Republicans committed to making Black Hills a sacrifice zone

South Dakota's Republican politicians are just pawns of the intense timber lobbying efforts of Hulett, Wyoming based Neiman Enterprises, the extraction industry and from welfare ranchers addicted to cheap grazing fees. They have teamed up with Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney to make sure the Black Hills are reduced to piles of timber slash and mine waste. 

Instead of allowing native aspen to be restored, stands of doghair ponderosa pine (ladder fuels that feed wildfires) cover much of the Black Hills National Forest. Spurred by the Neimans the Forest Service is still planting pine in the Jasper Fire area. 

Thanks to the Trump Organization the United States is in debt to the tune of $22 TRILLION and US consumer debt is north of $74 TRILLION so the US is encouraging mining companies from outside the country to drill more holes in the Earth looking for gold and silver. The surging price of gold means Republicans and foreign miners see the sacred Black Hills as a sacrifice zone so now they want to buy land south of Lead from the Forest Service and deed it to the State of South Dakota. Brohm was an Australian company recruited by a now-dead Republican governor who gutted environmental protection in South Dakota.

Acknowledging there will always be acid mine drainage in the Black Hills the Republican-owned South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment is dealing with still another devil who wants to strip mine the Gilt Edge Superfund site hoping the US Environmental Protection Agency becomes a tool of the extraction industry. South Dakota is no stranger to ecocide because it's a way of life in the chemical toilet. Under the General Mining Law of 1872 even foreign miners have carte blanche to rape the Black Hills, so they are. At least five transients want to poke the Black Hills but it's happening throughout the Intermountain West.

The Republican South Dakota Department of Ecocide and Natural Ruination has even awarded a water permit to a Canadian miner drilling test holes near Keystone and Rochford. Mineral Mountain Resources has been trucking water in 3000 gallon tanks from Lead for lubrication and wants to take at least ten gallons a minute from wells near the test holes. While exploratory holes normally take millions of gallons of water they tend to have minimal impact on the Forest itself but the drillers usually sell their data to bigger miners like Barrick, a Canadian earth raper. 

Rochford area residents say British Columbia-based Mineral Mountain Resources destroyed Forest Service Road 184A during their drilling of some 7,500 acres in the Homestake Gold Belt on public lands and at a private site known as the Standby Mine Target. 

Wharf Resources has filed a Notice of Intent to do exploratory drilling in a new area close to its current strip mine and cyanide leach pads in the Northern Hills where it recorded $72.5 million in profits for 2020.

Jim Neiman’s Devils Tower Forest Products enjoys a virtual timber monopoly in the Black Hills whose customers include Pella Windows and fellow Republican backer Menards.

Photo is of a meadow west of Rochford near Pe'Sla.

Learn more about the war on the Black Hills here and more about the rape of water supplies here.

Tribes endorse Acoma attorney to replace Haaland

New Mexico Representative Deb Haaland is expected to become Secretary of Interior after Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced her support for the nomination. 

State Representative for New Mexico's 26th District, Georgene Louis is a citizen of the Acoma Pueblo. Her bachelor’s degree and Juris Doctor are from the University of New Mexico and she serves as general counsel of the Pueblo of Tesuque. 

The Georgene Louis for Congress campaign today announced a major new endorsement from the Coalition of Large Tribes, a critical coalition of tribes that advocates for issues facing American Indian tribes with land bases exceeding 100,000 acres. “As a proud member of the Pueblo of Acoma, I’m so grateful to have gained some exciting support this week from the Coalition of Large Tribes,” said Georgene Louis. “If I’m fortunate enough to become the newest Congresswoman from New Mexico, I will fight every day to build off the important work of Congresswoman Haaland, serve as an effective Native voice in Congress, and deliver on the issues important to our communities." [Indian Country Today Media]

Late last night, HB 231 passed the NM House Floor to ensure voting protections for Native Americans & encourage voter turnout on tribal lands even during times of public health concerns. Thanks to @NMSecOfState @NativeVoters & my Native American colleagues for your support! ✅

— Georgene Louis (@georgenelouis) March 3, 2021

More ag poisons found in South Dakota wildlife, urban yard waste

Every ag product, meats both wild and domestic not grown organically in South Dakota is contaminated with atrazine, neonicotinoids, glyphosate, dicamba, DDT, mercury, lead, cadmium, PFAS, E. coli, Shigella, Legionella and other toxins. That's probably true everywhere in the United States. Country of Origin Labeling was repealed in 2015 to shield American meat from scrutiny.

