sources and hunting. 

Just hours after taking the oath of office, President Joe Biden issued the Proclamation on the Termination Of Emergency With Respect To The Southern Border Of The United States And Redirection Of Funds Diverted To Border Wall Construction.

Yvette Herrell is a member of the Cherokee Nation and the Republican New Mexico Representative from District 2 but her support for Herr Trump's border wall strains her ties with her Indigenous heritage.

According to the Tohono O’odham’s website, the Tohono O’odham Nation is a federally recognized tribe of more than 34,000 tribal members, including more then 2,000 residing in Mexico. When Tohono O’odham members are questioned on their position of the border wall, their first response is, “there is no O’odham word for wall.” Many oppose construction and cite the desecration of sacred sites and the violation of treaties. Herrell’s stance to oppose the halting of the border wall construction also undermines the Cherokee Nation of Mexico, who claim Cherokee descent after many migrated to Mexico during the 19th century. [Native News Online]

Every federal department and agency already recognizes Native America as the 51st State. While the Palestinian homeland looks like holes in the slice of Swiss cheese analogous to the illegal Israeli state, progress toward resolutions of Native trust disputes would have far more political traction after tribes secede from the States in which they reside and then be ratified to form one State, the 51st, sans contiguous borders with two Senators and two House members as there are an estimated 2.5 million Indigenous living on reservations.

French developer having second thoughts about wind farm eyesore

Utilities are not your friends. 

In 2000 now-dead Republican South Dakota Governor Bill Janklow sold the state cement plant in Rapid City to Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC). Democratic legislators voted against Janklow's folly because GCC was exempted from mineral severance and was allowed to mine on ground owned by School and Public Lands. Limestone-rich state trust land near Dewey was leased for a dollar for 99 years and could be renewed twice so for three bucks GCC received the mineral rights for 297 years and school kids got screwed. 

During the 1980s and 90s the cement plant returned about $11 million a year but in 2013 the legislature had to kick in $4 million to the plant's retirement system and South Dakota still surfs the bottom for America's education dollars. Today, West Rapid routinely endures blowing dust and air quality alerts from GCC's quarry operations. 

According to Democratic former legislator, Kathy Tyler the Mexico-based land raper has bought up most cement companies in South Dakota with operations in Huron and even in little Holabird in Hyde County east of Pierre. She said the previous owners had no choice; they either had to sell or GCC would put them out of business.

In 2018, Black Hills Energy sold some of its 700 oil and gas wells in New Mexico and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming to help finance a $70 million monolith headquarters in Rapid City. It was built there on the backs of subscribers without choices because out of state Republicans who write the tax law own South Dakota and because the state ended environmental oversight. BHE raised much of its construction cash on Colorado cannabis. 

The two monopolies teamed up to bilk taxpayers.

GCC’s Rapid City Plant partnered with Black Hills Energy to move to wind energy in the next year. The program will provide about 50% of the cement plant’s electricity needs for the next 15 years. Black Hills Energy will build a wind-power generating facility in 2020 to supply the energy. Located near Cheyenne, Wyoming, the Corriedale Wind Energy Project is anticipated to produce energy by the first quarter of 2021 that will be shared with subscribers in South Dakota and Wyoming. The program was designed for large commercial and industrial customers and governmental agencies in the company’s electric service territories in South Dakota and Wyoming. [KOTA teevee]

No corporate taxes, a compliant regulator, a dearth of environmental protection and cheap labor make South Dakota the perfect dumping ground for earth killers like coal and eyesores like wind farms. But according to Republican Public Utilities Cartel (PUC) Commissioner Chris Nelson the amount of wind power generation may have reached its plateau. In a 2019 interview with WNAX Radio Nelson said he believes there will be rapid development of solar power production facilities.

