South Dakota Earth haters ready 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.

Miners threaten sacred lands on purpose: part n

It’s not really South nor even really Dakota. 

Over twenty years ago Congress passed the Tribal Forest Protection Act when this columnist was still living in the Black Hills. It authorized tribal nations to enter agreements with the Departments of Interior and Agriculture to protect public resources bordering or adjacent to reservations and trust lands that have biological, archaeological, historical, or cultural connections. 

Then in 2012 the Sicangu Lakota Oyate or Rosebud Sioux Tribe raised some $10 million combined with contributions from the other members of the Oceti Sakowin the People of the Seven Council Fires purchased Pe'Sla, the property formerly called Reynold's Prairie by the descendants of white settlers. In 2014 the Nations acquired the final 437 acres of the Heart of Everything That Is and in 2015 the Oyates began moving bison to the meadow with hopes to add many more after winning federal trust status but in 2020 the herd of sixty five was removed after whining from welfare ranchers who lease Forest Service land for domestic cattle grazing for pennies per head.

Gaia targeting Olson ranch

Remember when Betty Olson said global warming is bunk because it's cold? Well, maybe she needs extreme grassland fire weather instead.

Earth hating Republicans like Betty Olson are destroying South Dakota.

Grand River Roundup

By Betty Olson

2-25-26

  Monday was President’s Day so we didn’t get any mail that day. It was a nice day so Reub and I put more firewood in the entryway for when it gets colder outside. Casey had left for Buffalo for wrestling practice with the Harding County wrestlers when Taz got the alert that there was a fire over east at the Nash ranch so Taz and Reub jumped into the fire-fighting unit and headed over there to help put the fire out. The wind wasn’t blowing hard and it was just a small grass fire. The fire headed down toward the Big Nasty Creek and the guys got it put out pretty quick. Thank God the wind wasn’t blowing like it was later in the week. Nash’s and a whole lot of other neighbors were here to help put out a fire on our ranch several years ago and we are really thankful to live in this neighborhood with so many good people here to help with whatever our problems are!

  Reub helped the guys move the cows across the highway from Coyote’ Butte to the pasture northeast of the buildings Tuesday morning because the cows will be calving soon. They brought some of the cows that looked like they are getting close to calve into the lot across the creek so they can keep an eye on them.

  It was really windy and cold when Reub and I went to Lemmon on Wednesday to meet with Attorney Jim Elsing to get the new wills he wrote for us. We asked our dear friends Audie and Wendy Brockel to come and sign the wills as witnesses for us and it was really nice to be able to visit with them a little while. We stopped in Hettinger on the way home to get stuff from Runnings but we had to hurry to get home in time to get ready for the Ash Wednesday Lenten service and potluck supper at the church that evening with communion during the service. A nice crowd came to enjoy the service and fellowship after the supper. 

  Thursday, February 19, was our son Sandy Dan’s birthday and this winter was a lot better than the year he was born in 1979. The winter of 1978 and 79 was horrible and there were weeks when the snow was so deep we couldn’t make it out to the highway to take our kids to school. We had been blocked in for two weeks when Reub got the snow plowed enough to make it out to the highway the day I went into labor. Reub took me to the hospital in Hettinger and went home that evening after Sandy was born. 

I was listening to the weather the next morning and there was another blizzard rolling in. Reub’s parents, Buck and Amy Olson, had their car in Hettinger getting fixed, so I called the garage and asked if their car was fixed yet. They said it was, so I asked them to bring it up to the hospital for me and then I packed up, wrapped Sandy Dan in a warm blanket, and headed for home after calling Reub to let him know we were coming. 

The blizzard didn’t start until I turned south at Reeder and headed down Highway 79 where the drifts on both sides of the road were higher that the roof on our house and there was only room for one vehicle on the highway. It was a struggle to make it through the blizzard and the bad road but when I made it down to the road into our place Reub and Pastor Phil Rokke were waiting to get us into the ranch safely. That was a stupid thing to do, but thank God we got home without getting stuck on the highway and it was two more weeks before we could get out again!

Wyoming Earth haters ignoring cheatgrass fix

Cheatgrass can produce more than 10,000 plants per square yard and is a major fire risk because it dries out more quickly than native vegetation. In 2021, the Forest Service, the US Department of Agriculture and the Wyoming Game & Fish Department sprayed the herbicide Rejuvra® with a helicopter on cheatgrass in a 9,200 acre area within the Mullen fire perimeter with the hopes of reducing, maybe even eradicating its presence. People recreating on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest were warned to avoid the kill zone and the compound is persistent in soil posing long-term risks to aquatic habitats through rain-induced runoff particularly on sloped or compacted earth.