After a 2019 study in South Dakota raised questions about potential health effects on white tailed deer, the DNR asked Minnesota hunters to collect spleens from the deer they killed. The agency received 800 spleens and testing found the insecticide imidacloprid in 61 percent of the samples. The South Dakota study did not find a direct link between the insecticide and health effects, but found a correlation between insecticide levels in deer and increased fawn mortality. [Common insecticide widespread in Minnesota deer herd]

David Ellingson and his Ortonville, Minnesota-area honey-producing family sued the US Environmental Protection Agency for not regulating the neonicotinoids killing their bee colonies. I worked for their operation one summer between semesters at South Dakota State University. It was one on the most fascinating lessons of this life. South Dakota beekeeper Adee Honey Farms also blames neonicotinoids for colony losses. 

Rapid City Solid Waste has seen an increase in harmful, persistent herbicides in its compost. Healthy compost will always contain herbicides that deteriorate before causing harm, but persistent herbicides degrade much slower and last long enough to damage plants, causing plants to curl, slow their growth and kill younger plants. It’s not just here in Rapid City, these herbicides are showing up all over the nation. [Harmful herbicides found in Rapid City Solid Waste compost]

Democratic former US Senator Tom Daschle gave the keynote address at the South Dakota Farmers Union's virtual December 9th convention where SDFU President Doug Sombke learned members overwhelmingly oppose merging the SD Departments of Agriculture and Environment and Natural Resources.

A resolution of disapproval filed by Senate Minority Leader Troy Heinert, D-Mission, opposes Gov. Kristi Noem’s joining of the South Dakota Department of Agriculture (SDDA) with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, a move that’s been met with skepticism since its proposal. Heinert noted the resolution has the power to stop the merger of the two state departments with a simple majority vote by the senate.

Republican leadership is an oxymoron. Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem (KLAN) is a one woman death panel and the Koch soaked South Dakota Legislature will ignore all pleas to keep the departments separate.  

Read more about Noem's intent to poison wildlife linked here.

Happy #WorldWildlifeDay. A friendly reminder that livestock cannot replace native biodiversity, despite what you may have heard. pic.twitter.com/VSuyIf1ccW

— Sheila Colla, Ph.D (@SaveWildBees) March 3, 2021

From GOP to goat: Ravnsborg should join Benda, Westerhuis in South Dakota history

 

Watching Jason Ravnsborg tearing the South Dakota Republican Party asunder is making Joe Boever a martyr. 

South Dakota's crusade against equal rights for women was being propelled by incel Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg — an obese, extraordinarily homely confirmed bachelor, killer and member of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers with little hope of attracting a mate himself because he's just so creepy. 

Republican South Dakota former and probably next Attorney General Marty Jackley has said that the Melody Schopp/Scott Westerhuis outrage was important because wrongdoing and stolen taxpayer dollars attracted too much national attention. Jackley alleges Scott and Nicole Westerhuis stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Mid-Central Educational Cooperative, an organization that ran the GEAR UP program designed to empower American Indian high school students. 

Like the narratives explaining the deaths of Brady Folkens and Rich Benda are sketchy Jackley's story is that Scott Westerhuis was tipped off then killed his family, set fire to their house then shot himself and that the safe likely holding evidence went missing. 

The killing of Joe Boever is just another chapter in the history of FUBAR in the South Dakota Republican Party. And they just keep getting away with it. 

Ravnsborg's political career is over. He should simply join Scott Westerhuis and Rich Benda at their places in South Dakota history.

Religious cult will stay in South Dakota county named for a war criminal

Update: ‘Corruption coming to an end’

###

Sharia Law? Nah. Sons of Perdition. 

Recall the mother of former legislator, now Republican Fall River County State's Attorney Lance Russell sold property to the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) where minor girls have been trafficked and raped. In 2011 Russell was censured by the state's judiciary for leaking grand jury testimony. 

Polygamy and pedophilia are apparently protected religious freedoms in South Dakota as far as incel and Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg is concerned. In South Dakota where corruption drives the Republican Party the FLDS uses Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dollars to bleed the beast. It's a community where counterfeit plural marriages of children to old white men are not only accepted they're encouraged. 

Last Thursday at the courthouse in a South Dakota county named for a war criminal members of the splinter group bought the 140 acre compound for $750,000 Thursday despite its $9 million valuation. The cult was not delinquent on property taxes but the acreage was sold at a sheriff's auction to settle a $2.1 million judgment against the FLDS, the towns of Hildale, Utah and Arizona City, Colorado. It's believed some twenty adults live on the parcel but they're expected to leave before close of escrow according to buyer Patrick Pipkin, manager of Blue Mountain Ranch of Colorado — a summer camp for at risk adolescents, no less.

Over three years later there are only three possible outcomes for Serenity Dennard's disappearance: she perished in another brutal South Dakota winter, she hooked up with a Jeffrey Epstein-type character or was lured into the fold by a representative of the FLDS Church.

Learn more at Bill Janklow’s idea of public radio.