SDGOP tampering with reliable voting blocs

Republican voters in South Dakota get special treatment. 

Meals on Wheels offers more than just food — it's a vehicle for outreach to the biggest Republican voter bloc in South Dakota but it's just one way the SDGOP keeps people who draw Social Security alive and pay the property taxes that fund red state failure. Well, until now anyway.

Insurance agent Ryan Maher is an Earth hater state senator from Isabel, South Dakota who is greased by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Qochtopus. Maher's political party is all about South Dakota being a perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area where socialized agriculture, socialized livestock grazing, socialized coal, socialized military insurance, socialized timber harvest and a virtual medical industry triopoly are simply ways of life.

The Department of Human Services has put Western SD Senior Services Inc. on notice that closures of meal programs in Timber Lake, Hot Springs, Dupree, Bison, Martin, Wall, and Faith could bring legal action and the loss of millions in public funds. Western SD Senior Services is under contract with the state through September 2025 and received reimbursements from the state totaling $2,279,461 in fiscal year 2024. Sen. Ryan Maher told The Dakota Scout this week that he’s urging his colleagues on the Government Operations and Audit Committee (GOAC) to look into the matter after he received calls from Western SD Senior Services subcontractors — restaurants and food service businesses hired to prepare and deliver meals — complaining they haven’t been paid since as far back as December. [Meals On Wheels Shuttering In Seven Western South Dakota Communities]

So, the more Republican South Dakota gets the stingier and more cruel the residents become. Not only has the SDGOP failed Indigenous Americans by not expanding Medicaid it has failed veterans and the elderly: its historically loyal voter base. But hey, if Tony Venhuizen wants to feed from the Qochtopus gravy train he has to prove he’s numbed to the misery, hopelessness and despair his father-in-law and political party have heaped on South Dakotans.

In a related story Rapid City Area Schools has turned to panhandling to pay student lunch debt because the state's Republican governor is a miserly solipsist. 

Project 2025 proves Republicans hate American Indians

Republican is simply another word for Earth hater but the cult of Trump clearly hates Native Americans, too.

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

But the extreme white wing of the Republican Party wants a not so civil war over critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people. Trump's acting but unlawful Interior Secretary William Perry Pendley hates American Indigenous, too. 

Attorneys are gathering even more evidence that the Trump Organization committed crimes against humanity throughout Indian Country not only by slow-walking resources to reservations during a pandemic but by undercounting Indigenous populations during the 2020 Census. Donald Trump even killed the White House Tribal Nations Summit because he loathes Native Americans after lawsuits he lost in federal court over casinos.

Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windigo, wintiko in Powhatan). Now that the veils obscuring wetiko are starting to be lifted, let us give birth to, and become, living antigens, embracing the polyculture of ideas that are challenging the monoculture of wetiko capitalism. [Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition]

Colorado's mineral extraction industries have effectively stolen over $500 billion from the Apache of Oklahoma, Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, Comanche, Kiowa, Northern Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, Shoshone, Ute Tribe of Utah, Southern Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute. Under the 1906 Antiquities Act and the America the Beautiful initiative President Joe Biden has moved to create the 400,000-acre Dolores River Canyon Country National Monument in Mesa and Montrose counties in Colorado but imagine the blowback if Pres. Biden remands that land back to the Ute Nation.

Outside the section on the Interior Department, substantive policy on Indian Country is slim. The section on the Department of Justice makes no mention of the long-standing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples, despite “renewing” a “focus on violent crime,” instead highlighting things like drug cartels and protections for protesters at abortion clinics. The section including the Indian Health Service acknowledges that “reforms are needed,” but lacks any detail concerning those reforms or information on how the federal government will fulfill its responsibility to provide tribes health care. Given the overall attempt by Project 2025 to reverse the Biden administration’s focus on climate, it’s all but certain that tribes would not receive continued support for climate resilience efforts under the Project’s vision. [What Project 2025 has to say about Native communities]

Learn more at ProPublica.