State regulators have been asked to let Meridian Wind Project withdraw an application for a $220 million complex in central South Dakota. France-based ENGIE originally planned Meridian as a 74-turbine facility with a capacity of 175 megawatts. The scope later changed to 64 turbine locations, according to a June 10, 2020, presentation. The company’s North America arm is based in Santa Barbara, California. Casey Willis, an ENGIE official, said in testimony filed with the April 23 application that Meridian at the time was still looking for a customer to contract for the power. [KELO teevee] 

Avangrid, Inc., a US-based subsidiary of Spanish energy firm Iberdrola with a base in my home town of Elkton, South Dakota has spent at least $216 million on a wind farm. That amount of cash would take nearly 17,000 electric subscribers completely off the grid.

$100 million spent on subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting and maintaining the Prevailing Winds project would take some 8,000 Basin Power subscribers off the grid. That's right: primary power purchaser Bismarck, North Dakota-based Basin Electric Power Cooperative is an oligopoly paying Prevailing Winds, LLC to rip up land and disturb cultural resources sacred to numerous Indigenous peoples for a grid that has never been more vulnerable to attack and to climate disruptions. 

The average cost of a household photovoltaic system is about $3/watt or around $12,810 before tax credits are factored in and leaving the grid has never been easier so anyone who can afford to it should do it now.

Microgrid technologies are destined to encourage self-reliance, enhance tribal sovereignty, free communities from electric monopolies and net-metering only gives control back to utilities enabled by moral hazard. Ice storms routinely knock out electric power on American Indian reservations often resulting in lost lives and the inevitable cyber attacks on the US will take down the grid for days, even months causing food shortages and mayhem.

TDP photo: a phallus on the Coteau des Prairies competes for the eastern South Dakota skyline with ubiquitous wind turbines near the divide between the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers over Oak Lake, part of a Brookings water supply and a source of the Big Sioux River.

Dakota Excess, KXL in Biden administration crosshairs

President-elect Joe Biden has never spoken publicly about the Dakota Excess pipeline, but last spring Senator, now Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, signed onto a legal document urging a federal judge to revoke a key permit for the pipeline and to protect the integrity of a federal law governing environmental reviews of infrastructure projects. 

Recall that mercenaries and National Guard troops brutalized many of the thousands of demonstrators opposed to the Dakota Excess pipeline who camped on federal land near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. In its aftermath some 761 people were arrested between early August, 2016 and late February, 2017. 

Trump apparatchiks even referred to the American Indians and their compatriots as jihadists and insurgents. 

During the 2014 election cycle Republican South Dakota former Representative now Governor Kristi Noem enjoyed a $2500 face lift from Dakota Excess parent, Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas company that gave nearly $321,000 to Republicans and less than $27,000 to Democrats. In 2015 the South Dakota Public Utilities Cartel (PUC) voted against an environmental impact study of the Dakota Excess pipeline route.

Someone needs to remind Republicans that the train can’t go any faster than 10 MPH between Fort Pierre and Wall because the geology destroys the rail bed every year. I called on numerous businesses in Philip, two restaurants in Midland and the school for nearly five years. The groundwater is undrinkable and eats ice makers just for fun. 

Biden is expected to stop the Keystone XL ecocide immediately after his inauguration, too.

It also seeks to ensure the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “takes seriously” issues raised by Native American tribes fighting the pipeline. The pipeline crosses under the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, and tribal members there are concerned about a potential oil leak. “The Biden administration can shut down the pipeline on Day 1 with the stroke of a pen,” said Jan Hasselman, an attorney representing the tribe in its longstanding lawsuit against the Corps.

Read the rest at the Bismarck Tribune.

'News of the World' brings tour of Santa Fe County

It's always a blast seeing local scenery in a world class film. Beginning in October, 2019, Tom Hanks, the cast and crew of News of the World spent 53 days shooting in the high desert, forests and mountains surrounding Santa Fe.

The following is an excerpt published in the Abuquerque Journal.

“News of the World” was shot entirely on location in and around Santa Fe. For 53 shooting days, cast and crew touched down at multiple locations, spanning two storied movie ranches, the first Native American-owned film studio, two cultural heritage sites, miles of the breathtaking terrain, and the streets of downtown Santa Fe.

