Dump your Tesla for a Scout!

Back in the mid 1970s the International Harvester dealer in Brookings, South Dakota debuted a Scout Terra. It was four wheel drive El Camino cool but really doggy with its automatic transmission and four cylinder Nissan diesel engine so the last one rolled off the line in 1980. IH rebranded as Navistar International Corporation in 1986 then entered a strategic alliance in 2016 with Volkswagen who bought the company in 2021. Herb loved "Binders'' too and we talked about driving that Terra right up until he left the Earth. Now, a factory in South Carolina is producing electric Scouts under the International® banner.

Here in New Mexico the two Tesla dealerships are on the Nambé and Santa Ana Pueblos to skirt state laws. It's become very complicated for the tribal governments especially now that a barely legal alien from South Africa is finding out after fucking around and gutting resources to Native communities.

 

Deep borehole could be resurrected after Summit defeat

In 2016 the Department of Energy and Republican former President Heather Wilson of the South Dakota School of Mines later Air Force Secretary in the first Trump term a Rapid City firm specializing in toxic waste floated the idea of a deep borehole in Spink or Haakon Counties where contaminated materials could be dumped. Albuquerque-based Valero Energy, a chemical company that is was one of Heather Wilson's favorite benefactors and has an ethanol processing scheme in Aurora, South Dakota has given Republican now US Senator Mike Rounds at least $10,000 in campaign contributions. 

Then because the state relies on taxpayer help to finance improvements to infrastructure, South Dakota received nearly $27 million from the Federal Railroad Administration in both 2022 and 2023 through what’s known as federal Short-Time Compensation program. Aurora sits on the tracks of the Rapid City Pierre and Eastern Railroad which also go through Haakon County.

After public outcry scuttled its eminent domain scam federally subsidized Sioux Falls, South Dakota chemical company POET, that enables nitrate pollution to grow corn for ethanol, entered an agreement to transport waste carbon dioxide through Nebraska in an existing natural gas pipeline to a sequestration site in Wyoming. After being denied permits Summit Carbon Solutions is petitioning courts to end litigation where they are the plaintiffs.

Some Great Plains states, such as Minnesota and Wyoming, report on the total tonnage of hazardous materials carried by rail in their states, but South Dakota does not. In an email response to questions, Jack Dokken, the air, rail and transit program manager for the South Dakota Department of Transportation, said the federal government is responsible for regulating rail shipments in South Dakota, but the state can respond to a release of hazardous materials. [11 billion-pound mystery: The chemicals South Dakota trains carry]

Republican then-US Representative Kristi Noem balked at the idea of storing nuclear materials underground but as governor she signed SB 201 which some call the "Landowner Bill of Rights" further splitting the South Dakota Republican Party and caving to the Green New Deal.

South Dakota is a sacrifice zone so if Earth haters like Pat Powers believe CO2 can be transported safely trains carrying it through Brookings to a site West River then buried under the Pierre Shale should be perfectly fine, right?

Area man training drone pilots in Ukraine

Luke Fitch is the oldest son of Steve and Lynn. This morning the BBC reported on Ukrainian drone superiority in its war of resistance. Luke is owner-operator of Santa Fe-based Altitude FX.

The American president and his VP trying to shout down Zelensky will go down as one of the most disgraceful moments in American history.

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 but 11th 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.