4/15/16

South Dakota dairies bring habitat destruction, wage slaves

Brookings County is not just home to SDGOP's most obnoxious liar; it's home to some of the most polluted watersheds in South Dakota.

A cheese factory made possible by Republican cronyism sustains the stench of thousands of dairy cattle making eastern South Dakota a wasteland.

In 2012, after another GOP governor gutted environmental protection in South Dakota, the Big Sioux River was named the thirteenth most polluted river in the US and nearly every waterway in the state suffers impairment.

The state's GOP congressional delegation is scrambling to cover up their roles in creating the circumstances for the Big Sioux River's impairment and protecting their campaign donors from scrutiny.

South Dakota's lack of environmental oversight has everything to do with offshore and out of state investors in economic development initiatives: little wonder the Big Sioux River is a sewer of biblical proportions.

South Dakota suffers from high cancer rates and instances of spontaneous abortions due to industrial agriculture. The Big Sioux and James River systems are poisonous to anyone exposed to the liquids within their banks that used to be water.

Habitat destruction, lapses in ethics, crime spikes, increased incarceration rates, more people infected with sexually transmitted diseases, the failure of prisons, human trafficking: all mark the terms of Republican governors in South Dakota.

So-called 'Americans for Prosperity' a Koch-funded group with a lobbyist based in Sioux Falls signaled to legislators that they will lose campaign funding from the Kochs unless they act to reverse the progress the US Environmental Protection Agency has made in South Dakota.

South Dakota is a sanctuary state for white collar crime, though. John Thune's family came from Europe and Canada just two generations ago. His mean-spirited attack on sanctuary cities comes as the Center for Immigration Studies exposes his party's EB-5 corruption.

Ag producers have destroyed shelter belts to plant industrial crops that deplete aquifers and now drought is blowing toxin-laden silt into downwind states.

South Dakota has the worst access to healthy food in the United States.

The crony capitalism that keeps South Dakota the 8th worst state for the working class is destroying lands promised to native peoples by treaty and my home town of Elkton is struggling to find enough housing for migrant workers often living in squalor.

South Dakota: Land of Infinite Vengefulness.

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