Bonanza Creek Ranch, just outside Santa Fe, has sprawling grounds, a 24-building town and five interior sets, surrounded by an unobstructed 360-degree vista. “If you’ve ever seen a Western,” says location manager and animal wrangler Diego Dominguez, “there’s a good chance it was filmed at Bonanza.” With just four weeks to prepare the location, the challenge was to take one seasoned movie ranch and carve it into four distinct towns fighting their way back from the Civil War. “Bonanza had a lot of character to begin with,” says David Crank, production designer. “So the job was to edit what existed – squashing down the color palette, removing trim and any unnecessary pieces – and making everything feel as real as possible.” Separating the ranch into quadrants, Crank identified distinct characteristics that could serve as visual hallmarks for each town, as well as common pieces that could be reused. Piece-by-piece, Wichita Falls, Red River Station, Dallas and Cranfills Gap began to emerge.

Thirty-five miles from Santa Fe, the team touched down at Cochiti Pueblo, a pristine natural landscape cut through by the Rio Grande. The region proved a versatile stand-in for roads leading to Red River Station and the Red River banks, as well as the Shallow Valley. It is one of the most wooded places the team members found in New Mexico, and they went back several times, as it had so much of what they needed.

An hour’s drive south from Santa Fe revealed true wilderness. Off the grid, ringed by the Cerrillos Hills, and the Ortiz, Sangre de Cristo and Jemez mountain chains – 81,000 acres deep, and roamed by deer, elk, mountain lions and bears – the San Cristóbal Ranch sits on the Galisteo Basin, where archaeological discoveries dating back thousands of years ago were unearthed. “Paul Greengrass was drawn to locations that had gigantic, epic vistas in the background; that’s everywhere at San Cristóbal,” Crank says. “The scale is immense, and it’s a harder and much more open landscape than any of the other ranches where we filmed. But there was also extraordinary diversity; the terrain goes from wide-open trails to gentle rolling hills and towering cliffs to more enclosed spaces.”

At Eaves Ranch, the filmmakers found everything they needed to bring the dark side of the West to life. A workhorse of a Western town since Hollywood moved in to shoot “The Cheyenne Social Club” in 1969, Eaves Ranch has grown to house more than three dozen buildings, including a main square and a church.

The rustic El Rancho de las Golondrinas became the shooting location for Johanna’s destination: the farm of her aunt and uncle, Anna and Wilhelm. A living history museum just south of Santa Fe, El Rancho de las Golondrinas is on 200 acres of rural farmland. It is punctuated by colonial homes that stretch back to the early 18th century, along with reconstructions of structures from across New Mexico – one of which became the Leonberger compound. “We found a log cabin in this wooded valley that had once been a schoolhouse,” Crank says. “It had a rather rough field across from it and an adobe structure nearby, everything we needed to create the more established, yet hardscrabble farm.”

Pieces of downtown Santa Fe were transformed into Kidd’s hometown, San Antonio – which came to life the Camel Rock Casino backlot, where the market was staged; and two restored centuries-old residences downtown. The filmmakers created Kidd’s San Antonio residence at a 200-year-old home that features Spanish-Pueblo Revival-style adobe architecture, known as El Zaguán. Its adjacent section of Canyon Road was transformed into the dirt-covered side street where we see Kidd’s approach. Another key location was the downtown law office of Kidd’s attorney, Mr. Branholme. This was captured at the 1890-era Delgado House, which, like El Zaguán, had been donated to the Historic Santa Fe Foundation to ensure its preservation. The final location on the schedule was an old school on the outskirts of Santa Fe, which was transformed into the grounds of San Antonio’s famed San Fernando Cathedral.

ip photo: a film crew is setting up for scene shoots last November on the Galisteo Dam Road under a gorgeous New Mexico morning sky. Click on it for a better look.

Noem succeeding in making red state, LawCo even whiter

Nipple Butte is just north of Lookout Mountain near the stupid little white ditch

Under single party rule South Dakota has been a net inbound Whitopia for at least four years running and Republican Governor Kristi Noem has been adding fuel to the burning crosses.

United Van Lines is reporting upticks, yet another Republican secretary of state is purging voter rolls and the resident electorate is withering under overwhelming disgust and hopelessness. Voter turnout is dismal in Indian Country mostly because tribal nations trapped in South Dakota flounder as they compete with the stingy red moocher state government for resources. 