Our WY/NE Wild Horse & Burro Program lead, June Wendlandt, was featured on @WyomingPBS in "Wind River Wild Horse Sanctuary," showing how the off-range pasture provides a home for non-adoptable wild horses while balancing conservation with cattle ranching. https://t.co/QsZakpFYEr

— BLMWyoming (@BLMWyoming) October 23, 2024

SDGOP on collision course in Pierre

Fading South Dakota Republican Party puffer, Pat Powers has members in his own zone in his crosshairs taking on ideological purists like Chris Larson. Larson has a pile of his own at Substack and shared his thoughts with an interested party.

Lil PP is as relevant to the future of SDGOP as Joe Biden is to the D party. IMO, the Grassroots Patriot movement in SD is on a trajectory to take over the party from the RINOs that have provem themselves beholden to special interests at the expense of We the People. More & more of us have awoken to the realization that we are being governed by the Wizard of Oz, metaphorically speaking.

In 1888 L. Frank Baum of Oz fame began editing the South Dakota newspaper The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer where he advocated for the extermination of American Indians.

Distributed amplification, also known as filling the zone with shit, is drowning the SDGOP and even the cheese baiting the trap is coated in it making the next legislative session just another septic system flush.

Jack o' Lantern filled with raw sewage expected to stiff ABQ again

Update. 

Trump’s last visit to Albuquerque, in 2019, resulted in the city billing his campaign more than $200,000 — a sum that remains unpaid and has climbed to $444,986 with interest, according to the city of Albuquerque. [Democrat-controlled State Land Office says sublease quashes parking plans for Trump rally]

### 

Update.

The rally is instead slated to take place Thursday at noon at a private hangar owned by CSI Aviation near the Albuquerque International Sunport, according to Trump’s campaign website. The president of CIA Aviation is former state Republican Party chairman Allen Weh, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2014. [Trump wanted the ABQ convention center for his campaign stump]

###

After Donald Trump's plane was diverted to Billings where he still owes $43,000 from a 2018 visit he stiffed eight thousand of his supporters for an hour and a half before introducing his disgraced and demoted drug dealer to the audience. Convicted felon and stochastic terrorist Trump still owes El Paso, Texas over a half million dollars and screwed Albuquerque out of $211,000 after a 2019 mudfest in Rio Rancho.

The Secretary of State’s Office released data early Friday showing more than 324,000 of the state’s 1.36 million registered voters already had cast either absentee or early in-person ballots, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans 162,000-115,000. Nearly 44,000 unaffiliated voters had cast ballots. A little under a third of Santa Fe County’s 112,000 registered voters had cast ballots. The 25,000 Democratic county voters weighing in early, either absentee or in person, led Republicans 5-to-1. [GOP: Trump scheduled to make Halloween visit to New Mexico]

In a related story, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of former Otero County Commissioner and Cowboys 4 Trump insurrectionist, Couy Griffin for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. 

ip image: plenty of New Mexicans turned out for early voting at the Southside Library in Santa Fe.

A rotund orange mass will be coming to ABQ on Halloween, and we're not talking about a pumpkin. Even though he still owes ABQ $$ from his last visit, the incoherent insurrectionist who's been found liable for rape will come back to the state he's already lost by 8% and 10%. https://t.co/cAuchFAeEt

— Democratic Party of New Mexico (@NMDEMS) October 27, 2024

Biden apology a start: NDN Collective

As part of an English-only movement that flourishes even today in parts of the US there were some 332 institutions that indoctrinated Indigenous children in 29 states. Oklahoma had 78, Arizona was home to 59, New Mexico had 52 and there were 23 in occupied South Dakota. 59 were in the clutches of catholics. 

In 1948 Congress gave the land belonging to the Indian Boarding School in west Rapid City to the City, the School District, the South Dakota National Guard, various churches and the Native Community - except the Native Community never got theirs. 

Leonard Peltier attended the Flandreau Indian School in the late 1950s where my mom practice-taught in the mid 1960s and learned first hand how Indigenous Americans were made to write in English. 

In 2012 the Rapid City Journal refused to publish journalist Jim Kent's column on boarding schools.

