South Dakota still among most federally dependent states

In 2024 South Dakota dropped to 49th in financial literacy and 50th in financial knowledge and education despite the Republican former governor's pathological Pollyannaism. The state was 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. 

Creighton University's Ernie Goss and supply managers are sounding the alarm again about the Trump tariffs, economic uncertainty and the potential for retaliation. Only nine percent of bankers see a potential of growth in the coming six months and economic optimism plummeted to 45.7 in February from 61.4 in January over concerns about global economic tensions and rising tariffs. Farmland prices sank again, farm equipment sales fell for the eighteenth straight month and retail sales are at the lowest levels since the pandemic.

WalletHub's newest surveys reveal South Dakota is now 40th in innovation but 50th in its share of technology companies, 48th in R&D spending per capita, has dropped to the third best state for doctors, 11th as most federally dependent, 4th in rank for government dependence and is now 16th in medical environment rank.

South Dakota ranks as the third-best state for doctors, in part because physicians have one of the highest starting salaries in the country, at $5,330 per month. The state ranks particularly high when it comes to the yearly salaries for psychiatrists ($273,000) and general internal medicine physicians ($318,000). In addition, doctors in The Mount Rushmore State pay less for malpractice insurance premiums than people in most other states. South Dakota also ranks well in the number of physician assistants per 1,000 residents, and has around 8.5 hospitals for every 100,000 residents, which is one of the highest numbers in the country. [Best and Worst States for Doctors (2025)

Cimpl Meats in Yankton has released some 250 workers after American Foods Group said the location isn't profitable and is moving its operations to Missouri. 

Threatened species, Forest Service, Wyoming, warring ranchers, sheriff, politics colliding in northern Black Hills

Forty five years ago this interested party logged in the Buckhorn and Moskee, Wyoming areas of the Black Hills when it was home to some of the last old-growth ponderosa pine stands in the region. We operated a belt-driven portable sawmill powered by a John Deere tractor on private ground where I cut and skidded some huge bug-killed trees. 

In 2020 the State of Wyoming completed the purchase of some 4349 acres of private land surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest near the border with South Dakota in the Grand Canyon area near Moskee in Crook County about seven miles east of Sundance. 

It's home for 63 species of birds, 30 mammals, 8 reptiles, 4 amphibians, 38 plants identified as critters of greatest conservation need and include the northern goshawk, northern pygmy-owl, least weasel, smooth green snake, the threatened northern long-eared bat and black-backed woodpecker. Wyoming is a fence-out state so the parcel is at risk to cattle encroaching from neighboring allotments and private property but Crook County Sheriff Jeff Hodge has refused to ticket the livestock owners who complain the cost of fencing is prohibitive. 

Grazing on federal lands is a privilege not a right and the Forest Service issues tickets for noncompliance but can also allow permits for trespass.

No legal fix has yet been found for the state land lease issue in the Moskee area that left two ranchers at loggerheads over grazing rights [sic]. However, Bearlodge District Ranger Patrick Champa visited the Crook County Commissioners last week to explain how the U.S. Forest Service has been working with the Office of State Lands and Investments to tackle the problem once cattle are turned out for the year. USFS does not require fencing on its leases. [Mediation ongoing for Moskee grazing issue]

Now, extended drought in the region is causing a bump in the number of pine beetles like Dendroctonus ponderosae and Ips pini so Neiman Enterprises has compelled the BHNF to request comment on proposals for commercial logging on 8,000 acres of National Forest System land four miles south of Beulah, WY and on 6,372 acres and fuel treatments on a total of 15,170 acres of NFS land on the South Dakota side of the border. 

Spearditch Republican Randy Deibert, a monetary recipient of Neiman largesse, is all for the projects even as the Norbeck Society and the group, People for Sustainable Logging in the Black Hills are sounding the alarm on over-logging on an already-stressed BHNF. 

Dave Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the BHNF who attended a 2024 roundtable discussion in Spearditch hosted by South Dakota's lone US Representative Dusty Johnson who sicced two fellow Republican congress members on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. Cochrane was the sixth different leader in 2023 alone and 11th in the past seven years. Mertz just told an interested party that the Allowable Sale Quantity or ASQ on the BHNF should be about 40,000 hundred cubic feet (CCF) and that despite increased timber sales the closure of Neiman's mill in Spearditch is only a matter of time.

