Land board blocks Montana overreach in APR bison case

American Prairie (APR) near Malta in north-central Montana got its first bison from Wind Cave National Park in occupied South Dakota in 2005. 

The group hopes to have native animals grazing on some 5000 square miles or about 3.2 million acres of private land including 63,000A. in Phillips County connected with corridors to federal land stewarded by the Bureau of Land Management and to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. Total land including the purchase of 34 ranches is as big as the State of Connecticut or the size of Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks combined. Adjacent is the Fort Belknap Reservation where the Nakoda and the Aaniiih manage a range with more than a thousand bison so building a tourist destination helps economic development for the entire region. 

Two recent acquisitions totaling 12,534 acres bring APR's deeded and leased property to more than 475,000 acres despite an appeal by the State of Montana and a murder of Earth haters who failed to stop the non-profit from grazing bison on eighteen US Bureau of Land Management allotments in five counties. A recent decision by the BLM allows for 7,969 animal unit months at $1.35 per AUM of permitted use with a 1:1 conversion from cattle to bison. 

That Republicans in Montana's executive branch and welfare ranchers are angry about the ruling means it's the right thing to do.

We all know this: unless the West embraces rewilding on portions of the Missouri River basin west of a north/south line from Oacoma, South Dakota through the CM Russell National Wildlife Refuge to Yellowstone National Park, north to the Yukon and south to the Rio Grande water wars will clog the courts leaving violent armed vigilantism to settle disputes.

Learn more at American Prairie.

Yellowstone National Park calls for more bison in the park, increased hunting of animals outside the park & an expansion of the tribal transfer program in new plan. #mtnewshttps://t.co/pvO08rOsKX via @MTFreePress

— Amanda Eggert (@amandaleggert) June 7, 2024

Earth hater Burgum embraces CO2 pipeline that splits GOP

In 2016 Donald Trump won North Dakota by a 36 percent margin but in 2017 the Trump Organization blew off Governor Doug Burgum's request for a major disaster declaration that would have helped cover some of the estimated $38 million gift to the law enforcement industry who busted heads and chilled the civil rights of water protectors trying to stop the Dakota Excess pipeline. 

Now, Summit Carbon Solutions wants to dig a $5.5 billion pipeline that would rip up some 2000 miles of colonized tribal lands where thousands of Indigenous Americans are buried. But, industrial agriculture is ecocide and for those of us who love the Earth shucks like Summit’s are subsidized corporate greenwashing and ironically many Republicans actually benefitting from caching greenhouse emissions decry them as caving to the Green New Deal. So Summit turned to using eminent domain to condemn land for private enterprise provoking resistance from many Republican landowners and their surrogates. 

But, Burgum is championing the CO2 pipeline project that aligns with President Joe Biden’s push for the Green New Deal.

While Burgum has outlined plans to make North Dakota carbon neutral by 2030, he’s steered clear of describing the pipeline or other carbon capture initiatives as environmentally friendly. Instead, he touts them as a lucrative business opportunity for North Dakota that might ultimately assist the fossil fuel industry. [A potential Trump VP pick backs a controversial CO2 pipeline favored by the Biden White House]

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed SB 201 which some call the "Landowner Bill of Rights" further splitting the South Dakota Republican Party.

The two Republican parties consist of one group of traditional conservatives and another group that’s even more conservative and not at all traditional. One group is interested in steering the ship of state while the other would rather run it aground. [Dana Hess, Primary upsets could cause a hard right turn in the Legislature]

Recall that in response to that citizen resistance in a neighboring state Mrs. Noem signed a bill that revived that state’s criminal and civil penalties for rioting and incitement so had Donald Trump led his insurrection in South Dakota he would have run afoul of her riot boosting law. But in the eyes of some that as Commander in Chief Trump clearly failed the State of North Dakota for not removing the protesting citizens from land managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Weaponized wildfire likely in southern New Mexico blazes

Weaponized wildfire has not been ruled out as residents return to their properties in Ruidoso, New Mexico where the Federal Bureau of Investigation is seeking public assistance in identifying the cause and offering $10,000 leading to the arrests and convictions of those responsible for the South Fork and Salt Fires. 

Since at least 2001 the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have disrupted many domestic terrorists and lone wolves who intended to launch attacks on the United States with explosives and other weapons. 

Southern and southeastern New Mexico is home to many descendants of the Confederacy who back a convicted Republican felon as unitary executive and are quick to point fingers at the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for wildfires. 

Disgraced Republican former Otero County Commissioner and Trump disciple, Couy Griffin broke into the US Capitol, plotted the violent overthrow of the federal government, alleged voter fraud when there was none, arbitrarily defied the Lincoln National Forest's plan revision and threatened Democrats with murder. He is barred from ever holding office again after being prosecuted under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment when he was convicted in a case brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in 2022. 

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.