In a letter dated 24 April, 2020 US Representative Deb Haaland (D- NM, 1st District) and Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ, 3rd District) asked for a grant of clemency and the release of Prisoner of War Peltier, a tribal citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. In May, 2020 Peltier applied for a compassionate release because of the coronavirus outbreak but it was denied by the Trump Organization because Donald Trump detests American Indians. In November, 2020 Native Americans overwhelmingly turned out to vote for Joe Biden then Deb Haaland became Secretary of the Interior. 

NDN Collective has purchased a home on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in anticipation of Leonard Peltier's release.

“Apologies must include meaningful action to repair the harm done – otherwise, they are just manipulative tools giving the semblance of care to distract from continued wrongdoing. Biden can and should make his apology real by:

Passing the U.S. Truth & Healing Commission Bill to ensure continued funding and support for the relatives who survived boarding schools;

Granting immediate Executive Clemency for boarding school survivor Leonard Peltier, freeing him from his 50 year incarceration;

Immediately investing in Indigenous language and cultural revitalization programs; Rescinding all medals of honor awarded to US soldiers for the massacre at Wounded Knee, in which 300 unarmed Lakota people – mostly women and children – were slaughtered;

Instructing the Bureau of Indian Education to conduct a full-scale investigation into failure by the Tuba City Boarding School system to address egregious misconduct and support the nationwide reforms being demanded by parents and students to keep children safe at BIE run schools." [NDN COLLECTIVE RESPONDS TO PRESIDENT BIDEN’S PLANNED APOLOGY FOR U.S. GOVERNMENT’S ROLE IN NATIVE BOARDING SCHOOLS]

In a related story, because the Roman church is being sued into bankruptcy, nuns in some orders are getting involved in activist capitalism to force social change.

Learn more at Cronkite News.

Although an apology is the least a US President can do for over 150 years of taking our children away from our lands and communities, we deserve more. Meaningful apologies require actionable steps toward accountability, healing, and repair. #NoApologyWithoutAction

— NDN Collective (@ndncollective) October 25, 2024

Republicans using farm bill as a political weapon

Republicans aren't anxious to write a new farm bill because the current agriculture recession makes the Biden/Harris administration look bad.  

In May, Chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, Representative Glenn Thompson (Earth hater-PA), introduced HR 84676, the "Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2024," in Congress. He leads all comers in campaign cash harvested from the worst offenders. 

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. High natural gas prices that make it more expensive to power grain dryers amid record harvests are contributing to cost spikes so some utilities want to raise rates exacerbating a rise in inflation. Failed red state South Dakota also suffers the ninth highest energy costs in the United States because Republicans give free rein to monopolistic predators like Montana/Dakota Utilities, 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. 

According to Creighton University's Ernie Goss rising interest rates and inflation are already affecting the supply chain but those conditions seem like a problem only for those of us who aren’t billionaires. That land-locked states have higher inflation rates should come as little surprise as transportation costs mount but as fuel prices increase emissions should decrease reducing the rise in greenhouse gases.

Basically, Doug Johnson, who heads up Johnson Ag Outlook, said supply is out of sync with demand in ways the industry couldn’t predict. By creating new demand, for example, low corn prices could drive up ethanol production. [American farmers are feeling gloomy]

Just like on border politics Earth hating Republicans are dragging their feet on the farm bill to make Democrats look like the villains and to elevate a convicted felon.

Learn more at Progressive Farmer.

State of South Dakota involved in massive coverup of Brady Folkens' death: Aanning

Just before Christmas in 2013 Brady Folkens of Brookings died in state custody after an unqualified medical attendant allegedly administered a lethal dose of the antibiotic minocycline to the teen at the former State Treatment and Rehabilitation (STAR) Academy in a South Dakota county named for a war criminal. But in a 2014 phone interview, Brady's mom, Dawn Van Ballegooyen told this blog he never had a previous acne condition that required an antibiotic and in 2016 Jonathan Ellis formerly of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader called out the State of South Dakota for covering up the truth in Brady's death.  

Avera McKennan Hospital pathologist, Raed A. Sulaiman ruled Brady’s fatal lymphocytic myocarditis was caused by Parvovirus B19 and not anaphylaxis.

After a public whimper petered out the death camp was shuttered and the sprawling property carved from the heart of Indian Country put up for auction. The stigmatized site was sold four times at sequentially reduced prices after the first buyer bounced a check to the state, the financing was unworkable or the scope of work proved too great.

