Fire weather still a threat in South Dakota

The grassland fire danger index will reach the very high category in much of South Dakota both Tuesday and Wednesday in a state where Republicans don't believe humans are responsible for desertifying the planet but push watersheds to the brink anyway.

The Bureau of Land Management plans to conduct prescribed burns this fall in the Fort Meade Recreation Area near Sturgis, the Exemption Area near Englewood, and south of Jewel Cave in Schenk Canyon, weather and conditions permitting. No burning will occur before Oct. 1. All prescribed fire projects follow detailed burn plans that set weather, fuel, and safety requirements. Fire personnel will only begin operations when conditions meet established standards. The BLM will coordinate with local authorities before starting any burns. Smoke may be visible during and after the burns, and crews will remain on site to monitor conditions for several days. Prescribed fire helps reduce hazardous fuels, improve wildfire preparedness, restore pine–savanna habitat, support biodiversity, and promote ecosystem health. [press release]

Doeden would be easiest for a strong Democrat to beat

 If you're not a white person in South Dakota there is no right to life.

And, a showdown between Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson and interim South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden in the Earth hater gubernatorial primary will nominate Tubby Toby Doeden who would be the easiest for a strong Democratic nominee like Troy Heinert to beat. But, conventional wisdom purports that if Rhoden gets out Jon Hansen and Doeden will split the anti-SDGOP establishment vote giving Johnson the nod. Delegate diversity and more likely uncivil war at that party's state convention will fill the rest of the ticket mindful that most are packing.

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 build 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 is government overreach and 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 with a free will chooses to terminate a pregnancy the creator doesn’t condone that decision? How does that work?

12. Only 1% of abortions occur in the third trimester and are performed for medical reasons such as foetal anomalies or maternal life endangerment.

Olson opines on South Dakota's culture of corruption

Editor's note: another skirmish flared up in the SDGOP civil war as Citizens for Liberty and Republican lawmakers filed a petition to bring a Rapid City boondoggle to a public vote while South Dakota's maddest former teevee newscaster, Shad Olson spoke truth to Pierre's culture of corruption again at his Faceberg page.

In addition to what amounted to appropriations money laundering and column shifting to spin the marketing tale of "we have the money" to build South Dakota's $650-million new prison, "The Cornhole Palace," the fine print on the builder contract gets much worse. Any cost savings on the total finished price of the project will be split 50/50 between the state and the builder.

While this arrangement might sound like a smart money play, it effectively incentivizes both the state and the builder to over promise and under deliver on quality and durability of the building, and to inflate the initial ask price for the project to leave padding for extra gravy off the backend.

Both parties get paid to cut corners. And the final price never changes. Anyone believing in "leftover government money," likely also believes in jackalopes and heterosexual South Carolina U.S. Senators.

In other words, if the final, or "actual price" of the prison project arrives at $350-million instead of $650-million, the extraneous $300-million "savings" would be split equally between builder and the state. $150-million apiece. An arrangement that installs multiple layers of opacity and ambiguity and plenty of slop room for greased palms and payouts.

And your "true conservatives" not only didn't play "hard to get" in the consummation of the deal, they bent over for a blowout establishment victory that leaves no reason for the RINO Governor and crony legislative caucus to negotiate on any piece of conservative legislation, or even to allow it to floor.

It's a worst of all possible worlds scenario, where South Dakotans were treated to a contrived auction under auspices of careful deliberation and in the end are nearly guaranteed not to get even the palatial finished project they were sold in the prenup.

But I'm sure there'll be a careful audit. Chortle.

Third most corrupt state in America.

South Dakota desperately needs a DOGE. And not one picked out and installed by the same batch of crooks, liars, thieves and phony conservative doofuses that have run the show for 40 years.

The illusion is finished.

President Jeffries will rescind Medals of Honor for Wounded Knee murderers

A year into South Dakota Statehood, the United States Army massacred hundreds of children, women and men in the southwest part of the state. 

Treaties that served as constitutions for American Indigenous were broken and rewritten for political expediency and one reason Republicans don't like Common Core history standards is that the curriculum long-ignored by textbooks includes genocide and near-extermination of Natives by European colonialism. Today, American Indians are subject to at least four overlapping jurisdictions making tribes the most regulated people in the US without representatives from their Nations serving in Congress. 