Hopefully they will be as successful in preventing foreign-inspired pyroterrorism and will become better at preventing massacres by deranged white domestic terrorists with stockpiles of weapons. [Wildfire Today]

Learn more at KRWG.

Today in red state failure: BHNF being ripped apart over wildlife extermination

Kill off apex predators like cougars, spray atrazine, neonicotinoids and glyphosate on everything then wonder why cervids like deer and wapiti contract a prion contagion like chronic wasting disease?

Now, the Bearlodge Ranger District of the Black Hills National Forest in northeastern Wyoming is shopping for Earth haters who want to be outfitters and guides for hunting deer, wapiti, cougars, and wild turkeys. Each ranger district has this option but it tends to happen most often where congressional delegations are Republicans and Crook County is a colony of whiny anti-government welfare ranchers. 

420 permits are issued for over 24,000 head of cattle to graze the BHNF for pennies a month in June through October and according to some alarmists wapiti can spread brucellosis and wild turkeys can transmit avian flu to fragile livestock.

Meanwhile, research scientists are sounding the alarm for bats after white nose syndrome was discovered in two species at Devils Tower National Monument in 2021. Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd) is the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome and in part because of WNS the US Fish and Wildlife Service extended Endangered Species Act protection for the northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) despite protestations from Republicans. Insects coated with industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals in water supplies are weakening immune systems spreading WNS to bats as part of Earth's anthropogenic-driven sixth mass extinction. 

Cattle oilers laced with insecticides are placed near water supplies on public lands where livestock graze contributing to the deaths of susceptible bats.  

The northern long-eared, little brown, and tri-colored bat are three of the species Northern Hills Ranger District Wildlife Biologist Amy Hammesfahr describes, when she says bats are hanging by a loose thread. [Black Hills Pioneer]

During one season in the Black Hills a white trophy hunter illegally slew a three-month old, fourteen pound cougar kitten. The idiot was cited for a class one misdemeanor improper tagging, which carries a penalty of fines to $1,000, one year in jail and loss of hunting privileges for a year. That particular incident is par for the course in Lawrence and Crook Counties where firearms and alcohol mixed with meth chasers are as common as sibling marriages.

ip image: cattle shitting in a sensitive public watershed in the Northern Black Hills.

The Bearlodge RD is soliciting interest from businesses & individuals wishing to offer new outfitting & guiding services for hunting big game (deer & elk), hunting mountain lions, & hunting spring turkeys on NFS lands. https://t.co/04mKBnvLyT pic.twitter.com/NlV76MBYST

— Black Hills NF (@BlackHillsNF) June 18, 2024

"South Dakota Amtrak: Feasible, defensible, and much-requested! - SD1"

From my inbox.

My Fellow South Dakotans,!!

The final round, Round 4, workshops of the FRA Amtrak Long Distance Service Study have wrapped up! 

All proposed new long-distance routes are feasible and defensible, including the routes through South Dakota. Now it will be on us to make sure Congress works to enact these nationally-critical, nationally-essential, passenger rail service routes. The routes through South Dakota are likely to perform similarly to other long-distance routes.

FRA Long Distance Study- Round 4 Workshops 

The concept of expanded passenger rail has continued to gain widespread attention and support. The project team received over 47,000 comments in the month after the Round 3 workshops, with 99% supportive of passenger rail. 

The Minneapolis/St. Paul- Denver route was one of the most commented on routes after the workshops, generating almost 300 comments alone. As we have seen these past few months, South Dakotans are keenly interested in the possibility of Amtrak and understand how this investment could also greatly benefit freight rail and economic development opportunities across the state. This interest was matched by comments elsewhere.

Even though there would need to be significant coordination and construction, both routes through South Dakota rate in the middle of the weighted priority list developed by the project team. Support from our Congressional delegation (Senator Thune, Senator Rounds, and Representative Johnson) would bring these routes to fruition, after having been talked about (but unrealized) for decades. 

The construction activities alone would yield billions of dollars of economic benefits in addition to the on-going direct and indirect economic benefits once the services are operating. The economic stimulus could very well rival building of the US Interstate Highways or the Missouri River Dams. Again, these routes would perform comparably to other long-distance routes. 

Federal Investment and [Dis]Favoritism 

It is important to emphasize how Federal investments (or lack thereof) have long disadvantaged South Dakota's railroad system. Starting in the territorial era, generous land grants (subsidies) were given to the railroads building through what are today North Dakota and Nebraska. South Dakota, in comparison, received almost nothing.

In the 1970s Congress bailed out the Northeast Corridor and northeastern United States railroad network (after the glorious implosion that was the Penn Central Railroad) but allowed the collapse of the still-viable but horrendously mis-managed Milwaukee Road Railroad, impacting South Dakota severely (even forcing Governor Janklow to call a special session of the state legislature, to Pierre, in August, (without air conditioning!!) to react to this crisis. 