In forensic autopsies where state authorities are concerned over their liability for wrongful death suits and their pathologist has already committed to being complicit in covering up the real cause of death, virtually no other pathologist will challenge the false diagnosis with a truthful cause of death. When responding to Dawn’s suspicion that Dr. Sulaiman was not truthful, the South Dakota Board of Medical and Osteopathic Examiners stated that their experts fully exonerated Dr. Sulaiman from any faults and that his autopsy result was “absolutely” correct. This proves that the SDBMOE is complicit in the coverup of Brady’s death[.] Both Dawn and I met with Marty Jackley at his office in Pierre and subsequently submitted a lengthy and minutely documented affidavit asking for an investigation into the coverup of Brady’s death – specifically focusing on the role of Craig Ambach heading Risk Management, present at every hearing during Dawn’s sabotaged litigation. [Dr. Lars Aanning]

This interested party believes the Governor's Office of Risk Management also covered up evidence after Jason Ravnsborg killed Joe Boever.

Upgrades likely coming to NMRX

When Democratic Governor Bill Richardson found the money to build the New Mexico Rail Runner Express or NMRX it was intended to serve communities from El Paso to Denver but that has yet to materialize since it began service in 2006. Rail enthusiasts have been shoving the NM Legislature to equip it to operate as designed even as Colorado sorts out ways to add service between Trinidad and Denver.

As ridership continues to rise for the state’s large commuter rail, concerns are being raised about the number of passengers it carries to offset CO2 emissions. The Rail Runner transports thousands of riders throughout the day, but a recent newsletter from the Legislative Finance Committee said ridership needs to go up if the train wants to offset its carbon footprint. However, they want to purchase more energy-efficient locomotives eventually. [Concerned raised over Rail Runner’s carbon emissions]

On Monday NPR aired a segment that highlighted a $64 million federal grant Texas received for high speed rail. Listen here. 

California has replaced two diesel-electric commuter trains with zero emission locomotives. Read more about building certainty into California Air Resources Board's electric transition linked here.

ip image: Santa Fe Railyard.

Rapid City's Eccarius channeling racist Tanton

At his Faceberg page Republican former South Dakota legislator and retired Rapid City ophthalmologist Scott Eccarius releases racist tirades especially against asylum seekers. He and this interested party clashed at the Protecting South Dakota Kids page where he argued against free will and reproductive rights; but he didn't get to rabid racism on his own. 

Michigan ophthalmologist, John Tanton held white nationalist beliefs and wrote that to maintain American culture, “a European-American majority” is required. Tanton died in 2019.

In 1975, he wrote a paper titled “The Case for Passive Eugenics” and would later, in a letter to eugenicist Robert Graham, a millionaire businessman known for starting a sperm bank for geniuses, clarify his goals. Tanton’s ideas could also be found in the proclamations of the prominent “alt-right” white nationalist leader Richard Spencer. And Tanton’s ideas could be heard on Fox News. “The left used to care about the environment, the land, the water, the animals,” Tucker Carlson said on his show on Dec. 17, 2018. [The Ghosts of John Tanton]

Moving Rapid City railyard could speed passenger service

My proposal for passenger rail from Minneapolis to Denver is a 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, Wyoming and Denver. Service to Sioux Falls and Omaha could diverge at Florence, Minnesota but a route in the I-90 median between Sioux Falls and Rapid City should also be explored. 

Construction costs are very high for passenger rail between Minneapolis and Denver because significant track upgrades are needed especially in South Dakota. In east Rapid City, the abandoned Milwaukee Line that used to connect with Sioux Falls dead ends at the junction of SD44 and E. St. Patrick Street. The RCPE divides sending traffic north and west to Colony, Wyoming and east to Pierre. There is no intersection of the two rail beds and at this time there is no intention to secure leases for a new right of way from Colony to Gillette where passenger service could be developed in the future.

With help from a consultant Cheyenne's Metropolitan Planning Organization’s passenger rail location study has identified six potential station locations: the Union Pacific Depot in downtown Cheyenne, the Reed Avenue Corridor, an area near Old Happy Jack Road, the BNSF railyard northwest of downtown, a site next to FE Warren AFB, and along Terry Ranch Road.