Then in 2021 former South Dakota State Senator Troy Heinert sponsored a resolution in the legislature in support of revoking Medals of Honor for Wounded Knee murderers that passed overwhelmingly but since DonOld Trump hates Native Americans one of his apparatchiks recently left the medals that dishonor Native American military servicemembers in place. In 2024 Heinert was tapped to run the Bureau of Indian Affairs' buffalo conservation and expansion project.

And, while the Palestinian homeland looks like holes in the slice of Swiss cheese analogous to the illegal Israeli state, progress toward resolutions of Native trust disputes would have far more political traction after tribes secede from the States in which they reside and then be ratified to form one State, the 51st, sans contiguous borders replete with two Senators and at least two House members.

The good news? In January, 2027 after Nikki Gronli, Julian Beaudion and the Democrats retake the US House and Senate they will elect Hakeem Jeffries Speaker of the House, impeach and remove Trump and JD Vance then Jeffries will become President of the United States. Soon afterwards Pres. Jeffries will do what Presidents Obama and Biden did not do and rescind those medals. After that, Democrats will annul the Nazist legacy left by the corrupt Trump Organization.

Ain't it the truth!

The Chairman of the FCC might lose his freedom of speech. pic.twitter.com/9aGiHHaWmp

— South Park (@SouthPark) September 25, 2025

SDHP apparently a shitty place to work

Recall that 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 by a Pennington County Deputy Sheriff. Today, Policing for Profit has allowed the Division of Criminal Investigation to provide military armaments for the industry throughout South Dakota. 

A South Dakota state trooper spent his time systematically profiling cars with license plates from states with legal cannabis until a Washington man stood his ground. Cannabis is legal in Washington but South Dakota convicted African-American Donald Willingham with multiple counts in Pennington County after Trooper Zach Bader illegally profiled the vehicle in which he was riding on Interstate 90. Recall that in 2012 short guy power hungry Bader accosted a Montana family instead of policing Sturgis Rally traffic. 

In 2017 Brian Biehl of Platte went to jail for taking nearly $70,000 confiscated during drug searches while he was employed as a South Dakota Highway Patrol trooper.

The overwhelming number of people profiled from legal cannabis states on I-90 are persons of color as is the population of South Dakota’s prisons. 

Now, the law enforcement industry is struggling to hire especially West River and is short some twenty five personnel or about 12 percent of its mercenary force even though members of the state polizei start at $30.46 per hour plus an additional $2.00 per hour for a night shift and $2.00 per hour on weekends.

And, we all know cops' lives suck because they reliably abuse the rule of law, their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and occasionally murder their wives; nevertheless, police unions are showered with cash while teachers' unions get the shaft. 

Spearditch theater is broke, looking for buyer

Spearditch is the seat of whiteness in LawCo and in the winter Exit 14 looks like a monument to the clear-span building that has been air-dropped into Antarctica so life-long residents drive to Rapid City and Denver to shop forsaking local merchants. The resultant soaring median age of the retirees seeking deliverance from the cultural diversities thriving in Colorado, California, Minnesota, even Arizona and Oregon drives the exploitation of South Dakota's regressive tax structure and reinforces the racially insulated Nazist enclave that Spearditch is today. Many, if not most, of these obese Republican slackers take advantage of the dynasty trust industry and flee the frozen tundra in their RVs ahead of consecutive six-month winters and strings of below-zero days.

Minnesota finally opens non-tribal cannabis dispensaries

When former US Representative Tim Walz was running for governor in 2017 legal cannabis was a favorite topic in Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party primary then in 2023 Governor Walz signed legal cannabis into law and gave a head start to the eleven Indigenous Nations in the state. 

Last week, Legacy Cannabis in Duluth was the first non-tribal retail shop to open and next February a Minneapolis building currently housing a Pizza Hut will become one of more than a dozen non-tribal dispensaries operating in Minnesota. Customers packed into the Brooklyn Park location of RISE dispensaries on its first day of cannabis sales, one of the first privately owned facilities to open about two years after the Legislature fully legalized the herb. 

Compacts include how the state taxes the Nations on the sale of cannabis products to a licensed wholesaler or dispensary off-reservation. Several Tribal Nations have signed compacts with Minnesota and lead retail cannabis growth where the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is hoping to become a billion dollar enterprise after completing construction of a 50,000-square-foot cultivation facility that dwarfs any non-tribal operations which are capped at 30,000 square feet. The White Earth Nation was the first of Minnesota’s eleven Nations to open an off-reservation dispensary. 