More recently in 2007, the Federal Railroad Administration denied the $2 Billion loan (about $3.5 Billion today; a loan mind you...) for the DM&E Railroad to build their powder basin coal line extension. This would have significantly enhanced much of the track the Twin Cities to Denver train would run on across South Dakota. Ironically FRA Administrator Joe Boardman, who denied the loan, would later go on to lead Amtrak.... 

"National Network or Nothing" - Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) 

The chronic cost escalations for projects on the Northeast Corridor and other national projects would have more than paid for the route across South Dakota multiple times. The need to complete important (but costly) projects elsewhere does not take away from the needs we have in rural America. We not only deserve service, we deserve good service. And we deserve it ASAP! Over 50 years is too long to wait for what we're already paying for. The amount of Federal funding this would mean for South Dakota would completely blow the meager STC Grants out of the water. 

An attack on one route, current or proposed, is an attack on all routes. That includes the routes through South Dakota. 

South Dakota's Call to Action 

There has not been a better time in the 53+ years of Amtrak to call for Federal investment in our railroads. It is upon us to make sure Congress works to enact these essential rail services. On-going economic development projects like Schwan's in Sioux Falls and the Black Hills Industrial Center deserve public investment as their federally-subsidized highway and aviation competition enjoy. If we want to turbo-charge these economic opportunities for our state, we should call for the implementation of these passenger routes that will upgrade railroad lines while also enhancing freight & economic development opportunities. With the eventual building of Federally-backed US Highway Interstate 27 over the Heartland Expressway (Highway 79/85 West River), our critical and growing importance to Washington D.C. is well recognized! 

What you can do 

Again, send your comments of support to the FRA Project team, our Congressional delegation, SD State legislators, and the SD State Railroad Board. Tell them to support these investments in our future.

The Federal Dollar will go much further, and be more meaningful at creating lasting sustainable opportunities, being spent on an expanded long distance passenger rail network in rural America; being spent on areas like South Dakota. 

"People live here!" It's time that we demand the Federal investment long denied us! 

Dan Bilka 

Co-Founder & President, All Aboard Northwest 

Coordinator, Greater Northwest Passenger Rail Coalition

Editor's note: my proposal for passenger rail from Minneapolis to Denver is a multi-modal route from the Twin Cities to Mankato on the right of way owned by the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad to Brookings, South Dakota and Pierre then to Rapid City and to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway tracks at Alliance via Chadron, Nebraska then to Cheyenne and Denver. Service to Sioux Falls and Omaha could diverge at Florence, Minnesota. A route in the I-90 median between Sioux Falls and Rapid City should also be explored. 

In August, 2017 this blog proposed an interstate highway that would connect I-25 at Trinidad, Colorado to Rapid City, South Dakota. 

Today's intersection: the unitary executive, John Eastman, SCOTUS and environmental protection

When the US Constitution was written the Federalists argued for a strong central government with co-equal branches but today neo-Federalists advocate for a weaker central government with a strong unitary executive — well, if that executive is a Republican anyway.

Two days before Donald Trump's attempted takeover of the United States in 2021 John Eastman was summoned to the Oval Office to share some exotic extralegal scenarios then in 2022 as he left a Santa Fe restaurant he was frisked by federal agents who seized his iPhone Pro 12 presumed to contain incriminating evidence of Trump's attempted autogolpe. An unindicted co-conspirator, Eastman knew Jeffrey Epstein through impeachment lawyer Bruce Castor and through Alan Dershowitz, also believed to be a pedophile. 

But, in 2023 with direction from Eastman and others the Trump-packed Supreme Court of the United States reversed environmental protection for a majority of American citizens and enabled the corporatocracy to pollute at will. Today, Republicans and their toadies cry government overreach while waters of the United States or WOTUS architects regroup for another round in Congress as Eastman and other christofascists work to install a Republican executive at any cost and kill the legal doctrine called the “Chevron deference.”

But before getting sucked into the gravitational force that is Donald Trump, Eastman, 64, was the sort of conservative legal figure whose name one might forget, a law professor with a cushy job and a chairmanship at a practice group of the conservative legal organization the Federalist Society. He epitomizes the type of anti-regulatory, Federalist Society–bred legal mind you can expect to see elevated by Trump. Many environmental lawyers see the preservation of rivers, lakes, forests, and the air—which cross state lines—as an issue of inherently federal concern. [Fish, Toads, and John Eastman: Inside the Conservative Project to Undo Federal Environmental Laws]

Yes, the US Environmental Protection Agency and US Fish and Wildlife Service are within the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief the president could simply order the Army Corps of Engineers and all to stand down.

Trump's lawyers are arguing that a unitary executive could launch the extraordinary rendition or worse of anyone anywhere anytime without due process because he can. But SCOTUS is in a box: if it rules the unitary executive is immune to prosecution President Joe Biden could call for the removal of every Republican who incited insurrection. And while Trump is a clear and present danger to national security and his imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay an intriguing goal house arrest, a gag order and loss of passport is probably adequate if POTUS Biden orders it.

ip image: East Pecos Baldy in the Santa Fe National Forest not far from where an American subsidiary of Australian company New World Cobalt was granted twenty federal permits to drill test holes.