In 2025 the Red Canyon Fire scorched 195 square miles of land plagued by a cheatgrass infestation so county weed and pest people argue that "without costly chemical intervention in the near future, the fire scar could convert to an unproductive monoculture of invasive grasses." But, those in the extreme white wing of Wyoming's party of Earth haters are pushing back on the cost of spraying Rejuvra®, at about $1,150 a gallon, on at least 340,000 acres in just one county.

Buffalo eat young, green cheatgrass in the spring and dormant plants but they mostly avoid it during the mid-summer seed stage when the awns are sharp and unpalatable. Wapiti or elk, mule deer and pronghorn travel from Grand Teton National Park to winter ranges throughout the region and into the Wind River Reservation eating cheatgrass along the way. But disease, urban sprawl and oil and gas development have altered historic migration routes in wonderful Wyoming.

So, irony is just another casualty of Wyoming's wildfires which have also cleared millions of acres of fences, power lines, dry grasses, sagebrush, ponderosa pine and juniper in Republican ranch country even as the Biden administration reached out to those serial ecoterrorists who rely on moral hazard to survive. But, if grazing cattle is the key to preventing wildfires why do red states suffer from near daily high even extreme grassland fire danger indices even in February? Because they're in denial about how manifest destiny is destroying the West.

ip image.

Global warming threatening Republican Black Hills town

Rapid City area fire crews knocked down a wildfire that burned dangerously close to some businesses early this morning. The fire burned right up to businesses off Disk Drive, including Pet Smart and Kohls. In all, the fire burned approximately 15 acres before being brought under control.

And.

After a stretch of cold days, our average temperature this winter has dropped 2.2°, down to 34.5°. This currently ties 1930-1931 as the warmest winter ever with 6 days to go, including today. With above normal temperatures expected this week, it’s looking likely that 2025-2026 will become the warmest winter ever recorded in downtown Rapid City history. Records began in 1888.

Daschle to host author in Brookings

Daschle Dialogues is the public component of the Thomas A. Daschle Congressional Research Study. Daschle, a 1969 SDSU graduate, served in Congress for 26 years. He was one of the longest-serving Senate democratic leaders in history and one of only two to serve twice as both majority and minority leader. Daschle’s official papers were donated to Hilton M. Briggs Library and maintained by University Archives and Special Collections, where they have become the basis for research by SDSU faculty, scholars and students. Daschle will join Meacham at the program.

May: white privilege will save Native kids from their cultures

George Washington was a warlord because enslaved people afforded him cannon, muskets, powder and ball. And, if they were alive today he and President Jefferson would be horrified to learn the US is operating on a manual written in the Eighteenth Century. But, blurring one line between church and state America's founders extolled the virtue of education as local schools were run both by christian sects and by local municipalities under the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution. 

But it was not until 1867 and Reconstruction made public education a federal prerogative when President Andrew Johnson created a Department of Education as a proxy for race politics. Missionaries were hired then dispatched to the Deep South to provide schooling for whites and Negroes alike and Roman Catholics were enabled in the American West to assimilate Indigenous youth. Congress was incensed then demoted the Education Department after a year making it part of the Interior Department yet abuses continued. 

The concept of a charter school began in 1971 as a progressive movement but especially in red states has since been hijacked by the far white wing of the Republican Party to advance the New Apostolic Reformation. Dominion theology supposes christians must control the seven “mountains” of government, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, family, and business in order to establish a global christianic theocracy and prepare the world for Jesus’ return. Many catholic schools are in the Hillsdale bubble because the curriculum ignores the church’s role in the Native American Genocide.

Today, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt would be putting American Indigenous in concentration camps arguing it’s for their own protection, the United States has become the Hamiltonian Empire Thomas Jefferson warned us about and resistance is futile. 

Liz May is a white christianic Earth hater who clearly ignores historical trauma and institutional racism but represents District 27 in South Dakota's demented legislature anyway. She blames the victims of Manifest Destiny for being part of the Fourth World.

We Protected the System. The Children Are Still Waiting. By Rep. Liz May, District 27 

SB 218 was not about policy theory. It was about children like the ones a teacher recently described to me — children most of us will never see inside our comfortable circles. “Almost every home is broken,” she said. “Nearly all have at least one addict parent. Some came to us suicidal.” 