So far, the closest dispensaries to the horrible red state of South Dakota are in Morton and Willmar.

Governor Walz has announced he will run for a third term.

Learn more at Minnesota Public Radio.

Handy chart

Yep

Anderson, ACLU taking on Spearditch City Hall

Editor's note: Angela Anderson bought her house from this interested party in 1994. The following story appears in the Black Hills Pioneer and is republished in its entirety. 

On Oct. 9, an amendment to Spearfish’s ordinance on assemblies, parades, and processions is expected to go into effect, carving out new exceptions for protests and gatherings that exercise free speech. 

The amendment was drafted after the city received a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), on June 16, stating that its rules on permitting and assembling in public were likely “unconstitutional and unlikely to survive legal challenge.” The complete letter is available in its entirety on the Pioneer’s website, bhpioneer.com.

Angela Anderson was organizing a protest on behalf of the Defenders of Democracy, an unpaid, grassroots citizen group that hoped to hold a “No Kings” protest in Spearfish this spring. She had planned protests before, and said that she generally found the city’s ordinances and policies laid out in the special events handbook unclear and confusing — many of the rules seemed to have been designed for private events, parades, and fairs or festivals.

“We checked with the city police, and three different individuals were told that we did not need a permit for a protest or a rally. As long as we didn’t impede pedestrian flow or vehicle traffic, but they appreciated that we let them know about it,” Anderson said. “The police said they would not have someone present, because they were short-staffed, but if we needed help or there was something we were troubled with to just give them a call.”

Then, just nine days before the protest, Anderson received a phone call from a city official. She was told that Defenders of Democracy needed to apply for and obtain a permit before they could hold a protest on public property.

If their protest was permitted, they would have to acquire special event insurance, with a minimum coverage of $1 million, in order to gather and make their voices heard.

That didn’t pass the sniff test for Anderson, who had trained with the ACLU in Rapid City to operate as a volunteer legal observer. She reached out to the ACLU and a civil rights lawyer based in Rapid City.

“They all said the same thing. You don’t need permits. It is against First Amendment rights,” Anderson said.City Ordinance 94.01, as cited in the letter from the ACLU, had stated, “it shall be unlawful for any person to organize or hold or participate in a parade, meetings, assembly, or outdoor concert … on the streets, sidewalks, or public parks of this city, unless such activity shall have first been authorized by written permit issued by the Chief of Police.” 

That ordinance was last revised 2011. 

Samantha Chapman, an advocacy manager with the ACLU of South Dakota, told the Pioneer there are several issues with the ordinance as written.

“When it comes to free speech and expression, people have a right to gather, to protest, to demonstrate in any space that is public,” Chapman said.

The First Amendment allows for free speech and gatherings for the expression and exchange of ideas in traditional public forums — streets, sidewalks, and parks.

“The city can only place restrictions on those sorts of public demonstrations and gatherings if they are pertaining to reasonable place and time is kind of the legal standard that comes into play when there are any kind of restrictions for protests. Reasonable place and time standards mostly applied in situations where people might be, like you can’t organize a protest that is going to be disruptive of a city government function,” Chapman said. “The government can say, ‘you can’t host a protest inside the city council chambers during the city council meeting.’”

Before the city council voted to amend ordinance 1406 on Monday, it required that permit applicants provide the city with the “purpose, location, and route” of any gathering — protests included.

Policies outlined in the event handbook, which was last amended in January, noted that the city could deny permits based on an applicant’s “performance regarding previous permit conditions.”

The letter from the ACLU states, “Considering past behavior when determining whether to grant or deny a permit application vests a municipality with too great discretion to survive constitutional scrutiny.”“We don’t want to have, in general, the government deciding who gets to protest and who shouldn’t, but even more so we don’t want to have one single individual responsible for determining who gets to protest,” Chapman said, citing the powers that the old ordinance granted to the police chief to issue or deny permits. 

City Attorney David Knox told the Pioneer, the application process has previously, and will continue to move through multiple city departments. 