Among the top inbound states were South Carolina (64%), Oregon (63%), South Dakota (62%) and Arizona (62%), while New York (67%), Illinois (67%), Connecticut (63%) and California (59%) were among the states experiencing the largest exoduses. [United Van Lines]

Lawrence County looks like a bargain compared to property in richer blue states so it's easy to double your money there and even Mike Trucano is cashing out hoping to outrun the state's Nazi onslaught. 

In the last days of 2020, Yankton businessman Steve Slowey purchased two historic hotel properties, spending more than $7 million between the two, purchases that he sees unlimited potential in. [Black Hills Pioneer] 

Spearditch is the seat of whiteness in LawCo so in the winter Exit 14 looks like a monument to the clear-span building that has been air-dropped into Antarctica. Main Street Spearditch is often ignored but a stroll reveals a few 60 or 70-somethings going into cafés, Ace Hardware or one of the banks. Life-long residents drive to Rapid City and Denver to shop forsaking local merchants. 

Real estate investment firm, Keating Resources, bought a 51,790 square-foot manufacturing building located at 125 Industrial Dr., in Spearfish from Polaris Corporation on Jan. 7. [Black Hills Pioneer]

Keating also bought the W.E. Adams building on Sherman Street in Deadwood which was home to a Sears catalog store when I moved to the gulch in 1978. Mary Dunne and Dave Larson owned it right up to the time Dave died. 

A sportsbook is expected to be housed in the building pending legislation regarding sports betting in South Dakota expected to take effect July 1. [Black Hills Pioneer]

The resultant soaring median age of the retirees seeking deliverance from the cultural diversities thriving in Colorado, California, Minnesota, even Arizona and Oregon drives the exploitation of South Dakota's regressive tax structure and reinforces the racially insulated Nazi enclave that Spearditch is today. 

To little surprise the assisted living, funeral home and florist industries do very well and now that brown workers can take the driver's license exam in Spanish white people can spend more time snorting and shooting meth.

Many, if not most, of these obese Republican slackers take advantage of the dynasty trust industry and flee the frozen tundra in their RVs ahead of consecutive six-month winters and strings of below-zero days.

The more white Republicans move to South Dakota the less safe American Indians become. Native Americans represent at least 9% of the population in South Dakota, but by design they account for 14% of all deaths from the Trump virus. 

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

The good news? At this hour a massive wildfire is threatening to burn Lemmon, South Dakota to the ground. 

To put it in perspective, the Native American Covid death rate in SoDak through November was 215.0. For whites it was 129.5. That gap is much larger at older age groups.

— Jonathan Ellis (@argusjellis) January 14, 2021

New Mexico governor adds legal cannabis for all adults as legislative priority

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.

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. 

My priorities for New Mexico's upcoming legislative session include delivering additional pandemic relief, fully funding early childhood education, legalizing recreational cannabis, and expanding and improving access to health care and behavioral health resources. #AllTogetherNM

— Michelle Lujan Grisham (@GovMLG) January 13, 2021

Hickey deletes his twitter account, pledges to leave Faceberg

Steve Hickey is from Kansas City, Missouri and is a former Republican South Dakota legislator and Sioux Falls pastor now teaching at Alaska Christian College. We agree on some things like executive clemency for Leonard Peltier and reconciliation with the tribal nations trapped in South Dakota through land repatriation and that Faceberg is malware. Like many conservatives he has deleted his twitter account and says he's leaving Faceberg. 

Professor Hickey suffers from a terminal lung disease that influences his eschatology and worships a supernatural extraterrestrial as the 'son of god' and believes It is coming to Earth to rule under a one-world government.

Some people are disappointed I’m leaving FB and it seems they may not follow me over to MeWe. It does bum me out. I get private notes that I’m putting my lamp under a bushel and letting “them” win, that voices like mine are needed out there. I’m getting some snark that this is a move into an echo chamber because only people like me will venture over there to follow my feed.