Kip Harrington is Rapid City's Community Long-range Planning Manager.

“There are a lot of railroad grant programs out there available," Harrington said. "We have spoken to the railroad about it, they’re all in favor of moving the railyard, except they don’t want to pay for it. So they’re looking for some other funding opportunity, so that’s something we’ll work on once we have the recommendations from this study.” [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]

The Railyard Relocation and Railway Configuration Study is linked here.

Learn more at Colorado Public Radio.

Pastor sounding the alarm on NAR

Within the New Apostolic Reformation, dominion theology supposes christians must control the seven “mountains” of government, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, family, and business in order to establish a global christianic theocracy and prepare the world for Jesus’ return.

South Dakota's Earth hating governor is up to her areolae in this stuff.

On Wednesday KANW aired a terrifying episode of Reveal that chronicles the rise of NAR among the radical white wing of the Republican Party. It features The Reverend Rob Schenck as he comes to realize the depth of the evil that Donald Trump has tapped into. Schenck has an essay in the November-December issue of Mother Jones.

It took years for the scales to fall from my eyes. A major turning point occurred when I took a leave of absence from Faith and Action to pursue a late-in-life doctorate. Part of my research involved the German Christian movement of the 1930s, which supported the Nazi Party. One of the most respected Bible scholars of that period, Paul Althaus, declared Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship to be a “gift and miracle from God.” I began to suspect that we evangelicals were similarly allowing our faith to be co-opted for political purposes. Devastating consequences seemed inevitable for evangelicalism and for our country. [Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist]

Listen to the Reveal broadcast linked here.

South Dakota suffering lack of political engagement

Blue states are twice as politically engaged as red states are. 

In 2020 my home state of South Dakota was 47th in the percentage of the electorate who turned out to vote and 49th in percentage of women who voted that year. 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. Just 59% of the electorate turned out for the General Election in 2022 and only 17% of voters turned out for the June 2024 primary election. Chiesman has known about voter disgust in South Dakota for at least two decades.

Even the state's establishment Earth haters are on tilt about it.

"Hi Larry,

With Election Day coming up and only 66.8% of the voting-age population having cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election, WalletHub today released its report on the Most & Least Politically Engaged States in 2024, as well as expert commentary, to identify where Americans are making their voices heard the most. The more engaged voters are, the better chance they have to impact future economic and social issues.

WalletHub compared the 50 states based on 10 key indicators of political engagement. They range from voter registration statistics and laws to the percentage of people who voted in recent elections to political contributions."
 

Most Politically Engaged States		Least Politically Engaged States
1. Maryland		41. Louisiana
2. Virginia		42. Mississippi
3. New Jersey		43. South Dakota
4. Oregon		44. Nebraska
5. Washington		45. South Carolina
6. Montana		46. Indiana
7. Minnesota		47. Oklahoma
8. California		48. West Virginia
9. Arizona		49. Alabama
10. New York		50. Arkansas

 

Johnson v. Noem in 2026?

In 2014 the late Jean Rounds pleaded with her husband not to run for the US Senate but Reich Mike Rounds knew he had to run to stall then-US Attorney for the District of South Dakota Brendan Johnson from opening an investigation of Rounds' role in Bendagate to the public. 

USAs for the Districts of North Dakota and South Dakota, Tim Purdon and Johnson left their posts in 2015 to join Minneapolis-based Robins Kaplan, LLC. Both are enjoying successful law practices and could win statewide elections in their home states with their pants around their ankles. But, reaping the lucrative tort whirlwind is far more profitable than public service is. 

Brendan's father, Democratic Senator Tim Johnson brought the need for a research facility in the former Homestake Mine to Congress and worked tirelessly to bring the project to fruition. But Sen. Johnson and Earth hating then-US Representative Kristi Noem were on opposite sides of the Violence Against Women's Act in 2013. In 2016, Tim Johnson's South Dakota First Political Action Committee advocated for the establishment of nonpartisan elections in South Dakota: a forerunner of Amendment H. 