These are kids who walk into classrooms carrying trauma most adults would struggle to survive. They are not worried about test scores. They are worried about whether there will be food at home, whether a parent will be sober, whether they are safe. 

I don’t read about this in reports. I live it. In many rural communities and on or near our reservations, geography alone limits opportunity. There are no specialized campuses down the road. No statewide autism centers within driving distance. No dyslexia intervention programs readily available. Families raising children with autism, dyslexia, or other learning disorders often face hours of travel for services — if services exist at all. In some areas, there is simply nothing beyond the traditional model. When your child needs specialized support and your zip code determines whether that help exists, “choice” is not theoretical — it is nonexistent. 

I grow weary of hearing that the problem is simply parenting. Yes, family instability is real. Addiction is real. Trauma is real. Poverty is real. But if we stop there, we are not diagnosing the problem — we are excusing ourselves from trying to break the cycle. Children do not choose the homes they are born into. They do not choose addiction. They do not choose instability. If anything, those realities make the role of education more urgent, not less. 

If generational cycles are the challenge, then education must be part of the solution. Otherwise, we are simply describing a cycle we have no intention of breaking. Every single session, we admit the system is not reaching every student. We file bills to carve out behavioral health exceptions. We create pilot programs for one county. We authorize limited alternative placements. We stand on the floor and acknowledge — again — that something is not working. But instead of confronting the structure itself, we patch around the edges. We build carve-outs because we are unwilling to question the foundation. If the model were truly working for all children, we would not need a steady stream of exceptions to keep it standing. 

This was not the first attempt at reform. Over several legislative sessions, proposals for expanding educational flexibility have been introduced. Each time, the response has followed the same pattern: narrow carve-outs are acceptable, but structural change is not. When reform begins to alter governance or funding authority, the establishment pushes back. Not because the need disappears — but because the structure is threatened. 

SB 218 would not have dismantled public education. It would have created structural flexibility. It would have allowed communities to design schools that fit their students — not force students to fit a single governance model. It would have made many of those yearly carve-outs unnecessary. 

The South Dakota Education Association, aligned with the national NEA, advocates for a district-centered system. Its affiliated political action committee, EPIC, supports candidates who share that priority. That is legal. That is transparent. And it is effective. When elections consistently reinforce protection of the existing structure, reform becomes harder — even when reform is aimed at the children who are struggling most. 

That is not conspiracy. It is politics. 

But politics does not sit in a classroom with a child who is suicidal. Politics does not walk into a home where addiction has hollowed out stability. Politics does not look into the eyes of a teacher who says, “Almost every home is broken.” 

That teacher was not asking to protect a governance model. She was asking for flexibility to save kids. 

Since SB 218 failed, I have not been able to shake it. We are a legislative body of 105 elected representatives and senators — one hundred and five adults entrusted with shaping the future of this state. And yet, year after year, we struggle to find either the courage or the consensus to create meaningful change for the children who need it most. 

Last night I went to bed thinking about our failure. I woke up this morning thinking about how much time we spend debating bills that will barely move the needle — while the hard conversations about structural change are delayed, diluted, or dismissed. We argue over technicalities. We protect turf. We preserve comfort. And in doing so, we avoid the deeper question: why can’t we figure out how to help the underserved children we all acknowledge are struggling? 

I do not feel better today about the state of education than I did before this vote. If anything, I feel a heavier responsibility. Because if we — as 105 elected officials — cannot summon the will to address structural limitations in a system we openly admit is not reaching every child, then what message are we sending to the families who are waiting for something different? Institutions naturally defend themselves. That is human nature. But legislatures are not elected to protect institutions — they are elected to protect children. Especially the ones with the least voice. Especially the ones who cannot move districts or write tuition checks. 

We just set aside hundreds of millions of dollars for a new prison. We call it planning for the future. But if we continue protecting a system that we admit — year after year — requires carve-outs to compensate for its limitations, then we are planning for failure long before we are planning for safety. 

SB 218 did not threaten children. It threatened control. 

When forced to choose between preserving a governance model and opening doors for underserved communities, we chose preservation. 

The system survived. 

But somewhere tonight, a child who needed a different door to open is still walking into the same one — carrying the same weight— because we chose to protect structure over courage. 

We protected the system. 

The children are still waiting.