Catholics are leading the crusade to destroy American democracy

Catholicism is hope like gonorrhea is charity. 

Paul McCown became Chief Financial Officer at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander after fellow 'Cowboy Catholic' Kevin Roberts left to become president of the Heritage Foundation.

When Kevin Roberts took over as president of tiny Wyoming Catholic College in 2013, few people outside of its Lander base even knew the school existed. But in just three years, the media-savvy Roberts managed to put the conservative campus in the national spotlight by embracing the term “Cowboy Catholics” and by refusing to accept federal grants and student loans that he felt would compromise the school’s independence and religious freedom. Its original dismissal of Trump as a legitimate candidate forced Heritage to scramble for influence. Roberts and Heritage have vowed not to let that happen again. To lead the “Project 2025” team, Roberts hired two former Trump administration insiders. [Wyoming’s ‘Cowboy Catholic’ could remake government if Trump wins]

Roberts is also a principal in the Council for National Policy and a member of Opus Dei, as is Rick Santorum and Trump attorney general, Bill Barr. 

McCown is serving a 63 month sentence in federal prison for fraud.

According to federal court filings, the fraud began in the spring of 2020 when McCown received $841,863 from the federal coronavirus relief program, or CARES Act, that was administered by the Wyoming Business Council. Alerted to possible fraud by online tips, the Wyoming Business Council conducted an audit in January 2021 and reported its concerns to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. [Former Catholic College CFO sentenced in Lander fraud case]

The Council for National Policy was created in 1981 by the extreme white wing of the Republican Party. Mike Pence is a member of the CNP as is Ohio Representative Jim Jordan (NAZI-OH) so was the late Wyoming resident, Foster Friess who gave $500,000 to a gaggle of religionist organizations in South Dakota just before he croaked. Robert Mercer, the blow-it-all-up Cambridge Analytica guy with billions stashed in South Dakota and ties to Faceberg and Maria Butina is a major donor to CNP. Members have included Oliver North, Jerry Falwell, Steve Bannon, Ginni Thomas, Betsy DeVos, Leonard Leo, current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and other Earth hating notables. 

Buoyed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and General Michael Flynn are modern Falangists financed by the John Birch Society. Many catholic schools are in the Hillsdale bubble because the curriculum ignores the church’s role in the Native American Genocide and Opus Dei is a cult of Fascists.

Bill Barr covered up Iran-Contra for Bush, Reagan & Mike Flynn’s mentor Jack Singlaub.
Bill Barr’s dad gave Jeffrey Epstein his first job with access to kids.
Bill Barr was hired by Trump & went to visit Epstein in jail. Epstein was dead the next day.
Jack Singlaub wrote a letter… pic.twitter.com/emkPq6m5QK

— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) July 4, 2024

"Blessings of liberty" would undermine food safety, forest health

After the last farm bill was enacted in 2018 Trump era Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue gave away a pool of cash in the 2019 Market Facilitation Program (MFP) payments aimed at buying off welfare farmers.

So today, agriculture is the leading source of pollution in the waters of the United States and the latest round of flooding in farm country has just made it worse. Desertification driven by livestock grazing and industrial agriculture has turned parts of the high plains into scorched earth. Moral hazard is the flip side of self-reliance and the heavily subsidized industry knows emergency declarations will provide bailouts for those who choose risk because Republican welfare ranchers are the real ecoterrorists who hate subsidies unless they benefit from them.

The American Farm Bureau Federation is notorious for conflicts of interest and denying the human effects on a warming climate while lobbying extensively for crop insurance in the federal farm bill and against WOTUS rules while ag bankers and biochemical cartels enslave landowners.

Real conservatives at the Heritage Foundation have called for subsidy reform for decades yet both Kristi Noem and Mike Rounds have taken over $5 million in federal handouts because South Dakota truly is a perpetual welfare state and a permanent disaster area.  