John Eastman didn't just come out of nowhere. He lived an entire legal life before Donald Trump.

I spent weeks examining Eastman's writings, speeches, and legal work on environmental law over the last 40 years. A clear theme emerges: https://t.co/TFNIxysiTW

— Jackie Flynn Mogensen (@jackiefmogensen) June 19, 2024

SDGOP not so civil war drawing blood, flinging feces, hurting women

I am no fan of Earth hater, Lee Schoenbeck because he helped to cover up catholic crimes against children and vulnerable adults so when a lame duck like he is turns on his own party members it’s pretty obvious nobody pays any attention to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment anymore especially in a failed red state like South Dakota. 

Go pop some popcorn then read through the comments under Mr. Schoenbeck’s screed linked below and see for yourselves how broke and broken the South Dakota Republican Party is. Be aware that Pernicious Pug, Pat Powers, who makes a stopped clock look like a well-greased machine salts his blog comment section with a seemingly infinite variety of aliases that threaten or jeer his political enemies and even his readers.

All of the money went to people on the extreme end of the political spectrum. Only candidates that [sic] would support the political careers of Jon Hansen, Fred Deutsch, Scott Odenbach and Spencer Gosch were worthy of seeing our misappropriated donor dollars. 

What these people have done with our donor dollars is much worse than this looks. We always were about pro-life. Now, [South Dakota Right to Life] spends our dollars to oppose 100% pro-life public servants. Only those that are part of the “tin foil hat” world view, so they will support Jon Hansen for Speaker and Scott Odenbach for Majority Leader, were deemed worthy of getting our misappropriated funds. 

We pro-lifers, that [sic] aren’t part of the “tin foil hat” world need a place to send our funds in support of the sanctity of life. There are thousands of us in South Dakota. Hopefully a trustworthy new option will surface. We still have much work to do to reach the hearts and minds across our whole state on the sanctity of human life. Time to go hug our kids and grandkids and pray for our future. [Schoenbeck, Dakota War Toilet]

1. Abortion is health care and a pregnant woman is the patient. 

2. Ectopic pregnancies kill women. 

3. Rich women have full reproductive rights while women at the lower income margins suffer chilling effects on those rights. Women in Texas, Wyoming and South Dakota who can afford it simply jump on a plane and fly to Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Denver or elsewhere for their procedures. Imagine a woman on the Standing Rock or Pine Ridge doing that. 

4. South Dakota’s repeated attempts to restrict access to medical care are not only mean-spirited, they're discriminatory anti-choice extremism. 

5. "Pro-life" is simply code for white people breeding. The extreme white wing of the Republican Party is driving the abolition of women’s rights because they’re wedded to the Great Replacement Hypothesis. African-Americans terminate pregnancies at about the same per capita rate as white people do but don’t take their jobs. Latinas, however, have fewer abortions per capita so the extreme white wing laments it's hemorrhaging jobs to Latinos. 

6. No foetus in the United States has any civil rights. Republicans preach civil rights for human blastocysts but deny the protections of the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments to people who enjoy cannabis. 

7. Republican politicians drive their anti-woman crusade to raise campaign dollars so ending reproductive rights in red states is Balkanizing women's health care. 

8. A blastocyst is no more an unborn child than it is an unborn grandparent. Foetal development is undefined in US Constitutional law so if someone calls it a baby that's an opinion and not a legal definition. 

9. There is no foetal heartbeat until at least ten weeks into a pregnancy. What an ultrasound “hears” at six weeks are cells beginning to built a cardiac system entirely dependent on amniotic fluid produced by a person with actual civil rights.

10. States that ban or punish women from going out of state for their procedures or medications are violating the Commerce Clause enumerated in the United States Constitution. 

11. One fifth of all pregnancies end in miscarriage or as some would call God working in mysterious ways but when a person chooses to terminate a pregnancy the creator doesn’t condone that decision? How does that work?

Big Sioux River is still a toxic shit hole

So, a couple weeks ago State Representative Scott Odenbach (R-Spearditch) shared several graphics at his Faceberg page from the state's 2022 report of impaired waterways in South Dakota with concerns that Spearditch Creek might look like the Big Sioux River one day. 

Because of the failures of South Dakota's Republican governors and legislature to control pollution some $172 million has been set aside for pipelines and drinking water improvements including in this interested party’s home town of Elkton where dairies and nitrates have ruined wells.

Look at the color of the river in the lower image. Contact with the Big Sioux River can cause spontaneous abortions in pregnant women but the mayor of Sioux Falls who is likely to run for governor and the congressional delegations from that tristate region are Republican Earth haters elected to bring bacon home to their districts while decrying socialism, big gubmint, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Army Corps of Engineers who manage the Waters of the United States or WOTUS.