HMC responsible for 'death map' in New Mexico

Beginning in 1958 Homestake Mining Company gouged uranium from New Mexico leaving piles of waste rock laden with selenium causing cancers and thyroid disease in its wake. 

It was made a Superfund site by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1983, plaintiffs filed a lawsuit, the mill closed in 1990 and in 2001 HMC merged with Barrick Gold. In 2019 because the Trump Organization despises Native Americans uranium mining was fast-tracked in and around Indian Country where tribes already suffer from diseases and birth defects wrought by radioactive contamination.

The leftover slurry was piped into two unlined earthen pits, the largest the size of 50 football fields and filled with over 21 million tons of uranium mill tailings. Over time, the uranium tailings decayed into radon gas; meanwhile, radioactive contaminants seeped into four of the region’s aquifers. Residents compiled a list of neighbors who died of cancer — they called it the Death Map. In fact, the conditions necessary for contaminants to infiltrate a fifth aquifer in a single generation — not a thousand years — could already be in the making. The future of the site seems all but predetermined: a wasteland in the truest sense, and a national sacrifice zone. Adding to the uncertainty is a recent announcement that the Trump administration intends to cut personnel at the EPA by up to 65 percent. “We’ve been poisoned to the gills,” says Christine Lowery, the Cibola county commissioner. [Poisoning the well]

Nearly a century of residue from Homestake and the Black Hills Mining District affects millions of cubic yards of riparian habitat all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Although the Oahe Dam was completed in 1962 sequestering most of the silt the soils of the Belle Fourche and Cheyenne Rivers are inculcated with arsenic at levels that have killed cattle. Endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, catfish and most other organisms cope with lethal levels of mercury throughout the South Dakota portion of the Missouri River. 

Tailings from uranium mining have been detected in Angostura Reservoir in the southern Black Hills and in northwestern South Dakota cleanup in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation.

Wife of Brookings Earth hater makes plea for Medicaid protection

So, the more Republican South Dakota gets the stingier and more cruel the residents become. Not only has the SDGOP failed Indigenous Americans by not expanding Medicaid it has failed veterans and the elderly: its historically loyal voter base. But hey, if Tony Venhuizen wants to feed from the Qochtopus gravy train he has to prove he’s numbed to the misery, hopelessness and despair his father-in-law and political party have heaped on South Dakotans. 

South Dakota is 51st in elder care protection. 

Michelle Powers is married to a Republican Brookings blogger who smears Democrats and principled conservatives who don't bend the knee to the South Dakota Republican Party establishment. They have a bunch of sick kids suffering from hellish diseases but she lives in Spearditch which is just about as far away from her husband as she can get and still live in that miserable state. 

My own personal connection to Medicaid comes from my 20-year-old daughter who has a developmental disability. My other connection to Medicaid comes from my role as chief executive officer for Northern Hills Training Center (NTHC), a community-based support provider, where our mission is to “support people to have meaningful lives”. For NHTC, almost 90 percent of the funds we receive are generated through the Medicaid program. Significant cuts to federal Medicaid funding will place additional financial strain on the state budget, forcing us to absorb the increased costs. State budgets must prioritize mandatory Medicaid services, leaving optional services like NHTC as a community-based service vulnerable to reductions. [Why should you care about Medicaid funding?]

That SDGOP condones, encourages and even pays Pat Powers to threaten, malign, bully and libel women while their party standard-bearers preach the protection of women is a measure of hypocrisy that strains human gauges. He has long been banned from this forum and other South Dakota related sites because of a constant stream of bigotry, misogyny and other hate speech. Pernicious Pug Powers, who makes a stopped clock look like a well-greased machine, salts his blog comment section with a seemingly infinite variety of aliases that threaten or jeer his political enemies.

Another day of red flag warnings for failed red state

Yes, the grassland fire danger index will reach the very high and extreme categories Sunday and Monday for most of the failed red state of South Dakota.

The 2025 calendar year runoff forecast above Sioux City is 22.1 MAF, 86% of average. The runoff forecast is based on current soil moisture conditions, plains snowpack, mountain snowpack, and long-term precipitation and temperature outlooks. Mountain snow normally peaks near April 17. [Defense Visual Information Distribution Service]