Racist city might not see a Trump bronze until after he leaves office again or croaks early

James Maher has produced bronzes of many of the horrific losers in US presidential history for the City of Presidents Foundation: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Woodrow Wilson, Hoobert Heever, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. 

Now, after admitting he doesn't loathe the 45th President of the United States Maher is nearing the completion of a sculpture of Donald Trump at a cost of at least $100,000. But the likenesses are normally not placed until a president is gone from office for two years and no location has been chosen for the cast of the convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and career criminal.

But here's the dealio: Trump lost in 2020 to Pres. Joe Biden by fetching nearly the same number of votes he won with — 74,216,747 and 74,848,942 in 2024. Joe won with 81,268,867 but Vice President Kamala Harris has only received 71,260,728 in counting so far hence it was only a landslide in the Electoral College. 

So where are the 10,000,000 votes? Trump convinced Latinos and Black men that migrants were taking their jobs and threatened other people of color who showed up to vote at polling places. Young voters who turned out en masse for Pres. Barack Obama turned up their noses at VP Harris over the Biden administration's support for Israel's war crimes in Gaza so Trump won in states where Democratic senators also won. Harris won 30 of New Mexico’s 33 counties.

There is a push for Joe to step down so Kamala can spoil Trump’s 47 merch!

Although the bronze of Joe hasn’t even been commissioned the racists who visit Rapid City might just have to wait until the Orange Julius is dead and gone.

BLM, FS moving to Trump-proof ancestral Pueblo lands

Our neighbors to the west, the Jemez, Cochiti and Zia Pueblos, the Santo Domingo and San Felipe reservations, were hit hard by the Trump Virus where tribal authorities have been restricting travel for non-members. New Mexico is home to twenty three Indigenous nations.

Established by President Bill Clinton in 2001, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument is just across I-25 from the Baja Waldo/Red Rock community and is one of the most popular national monuments in New Mexico.

The Monument was temporarily closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, BLM and Cochiti Pueblo jointly agreed to maintain the closure after pandemic restrictions were lifted in order to renegotiate operations of the Monument. In keeping with the Biden-Harris administration’s priorities of honoring Tribal sovereignty and the federal trust responsibility and respecting the ties that native and traditional communities have to public lands, the BLM and Cochiti Pueblo entered into an agreement under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act that will allow Cochiti Pueblo to take on day-to-day operations of the Monument. [BLM, Cochiti Pueblo announce reopening of Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument]

On 18 April Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced protections for 4,200 acres in New Mexico for lands sacred to the Santa Ana and San Felipe Pueblos. In Arizona she signed historic agreements with the Colorado River Indian Tribes and pledged $14.5 to the Navajo, Hopi and San Carlos Apache to electrify homes. 

Los Alamos County is a member of the Coalition of Sustainable Communities New Mexico and the city has been part of Local Governments for Sustainability since this interested party has lived in the state. LANL boasts its electricity needs are 31% carbon pollution-free so the National Nuclear Security Administration wants to erect a transmission line across the Caja del Rio wilderness from a substation that generates some of its power from a photovoltaic array.

Today, leadership from the Bureau of Land Management, the USDA Forest Service, and the Pueblo of Tesuque signed a memorandum of understanding to co-steward culturally significant Tribal places located on public lands of the Caja del Río Plateau west of Santa Fe, N.M. This agreement establishes a framework to collaboratively ensure the protection, preservation, and access to culturally significant Pueblo sites within the boundaries of land managed by federal agencies. In 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack signed Joint Secretarial Order 3403 to ensure agencies manage federal lands and waters in a manner that seeks to protect the treaty, religious, subsistence, and cultural interests of federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native Tribes and the Native Hawaiian Community. [The Pueblo of Tesuque, Bureau of Land Management, and USDA Forest Service to co-steward the Caja del Río Plateau]

A settlement has been reached in the Jemez Pueblo's long dispute with the National Park Service to occupy a portion of the Valles Caldera National Preserve.

In Colorado, Senator John Hickenlooper is taking fire from Republicans opposed to the creation of the Dolores River National Monument. Republicans in Arizona and Utah are challenging Pres. Biden's authority to limit grazing permits and uranium mining on Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.

Kristi Noem’s father hated American Indians, she hates Indians and Donald Trump hates Indians so moving to prevent a convicted felon and his mob from seizing ancestral lands from Indigenous people again needs to happen fast.