“Oversight of the permitting process is not changing. Applications will continue to be reviewed by a number of departments internally, including finance, police and fire, parks and recreation, public works and city administration,” Knox said. “The parks and recreation department has a special events assistant that has helped administer the permitting process for some time, and the department will maintain copies of permits and applications. The revisions to the ordinance help align the ordinance and current practice.”

In its letter, the ACLU pointed out to city that policies in the special events handbook that seemed to deviate from the ordinance. 

Ordinance 94.06 required applicants to apply for a permit at least five days before a protest or event. The handbook asked that permits be submitted “no less than 60 days before the proposed event.”

Either time constraint, Chapman said, could bar protected, spontaneous speech and ignore the fact that “timing is of the essence in politics.”

“The First Amendment protects your right to protest in response to breaking news. Meaning, immediately. The city could put that five-day requirement in place; however, they would not be able to legally or lawfully stop a protest coming together in response to breaking news,” Chapman said.In the case of the localized “No Kings” and “Make Good Trouble” protests Anderson helped organize, there was plenty of time to potentially fill out a permit application. That isn’t always the case when it comes to the exercise of free speech. 

“During this current, second Trump administration, the speed at which huge sweeping changes to the way that our government functions and operates are being rolled out is pretty consequential,” Chapman said.  “A lot of things are changing very rapidly every single day, so in order to keep up with the news cycle, there is no possible way that any protest group could comply with a 60-day advanced notice.”

Anderson said her group tried to comply with the insurance requirement laid out in the special events handbook.

“We tried to get event insurance. It wasn’t possible; a number of us searched on national sites as well as locally. It is just not something that we could get. The vendor they listed in the handbook would not give us insurance for this protest,” Anderson said.

According to the ACLU, federal appellate courts have already struck down, “nearly identical insurance and indemnification requirements.”

Chapman said she is concerned that barriers to obtaining insurance and permitting requirements might prevent citizens from protesting , picketing, or assembling for a common cause.   

“We have concerns that protestors will be denied permits, or that people will assume that they are not going to be able to get a permit, therefore they won’t protest, so that will have a chilling effect,” Chapman said.On June 16, Chapman signed the letter addressed to the city council, city attorney, police chief, and mayor that closed by stating “For all of these reasons, the ACLU has grave concerns about the First Amendment rights of Spearfish citizens.”

After two weeks, she had not heard back from the city.

In reaching out again, Chapman offered to help revise the ordinance — an offer the city did not accept, she said. Instead, the city independently altered Ordinance 1406. The first reading of the amended ordinance happened on Sept. 2. The special events handbook is now in the editing process, so that changes can be made to reflect the updated ordinance, Knox said.

“The city has seen a significant increase in the number of Special Events this year - including longstanding events like the Five-O and Downtown Friday Nights, and more recent events like the Camaro Rally. In addition to events like these that require reservation of public spaces and coordination of public services, historically there have been periodic public assemblies in the city, some of which did not seek a permit,” Knox said. “The city has not interfered with or restricted such public assemblies. However, with an uptick in the number of special events this year and the number of assemblies in recent months – both locally and nationally – the city decided to review the current process and ensure the ordinance would clearly exempt such assemblies and would provide adequate advanced notice for larger events that place demands on city services.”

Now, public assemblies are exempt from permit application and insurance requirements. It defines public assemblies as “any meeting, demonstration, picket line, rally, or gathering of persons for a common purpose, whether spontaneous or as a result of prior planning, in or upon the street, sidewalk, or other public grounds in a place open to the general public.”The amended ordinance then goes on to say that, “no permit is required for a public assembly which will not interfere with the normal flow” of traffic.

Planned public assemblies that expect to see more than 25 people “should submit a permit application for informational purposes only to assist the city in scheduling or coordinating services for the assembly.”

Anderson said it is often difficult to determine how many people will attend a rally or protest. One of the “No Kings Day” protests held earlier this year saw nearly 400 people in attendance.

“There is still an element of uncertainty because you should get an event permit, but you don’t have to,” Anderson said. “The city police are not the ones that grant the permit, it’s through the city, but it has it go through the city and now the parks and rec department.

It is really a mess, and they’re really still somewhat trying to control what we say and when we do it.”

She said that was why she felt strongly about reaching out to the ACLU, her city council representative, and city staff to address the ordinance in the first place.

“The reason why we all persisted in following through with these ordinances was, we were doing these protests and they were planned, but it was so unclear within the ordinances and the handbook that we all felt it was our civic responsibility to make sure that this got clarified for everyone,” Anderson said.