LawCo Democrat named SDPUC candidate

The South Dakota Democratic Party has named Lawrence County's Forrest C. Wilson its candidate for Public Utilities Commission. 

Mr. Wilson is currently Club Director of the Lead-Deadwood Boys and Girls Club and as a former administrator in state government Forrest saw and got enough of Earth hating Republicans giving free rein to monopolistic predators like Black Hills Energy and Summit Carbon Solutions masquerading as your friends and bilking South Dakota residents while filling lakes with mercury and suing landowners for access.

Former Career Advisor at South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation

Former Assistant Registrar at South Dakota Mines

Former Admissions and Recruitment Specialist at Western Dakota Tech

Former Admissions Evaluator at Montana State University

Studied Music Ed at Northwest College

Studied Music Industry at Chadron State College

Lives in Lead, South Dakota

From Sundance, Wyoming

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If Moms for Liberty is a hate group why isn't AFP one?

Americans for Prosperity is a Koch-soaked dark money group masquerading as a grassroots organization that now has an agent in tiny Sundance, Wyoming in a state where Democrats are threatened with violence if they even run for public office.

South Dakota's Earth hating legislators and candidates have enjoyed millions in lobbyist benefits from the Kochs' contribution arm, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the state's junior senator was elected with cash from ALEC-backed National Federation of Independent Business.

It doesn't take long to follow the money from these guys to the TEA movement and to Donald Trump's lunatic fringe. In 2015 reporter Lee Fang discovered that the Trump campaign roster read like a Koch/AFP tabloid.

South Dakota's Political Porker squeals with glee over the efforts of the Koch-powered AFP and pretends to be offended by the uncoded misogynistic hate speech being delivered in the center ring by the leading performer in his party's presidential clown show.

Kristi Noem's anti-civil rights actions are no accident because she's a graduate of ALEC, an anti-think tank think tank that teaches how wedge issues raise campaign dollars for the extreme white wing of the Republican Party.

But if the Southern Poverty Law Center can expose Moms for Liberty as a hate group why isn't AFP so branded? 

Americans for Prosperity isn’t the only Koch-funded political entity with connections to Moms for Liberty. Colorado-based Parents Defending Education organizer Mailynn Salabarria has taken to posting in Moms for Liberty Facebook groups in neighboring states in order to drum up — or astroturf — attendance for this summer’s Freedom Foundation “Teacher Freedom Summit.” [Labeled as a Hate Group, Moms for Liberty Doubles Down]

South Dakota Republicans are losing their law and order crusade

South Dakota is rife with sobriety checkpoints, racial profiling makes I-90 a civil rights black hole and police just recently were stopped from forcing catheters into the urethras of the accused. 

Yet it's not just Rapid City where Republicans have failed their law and order mission.

Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead said the uptick in juvenile crimes is related to teens stealing weapons from unlocked vehicles. Milstead did say that it isn’t just juveniles stealing guns from vehicles, but adults as well. And while the number of people in the county jail has decreased, the seriousness of the charge and length of stay is longer. [Officials: Growing crime caseloads include more teens]

Yes, pollution, crashes, blackouts, anthrax, Legionella, shigella, bovine TB, suicides, flooding, wildfires, hail, ecocide, crime, corruption, disease, drought, destruction, distrust and dependence: these are the Noem years.

Little wonder the red moocher state elected a governor who not only slept her way to the top she drives the violence. 

But, a red moocher state like South Dakota is powered by sin: video lootery, a loan shark industry that preys on the least fortunate and a too-big-to-jail banking racket fill in the gaps created by lobbyists who enjoy the protection of single-party tyranny.

Thanks to @TedNugent for defending the 2nd Amendment with us at the Friends of the NRA Lewis & Clark Chapter last night!

Together, we will continue to make South Dakota the MOST 2nd Amendment-friendly state in America, and we’ll share that example with the nation. pic.twitter.com/gWP4LANNQd

— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) June 8, 2024

It's time for the Feds to shake down Rapid City

It didn't start under the Rounds and Daugaard administrations but the rates of violent crime in South Dakota increased dramatically during their watches. 

GOP leadership in the state, especially in Rapid City, has fostered conditions where reported aggravated assaults have increased exponentially. When the state's attorney general and judiciary are on the GOP dole nothing in Rapid City will change. 

Law is not order.

In 2011 Daniel Tiger chose to take out two enemy Rapid City Police Department personnel with him rather than be gunned down in cold blood like Christopher Capps was in the previous year. 

US Attorney General Eric Holder went to South Dakota to keep the smoldering war between the RCPD and Indigenous Americans from a flash point and was accompanied by then-US Attorney Brendan Johnson who participated in the joint Native American Issues Subcommittee and the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee meeting. 

