6/29/21

Catholics all about raping children but won't prescribe a death with dignity?

New Mexico is the political inverse of my home state of South Dakota. It's where if the packed Supreme Court of the United States overturns Roe v. Wade women will still be free to exercise their reproductive rights because Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the Respect New Mexico Women and Families Act that repealed the 1969 state statute banning abortion. 

New Mexico's Democratic governor and unpaid legislators not only legalized cannabis for all adults they passed legislation making a death with dignity legal for people with terminal illnesses.
Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, part of the Christus Health network of Catholic hospitals, will not prescribe the lethal medications to terminally ill patients, spokesman Arturo Delgado said. “Healthcare in the Catholic tradition recognizes the rights of patients to treatment, care and services within our capability and mission,” Delgado wrote in an email. [Santa Fe New Mexican, New Mexico's aid-in-dying law takes effect]
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas has been investigating predator priests and the Archdiocese of Santa Fe was forced to file for bankruptcy because of the high number of lawsuits.
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6/27/21

Today's intersection: fire retardant and cheatgrass



In the past slurry bombers usually dropped two toxic PHOS-CHEK products on wildland fires. LC95A is a liquid concentrate and MVP100 is a powder mixed with water at tanker bases. 

But, as a result of two years research the US Forest Service and taxpayers are buying a less poisonous ammonium phosphate-based compound from Perimeter Solutions. PHOS-CHEK LCE20-Fx is essentially a fertilizer mixed with a red dye for increased visibility from the air. Because of its toxicity air tankers applying these retardants on wildfires must avoid waterways to prevent fish kills. 

Despite being bombarded with thousands of gallons of retardant the Mullen Fire burned some 177,000 acres about 28 miles west of Laramie, Wyoming into mid-October of 2020. Today, cheatgrass, an invasive plant introduced to the Forest as feed for domestic livestock has infested much of the Mullen burn area. Cheatgrass can produce more than 10,000 plants per square yard and is a major fire risk because it dries out more quickly than native vegetation. 

Now, the Forest Service, the US Department of Agriculture and the Wyoming Game & Fish Department have begun spraying the herbicide Rejuvra® with a helicopter on cheatgrass in a 9,200 acre area within the Mullen fire perimeter with the hopes of reducing, maybe even eradicating its presence. People recreating on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest have been urged to avoid the kill zone. Imagine the effects on native pollinators and cervid genetics.

So, applying fertilizer that was developed by Monsanto in the 1960s then spraying another Bayer CropScience poison to control weeds on public lands? Isn't lobbyist capitalism just another reason to move the Forest Service from USDA?
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6/25/21

Interior, BLM struggle to manage feral horses and burros

Feral horses range freely on a Kewa Nation pasture

The modern horse was introduced to North America by the Spanish late in the 15th Century and then by other European colonizers. Acquiring the horse in the 1740s enabled the Lakota to win the Black Hills. 

Today, tribal officials say there are an estimated 75,000 feral horses roaming the Navajo Nation, "ravaging the range and depleting water sources." Because they have no natural predators feral horse herds double in size every four to five years. “You don’t have wild horses anymore. You have their bodies, but they are … domesticated,” said one researcher.

After the Bureau of Land Management held livestock production scoping sessions in 2020 the Trump Organization ended some protections for endangered species and public lands because ranchers insist grazing cattle reduces wildfire risks despite copious evidence and strong arguments to the contrary. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and American Farm Bureau Federation are pushing for the capture and slaughter of some 130,000 feral horses over 10 years at an estimated cost of $1 billion. 

The Trump Organization proposed slashing $10 million and 29 positions from the Interior Department’s feral horse and burro program. Funding for birth control was cut and the Bureau of Land Management was allowed to sell horses protected under a 1971 law to be harvested and the meat sold mostly abroad. The United States already sends more than 12,000 horses annually across the southern border for slaughter ultimately bound for markets in Europe and Asia.

Today feral horses and burros on public lands number nearly 100,000 or about four times what the landscape can sustain without damaging habitat. In Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and seven other states the BLM adopts out, seeks private pastures for, and feeds the horses. The cost of keeping feral horses in holding pens off wild lands costs taxpayers at least $49 million annually. Wyoming has the second-highest feral horse population in the country with at least 7,144 of these horses. The BLM’s target is 3,725. 