Today as governor Mrs. Noem failed on a COVID response, has failed on flood decisions and to bury her past criticisms of Donald Trump she deleted her old twitter feed so if Rounds resigned today she would simply appoint herself to the seat.

With NDN Collective and the Oglala Lakota Nation pressing the US Department of Justice to investigate the Rapid City Police Department Brendan Johnson was recently interviewed as part of a wider probe of rampant police brutality and "officer involved shootings" in the reservation border town.

So with the passing of Tim Johnson the future of the republic is too important to ignore.

A statement from Johnson’s family said “Tim always quipped that neither the left, nor the right, had a monopoly on all of the good ideas, but that working together, we can find common ground for the good of our country. In his work and life, Tim showed us never to give up. He will be missed. Our lives are fuller for having been loved and supported by him.” [Longtime Senator Tim Johnson dead at 77]

ip photo: Sen. Tim Johnson attending the 2014 South Dakota Democratic Party's State Convention in Yankton.

The good news? Hurricanes disperse hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico

Following the release of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's latest measurements Iowa Farmers Union President Aaron Lehman said that state's Nutrient Reduction Management Strategy is proving to be ineffective in controlling hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. But, Lehman is concerned that without further financial incentives from the Biden administration Republican welfare farmers will simply continue polluting waterways.

In Gulf states like Florida insurance companies are pulling out as Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is sounding the alarm over funding shortfalls following multiple climate catastrophes exacerbated by human impacts.

In 2020, Hurricane Hanna passed through the central and western Gulf days prior to the research cruise and mixed the water column, disrupting the hypoxic zone which forms in the coastal ocean west of the Mississippi River delta. While the size of the hypoxic zone fluctuates naturally throughout the summer, it usually forms again within days or weeks after the passage of storms. [Dealing with Dead Zones: Hypoxia in the Ocean]

Tropical cyclones cycle nutrients, too.

More cougars will be spared in the South Dakota Black Hills but in Wyoming not so much

This interested party lived in the Black Hills for nearly thirty years before seeing a cougar then saw three in the Two Bit drainage inside part of the Grizzly Gulch burn: two cubs in the Spring of 2006 and probably their mother the previous winter about four miles apart. The adult ran in the snow in front of my pickup long enough for me to reach for the camera in my glove box and realize there was no film in it. My friend, Herb watched six for an hour in his front yard near Devils Tower about ten years ago but he didn't have a camera on his flip phone.

South Dakota Game, Fish, and Plunder has been systematically exterminating the cougar population that had been discouraging wolves from migrating into the state and in 2015 mountain lions were nearly extirpated from the South Dakota side of the Black Hills.

The robust Black Hills mountain lion population has long been thought of as a conveyor belt of itinerant eastbound animals that will eventually culminate in Puma concolor reoccupying old haunts they were extirpated from long ago. The region’s reputation as a lion-dispersal factory is rooted in observation: Animals that have been fitted with tracking collars in the isolated bi-state mountain range have ended up treading into North Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado, Nebraska — and even well beyond. [Wyofile]

Since then the large felid has rebounded enough that SDGF&P considered removing them once again but after a public outcry the Republican-glutted commission has junked their plan. 

But in the Bear Lodge District in the Wyoming Black Hills the big cat may not be so fortunate because Earth haters in that state are shopping for 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.

Paula Von Weller of Spearfish testified that mountain lions play a critical role as predators in the Black Hills, helping to reduce disease by preying on diseased, weakened animals. “Lions provide essential ecosystem services by removing chronic wasting disease from deer and elk populations,” Weller said. [State commission scraps plan to reduce mountain lion numbers after public pushback]

CWD is surging in Midwest states like Iowa and Minnesota but Wyoming and Colorado are seeing spikes, too. According to Wyoming Game and Fish, the disease, which occurs mainly in male cervids like wapiti, moose and deer, is found in 34 of the state's 37 mule deer herds and in 15 of the state’s 36 elk herd units. In parts of Canada 85% of male mule deer and 35% of females are infected. 

Colorado Parks and Wildlife's mandatory testing revealed increases in CWD in three of the state's mule deer herds. A warming climate is blamed for part of increased transmission rates but researchers say the federal government's feeding of elk, especially in Wyoming, in close proximity is also a factor. Hay fed to those animals is likely contaminated with Roundup® and other pesticides. Scavengers like American crows can move the disease from gut pile to gut pile and can remain in soils for years.

