SDGOP disintegrating over CO2 pipelines, vote tabulators

Industrial agriculture is ecocide and for those of us who love the Earth CO2 pipelines are subsidized corporate greenwashing but ironically many Republicans actually benefitting from reduced greenhouse emissions decry the sequestration of carbon as caving to the Green New Deal. 

But as the South Dakota Republican Party faces disintegration and braces for potential violence that could test Kristi Noem's riot boosting law during Veto Day in Pierre at least two issues threaten the Big Tent. Republicans are militantly divided over the utility of eminent domain for private enterprise for pipelines to move carbon dioxide but are just fine with employing it for the entrepreneurial transport of oil and gas.

The most controversial part of the new law is its perceived effect on the Public Utilities Commission and local setback laws. Prior state law allowed the commission to overrule counties’ pipeline setbacks, although the commission has so far declined to do that. [New group aims to refer carbon pipeline law to voters]

A private plane carrying Republican former Mesa, Colorado County Clerk Tina Peters and other Trump operatives took them to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to attend a rally held by Mike Lindell. Peters' trial on charges that she copied files of the county's election tabulations then shared them with Pillow Guy, Lindell has been pushed back to at least July. Peters is probably going to jail after compromising election results and forcing polling machines to be discarded and Lindell is bankrupt.

Most of the county officials who administer elections in South Dakota don’t consider hand counting to be an effective or efficient method of tabulating votes. That’s the result of a South Dakota News Watch survey that saw input from 49 of the state’s 66 county auditors. Auditors are elected officials who supervise county, state and federal elections as well as maintain financial records and other duties. The hand count debate comes as South Dakota is viewed as a proving ground by election reformists who claim that recent elections across the county were marred by hacking or fraud, allegations repeatedly rejected by courts of law as well as Democratic and Republican election leaders. Jim Eschenbaum, a semi-retired farmer from Miller who serves as a Hand County commissioner, thinks some of the election reformists have gone too far. [Hand counting vs. voting machines: Debate rages in South Dakota]

The grassland fire danger index will reach the high and very high categories Sunday for most of South Dakota and will reach the extreme category Monday for the northwestern part of the pathetic red state.

Based in Brookings, Pat Powers is a morbidly obese establishment SDGOP blogger whose kids all suffer from the effects of ag chemicals but is in the bag for Summit's pipeline boondoggle nevertheless. The irreversibly polluted Big Sioux River runs through Brookings County.

In a related story more than half of Iowa's streams and lakes are impaired because of runoff from industrial agriculture.