In an era when western states are scrambling to preserve habitat for bison, wapiti, bighorn sheep, pronghorns, deer, the threatened Greater sage grouse and all the other wildlife at risk to the Republican Party how is running nurseries for introduced species like wild horses and burros either conservative or sustainable? 

Ironic that in a country that exports more weapons of mass destruction than all others combined and relentlessly hunts nearly anything that moves, in parts of the Mountain West and even in bright red Wyoming Equus ferus is still seen as a pet.
Park County commissioners and wild horse advocates sparred over the words and messaging delivered in the draft Natural Resources Management Plan during a meeting last week. Drawing the most ire from the wild horse advocates was a perceived negative description of the herd occupying the McCullough Peaks area, referred to as “feral” in the draft. “They have been mistakenly labeled non-native or feral,” a letter written by wild horse advocacy group Friends of a Legacy to the commissioners said. Commissioner Lee Livingston said although he previously used the horses himself, he said the quality of the McCullough herd has drastically declined in recent times. Livingston said the wild horses are no more than descendants from runaway ranch horses. [Cody Enterprise, Horses ‘native or feral?’ Sides debate proposed plan]
Tracy Stone-Manning is President Joe Biden's choice to lead the BLM and if confirmed she will serve under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. Stone-Manning has called nearly every Trump era ruling "illegal" including its plans to manage feral horses and burros. 

Clear the second growth conifers and eastern red cedar then 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 BLM pastures onto other public land to control exotic grasses and buy out the welfare ranchers Tony Dean warned us about.
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6/23/21

Biden administration returning to science when enforcing WOTUS rules



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.
 
In 2018 New Mexico's Hector Balderas joined a bipartisan group of mostly western attorneys general that included Republicans Tim Fox of Montana and former South Dakota AG Marty Jackley in a lawsuit against the Trump Organization's EPA. They argued EPA failed to promote a rule that would have forced hard rock mines to meet federal financial bond rules passed during the Obama years. 
On his first day in office, President Biden issued a flurry of executive orders to reverse actions taken by the Trump administration. Among those, a review of the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule (2020NWPR) was included and had the effect of revising the Obama-era Clean Water Rule that included a fairly broad definition of the term “Waters of the US” (WOTUS). On June 9, 2021, as a result of the review of the 2020NWPR triggered by Biden’s Executive order 13990, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Army announced “their intent to revise the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ (WOTUS) to better protect our nation’s vital water resources that support public health, environmental protection, agricultural activity and economic growth." [Policy pennings: Biden administration to reconsider “Waters of the US” definition and regulations]
Regulations are protections so if EPA actually enforced bonding requirements federal rules could supersede state regulations and can change with each administration to satisfy political expediency instead of advancing the greater good.
David Brooks, Montana Trout Unlimited’s executive director, said the 2015 rule was established by a well-vetted process that incorporated both public participation and strong science, and he’s encouraged to see the EPA consider a return to that rule. [What ‘waters of the U.S.’ means for Montana]
According to Rachel Conn, projects director for Taos-based Amigos Bravos, New Mexico is one of just three states that has no authority from the EPA to regulate discharges of pollution so she was party to the suit seeking to reverse the Trump edict. Learn more about that at the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Republican welfare ranchers are the real ecoterrorists who hate socialism unless they benefit from subsidies so desertification driven by livestock grazing and industrial agriculture has turned parts of the high plains and much of my home state of South Dakota into scorched earth.

Trump’s military rescinded the surplus water agreements just before President-elect Joe Biden took the oath.

ip photo: the Rio Grande at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.
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6/22/21

Blogger deleting Faceberg, posts

Faceberg is malware. 

I just got put in jail for seven days for calling South Dakota’s governor a reactionary cracker. 

To be sure the Faceberg community standards are arbitrary and capricious. That’s not an accident. Twitter is dominated by progressives while Facebook tends toward extreme white wing users. Faceberg is so swamped with people deleting their accounts it can’t even begin mine until the middle of July so I am doing it myself manually. There’s quite a pile. For now I am going to leave up some posts that shine light on the Ice King and his empire.