She said she does plan to keep the city in the loop and does understand the need to maintain public safety.

“We will of course, inform the city police that we are having this so that they can be aware and be available,” Anderson said. “The police have been very helpful.”Chapman said the amended ordinance is not perfect, but it has greatly improved the city’s policy from a legal perspective.

“Overall, we think it’s a huge improvement. We see this as a big win for the citizens of Spearfish and anyone in Spearfish who wants to express themselves. It is a victory for free speech. There are some lingering small issues that ultimately none of which are bad enough or serious enough that we feel further action is needed at this time,” Chapman said.

Guest post: Wismer updates South Dakota voters on prison plan

Editor's note: Democratic former South Dakota State Senator Wismer repeatedly warns about the risk of Earth haters holding supermajorities in the legislature and that the state is living in the "dark ages." Her reasoning is hardly mysterious. It’s all about the money a too big to jail banking racket, video lootery, a medical industry triopoly, prostitution, the Sturgis Rally, policing for profit, sex trafficking, hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the SDGOP destroying lives, depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule. So, instead of building a nearly billion dollar prison the state should spend the money to house, feed and educate people. 

The reported contractor for the proposed prison build out is Henry Carlson Construction, LLC. Henry Carlson, Jr. was the guy who helped create the Future Fund and until his death in 2022 was a regular contributor to the Governor's Club.

Susan Wismer is still speaking out. The following column appears at her Faceberg page.

Next Tuesday, September 23, will be a big day for South Dakota. The legislature will be meeting to finally approve the construction of the new state prison. The money is available without borrowing, thanks to Biden/COVID windfalls to the state (and some really creative accounting) the last few years. As Ryan Brunner writes below, it's time to focus on the facts. This issue has been studied to death, and it's long past time for action.

Nevertheless, a substantial block of "heads in the sand" legislators are threatening to vote no on the project; most are pandering to their conservative primary voters... No one likes to spend money building prisons, but the right decisions are often not the easy ones. District One's own Logan Manhart typically follows that naysayers block, though I haven't heard him commit one way or another since last winter, when he was a big NO. NO would be an irresponsible vote.

If you care about public safety, the safety of prison guards, or inmates, you know this is a project our state has pushed down the road for 40 years and it needs to happen ASAP. If you care about our state's high recidivism rate, (the rate at which inmates recycle through the corrections system) or if you care about the subtle pressure judges are under not to sentence people who should be in prison to our overcrowded facilities, you know a YES vote is needed. This fresh batch of legislators that had to be brought up to speed last summer on an issue that any legislator ought to have already studied up on, has already cost us a year's construction season.

One of the many improvements in the new facility will be space for increased inmate education, job training, and addiction treatment services. Why wouldn't we want to help inmates be all they can be once they rejoin society? Won't their success increase our public safety? Won't it help keep them from recycling back into the expensive prison system?

Some of that increased space has already been cut back in the name of cutting construction costs. What a typically "penny-wise and pound-foolish" decision! For far too long, pleas for those services have been ignored and/or sacrificed on the altar of low taxes. It's been refreshing to hear support for those services included in this discussion, in part thanks to our Native American legislators.

If you care about a family member involved in the corrections system as an inmate, or staff, share your story with Rep. Manhart and ask him to vote YES. He needs to know voters he's never met are paying attention to his votes. Please help make sure that NESD doesn't stand in the way of doing the responsible thing for our people and state.

Guest post: Conlon on farm handouts

Editor's note: Shelly Conlon is News Director for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. Her column appears at Farm Forum.

The farmers who spoke at a Sept. 2 meeting with congressional officials in Brookland, AR, were respectful, plain-spoken, and worried, according to the 4-minute, 30-second report aired by KAIT News, Jonesboro, and posted on YouTube afterwards.

None, however, could have anticipated the anger their pleas for federal farm assistance ignited when the video went viral.

Within a week of the report's online posting, 25,237 comments–most packed with resentment and invective–poured into YouTube. Many echoed someone calling herself @SamanthaUniverse who demanded the farmers "Put your red hats back on… NO HANDOUTS".

Another suggested that the farmers "Call Eric Trump he made 500 million yesterday." Over 9,500 people endorsed that comment with a thumbs up emoji while none disagreed.Equally remarkable, the straight-down-the-middle news report of the public meeting received an astonishing 826,000 views within four days.

