Utility pulls plug on new Montana wind farm

The cost of subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting, maintaining then removing and disposing of just one wind turbine eyesore bat and bird killer would take six hundred subscribers to energy self-reliance. 

Microgrid technologies enhance tribal sovereignty, free communities from electric monopolies and net-metering only gives control back to the utilities enabled by moral hazard. And, since utilities are not your friends don’t tie your photovoltaic system to the grid but if you use it as a backup keep your own electricity completely separate from the grifter that reads your meter.

In 2024 NextEra was the fourth-biggest US energy group after ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips but today leads in the market capitalization of solar and wind energy.

NextEra Energy is suspending its $1.85 billion Glendive Wind Project originally scheduled to break ground this year due to the company not securing customer contracts. NextEra plans on maintaining contact with local governments and landowners participating in the Glendive Wind Project as it considers the future of the project. [Glendive Ranger-Review]

Mormons will build McTemple in occupied Black Hills

Mormonism is not so much a religion as it is a social contract which is probably why there is so much suspicion from Calvinists since it just seems like another pyramid scheme exacting pounds of flesh while employing tax-exempt status. 

Cody, Wyoming's evangelical christians and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or LDS quarreled over the erection of a pantheon there that one Cody Enterprise story respondent called a McTemple where the only thing missing is a sign out front saying "Billions Extorted." But seriously, what is the LDS church if not a white supremacist cult? Mormons are, of course, not christians at all so it's been front page news in Wyoming for years.

In 2023 LDS distributed 435 boxes of food to families on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation and just recently, they bribed Feeding South Dakota in Rapid City with 40,000 pounds of food which offered some relief to hundreds of families hit hard by the Trump Organization's tariffs. Now, they're building a McTemple on a 4.86-acre lot located at the northeast corner of Mount Rushmore Road and Moon Meadows Drive south of town. The sect boasts a membership of some 12,000 souls in that failed red state. 

According to one source the real owner of the former FLDS compound near Pringle is Paul Elden Kingston, a polygamist believed to have some 40 wives, over 300 kids and preaches "bleeding the beast." Kingston is an accountant and attorney who has served as the Trustee-in-Trust of the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS), a Mormon fundamentalist denomination and part of the Latter Day Church of Christ with assets in the $150 million range.

The good news? The grassland fire danger index will reach the high and very high categories for that part of Pennington County on Thursday and Friday.

Mainstreet Index again below growth neutral; South Dakota floundering

Since at least 2017 Creighton University's Ernie Goss has been warning that the Trump Organization is bad for American agriculture. Goss follows the economies of several breadbasket states including South Dakota's and banksters are freaking out as the region’s overall reading for February fell to 47.9 from 52.0 in January. This marks the 12th time that the Rural Mainstreet Index has dropped below growth-neutral or 50.0 since January 2025.

According to trade data from the International Trade Association (ITA), regional exports of agriculture goods and livestock for the first 11 months of 2025, compared to the same period in 2024, fell from $11.5 billion in 2024 to $10.8 billion in 2025, for a decline of 6.6%. The February RMI for South Dakota sank to 47.2 from January’s 54.2. The state’s farm and ranchland price index fell to 45.2 from 46.3 in January. South Dakota’s February new hiring index decreased to 48.7 from 50.3 in January.

Read it all here.

South Dakota Earth haters arm for circular firing squad

Watching these four Earth haters pounding the shit out of one another is going to be a blast!

Conservation vital to Mountain West: State of the Rockies

Even red state voters are leery of the Trump Organization's war on the West.

Results from Colorado College’s 16th annual State of the Rockies Project Conservation in the West Poll released today show widespread concern among Western voters about rollbacks of protections for land, water, and wildlife and cuts to funding for public land management.

The poll, which surveyed voters in eight Mountain West states—Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—found that Western voters across party lines are prioritizing conservation, recreation, and renewables over fossil fuel development heading into this year's midterm elections.

Highlights from the Poll

• ●  84% of Western voters say that the rollback of laws that protect our land, water, and wildlife is a serious problem, a sharp increase from prior years.

• ●  85% of respondents say issues involving public lands, waters, and wildlife are important in deciding whether to support a public official.

• ●  86% of Western voters deem funding cuts to public lands a serious problem, including 76% of Republicans.

• ●  70% of respondents oppose fast-tracking oil, gas and mining projects on national public lands by reducing environmental reviews and local public input.

• ●  72% of Westerners prefer expanding renewable energy over drilling and mining for more fossil fuels.

• ●  76% of Western voters—more Western voters than ever before—say they would prefer their member of Congress to place more emphasis on conservation and recreation on public lands over maximizing energy production.

• ●  74% of Western voters oppose selling some national public lands for oil and gas development.

  ● 91% of Western voters say existing national monument designations should be kept in place.

Read it all here.