"The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:

1. Ben Shapiro
2. Ben Shapiro
3. Sean Hannity
4. Human Rights Campaign
5. NumbersUSA
6. Fox News
7. Dan Bongino
8. The New York Times
9. Dan Bongino
10. Ben Shapiro"
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6/20/21

Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers' Communion diktat all about the money



Ireland and Australia are leading calls to prosecute the cult's leaders and as lawsuits and the US Department of Justice swamp the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers the future of the religionist mob isn't looking very rosy.

Even as membership in the sect cascades to record lows the extreme white wing of bishops in the United States wants to deny Communion to Americans who support reproductive rights including President Joe Biden. Recall a similar diktat threatened former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle with excommunication. 


Under a not so secret agreement with President Biden's career criminal predecessor the international crime syndicate that is the Roman Catholic Church got some $3.5 billion tax free under the Paycheck Protection Program to continue paying down lawsuits for its ongoing sex abuse scandals despite assets of an estimated $30 billion. US Catholic voters were evenly split between President Biden and Herr Trump.
Asked on Friday if he was concerned by the bishops' decision and if he would be blocked from participating in Holy Communion, Biden said, "That's a private matter and I don't think that's going to happen." The president has said he personally opposes abortion but supports a woman's right to choose. He did not keep a Hyde Amendment ban on federal funds for abortions in his first budget presented earlier this year. According to a Pew Research poll from 2019, about 56% of Catholics said they thought abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Sixty Catholic Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives released a statement on Friday urging the church not to deny elected officials Communion over one issue.

Image lifted from the Santa Fe Reporter.
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6/19/21

Minnesota Republican wants his guns — and edibles, too

Still believe the Second Amendment is absolute? 

Think again. 

There are some 43,000 patients registered in Minnesota's therapeutic cannabis program including State Representative Rod Hamilton (R-Mountain Lake) who has multiple sclerosis. He can't renew his permit to carry or even fire a gun legally so he wants to change Minnesota's laws to remove the herb from his state's schedule that places it on the same level as heroin and LSD.

Minnesota's Republican-dominated legislature just passed a law that allows adults in the state’s therapeutic cannabis program to purchase raw flower and smoke it increasing participation while significantly driving down costs.

But, until Congress legalizes on the federal level you still can't buy a gun if you admit being addicted to cannabis so the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) will make sure you lose your Second Amendment rights if you admit to an addiction to cannabis, therapeutic or otherwise. “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, [cannabis] or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”

A similar conflict will occur in my home state of South Dakota now that the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe is preparing to dispense cannabis from its operation in the southeastern part of that state so why anyone would want to be on Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's dope list remains a mystery. 

Yes, Republicans preach civil rights for human zygotes but deny the protections of the First, Second, Fourth and Ninth Amendments to people who enjoy cannabis.
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6/17/21

Another beetle thinning ponderosa pine in BHNF

Aspen, Rocky Mountain juniper, white spruce and bur oak were at least as abundant as ponderosa pine was in the Black Hills during pre-settlement times. But today second growth ponderosa pine is overrunning parts of the Black Hills National Forest and stressing water supplies. 

A century and a half of poor ranching and land management practices have created an unnatural overstory best controlled by the mountain pine beetle, prescribed fires and periodic wildfires. The BHNF is trying to restore limber pine (Pinus flexilis) in the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve but native Douglas fir and lodgepole pine are virtually extirpated from the Hills. 

Now, another insect called the Ips engraver beetle is culling trees that are highly stressed by drought conditions. According to Kurt Allen, an entomologist for the US Forest Service in Region 2 impacts from the Ips beetle typically only last for two or three years but pine trees that are completely brown or red are dead and the beetle has moved on. The Forest Service generally allows the beetle to run its course and doesn't treat affected stands. Bark beetles shape water supplies throughout the Mountain West.

As many readers are aware the first US Forest Service timber sale took place in the Black Hills near Nemo but only after nearly all the old growth of every native tree species had been cleared for mine timbers, railroad ties and construction. 

Learn more about ponderosa pine overgrowth and stress on Black Hills aquifers linked here.

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6/16/21

Kristi Noem would ban Pulitzer Prize winner if she could



We all know Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem (KLAN) is a racist so now she is exploiting ethnic cleansing to advance her national aspirations. Because of her toxic narcissism and desire to hoe in the cash by the boxful Noem would ban authors like Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Erdrich whose images of the Native American Genocide are burned into her work. 

The United States was founded on the backs of enslaved people as systematic genocide became a way of life for white christians quoting scripture as they slaughtered their fellow humans. 