Unsurprisingly, however, the federal officials hosting the meeting–identified as staffers from the offices of Arkansas senators John Boozman and Tom Cotton and local Congressman Rick Crawford–played it close to their MAGA-red vests. 

Their post-meeting joint press statement was a bowl of warm milk: fat-free promises that the July-passed Trump tax bill, "once implemented, will help economic challenges and natural disasters to preserve family farms…"Not likely; most of the bill's modest tools are a year from taking effect and nothing in it addresses farmers' two most pressing concerns now: Trump tariffs choking off vital U.S. export markets and fast rising prices on key inputs like machinery, seed, and fertilizer.

"So how can this be fixed?" the KAIT News reporter asked an attendee."In the short-term," explained the farmer, "they have no choice but to mail us a check. I don't know a farmer that likes a check program. Nobody wants to take the taxpayer money, but nobody wants to go broke..."

Of course not, but that prescription–another government bailout offered as a matter of fact–tipped commenters into anger. Few saw another government bailout of farmers as a matter of fact.Noted one, "Farming 101: reap what you sow!" Another wrote, "Thoughts and prayers."

Anger aside, the farmer who suggested the government has "no choice but to mail us a check" is probably right. Sending the nation's dwindling number of farmers ever-bigger federal checks isn't a solution; it is, in fact, an admission of failure.

Failure in that the United States' now 30-year-old, farm policy–essentiallly Freedom to Farm with heavily subsidized crop insurance–needs to be overhauled if we're to help feed a hotter, more crowded, increasingly resource-depleted world in the near future.

Furthermore, using today's shrinking U.S. farmland base to grow "sustainable fuels" like ethanol and biodiesel makes no sense if the world must double food production over the next 25 years to sustain a forecasted population of 10 billion.

The two biggest alternatives to that truth, billions fewer people or finding 30 percent more land worldwide–the equivalent of 10 Californias–to grow the needed food are not just absurdly unlikely, they're madness.Mad, too, is ag's weak-kneed view of climate change. If American farmers don't speak out against today's climate-denying White House and its announced policies that promise dirtier air and water, why shouldn't farmer-supporting American taxpayers howl at the very idea of underwriting even more climate denial?

There are other problems–a Farm Bill rewrite more than 700 days overdue, woodenheaded tariff policy, an economic plan that fuels more unemployment than opportunity, and a brutal immigration crackdown that's removed more than one million workers from farms, factories, and families.

So, yeah, the people listening to the Arkansas farmers were angry. Their gripes were also real and, unlike many farmers today, they didn't have to rationalize their beliefs.

South Dakota students are struggling with debt; New Mexico is offering free tuition

Recall Republican former South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds won election to the US Senate for advocating the dissolution of the US Department of Education so he is currently sponsoring a bill that would eradicate the DoEd, curtail federal funding for kids and South Dakota still hates teachers.

Today, students in South Dakota are fifth in overall rank of those in debt and suffer that load at the highest proportion in the US. The Bendagate state is 37th in grant and work opportunities rank and is tied for 42nd in student work opportunities. 113,750 people in South Dakota don’t have enough food including 1 in 5 children.

New Mexico is 50th in average student debt, is tied for 49th in proportion of students in debt and offers free school breakfasts and lunches. New Mexico is also the third most diverse state in America while South Dakota is 37th and 46th in educational-attainment diversity according to WalletHub. 

Neighbor Lynn was an on and off member of the National Education Association (NEA) while she taught for twenty six years, twenty of those at New Mexico's oldest charter school. She told an interested party that what she liked about it was that staff and families made their own decisions and didn’t have to follow the whims of the Santa Fe Public School administration. But it wasn't always easy to get the community involved so she believes charter schools make the most sense when they have a specific purpose—like those devoted to the arts or to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have done.

New Mexico is investing big in higher education, covering tuition for roughly 55,000 students through programs like the Lottery and Opportunity Scholarships. The state has also increased funding by millions of dollars for loan repayment and debt relief programs, specifically for healthcare workers and teachers. [How Is New Mexico Paying College Tuition For 55K Students?]