Learn more at the Associated Press.

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Winter is coming

We're fucked.

Bankers, corn and soybean glut driving farmers off the land as drought grips upper MO basin

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

Matt Bruner supported Ted Cruz when he was a South Dakota delegate to the 2016 Republican convention. Bruner farms near Carthage where he has taken some $3500 in federal subsidies, supports candidates in the far white wing and even Republican former legislator, Steve Hickey called him a racist. When pressed by an interested party on Faceberg recently Bruner said he doesn't care whether a farm bill is passed after he posted a picture of rotten corn saying, "but it's not actually black. Thus, it's Kamala corn."

Farmers are taking out loans at a rate and scale not seen in years as weakened crop prices weigh on the agricultural sector, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Farmers are grappling with weakened global demand and a glut of corn and soybeans, which has contributed to a decline in the prices paid to producers. [Farm Loans Soar as Ag Economy Deteriorates]

Especially without a farm bill economists like Creighton University's Ernie Goss and ag groups like the National Corn Growers Association are sounding the alarm about the Trump tariffs. According to the most recent findings from WalletHub 75% of Americans expect a recession if Trump is elected. 60% of Americans think the economy is improving and 68% are concerned that cutting interest rates will make inflation worse. 

Ag producers have destroyed shelter belts to plant industrial crops that deplete aquifers and now drought is blowing toxin-laden topsoil into downwind states. Spring wildfire seasons begin in eastern Colorado, western Kansas, the panhandles of Oklahoma, Texas and other Republican-held areas where moral hazard and poor ranching practices routinely decimate the high plains.

Going back to 1950, 66% of all U.S. farms — 3.75 million farms in total — have stopped producing. The number of acres farmed has dropped by 323 million, which is roughly double the size of Texas. Agriculture experts worry as family farms across America gasp to stay afloat and go broke. [American Family Farms Going Broke]

In February two tracts of farmland in Iowa sold for nearly $30,000 an acre and in March some farmland in that state sold for $26,000 an acre. Today, land is selling for $17,000 and $20,000 per acre but there were also fourteen "no sales" in the state. In Iowa voluntary buffer strips and other conservation practices have simply failed desertifying parts of the state and causing the Raccoon River to be named one of the most endangered waterways in the United Snakes. 

Summit Carbon Solutions wants to dig a $4.5 billion pipeline that would rip up over 700 miles of unceded tribal lands where thousands of Indigenous Americans are buried then pump carbon dioxide to some sacrifice zone in occupied North Dakota ostensibly to be sequestered. According to Iowa State University some land impacted by pipelines never recovers from the disturbance. 

Iowa's Republican governor is the most hated by a state's constituency in the country.

David Andrews’ farm is about nine miles away from the small, aptly named Iowa town of State Center. The 160-acre farm has been in his family since 1865, and Andrews grew up there. So, 30 years ago, he decided to plant 60- to 100-foot strips of tall grasses within and along the edges of fields to prevent erosion. To pay for it, he enrolled a total of 14 acres, made up of those strips, in the federal government’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Project 2025, a conservative Republican presidential transition blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, proposes eliminating CRP. Project 2025 says farmers should not be allowed to get commodity payments if they get crop insurance subsidies. In Rep. Dusty Johnson’s case, when asked about conservation programs at the May equipment manufacturers’ panel, he answered with political dexterity, praising conservation programs but indicating he may in fact be on board with the RSC proposal to eliminate CRP. [Republican Plans for Ag Policy May Bring Big Changes to Farm Country]

The US Army Corps of Engineers has put the upper Missouri River Basin on drought management status and tribes want to see the river managed more sustainably.

Despite Republican bellicosity the US Department of Agriculture has given South Dakota another $83 million for grassland conservation.

A respected Iowa poll just found that a majority of voters in that state support Vice President Kamala Harris for POTUS.

Learn more at E&E News.

Rapid City finally takes blogger's advice

Update: "Pennington County Human Services is providing a one-time, one-way bus ticket for [Client's Name] to [Destination]. By accepting this assistance, I understand that this bus ticket support is intended as a one-time service. I acknowledge that my use of this service may preclude me from receiving bus ticket assistance in the future at the discretion of Pennington County Human Services."

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Back in 2016 this blogger urged Rapid City to help unhoused people apply for Medicaid and give folks without places to live $1000 vouchers so they can flee South Dakota and its brutal winters.