These are days to shift into clandestine mode. We have gone from carefree, to cautious and now need to shift into clandestine mode as related to the surveillance and police state, and church and state, and church against the tentacles of the Empire/Globalism; big tech, media, banking, academia, “science”, etc. I’ll teach more on my thinking on Clandestine Christianity this week and our witness in a world and society that is overtly hostile to all that we value and believe.

The surveillance state is far worse than any of us ever imagined. I’ve been lackadaisical on this for years, reasoning that there is no real way to hide at this point because I have so much out there already it’s really too late and futile. But I was wrong. The terms have changed since I bought my iPhone. I didn’t sign up for what they are now trying to do. They can now reach my bank account, my location and movement, activities, monitor my interests, contacts, etc etc. show up at the door when more than ten of us meet against the every changing lock down orders. Instagram says in the fine print they have all my texts. For what? They expressly call the camera on my phone “out camera” and say they will occasionally take pictures and audio to be better able to suggest “masks and filters” for our own well-being. Huh? We are seeing in small measure them employing their control. We are being monitored and reported. If we post something they don’t like we can lose our job. Not that I care about that part personally but I have to cut them off.

Others wonder why I picked MeWe. I looked into it last summer, signed up and liked it. Maybe something better is out there but the building is on fire and I decided to pick a meet up corner outside where we can regroup. So MeWe is that spot.

We are going to have to learn how to rebuild our social networks and be content with less than we had before. Convenience and laziness is killing us. Just so we don’t have to shift our fat butts in the chair and dig out our wallets we’ve given over our banking info passwords and facial ID. How will we buy or sell without Google and Amazon? Time we learn. [Faceberg post, Steve Hickey]

It's no secret that I loathe what my home state has become so watching the grassland fire danger index go into the extreme category today and tomorrow for much of the chemical toilet warms the cockles of my heart.

Noem driving CNP agenda in South Dakota

The Council for National Policy (to which Kellyanne, Bannon, the DeVos family, the Mercers, Pence… by @jennycohn1 https://t.co/Y2SFRIJn37

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) January 4, 2021

Ian Fury is Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's communications director and an operative of the Council for National Policy - a manifestation created by the extreme white wing of the Republican Party. Fury used to work for Representative Jim Jordan (NAZI-OH) who is also a member of CNP.

CNP has infiltrated Pierre and the extremist South Dakota Legislature because banks in my home state are hoarding nearly $4 TRILLION for its members including Robert Mercer, a Long Island hedge-fund manager who bankrolled Donald Trump's presidential campaigns. It’s important to note Kristi doesn’t write her tweets - they’re generated by her political campaign. Like Trump she’s using her post to milk the prosperity gospel for every penny she can hustle. 

One reason Noem is working to defeat non-tribal cannabis in the red moocher state is that the CNP believes the white workforce will be too impaired so employers will have to hire brown people. She addressed a meeting of the body last August. 

Noem is also a graduate of the Koch Brothers' American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, an anti-think tank think tank that teaches how wedge issues raise campaign dollars for the nut wing of the Republican Party.

The CNP’s 2014 vision statement, reproduced at the front of the directory, succinctly lays out its goal: “A united conservative movement to assure, by 2020, policy leadership and governance that restores religious and economic freedom, a strong national defense, and Judeo-Christian values under the Constitution.” Among them are Nelson Bunker Hunt; Richard DeVos, the co-founder of Amway whose net worth was estimated at $5 billion in 2012; and Foster Friess, a stock picker who was recognized in 2011 for contributions exceeding $1 million to the right-wing funding apparatus started by brothers Charles and David Koch. [The Council for National Policy: Behind the Curtain] 

At Noem's behest Friess just gave $500,000 to a gaggle of religionist organizations in South Dakota.

“‘The idea that Georgia, of all places, could elect two communists to the United States Senate was ridiculous,” Noem said in her speech.’” https://t.co/DMFUfYAxQl https://t.co/88v99UWdz6

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) January 8, 2021

Area bozo caught up in Trump riot

The sovereigns are overwhelmingly white christians using maladapted interpretations of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to rationalize its commitment to a pending race war. 