During the height of the pandemic Trump-worshipping Republicans wanted to ditch masks and get kids back into schools. But most now even admit they want to end social studies and turn students into mindless wage slaves. 

Teachers' wages in red states like South Dakota surf the bottom because Republicans are Balkanizing education amid a fight over critical race theory and in my home state academic freedom is under attack from a reactionary, Earth hating, self-dealing, authoritarian governor.

Noem quoted a WalletHub finding in her latest jobs propaganda but another survey they did just last week found South Dakota’s economy at 33rd.

Learn more about the Republican Party's war on American history at NPR.

Above image of Kristi Noem is by Marty Two Bulls.
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6/14/21

Socialism brings Earth haters to Biden table



Little wonder the Big Sioux River is a sewer of biblical proportions. 

South Dakota's dairies are wreaking habitat havoc all along the state's border with Minnesota and like most of the state, southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa are Republican strongholds where dairies, swine units and other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have devastated water supplies by contaminating wells with nitrates. 

Now, because of environmental degradation driven by CAFOs officials with the Lewis & Clark Regional Water System (LCRWS) want to expand output from its current 45 million gallons per day to 60 million gallons per day.  Water levels in the Missouri River and its basin are at historic lows.

Contact with the Big Sioux River can cause spontaneous abortions in pregnant women but the congressional delegations from the tristate region are Republican Earth haters elected to bring bacon home to their districts while decrying socialism, big gubmint and the US Army Corps of Engineers who manage the Waters of the United States or WOTUS. 

Republicanism 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 so they're begging the Biden administration for more money.

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6/9/21

Montana Democrats first in US to create formal role for Indigenous

In an effort to reverse voter apathy in Indian Country the Montana Democratic Party has become the first state party to formally include Indigenous as equitable partners.

Montana is home to 12 Indigenous languages three of which are at risk of going extinct after Donald Trump weaponized a novel coronavirus strain killing many Assiniboine, Gros Ventre and Montana Salish elders. During Montana's last legislative session Trump worshiping reactionary Republicans moved to cut funding for Native cultural preservation. Outside Montana’s reservations the state has become the new Orange County, California where the Last Best Place is becoming the next best strip mine and a welfare rancher's wet dream. 

A transplant to Montana, the state's christianic Republican governor was the richest member of Congress who literally bought his seat in the state’s Executive Branch.

In past years the Trump Organization used the federal courts to punish tribal nations who built casinos Herr Trump said were competition so he slow-walked resources to reservations effectively deploying COVID-19 as a biological weapon in Native America.
Indigenous people comprise at least 6.7% of Montana’s population of 1 million. In 2018, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester won by 17,913 votes, and in 2016, Gov. Steve Bullock won by 19,818 votes. Both victories were within the margin of the Native vote. [Nora Mabie, Great Falls Tribune]
David Treuer was born of a Holocaust survivor and Ojibwe mother. He wrote in The Atlantic that he believes that most land held in America's national parks should be remanded to Indigenous peoples but it's my view that the land held in the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service should also be part of that trust.

ip photo: Slippery Ann Creek in Montana's CM Russell National Wildlife Refuge.
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6/7/21

As wolves and grizzlies are targeted for livestock predation bald eagles liberated more Idaho wild lands

Not wolves, cougars or even coyotes — in 2019 golden eagles levied a 53% mortality rate on domestic sheep on one ranch in Wyoming. Yet, failed red states like Wyoming, Montana and Idaho are targeting wolves and grizzlies for extermination. 

In blue state New Mexico the Santa Fe and Carson National Forests have prohibited domestic sheep and goats on public lands to protect native bighorn sheep.

Just north of the southern border long-time environmental activist, Ted Turner has teamed up with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the State of New Mexico to foster a pair of endangered Mexican gray wolves and their pups on his 243 square mile ranch near the Gila National Forest. Nearby, jaguars are being reintroduced.
In April, Rocky Matthews started finding dead lambs on his farm near Murtaugh Lake. At first, Matthews thought someone had killed the animals with a pellet gun. It wasn’t until he saw an eagle attack his flock that he realized the true culprit. Penalties for killing a bald eagle can reach a maximum $100,000 fine and one year in prison for a first offense by an individual. Matthews and his wife, Becca, filled out the paperwork and, if approved, they will get paid 75% of the market value of the livestock. [Magic Valley (Idaho) Times-News]
Learn more about the Republican war on the Earth at Boise Public Radio. 

