South Dakota still sells sex

Governor Kristi Noem is a former Snow Queen who convinced her own daughters to compete in beauty contests. Buxom South Dakotan Jordan Tierney was just crowned Miss Rodeo America.

A recent report gave South Dakota a “D” grade when it comes to fighting the sex trafficking of minors. It was one of only two states to grade that low. South Dakota is one of the few states that saw its grade fall, primarily because of legislation that sent any minor involved in a commercial sex act through the criminal justice system. Scores went up overall nationwide. [Hub City Radio]

Polygamy and pedophilia are apparently protected religious freedoms in South Dakota as far as Republicans are concerned. Recall the mother of Republican state legislator and former candidate for South Dakota Attorney General, Lance Russell sold property to the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) Church where minor girls are trafficked and raped. That they offered escape to Serenity Dennard is not impossible.

Now, the chemical toilet and permanent disaster area that is South Dakota has elected a governor who not only slept her way to the top she has never supported the Violence Against Women Act.

The United States foster care industry supplies at least 88% of sex-trafficked children some of whom are raped for money at the annual Sturgis Rally. Billionaire Republican Denny Sanford has given millions to the Children's Home Society, just for instance. "Unsafe. Unacceptable. Hyper-masculine. Sexualized. Dirty." That's how the Aberdeen American News board and how women have described the legislative session in Pierre. The South Dakota Newspaper Association, teevee stations and local media have known about Pierre's rape culture and culture of corruption for decades but simply concede to the twenty earth hater donors who run the state.

For about three months of the year, from September to November, the bar and restaurant transform into a completely different establishment. But increasingly it is a commercial enterprise, one that comes with a dark side: sex trafficking and pop-up strip clubs that cater to hunters here for a good time. Asked about a rumored prostitution sting at Frank Day’s last year, a representative for the state Department of Criminal Investigation issued this statement: “The DCI does a number of operations, but we do not confirm any details. The only time operation details are released is if there are arrests.” Trafficking ensnares South Dakota women as well. Native American women are heavily targeted. Nothing to see here. [Hunting season’s underbelly: Stripping, sex trafficking and small towns looking the other way]

The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it's all about the money prostitution, the Sturgis Rally, policing for profit, sex trafficking, hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the South Dakota Republican Party destroying lives, depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule.

Selection of Duhamel for South Dakota's legislature ends non-tribal cannabis

With the selection of law enforcement industry patsy, Helene Duhamel to replace Alan Solano in South Dakota's legislature Governor Kristi Noem has likely ended any chance of industrial cannabis (hemp) outside of the state's nine reservations so on Monday, the 21-person Oglala Sioux Tribal council voted 11-8 to again allow Gov. Noem to visit the sovereign Oglala Lakota nation.

Gov. Kristi Noem has blocked industrial hemp from being grown in the state, but that’s not stopping Native Americans who can regulate their own hemp crops under the 2018 Farm Bill. Many tribes are drawn to hemp’s potential for bringing profits to communities that badly need it. They say that Noem’s resistance is giving them an advantage to getting into the market, even as it may complicate their ability to transport and sell it. [KNBN teevee]

A 1986 amendment to federal law allows tribes to acquire off-reservation land to serve the needs of its people so last year the Oglala Lakota Oyate bought property on I-90 just outside Badlands National Park. The Isanti Dakota Oyate or Flandreau Santee Sioux Nation has also taken steps to resume their cannabis initiative. A former chairman of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate is a tribal liaison for a cannabis development firm and South Dakota Secretary of Tribal Relations Dave Flute is also a former chairman of the SWO.

Two tribes in occupied Wyoming are also pursuing futures in cannabis.

If the political will existed South Dakota's legislature could write a bill that would adopt legislation similar to Minnesota's therapeutic cannabis law but worthy of Federal Drug Administration scrutiny where real medicine could be sold by pharmacies.

It's very brave, even progressive of Noem to give tribes a head start in America's budding cannabis industry but giving the South Dakota Republican Party an opportunity to shape cannabis law in my home state is further evidence Democrats could even lose reservation support.