According to Project 2025, a second Trump White House–and by extension, an already Trump-loving Congress–should enact a wholesale overhaul of the 2018 Farm Bill and its implementing agency, the 163-year-old U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Continued foot dragging by today’s House leadership to even schedule a Farm Bill vote and a long-stalled Senate already has Washington discussing another extension of the 2018 law until after–you guessed it–January 2025. [Alan Guebert: Farm Bill politics 2024 lean toward Project 2025]

South Dakota's Earth hating congressional delegation frequently calls for a socialized Black Hills timber industry to placate Hulett, Wyoming-based donor, Neiman Enterprises while spouting the "blessings of liberty." In the ag portion of the Project 2025 text is an outline for unlimited corporate access to national forests despite a timber glut and sawmill closures. 

But now that the Supreme Court of the United States has given President Biden ultimate power over the US Constitution POTUS has the opportunity to order anything he wants including the imprisonment of those who would undermine the solidarity of the food chain. 

Learn more at Progressive Farmer.

Nitrates are rushing from fields into waters of the Corn Belt. Pollution reigns across Iowa and other states. Industrial agriculture is worst water polluter ever in U.S. https://t.co/gYgJZbSAga

— Keith Schneider (@modeshift) May 24, 2024

SD exports down more than 11% as energy prices soar

Source: WalletHub

Midwestern Trump states are still near growth-neutral and manufacturing supply managers report that poorly-run South Dakota is exporting eleven percent less in June than it did last year according to Creighton University's Ernie Goss. 

Bankers remain gloomy as farmland prices fell, farm equipment sales sank and the overall Rural Mainstreet Index slumped for the tenth straight month while regional exports of agriculture goods and livestock for 2024 year-to-date were down 4.1% from the same period in 2023. 

Failed red state South Dakota also suffers the ninth highest energy costs in the United States because 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.

The June RMI for South Dakota slumped to 45.5 from May’s 47.9. The state’s farmland price index rose to 50.1 from 48.4 in May. South Dakota’s June new hiring index declined to 48.1 from 50.3 in May. According to trade data from the International Trade Association, exports of agriculture goods and livestock for 2024 year-to-date were up 24.5% from the same period in 2023. [Rural Mainstreet Economy Down for 10th Straight Month; Farmland Prices Fall for a Second Consecutive Month]

Learn more about red state failure at South Dakota Searchlight.

Corn acres down but hemp's budding

The Chinese Ring-necked Pheasant isn't wildlife but it is a canary in a chemically and genetically engineered corn mine since the pesticide industry that greases Republican politicos doesn’t give a whit about anything but profit.

But, unless it replaces corn acres this blog hasn't supported widespread growing of industrial cannabis (hemp), especially on tribal lands because it is an invasive species capable of overgrowing native grasses. It was introduced to the western hemisphere by the Spanish in the south and in the north the colonizing Europeans began seeing the Powhatan population growing it around 1609. Thomas Jefferson would not plant tobacco because he believed it to be bound to the capitalism he abhorred and chose cannabis as his crop of choice for its utilitarian applications. 

Pastures in Brookings and Moody Counties and the ditches along the I-29 of my youth were adorned with feral cannabis from Sioux Falls to Omaha, descendants of an agribusiness destroyed by a racist and xenophobic law enforcement industry now dealing with bulging prisons.

After it was legalized by the 2018 farm bill a jury in Montana awarded more than $65 million to hemp growers in 2021 in that state after being screwed by Canadian and American businessmen yet replacing the ecocidal corn/ethanol subsidy in South Dakota with hemp acres is a bridge too far for Republicans who run for office on habitat destruction. Besides, why anyone would want to buy genetically engineered seed from Bayer Crop Science/Monsanto or some other Earth hater every year remains a mystery especially since pollen drift can destroy therapeutic and "recreational" cannabis crops. 

The good news? Welfare farmers planted less corn in 2024 while ninety-four percent of all corn acres planted in the United States are genetically modified, up from 93% in 2023 according to the US Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Farmers grow three different varieties of hemp in South Dakota: CBD, fibers, and grain and seed. South Dakota reached No. 1 for grain and seed acres in 2022 and now reached No. 1 for fibers this year. [South Dakota No. 1 state in nation for hemp production]

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