Johnson was recently interviewed as part of a wider investigation of rampant police brutality and "officer involved shootings" in the reservation border town.

“I am not at all unsympathetic to the situation the police department in Rapid City is in,” Johnson said. But, he adds, “I’m also sympathetic to the frustration that has to exist within the (Native) community. If there is an example of bad policing, of brutality, the challenge to try to get justice in a case like that in a place like Rapid City would be exceptionally difficult, exceptionally difficult.” [All of the fatal police shootings in one town involved Native Americans. How common is this?]

Little wonder cops’ lives suck so they reliably abuse their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and occasionally murder their wives, even vilify people like Leonard Peltier.

Since the South Dakota Republican Party thrives on violence and hypocrisy reigns supreme at the highest levels of power in South Dakota residents endure Policing for Profit and civil forfeiture so the current Earth hating governor can crow about her leadership and self-reliance while moral hazards pay the bills.

Learn more from Ted McDermott at the Missoulian.

Howdy Doody Dusty wants to kill family members with cyanide bombs

Want to help Congress advance a farm bill? Urge your congressional delegation to defund the US Department of Agriculture's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service or APHIS. 

While failed red states like South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho celebrate the extermination of apex predators for unsustainable short-term gain the USDA's division of death, so-called "Wildlife Services," is to blame for the widespread use of lethal poisons like M-44 cyanide bombs that maim and kill family members. 

In 2022 We, the People killed 216 feral cattle through APHIS but we also shot, trapped or poisoned over 56,000 coyotes or about 153 every day. Funded by the 2018 farm bill and reported for 2022 the rogue agency killed 26,371 beavers, over 14,000 red winged blackbirds, 478 armadillos, 244 badgers, 450 black bears, 515 bobcats, 820 red-crested cardinals, 204 cougars, nearly 20,000 brown-headed cowbirds, 4,300 American crows, nearly 11,000 white-tailed deer, over 19,000 mourning doves, some 4,000 ducks including those that feed on invasive zebra mussels, over 6,000 egrets, 540 American kestrels, over 3,000 foxes, some 20,000 gulls, 1,200 jackrabbits, over 2,000 hawks, 600 herons, 3,000 iguanas, 74 javelinas, 1,182 yellow-bellied marmots, 1,700 muskrats, over 8,500 black-tailed and Gunnison prairie dogs, nearly 8,300 raccoons, almost 11,000 common ravens, 4,400 striped skunks, 1.2 million European starlings, 1,600 mute swans, 137,000 feral swine, 440 wild turkeys, 380 snapping turtles, over 14,000 vultures, 220 wolves and 2,300 woodchucks.

Use of the bombs by third parties is prohibited in the USDA’s Fiscal Year 2024 Appropriations Package after the US Bureau of Land Management stopped deploying them on public property that they oversee in 2023. The National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service also prohibit the devices. 

But to spite preservationists like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity Representative Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson (Earth hater-SD) has signed a letter to Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack urging APHIS to roll back a ban on purchasing or utilizing M-44 ejector devices on public lands. 

Preservation is a weak spot in the Republican agenda and if enough people believe forest and rangeland resilience is a bankable position the South Dakota Democratic Party needs to exploit it by fielding candidates who can convince voters to reject politicians like John Thune, Kristi Noem, Mike Rounds and Dusty Johnson who work for the grazing, mining and logging profiteers at the expense of public lands.

ip image.

Repeal of SB 201 dividing SDGOP for good

Virtually every waterway in South Dakota is at risk to livestock and industrial agriculture and most are irreparably impaired. 

Summit Carbon Solutions wants to dig a $4.5 billion pipeline that would rip up some 2000 miles of colonized tribal lands where thousands of Indigenous Americans are buried.

Besides Summit, TPG Rise Climate whose investors include China’s Silk Road and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund have deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. Summit’s second largest investment is from Continental Resources founded by fracking billionaire Harold Ham and shareholders include BlackRock, Vanguard Group and other wealthy globalists. The biggest beneficiaries are those who want more money, power and control of our land and lives. [Steve Sibson: Money is in control, not us]

According to Iowa State University some land impacted by pipelines never recovers from the disturbance. 

Ethanol has only two thirds the energy density of gasoline or diesel and less than half of what natural gas contains but has an immensely larger carbon footprint. Few farm with gasoline powered equipment and ethanol is being grown with diesel fuel so how is that either conservative or sustainable? 

Summit also faces formidable opposition from Indigenous communities, who were not meaningfully consulted — all too familiar with the devastation such projects bring. They are alarmed by the influx of transient pipeline construction workers. “Man-camps” built to house out-of-state workers for large construction, fossil fuel, or natural resource extraction projects in the past, increased violence towards Indigenous communities, especially women. The report highlights other concerns that the project poses on tribal reservations and Indigenous communities living near the pipeline route, including land degradation, disturbance to sacred sites, and the threat of a pipeline rupture. Commitment to protect the land and their communities is driving the mobilization of Indigenous communities. [The Great Carbon Boondoggle: Inside the Struggle to Stop Summit's CO2 Pipeline]

Republican organizations like the South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association and South Dakota Farm Bureau make sure the Prairie Pothole Region is one big eutrophic shit hole and nearly every waterway in the northern Plains states is impaired. State Representative Roger Chase of Beadle County is a member of the SDFB. 