Source: WalletHub

Schoenbeck: Earth haters unfit to be SDAG

Editor's note: If a majority of the delegates are in the far white wing of the SDGOP Steven Haugaard probably has the best chance for nomination for attorney general at their 2026 state convention unless Jon Hansen abandons his quixotic governor run then seeks the nod. 

Earth hater Lee Schoenbeck is a former South Dakota legislator who is covering up catholic clergy crimes. His comment about three potential SDGOP candidates for attorney general, Haugaard, Lance Russell and Hansen appears at a lesser-known weblog.

This is sad. None of these three are people you would want representing your family. The state’s civil caseload is substantial and affects taxpayers. NONE of these has successfully tried any significant case like the state regularly faces.

Two or three have no jury trial experience, and the other one his been disciplined by the SD Supreme Court because he has terrible ethics – in the use of his public office.

This is really bad for options for our chief law enforcement officer.

White bomb, manosphere driving End Times

 

Nick Anderson cartoon

Olson on SDGOP

Editor's note: the civil war raging within the South Dakota Republican Party is just going to get uglier if Shad Olson's Faceberg following is any indicator.

Before it's said and done, Charlie Kirk's death investigation will do just as much to expose the subversion and instigated infighting in the conservative movement as it has done to give added exposure to the ugliness, hatred and radicalism on the left.

The Nikki Haley wing of the party is just as jubilant about his death as the blue haired whackadoos on the left. Sadly, some of you are blind to this and being taken in by those very same NGOs and donors in the South Dakota GOP.

Not for much longer...

General Flynn knows.

South Dakota still hates teachers

Source: WalletHub

47th best state for teachers, South Dakota is 50th in budgeting for schools and not only hates public education, the state's dead last in high school financial literacy and 50th in financial education performance and access. Teachers' wages in red states like South Dakota surf the bottom because Republicans are Balkanizing education amid a fight over ideological purity and in my home state academic freedom is under attack from another reactionary governor. Republican former governor, Kristi Noem is directly responsible for the closing of Presentation College where many of South Dakota's teachers and nurses were trained.

Guest post: Schorn on Kirk

Editor's note: Charlie Kirk was a hateful Nazist reciting a death chant and in 2019 sleepy Vermillion became ground zero for Donald Trump's war on America in South Dakota. In 2022 University of New Mexico schedulers expected protests but booked Tomi Lahren and Kirk anyway even knowing the decision would be seen as normalizing hate speech.

The following appears at University of South Dakota Professor Timothy Schorn's Faceberg page as a fellow USD instructor was being fired for exercising their free speech rights amid calls from Earth haters who look like Pat Powers.

Since none of the dust and passion surrounding the murder of Charlie Kirk has settled, it’s time for a bit of detail, perspective, and truth about Mr. Kirk and his Turning Point USA (TPUSA). Kirk was by any objective standard a racist demagogue. Hate begets hate. And Kirk’s brand of exclusion, white nationalism, and bigotry inflamed hatred on both sides of the political spectrum.

Kirk denied racism existed because he wanted to protect the white privilege that elevated him. Many supported him for that very reason. He vilified and dehumanized those who were neither like him nor agreed with him. He cozied up to white supremacists and anti-Semites. We can look to his own speech, the statements from TPUSA, and the words of his friends and compatriots to see what he believed and advocated. (Show me a person’s friends and I’ll tell you what kind of person they are.)

I find it reprehensible that he was able to dismiss the fear and suffering of children, parents, teachers, and neighbors caused by mass shootings. In his own words, “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.” Along with the inhumanity and carelessness of this statement, it is also a perversion of the Second Amendment. Ironically, there was a school shooting in Colorado the same day Kirk was killed.

He was absolutely honest about his racism. The unfortunate result was that he empowered racists, bigots, and white supremacists who went on to fearmonger, discriminate, and lie. He questioned the skill of black pilots. He accused African Americans of prowling around to target white people. He was equally honest about his 19th-century approach to women, suggesting they submit to their husbands. He encouraged racist immigration policies and was an advocate of the “great replacement” theory, which is nothing less than race-baiting and fearmongering, and could come directly out of Hitler’s playbook. He was anti-Islam and, again, resorted to fear-mongering to advance his Christian nationalism.

I was personally targeted by TPUSA. There was no call for violence, but I had a figurative target on my back; people, including students, were monitoring what I said in class, in the media, and in private, and planned to, and apparently did, “report me” when I said something that failed to satisfy the litmus test of the radicalized right.