Aberdeen could ease flooding concerns by loading stormwater into rail tankers

A contributor at the Aberdeen American News Facebook Faceberg page wants to melt snow, put the water in a pipeline and pump it to the Southwest.

We could be cashing in on all the snow we get here. Let's build snow melting plants and get water pipelines to California or Nevada where the drought is severe. We have oil pipeline from Alaska to Texas. We could do the same with snow: WATER THE NEW OIL..But Kristi Noem will think I am on Meth to suggest that idea. [Baka Bagoubadi]

Good idea but it’s not really new. In 2011 an interested party wondered whether compressing snow into ice and loading it onto flat rail cars might work. The capacity of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River is 27,000,000 acre-feet.

If East River would either carve ice out of the James and Big Sioux Rivers, load it onto side-dump railcars or pump flood water into tank cars, or both, then dump it into the Colorado's closest tributary, the Green River in Wyoming, South Dakota could sell that water to Las Vegas and Phoenix. [interested party]

Instead of empowering communities to harvest snow melt and rain water rural communities continue to be dependent on politicians who exploit need.

Diesel fired portable snowmelters are the most popular models since you can move them from site to site as self-contained units. Current portable snowmelters come with a debris catch area with baskets for manual removal of debris - even during operation! The SND5400 is designed for the airport market and other large-scale users. It economically melts 180 tons of snow per hour (based on latent heat of ice). [Snow Dragon Snowmelters]

That’s about 5421 gallons per hour and a rail tanker holds about 30,000 gallons. An acre-foot of water is almost 326,000 gallons. A water pipeline from the Missouri River to Rapid City would cost almost $2 billion and rip up a few hundred miles of stolen treaty ground but there already is one railway connecting the Big Sioux and James Rivers to Rapid City.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has cancelled Spring Pulses on the Missouri River not because of low flows but because the sediment is so poisonous it would kill the very species it says it's trying to preserve. Endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, catfish and most other organisms cope with lethal levels of mercury throughout the South Dakota portion of the Missouri River even as flooding in the Midwest is killing the Gulf of Mexico.

The idea of a storm water utility fee that would be assessed against property owners was one possibility of generating additional revenue while securing the dollars, as outlined in the draft ordinance, for the administration, planning, analysis, installation, operation and maintenance of a public drainage system in the City of Watertown. [Watertown City Council Discusses Storm Water Utility Ordinance]

Lake Kampeska, Lake Poinsett, Lake Mitchell, Lake Thompson and other non-meandered bodies of water will continue to suffer the effects of human-caused climate distortions but disaster declarations are how Republicans who preach small gubmint fund crumbling infrastructure in red states. Recall Rep. Kristi Noem repeatedly voted against disaster aid after Hurricane Sandy and other climate related catastrophes but she doesn’t respect self-reliance because she’s wedded to moral hazard.

As ice floes bash moorings and flooding causes the scouring of fill from river bottoms the disasters befalling the Missouri basin should be a stern warning to erstwhile pipeline operators: it's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

River Info: Forecast issued on the BIG SIOUX R nr CASTLEWOOD SD 1NW #CSWS2 #SDflood #SDwx https://t.co/tZaXcHcBUm

— NWS MBRFC (@NWSMBRFC) December 4, 2019

Foreign miners continue to probe public lands

Comexico, an American subsidiary of Australian company New World Cobalt, wants to drill test holes into the Sangre de Cristo mountain range on the Santa Fe National Forest in the Jones Hill area north of Pecos, New Mexico.

Federal mining regulations and laws, including the General Mining Law of 1872, as amended, require the Forest Service to allow mineral exploration and development on National Forest System lands. The surface-disturbing drilling activities proposed in Comexico’s plan of operations require analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and the Forest Service can add mitigation measures and modifications to Comexico’s plan of operations to minimize potential environmental impacts. The project area is within designated critical habitat for the Mexican spotted owl, a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, and the endangered Holy Ghost ipomopsis as well as habitat for the goshawk, peregrine falcon and Rio Grande cutthroat trout. [press release, Santa Fe National Forest]

The US Forest Service is often powerless to stop the extractive industry from permanently altering sensitive watersheds because of the 1872 law. Repeal or even reform of the 1872 statute has been thwarted repeatedly by the earth hating Republican Party.