A study conducted in Montana's Bitterroot Valley between 2011 and 2018 found elevated lead levels in 90% of the golden eagles that winter there.

ip photo: bald eagles roosting in Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.
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6/6/21

How Trump could become POTUS

Democrats should end the filibuster then if they fall into the minority the lame duck Senate can restore it, easy peasy.

After they removed Hillary Clinton before the 2018 midterms there is no way in Hell the GOP would have given a President Tim Kaine the time to choose a Veep so here's a Sunday nightmare scenario for those who slept through civics. The Speaker of the House doesn't need to be an incumbent member of Congress so if the Republicans regain the House of Representatives they could elect Trump as Speaker then assassinate POTUS Biden and VPOTUS Harris and Trump would become Chief Executive.

Cartoon: Michael de Adder.
 
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6/5/21

While NMGOP, Noem in Texas Stansbury dances to victory in ABQ

My home state of South Dakota will suffer brain drain for years to come and New Mexico has its own set of challenges but living where the Republican Party is virtually powerless and Democrats rule is well worth it. 

Last month Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem joined her fellow Earth haters in Texas as a pimp for the New Mexico GOP. Like Herr Trump did she’s using her post to milk the prosperity gospel for every penny she can hustle. The rally was held there to protest face covering mandates and to slime Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham who just announced her intention to run for reelection. 

Yes, while Kristi was in Texas hoeing in the cash by the boxful Democrat Melanie Stansbury buried her Republican opponent in Albuquerque. 

The kicker? After telling voters they can’t trust the 2020 election results the NMGOP chair blamed poor turnout on people not trusting the election results!
Steve Pearce’s Texas two-step backfired, bringing about a predictable response. Melanie Stansbury, the Democratic candidate for Congress, campaigned in Albuquerque while Pearce and Republicans from Ohio and South Dakota exhorted New Mexico conventioneers in Texas. Stansbury trounced Moores: 60 percent to 36 percent. [GOP boss full of alibis after another lopsided loss]
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6/4/21

State: community name change to Little Wound would require election

This blogger has been arguing for Lakota names on South Dakota's geographic features for nearly thirty years. 

The South Dakota Board of Geographic Names spent more of their time renaming the Squaw Humper Dam than on the proposal to change the name of a local jurisdiction to Oglala Lakota County. Democratic former State Representative Kevin Killer, now president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, backed the name change of the South Dakota county from one based on white conquest and helped get the issue passed in 2015.
Last fall, the Medicine Root District executive board voted to change the name of the town Kyle to Little Wound on the request of community members, led by Marcell Bull Bear, Lakota elder historian and Oglala Lakota College instructor. According to Rory Mennenger, Secretary of State’s Office, Elections & Federal Project Coordinator, the statutes that apply for the changing the name of a city appears to require an election. Little Wound was one of the Oglala chiefs who believed education was one of the answers for a better future for their people. [Lakota Times]


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6/3/21

Santa Fe County facing more recycling pressure after China balks

After China instated her ban on importing waste plastics in response to the Trump Organization's destructive trade policies some communities are learning to improvise.

It takes trucks, tub grinders and balers dedicated to specific materials on a regional scale to do recycling right. 

We sell millions of tons of salvage material to India and Asia to be recycled and tearing up our own ground mining for virgin minerals while steel, copper and rare earth metals are buried in landfills. Most plastics can be pyrolysized for fuel or added to asphalt. Japan recycles nearly 100% of her glass but the US has thousands of mountains of glass cullet from the municipal waste stream just waiting to be repurposed, yes, even for the silica used in hydraulic fracturing.

Online shopping is driving increased cardboard recycling and Albuquerque's plastic bag ban will go back into effect in August. Growstone, Inc. buys Albuquerque's glass and manufactures a medium for horticultural applications. In Nova Scotia, 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 pilings and agricultural posts.

New Mexico surfs the bottom of the US for recycling but Maine does pretty well. Denver and Boulder, Colorado are among the best cities for doing recycling right. 