As a friend put it to me: “If Charlie Kirk had created a watchlist for their profession where you could be put on it because some 19-year-old was in a bad mood, people would feel differently about him.”

Kirk and TPUSA were after me because I spoke against systemic racism and ignorance And, for the record, I stand by what I said. The research shows minorities, and especially African Americans, suffer under racial disparities in prosecutions and sentencing, and this results from institutional and systemic racism in lawmaking and selective enforcement. Oddly enough, when it comes to voting rights and discrimination, the Supreme Court has found the same thing. And what’s stupid (my own word choice they took issue with)? The fact that legislatures, governing bodies, and candidates ignore the evidence and then engage in race-baiting to end policies and close centers and institutions that were intended to address racism and discrimination.

So, yup, I stand by my statements and they’re backed by facts and evidence. Was my language harsh? You betcha. Because the “snowflakes” know what the evidence is but choose to deny it to further their own political agenda. Republican candidates rushed to back counter-factual political ststements and engaged in fearmongering and racebaiting. My posts and media statements certainly got someone’s attention. Because, more likely than not, it was a student or colleague who reported me to TPUSA. At one point, Charlie himself tried to sign up for my tweets. If the facts proved me wrong I would have changed my tune. They didn’t, and I won’t.

Now the 1st Amendment is under attack by those who know they can’t win on the merits of their arguments, and instead want anyone who disagrees with them fired and silenced. Unfortunately, institutions that should be protective of First Amendment rights, broadly defined, such as higher education, including my own system, are caving. The snowflakes are melting.

Lame duck Larry Rhoden should apologize as he exits

A collapse of the agriculture sector, $650 million plus cost overruns for a prison, $240 million plus cost overruns for the Platte-Winner Bridge rebuild, $150M plus cost overruns for a Capitol remodel and at least $2 billion for a boondoggle West River water pipeline but just a $65 million surplus, the end of property taxes and TIFs galore? 

Looks like Earth hater pie-in-the-sky to any cynical observer. 

How are 66 county seats and their bureaucracies either conservative or sustainable? They're not; but, it is the way Republican cronyism and patronage built barricades to democracy by providing benefits of the public dole to those who say they deplore big gubmint in a state that hates poor people. 

Why does a welder or a coder or even a registered nurse need a liberal arts education especially when the English Language Holy Bible and The Turner Diaries are all you need to read?

South Dakota Democrats need to run on a corporate income tax, ending video lootery, reducing the number of South Dakota counties to 25 and turning Dakota State and/or Northern State University into community colleges.

Since the bridge over the Missouri River between Fort Pierre and the cesspool on the east side was at least two years late and millions over budget maybe interim Governor Larry Rhoden should just apologize for decades of graft and a culture of corruption in South Dakota's capital when he announces he isn't running in the Earth hater gubernatorial primary.

Did MAGA take Kirk out?

Weird, innit?

It's a complicated and sad situation. Healthy societies don't produce Kyle Rittenhouses. I blame the people who created the conditions more than I blame the dumb high school dropout who listened to too much Fox News

— Laura Jedeed (@laurajedeed.bsky.social) August 25, 2025 at 11:57 AM

“Trump will use this awful moment as justification to attack anyone — and everyone — who stands up against him, his agenda and the MAGA movement.” www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

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— Dan Froomkin/Press Watch/Heads Up News (@froomkin.bsky.social) September 11, 2025 at 11:55 AM

Tapio wants to suspend government

God certainly works in mysterious ways, innit?

Neal Tapio

15h · 

I no longer recognize our country. We no longer have a common set of values.

We can act like everything is fine. After all, we live in South Dakota. Truth is, when a country is bankrupt, morally and financially, violence and lawlessness is inevitable.

An elected government will never be able to vote in the changes necessary to control the massive debt and out of control violence.

Martial law is not the answer.

Senator John Thune needs to suspend regular session in the US Senate and hold emergency sessions for the next 1 1/2 years. 24/7/365. We need a government shutdown to completely expose what is going on. No more breaks. No more weekends off.

We need to impeach rogue judges. We need to stop sending money to rogue states. Enforce existing laws. No more sanctuary cities. No more tolerance.

No more getting along.

This is an emergency.

It’s time.

RIP Charlie Kirk