Using links to the federal storming of Ruby Ridge in Idaho and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas culminating in the Oklahoma City bombing the extreme white wing of the Republican Party worships manuscripts like the Turner Diaries as prayers. 

Many are either convicted felons no longer able to vote or have been marginalized by those who believe that the democratic process is ineffective especially since a person of color was President of the United States. The guy who killed some 60 people in Las Vegas was a white supremacist bent on starting a race war. 

A New Mexico County Commissioner who is no stranger to stirring up controversy is at it again after attending the riot at the U.S. Capitol this week. Now there are calls for his removal because of what he said. “There’s going to be blood running out of that building,” which are the words Couy Griffin is not apologizing for. But he’s getting a lot of backlash about it, even from fellow Republicans and a group who wants him to resign from his elected position. His Cowboys for Trump Twitter page was suspended Friday. [KRQE teevee]

The New Mexico Capitol Roundhouse was also locked down for a time as extremists who idolize Herr Trump demonstrated in Santa Fe.

Recall that during the second Obama term a group of armed thugs, including a retired Air Force master sergeant from South Dakota allied with mormon Cliven Bundy, occupied and ransacked not a courthouse but a national wildlife refuge in none other than Harney County, Oregon. The Ridiculous Right brands Black Lives Matter and Native American protesters unemployed slackers but a horde of Huns that takes over a federal facility to wait out the End Days and terrorizes Congress are called patriots.

In a video posted at his Faceberg account Griffin invoked now dead domestic terrorist Lavoy Finicum who helped vandalize the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in 2016.

Republican leadership is an oxymoron. The faster all the deplorables taser themselves in the testicles until their myocardias infarct the better.

Above image was lifted from the Cowboys for Trump Faceberg page; Griffin is the clothed deplorable in the photo.
 

Can you draw a line from the Malheur occupation to Wednesday? In many ways, yes. I think there’s an even straighter line from the acquittals: after ousting a juror, the remaining Oregonians allowed the Bundys to walk - suggesting how open people were to agreeing with fringe ideas

— Leah Sottile (@Leah_Sottile) January 8, 2021

As Noem says 'nyet' to non-tribal cannabis Oglala Lakota Nation seats commission

Since at least 2011 I've taken my proposal to mirror state gaming statutes to mayors and several commission members to make Deadwood the exclusive non-tribal cannabis market but they have always blown me off because they wanted the sports betting gig. So my position today is that the tribal nations trapped in South Dakota must have exclusive production and distribution privileges. 

Today, as Deadwood is slated to become the only seat of sports gambling in the state Republican Governor Kristi Noem is jamming the brakes on non-tribal cannabis. 

Noem, a Republican, warned in a veto message two years ago that legalizing industrial hemp in South Dakota would lead to legalizing recreational marijuana. Meanwhile she campaigned against Amendment A last fall. Noem described the marijuana votes as “disappointing” when she made her budget recommendations to lawmakers December 8. She spoke at length about the issue. [KELO teevee] 

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). 

On Wednesday, December 30, the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council met for their regular December session; with a vote of 20-0, the council voted to seat Jody Bird Head (three year term), Janelle Rooks (three year term) and Maxine Knife Chief (two year term) on the OST Cannabis Commission. [Lakota Times]

Proving irony is dead the red moocher state that routinely legislates against reproductive rights is dragging its feet on legal cannabis for white people by saying lawyers can't serve the cannabis industry because it's illegal under federal law. 

However, the US House has 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 now that the Georgia runoffs have put the Senate in Democratic hands Vice President Harris will vote to break the inevitable 50-50 tie.

Guest post: Seward will replace Ravnsborg

After more than 100 days of investigation, embattled South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg will be relieved of his post pending release of detailed confirmation of his September 12th distracted driving killing of pedestrian Joseph Boever near Highmore. 

Ravnsborg told 911 operators that he thought he might have hit a deer after hitting Boever who was walking on the shoulder of the Highway when he was struck by Ravnsborg's car. 