In Santa Fe County Reunity Resources has stepped up to compost food scraps, organics, wood and yard waste for garden soil while local recycling has increased to some 11,000 tons a year. 
For the past nine years, the team at the Buckman Road Recycling & Transfer Station has quietly soldiered on, sorting and processing Santa Fe’s waste. Previously, waste managers happily sent recycling to China on empty container ships making their return journey across the Pacific Ocean, where the materials found new life as recycled plastic products. But the sudden shift put US cities and counties in an awkward position. Instead of dumping the county’s recycling program, Santa Fe’s waste managers opted to dip into their savings to continue the service. In May of 2019, instead of shipping all recyclable materials to Friedman Recycling of Albuquerque—as BuRRT had done for years—the agency reopened its Material Recycling Facility after four years of closure due to unsustainable operations costs. The “MeRF,” first opened in 2007, enabled the site to process mixed paper and some mixed container waste, which includes sorting and baling the materials. [More Trash Costs More Cash]
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6/2/21

Eco-warrior will take on eco-terrorists

In 1993 Missoula's Tracy Stone-Manning was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony in a 1989 tree spiking incident in Idaho's Clearwater National Forest. 

Eco-warrior Stone-Manning became an aide to Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), was chief of staff for Montana Governor Steve Bullock, ran the state’s Department of Environmental Quality and as the director of the Clark Fork Coalition she guided dam removal and river cleanup. She's currently the National Wildlife Federation’s senior adviser for conservation policy who blasted the Trump Organization's acting director of the Bureau of Land Management for enabling the marauding Bundy clan to abuse public lands.

Today, Stone-Manning is President Joe Biden's choice to lead the BLM and if confirmed she will serve under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. In 2019 Democratic then-New Mexico Representative Haaland led a House subcommittee hearing on anti-government extremism emphasizing that the violent ideologies expressed by the Bundys were spurred by white elected Republicans in the Mountain West. Now, at the direction of Sec. Haaland the BLM has even hired a security specialist to outline strategies to defend federal employees and public property against welfare ranchers and white supremacists.

In a statement Tester said Stone-Manning is a “tireless public lands champion with a lifetime of experience." She has been an outspoken opponent of moving the BLM headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado.
Qualified? There is absolutely no question. (She’s far more directly qualified to lead BLM than was Zinke to take over Interior.) Every stop in Stone-Manning’s remarkable career has applicability to this job. So here’s the question: Will Republican Steve Daines subvert his political and policy differences with Stone-Manning and get behind an unassailably qualified Montana candidate? Or will he continue to play the shrill, strident partisan role he has taken on this session, ever since fund-raising off spurious allegations that Democrats were trying to “steal the election?” Stone-Manning is far more qualified than the last BLM leader Daines supported — William Perry Pendley, the lawyer who advocated selling off federal lands. Her confirmation would go far toward restoring professionalism to a politicized agency, and would clearly be both an honor and an advantage for Montana. [Lee Newspapers of Montana]
Eco-terrorist Ammon Bundy has announced he will run in the Republican primary in a bid to unseat Idaho Governor Brad Little. 

Learn more about that at Jefferson Public Radio.
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6/1/21

New Mexico's 1st District wised up after Heather Wilson

Spurred by Heather Wilson, formerly the president of the South Dakota School of Mines, secretary in Donald Trump's Department of the Air Force and now president of the University of Texas El Paso, a Rapid City firm specializing in toxic waste had been floating the idea of a deep borehole where radioactive materials could be dumped. Wilson is a Republican former US Representative from New Mexico's 1st US congressional district, Air Force officer and lobbyist linked to double dealing at laboratories with ties to the military/industrial complex. 

But it looks like voters in the 1st District have seen the light. 
State Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat, is considered the favorite in the special congressional election. While the district was once a Republican stronghold, Democrats now make up 47 percent of registered voters compared to 28 percent Republican. A Republican held the seat for 40 years, but the seat shifted to and has remained in Democratic control since 2009. The district includes most of Bernalillo County, all of Torrance County and parts of Sandoval, Santa Fe and Valencia counties. As of Friday morning, 77,253 ballots had been cast, including 45,354 from registered Democrats and 22,457 from registered Republicans, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. [Santa Fe New Mexican]
When now Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was the US Representative for the 1st District she was one of the sponsors of the Chaco Culture Heritage Protection Act of 2019 that would have codified the 10-mile buffer zone around Chaco Canyon. Protection for Chaco is closer than ever.

Learn more at KUNM.
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