In Michigan where cougars are considered rare white-tailed deer are being decimated by CWD and by epizootic hemorrhagic disease or EHD.

Unaffiliated Spearditch candidate could help send a progressive to Pierre

Brookings County's pestilent plague is having a cow.

Shana McVickers is an unaffiliated candidate running for the Statehouse in South Dakota District 31 but she reads like just another member of the extreme white wing of the Republican Party. Also in that race is incumbent Republican Mary Fitzgerald who could lose a significant number of votes to McVickers and send the progressive, Victoria Greenlee to Pierre. 

Again, if you are a South Dakota conservative with the fire in the belly who can get on the general election ballot in 2024 and intends to run as an unaffiliated or third party candidate for the US House or for the legislature from your district I will support your efforts both with money and in print.

Midwestern Trump states in 'significant recession:' Goss

Creighton University's Ernie Goss follows the economies of nine midwestern states and says manufacturing sectors in South Dakota, Missouri, and Iowa have been underperforming for at least five months straight. His Mid-America Business Conditions Index declined to 48.1 from 48.7 in August and represents the ninth time in 2024 that the index has drifted around growth neutral. Goss reports that the midwestern agricultural sector is now in a significant recession, and the region’s economic picture is lagging.

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. 

Goss says economic optimism among supply managers is waning, with about 62 percent expecting a recession or worsening conditions in the next six months.

“The overall economy is not in a recession. However, certain sectors in a recession, and I would argue right now that the manufacturing sector is in a slight recession. The agricultural sector is in a fairly significant recession.” [Creighton mfg. index slumps in Sept., pointing to mixed economic conditions ahead]

Unprovoked In Pennsylvania, Trump attacks John Deere, "I'm notifying John Deere right now. If you do that, we're putting a 200% tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States. So that if I win, John Deere is going to be paying a 200%." pic.twitter.com/sPbm4MWFSR

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) September 23, 2024

Arizona's voucher plan a $400 million black hole

Blurring one line between church and state America's founders extolled the virtue of education as local schools were run both by christian sects and by local municipalities under the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution. But, in the late 19th and early 20th Century the Ku Klux Klan and those on the losing side believed John Wilkes Booth was a patriot who took out the US President that started the American Civil War directed by a Marxist Illuminati. Then after World War I the Klan grew to some 4 million members, got involved in education and its leader, Hiram Evans complained that the control of school textbooks had been taken away by "un-American forces." 

The concept of a charter school began in 1971 as a progressive movement but especially in red states has since been hijacked by the far white wing of the Republican Party to advance the New Apostolic Reformation. Dominion theology supposes christians must control the seven “mountains” of government, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, family, and business in order to establish a global christianic theocracy and prepare the world for Jesus’ return.

The Trump Organization was simply the latest obstacle to public education because it hates people of color and social equity, too. Add it all up: Rupert Murdoch, a a not-so-closeted racist himself, the Kochs, the John Birch Society, the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, the Council for National Policy, the National Rifle Association, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, their attacks on public education and their fear of the "Great Replacement." 

On Monday WBUR's On Point aired its second episode on school vouchers as part of a partnership with ProPublica and revealed that vouchers don't have to meet the level of transparency that Arizona requires of public schools.

In terms of transparency, I mean, as a reminder, this is all of our money as taxpayers, is public money being spent on private schools and homeschooling. It seems to me that that should come with some level of accountability. So, like, I, as a reporter or any other citizen of the state can't see private schools' budgets to see how our taxpayer dollars are being spent or homeschoolers' budgets. There are states like Arizona where there aren't testing requirements. [Eli Hager, ProPublica]

In my home state of South Dakota public money for private schools and homeschooling is still an explosive topic, too. 

ip photo: Saquaro National Park near Marana, Arizona.

Trump alludes to eliminating the Department of Education so states can pump money into private schools.

"School choice is a very big deal. A lot of people don't know that, but it's a big deal. It'll be great." pic.twitter.com/dhVXyv1oHy

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) September 29, 2024