Governor Kristi Noem signed SB 201 which some call the "Landowner Bill of Rights" further splitting the South Dakota Republican Party and caving to the Green New Deal.

Now a vocal minority is seeking to repeal benefits for South Dakota landowners. The proponents of a repeal also suggest that these new measures somehow give pipeline companies a “layup” in siting these projects. Regardless of your opinion on carbon sequestration, if the market demands lower carbon and South Dakota farmers and ethanol plants can provide it - that’s a win for the entire state. [Chase: Majority of South Dakota landowners don’t support SB 201 repeal effort]

The Green New Deal remains very popular among Americans.

Meanwhile, Lake Mitchell continues to suffer from ag pollution while the city faces a $36 million dredging fix. 

Learn more about the death of the SDGOP at the Dakota War Toilet.

Recall Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling or MCOOL was repealed during the second Obama term to shield American commodities from scrutiny because every ag product, meats both wild and domestic not grown organically in the US is contaminated with atrazine and worse. https://t.co/GbWCN9HG6u

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) June 6, 2024

Extreme white wing rejects establishment SDGOP

The South Dakota Republican Party is broke and broken!

In May, 2021 a poll conducted by South Dakota News Watch and the Chiesman Center for Democracy at the University of South Dakota revealed that Republicans in the failed red state revel in authoritarianism when Republicans are in power and loathe democracy and progress when Democrats govern. Chiesman has known about voter disgust in South Dakota for some time. 

But now, South Dakota Democrats have an opportunity to reverse decades of single-party rule after Republican primary voters jettisoned the establishment for the extreme white wing in Tuesday's election. Turnout was pathetic with only one Democratic legislative primary and 44 Earth hater primaries. 

Governor Kristi Noem signed SB 201 further splitting the SDGOP caving to the Green New Deal.

Earth haters like Brookings blog bully, Pat Powers are on full tilt. 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.

Add to that mix of the political environment that the surge in facebook populist candidates taking over the GOP has literally strangled the party for fundraising. It’s hard to contest a ballot measure when no one is donating. [Dakota War Toilet]

Learn more at South Dakota Searchlight.

Economies of South Dakota and other midwest Trump states trending downward

Source: WalletHub

South Dakota is at full employment so expect inflation to claw higher in the coming months since the state has dropped to 48th in innovation potential, 45th in economic activity, 41st in overall economic ranking, 50th in share of technology companies and is still 47th in R&D spending per capita according to WalletHub. 

Creighton University's Ernie Goss follows the economies of nine midwestern states including South Dakota's. He reports that the region's supply managers remain pessimistic with forty two percent expecting slower economic growth for the remainder of 2024, 33% suffered job losses and for the fifth straight month the region's employment index dropped below growth neutral. South Dakota’s manufacturing sector lost jobs at a rate of 1.3%.

“Finding and hiring qualified workers remains an issue and that’s true in South Dakota with the unemployment rate being about half what the national number is. And in South Dakota you’ve got also the issues of higher interest rates, which is affecting a very important industry in South Dakota which is banking and finance. That industry is being negatively affected by higher interest rates and it's spilling over into the manufacturing sector in our survey,” Goss said. [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]

South Korea-based Schwan's says it has plans to construct a 700,000-square-foot Asian food production facility at Foundation Park in Sioux Falls with a promise to hire some six hundred employees likely from an imaginary workforce. The company gives over twice as much campaign dough to Earth haters including to former Representative Kristi Noem in 2014 and to Rep. Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson who got $4000 in 2020 and $5000 in 2022. 

Tribes blazing new cannabis trails, replacing alcohol

US States are often the biggest obstacles to cannabis success in Indian Country but Washington and Nevada are the best for cooperating with tribal communities planting the seeds of cannabis economic development. 

As of May, 2024 forty seven Native cannabis retailers are operating fifty seven stores in nine states for a gain of some thirty percent since January, 2023. Nations in Minnesota and New York lead non-tribal retail growth in those states but in California and Michigan the industry is reaching full flower very quickly, too. In Minnesota, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is constructing a 50,000-square-foot cultivation facility that will dwarf any state-licensed operations which are capped at 30,000 square feet. North Carolina and New Mexico lead in the sheer size of retail stores while the NuWu Cannabis Marketplace in Nevada, owned by the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, is one the largest cannabis retail outlets in the world. 

Nineteen tribes have built dispensaries near casinos including in South Dakota where the state’s Republican governor and attorney general are confirmed racists.