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem spent recent weeks vetting potential replacements for Ravnsborg, with former Bllack Hills Corporation Vice President Jim Seward Jr. the frontrunner and likely choice. Noem recently expressed public frustration at the delay in reaching conclusive finding regarding the nature of Ravnsborg's inattentiveness behind the wheel in the moments prior to the accident. 

Critics have already voiced concern about the pick given swirling grist regarding circumstances of Seward Jr.'s involuntary exit from Black HIlls Corp., where he most recently served as Vice President of Wyoming Operations. Sources say complaints from female coworkers regarding unwanted attention led to Seward's eventual ouster. 

Seward previously served as General Counsel for South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard before leaving in 2016 to take the Black Hills Corp. position. 

Ravnsborg meanwhile is presently in Washington D.C. where he will deliver one of South Dakota's three electoral votes to tomorrow's tally of the Electoral College. 

It's not clear whether Ravnsborg will be given the option of resignation or will be fired.

Shad Olson

President Biden could settle the Black Hills Claim

Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and an assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico. 

In 1987, New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, a former New York Knicks basketball player, introduced legislation drafted by Lakota people to return 1.3 million acres, targeting Park Service land, not private land. The bill died in committee. [The battle for the Black Hills]

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 Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has passed resolutions condemning what they say are abuses of the General Mining Law of 1872 that led to the Custer Expedition's discovery of gold in the Black Hills.

The South Dakota Democratic Party should lobby the Biden administration to free Leonard Peltier,  paying the tribes and settling the Black Hills Claim, dissolving the Black Hills National Forest, moving management of the land from the US Department of Agriculture into the Department of Interior as a national monument in cooperation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildfire Management. 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.

No doubt my Native American friends would have said it more eloquently but good article on Tribal Sovereignty and how it is not some act of kindness or grace. Too much was given for treaties to be violated. https://t.co/AwpLzhxxd5

— Brendan Johnson (@Brendan_SD) January 2, 2021

Bullock could stop Keystone XL pipeline

Humans are driving Earth's six mass extinction and are only on historian Christopher Lloyd's list of important species that evolved because of anthropogenic climate change. 

In 2015 the US Department of Transportation swatted ExxonMobil with a million dollar penalty after the Environmental Protection Agency released an overview of cleanup efforts in the aftermath of the 2011 breach of the Silvertip pipeline that spilled 63,000 gallons of crude oil into the Yellowstone River upstream of Billings, Montana. 

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 workers have become commonplace. 

In his final days in office, Governor Bullock holds immense power over the future of Montana and our children. His administration could deny the 401 water crossing permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline threatens waterways at more than 770 water crossings along the proposed route through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska — with over 200 water crossings in Montana alone. Governor Bullock has a choice to make. I urge him to please choose well for all Montana families. Please choose to protect our waterways, our communities, our health and our chance for a livable future. I hope he stands up and makes his administration's final act in office the denial of this permit. [column, Winona Bateman]

Nebraska is enduring damaged roads and unsightly pipe yards, too. 

Some recent rulings by 3 NE judges raises the possibility that @TCEnergy may have to reapply for a route across Nebraska for #keystonexl due to 'substantial' changes made after route approval in 2017. Of course, the bigger issue is whether @JoeBiden will kill the pipeline.

— Paul Hammel (@PaulHammelOWH) December 31, 2020

South Dakota conservatives pondering Patriot Party after Trump denounces Thune

The “Primary John Thune in 2022” Faceberg page has gone over 2400 members. They’re serious but not serious enough to run a candidate against him in the general election because nobody can match Thune's $13 million war chest. Making him burn off a few thousand dollars won’t weaken him one bit but moderate Jeff Lassle is considering getting into the SDGOP Senate primary as a symbolic protest. A big name principled conservative has yet to announce an affiliated run in the general election although Scyller Borglum is making the right noises.

I hope to see the great Governor of South Dakota @KristiNoem, run against RINO @SenJohnThune, in the upcoming 2022 Primary. She would do a fantastic job in the U.S. Senate, but if not Kristi, others are already lining up. South Dakota wants strong leadership, NOW!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2021