In September we motored to Oracle, Patagonia, Bisbee and Morenci from Santa Fe and were shocked by the ravages of surface mining in SE Arizona where operations owned by Morenci and Miami are ravaging water supplies and reducing entire mountain ranges to piles of waste rock.

Wind-driven electricity generation has likely peaked in South Dakota

A phallus on the Coteau des Prairies competes for the eastern South Dakota skyline with ubiquitous wind turbines near the divide between the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers over Oak Lake, part of a Brookings water supply and a source of the Big Sioux River.

No corporate taxes, a compliant regulator, a dearth of environmental protection and cheap labor make South Dakota the perfect dumping ground for earth killers like coal and eyesores like wind farms. But according to Republican Public Utilities Cartel Commissioner Chris Nelson the amount of wind power generation may have reached its plateau. In an interview with WNAX Radio Nelson said he believes there will be rapid development of solar power production facilities.

Avangrid, Inc., a US-based subsidiary of Spanish energy firm Iberdrola with a base in my home town of Elkton, plans to spend at least $216 million on a wind farm. That amount of cash would take some 43,000 electric subscribers completely off the grid.

A settlement agreement presented by Tatanka Ridge and PUC staff was previously accepted by the commission in October. Issues not addressed in the settlement – funding for decommissioning, risk associated with ice throw, cumulative sound impacts, and the potential impacts to whooping cranes – were presented at an evidentiary hearing in Pierre on Nov. 4. The commission’s action this week was to rule on those issues and determine if a permit should be granted. [PUC gives Tatanka Ridge Wind Project permit to construct in Deuel County]

Marty Jackley got campaign cash from NorthWestern Energy last cycle; so did a bunch of other South Dakota Republicans. In 2014, Xcel gave $10,000 to Mike Rounds, $2,500 to John Thune and $4,250 to Kristi Noem. In 2016 Black Hills Corp. gave Thune and Noem wads of cash, too. Basin Electric doled out $270,000 in 2016 alone. Oil and gas found Mike Rounds' zerk, too. Noem knocked down at least $5,500 from electric utilities in the 2018 election cycle.

Recall that in 2014 nerdling Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson accompanied South Dakota's Republican former governor to a taxpayer-funded Western Governors Conference soiree in Colorado Springs where the pair met with industry mucky-mucks. Guess what: it paid off. Dusty hauled in at least $14,150 from those dudes last cycle. Xcel Energy is another utility reaping the Colorado cannabis whirlwind so they gave Dusty $2500.

$100 million spent on subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting and maintaining the Prevailing Winds project would take at least 20,000 Basin Power subscribers off the grid. That's right: primary power purchaser Bismarck, North Dakota-based Basin Electric Power Cooperative is an oligopoly paying Prevailing Winds, LLC to rip up land and disturb cultural resources sacred to numerous Indigenous peoples for a grid that has never been more vulnerable to attack and to climate disruptions.

2017's Legion Lake Fire in the state park named for a war criminal was caused by Black Hills Energy and Cal Fire has pinned the blame for dozens of the deadly blazes in Northern California on Pacific Gas and Electric.

Utilities are not your friends. Ice storms routinely knock out electric power on American Indian reservations often resulting in lost lives and the inevitable cyber attacks on the US will take down the grid for days, even months causing food shortages and mayhem. Microgrid technologies are destined to enhance tribal sovereignty, free communities from electric monopolies and net-metering only gives control back to utilities enabled by moral hazard.

Leaving the grid has never been easier so anyone who can afford to it should do it now and with Trump still in the White House destroying solar power it's never been more urgent.

Listen to Nelson's interview with WNAX here.