Starting in New York Donald Trump targeted the Mohawk and Oneida Nations for annihilation in 2020 but today the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe runs 20 retail cannabis operations, the Cayuga Nation, Oneida Indian Nation and Seneca Nation have retail outlets and the Shinnecock Indian Nation operates a dispensary in the Hamptons.

Initially, there was liberalization during the 1970s, marked by the Shafer Commission report and state decriminalization efforts. This was followed by a conservative “Reagan-Bush drug war” era spanning from 1980 to 1992. Then, a 15-year phase from 1993 to 2008 witnessed state-led “medical marijuana” liberalization despite federal opposition. Lastly, from 2009 to 2022, federal non-interference was implemented, culminating in legalization in Colorado and Washington in 2012. [Cannabis Tops Alcohol In Daily Use For First Time Ever, Study Finds]

For someone who comes from the times of $150 kilos and fifteen dollar lids these are heady days indeed.

🌿 Nationwide, nearly 60 cannabis retailers are tribally owned – an increase of nearly 25 percent since 2023. https://t.co/Pno37eLicv

— NORML (@NORML) May 28, 2024

BLM, USDA butting heads over spraying in the Rio Chama

To better protect wilderness, contractors with the US Department of Agriculture's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service or APHIS shot 65 unvaccinated invasive cattle in 2022 from helicopters on the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico. 

But, it's hardly an easy alliance between preservationists and an agency like APHIS that killed 1.75 million creatures in 2021 including 400,000 native species like wolves, cougars, bears and bobcats.

Federal and private landowners have requested 22,500 acres — roughly 35 square miles — be treated to thwart the insects that consume grasses essential for grazing cattle. One difference is that this year the planes would spray diflubenzuron, which kills insects in the juvenile stage, rather than carbaryl, a potent neurotoxin that’s “broad spectrum” or indiscriminate in the species it can harm, including fish and birds that could eat the poisoned insects. BLM’s Taos field office has not requested spraying this year and is doubtful it will because of the low grasshopper population reported so far, spokeswoman Allison Sandoval wrote in an email. BLM officials also don’t believe the USDA’s assessment satisfies the National Environmental Policy Act or is sufficient public outreach, she wrote. [Federal officials again consider Rio Chama pesticide spraying]

Carbaryl (1-naphthyl methylcarbamate) is a white crystalline solid commonly sold under the brand name Sevin®, a trademark of the Bayer Group. It kills beneficial insects like honeybees as well as crustaceans not to mention its havoc wreaked on fungal communities and amphibians. Sevin® is often produced using methyl isocyanate the chemical that Union Carbide used to kill thousands of people in Bhopal, India in 1984.

Grant County has tabled its contract with APHIS because of blowback from welfare ranchers and despite a state law banning their use the agency still deploys M44 cyanide bombs that often kill domestic pets.

FS, LANL impeding Park Service plans at VCNP

Indigenous history in the Valles Caldera goes back at least 8,000 years and obsidian quarried there for knives and projectile points is found throughout the region. The ancestors of Jemez Pueblo or Walatowa migrated into the area in the late 13th Century after Mesa Verde was laid bare. Pre-European Indigenous cultures in the Jemez Mountains and around the caldera raised turkeys, beans, squash and maize. 

Today, cattle trespasses are creating problems on the Valles Caldera National Preserve as the National Park Service makes plans to bring more visitors to the Jemez Mountains. And, if tourists are heading to the Preserve from Los Alamos drivers must go through a series of guardhouses at the boundaries of the National Laboratory, present identification and promise not to take any pictures for a four and a half mile stretch. 

VCNP enjoys a multi-year funding agreement with the Pueblo of Santa Clara for road maintenance on 54 miles of roads within the park and the Park Service intends to add food vendors at the visitors center.

This National Park attracted more than 76,000 people in 2023 and the Valles Caldera team have numerous plans to help bring more attention to the park while also preserving and maintaining it for the future. The long-range management plan includes the possibility of rerouting the main entrance road away from the wetlands as well as paving it. Big plans are also in the works for Sulphur Springs, the park’s geothermal site. The gurgling of mud pots and an acid green pond with its own pockets of bubbling water make it prime to be a popular spot for visitors. Fire mitigation is another major focus. The problem is more and more trees are getting packed tightly together, totaling between 1,000-2,000 trees per acre. A cattle wrangler has also been hired and corrals are erected to collect wayward cows. [Valles Caldera National Preserve Shares Big Plans]

Cattle manure contaminated with bovine growth hormones and antibiotics introduced into critical watersheds is epidemic even on public lands.

“I feel a deep sense of betrayal,” said Madeleine Carey, Southwest Conservation Manager for WildEarth Guardians. “We were promised this persistent issue would be dealt with and, if anything, things have gotten worse.” [Heinrich presses forest service chief on fencing to keep cattle from entering the Valles Caldera National Preserve]