2020 presidential candidate, Andrew Yang wanted to implement a universal basic income of $12,000 a year and guaranteed income (GI) demonstration projects are underway in several states including in New Mexico. That same year Republican former mayor Steve Allender said it costs Rapid City some $15 million every year to address homelessness. Even Palestinian refugee and Muslim Hani Shafai wants to house Rapid City's perpetual homeless population.

Harley owners, some of whom have ties to clubs with nefarious pasts and many of them pre-1970s graduates of Spearditch High School, cruise the streets in summer and then recuse themselves from the horrible Lawrence County winters for warmer white compounds in Scottsdale, Marana, Sedona or Mesa. Often, there are elderly parents in one of the ubiquitous long-term care facilities and cemeteries. These obese Republican slackers taking advantage of the dynasty trust industry are now fleeing the frozen tundra in their RVs ahead of another six-month winter and strings of below-zero days.

Denver and Albuquerque are converting empty office buildings to apartments. Las Cruces will be in the mid-60s and low 70s all week, El Paso and Tucson will be, too and Phoenix will be in the mid-70s.

Click on the image for a better look.

Noem in line to warp civil service, BLM

The Government Accountability Office documented more than 350 incidents of threats and assaults against federal land management employees during the Obama years but spurred by Donald Trump there have been many more culminating in an attack on the US Capitol. Not just the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and at least 15 other federal agencies also suffered hits to morale while in the clutches of the Trump Organization. 

A survey conducted by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) showed that during the Trump years the BLM was plagued by staff shortages, high turnover and partisan rancor. Civil service is on the ballot again as those of us who love the Earth fret the possibility that the unitary executive will not be a Democrat. Yes, Interior, 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 elements of the administrative state to stand down. 

South Dakota's Earth hating, compliant, infidelitous, jaded or all the above governor has been fingered for a having a fling with Trump henchman, Corey Lewandowski so she has hoed her way to the queue for a post within the Cabinet. To cover up her past criticisms of Trump she even deleted her old twitter feed so the Bureau of Land Management is probably in her sights.

That means the Interior Department — a vast agency that oversees public lands, the national parks, Western water conservation and endangered species protections — is sure to witness drastic policy shifts if Trump reclaims the White House in January. Arguably, the most significant Interior workforce change during the Trump years was the relocation of the Bureau of Land Management’s national headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. The Trump administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service moved to rewrite the ESA regulations that determine how critical habitat is defined and whether costs are tallied as part of a threatened or endangered listing decision. [Trump 2.0 would bring whiplash to Interior Department]

In a related story, a new study has revealed that heavy metals in the wildfire retardants that the Forest Service and other agencies use leach into waterways. One third of the Earth's tree species are at risk to extinction according to the United Nations.

Also, Mormons are splitting with Trump over his deportation rants.

Midwestern Trump states, ag groups still pessimistic: Goss

Especially without a farm bill economists like Creighton University's Ernie Goss and ag groups like the National Corn Growers Association are sounding the alarm about the Trump tariffs.

Goss and the Business Conditions Index track the economies of nine midwestern states. Those Trump states have lost some 3700 jobs in the last five months including South Dakota where unemployment is ticking up while losing more manufacturing opportunities. Supply managers remain pessimistic with some 41% signaling a recession and a significant drop off in the next six months. 

WalletHub sez 54% of Americans say the Federal Reserve's September rate cut saved them money but South Dakota has dropped to 49th in financial literacy and 50th in financial knowledge and education despite the state's Republican governor's pathological Pollyannaism. The state is the 43rd best economy in the US, 51st in percentage of businesses owned by women and 50th in innovation potential. Because of talent flight and brain drain in 2023 South Dakota was among the least innovative states, ranked 50th in venture capital spending per capita, 47th in R&D spending and 51st in share of tech companies. South Dakota is 24th of states where workers are fleeing their jobs, 35th in women's health and safety and 47th in road and bridge infrastructure. 

According to the most recent findings from WalletHub 75% of Americans expect a recession if Trump is elected.  60% of Americans think the economy is improving and 68% are concerned that cutting interest rates will make inflation worse.

October's wholesale price gauge also continued to fall to 56.5 from 56.6 in September, indicating cooling inflationary pressures. However, Goss says supply managers remain pessimistic regarding the economic outlook, with roughly 41% expecting a recession--citing supply chain disruptions as the top concern. [Goss: October BCI numbers a mixed bag]

Review the WalletHub release linked here.